WarSclerotic

A Major Victory for President Obama on Iran – Jeffrey Goldberg – International – The Atlantic.

By Jeffrey Goldberg Jan 10 2011, 7:24 AM ET

With Iran, you never really know what’s what (remember the National Intelligence Estimate a few years ago telling us that Tehran had stopped developing nuclear weapons?) but I think it is fair to say that the combination of sanctions and subterfuge has definitively set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least one and perhaps as many as four years. As I said, all of this is provisional, and it is perhaps true, as some critics have it, that the outgoing Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who is telling anyone who will listen that Iran is back on its heels, is letting his personal opinions about the efficacy of a military strike against Iran color his intelligence analysis, but I really don’t think so. Dagan, those who know him tell me, is too invested in the survival of Israel and the Jewish people to politicize intelligence in this way. In any case, Dagan’s recent statements have led to an unlikely scenario in which the American secretary of state sounds tougher on Iran than the head of the Mossad. But Iran can do that to people.

Much credit in delaying Iran goes to the unknown inventor of Stuxnet, the miracle computer virus, which has bollixed-up Iran’s centrifuges; much credit goes to the Mossad and the CIA and the Brits and God knows who else, who are working separately and in tandem to subvert the Iranian program, and a great deal of credit must go to, yes, President Barack Obama, who has made stopping Iran one of his two or three main foreign policy priorities over the past two years. He did the difficult work of pulling together serious multilateral sanctions against Iran; he has convinced the Israelis — at least he has partially convinced some Israelis — that he has placed the prestige of his presidency behind this effort, and that he sincerely and deeply understands why it is in no one’s interest to see Iran with a bomb, and he has supported, in ways that I only know the most general way, some very hard-edged counterproliferation programs, programs whose existence proves, among other things, that he is capable of real and decisive toughness.

What all this means is that the West — in combination with Iran’s own incompetence — has created a bit of breathing space for itself. David Ignatius:

The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials estimate that if Iran were to try a “break out” by enriching uranium at Natanz to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, that move (requiring reconfiguration of the centrifuges) would be detectable — and it would take Iran one to two more years to make a bomb.

It is important to remember that Iranian intentions are unchanged, until proven otherwise, and it is also important to remember that technical difficulties are surmountable, but it is definitely fair to say that the zero hour is not yet here. I spoke with one of the Israeli officials I quoted in my article last year about the coming confrontation between Israel and Iran, and he put the chances of an Israeli strike on Iran in the next year at less than 20 percent — and he was one of the Israelis who felt, in the spring of last year, that it would be necessary for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities by the end of 2011. “People have very different opinions inside the defense establishment,” he said, when I reached him, “but it’s clear to all analysts that the virus and the sanctions are working better than we thought.”

Obama and Clinton’s Iran strategy: More there than meets the eye? | David Rothkopf.

From its start, I have viewed the Iran sanctions regime the Obama administration has helped devise with great skepticism. However, if recent reports are to be believed, the sanctions may someday be seen in retrospect as a vital element of an effective strategy to curtail the Iranian nuclear program. In fact, the possibility is beginning to emerge that they could be seen as part of what may someday be seen as one of the signal triumphs of Obama-Clinton foreign policy.

My initial concerns about the sanctions program were several. First, it was my sense that such sanctions programs tend not to be terribly effective where authoritarian regimes are concerned. Next, sanctions tend not to be effective if they do not are not supported globally by all the economies interacting with the country facing sanctions. Third, in the case of these sanctions, the Russians and the Chinese carved out elements that protected important components of their own trade with Iran. Fourth, my sense is that the Iranians are engaged in a cat and mouse game with the international community in which they make a few seemingly constructive moves, even appear to make concessions, and then continue on with their nuclear development work behind the scenes.

My sense was also that international diplomatic and economic pressure would simply not be enough to really impede their program — especially if the threat of the use of force to punish them if they did not back down was not credible. And the message from the administration was not tough enough on that last point.

However, when last week, the departing boss of Israel’s intelligence service, Meir Dagan, stated that in his view the Iranian program had in fact been set back to the point that it would not be able to develop nuclear weapons until 2015 at the earliest, it suggested that whatever was being done was working. No one, for obvious reasons, takes the Iranian threat more seriously than the Israelis (although WikiLeaks confirmed for all how worried the Iranians make all their neighbors). If they who had been saying two years ago that the Iranian threat would reach a critical level within a matter of a year or so were now saying it has been pushed out several years, it was more than just an interesting sound bite.

Of course, Dagan was not just referring to the sanctions in his remarks. He spoke of “measures that have been deployed against” the Iranians. This seemed to acknowledge a program of covert operations against Teheran that had played an important role — and possibly the central role — in producing the delays. While one cannot help but view the latest Iranian announcement of rounding up an “Israeli spy ring” as more likely to be about political posturing than it is the result of genuinely successful counter-espionage work, it seems clear that a systematic effort has been undertaken to compromise Iran’s program. Elements of that effort that have been visible to the public range from the apparent cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to the physical attacks on prominent Iranian nuclear scientists.

Now it is far more credible that a program of sanctions plus covert action against the Iranians would be effective. Further, there has been a third element to this initiative which has featured the dogged attention to maintaining diplomatic pressure that has been led very effectively by Secretary of State Clinton. Whether it has been the recent public dismissals of the Iranian effort to divide and conquer major powers by inviting a few but not the United States on guided tours of their nuclear facilities or the effort to blunt the effectiveness of third party initiatives such as those of Brazil and Turkey, the U.S. State Department has had to work feverishly to manage the fractious coalition of forces needed to put meaningful pressure on the Iranians. Again, WikiLeaks inadvertently showed the scope of these efforts behind the scenes in the region.

Frankly, there is also a fourth element to the program that doesn’t get as much credit as it perhaps should. While candidate Obama’s calls for “engagement” as a centerpiece of U.S. diplomacy seemed naïve in the context of real world problems like those with Iran — and whereas real engagement with the Iranians has proved nearly impossible — Obama’s stance did give his administration more credibility with allies in Europe as well as with critical partners like Russia and China. Via his engagement language he sent a clear message that America was moving away from the “us versus them” world of the Bush years and this restored some of the diplomatic high ground to U.S. diplomats.

The threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program remains grave. It continues to be the case that should they achieve nuclear weapons manufacturing and delivery capabilities that it would be severely destabilizing throughout the Middle East. However, the comprehensive, multi-tiered effort led by the Obama administration does seem to be gaining at least temporary traction. It also illustrates just how even nations with very differing perspectives can piece together programs using diplomatic, political, economic and intelligence tactics and tools that can be effective and can postpone or avoid having to turn to the blunt instrument of military intervention.

Again, it is far too early to hail this as a lasting or even a truly significant success. The Iranian government is capable of levels of mendacity, callousness and brutality that make them a grave threat and there are others in the world who will overtly or covertly continue to tirelessly work with them to support the efforts of those who would see Iran have nuclear weapons. But far from being naïve or assuming tough but ineffective diplomatic poses, the efforts to date of the United States, the Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, Iran’s gulf neighbors, and even the Israelis working together seems to be producing at least some encouraging results — and the first elements of what might, we can hope, someday be viewed as a lesson about how to conduct effective foreign policy in the 21st Century.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 10, 2011, 11:08 PM (GMT+02:00)

Majid Majali poses as Mossad agent for Iranian TV

Monday night, Jan. 10, Tehran launched against Israel a full-scale intelligence onslaught on three fronts:

Intelligence Minister Haydar Selahi stated that after a year’s effort, his agency had succeeded in penetrating the ranks of the Mossad, Israel’s central espionage agency and rolled up a network of Iranian agents implicated in the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi last January.
In a separate statement, Iran’s new foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi claimed “legal proof” that former deputy defence minister Alireza Asgari, who was in charge of Iran’s nuclear and intelligence ties with Syria, was kidnapped by Israeli agents from his Istanbul hotel shortly after his arrival from Damascus on Dec. 9, 2006.
Tehran was demanding the incident be investigated by an international body.
The third step was blatantly anti-Semitic: The Fars news agency, which is owned by the Revolutionary Guards – IRGC, offered a new twist on the blood libel devised often in the past to justify the persecution of Jewish communities. It carried report noting that Jews were wont to add the blood of Muslim children to the “Ears of Haman”, a pastry traditionally baked on the Purim festival which falls this year on March 20.

This accusation, together with the putative “exposure” of “the real holocaust,” the massacre of Iranians and spy charges, are capable of unleashing a wholesale anti-Semitic rampage against the 20,000 Jews who are the last survivals of the 3,000-year old community.
Our Iranian sources report that in recent weeks, Iranian Jews, fearing for their lives, have been fitting steel plates on the Magen David symbols outside synagogues and Jewish institutions. Sunday, they hastily covered the tombs of Esther and Mordecai in Hamedan after watching Iranian students rallying in demand for the government to stop protecting the tombs as sacred sites and allow them to be demolished.

Monday night, a young Iranian presented as Majid Jamali went on Iranian TV to claim he had been a Mossad spy and received training at a facility “near Tel Aviv on the road to Jerusalem” in the use of explosives for planting in the cars of targeted Iranian nuclear program scientists.

His appearance coincided with the first anniversary of the murder of Dr. Massoud Ali Mohammadi. The authorities in Tehran badly needed to show some progress in the stalled investigation of his death – hence the Jamali show.
debkafile recalls that Iranian officials have variously hit on Israel, the US, Britain and other world powers as responsible for the scientist’s murder. Iranian opposition circles and people close to its leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi have another theory: They are convinced that Mohammadi was killed by minions of the regime, because he supported the anti-government resistance. A week before his death, the scientist attended a meeting of the opposition Green Movement’s supporters. And although he was a leading light of Iran’s nuclear program, in the days after his assassination, Tehran denied his association with that program in any way.
Monday night, young Jamali was produced with Tehran’s latest version of the episode, tailor made for its intelligence against Israel, whereby he took part in the murder on behalf of the Mossad who had hired him as an agent. In reality, he claimed, he was a member of the Revolutionary Guards and employed in one of its top- secret intelligence divisions which the Israeli Mossad had been able to penetrate.

Iranian sources backed up his statement by reporting they had photos of Jamali carrying a gun in the company of his IRGC comrades.
debkafile‘s Iranian sources who monitored his broadcast “admission” in the Farsi language described it as an amateurish concoction full of holes. Most of the information he offered about the alleged “capture of Zionist spies” was a rehash of the statements released by security officials in Tehran the week of Mohammadi’s murder. The account of his experiences as a Mossad agent certainly did not ring true. No espionage organization operates in the way he described; it would be contrary to its professional logic.

Moreover, if he had really been involved in the murder, he and his confederates would not have waited around but have fled the country as fast as they could run. The fact is that he was still in Iran.
And another careless mistake in the “legend” Iranian intelligence put together for its “Mossad spy” was the way he described his arrival at Ben Gurion airport as having to go through passport control
It is hard to conceive of the Mossad sending one its secret assets to be openly processed through Israeli passport control along with a pack of tourists.

Congress hints: No cuts in Iron Dome aid – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Notwithstanding economic crisis and calls for major cutbacks, senior House of Representative officials say funding for Israeli anti-missile defense systems still top priority

Yitzhak Benhorin

Iron Dome system

WASHINGTON – Senior officials in the House of Representatives in Washington made it clear Monday that the funding for the development of missile defense systems was still a top priority in the foreign aid budget in spite of pressure from congress’ republican majority to make significant spending cuts.

In an interview to The Hill, a newspaper covering the comings and goings on Capitol Hill, senior officials Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the new chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.), who sits on the Appropriations subcommittees on Defense, Homeland Security and State and Foreign Operations, said that they support the ongoing special funding allocated by the Obama administration for the Iron Dome and Arrow-3 anti missile program, aid that stands at more than $442 million.

The US budget for 2011 has been delayed for over three months and includes the annual defense aid to Israel including the special additions that the new congress has yet to address. Granger said that her panel’s funding has jumped 33% over the past two years, and lawmakers on the subcommittee will look to those recent funding additions first when it comes to cuts.

Among the initiatives that the Republicans seek to cutback on are the presidential initiatives on global health and climate change. “As we look at cuts we have to always look at national security and the security of our partners, which is our security, too,” Granger stated. She mentioned that she agreed with cutbacks announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that don’t touch the missile defense programs.

In response to the Republican demand to make cutbacks to all budgets, which came specifically from the new members from the anti-Obama administration Tea Party faction, Granger noted that the Hezbollah now has 45,000 missiles which demand some kind of response.

In 2010, President Obama presented congress with a request for $205 million in special aid for the development of the Iron Dome short range missile defense system and $200 million for the Arrow-3 program which is supposed to add an additional layer of protection from Ballistic missiles. Over the past two years the US funded nearly $1 billion in developing anti-missile systems in Israel and congress has been signaling its intent to continue funding the protective projects.

“Israel has assisted in the security of the United States on literally thousands of occasions in nearly immeasurable ways since her birth and continues to be an even more essential partner with the U.S. in not only protecting our shared values and interests but the very national security of the United States,” Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) said.

The Region: Ideology is a powerful deceiver.

Some of my readers are bothered when I say that mistakes in Western Middle East policy are caused by stupidity and ignorance – abetted by ideology – and want to argue that the shortcomings are due to deliberate sabotage or evil intentions (often against Israel).

I can understand why people think such things. But almost 40 years of studying the Middle East have shown me time and again that foolishness, misunderstanding, wishful thinking and naivete are powerful forces in international affairs. As the great statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand put it almost two centuries ago: “This is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.”

Remember that we are dealing with people (policy-makers, journalists, academics) who are trying to function across cultural, experiential, historical, linguistic and usually religious lines. And what is their biggest handicap at present? Why, the very denial that such lines exist. Once you accept the assumption that everyone is basically alike in their thoughts, dreams, goals and worldview, you have no hope of understanding anyone who has a different standpoint.

True, sometimes these decisionmakers and opinion-makers (especially the academics and European journalists) have taken up partisan positions. Yet this is far less true for politicians and policy-makers who must keep in mind both their own and their country’s interests. We tend to focus on extreme exceptions – which certainly exist – but are a minority.

Ideology, of course, is also a powerful deceiver. It sets up preconceptions that often dominate even when the facts go against them. Central here is the sad reality that we are living at a time when ideology rather than pragmatism dominates the Western intellectual and political debate.

The academic world has broken down to an astonishing extent in terms of its ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. The mass media have followed this pattern, albeit to a lesser extent. Thus, the Western world has been deprived of its two greatest sources for “reality checks.”

That’s devastating.

“Since the masses are always eager to believe something,” said Talleyrand, “for their benefit, nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.”

But what’s worse is the domination of governments by forces that cannot even acknowledge that the great struggle of the time is between revolutionary Islamism and other radical forces – as in not only North Korea, Venezuela, etc., but in the West as well – and traditional liberal Enlightenment, democracy, freedom of speech, Western civilization and family values.

In Talleyrand’s words: “To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man.”

Of course, a number of Western governments do things that favor the wrong side in terms of domestic policies. It is easier to believe that in domestic affairs there is a hidden agenda, an ideologically dictated series of goals concealed because the public would reject them if it understood what was really going on.

Yet when it comes to foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, many Western leaders think they are buying peace and stability when they are actually undermining it, precisely because they don’t understand their enemies. Often, they no longer seem to understand the foundations of statecraft either. Perhaps this is symbolized by people being able to obtain a degree in “conflict resolution” but not learning about the uses of force, deterrence and credibility.

CONSIDER A little case study. The Obama administration has messed up on Israel-Palestinian issues for two years, a story I can tell – and have, in previous articles – in great detail. Recently, it proposed a three-month freeze of construction on West Bank settlements. If it had gotten precisely what it wanted, this would have led to no gain at all.

The administration reportedly promised Israel a great deal if it agreed to the proposal. The Israeli government responded cooperatively. Yet what was the US government offering? Apparently, the administration was so incompetent as to contradict itself to the point where Israel couldn’t figure out the supposed deal. Then the Palestinian Authority demanded more, and even if it was given concessions wanted to sabotage talks.

In short, the Obama administration became increasingly entangled in seeking a goal that wasn’t worthwhile, offering more and more but in a confused, contradictory manner, and having to deal with Palestinian leaders who refused to cooperate and an Israeli coalition that might splinter over the issue.

So the administration abandoned the whole mess. Yet to read the explanations available to average Americans, or even opinion-makers, one would never know any of this clearly. The alternative explanations mostly blame Israel for Washington’s failure.

Indeed, after two years in which Israel has offered to negotiate with the Palestinians every day and they have refused to negotiate almost every day, the ruling establishment, mass media and academia generally persist in saying the deadlock is Israel’s fault.

If people are unable to understand the simplest points – due to preconceived ideology, a failure to look at the facts or and inability to understand them – we are not dealing with a conspiracy, but with what might be called intellectual blindness.

What is the way out?

First, keep explaining the truth, since there’s a large portion of people open-minded enough to be persuaded, if they only are allowed to see the ridiculous flaws in what they’ve been told. In other words, use the free marketplace of ideas to the greatest extent possible.

Second, let events (and the behavior of their enemies) teach people that their ideas, policies and programs just don’t work, make them look like idiots, and lead to a loss of prestige and power. That has been clearly happening.

Third, develop and put into place a counter-elite that has a far better level of understanding about how the world works.

Having seen so many different and changing eras already, I’m confident that this combination will work. Hopefully, it will work faster so that fewer people will die and suffer, while the damage already done will be easier to reverse.

Or, to quote Talleyrand once again: “The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.”

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal and Turkish Studies. http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

Clinton calls on Arab world to prevent Iranian threat.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday accused Iran of trying to foment new conflict in the Middle East to distract attention from its nuclear program. She said the Arab world must reject such attempts, sharpen enforcement of sanctions, and back Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Clinton told a pan-Arab television talk show that sanctions against Iran have slowed its progress in developing nuclear weapons. But she said the world has to keep up the pressure. She said that if Iran is able to produce a nuclear weapon, it will spark a disastrous arms race in the region.

At the start of a three-nation tour of the Persian Gulf, Clinton also said Arab countries in particular should work to build confidence between Israel and the Palestinians so that stalled peace talks can resume.

On Sunday, in meetings with leaders in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Muscat and Doha, Clinton said she would look for more Arab backing for the new government in Iraq and more financial support for the Palestinian Authority.

Such progress may help forestall Palestinian moves to declare statehood or seek UN action against Israel.

“We continue to believe strongly that New York is not the place to resolve the longstanding conflict and outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Clinton said. “We do not think that that is a productive path for the Palestinians or anyone to pursue.”

Discussing the Iranian nuclear sanctions, the US secretary of state said that the world must keep pressure on Iran over its suspect nuclear program despite recent estimates that the country may be further behind in efforts to develop atomic weapons than previously thought.

Clinton told reporters accompanying her on a three-nation tour of the Persian Gulf that Iran “remains a serious concern” no matter when it might be able to produce a nuclear weapon. And she urged countries in the region that do business with Iran “to do everything within reason” to help ensure the sanctions are enforced.

Cyber victory in Iran – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Derailment of Iran’s nuclear program is greatest under-reported news story of 2010

Charley J. Levine

Three attacks on developing nuclear centers have occurred in the world, the most recent scant months ago. It is amazing that the year 2010, pegged universally as crunch time regarding Iran’s atomic ambitions, ended with such a whimper, not a bang. It was to be a year characterized ultimately by a crippling counter-blow to Teheran’s plans -with nary a peep from the media. No “top 10 stories of 2010” inclusions. Not even a Wiki-leak.

On June 7, 1981 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered his air force to destroy Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear site in Iraq. As the world twiddled its thumbs and tut-tutted, Israel took out this metastasizing growth. The UN Security Council, including America’s vote, condemned the attack 12 days later. As recently as a few months ago, calls for compensation to be paid by Israel to Iraq were still being voiced.

Just three years ago, on September 6, the Syrian nuke site at Deir Ez Zor, a shill for North Korea, was leveled. Both the IAEA and CIA had concluded the site was heading toward military functionality. Eight “unidentified” aircraft carried out the mission, which included clandestine scouts on the ground. The bombers used Turkish airspace, tacitly approved as a result of Ankara’s deep concerns over budding Syrian nuclearization. Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman, President Assad’s go-to-guy with North Korea and Iran was subsequently – as if for good measure – shot dead by an unnamed sniper while on vacation on August 2, 2008.

Although then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed (a Wiki revelation) that Israel had rather unsurprisingly mounted the attack, no UN condemnations followed, this from an international body never shy to hurl hostile pronunciamentos in Jerusalem’s direction. With supreme irony, the Syrians were too embarrassed to make much of a to-do, and Israel clearly preferred to keep it quiet.

Most amazing of all, the third attack was “silent but not subtle” as one analyst observed. Stuxnet. Even the name discourages casual conversation. Try saying it five times, fast. Perhaps the most sophisticated, complex worm virus ever designed (massively comprised of 15,000 lines of code) invaded the rapidly developing computer control systems of Iran’s atomic facilities. Analysts ascribed the capability to develop this level of malware to a small circle of candidates: the US, Britain, Israel.

Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security concluded that Stuxnet infected as many as 30,000 institutional computers involved in the project and outright broke 1,000 Iranian IR-1 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, prompting a rare understatement from President Ahmadinejad citing technical problems as the cause for a temporary shutdown of the plant.

World security experts opined that Stuxnet was “amazing” and “groundbreaking,” even a “prime example of clandestine digital warfare.” Most concurred that basement hackers would not be likely sources of the malware, which required tremendous time, brainpower and government-level resources to create.

Nobel Peace Prize for Stuxnet

Whodunnit? Curiously, even though many suspected Israel, global reactions were relatively muted. Some pointed to the IDF’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, concentrating dozens of brainy Israel’s most precocious geeks under one roof. President Obama also ordered the creation in the US of a new military unit called Cyber Command, headed by General Keith Alexander. No one is perfect, but the new American unit failed spectacularly to prevent the mass Wiki-pilferage that recently rocked the world.

Some point to two deeply imbedded Stuxnet file names, myrtus and guava, interpreted as a not so subtle allusion to the Bible’s Esther story. Her Hebrew name was myrtle, in the guava family, and of course she saved her people the Jews…from imminent annihilation in ancient Iran. Then again, it might have been a red herring.

If the malwarfare were not enough, an outright panic assault on Iran’s atomic scientists was also an integral part of the campaign. As recently as November 29, 2010, quantum physicist Majid Shahriari was eliminated in Tehran and colleague Fereydoun Abbasi was seriously injured in another assassination attempt across town.

Previously, quantum theorist Massoud Alimohammadi was killed in a similar attack and Ardeshir Hosseinpour, an authority on electromagnetism, died mysteriously in 2007 during his nuclear work at Isfahan. The four targets were themselves valuable assets, but clearly the more important accomplishment was to cause the next 5,000 people engaged in weaponizing Iran to shiver and perhaps think twice about their career path. Death was delivered not by drone in these cases but simply by exploding motorbikes next to the scientists’ respective cars.

As monumentally significant as the strategic ramifications of Stuxnet are, the universal lack of media coverage of this new phase of cyberwar was nothing less than stunning. Whereas the Osirak operation commanded page one attention everywhere for a lengthy news cycle, the latter two initiatives attracted less press interest than a devastating flood might in Upper Volta.

A key lesson has clearly been learned: Attack effectively and keep quiet. A cursory Google news scan turned up only 30 references to Osirak which is of course more history than news in 2011. But key word searches for the Syrian episode revealed only 131 news references, and Stuxnet barely cleared the 1,000 hurdle. Contrasted to Justin Bieber announcing his upcoming performance in Israel, these tiny numbers border somewhere between negligible and non-existent.

The temporary derailment of Iran’s atomic program is the greatest news story NOT reported on in 2010, made possible by the world media’s fierce indifference to this defeat by malware. Meanwhile, the West can sleep just a little better tonight as a result, comforted by the amazing results that transcended tepid international sanctions…results secured by a smart and civic minded Lone Ranger who might be considered for the next Nobel Peace Prize. But nobody for sure knows who that quiet masked man was. Or what he did. Or why he did it.

Charley J. Levine is a media relations and public affairs specialist living in Jerusalem

Clinton dismisses outgoing Mossad chief’s assessment about Iran nuclear program – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Visiting the Gulf region, the U.S. Secretary of State urges increased pressure on Iran.

By Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed on Sunday Israeli assessments of delays in the Iranian nuclear program and called for more work on sanctions to bring Tehran to heel.

Clinton, on a tour of Gulf Arab countries to shore up support for pressure on Iran, arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. She will also visit Dubai, Oman and Qatar on the five-day trip.

	U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy’s seventh annual forum in Washington, Dec. 10, 2010.
	Photo by: Reuters

Global powers are preparing for another round of talks with Iran this month over its nuclear program.

Clinton said a recent assessment by the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service that Iran would not be able to build an atomic bomb until at least 2015 should not undercut international determination to keep the pressure on Iran through sanctions and other means to come clean about its atomic work.

“The timeline is not so important as the international effort to try to ensure that whatever the timeline, Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons,” Clinton told reporters on her plane as it arrived in Abu Dhabi.

“I don’t know that it gives much comfort to somebody who is in the Gulf, or who is in a country that Iran has vowed to destroy, that it’s a one-year or a three-year timeframe.”

Clinton did not dispute the views of Mossad’s retiring director Meir Dagan, whose comments published on Friday were interpreted as evidence of new Israeli confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and covert action designed to discourage or delay Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.

Dagan’s views echo cautions expressed both in Jerusalem and Washington about possible use of force against Iran, which denies seeking nuclear arms and has vowed to retaliate against Israel and U.S. interests for any such attack.

“I think we should keep the attention where it belong,” Clinton said, adding that she was confident existing sanctions on Iran “have had a very significant impact.”

U.S. underscores Gulf security

Western intelligence agencies say Iran could make a bomb by the middle of the decade, should it choose to enrich uranium to higher levels and master weaponization techniques.

Clinton’s Gulf visit, her second in two months, is aimed at underscoring U.S. security commitments to its allies in the oil-rich region, who are among those who feel most threatened by Iran’s nuclear plans.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – along with Germany are due to hold a second round of talks with Iran in Istanbul later this month after a first set of negotiations in December produced little progress.

Secret U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks described some Gulf leaders such as Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as privately urging Washington to take an even tougher, military approach towards Tehran.

But U.S. officials have also voiced concern over the enforcement of sanctions by some of Iran’s neighbors, who have deep trade and economic ties with the Islamic Republic.

Clinton said her message to Gulf leaders was that sanctions were working and enforcement must be improved.

“We do keep the pressure on all the time because the Iranians are always looking for a way out of the sanctions,” she said. “We expect all our partners to share that concern, as these countries certainly do. ”

“We don’t want anyone to be misled by anyone’s intelligence analysis,” she said.

Clinton is expected to discuss other regional issues, ranging from security in Yemen, where al Qaeda’s regional wing is increasingly viewed as a global threat, to the new government in Iraq and faltering U.S. attempts to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the bargaining table.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 10, 2011, 9:58 AM (GMT+02:00)

Jihad Islami shows weapons in Gaza for attacking Israel

The Israeli air strikes in Gaza early Monday, Jan. 10, described officially as aimed at “terrorist targets” and “smuggling tunnels” were in fact systematic missions to start destroying the new Hamas underground command centers which Iranian Revolutionary Guards engineers are building across the enclave. This is reported exclusively by debkafile‘s military sources.
The enhancement of Hamas’s military capabilities against Israel is seen as Iran’s punishment for the attacks on its nuclear scientists and installations, while serving its broader effort to control the Gaza Strip as its Mediterranean outpost.

Sunday, Jan. 9, the heads of Hamas’s military wing Ezz e-Din Al-Qassam tried to persuade Iran’s Palestinian proxy, Jihad Islami leader Amin al Hindi, to rein in his group’s missile and mortar attacks on Israeli towns and villages and its rocket strikes against Israeli border patrols. They argued that these attacks caused no real harm, depleted the resources needed for a major showdown with Israel and provoked the IDF into prematurely launching another round of the Cast Lead campaign of 2008-2009. This campaign had already begun, they said, with the Israel Air Force’s precision bombing of the new Hamas facilities going up for the next Palestinian war on Israel; Israel should not be driven to devastating attacks before the facilities were in place.

debkafile‘s sources report that IRGC engineers who stole into Gaza in recent weeks have been working  around the clock to lay a network of command centers across the territory according to detailed plans . In highest demand in Gaza today are not the missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv but the concrete smuggled in mainly from Egypt.
The “terror targets” the IAF struck Monday in Gaza City and Khan Younis were those very command centers.

To tempt Jihad Islami leaders into keeping their powder dry for now, Hamas offered them cabinet portfolios, hoping to buy them off with ceremonial departments, sumptuous offices, fancy cars and “budgets.” However, Al Hindi, who takes his orders from Tehran, refused to play. He told Hamas: We don’t want money; we want to step up our war on Israel.

According to debkafile‘s Iranian sources, Tehran is aiming to launch a war of attrition from the Gaza Strip by using the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami to constantly batter the border fence and the Israeli populations in its vicinity and so elevate the level of confrontation with the IDF.
Since Jihad Islami takes its orders directly from Tehran, Hamas – which also depends on Iranian directives, funding and military aid received through Damascus – cannot afford to force its will on the Jihad Islami and risk an open breach with Tehran.

Hamas-Gaza’s only recourse is to persuade Khaled Meshaal, head of its Damascus wing, to press Tehran to rein in Jihad Islami and so save the unfinished command centers from destruction. Hamas seems to think that in Tehran one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. In fact, according to our sources, Iran is acting deliberately to stir up confusion among the Palestinan organizations in the Gaza Strip while also maintaining military tensions around the border fence and southwestern Israel at a high pitch.
While its air force takes advantage of the confusion Iran is generating in Gaza to wipe out the new military command centers, Israel’s military planners are fully aware that this is a short-term strategy which carries a high price. Their reprisals for attacks are predicted by Iran and serve its strategic objectives in the Gaza Strip. Iran can rebuild Hamas’s destroyed command centers but is determined to allow no letup in Palestinian violence from the Gaza Strip. Israeli strategists are therefore expected to chart different and novel modes of operation for stemming the attacks now fully orchestrated from Tehran.

So far, Iran is doing better in the Gaza Strip than in Lebanon. There, it calls the shots for a single radical group, the Hizballah, whereas in Gaza it holds the two dominant radical Palestinian movements in the palm of its hand.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 9, 2011, 12:26 PM (GMT+02:00)

The heavy water plant at Arak – for the plutonium track to a bomb

Meir Dagan, when he retired as Mossad chief last week, estimated that difficulties had held back Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb until early 2014 or 2015. He did not mention the Stuxnet virus invading its systems or the untimely deaths of its nuclear scientists. He did refer to arguments in Iran’s ruling elite which had delayed the attainment of its goal, indicating that without those disputes Tehran would have acquired a nuclear capability by now – or very soon.
But most strikingly, Dagan omitted mention of the short cuts available to Iran, as noted here by debkafile‘s military, intelligence and Iranian sources:

1.  Not all Iran’s concealed nuclear facilities have been discovered by Western intelligence – not even Mossad. Given Iran’s record of concealment, it would be foolish, for instance, to ignore the possibility of a secret plant enriching uranium at full speed somewhere underground out of range of the UN nuclear watchdog’s cameras recording every centrifuge spinning at Natanz. They may still be undetected by spy satellites and unbeknownst even to the defectors and double agents willing to collaborate with the West.
A single secret facility of this kind would invalidate the current Western estimate of Iran’s stock of low-grade enriched uranium as standing at 3,000 kilos. The real amount could be 20 times or even 100 times as much, enough for three or four bombs.
2.  The same applies to the “malfunctions” undoubtedly holding up the program. No competent agency would risk guaranteeing that every last Iranian facility has been crippled or exposed to cyber invasion. The publicity surrounding Stuxnet and the deaths or defections of Iranian nuclear scientists has conveyed the impression of a nation on the point of collapse, whose every nook and cranny is wide open to the long arm of Western and Israeli spy agencies.

But who knows what really goes on in the top-secret laboratories of Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, which employed the two nuclear scientists targeted for attack last month? It is there that much of the research is conducted form Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. But there is no certainty that a parallel research institution is not operating in some other dark place.

3. Iran has been known in the past to have established or transferred sensitive nuclear facilities outside the country to remove them from the sight of alien intelligence agencies and safeguard them against sabotage, like the audacious attack of Oct. 12, 2010 against a hidden Shehab-3 missile store at the Revolutionary Guards Imam Ali base in northwest Iran. The consequences of this attack were as destructive as the Stuxnet invasion.
It will be recalled that only when the Israeli Air Force struck the North Korean-built plutonium reactor at A-Zur in northern Syria in Sept. 2007 was this vital external link in Iran’s nuclear program revealed.
Tehran, Pyongyang and Damascus resumed their nuclear collaboration in early 2009, debkafile‘s sources disclose. Three or four secret military research centers are going up in Syria at this moment, which is why Damascus denies International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to suspect nuclear sites.
Western intelligence, including the Mossad, knows very little about Iran’s nuclear partnership with North Korea. An Iranian military nuclear mission has been discovered based permanently in Pyongyang. It was substantially expanded in recent weeks raising the suspicion in the US and Israel that a joint nuclear test is planned to take place at the North Korean testing site in the course of this year.If North Korea performed this service for Iran, Dagan’s 2015 estimate would no longer apply.

4. All the deadlines predicted for Iran’s nuclear programs are therefore problematic.

Early on in the last decade, in 2000, Western and Israeli intelligence anticipated Iran would have a nuclear bomb or warhead by 2007. That year, the timeline was pushed back to 2009 and then again to 2011. The gap has widened now to 2015. However, there is no guarantee from any quarter that the latest estimate is any more credible than the old ones and that Tehran is not capable of throwing it awry by one stealthy ruse or another – this time not for another delay but by jumping the gun.