WarSclerotic

Behind the Tehran bombings–Benny Avni – NYPOST.com.

A Daring Tehran assassination is sending shivers down the spine of anyone involved in Iran’s nuclear program. The program was recently severely set back by a cyber attack, and foreign companies abetting it increasingly fear American retribution. Is all this enough to stop the mullahs’ nuclear dash?

That question will surely crowd the desk of Tamir Pardo, named this week as the next chief of Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations — the Mossad.

A former deputy chief of the institute, the man previously identified only as “T” shyly told Israeli reporters Tuesday that he didn’t expect major changes, then disappeared into hoped-for operational anonymity.

Getty, EPA

The Mossad gets the credit: Iranian police at the scene of Monday’s attack on nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi. Inset is new Israeli intelligence and special-ops chief Tamir Pardo.

Indeed, aside from some criticism that Meir Dagan’s eight-year tenure at the Mossad lasted too long and resulted in some recent “slip ups,” few think radical changes are needed. Certainly, everyone in the region and beyond assumes the Mossad perpetrated Monday’s daring, precise and professionally executed raid.

At the height of the morning’s rush hour, two helmet-clad motorcyclists simultaneously flew by two separate cars, nimbly stuck magnetized explosive charges on the driver-side doors and then vanished. The charges exploded, harming only the cars’ drivers and passengers.

One blast killed Majid Shahriari, a key figure at Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. The other left Fereydoon Abbasi, a top operator in the program, badly injured, along with his wife. (He apparently escaped death because his bodyguard was at the wheel.)

Menashe Amir, one of Israel’s top Iran watchers, says the regime was busy yesterday trying to calm its remaining nuclear scientists, broadcasting details of new security measures meant to stop future assassinations.

Then there’s Stuxnet, the computer worm that crippled Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges. Computer geeks say the worm included text alluding to biblical Jewish triumphs over Persian enemies — a clear sign that Israelis manufactured it.

None of this is new. The Israeli press (and some of my sources) have been reporting for years on operations such as assassinations of Iranian scientists and sabotage of the nuclear program’s hardware and software. The “ops” are often aided by America, Iranian dissidents and Iran-fearing Arab allies.

Such efforts may explain what Israel’s critics call Jerusalem’s ever-moving target date for Iran to go nuclear.

Israel has warned for years that Iran’s bomb is just around the corner. Recently leaked diplomatic cables tell us that Defense Minister Ehud Barak said 18 months ago that the window on a “clean” bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities would close by the end of this year.

Yet these predictions can’t allow for the unforeseen, including sabotage operations and the US-led sanctions that are deterring more and more companies from doing business with Iran’s nuclear program.

So why did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bother to announce yesterday that she’s “encouraged” by next week’s resumption of talks with Iran in Geneva?

The Obama administration has argued that such diplomacy (coupled with pressure on Israel to make concessions in the “peace process” with the Palestinians) would unite the Arab world against Iran. But the WikiLeaks dump reveals that Iran-fearing Arab leaders care little about diplomacy or the Palestinians.

For example, Qatar — one of Tehran’s most vocal public defenders — secretly offered its military bases for a US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And many Arabs still believe that only such an attack, whether carried by America or Israel, can stop Iran.

Israel is far more cautious, since Iran’s Hezbollah and Hamas proxies would shower its cities with missiles in retaliation.

But few think that sabotage and sanctions can do more than delay the inevitable. Yes, we’re told military attacks will also be effective only for a short time — but some of my Israeli sources note that neither Saddam Hussein’s Iraq nor Bashar Assad’s Syria (so far) were able to rebuild their nuclear programs after obliteration by air attacks.

A NATO source recently said that Israel’s air attack is coming soon, with everyone in the organization helpless to stop it. But so far, Israel has proved to be much more cool-headed than its critics allow, preferring to slow down Iran to an all-out war.

As Tamir Pardo takes over at Mossad, he must now assess the success of those efforts. But Israel’s leaders vow they won’t be helpless. beavni@gmail.com

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 2, 2010, 9:43 AM (GMT+02:00)

Nicolas Sarkozy – discreet pressure on Washington

In quiet contacts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile‘s intelligence sources report. The French president has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea – not just because of its aggression against the south, but to hold back Pyongyang’s nuclear aid to Tehran.

Our sources report urgent secret calls from the Elysée to the New York hospital where Saudi King Abdullah is recovering from surgery, to his foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and intelligence chief Prince Moqrin Bin Abdul Aziz as well as to the Emir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. He asked them to use their influence and lean hard on Washington for urgent action. In Sarkozy’s opinion, Iran only agreed to meet the Six-Power representatives on December 6 for talks as a gambit to play for time until the North Korean nuclear supplements are in hand. He told the Gulf rulers that he had been informed by highly credible sources that the items from North Korea would help Iran solve the technical problems plaguing the program and holding up its progress.
Our sources also report a closed briefing session the French president held in Paris a few days ago for high officials in his government in which he enlarged on his warning. He found fault with President Obama’s tactic of massing air and naval strength around Iran’s shores in recent months to keep the Islamic Republic under military pressure ahead of nuclear talks. Those units, he said, would have been better employed surrounding North Korea in order to block its export of nuclear components to Iran. The sea is Pyongyang’s only consignment route to Tehran, Sarkozy explained. If we all work together (US, France, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf emirates), he said, we can still abort it.
debkafile‘s military sources add that the US-French naval and air deployment opposite Iran numbers two American and one French aircraft carrier, the USS Truman, USS Lincoln and the Charles de Gaulle and their strike forces. Several British and German warships have joined this armada.

Sources familiar with the Sarkozy briefing quote him as maintaining that the USS Lincoln should have been sent to the Yellow Sea before the crisis erupted over North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island in the third week of November. He would then have ordered the Charles de Gaulle to join the US carrier at the Korean scene.

 

Is the US just a paper tiger?.

By ED KOCH
12/02/2010 00:00

Our country may have reached the point when we, like so many great nations before us, are no longer the leading state of our time.

The evidence of our decline is everywhere, but nowhere is it more apparent than in the way we are being treated by other countries. Some of our allies, including Canada, Holland and Spain, have left or are leaving us in the lurch in Afghanistan, withdrawing their troops. Many states, including our allies, have sought to embarrass us diplomatically. The trip that President Barack Obama took recently to the Pacific Rim was an example of that. He was rebuffed by countries large and small. Most media observers called his journey a fiasco of sorts.

There was a time when the US military said it was capable of fighting two and a half wars at the same time. Today, as a result of being bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we probably are unable to fight a third war, and our enemies know it.

LAST SPRING, North Korea sank a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 South Korean sailors. The US is an ally of South Korea with 28,000 troops in that country. We’ve always been told that those troops are there as a trip wire, so that North Korea would know if it attacked South Korea, it would be attacking the US in the same way that an attack on one NATO country would be seen as an attack upon all NATO members. North Korea has paid no price for its sinking of the South Korean ship and, just as bad, no price for its recent unprovoked artillery bombardment of a South Korean island which resulted in the deaths of two South Korean soldiers and two civilians and injuries to 15 others.

It was recently revealed in the American secret documents disclosed by WikiLeaks that North Korea has been supplying long-range missiles to Iran. According to The New York Times of November 29 the documents “reveal for the first time that the United States believes that Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow and help it develop more formidable long-range ballistic missiles.”

Other than decrying the most recent attack on South Korea and sending the aircraft carrier George Washington to participate in a joint military exercise in South Korean waters, so far as I know, we have done nothing to retaliate. Undoubtedly, South Korea is reluctant to retaliate or escalate, fearing to expose millions of its citizens to further military action, including a possible nuclear attack by North Korea, which has the fourth largest army in the world. North Korean citizens may be dying of starvation, but their army is well provided for.

Do we have the means or resolve to launch a punishing attack against North Korea, which is perceived as crazy enough to launch a nuclear attack against South Korea or Japan, expecting China to continue to protect it at the UN and provide it with military support?

Aside from our not having the resources to take on another war with North Korea, especially if the latter is supported by China – remember General Douglas MacArthur’s error in 1951 in approaching the Yalu River and having the Chinese army enter the fray and drive us back to the 38th parallel – most troubling is we don’t have the resolve. America is simply not prepared or willing to go to war again, after our terrible experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are not willing to accept the hardships a war requires, including the need to pay for that war with additional taxes. Nor are we willing to reimpose the draft requiring everyone to do their part.

We simply are not prepared to protect our national honor and national security as we were when we went to war with Nazi Germany. Indeed, the situation today is looking more and more like Munich of 1938 when the world caved to the Nazi threats, as we today cave to the threats of countries like North Korea and Iran. We have even succumbed to the threats of Somali pirates who, according to The New York Times of November 9, are holding for ransom 25 ships and 500 people.

We should tell North Korea and Iran to turn over by a stated deadline their nuclear weapons to China or Russia, countries where we believe the doctrine of mutually assured destruction still applies, or suffer military consequences. We should warn them that any act of war they engage in worldwide will result in an immediate military response on our part of a devastating nature.

What our current situation requires is the resolve of president John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when he made clear to the USSR that the US would immediately respond to its placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, deeming it an act of war. Is President Obama up to it? This is his 3 a.m. telephone call. I pray he is.