WarSclerotic

Deputy FM: Iran-Venezuela ties threaten U.S., entire world – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Reports of financial and military ties between Venezuela and Iran have raised U.S. concern, who is closely monitoring Iran’s activities in Latin America.

By Haaretz Service

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon warned Monday that Iran’s ties with Venezuela posed a threat to the entire world, and in particular the United States.

“Venezuela is Iran’s advance outpost on the Latin American continent. The two countries have joined together to create an axis of conventional and nuclear terror [that threatens] not only the Middle East, but also the continent of America, and the United States in particular,” Ayalon told a group of some two dozen journalists from Latin American countries.

	Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon
	Photo by: Hagai Ofan

The deputy foreign minister said that Iran was the main problem threatening world peace, and stressed that the coming year would be a decisive one in dealing with country’s attempt to become a nuclear power.

Ayalon also referred to Palestinian efforts to increase diplomatic warfare against Israel on international fronts, including its efforts to achieve recognition of a Palestinian state without an agreement with Israel.

Last month, sources in Latin America told Haaretz that a border incident between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and military pressure placed on Costa Rica, a country without an army, are the first step in a plan formulated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, with funding and assistance from Iran, to create a substitute for the strategically and economically important Panama Canal.

The plan has aroused concern in Washington, and the U.S. has begun behind the scenes efforts to foil such a move.

Sources in Latin America consider these events, and the power demonstrated by Nicaragua, as a trial balloon by the creators of the “New Canal Plan” – Venezuela, Iran and Nicaragua. Western intelligence agencies are closely following the path of heavy machinery equipment to Nicaragua as well as the activities of Iranians in the Nicaraguan capital Managua.

Earlier this year, increasingly anti-Semitic commentary in Venezuela’s state-sponsored media prompted the heads of the country’s Jewish community to request an urgent meeting with President Hugo Chavez.

The verbal and written attacks have included hints that Jews are damaging the country’s economy, and follow the style of the notorious anti-Semitic fabrication, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Meanwhile, Argentina and Uruguay announced last week that they intend to join Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state, provoking sharp criticism from Israel. The announcements by the three Latin American countries came as Middle East peace talks were on a hiatus since the temporary settlement freeze ended in late September.

Clinton: Iran’s dismissal of FM shouldn’t affect its ‘good start’ in nuclear talks – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Clinton noted that Tehran had agreed to a follow-up meeting next month in Istanbul, and signaled that the so-called “P5+1” powers would continue to press Iran to give up what they believe is a nuclear weapons program.

By Reuters

Iran has made a good start in talks with big powers about its nuclear program and progress should not be affected by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s decision to sack his foreign minister, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

Clinton said Iran’s meeting this month in Geneva with representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany marked a return to substantive dialogue.

	Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad conferring with his Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the UN headquarters in N.Y. on May 3, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

“It wasn’t more than that, but it was a good start to a return to serious negotiations,” Clinton said during an appearance in Canada with the Canadian and Mexican foreign ministers.

Clinton noted that Tehran had agreed to a follow-up meeting next month in Istanbul, and signaled that the so-called “P5+1” powers would continue to press Iran to give up what they believe is a nuclear weapons program.

“We remain committed to pursuing every diplomatic avenue available to us and our international partners to persuade Iran to forego a nuclear weapons program,” she said.

Asked if she had any reaction to news that Ahmadinejad had sacked long-serving Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and replaced him with one of his close allies, Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, Clinton said she had no insight into what might have caused the decision.

But she expressed confidence that the personnel change would not affect how negotiations may go forward.

“Whether one person or another is foreign minister is not as important as … what the policy of the Iranian government is in dealing with the international community on this very important matter,” Clinton said.

Both Clinton and Mottaki attended a security conference in Bahrain earlier this month at which she addressed him directly from the stage and said it was time for Tehran to deal seriously with concerns about its nuclear program.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator is Saeed Jalili, who last week in Geneva agreed to another set of talks next month but restated Iran’s refusal to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis December 13, 2010, 7:03 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iran’s new nuclear foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi

Nuclear Energy Commission Director Ali Akhbar Salehi was appointed Iran’s new foreign minister Monday, Dec. 13 in midstream of resumed nuclear diplomacy – to make sure the Six World Powers headed by the United States understood that Tehran was determined to go full speed ahead with its nuclear weapon program without given Washington an inch on any related issue.

debkafile‘s Iranian sources expect that after Manoucher Mottaki’s sacking as foreign minister was announced Monday, Tehran’s campaign against the Obama administration will be more aggressive than ever before and it drive even harder hard to axe every American position of influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
By dropping Mottaki, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad strengthens his line-up of wholly dedicated pro-nuke advocates, headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Salehi, defense minister Ahmed Wahidi and intelligence minister Heidar Meslahi.

Only hours before Mottaki’s dismissal was announced in Tehran Monday, an Iranian military communiqué divulged that Iran’s ground forces had completed a large war game near the Iraqi border. Iran usually makes big propaganda play of its military exercises. This time it was kept secret and even the closing bulletin gave away very little. However, the two events in one day posted a message to Washington that Iranian military strength was arrayed to confront US forces in Iraq.
Ahmadinejad announced Mottaki’s dismissal with the impulsiveness which has become a typical feature of his behavior in the five years of his presidency. The day before, the foreign minister set out on an official tour of Africa to strengthen Iran’s ties on the continent and seek out purchasing opportunities for raw uranium ore. The president’s terse cable reached him shortly after he landed in Dakar, Senegal. It told him he was fired, instructed him to return home and wished him success in his future endeavors.

Salehi’s letter of appointment as new foreign minister was quite different. He was said to have earned his new honor “by virtue of his dedication to the Revolution, the breadth and wealth of his knowledge and his blessed experience.”

It has been common knowledge in Tehran, according to debkafile‘s Iranian sources, that Mottaki was foreign minister in not much more than name. Like Israel’s Avigdor Lieberman, important diplomatic assignments passed him by and were carried out by officials close to the president.

For example: The Deputy President Esfandyar Rahim was sent to Amman Saturday, Dec. 11, with an invitation for Jordan’s King Abdullah to visit Tehran.

Critics in the Majlis (parliament) often accused Mottaki of lack of enterprise in promoting Iran’s diplomatic relations and its international interests. Disclosures by the WikiLeaks secret-blowing website contributed to his undoing. US diplomatic cables exposed Arab rulers as deeply apprehensive of Iran’s nuclear plans to the point of pressing for military action against the Islamic Republic, whereas it was his job as foreign minister’ to allay their fears and quiet their unrest.
Tehran has showed its hand in a bid to cultivate the Jordanian king, the staunchest of America’s Arab allies in the Arab world.  One of Salehi’s first tasks as incoming foreign minister is to actively woo those allies, draw them away from Washington and lift Iran’s image in the Arab world. More cordial invitations to Tehran will soon be landing on the desks of other Arab rulers.

debkafile‘s Iranian sources disclose that a name to watch now is that of Mohammad Ghannadi Maraghee, head of Iran’s Institute for Scientific and Nuclear Technological Research. He takes over from Salehi as new Director of the Nuclear Energy Commission.

Right Turn – Time to reset Iran policy.

AFP: Iran nuclear showdown still in diplomacy stage: Barak.

WASHINGTON — The showdown over Iran’s nuclear pursuit is “still in the stage of diplomacy,” and extended sanctions against the regime could help prevent it from acquiring atomic weapons, Israel’s defense minister said in comments broadcast on Sunday.

“I think that it’s still in the stage of diplomacy,” Ehud Barak told CNN in an interview.

“I still believe that much more active sanctions can cause the regime to have a second thought” about pursuing a weapons drive, which is at the heart of the concerns by western powers over Iran’s nuclear program.

Barak’s comments came days after the first international talks in 14 months were held on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program, which concluded with an agreement to meet again in Istanbul in late January to discuss ways to resolve what the European Union described as “core concerns about the nuclear issue.”

But even as diplomatic efforts between Iran and the six international powers engaged once again, Barak reiterated a long-held Israeli principle — that the Jewish state would not sit idle if it felt a Tehran nuclear weapons drive was putting Israel under direct threat.

“As I’ve said earlier, we recommend to you (the Americans) and to the Europeans not to remove any option from the table and we mean it.”

When asked directly if Israel would authorize an attack on Iran should sanctions fail, Barak said: “I don’t think that we have to answer these questions.

“Of course, we have a right of self-defense, and it’s a basic right of individuals in any country, including this continent or in Europe, to live in safety and to live free of fear.”

Iran is currently under four sets of UN sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atom bomb.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on the six countries — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — to lift international sanctions against his country if they want the talks to bear fruit.

On Friday western nations accused Iran of stepping up illegal arms trading and made calls for tougher UN sanctions, after the seizure of 13 containers of rockets, mortars and other weapons in Nigeria last month and up to seven tonnes of high explosive in Italy in September.

Italian PM Warns Israel May Nuke Iran — News from Antiwar.com.

Berlusconi Insisted Obama Couldn’t Stop Preemptive Nuking

by Jason Ditz, December 12, 2010

In a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi warned that he believed “no one including Obama” could stop Israel from launching an attack against Israel once it had made up its mind.

Berlusconi, who has publicly said previously that he absolutely believes Israel will ultimately attack Iran, was revealed in the new comments, part of a WikiLeaks cable, to be concerned that Israel was planning to use nuclear weapons in the attack.

Though it continues to officially take a position of “ambiguity,” Israel has a large nuclear weapons arsenal and is indeed the only nuclear weapons power in the Middle East. Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over its civilian nuclear program, claiming it constitutes an “existential” threat.

Berlusconi was said to have been briefed about a 2008 Israeli Air Force exercise in which warplanes flew a mock bombing run over Greece, apparently an attempt to simulate a flight to and attack against Iran. Others, including Australia’s intelligence community, have expressed similar concerns about the possible attack recently.

Iran conducts large military exercise near Iraq border.

TEHERAN — Iran’s army has finished a large military exercise by ground forces near the Iraqi border, the official Iranian state news agency IRNA reported Monday. But unlike previous war games in which Iran boasted of weapons advances, the latest maneuvers were largely held under wraps.

The report by the IRNA news agency was the first public word that the maneuvers had been held, and even IRNA’s confirmation came only indirectly. The report was about the death of two military officers in a road accident as they came back from “large” exercises by ground forces.

IRNA gave no further details about the maneuvers.

Iran has been holding regular exercises by the various branches of its military and its elite Revolutionary Guard, considered the strongest fighting force in the country. Usually, Iran’s state media give them extensive coverage of military exercises to tout the country’s strength in the standoff with the United States and its allies over Iran’s disputed nuclear program. In November, air defense exercises were meant to showcase Iran’s capabilities in defending its nuclear facilities from possible attack.

Iran announced two months ago that it would hold war games in December in the southwestern provinces of Khuzestan and Ilam, both next to Iraq. But there had been no announcement that the maneuvers had begun.

IRNA said the two officers who died were returning from maneuvers “in the south,” an apparent reference to the same exercises. It identified the two as Gen. Rahman Forouzandeh , a ground force commander, and his aide, identified only by his rank and family name, Lt. Ordikhani. The report called Forouzandeh a war veteran of Iran-Iraq war in 1980s, saying funeral services will be held for the two on Tuesday in northwestern city of Tabriz where their division is stationed.

It was not clear why the maneuvers were held in secret.

Iran has been working for years to step up the capabilities of its armed forces, at a time when it is locked in a confrontation with the West over its nuclear ambitions. The United States and its allies say Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, an accusation Iran denies, saying its program is intended only for peaceful purposes.

Both the US and Israel have not ruled out military option against Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Iran also sees the presence of the US forces on its doorsteps in Iraq and Afghanistan as a threat. It regularly asks for evacuation of the US forces from the region.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Mossad

Two nuclear scientists targeted in Tehran

US, British and Israeli secret services are getting set for Iran to retaliate for the attacks of which they are accused on its top nuclear physicists. debkafile‘s Iranian sources report that the last straw for Tehran were the attacks of Nov. 29, which killed Dr. Majid Shariari, head of the national offensive against cyber attack by Stuxnet, and injured Prof. Fereydoun Abbasi, director of centrifuge operation at Nananz, in the heart of the Iranian capital.

Iran also has an unsettled score for the murder eleven months ago of Prof. Massoud Ali Mohamadi, by the remote-control detonation of a booby-trapped motorbike parked outside his home.

In the last ten days, the Iranians have mounted a propaganda campaign of rising intensity accusing the CIA, MI6 and Mossad of combining forces to liquidate its senior nuclear scientists inside the country during 2010. A Western intelligence source commented Sunday, Dec.12 that Tehran would not have waged this campaign so publicly unless it was planning imminent retribution. He reported: “All three Western agencies have taken special measures to safeguard their scientists and senior diplomats across the world against assassins.”

The Iranians are fingering the US, Israel and the UK, in unfolding blasts of vilification:

The Six Power nuclear talks with Iran opened in Geneva on Dec. 12 with an 80-minute tirade by Iran’s representative Saad Jalili, Iran’s National Security Adviser and head of its delegation. He declared, “Iran has so far lost 13,000 citizens in terrorist attacks… that (are) supported by the West. The same trend is repeating again.” Turning to European Union executive Catherine Ashton, he said, “The recent assassination of the two nuclear scientists was a different case compared with the previous cases.”

To explain why they were different, he claimed that the MI6 director John Sawers and Israel had confessed they were behind those attacks. Jalili went on to ask: “Why has the world kept mum about the terrorist action and the straightforward confession of a number of countries about their involvement in this act”?

debkafile‘s intelligence source pointed out: No regime, and certainly not Iran, could think of openly charging that 13,000 of its citizens were murdered – and then let the culprits go unpunished.” By naming the head of the British secret service and Israel as the culprits, Tehran is telling London and Jerusalem they have crossed red lines and will have to face the consequences.
A day earlier, Alil Salehi, Director of Iran’s Nuclear Commission and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, both spoke sharply about the involvement of foreign agencies in the attacks on Iranian scientists and their modes of operation, such as “sticky bombs.”

Finally on Saturday, Dec. 11, Interior Minister Mostafa Najjar claimed that,”Arrested agents confessed that they received equipment and training from the Mossad, the CIA, and MI6.” He promised special measures to provide protection for the elite and scientists.

debkafile‘s intelligence sources: This is the first time Tehran has claimed the existence of a joint US, Israeli British clandestine mechanism collecting intelligence for assassinations in Tehran. It indicates that the country is wide open to such activities and its security services helpless to combat them.

FoxNews.com – Stuxnet Worm Still Out of Control at Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Experts Say.

Ronen Bergman: Iran, Israel and the Arab Contradiction – WSJ.com.

The WikiLeaks cables reveal that Egypt and Saudi Arabia can’t decide if they fear a Shiite bomb more than they hate the Jewish state.

By RONEN BERGMAN

Tel Aviv, Israel

Speaking recently to the heads of his country’s major media outlets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to contain his glee at the revelations from the latest WikiLeaks documents (a reaction that elicited a private protest from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv).

The main reason for Mr. Netanyahu’s satisfaction was that the highly classified State Department documents present a picture of an Arab world that despises Hamas, believes that Hezbollah is a danger to Lebanon, and fears Iran. Arab leaders take the last matter so seriously that they even appear to be doing their best to persuade the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, for example, “hates Hamas, and considers them the same as Egypt’s own Muslim Brotherhood, which he sees as his own most dangerous political threat,” states one February 2009 memorandum to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Another memo, dated July 2008, reports that Mr. Mubarak informed Sen. John Kerry that the Iranians “are big, fat liars and justify their lies because they believe it is for a higher purpose.”

According to this report, Mr. Mubarak views Iran as the primary long-term challenge facing Egypt. Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s intelligence chief and right-hand man, told Gen. David Petraeus in July 2009 that Iran is running agents inside Egypt in an effort to subvert the Egyptian regime in collusion with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.