WarSclerotic

Iran suicide bombings kill 39 during ceremony | Reuters.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Two suicide bomb attacks outside a mosque killed 39 people and wounded more than 100 during a Shi’ite religious ceremony in the southeastern Iranian city of Chabahar Wednesday, local media reported.

Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite television channel reported that Jundollah, a Sunni Muslim rebel group, claimed responsibility for the bombings outside the Imam Hussein Mosque in Chahbahar, near Iran’s border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The report could not be confirmed independently but the poor province of Sistan-Baluchistan has been the scene of unrest with the mainly Sunni population claiming discrimination by the Shi’ite authorities.

“At least 39 people were martyred after two suicide bombings targeted Shi’ite mourners in front of a mosque in the town of Chahbahar,” Fariborz Ayati Firouzabadi, head of the Coroner’s office in the province.

The bombings killed many children and women, who attended a Shi’ite religious ceremony to commemorate the death of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein, state television reported, adding that the death toll was expected to increase.

Iran has faced a string of blasts in past months, including two in June that killed 27 people in the same province. Jundollah had also claimed responsibility for that attack.

Bombings and clashes between security forces, ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents and drug traffickers have increased in recent years in the area.

ENEMIES INVOLVED

Iran says Jundollah has links to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and has accused Pakistan, Britain and the United States of supporting the group to stir instability in southeast Iran, home to Iran’s Sunni minority. The three countries deny backing it.

“America and the Zionist regime (Israel) try to create discord among Shi’ites and Sunnis by orchestrating such bombings,” said parliament speaker Ali Larijani, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. “They should know that such measures will not go unanswered.”

The United States and Israel have not ruled out a military strike against Iran if diplomacy fails to persuade Iran to halt its sensitive nuclear work, which the West fears is aimed at building bombs. Tehran denies the claim.

Mahmoud Mozafar, head of the province’s Red Crescent, said his team had received a number of threats before the ceremony. “We were on alert in the past days because of some anonymous threats,” he told Reuters by telephone.

He said that according to his information more than 36 people were killed.

“Three terrorists entered Iran from a neighboring country … One of them blew himself, another one was killed by police and the other was arrested while trying to flee Iran,” an unnamed Intelligence Ministry official told the IRIB website.

Iranian leaders reject allegations by Western human rights groups and Jundollah that the Islamic Republic discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities.

Ethnic Baluch, many with tribal links to their restive kin in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan, make up an estimated one to three percent of Iran’s 77 million people

Israel general drops defense bombshell – UPI.com.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 14 (UPI) — Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, commander of Israel’s northern front, has dropped a bombshell by disclosing that the anti-missile systems the defense industry has developed are intended to protect the country’s military installations, not its cities and civilian population.

“The residents of Israel shouldn’t be under the illusion that someone will open an umbrella over the heads” in the event of a massive missile and rocket attack by Israel’s enemies, he declared in a speech Sunday at the University of Haifa.

“The systems are designed to protect military bases, even if this means that citizens suffer discomfort during the days of battle.”

Eisenkot’s uncompromising statement did nothing to ease a spate of dire warnings by political and military chiefs in recent weeks that Israel’s cities, particularly Tel Aviv and its densely populated environs, will be major targets in any new conflict.

In November, the outgoing head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, painted a stark and unvarnished picture of what the Israeli population can expect in the country’s next war.

“Tel Aviv will be a front line in the next conflict,” he told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet in his final briefing after five years as the military’s intelligence director.

A few days earlier he gave an equally bleak forecast to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, noting that “future wars … will be much bigger, much wider and with many more casualties” than Israel’s conflicts in Lebanon in 2006 and the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09.

The key factor here is that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are expected to bombard Israel relentlessly with an unprecedented firestorm of missiles and rockets if hostilities break out once again.

Israel got a taste of that in the 34-day 2006 war, when Hezbollah unleashed nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, the heaviest bombardment Israelis have ever suffered.

These weapons, mainly unguided rockets, killed around 50 people.

Next time, Israel is likely to be hammered with far greater broadsides using missiles with far greater range, accuracy and destructive power than ever before. Fatality forecasts run into thousands.

The Israeli military estimates Hezbollah has at least 42,000 rockets and missiles, hundreds of which can hit anywhere in Israel. Syria is reported to be receiving advanced missiles from Iran and to be upgrading the capabilities of its existing arsenal. Iran reportedly has more than 100 Shehab-3b ballistic missiles deployed and to be developing a more powerful weapon, the Sejjil-2, capable of hitting Israeli targets.

After 2006, when Israel’s vulnerabilities to missile attack were exposed for all to see, the country’s defense industry raced to develop defense systems to counter this new threat.

The Arrow system, capable of intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles at high altitude and at long range, was already in operation.

Arrow, developed by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Boeing Co., was largely funded by the Pentagon. But this system is useless against shorter range weapons.

Enter a system called Iron Dome, designed to counter the short-range rockets like those used by Hezbollah and Hamas, and another, called David’s Sling to defend against medium-range missiles.

Two batteries of Iron Dome, built by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, are ready. But military planners say at least 20 are needed if the system is to be anywhere near effective.

Rafael is still developing David’s Sling and the first live-fire test is scheduled for the next few months.

The first hint Israelis got that Iron Dome, which critics say will never be able to counter heavy rocket fire, won’t be deployed to protect their cities came Nov. 9. The Jerusalem Post daily reported that the system would be stored at an airbase and would be deployed only in cases of extreme rocket fire.

“Budget limitations will obviously prevent the procurement of tens of thousands of defensive missiles,” Reuven Pedatzur, a strong critic of the air-defense strategy, wrote in the Haaretz daily Dec. 2.

“In the best case, defense officials talk about hundreds of such missiles. Thus even if these systems prove effective (and there is no guarantee of that), they can provide as defense against only a small proportion of the rockets and missiles that would be fired at Israel during a war.”

Israel Seeks 20 Additional F-35s After Failure of U.S. Swap for Peace Plan – Bloomberg.

An F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. Source: Lockheed Martin/US Air Force via Bloomberg News

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, said his country is still seeking 20 additional F- 35 fighter jets even after the failure of a U.S. offer to provide the planes in exchange for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction.

The 20 jets would be in addition to the 20 Lockheed Martin Corp.-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, valued at about $2.8 billion, that Israel ordered in October, Oren told Bloomberg News reporters and editors in Washington yesterday.

“It was clear from the beginning that the 20 we were purchasing would not be enough and we’d require more,” Oren said. The F-35 planes are the “ballast in helping Israel maintain its qualitative military edge” over potential foes in the region, he said.

Defense officials from both countries are discussing ways to pay for the “expensive” jets because Israel lacks the funds, Oren said.

The U.S. had offered the 20 additional F-35 jets as part of an effort to revive direct Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which stalled after an earlier freeze on West Bank settlement construction ended in September. Israel’s Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi confirmed the offer at a Nov. 17 news conference at the Pentagon.

The Obama administration said last week that it would stop pushing Israel for a renewed 90-day construction moratorium.

“The 90-day extension discussion is off the table but the 20 extra jets are very much on the table,” Oren said. “It’s not attached to the 90-day freeze.”

‘Wasn’t a Bribe’

Discussion on providing Israel with an additional set of 20 F-35 jets began around mid-year, part of a longstanding U.S. undertaking to help Israel “defend itself against any Middle East adversary or a combination of adversaries,” Oren said. “It wasn’t a bribe, and was not intended to be a bribe, but part of ongoing discussions.”

Recent U.S. sales of weapons to the Middle East, including the proposed transfer of arms to Saudi Arabia, have eroded Israel’s military edge against nations in the region that have larger defense budgets than Israel, Oren said.

The U.S. currently provides Israel $3 billion annually in military aid. The program isn’t as sufficient to buy protection as it had been 20 years ago when it began, Oren said.

In October, the Obama administration told Congress of plans to sell Saudi Arabia arms valued at $60 billion, which may be the largest weapons sale to another country in U.S. history if all purchases are made.

The plan included Boeing Co. F-15 fighter jets, attack helicopters and satellite-guided bombs, according to notices sent to Congress on Oct. 20. It also covers transport helicopters made by United Technologies Corp. and advanced radar from Raytheon Co.

‘Stuxnet virus set back Iran’s nuclear program by 2 years’.

The Stuxnet virus, which has attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities and which Israel is suspected of creating, has set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by two years, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze the program’s code told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

“It will take two years for Iran to get back on track,” Langer said in a telephone interview from his office in Hamburg, Germany. “This was nearly as effective as a military strike, but even better since there are no fatalities and no full-blown war. From a military perspective, this was a huge success.”

Langer spoke to the Post amid news reports that the virus was still infecting Iran’s computer systems at its main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and its reactor at Bushehr.

Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, said that Iran had suspended work at its nuclear-field production facilities, likely a result of the Stuxnet virus.

According to Langer, Iran’s best move would be to throw out all of the computers that have been infected by the worm, which he said was the most “advanced and aggressive malware in history.” But, he said, even once all of the computers were thrown out, Iran would have to ensure that computers used by outside contractors were also clean of Stuxnet.

“It is extremely difficult to clean up installations from Stuxnet, and we know that Iran is no good in IT [information technology] security, and they are just beginning to learn what this all means,” he said. “Just to get their systems running again they have to get rid of the virus, and this will take time, and then they need to replace the equipment, and they have to rebuild the centrifuges at Natanz and possibly buy a new turbine for Bushehr.”

Widespread speculation has named Israel’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, as well as the United States.

Langer said that in his opinion at least two countries – possibly Israel and the United States – were behind Stuxnet.

Israel has traditionally declined comment on its suspected involvement in the Stuxnet virus, but senior IDF officers recently confirmed that Iran had encountered significant technological difficulties with its centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.

“We can say that it must have taken several years to develop, and we arrived at this conclusion through code analysis, since the code on the control systems is 15,000 lines of code, and this is a huge amount,” Langer said.

“This piece of evidence led us to conclude that this is not by a hacker,” he continued. “It had to be a country, and we can also conclude that even one nation-state would not have been able to do this on its own.”

Eric Byres, a computer security expert who runs a website called Tofino Security, which provides solutions for industrial companies with Stuxnet-related problems, told the Post on Tuesday that the number of Iranians visiting his site had jumped tremendously in recent weeks – a likely indication that the virus is still causing great disarray at Iranian nuclear facilities.

“What caught our attention was that last year we maybe had one or two people from Iran trying to access the secure areas on our site,” Byres said. “Iran was never on the map for us, and all of a sudden we are now getting massive numbers of people going to our website, and people who we can identify as being from Iran.”

Byres said that some people openly identified themselves as Iranian when asking for permission to log onto his website, while others were impersonating employees of industries with which he frequently works.

“There are a large number of people trying to access the secure areas directly from Iran and other people who are putting together fake identities,” he said. “We are talking about hundreds. It could be people who are curious about what is going on, but we are such a specialized site that it would only make sense that these are people who are involved in control systems.”