WarSclerotic

Canada Takes a Stand for Israel | theTrumpet.com by the Philadelphia Church of God.

Prime Minister Harper accuses Muslim nations of being anti-Semitic and of scuttling Canada’s bid for a UN Security Council seat.

By Kenneth Fehr

In a speech on Monday to a gathering of international parliamentarians and experts attending a conference on combating anti-Semitism, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned of a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Canada and abroad.

He called it an evolving, global phenomenon of hateful ideologies targeting the Jewish people and their homeland, Israel. He said persecution of Jews was a primary source of injustice and conflict in the world, and that anti-Semites were using the language of “human rights” to push their hateful ideology. He stated that if left unchecked, there are those who would ignite another holocaust even today.

Referencing Jewish attacks in Mumbai in 2008, he stated, “We have seen all this before. And we have no excuse to be complacent. In fact, we have a duty to take action.” Taking an aggressive stance, Prime Minister Harper said that all Canada was “morally obligated to take a stand” and should “be relentless in exposing this new anti-Semitism.”

This is a lot of tough talk from a nation often viewed as appeasing and non-confrontational. At a time when Israel’s friends are few, Canada has shown its support even though it may have cost it a seat on the United Nations Security Council. In a secret ballot in October, the UN General Assembly voted to give Portugal the coveted position instead of Canada, raising questions in the Canadian press as to the reason why. According to Mr. Harper,

When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand ….

I know, by the way, because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at the United Nations, or any other international forum, the easiest thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-Israeli rhetoric, to pretend it is just about being even-handed, and to excuse oneself with the label of “honest broker.”

There are, after all, a lot more votes—a lot more—in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But, as long as I am prime minister, whether it is at the UN or the Francophonie or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost. Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us.

Although Canada’s friendship must come as welcome relief to tiny, beleaguered Israel, much more is needed to curb the mounting anti-Semitic trend. As Israel continues to seek support from the United States and Britain for a tougher stance on nuclear-ambitious Iran and is consistently rebuffed, watch for Israel to turn to Europe instead.

For more information on the impending fallout between America and Israel, read “The End of the U.S.-Israeli Alliance” by Stephen Flurry.

Prof: Obama’s Obsession with Israel Won’t End – Politics & Gov’t – Israel News – Israel National News.

Prof. Eitan Gilboa, a former government advisor and expert in media and administration, says that U.S. President Obama’s setback in the Congressional elections will not end his “obsession” with Israel.

Speaking with Arutz-7, the Bar Ilan University professor said that he does not think Obama will “lay off” Israel in the near future. “I believe he has an obsession with Israel,” Gilboa said. “He will want to get the talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority going again because he wants to be remembered in history as the one who is signed on the peace agreement.”

Just this week, Obama criticized Israel for announcing another stage in the approval process of 1,300 housing units in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa. “This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations,” Obama said during a visit to his boyhood home in the Muslim nation of Indonesia. “I’m concerned that we’re not seeing each side making the extra effort involved to get a breakthrough.”

Knesset Members from both the coalition and opposition criticized Obama, saying that he is ignoring the reality of Israel’s security and other needs in Jerusalem. Kadima party MK Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shabak, then known as the General Security Service, told the Jerusalem Post that the Americans “understand that there is no chance that Jerusalem will return to the 1967 borders. They also aren’t blind – they know where the municipal borders are drawn, and they also know where our security borders are around the city. But they still don’t know – or don’t understand – that the most sensitive part of the negotiations is Jerusalem. To begin by addressing the most sensitive issue, without establishing any level of trust, is a recipe for failure. The first place to build Israeli trust in the PA was in Gaza, and the first question should be not what happens in Jerusalem, but what happens in Gaza – how we make sure that there is one, and not two Palestinian states… [T]o deal with Jerusalem at the beginning of negotiations is a recipe for failure.”

American Permission Not Necessary
Later on in his interview with Arutz-7, Prof. Gilboa said that a careful reading of the memoirs of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, shows that Israel need not always ask permission from the U.S. before carrying out a particular military action.

“Bush wrote that he was disappointed in [former Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert’s decision not to attack Syria during the Second Lebanon War,” Gilboa said. “However, he noted that Olmert’s decision to attack the nuclear reactor in Syrian in 2007 was an excellent one, even though the Americans opposed it at first.”

“The American approval, despite its original objections, proves that not always does Israel have to ask permission or coordinate with the United States before a military action,” Gilboa said. He added, however, that there are situations, “such as a future attack on Iran,” in which because of operational and political considerations, “Israel will have to receive a green light from the Americans.”

Gilboa holds a Ph.D. in Administration from Harvard University, and has served as an advisor to the Prime Minister’s Bureau, the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry.

Air Defense: Iron Dome Stays In Storage.

November 11, 2010: Israel has again delayed the deployment of its new Iron Dome anti-rocket system. Now the first battery will be stored at an air force base until needed (by an imminent threat of numerous attacks across the Lebanese or Gaza borders). The system passed its final tests last July, and the first battery was supposed to enter service by the end of this year. But the air force says it wants to provide the crews with more training first, and for that reason, the first battery won’t be available for service until early next year.The first battery equipment was delivered several months ago. Israel has bought seven batteries, to be delivered over the next two years. Each battery has radar and control equipment, and three missile launchers (each with twenty missiles). Each battery costs about $37 million, which includes missiles.

Israeli politicians have been demanding that the air force deploy Iron Dome batteries immediately along the Gaza border. The air force preferred to save money and put the batteries in storage, to be deployed only for regular tests (and for training) and for an actual emergency. A compromise was negotiated, that had one battery deployed along the Gaza border, with the others kept in storage. Apparently the air force made a convincing case for delaying deployment. This was helped by the fact that rocket attacks from Gaza are few, and causing hardly any casualties. But if someone gets killed by one of those rockets, expect a political uproar, and the air force to suddenly discover that the troops were adequately trained and that an Iron Dome battery was on its way to the Gaza border.

During tests, the system detected and shot down BM-21 and Kassam rockets. The manufacturer, Rafael, was offered a large bonus if they got the system working ahead of schedule. When Iron Dome was first proposed four years ago, it was to take five years (until 2012) to get it operational. In addition to the cash incentive, there’s also the rockets still coming out of Gaza, and being stockpiled by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But the current low rate of rocket attacks are more of a political and psychological danger, than a real one.

Iron Dome uses two radars to quickly calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket (Palestinian Kassams from Gaza, or Russian and Iranian designs favored by Hezbollah in Lebanon) and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. But if the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area, a $40,000 guided missile is fired to intercept the rocket. This makes the system cost-effective. That’s because Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets in 2006, and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired over six thousand Kassam rockets in the past eight years, and the Israelis know where each of them landed. Over 90 percent of these rockets landed in uninhabited areas. Still, a thousand interceptor missiles would cost $40 million. But that would save over a hundred lives, and hundreds of injuries. A cheap price to pay, especially if you are one of the victims, or potential victims. Israel already has a radar system in place that gives some warning of approaching rockets. Iron Dome will use that system, in addition to another, more specialized radar in southern Israel.

The rocket attacks had been around since 2001, but got much worse once Israel pulled out of Gaza in August of 2005. This was a peace gesture that backfired. From 2001 to 2005, about 700 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. Since the 2005 withdrawal, over 3,200 more rockets were fired into Israel. The rate of firings increased after Hamas took control of Gaza in June, 2007.

The most numerous threat is the 122mm BM-21 rocket. These weigh 68.2 kg/150 pounds and are 2.9 meters/nine feet long. These have 20.5 kg/45 pound warheads, but not much better accuracy than the 107mm model. However, these larger rockets have a maximum range of 20 kilometers (versus six kilometers for the 107mm model). Again, because they are unguided, they are only effective if fired in salvos, or at large targets (like cities, or large military bases or industrial complexes.) There are Egyptian and Chinese variants that have smaller warheads and larger rocket motors, giving them a range of about 40 kilometers. Iron Dome was designed to deal with even larger rockets, that have the range to reach larger Israeli towns and cities.

The rocket attacks from Gaza have been remarkably ineffective, killing only 40 people (half from rockets, the rest by mortars) in eight years. Hamas has had to fire about 270 rockets or mortar shells for each Israel soldier or civilian they have killed. Israeli counterfire killed or wounded a Palestinian for every three Palestinian rockets or mortar shells fired. One Israeli was killed or wounded for every 40 rockets or mortar shells fired. Israeli fire was much more accurate, with most of the Palestinian casualties being terrorists or others involved in building or firing the rockets and mortars. Hamas has tried to get civilians killed, by storing rockets in residential areas, and firing them from those neighborhoods as well. Although Hamas believes in the concept of “involuntary martyrdom” (getting civilians killed for the cause, even if the victims are not willing), many of its chosen candidates are not eager to die. So civilians stay away from areas where the rockets are launched, and try to conceal the fact that rockets are hidden under their homes.

Meanwhile, up north in Lebanon, Hezbollah have stockpiled over 40,000 factory-made rockets, mainly BM-21s brought in from Iran via Syria. This is three times as many rockets as they had in the Summer of 2006, when over 4,000 rockets were fired into northern Israel, killing about fifty people, most of them civilians. Over a thousand Lebanese died from Israeli counterattacks. Hezbollah and Hamas plan to launch a joint rocket attack on Israel eventually. The Israelis have been planning more effective countermeasures, which they have not been discussing openly. There is also the option of installing Iron Dome in the north, but that is not likely to happen unless it seems likely rocket attacks are going to resume.

US to move military equipment worth $400 mn to Israel.

Jerusalem: Boosting Israel’s defence capability, the US is to move an additional USD 400 million worth of military equipment, mainly smart bombs and precision attack weapons, for emergency storage in the Jewish state over the next two years, a media report here said.

The US Congress approved the hike last month, which will bring the value of American military equipment stockpiled in Israel to USD 1.2 billion by 2012, daily Ha’aretz reported.

The United States stores equipment in Israel by virtue of a special clause in its foreign aid law governing war reserves stockpiles for allies.

The equipment can be used by American forces throughout the world, and also, in an emergency, by the military in the country where the equipment is stored, the clause says.

The clause was originally intended to allow South Korea use of American equipment in case of a surprise attack by North Korea.

The type of equipment stockpiled in Israel is decided through dialogue between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the US Army’s European Command.

The issue is said to have been raised in discussions last week during the US visit by IDF’s logistics and technology chief, Maj Gen Dan Biton, at the Pentagon in Washington, the report said.

It is believed that a great deal of the equipment will include precision weapons launched from the air.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said this week that in Israel’s future wars, much more precise weaponry will be needed to strike urban targets from the air, without injuring civilians. Israel used such American weaponry during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 against Hezbollah.

The agreement between the two armed forces also includes conditions under which the IDF may use the equipment.

The US had set a ceiling at USD 100 million, the first time it started stockpiling weapons in Israel in 1990, but it has seen a constant increase over the years, rising to USD 300 million during the first Gulf War and later 400 million.

It was doubled in 2007 after the Second Lebanon War, and will now reach USD 1.2 billion by 2012.

It is assumed in Israel that the US administration asked Congress to increase the value of the emergency equipment to signal its continued commitment to the Jewish state’s security and also to persuade Israel not to mount a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the daily said.

Israel is also expected to be allowed more involvement in selecting the types of equipment and weapons to be stored in the country, and also greater freedom to use it in an emergency.

The agreement on additional stockpiling is part of a very significant upgrading in security relations between Israel and the United States, which also involved an increased number of joint exercises between the two countries during which joint command over complex operations were also drilled.

Iran builds new weapons with a wave of a wand – English pravda.ru.

Iran is testing its own air defense systems, the technical and combat performance of which meets those of Russia’s renowned S-30 missile systems. The news was made public on November 10 by Iran’s state news agency IRNA that quoted Brigadier General Mohammad Hassan Mansourian.

“[Missile defense] systems similar to S-300 will soon undergo test firing and field modification while other long-range systems are also being designed and developed,” Mansourian said.

“In order to provide for part of our security needs … we wanted to buy S-300 from Russia,” the general said. “But this country (Russia) used the (UN sanctions) Resolution 1929 as a pretext in order to refuse the handing over of this defense weapon to us,” the official added.

On Septermer 22nd, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree to execute the resolution of the UN Security Council against Iran, which banned the delivery of military hardware, including S-300 complexes to Iran.

The West hoped that Iran would become more agreeable once it had been deprived of the opportunity to receive the systems from Russia. However, it turns out that Iran does not live up to expectations of the West. Fifty days after Russia’s refusal to implement the contract with Iran, the latter designed its own antiaircraft system out of the blue.

Russia Today: US, Israel seek regime change in Iran

This seems to be unimaginable indeed. In Russia, S-300 missiles appeared after decades of technological development. According to international military experts, there were only two countries in the world that possessed full-fledged missile defense systems – the United States and Russia.

It is an open secret that Iran regularly blows its trumpets all over the world saying that it is building new arms – from assault rifles to fighter jets, destroyers and ballistic missiles. Like a wizard, who takes various things out of his magic hat, Iran proudly makes announcements time and again about the appearance of state-of-the-art arms to scare away any aggressors.

Now it goes about anti-aircraft missile systems. It seems that just in a while Iran will announce the development of laser weapons and fifth-generation jets. Israeli military experts have exposed Iran’s blatant lies before when they proved that Iran had no miraculous weapons whatsoever.
Is the story different this time?

Konstantin Sivkov, the first vice president of the Academy for Geopolitical Sciences, believes that Iran is capable of establishing its own production of state-of-the-art missile systems.

“Their technical performance will be much worse than that of Russian systems, of course. Here is an example. The USA used to ship F-14 Tomcat fighters to Iran. The jets were equipped with air-to-air Phoenix missiles. It was the only country in the world that earned such an honor from the USA. As soon as the shah regime in Iran collapsed and ayatollahs came to power there, the military cooperation between the two countries was suspended. The US realized that its potential enemy possessed the arms that can drastically change the situation in a possible conflict. As a result, the USA did it best to deprive Iran of Tomcat spare parts and other equipment in a hope that the delivered planes and missiles would come out of order one day and Iran would not be able to establish their production afterwards. However, Iran launched its own production of both the spare parts and armament systems for F-14 planes, including Phoenix missiles.

“It brings up an idea that the Islamic Republic will be able to build a complex similar to S-300. They can do it with China’s help. China purchased Russian export variants of S-300 and then started making its own versions of the system. However, as experience shows, everything that China copied from Russia was much worse than the originals.

“Let’s take one of the most important parameters of the S-300 system – its interference resistance. This problem cannot be solved with mere copying. The data used in the design of S-300 interference resistance capability is a highly important state secret, which no one intends to make public.

“Nevertheless, even if Iran’s systems are 20 or 40 percent worse than the Russian ones, they can become a serious obstacle for conducting air raids against the Islamic Republic. Neither the USA, nor Israel will attack the country if they are not certain that everything will happen strictly according to their plans. The Iranian administration can see that American threats to North Korea have been replaced with persuasion and diplomatic approach after North Korea has proved the possession of nuclear arms.”

Vladislav Shurygin told Pravda.Ru that Iran’s most recent statements were nothing but propaganda tricks.
“One cannot build such weapons from nothing. I don’t understand what exactly the Iranians are promoting – their own invention or a Chinese copy of S-300? Iran has been investing a lot in the development of its air defense system recently, though. It purchased Russian Tor systems, for instance. However, there is no knowledge about Iran’s air defense system because it is one of the closest systems in the world. This way or other, Iran is definitely not the country that can be fully prepared for a modern war,” the expert said.

Sergey Balmasov
Pravda.Ru

Daylight over Iran.

Photo by: ASSOCIATED PRESS  

By JPOST EDITORIAL
11/11/2010 23:10

The more credible a military threat today, the greater the chance that a resort to force may not prove necessary.

Netanyahu’s comments, coming less than a week after US mid-term elections handed a major victory to Republicans, highlighted the growing daylight between Israel and the Republicans on one side, and the Democrats on the other, over Iran’s nuclear program.

While there is bipartisan support for “crippling sanctions,” and while Israel is emphatically publicly supportive of the sanctions effort, the sides are split over the fallback position in the event sanctions don’t work.

Roughly speaking, while many Republicans and Israel say containment must be “off the table,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) put it this week, and call to maintain a “credible military threat,” many Democrats have not rejected outright the possibility of containment, though they also continue to say that “all options are on the table.”

“Containment” is a term borrowed from the Cold War era when the US in the mid-1960s refrained from attacking China’s nuclear plants to prevent Mao from getting the bomb. In the Iranian context, containment implies that since it is impossible to stop Iran from attaining nuclear capability, all efforts should now be focused on deterring Iran from using it and preventing nuclear proliferation.

Undoubtedly, containment sounds much more attractive for citizens of a country located thousands of miles from the Middle East. However, 64 percent of Americans support military action against Iran after sanctions are exhausted, according to the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends survey of public opinion in the US and Europe. The survey, which was conducted in June and published in September with a three percent margin of error, found that 58% of French respondents felt the same, though only 32% of Brits did.

Most American and French citizens evidently understand the dubious efficacy of containment. There is no assurance that it would prevent the Islamic Republic from slipping a crude weapon or nuclear material to terrorists who could stage an attack anywhere. Reconciling to a nuclear Iran would also undermine the US’s deterrent capability and could result in an eruption of nuclear proliferation around the Middle East with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt embarking on their own nuclear programs.

THE MIDTERM trouncing, in which foreign policy is not widely regarded as having been a factor, has unsurprisingly prompted no sign that the Obama administration is rethinking its foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran. “We are prepared to do what is necessary,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates shortly after Netanyahu spoke at the GA, “but at this point we continue to believe that the political- economic approach that we are taking is in fact having an impact in Iran.”

With Israel on the front lines as a country that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said should be “wiped off the map,” a failed containment policy is an existential threat.

In fact, Iran, via its proxy Hamas in the Gaza Strip, is literally on Israel’s border. And as Middle East commentator Ehud Ya’ari pointed out in a recent article for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled “Sunni Hamas and Shi’ite Iran Form a Common Political Theology,” a new phase of bridge-building has begun between Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Hamas.

The Hamas leadership in Gaza is promoting partnership with Iran as a religious duty for the faithful. The painful fact that Sunni Muslims in Iran, who comprise more than 10% of the population, suffer from systematic discrimination, and that many of their leaders have been executed or imprisoned without legal justification is conveniently ignored. More important is their common hatred of the West and the fact that Iran and Hamas share a vision of reviving the caliphate and returning to a pristine form of Islam that utterly rejects existing “moderate” regimes in Egypt or Jordan, not to mention a Jewish state of any size in the Middle East.

‘CRIPPLING SANCTIONS’ against Iran are important. The hope remains that they will yet deter Teheran from pursuing its nuclear program, for fear that it will lose power in the quest.

But what happens if these sanctions are exhausted and the Islamic Republic remains undeterred in its hell-bent push for nuclear capability? For Israel, many in the Republican party and some Democrats, and the majority of Americans and French, the answer is clear. The more credible a military threat today, the greater the chance that a resort to force may not prove necessary.

Analysis: Relevance of IAF dogfight training.

The last flight that Majors Amichai Itkis and Emanuel Levi made Wednesday night was one that Israel Air Force pilots do not encounter on a daily basis or, to be more exact, have not encountered in almost 30 years.

The two men were flying the lead aircraft in a formation of four F-16I Sufas and were drilling dogfights with enemy aircraft over enemy territory. The last time an IAF pilot fought with an enemy pilot was in 1982, when Israeli jets shot down some 80 Syrian jets without losing a single one of their own.

Some might say that due to the almost three decades that have passed since then, such training is obsolete. Well, not exactly.

As Teheran, which has a large air force, continues to race forward with its nuclear program despite stiffened sanctions and threats of more, the possibility that the IAF will be sent to attack Iranian nuclear facilities is real.

In addition, the Middle East is slowly changing – while Israel has for decades enjoyed clear air superiority in the region, this is no longer as straightforward as it once was.

Syria, which for decades neglected its air force, several years ago began expressing interest in acquiring new MiGs, with some reports claiming that it has already signed a deal with Russia. Egypt is currently buying more than 20 F- 16s and Saudi Arabia is finalizing a $60 billion deal to buy 84 F-15s that could one day pose a direct threat to Israel.

What is unique about training for dogfights in enemy territory is that the IAF pilots cannot rely on help from Israel’s ground-based radars. Instead, they only have their onboard radars. The imperative is to detect the enemy before the enemy detects you and then to shoot him down.

It will take some time before the IAF will be able to conclude what exactly caused Wednesday’s crash. While a mechanical malfunction is being considered, the growing assessment is that the plane hit the ground due to human error. The pilot might have miscalculated the altitude and how close the plane was to the ground.

Like the IAF’s last major accident – the crash of a Sikorsky CH-53 Yasour transport helicopter in Romania in July – the F-16I was flown Wednesday night by an experienced pilot and navigator. Itkis was the squadron’s former deputy commander. Levi was one of the first navigators to fly on the Sufa when it arrived in Israel several years ago.

While there is no common denominator that directly connects the two accidents, there is no question that the IAF is flying a lot more in recent years, including overseas, mainly as a consequence of Israel’s strategic standing in the Middle East and the growing threats the nation faces.

Intensive training is not a bad thing. As the saying goes in Hebrew, “Tough in training means easy in war.”

One could argue that the crew should not have flown three sorties in one day, and instead, maybe just one, or at most two.

On the other hand, it is important to understand what type of conflict the IAF is preparing its pilots for. With Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas all connected in what some call an axis of evil, the IAF and the IDF are preparing for the possibility that the next war will be fought simultaneously on several fronts.

As a result, pilots and navigators need to know how to fly several times a day, on different fronts and in different battle conditions – in Gaza with light surface-to-air missile systems, Lebanon with heavier systems and Syria and Iran with the possibility of dogfights.

LYONS: Dealing with Tehran – Washington Times.

For 30 years, when it has come to addressing Iran’s acts of war against the United States, we have reacted like a “ship of fools.” Iran has been treated as a “sanctuary” from which it openly continues to conduct acts of state-sponsored terrorism against the United States and also train, equip and lead through proxies and the Quds Force the adversaries we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each administration since President Carter’s has chosen to ignore or pretend that the Iranian theocracy is not behind the repeated acts of terrorism or combat killings of hundreds if not thousands of our military and civilian personnel. Never has there been such a stain on our honor.

It started with the takeover of our embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the holding of our diplomatic personnel as hostages for 444 days. That was followed by the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, with the loss of 241 of our finest military personnel. We have proof positive that the orders came from the Iranian Foreign Ministry to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus. Unbelievably, our response was to move the Marines offshore even though we knew where the Iranian-backed terrorist group Islamic Amal (forerunner to Hezbollah), which had carried out the attack, was holed up in the former Lebanese army barracks above Baalbek. It took over the barracks on Sept. 16, 1983, with the help of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. For the record, we had the planes loaded and ready to attack but could not get authorization to launch. Osama bin Laden has often cited our failure to respond when faced with losses, concluding that Americans will cut and run.

Since that time, Iran has continued to conduct acts of war against the United States, including the Persian Gulf tanker war in the late 1980s as well as the truck bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 of our military personnel. Further, its support of the insurgency in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan continues unabated.

The most recent Iranian cash payment of 1 million euros in a plastic bag to Afghanistan’s corrupt Karzai government to buy influence in Kabul while at the same time supporting the Taliban to bring down the Afghan government follows the same formula Iran used successfully in Iraq. What’s astounding is that we have known all along about these bribes. The State Department when queried could only pathetically respond that it hoped Iran would be a constructive influence on Afghan’s future.

When we are sending our finest military men to fight in two wars with no intention of addressing the basic problem – Iran – it is more than dereliction of duty; it borders on criminal. Why has Iran been off-limits for more than 30 years? Unfortunately, should we strike Iran, the fear factor has been implanted successfully about what Iran might do in Iraq and Afghanistan or what mischief it would have Hamas and Hezbollah create for Israel or how it possibly might interfere with the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz. Are we afraid of the reaction of Iran’s chief ally, China, which has been a key source of conventional, missile and even nuclear technology for Tehran?

Let’s remember that we have fought much tougher enemies than Iran. There is no question that we have the military capability to launch and sustain a devastating strike on Iran. It’s our leadership that has failed the American people.

The latest information I have is that the illegitimate Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime is coming apart from within. However, we cannot overlook that we are in a race to bring about the downfall of this corrupt regime before it can achieve a nuclear weapon or nuclear device. The opposition in Iran is poised to act, but it requires outside support. This can come in many forms that we have used successfully in the past. Financial support is one of the key elements, as is forming a “shadow government” to replace the current regime. To launch the opposition movement, a tsunami-like event must occur. Such an event should be the execution of our Strategic Strike Plan (SSP), which has been developed to be carried out on short notice. Phase I of the SSP should be limited to striking the key facilities of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including the energy grids that support those facilities. A key element of the SSP should include plans to neutralize the current Iranian leadership.

There is no question that such action will resonate well beyond the Middle East. Our commitment to freedom and democracy will be clear. It also will signal that there will be no more sanctuaries, and our honor will have been restored. We owe this to the thousands of men who paid the ultimate price.

Retired Navy Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

The bank, the buck and the next war – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Bank of Israel chief Stanley Fischer has been buying dollars for two years. While the official reason for this is to boost exports by devaluating the shekel, there are other considerations, which may not bode well for the future

By Aluf Benn

Every few weeks I get a call from an international investment house or a risk-assessment firm. The callers always wants to know if and when Israel will attack the nuclear facilities in Iran.

	Illustration by Izhar Shkedi

“You have to understand that this is a critical question for my employers,” one adviser told me. “They need to decide whether to go long or short in oil.”

An Israeli military operation will send energy prices spiraling worldwide, and investors want to decide in advance what the most expedient move would be in such a situation. One investor says he is uneasy about Israeli bonds, which have done well in recent years, and he wants to protect himself against a potential fall should war break out.

Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer is readying for a possible war by hoarding vast amounts of dollars. Last month, Israel’s foreign currency reserves reached an all-time high of $67 billion. They have been increasing steadily for the past two years, since Fischer started buying dollars on the open market. The policy is presented as being aimed at creating a deliberate devaluation of the shekel in order to support Israeli exports. But according to a senior official in the economic establishment, “There are also geopolitical considerations, which do not exist in other countries.” Most countries aim to build up a “security cushion” of hard currency to guarantee their ability to repay debts and finance imports in hard times, he explains, “But because of the geopolitical situation, we have a little more [hard currency] than what the economics textbooks recommend.”

Prime Minister Benjamin visit to the United States this week is likely to rattle the investors and their advisers. Following a long period of quiet on the subject, Netanyahu has catapulted the confrontation with Iran back into the political headlines. He called on the U.S. administration to posit a “credible military threat” against the Iranians, and added that the sanctions as such will not induce Tehran to abandon its threatening nuclear program.

The U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, immediately took issue with the prime minister. The sanctions are working, he declared. But the Israeli message was received loud and clear. Netanyahu is trying to influence the agenda of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is looking for another realm to invest his efforts in the next two years, following the Democratic Party’s serious setback in the midterm Congressional elections. Netanyahu wants “Iran first,” but Obama is insisting on “the settlements first.” Obama’s relatively mild response to reports about Israel’s intention to build thousands of new residential units in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood and elsewhere across the Green Line indicates that he is looking to cut a deal with Netanyahu. The hopes and expectations of the Israeli left – that Obama would come down hard on Netanyahu immediately after the elections – have so far not been fulfilled.

Netanyahu wants to offer Obama a blueprint for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that can be achieved within a year. In return, he has a few requests: a large-scale security package from the U.S. – not only for the West Bank; the enlistment of additional Arab states in a broad regional settlement that will be signed parallel to the Israeli-Palestinian agreement; and an American demand from the Palestinians to return to the talks, rather than presenting their case before the UN Security Council. Netanyahu knows that before these requests are discussed he will have to give Obama something on the settlements, in order to overcome the obstacle of the construction freeze.

This week’s preoccupation with Har Homa is diverting attention from Netanyahu’s public call for an escalation in the confrontation with Iran. True, he did not urge the Americans to load stealth aircraft with bombs and destroy Natanz. The premier knows this is not the way Washington works: The Americans go to war only in the wake of a provocation by the other side. Accordingly, he made do with a proposal for a “credible military threat.” The fact is, says Netanyahu, that in 2003 the Iranians took fright at the display of American might in the conquest of Iraq and suspended their nuclear project for a time.

In his imagination, Netanyahu sees a replay of the 1962 missile crisis in Cuba. In this scenario, the U.S. imposes a maritime blockade on Iran and the economic stranglehold prompts Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and their colleagues to throw in the towel and drop the nuclear program.

President John F. Kennedy won everlasting glory for the courage and control he demonstrated in the missile crisis, in which the world was closer than ever before to a nuclear catastrophe, after the Soviets installed surface-to-surface missiles on Fidel Castro’s island – a short hop, skip and jump from Miami, Washington and New York, in ballistic terms. Kennedy put his foot down and the Russians backed off and removed the missiles from Cuba (after the U.S. promised quietly to remove its missiles from Turkey ). If Obama can reprise this exercise and get Iran to forgo its nuclear project without firing a shot, he will justify the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded last year big-time – and earn himself a place of honor in history.

But that scenario is better suited for a Hollywood action movie. In reality, Netanyahu does not trust the Americans to take serious action against Iran. If he truly believed that Obama wanted to put a stop to Iran’s work on a nuclear bomb, he would not be preaching to him publicly about what to do. The prime minister apparently thinks that Washington has reconciled itself to Iran having nuclear weapons capability, and that it intends to contain Tehran by diplomatic means and deterrence, but not to use force. He is disturbed by what he heard about the renewal of the talks between Iran and the big powers, in which the Americans dropped their demand for a complete halt to uranium enrichment in Iran. But the prime minister’s public castigation looks like an Israeli attempt to “wag the dog” and drag America into a war it doesn’t want.

What course of action will Netanyahu take? Will he launch a preventive war against Iran? The risks are great. Accepting an Iranian nuclear capability would place Israel under a dark cloud. Bombing the Iranian facilities from the air, or any other aggressive action that could be identified with Israel, is liable to make the warning issued by the outgoing director of Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin – who predicted heavy Israeli casualties in the next war – a reality.

If Tel Aviv is assaulted by missiles and rockets, and airlines stop flying into Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel will suffer a serious economic blow as well. The impressive achievements of the past year – Israel’s high growth as compared to that of the Western economies, the country’s 15th place ranking in the United Nations’ human development index, and Tel Aviv’s third-place position on the “Lonely Planet” list of tourist destinations – will instantly evaporate.

Israel has not recovered to this day from the economic blow inflicted by the Yom Kippur War. Will it take another risk of this magnitude?

DEBKA.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton

When they met on Sunday, Nov. 7, in New Orleans, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the opinion to US Vice President Joe Biden that Iran “must be made to fear a military strike against its nuclear program.” He was urging Washington, in other words, to take substantial military measures against Iran further – for example, to embark on practical preparations for war.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking from Melbourne, quickly retorted: “I disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions that it needs to, to end its nuclear weapons program.”
Netanyahu’s remark sounded oddly misplaced given the Obama administration’s unprecedented military pressure on Iran since mid-October, when a second American aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, was stationed off of Iran (on October 17) for the first time in the two years of this administration, joining the USS Harry S. Truman; and a French aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, which arrived in the Persian Gulf Saturday, November 6. And, furthermore (as we reported exclusively in our last issue) President Barack Obama in person asked NATO leaders and commanders to start drafting operational plans for military action in Iran that would just fall short of full-blown war.
Certainly, President Obama has leaned on Iran with more visible military might than any of his predecessors. They include especially President George W. Bush, who in his memoir, “Decision Time,” published this week, wrote: “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program.”
Netanyahu’s silence traded for Obama’s sanctions
It was on those grounds that in 2007 Bush refused an appeal from Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Olmert, for America to bomb the Syrian nuclear reactor (which Israel proceeded to do itself). But the former president omits to mention that at the end of the same year, he rejected Olmert’s request to attack Iran and on the same grounds: the National Intelligence Estimates – NIE just put on his desk concluded that Iran had stopped developing a nuclear weapon.
Today, Washington admits that the NIE got it wrong. In private, some US officials are willing to admit that its conclusion was deliberately faked to mislead Bush into shelving any plans he or Israel might have to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Another fact, brought out in several previous DEBKA-Net-Weekly issues, is that earlier this year, President Obama and Netanyahu agreed on the quiet that Washington would take economic and financial sanctions against Iran to the fullest extent in return for the Israeli prime minister holding his horses and refraining from harping on the military option, American or Israel – unless Tehran actually went into production of a nuclear bomb or warheads.
Netanyahu scrupulously upheld his side of the bargain to the point that his silence was deemed harmful to Israel’s fundamental interests – until he saw Vice President Biden in New Orleans on Sunday.
So what made Netanyahu veer suddenly from an embarrassing silence on the Iranian nuclear question to blunt rhetoric?
Newly hard-hitting on Iran, talks with the Palestinians, Hizballah
That was not the only odd feature of the Israeli premier’s unusually lengthy five-day trip to the United States.
Asked why he traveled to America when Obama was away in Asia, senior ministers in Jerusalem just shrugged and said that when they had put the same question to Netanyahu, he was evasive.
Then, too, on the day he saw Biden, an announcement came from home that 1,300 new housing units had been approved for Jerusalem suburbs across the old Green Line, recalling the awkwardness generated between Israel and the Obama administration of a similar announcement during the Vice President’s visit to Israel nine months ago.
Equally bizarre was Netanyahu’s meeting with UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon in New York Monday, Nov. 8.
In a briefing to US and Israeli reporters, his spokesmen said he would inform the UN Secretary that Israel was willing to hand over to United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) control of the northern part of the divided village of Ghajar, one of its strategic footholds in Lebanon. Ban has been pressing Israel to make this gesture for the last two years in the hope it would reduce border tensions between Israel and Hizballah.
But then, when the meeting took place, the prime minister changed his mind and said only that the Ghajar issue needed to be aired further by his political-security cabinet.
All in all, in America, Netanyahu has shown a distinct hardening on the toughest issues facing his government – Iran, talks with the Palestinians and Hizballah, generating conflicting hypotheses to account for this change of face – depending on who one asks.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Washington and Jerusalem offered two explanations – one Israeli and one American:
1. Israel: Talking tough to deter Iran from jumping into Lebanese crisis
1. The prevailing view among Israeli insiders is that as Lebanon plunges ever deeper into a crisis (See a separate article on the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah plans to overrun Lebanon) which is expected to peak in the coming four to six weeks, Netanyahu is getting the country set for a possible spillover into war with Syria, Hizballah and possibly Iran. He stayed quiet in respect of his deal with Obama for as long as it was tenable. He then chose the American arena for a switch to a tough military stance – more to deter Iran from stepping into a possible clash on the side of Syria and Hizballah than to halt its march toward a nuclear weapon. The latter goal, he is convinced, Tehran will pursue no matter what.
The published approval of 1,300 new homes in the established Jewish neighborhoods of Ramot and Har Homah in East Jerusalem – which could have gone through routinely without fanfare – was Netanyahu’s rejoinder for the Damascus get-together on Nov. 9 of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas‘s Fatah and the extremist Hamas, to work out a plan seriously detrimental to Israel’s security.
They have been talking about posting Fatah units to the Gaza Strip in return for Hamas gunmen taking up position on the West Bank opposite Israel’s heartland.
Their concurrence on this rearrangement, say our Israeli sources, would pave the way for the two feuding Palestinian factions to bury the hatchet and form a radicalized, power-sharing administration. Those sources point out that Israel’s prospective peace partner, Mahmoud Abbas, is clearly gambling on Syria and Iran gaining the upper hand in the Middle East. For the sake of making up with their extremist Palestinian ally, he is willing to open the West Bank to terrorists, knowing he is crossing an Israeli red line and by doing so reducing the prospects of reaching the US-sponsored negotiating table.
Netanyahu decided to show the Palestinian leader that by opening one door he risked closing another.
2. US: Hard line conceals big strides towards Israel-Palestinian accord
US administration insiders take the opposite view. They argue that backdoor negotiations far from being in stalemate have been going great guns for some weeks – so much so that the Israeli prime minister felt the need to keep from letting the cat out of the bag before he could prepare the ground at home and preempt a coalition crisis that would abruptly put paid to the negotiations. Informed US quarters believe that he assumed a tough stance as camouflage.
Progress, Washington informants told DEBKA-Net-Weekly, has been remarkable in the quiet talks taking place in the Jordanian capital of Amman between US, Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian representatives. They have come close to accord in principle in five key areas, although many details remain to be filled in and more issues are pending.
Knowledge of their content, say those sources, would most certainly bring the Netanyahu government tumbling down. They all prefer, therefore, to have a deal in the bag before word gets out.
The talks are anchored on five points of progress
Those points, according to our sources, concern the following:

A. The Jordan Valley which runs north to south and the Jordan River meandering through it.
Every Israeli government since the 1967 War has stipulated that any peace accord must leave this strip in Israeli hands as its security border to the east.
But now, the round-table negotiators have accepted the principle of a foreign, namely Jordanian, troop presence there in a deployment that would satisfy Israel’s security requirements and provide a barrier against the smuggling of missiles, other munitions and fighters into the West Bank when it comes under independent Palestinian rule.
If this clause survives the negotiations, the Hashemite Kingdom, for the first time since the Jordanian Army withdrew from the West Bank 43 years ago, would regain a military presence on the both the West and East Banks of the River Jordan and a springboard for reviving its influence over the former.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.
B. The Jordanian military’s functions along the Jordan River and on West Bank soil would be governed by agreed rules of conduct. Those rules would extend to other parts of the West Bank where the deployment of foreign forces is under negotiation.
C. The Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley would remain in place and continue to develop – on the understanding that after several decades, 30-50 years, their disposal would be renegotiated with the possible option of passing the area to the Palestinian state. This item is still under discussion.
D. Israeli Defense Forces positions remaining there for now would be gradually reduced in size and number.
E. The above provisions would go into effect only after an independent Palestinian state is established.

These points are published here for the first time by DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s exclusive sources. They have been kept secret from Israeli political and military officials excepting only those participating in the secret talks. Netanyahu is holding his cards close to his chest, not sharing them even with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Lieut. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi or National Security Council Chairman Dr. Uzi Arad.
All these officials know is that the talks have progressed dramatically. The only person possessing all the information is the prime minister’s political advisor and confidante, Yitzhak Molcho.