WarSclerotic

Turkey policy paper: Israel’s actions threaten Mideast – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

(“Et tu, Brute?” – Joseph Wouk)

Ankara’s National Security Council names Israel as central threat to Turkey’s security for first time since 1949, fails to mention Iran, Syria.

By Haaretz Service

Turkey’s already tense relations with Israel continued their apparent downward spiral on Saturday as Channel 10 reported that a central Ankara policy paper defined Israel as a central threat to Turkey’s security, blaming Jerusalem’s policies for destabilizing the entire region.

	A banner featuring a picture of Turkey PM A banner featuring a picture of Turkey PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan outside a souvenir shop in Gaza City outside a souvenir shop in Gaza City, June 6, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

Tensions between Israel and Turkey peaked earlier this year, following a deadly Israeli raid aboard a Turkish aid ship sailing to Gaza in attempt to violate the Israeli naval blockade. On May 31, Israeli navy commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara and killed nine Turkish activists on board after facing violence from the passengers.

The Channel 10 report on Saturday, citing Turkish media outlets, said Turkey’s National Security Council rectified an amendment to Ankara’s central policy paper, nicknamed the “secret constitution,” defining Israel as “a central threat to Turkey.”

“The region’s instability stems from Israeli actions and policy, which could lead to an arms race in the Middle East,” the paper outlining Turkey’s foreign and home policy for the next five years said, adding that those actions posed “a major threat on Turkey.”

Channel 10 also said Turkish media dubbed the amendment “historic,” as it represented the first time Israel had been seen as a threat on Turkey since 1949. The document fails to mention Iran or Syria as outside threats, apparently as a result of Ankara’s recently improved relations with both states.

Earlier this month Haaretz quoted Turkish reports as expecting that, for the first time since the Cold War, Turkey to remove Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Greece from their list of “threatening countries.”

The reports claimed that such a move would directly affect Turkey’s foreign policy, as laid out by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoğlu, whose goal is to rid Turkey of any problems with its neighbors.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his demand that Israel apologize for its May attack on the Gaza flotilla, saying “Israel must apologize to Turkey and pay compensation for the state terrorism in the Mediterranean.”
“If it does not, it will be doomed to remain isolated in the Middle East,” Erdogan added.

The Turkish premier also criticized the United States for continuing to support Israel after the “uncivilized” attack during a recent state visit to Pakistan.

“Nine Turkish martyrs on the ship received 21 bullets from Israeli soldiers in their bodies, we provided post mortem reports and even the pictures to the EU and U.S. but Washington is not ready to condemn the state terrorism of Israel against Turkey which means that the U.S. is supporting an international terrorist who killed our citizens in international waters,” Erdogan said.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report October 30, 2010, 1:24 PM (GMT+02:00)

Device found at East Midlands, UK, airport

Were it not for a tipoff from Saudi intelligence identifying the UPS and Fedex bomb parcels directed from Yemen to Chicago on separate cargo planes, they would not have been discovered before they blew up. Even so, debkafile‘s counter-terror sources report, al Qaeda chalked up a coup by successfully penetrating and paralyzing the main intercontinental air mail systems.

The packages taken off planes at the British East Midlands airport and Dubai Friday, Oct. 29, and rendered harmless were affixed to separate detonators- a cell phone and a trigger.

President Barack Obama reported a credible terror threat to the United States Friday night and pointed to Al Qaeda in Yemen (AQAP). He said two Chicago synagogues were targeted, but did not specify to which of the 140 Jewish places of worship in the Chicago area the packages were addressed.
The city is the president’s political base. His outgoing chief of staff mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel and his wife attend Anshe Shalom.
The United States, European and Middle East airports went on high terror alert after Washington was informed of a bomb threat to the US by means of air cargoes Thursday night. All the same, local airport security authorities in the US, Britain, Germany, France and Dubai were not aware of the threat and let the packages go through to their destinations.  Suspicion was first aroused at the East Midlands airport by a photocopier ink cartridge with wires and white powder. Our sources report it contained PETN explosive material disguised by a chemical coating. This was the same substance used by the “Underpants” bomber Farouk Abdulmuttalab when he failed to blow up a Delta passenger flight last Christmas and “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid nine years ago. After that, cargo planes with freights originating in Yemen were kept back on arrival at Philadelphia and Newark, NJ international airports for thorough screening.

Intensified security measures at all US airports for passengers as well as freight and the public advised to be extra vigilant.  Friday, as confusion mounted over the nature of “attack”, dozens of alarms were phoned in during the day from different parts of America. They included sightings of two UPS pick-trucks in Queens and Brooklyn, an unaccompanied bag on a street bench which caused part of San Francisco’s financial district to be temporarily evacuated and a knapsack outside a courthouse in Portland, Maine.

Linda Haase, the associate vice president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, said Friday that synagogues in the area had been on alert since being informed of a potential threat. She referred to threats to synagogues and the White House and mentioned “black powder.” The reference to the White House as later dropped from the report.

Obama’s statement stressed that the terror threat was still in force and US security and intelligence services were on guard to protect US citizens, friends and allies. The Transport Security Agency was ordered to intensify security checks at all American airports.
Saturday, the US media disclosed that Saudi intelligence had been the source of the tipoff to Washington about dangerous air freight on its way to the United States providing the consignment numbers of the bomb packages. In the UK, following discovery of the rigged ink cartridge, a new counter-terror center was established with labs for testing suspect articles.  Prime Minister David Cameron called the emergency COBRA committee into session to review the lapses of the British air security system. The suspect package was noted and cleared at East Midlands and sent on its way. The meeting was chaired by the Home Secretary Theresa May  as Cameron had a date with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They too no doubt discussed the ramifications of al Qaeda’s air cargo plot.

Even after the ink-bomb raised suspicion at East Midlands, major questions remain to be answered:

1. Without the Saudi tipoff, the bomb-parcels would have remained undetected and reached their targets. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has succeeded in breaching the intercontinental air freight system, one of the wheels which makes Western economies go round and can claim a tactical success.

2.  Although PETN had been used by failed al Qaeda’s bombers on international flights in the past, several airport security agencies at ports on the routes of the cargo flights failed to detect the presence of this explosive substance.
3. While only two packages have been identified as dangerous, there may be more still be found in meticulous sweeps of many tons of freight – or even delivered. Their presence refutes the first theory widely held by terror experts that the plot was a dry run to probe for weak points in the intercontinental air freight system.

4.  The imposition of heightened security for air cargo comparable to that applied to passenger traffic would throw the mail industry into chaos, causing extreme financial losses and disrupting an important branch of the Western economy. That too would be accounted by al Qaeda a major success – at very little cost to itself.

Security and Defense: The day after.

By YAAKOV KATZ
10/29/2010 16:28

When Israel thinks of a nuclear Iran, it’s not just concerned about change in balance of power; it’s more concerned about nuclear terrorism.

In February 2009, a professor named Abdallah Nafisi gave a lecture in Kuwait and discussed how the tunnels that are used by smugglers under the Mexican-American border could be used in a potential terror attack against the US.

“Four pounds of anthrax carried in a suitcase this big,” he said, creating a small-looking suitcase with his hands, “carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the US, is guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there.”

According to Nafisi this scenario is possible and as a result there is no longer any need for attacks like 9/11 which, he said, would be “small change” in comparison to the attack he envisions.

“There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. Just one person with courage to carry four pounds of anthrax will go to the White House lawn and will spread this confetti all over… it will turn into a real celebration,” he said at the conference, which was aired on Al- Jazeera television.

While it would have been easy to dismiss Nafisi as just another crazy anti- American radical, his scenario was carefully studied and deemed viable. Many security officials even took his remarks seriously. One of them was Ronald K. Knoble, secretary-general of Interpol, who that month mentioned the speech in a letter he issued in commemoration of the first World Trade Center bombing which took place 16 years earlier.

“If we add to these global security gaps the devastation that could follow a nuclear or biological terrorist attack within the next five years… then we must conclude that now is no time for complacency,” Knoble wrote.

Nafisi’s comments were also not ignored in Washington , where a team of experts, led by Bob Graham, a former senator from Florida, had just submitted a report it had been asked to write by president George W. Bush on the threat of nonconventional terrorism to the world and the US in particular.

The scenario laid out by Nafisi was analyzed and found to be realistic, even though the body count was a bit exaggerated and would, according to one of the experts on biological terrorism who worked for the committee, be far fewer, likely in the tens of thousands.

The report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism startled the administration as well as Congress with its primary warning that a nuclear or biological terrorist attack was likely. “Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013,” the commission concluded.

The tunnels under the US’s border with Mexico is just one way for that to happen.

THAT IS WHY when Israel thinks of a nuclear Iran, it is not just concerned about change in the balance of power in the region and the constant threat it will have to get used to living under – particularly due to the possibility, no matter how slim, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will use his country’s newly-acquired bomb to do what he has called for and wipe it off the map.

It is more concerned, according to senior defense officials, with the threat of nuclear terrorism – the possibility that Iran will give a crude device, or dirty bomb, to one of its proxies. This way it will be able to maintain some level of deniability.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this clear in 2008 when he said that he did not “belong to those who think that if Iran has a nuclear weapon, it will hurry to drop it on a neighbor.” Rather, he said, the primary danger is that “a nuclear weapon will reach a terrorist group which will not hesitate to use it immediately. It will send it in a container with a GPS to a leading port in the US, Europe or Israel.”

According to Israeli assessments, if Iran achieves a nuclear weapon, its proxies will feel emboldened and empowered. It will basically make Hizbullah, Hamas and others, feel braver to be more daring in their own acts of aggression.

THIS ISSUE has been taboo for many years within the government and defense establishment.

The reason is quite simple – if Israel starts to think about the day after Iran goes nuclear, it would appear that it is coming to terms with a nuclear Iran, which it is not. On the contrary, Israel is still pressuring the US, the UN and the European Union to step up their sanctions regimes, which if toughened, it believes, are capable of getting Teheran to rethink its current course of action.

But this does not mean that no one is thinking about the day after. On Monday, The Jerusalem Post revealed that the Foreign Ministry has established a team of experts to work on contingency plans for what will happen the day after Iran goes nuclear.

Despite its establishment, a government official stressed that while the government might be preparing various contingency plans for the day it “wakes up and there is a nuclear Iran,” this does not mean it has come to terms with this eventuality.

The Foreign Ministry is not the first to analyze such issues. In 2007, a small team of senior analysts with the National Security Council drafted a secret memorandum about “the day after” Iran obtains atomic weapons. The memo did not go into too much detail about what course of action should be taken if this happened, but its mere existence was an indication that not everyone in Israel believed in preemption.

A few years later, a prestigious think tank convened a group of former senior IDF officers and diplomats to participate in a day of war games that broke new ground by assuming the existence of an Iranian bomb. Discomfort with the scenario prompted the Defense Ministry to cancel its participation.

The scenario played out involved an Iran which had already obtained a nuclear capability. Shortly after the announcement that Iran had gone nuclear, Hizbullah launched long-range missiles at Tel Aviv, striking the Defense Ministry and causing casualties and large-scale destruction. The next stage was that Israel and the US had obtained intelligence indicating Iran had transferred technology to Hizbullah which could be used to create a crude nuclear device.

Possibly of more concern for Israel is the nuclear arms race a nuclearized Iran will set off, turning the Middle East from an already volatile region to something of a nightmare. If Iran succeeds in defying the world and developing the bomb, then the Nonproliferation Treaty could completely collapse, paving the way for additional countries to develop nuclear weapons.

Countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan have already announced plans to engage in nuclear research, of course for energy purposes at this stage.

The congressional commission led by Graham raised concern that some of these countries – possibly Saudi Arabia – might go as far as to immediately buy a nuclear weapon on the black market and skip over the development process and technological obstacles. The idea would be to immediately create a balance of power with Iran.

“Failure to stop Iran and North Korea could result in a cascade of proliferation,” Graham wrote early this year, “which would dramatically increase the likelihood of the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

America’s Security Is Also On The Line – Investors.com.

Election ’10: Economic issues dominate this year’s campaigns, with voters furious at big-spending members of Congress. But there’s an even more pressing reason to “throw the bums out” — they’re failing to protect us.

Voters know they’ll throw a legislative monkey wrench into the liberals’ machinery on Tuesday when it comes to more stimulus spending, health reform, environmental activism and the like. But a Republican House and especially the possibility of a GOP-controlled Senate could also obstruct the Obama administration’s perilous foreign policy.

Take the president’s timid accommodations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. We’ve canceled the construction of an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, for instance, which could protect against Iranian and Russian attacks alike, because it rubbed Putin the wrong way.

And even a Huffington Post blogger like “Peace Scholar” Jonathan Pearl complained last week that “when Russia recently signed a deal to supply Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with nuclear reactors, the silence from Washington was deafening.”

The U.N. Security Council’s imposition of a fourth round of sanctions against Iran — which the Obama administration touts as such a victory for its “tough diplomacy” — didn’t stop Moscow from delivering fuel for Tehran’s Bushehr reactor this summer.

Iran’s going nuclear is, after all, the name of the game in the continuing global war on terror. We can have as many fighter escorts of suspicious passenger flights from the Middle East as we like, and we can foil jihadist plots against the U.S. homeland as effectively as the Bush administration did. But if jihad goes nuclear, with Iran giving a device to its financial beneficiaries in Hamas or Hezbollah, or installing the bomb on top of one of its ever-longer-range missiles, we will have entered a whole new world.

Does any rational observer believe containment of a nuclear Iran is a feasible objective? In his recent book “Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West,” Michael Ledeen warns that “having forgotten how close we came to losing the Second World War, we are repeating our past errors. We could lose this war against the Iranian terror masters; our traditional strategic buffer — the oceans — is no longer effective, and our land borders are porous.”

The mullahs who rule Iran do not think in Western — or even logical — terms. Like your garden-variety Islamist suicide bomber, the destruction of their foes is what matters, even if it means death for themselves and the devastation of their homeland.

And as far as depending on Israel to solve the Iranian nuclear threat for us, the peace-loving Obama administration has been pressuring the Jewish state not to defend itself and bomb Tehran’s nuclear sites.

The American people are about to exercise the ultimate power of a free country. With it, they can get rid of John Kerry as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or at least make things tougher for him as he, among other shenanigans, pushes to ratify Obama’s New-START treaty, which would impede our missile defense against nuclear attack.

Republican control of Congress wouldn’t end Obama’s dangerous foreign policy. But it would put the brakes on its more dangerous aspects.

US condemns Hizbullah threats against Hariri tribunal.

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Photo by: .

By JPOST.COM STAFF AND ASSOCIATED PRESS
10/30/2010 04:37

PJ Crowley criticizes “maneuver by Hizbullah to try to deny the Lebanese people the truth”; says interference in tribunal “should not be tolerated.”

Efforts to “discredit, hinder, or politicize” the UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri only increase instability in Lebanon and the region, and “should not be tolerated,” said US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley Friday.

During a daily press briefing in Washington, Crowley said, “The tribunal was created at the request of the Lebanese Government to the United Nations, and it’s a professional and independent tribunal with a mandate from the United Nations Security Council and the support of the international community. And politicizing and interfering with the work of the tribunal does not serve the interest of the Lebanese people.”

He added that, “we condemn threats as yet another maneuver by Hizbullah to try to deny the Lebanese people the truth and justice that they deserve. There’s a presentation by Hassan Nasrallah that somehow one has to choose between justice and stability. And we reject that as a false choice.”

“The special tribunal was created to investigate a heinous crime and to end impunity for these crimes. And unless and until Lebanon is able to end impunity for these crimes it will be extremely difficult to achieve the peace and stability that all the Lebanese people deserve. That may well be Hassan Nasrallah’s purpose, but it’s not ours,” Crowley said.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called Thursday on all Lebanese to boycott the UN tribunal investigating the assassination of the former prime minister, saying all information gathered by the team was being sent to Israel.

Nasrallah’s comments came a day after a crowd of women attacked two UN investigators and a Lebanese interpreter as they gathered evidence at a private gynecology clinic in Beirut. The women scuffled with investigators and stole several items from them.

The attack underscored the charged emotions behind the tribunal, which Hizbullah says is biased.

US Jewish groups told to be on high alert after terror plot.

Police and ADL warn Jewish organizations not to open suspicious packages sent from abroad following thwarted terror attacks in US.

WASHINGTON — US law enforcement has warned Jewish groups to be on the lookout for packages mailed from overseas in the wake of suspicious packages addressed to Jewish institutions in Chicago.

The Associated Press quoted President Obama as saying Friday that the packages found on planes headed for the United States constituted a “credible terrorist threat” and had been addressed to Jewish organizations in the Chicago area.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a nationwide alert, based on warnings from law enforcement officials.

“There is a reported threat to Jewish institutions in the form of packages mailed from overseas, particularly Great Britain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” it said. “In light of the reported threat, the League has sent out a notice to US Jewish communal institutions across the country to increase mailroom security and to contact law enforcement immediately if they see anything suspicious.”

Queries should be directed to the FBI, the alert said.

The Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago also issued an alert.

“The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago has alerted area synagogues not to open packages that appear suspicious due to the way they are wrapped, or which come from Yemen or from any organization that has the name ‘Yemen’ in it,” it said.  “Any institution that receives such a package is advised to call “911” and to evacuate the premises until law enforcement arrives.”

Islamic Jihad leader: Israel must be wiped out of existence – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Organizers say up to 100,000 people attend largest Islamic Jihad rally in Gaza in several years; Hamas leader calls for unity against Israel.

By Reuters

Tens of thousands of supporters of the militant Islamic Jihad movement rallied in the streets of Gaza on Friday, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Young men and boys wearing white T-shirts with a slogan in the shape of a rifle carried portraits of militants killed in combat, under the black flags of Islamic Jihad.

	A Palestinian militant of the Islamic Jihad stands guard during a rally in Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 29, 2010.
	Photo by: AP Photo / Hatem Moussa

Ramadan Shallah, the group’s exiled chief, currently residing in Damascus, sent a recorded message marking the anniversary of the assassination of the group’s leader Fathi Shiqaqi in Malta in 1995, by presumed Israeli secret agents.

“Israel will not bring peace to the region, it will only bring war and destruction and therefore, the slogan of all should be that Israel must be wiped out of existence,” said
Shallah, who is on a United States wanted list.

Senior leaders of the ruling Islamist group, Hamas, joined the open-air gathering, the largest for years in honor of Islamic Jihad with up to 100,000 attending according to its organizers.

Hamas allowed the group to use city terrain it usually reserves exclusively for its own rallies, and Hamas forces provided security for the parade by its smaller rival.

A Palestinian woman holds a gun as she attends the Islamic Jihad rally in Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 29, 2010. AP

1/11

‘Referendum against peace talks’

Islamic Jihad carried out a series of stabbing attacks in the 1980s against Israeli citizens who used to visit the Gaza Strip to purchase cheap goods and later turned to suicide bombings inside Israel.

Its militants continue to harass southern Israel with sporadic rocket and mortar fire from inside Gaza, frequently paying with their lives in swift retaliatory strikes by the Israeli air force.

Islamic Jihad officials said Friday’s turnout was a “referendum by the Palestinian people rejecting peace-making with Israel.”

Negotiations between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have faltered after Israel’s 10-month freeze of settlemement construction expired on September 26.

“The choice of negotiation has reached deadlock, and we are wondering why is there such an insistence by the Palestinian Authority on negotiation with the enemy,” said Shallah.

He urged an end to peace talks and fresh efforts to heal the rift between Abbas’s Fatah movement and the Islamist militants.

Raising hopes that the three-year-old split may be coming to an end, Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya said it was time for unity in the face of Israel.

“There is only the choice of Jihad and nothing else … There is no more room to make bets, on the Americans or anyone else,” said Hayya.

President Abbas, however, rules out any return to violence against Israelis in pursuit of Palestinian statehood. He has said he will pursue diplomatic alternatives should the peace talks with Netanyahu collapse definitively.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report October 29, 2010, 10:53 PM (GMT+02:00)

Device found at East Midlands, UK, airport

President Barack Obama, in a special statement Saturday, Oct. 29, dismissed speculation of an Al Qaeda dry run and disclosed “a credible terrorist threat to the United States” by means of two packages containing explosives originating with al Qaeda in Yemen and planted on UPS and Fedex cargo flights bound for the US. Obama disclosed that two Jewish places of worship in Chicago were among the targets of the package plot.

The threat to the US and its allies is still in force, the US president warned. He stressed the importance of cooperating with the Yemeni government to destroy Al Qaeda.
Security agencies on three continents went on high terror alert after being tipped off by allied intelligence that explosive packages had been addressed to the White House and Chicago synagogues from Yemen. The first suspect package, a photocopier ink cartridge rigged with wires and white powder, was found on a Chicago-bound UPS flight from Yemen at the British East Midlands airport. The second was confiscated at the Fedex facility at Dubai airport.

US authorities are unclear how the explosive substances were to have been detonated. Much still remains to be investigated.
debkafile reported earlier:

The tipoff by an allied intelligence service of an air cargo terror plot reached Washington Thursday night, Oct. 28. After that US, British, French, German and Gulf counter-terror and aviation security agencies went into round-the-clock mode. Saturday, they decided to quarantine three cargo flights at Philadelphia and Newark, NJ, international airports for intensive sweeps of freights from Yemen.
The Chicago Jewish Federation was warned to be extra careful because some of the suspect parcels containing black power were addressed to local synagogues.

Security measures were tightened at all US airports for passengers as well as freight and the public was advised to be extra vigilant.  As confusion mounted over the nature of the “attack”, dozens of alarms were phoned in during the day from different parts of America. They included sightings of two UPS pick-trucks in Queens and Brooklyn, an unaccompanied bag on a street bench which caused part of San Francisco’s financial district to be temporarily evacuated and a backpack in bushes outside a courthouse in Portland, Maine.

A special new counter-terror center was established in the UK with labs for screening suspicious articles.

debkafile‘s counter-terror sources report three theories current about the motives behind the air mail plot:

1.  The small number of suspect packages – apparently less than the fingers of one hand – was used to probe the intercontinental aviation security systems for cargo planes and airports handling freights to the United States preparatory to a major attack.
2.  The imposition of heightened security for air cargo comparable to that applied to passenger traffic would throw the mail industry into chaos, causing extreme financial losses and disrupting an important branch of the Western economy.

3. Getting one of the suspect packages delivered at the White House in Washington would have given al Qaeda a tremendous propaganda boost – especially in the run-up midterm congressional elections.

DEBKA.

Iran started to inject fuel into its only nuclear reactor Tuesday, October 26, explaining the three-month delay by the need to fix a leak in the Russian-built reactor’s basin. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said the loading of 163 fuel rods into the reactor’s core began after tests had shown all its systems were functioning properly.
Since August, Iran has steadily denied that the Stuxnet computer virus caused the delay, only admitting that some of the staff’s personal computers had been affected. But DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence and Iranian sources confirm that the malworm was in fact the only cause of the postponement and the Iranians are far from sure that it is not still lurking in the system and capable of preventing the full quota of fuel rods being loaded. Even if they are, they are not certain the reactor will finally go on-line and produce electricity.
Our sources report the following steps taken by Tehran to control the damage:
1. From July, when the cyber attack on Bushehr was first discovered, Iran invited three teams of cyber war experts for consultation – the first from Western Europe, the second Russia and the third, Chinese. The last team arrived in early October and has remained to monitor the injection of fuel and the plant’s activation.
2. The European and Russian experts concluded that the Stuxnet invasion was enabled by disabling thumb drives and was the work of a foreign intelligence agency.
On their advice, the Iranians had all computer ports – first in Bushehr and later in all their nuclear and military installations – sealed with liquid blocking material. The experts were amazed to find the thumb drives so accessible and, while not 100-percent sure, assumed that this was how Stuxnet was introduced into Iran’s computer control networks.
Chinese experts advise dismantling, reprogramming computers
The obvious conclusion was that it was an inside job: In other words, someone working at the Bushehr reactor, a nuclear plant or laboratory, whose computers were linked to the computers at Bushehr, planted the Stuxnet infiltrator via his or her thumb drive – whether deliberately or inadvertently.
4. Although several suspects remain under arrest and are still being questioned, Tehran has to this day not run down the source of the cyber attack and cannot tell whether it was deliberate or not.
The regime has turned naturally to intimidation tactics directed against personnel employed at nuclear facilities; the disclosure Tuesday, Oct. 26 on the day the first fuel rods were loaded at Bushehr, that seven suspected spies for the US and Israel were under arrest was intended to frighten the perpetrator of the virus attack into believing that Iranian security was close on his heels.
5. On the advice of the Chinese experts, all of the software was removed from the computers of the contaminated networks and they were reprogrammed under close surveillance. Every bit was carefully examined before it was inserted in the computer and tested again.
Those experts warned Tehran that the Stuxnet worm may have launched a “semantic attack” designed to fool its victim into believing that its computer systems are virus-free and functioning properly, when in fact they are not, and may not have been for some time.
Therefore, there is no guarantee that Iran’s security measures and reprogramming rid its computers of the worm. Stuxnet may still be lurking undetected at an unknown digital location ready to spring back into malign action at an unforeseen moment.

DEBKA.

Revolutionary Guards

If the next war in the Persian Gulf and Middle East plays out according to the Iranian scenario, Revolutionary Guards elite units will hit back at enemy troop landings by sea or air, by taking the war to US Middle East bases, Mediterranean shores, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The paucity of Iranian fighting men and size of country would make defense a tall order for Tehran, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military experts.
The IRGC’s regular strength is just 150,000 fighting men – rising to 200,000 when war reserves are fully mobilized. This is nowhere near being up to the combined task of defending the country while striking the enemy outside its borders.
The Iranian general staff has addressed this predicament by assigning some 15,000 troops of the IRGC’s crack Special Forces, Navy and Air Force units to striking targets in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, while leaving an army of roughly one million soldiers to deal with enemy assaults and invasion.
That number too is far too small to defend all 1,648,195 square kilometers (636,372 square miles) of Iran, which is the 18th largest country in the world in terms of area, with a population of more than 75 million and coastlines on three seas, the Persian Gulf-Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Caspian Sea.
To make up for that deficiency, Iran has for the past eighteen months been building and training special local forces for defending the capital Tehran, other key cities, its nuclear installations and other strategic and military centers. They will also bear the brunt of putting down minority uprisings by Kurds, Arabs or Baluchis and curbing their efforts to sever main transportation arteries by sabotage and terror.
These scratch armies, yielding around 140,000 semi-trained fighting men, have been molded out of the Basij volunteer militia and local police departments.
Semi-trained, poorly-equipped to rebel invaders
The Basij, which numbers about 90,000 volunteers (The Iranians claim there are more than 10 million!) was until recently no more than a poorly equipped local militia of enthusiastic thugs at the beck and call of the regime. Iranian tacticians have managed to hammer them into five armored Basij divisions equipped with tanks, artillery and short-range anti-aircraft weapons, whose task it is to destroy any enemy forces landing on their patch.
Iran’s police force has undergone a similar transformation. It now resembles a paramilitary force more than an arm of law enforcement. Its single Police Unit 110 for rapid response in urban areas has been replicated in many parts of the country and trained for combating local guerilla fighters and invading foreign troops in their areas of control.
All in all, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources estimate that Iran could field in the early stages of a war 900,000 to a million fighting men – the professionally-trained 600,000-strong army and IRGC troops and the semi-trained units making up their numbers.
This army would be far from homogenous, lacking a unified central command, with uneven combat skills, low-grade weaponry and only very basic communications equipment. The units assigned with repelling invaders will have little-to-no air support or helicopters for striking ground targets because almost the entire ageing air force, including attack helicopters, must be reserved for the big battle of the Persian Gulf against US, Saudi and emirate forces.
Heavy Iranian reliance on allies for proxy offensives
Given these grave tactical deficiencies, Tehran would be heavily dependent in any conflict in the foreseeable future, on “second” and “third fronts” fought by allies and surrogates – the Syrian Army of around 500,000 troops, Hizballah’s fighting militia of 45,000 and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, which together could muster 17,000-20,000 men under arms.
They would be charged with carrying forward Iran’s military doctrine of taking the war into enemy territory.
Iran’s proxy army is made up of two main elements:
1. Commando forces trained for missions inside Israel
The two most professional forces under Iran’s remote control are the 15,000-strong Syrian airborne commandos and Hizballah’s 4,000 special forces – most of whose officers and men underwent specialist IRGC and Al Qods Brigades training in Iran.
According to Tehran’s war plans, while helicopters dropped Syrian commandos over target areas in Israel, flying in low to evade Israeli radar, Hizballah’s ground troops would drive across the Lebanese-Israeli border and head for sectors inside Israel pre-designated for capture with the aid of the local Israel-Arab populace, while also striking Israel Defense Forces facilities and severing Israeli transport routes in their respective areas.
The involvement of Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers has deepened throughout the Hizballah chain of command. Tehran has appointed Revolutionary Guards Gen. Hossein Mahadavi overall commander of the war front against Israel in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. He is permanently seated in Beirut with a staff of dozens of Iranian specialists who advise Hizballah on intelligence and weapons systems.
While Syrian and Hizballah troops attack northern Israel, armed Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist squads would smash their way into southern Israel and attack IDF soldiers and civilians, focusing on the coastal cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod. They would make use of the hundreds of tunnels burrowed under the Gaza border fence in deference to the North Korean doctrine of infiltration and operation behind enemy lines, and also try and land by sea.
Iranian war planners foresee simultaneous battles flaring up in many parts of their country, especially around nuclear installations and important military facilities. They are keen to replicate this scenario inside Israel which is far too small to withstand such strategy.
Evidence has been building in the past six months of Syrian and Iranian marine units – the latter already present in Syria – simulating sea landings from the Mediterranean at various points on the Israeli coast where major naval bases, oil refineries and power stations would present ready infrastructure targets for destruction.
2. A sustained missile strike on Israel
Tehran plans its first knee-jerk response to a US or Israeli attack to be a concentrated four-directional missile blitz on Israel and has amply armed its proxies for that task. Not only would Iranian missiles cover the distance, but Syria would let loose from the north, Hizballah from the northwest, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the south. They have all been supplied with enough intermediate-range missiles and rockets to pound every inch of Israeli territory.
Syrian and Hizballah arsenals were recently swelled by large consignments of the new-model Fateh-110 missiles, which have a range of 220-250 kilometers, while the two Palestinian groups in Gaza have been furnished with a growing supply of improved Fajr-5 missiles whose 80-kilometer range takes them as far as Tel Aviv.
Iran has also smuggled into Gaza enough anti-aircraft missiles of different types with launchers housed underground and operated by remote control to affect Israel’s aerial tactics against terrorists operating out of Gaza. DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report the Israeli Air Force has just discontinued the use of helicopters for surveillance and other tasks over the Gaza Strip and border areas in Israel lest they are shot down from Gaza.
Indeed, last week, an Iranian anti-aircraft missile fired by an Islamic Jihad squad managed to bring down an Israeli UAV over the northern Gaza Strip. Large Israeli ground forces with tanks rushed across to the crash site to remove every fragment of the drone before the scraps could be collected by Palestinians and sent on to Iran or Hizballah for analysis.
The missile blitz Tehran has planned would be coordinated by a joint command set up in Damascus last June by Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This command center also divided Israel into sectors for coordinated targeting adjusted to the types of missiles in the hands of the participants and ongoing events in the various war zones, including Iran.
Israel lines up its defenses
Tuesday, October 26, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, drilled a simulated strike on the building by two of Hamas’ Grad missiles during a plenary session, necessitating the transfer of deliberations to another location in Jerusalem.
That exercise, which took place three days after the conclusion of the US-Israeli joint missile defense maneuver Juniper Falcon 11, indicates Israel is fully aware that every part of the country is now exposed to Iranian or surrogate missiles. That maneuver led straight into the biggest exercise the Israeli Air force has ever staged to practice the widely-varied combat, defense and support functions this arm will have to perform against a synchronized Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah-Palestinian assault.
The air exercise continues through the end of the week.
On the diplomatic front, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley Tuesday night accused Syria of continuing to “steer weapons to Hizballah militants in Lebanon in an attempt to exert control over its neighbor.”
In Paris, Israeli sources leaked word to the French newspaper Le Figaro that Hizballah is running three logistics units whose specialty is weapons transport:
Unit 108, based in Damascus, is responsible for trucking arms and ammunition supplies inside Syria to storage depots in Aleppo, Homs and Tartous.
Unit 112 delivers war materiel to Hizballah’s caches in Lebanon and ammo to its Bekaa Valley facilities.
Unit 100 organizes the travels of Hizballah fighters and Iranian experts between Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and Iran via Damascus airport.