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U.S. should heed Canada’s message to Iran

January 28, 2011

Clifford D. May: U.S. should heed Canada’s message to Iran | Full Comment | National Post.

National Post January 27, 2011 – 12:16 pm

Last week, Canada’s Free Thinking Film Society – love that name – was scheduled to screen Iranium, a new documentary about the regime that has ruled Iran since 1979, its drive to acquire nuclear weapons and the dangers that poses for the West. But then the Iranian embassy complained and – coincidently – threats and “suspicious letters” were received at the National Archives in Ottawa, where the event was to take place. The Archives cancelled the screening and shut the building. Archives spokeswoman Pauline Portelance explained: “We deemed the risk associated with the event was a little too high.”

Apparently, however, officials above her pay grade recognized that allowing Iranian theocrats to set the limits of free speech in Canada’s capital would run an even higher risk. It was given to Minister of Heritage James Moore to deliver a Churchillian response.”This movie will be shown, the agreement will be kept,” he said. “We will not be moving it to a different facility, we’re not bending to any pressure. People need to be kept safe, but we don’t back down to people who try to censor people by threats of violence. Canada does not accept attempts from the Iranian Embassy to dictate what films will and will not be shown in Canada.”

The Canadian screening of Iranium has now been rescheduled for early February. Will Iran’s rulers and supporters accept that decision? Or will they escalate the conflict? While we’re waiting for the answer, it’s worth recalling that the Islamic Republic has a long history of attempting to enforce its will extraterritorially. As early as 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led Iran’s revolution ten years earlier, issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, against a British subject, Salman Rushdie, because Khomeini considered Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, blasphemous. The fatwa called for Rushdie to be executed by any Muslim who could manage the task.

That might have been expected: As Iranium makes clear, Khomeini’s revolution was not just against the Shah of Iran. It was intended for export – and not only to countries in which Muslims are in the majority.

Khomeini’s ambitious goal then, and his successors’ goal now, is “world revolution,” the creation of a universal and “holy” government and the downfall of all others. “Islam is good for you,” Khomeini said. “It is good for the world.” He said this even as – in Stalinist fashion — he was executing at home and assassinating abroad not just those who opposed him but also those who might one day oppose him.

I am among those interviewed in Iranium, along with several other Foundation for Defense of Democracies experts. Also providing analysis and insight: scholar Bernard Lewis, former CIA director Jim Woolsey, Senator Jon Kyl, and former Ambassador John Bolton. But it is really Iran’s despots who tell the story.

For example, in 1980, war broke out between Iran and Iraq. Khomeini sent Iranian children on foot to clear minefields so that regular troops and tanks could pass after. How could a man of faith justify that? He was guaranteeing their entry into Paradise. Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, finds poetry in such carnage. “No art is more beautiful,” he is seen in the film telling a group of his acolytes, “more divine and more everlasting” than “the art of martyrdom”.

Khomeini’s successor, the Supreme Leader – an audacious title — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is candid: America is not just Iran’s enemy; America is the “enemy of Allah” and “the Great Satan.”

It is difficult for us, for Westerners, children of the Enlightenment, to believe that there are rulers of great nations who take such notions seriously. But if you watch and listen to them – not least in this documentary – it becomes clear that they do. What does that mean for policy? It means that diplomacy, outreach, engagement and carefully crafted speeches showing respect and apologizing for “grievances” will have limited utility.

Truth be told, Americans have been reaching out to Iran’s theocrats for more than 30 years. Khomeini came to power on Jimmy Carter’s watch. Carter was by no means hostile to him and his revolution. On the contrary, Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, called Khomeini “some kind of saint.” William Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador in Tehran, compared Khomeini to Gandhi. A State Department spokesman at that time worried about the possibility of a military coup against Khomeini, saying that would be “most dangerous for U.S. interests. It would blow away the moderates and invite the majority to unite behind a radical faction.”

In response, Khomeini and his followers, as seen in the film, chanted not only “Death to America!” but also “Death to Carter!” And, of course, less than a year after Khomeini came to power, his followers took over the U.S. embassy, which Khomeini called a “center for corruption,” holding its occupants hostage for 444 days – not exactly the kind of action Gandhi would have endorsed.

Seizing an embassy is an act of war. Carter’s response was, as Bernard Lewis characterized it, “feeble.” Khomeini was gratified to discover that, “Americans cannot do a damn thing.”

Three years later, Khomeini tested that proposition again. He dispatched the Lebanese-based Hezbollah to suicide-bomb the barracks of U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut. Not since Iwo Jim had so many U.S. Marines been killed in a single attack. In response, President Reagan committed a grave error: He did not retaliate against Hezbollah or Iran. That taught a lesson: Hit Americans and Americans will retreat. They really “cannot do a damn thing.” (And, as I write this, Hezbollah is on the verge of taking over Lebanon. The American response? So far, it would be fair to characterize it as “feeble.”)

Islamic militants throughout the world were inspired by what happened in Tehran and Beirut. What Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin, advisors to President Clinton, would call “The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War Against America” had begun.

Iran has since collaborated with al-Qaeda and a long list of other terrorists groups – the evidence is overwhelming – while also training and equipping those fighting Americans in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The regime continues to repress its own people – dissidents, of course, but also ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals and women. As noted in the film, virgins sentenced to capital punishment are routinely raped prior to execution. This practice also is based on theology: Virgins go to Paradise, a reward enemies of the regime do not deserve.

And now Ahmadinejad and Khameini are in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons. To what end? The destruction of Israel, which Khameini has called “a cancerous tumor.” The treatment he prescribes: “remove it.” But it is not Israel alone to which scalpels are to be applied. Ahmadinejad tells a crowd: “The arrogant powers of the world must be annihilated. … The countdown of America’s sinister power has begun. … Have no doubt: Islam will conquer …all the mountaintops of the world.”

Iran’s Arab neighbors have at least as much to fear as Israel and America. As cables recently released by WikiLeaks make clear, they know that, they are looking to the U.S., and they are not reassured.

No sensible, rational person can watch this film, hear this evidence, and fail to come to the conclusion that the fanatics who rule Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

That is the message Iranium – I like that title, too, by the way — conveys. That’s why the theocrats and their apologists don’t want you to see it. That’s why you really should.

Clifford D. May leads the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-partisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.

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Hezbollah’s takeover threatens Israel even more

January 28, 2011

Hezbollah’s takeover threatens Israel even more | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California.

Israel’s neighborhood turned even more dangerous this week with the takeover of Lebanon by Hezbollah.

While some people may say the word “takeover” is too strong, let us remind you that Lebanon is not a democratic country. Hezbollah threatened its way to the top. And it anointed the likely prime minister, Najib Mikati.

Hezbollah began making inroads with the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Despite Hezbollah’s claim it had nothing to do with the killing, a U.N. court is expected to rule otherwise any day now.

In preparation for that ruling, Hezbollah last week toppled the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri — the son of the slain leader. Mikati is expected to reject the finding or possibly lose his job.

As Jews we should be worried. Syria and Iran are patrons of Hezbollah. They help to fund the terrorist organization and supply the rockets that are fired at Israel across the border

Israel had feared that a nuclear-armed Iran could fire weapons that would hit the Jewish state within 10 to 12 minutes. But if Lebanon is armed with nuclear weapons, that attack could happen even more quickly.

Israel saw this coming when it attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. But it also found out that fighting militants is a lot different than fighting an army.

Hezbollah fighters are accomplished at disappearing into the background, behind schools, medical facilities and people’s homes. They have no uniforms. But they do have guns, and lots of them. Hezbollah has an arsenal that is said to be four times larger than it was in 2006.

The militant group is as much a threat to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. But there’s little other Arab heads of state can do. They are powerless against Syria and Iran and they are now powerless against Lebanon.

The United States is in no better a position. The former Lebanese government was considered to be pro-Western. But in all honesty, it wasn’t much of a friend to Western powers.

The new Lebanon is not a friend of the West. It poses the same threat as al Qaida does in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it’s going to divide the people of Lebanon, making it look once again as sharply divided as Iraq.

Some political observers are worried that there could be battles in the streets of Lebanon over who has the right to run the country. But Lebanon has suffered such internecine warfare in the past, and the victor was usually the side with the most fire power.

With this week’s happenings, the Middle East becomes even more unstable. There is good reason to worry that it will only get worse.

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Stuxnet: Game Changer On Iran

January 28, 2011

Baltimore Jewish Times – Cover Story | Stuxnet: Game Changer On Iran.

Fans of pro football use the term “game changer” to refer to a long touchdown pass or a key interception that turns a game around.

Similarly, in international politics, there are occasional “game changers” such as the U.S. development of the atomic bomb during World War II or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which fundamentally altered the course of world events.

While perhaps not as decisive as the development of the atomic bomb, nor as dramatic as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revelation that the U.S. and Israel, working together, had forced more than a three-year delay in Iran’s ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon by inserting the Stuxnet computer virus into Iran’s nuclear facilities may, in fact, be a Middle Eastern “game changer.”

This is the case for two reasons:
• First, by delaying Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, Iran’s influence in the Middle East suffered a major blow.

• Second, by eliminating a major area of conflict between the U.S. and Israel over the desirability of an immediate attack on Iran’s nuclear installations, a major problem in the U.S.-Israeli relationship has been removed.

Under the leadership of its firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran had been racing toward the capability of producing nuclear weapons since Teheran broke off negotiations with the European Union in 2005, soon after Mr. Ahmadinejad took office. Since then, Iran has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the European Union and the U.S., on the one hand promising serious negotiations, but then pulling back from serious concessions.

Those concessions include giving International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to Iranian nuclear facilities or sending substantial amounts of its enriched uranium abroad to ensure that it could not be processed into nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, because of its stalling tactics, Iran was able to put more and more centrifuges on line — spinning centrifuges are used to purify natural uranium (about 3 percent pure) into bomb-grade uranium (about 90 percent pure).

By early 2010, Iran had succeeded in getting its centrifuges to enrich uranium from 3 percent to 20 percent, the first major step needed to get to the 90 percent bomb-grade level. However, during the prolonged period of stalled negotiations, the international community grew increasingly impatient with Teheran, although serious sanctions were not imposed until last spring when Russia and China finally acquiesced to the U.S. call to punish Iran.
As Iran produced more and more of the enriched uranium, fears grew, especially in Israel, that it was nearing a nuclear weapons capability. It was at this point, however, that the situation began to go wrong for the Iranian nuclear program. A computer virus called Stuxnet, reportedly jointly developed by the U.S. and Israel, and tested at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, knocked out and most probably destroyed 984 Iranian centrifuges of the P-1 type, considerably slowing the Iranian nuclear effort.

At the same time, Iran’s efforts to develop the more sophisticated P-2 centrifuge have been complicated by embargoes on the carbon steel necessary for its manufacture, as well as by the assassinations of several key Iranian nuclear scientists.

The end result has been to delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program by an estimated three years. This gives Israel sufficient time to, at the minimum, give diplomacy yet another chance, but perhaps more importantly to allow more time both to perfect its complex anti-missile air defense system and to improve its civil defense preparedness.

If Israeli leaders decide, in three years, that Iran’s nuclear installations still need destroying, Israel will be better protected against retaliatory strikes by Iran and its allies — Syria, and the terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas.

From a political perspective, the nuclear setback also is problematic to Iran. Its ability to intimidate the Arab states of the Persian Gulf — allies of the U.S. — has been reduced, and these countries, along with Egypt and Jordan, now have three more years to develop their own nuclear programs to counter-balance Iran.

In addition, should the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was established to investigate the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, decide to blame Hezbollah for the crime, as appears likely at this time, then Hezbollah’s moral legitimacy in Lebanon, and that of its ally Iran also, will be tarnished, as it will be shown that Hezbollah is not just a force opposing Israel, but is a force seeking to destroy Lebanon from the inside.

Also, while the Arab world has recently been seriously challenged by the overthrow of the Ben-Ali dictatorship in Tunisia, the weakening of the Iranian threat due to the delay in its nuclear program can only be seen as a major benefit to the Arab states of the region as they seek to deal with their domestic problems, including Iranian-backed subversion in a number of Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.

While there are clearly major benefits to Israel, the U.S. and the Arab Gulf states from the delay in Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, the delay also benefits the Israeli-American relationship.

Although there are currently a number of issues complicating U.S,-Israeli relations, including Israel’s construction program in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the most important problem in the U.S.-Israeli relationship during the Obama administration, as it had been under former President George W. Bush, is the disagreement over whether, and how soon, to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Israel, seeing an existential threat from Iran whose leadership regularly called for the Jewish state’s destruction, wanted the U.S. to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. If the U.S. was unwilling to do so, to give Israel both the political backing and the bunker-busting bombs (some of Iran’s nuclear installations are buried underground) to do so. From the U.S. perspective, particularly that of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has held that post since 2006, the U.S. already had more than it could handle with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. wanted to give sanctions and diplomacy more time to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem, a point Mr. Gates made publicly in rebuttal to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s call for military action against Iran in November 2010.

From the U.S. perspective, a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran could bring in its wake a number of negative consequences for America. First, Iran could step up its aid to anti-U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby complicating the U.S. military effort in both countries.

Second, Iran could strike at U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf. Third, Iran could, at least temporarily, force the closure of the Straits of Hormuz through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes daily, thereby causing world oil prices to skyrocket. Whether such Iranian responses would have a long-term negative effect on the U.S. position in the Middle East is, however, a very open question given the fact that any Iranian attack on U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf, or attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz, would lead to massive U.S. retaliation against Iran, including attacks on the main pillars of the Islamic regime such as the slamic Republican Guard as well as on Iran’s air, naval and missile bases, attacks that could seriously threaten the regime in Teheran.

Nonetheless, the U.S. preferred not to take the risk although American leaders from Mr. Gates to President Obama repeatedly stated that the United States had not taken the military option in dealing with Iran “off the table.”
The Israeli perspective on Iran differed sharply from that of the U.S. In the first place, Israeli leaders tended to take Iranian rhetoric much more seriously than did the United States. When Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose power in Iran is rising, and whose position in the Islamic Republic is now second only to the Ayatollah Khameini, openly states that Israel “should be wiped off the map” and denies the Holocaust, Israeli leaders — and the Israeli public — become concerned.

Then, when the Iranian discourse about destroying Israel becomes combined with Iran’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons, Israelis, both on the right and on the left, see Iran as becoming a threat to Israel’s existence. The question for Israel was what to do about the existential threat from Iran. From a purely logistical point of view, it would be far easier for the U.S. to attack Iran than for Israel to do so. The U.S. could use a combination of B-1 and B-2 bombers, long-range missiles with conventional warheads, and fighter bombers launched from the U.S. aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean to begin an attack on Iran.

By contrast, Israel would have to depend on a combination of F-15 and F-16 military aircraft, which would have to be refueled both en route to Iran and on the way back to Israel, plus a limited number of missile strikes from Israeli submarines in the Indian Ocean. In addition, while the limited Israeli military resources would have to be concentrated on Iran’s nuclear installations, thus leaving Iran’s intermediate range missiles free to strike Israel in retaliation, a U.S. attack would presumably not only destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, but also its air, missile and naval bases as well, thus making an Iranian retaliatory attack against Israel more difficult.

It is for these reasons that Israel has pushed so hard, albeit so far without success, for a U.S. strike on Iran, causing a considerable amount of friction in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. However, under President Obama, the U.S. has done a considerable amount to strengthen Israeli security, including asking Congress to appropriate an additional $205 million for Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system, pre-positioning additional U.S. military equipment in Israel that it could use in case of an emergency, and increasing the number of top-level security meetings between the two countries.

Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have claimed that by being unwilling itself to deal with the growing menace from Iran, and not giving Israel both the political backing and the bunker-busting bombs to do the job itself, the U.S. was not dealing seriously with Israel’s legitimate security concerns.

This issue, at least for the present, has been removed from the U.S.-Israeli agenda. Indeed, the story of the development of the Stuxnet computer virus, if newspaper reports are to be believed, indicates a great deal of close U.S.-Israeli security cooperation. This has involved P-1 centrifuges that the U.S. acquired from Libya when Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi closed down his nuclear program in 2003. The U.S. also received information from the German company Siemens on how its computer controllers, which run the Iranian centrifuges, operate; and a test facility at the Israeli nuclear site of Dimona evaluated the vulnerabilities of the P-1 centrifuges.

The end result of the joint U.S.-Israeli project was at least a three-year delay in the Iranian nuclear weapons program — the same delay, it is estimated, that the U.S. or Israel would have obtained from a strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, with none of the military, political or economic costs that would have accompanied a military attack, because Iran cannot prove that the attack originated either in Israel or the U.S. It is also an open question as to whether Iranian computers are sophisticated enough to retaliate in kind against the U.S. and Israel.

Besides removing a major irritant in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, at least for the time being, the successful Stuxnet operation also has demonstrated a close degree of Israeli-American security cooperation that bodes well for the future of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

With the Iranian nuclear threat now postponed, and the Iranian political position in the Middle East weakened as a result of the delay in its nuclear weapons program, the time would appear ripe for moving ahead with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as Netanyahu can no longer argue that the Iranian threat needs to be dealt with first. Whether President Obama will be able to build upon the success of the Stuxnet operation, and the new spirit of security cooperation between the U.S. and Israel to promote the peace process, however, remains to be seen.

Talks Stalled

JTA Wire Service
Talks on Iran’s nuclear program between the Islamic Republic and six world powers have been deemed a failure.

The talks, held last weekend in Istanbul between Iran and P5+1 — United Nations Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany, did not make progress in part because Iran came to the table with preconditions, including that it would not halt its uranium enrichment and wanted that right to be “recognized,” according to reports citing P5+1 officials.

“This is not the conclusion I had hoped for,” European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in Istanbul on Saturday. “We had hoped to embark on a discussion of practical ways forward and have made every effort to make that happen. We expect Iran to demonstrate a pragmatic attitude, and to respond positively to our openness toward dialogue and negotiations. The door remains open; the choice remains in Iran’s hands.

“It remains essential that Iran demonstrates that its [nuclear] program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” she added. “But so far the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has not been able to certify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s program, given what the agency states is a lack of sufficient cooperation by Iran.”

On Sunday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the failed talks, saying during a speech aired on live television that “They have talked for a few rounds, but we never expected that issues would be resolved during these few sessions because of the record and mentality of the other parties.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad said he believed that results would be achieved in future sessions. He also said that “the uncultured Zionists and some power-hungry people in Europe and the U.S. are not interested in a good resolution of the issues.”

“You cannot make Iran back down an inch from its course as it is now a nuclear state,” Mr. Ahmadinejad concluded.

A date for future talks has not been set.

Dr. Robert O. Freedman is Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone professor of political science emeritus at Baltimore Hebrew University and is visiting professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Among his publications are: “Israel In The Begin Era,” “Israel Under Rabin,” “Contemporary Israel” and the forthcoming, “Six Decades Of U.S.-Israeli Relations.”

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Does Obama Understand the Threat of a Nuclear Iran?

January 28, 2011

FoxNews.com – Does Obama Understand the Threat of a Nuclear Iran?.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama addressed one of the biggest threats to the free world in the 21st century in just one sentence: “Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before.” However, the president failed to mention that his policies toward Iran, in the two years he’s been in office have proven to have been a complete failure.

His efforts to reach out to the Islamic leaders of Iran have not been successful. Instead of supporting the uprising of the Iranians against their barbaric regime he chose not to get involved. And despite all the sanctions in place Iran continues even more aggressively with its nuclear drive while repeatedly refusing to give into the U.N. demands.

It was just last week when, after two days of intense negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey, the Iranian delegation refused to discuss its nuclear program and even refused to take the offers made by the participating representatives of six world powers to the Iranian leaders. The Iranian government- controlled media celebrated it as another victory against the Great Satan — America!

The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, boasted that the enemy claims that Iran will expand its power, but they should know that this is just the beginning as “the Iranian nation will stand strong to end world oppression and establishment of justice under the flag of Imam Mahdi, the Shiites 12th imam.”

The Iranians have continuously announced their intentions to proceed with their nuclear enrichment program, they’ve declared that missile development will go on, that even if there is a military strike, they will continue to enrich uranium; and that they have other sites for contingencies in the face of an attack.

After so many years of failed negotiations, it is time for the West to realize that the Iranian leaders are only looking to buy time until they are fully nuclear armed.

For over three decades, the West has failed to understand the political structure of Iran and the mindset behind the radicals ruling Iran. That failure has cost hundreds of thousands of lives of innocent Iranians aspiring for freedom and too many lives of American heroes fighting for democracy and freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every U.S. administration, since the onset of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, has tried in vain to negotiate with the Iranian rulers: Every single one failed.

All the while, the Iranian leaders have pursued their aggressive policies against the West with a focus on increasing their military capability. The Revolutionary Guards have expanded their missile program with the collaboration of North Korea and China.

They now have the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, which are capable of targeting all of Israel, every U.S. base in the Middle East and every capital in Western Europe.

The Guards are also working on intercontinental ballistic missiles with the help of North Korea under the guise of their space project.

Most alarming is the Iranian nuclear program, which started in the mid-80s with only one goal — to obtain the nuclear bomb. Today Iran is ever closer in achieving that goal. It is just a matter of time before they have the capability to weaponize warheads on their ballistic missiles.

Right now, Iran has enough enriched uranium for three nuclear bombs. They are involved in joint research and development on weaponization with North Korea. Recent Wikileaks reports reveal that U.S. officials are now certain that Iran has mastered the enrichment to higher levels and, should the leadership choose so, they can enrich uranium to a weapon grade in a short period of time.

The leaders of Iran continue their terrorist activities around the world with their ongoing support of terrorist groups including Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al Qaeda and others in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Africa. If Iran acquires the nuclear bomb, proliferation will become a nightmare and every terrorist organization in the world could be armed with such weapons of mass destruction.
The idea of changing the behavior of the Iranian leaders is as much a fantasy as believing that watered down sanctions will force them to negotiate.

The failure of our approach is reflected in our misunderstanding the ideology of the radicals ruling Iran. They literally take everything from the Koran, which demands the annihilation of the infidels and Islam’s conquest of the world. They believe that Allah has empowered them and that America will not be able to do anything about it.

We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Today we are facing an evil much worse than we did in 1938. Appeasement and vacillation do not work. World peace, global stability and millions of lives are on the line. Our first priority should be to stop these radicals in their tracks and to help Iranians free themselves from this evil.

The Iranian people are one of the most Westernized in the region. A new regime in Iran could transform the world for the better. Imagine that: Much of the worldwide terrorism will end; Iraq and Afghanistan becoming much more stable; Lebanon becoming more independent without the influence of Hezbollah; Israel being more secure; A peace between Israel and Palestinian leadership; Positive changes happening throughout Central Asia and Latin America without Iran’s influence; and finally, no more appeasing China and Russia over Iran.

It really is simple. All we need do is support the Iranian people in their aspirations for freedom. Do not appease their leaders. Do not negotiate with them. Help embolden Iranians to take their country back. They are looking for support from the West.

We would do well to remember the words of President Reagan to the nation on the night of our bombing of Libya’s terrorist facilities in 1986: “There is no security, no safety, in the appeasement of evil. It must be the core of Western policy that there be no sanctuary for terror. And to sustain such a policy, free men and free nations must unite and work together.”

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. “A Time to Betray,” his book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2010.

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‘We’re living on a volcano,’ experts warn

January 28, 2011

‘We’re living on a volcano,’ experts warn.

Angry protestor shouts at police in Cairo (AP)

Photo by: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
01/28/2011 01:44

As with Iran in ’79, Islamists could hijack pro-democracy movements; ex-IDF research chief: “We’re on thick ice, but even that melts eventually.”

Israeli security experts are casting an uneasy eye at the civil unrest spreading through the region.

On Thursday, Yemen joined the list of Arab states experiencing unprecedented demonstrations calling for authoritarian leaders to step down, and Egypt braced for more civil unrest.

RELATED:
The Region: Revolutions, walk-outs and fatwas
Analysis: A warning to Arab dictators

While no analysts here predict any immediate ramifications for Israel’s national security, some said mass protest movements that begin as pro-democracy uprisings could easily be hijacked by Islamists.

“We need to understand that we are living on a volcano,” said Maj.- Gen. (res.) Ya’acov Amidror, former head of the IDF’s Research and Assessment Directorate.

“Conditions can change from today until tomorrow. We must ask ourselves, what is the worst case scenario,” he said. “We are on thick ice, but even that melts eventually.”

“Advice we have heard from certain countries in Western Europe [suggesting that the uprisings could lead to a wave of democratic revolutions] should not be followed,” he said. “There’s no immediate fear of any security escalation. The main question is: In the long term, will we be ready for all scenarios?” Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser, and a senior research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said, “There’s a reasonable chance that if a revolution takes place in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would rise to power. That would be bad not just for Israel but for all democracies.”

The true struggle in Egypt was not between “Mubarak and pro-democracy elements, but between Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood,” Eiland said.

Casting his eye on Lebanon, Giora said the recent confrontation between the pro-Western March 8 alliance and the Hizbullah-led March 14 bloc was not as severe as met the eye.

“It’s true that the two camps have been in a political confrontation that became sharper. But there is a clear interest for both sides to continue to cooperate – not only to prevent a civil war, but to enjoy the best of both worlds,” he said.

“So long as there is a unity government, then pro-Western camp can ask the West for economic and military aid, while pointing to democracy in Lebanon, a free economy, and a functioning parliament. The role of Hizbullah is to continue to be the most powerful military force in Lebanon, and to have strategic control,” Eiland said.

He believes that Israel is better off with a Lebanon formally controlled by Hizbullah, “because as soon as fire is opened at Israel, it’s not Hizbullah but the whole of the state of Lebanon that is responsible. That is a real deterrent, and it has plenty of advantages.

“The same is true of Hamas rule in Gaza,” Eiland said.

Shlomo Brom, director of the program on Israel-Palestinian relations at the INSS, said it was impossible to know what would happen next.

“It’s true that pro-democracy voices are being expressed – and that is positive – but we don’t know how it will end,” Brom said. Even in Tunisia, where the Islamists are weak, we don’t know how it will end. We can’t forget that in Iran, at the end of the 1970s, the uprising against the shah was led by [pro-democracy] youths who took the streets – but this was taken over by Islamists in the end.”

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Egypt’s Internet Shut Down, According To Reports

January 28, 2011

Egypt’s Internet Shut Down, According To Reports.

Reports are emerging that Internet has gone down in Cairo and throughout Egypt, only hours before the largest planned protests yet.

According to a report from The Arabist, “Egypt has shut off the internet.”

Multiple Internet Service Providers are affected according to the report, which states:

I just received a call from a friend in Cairo (I won’t say who it is now because he’s a prominent activist) telling me neither his DSL nor his USB internet service is working. I’ve just checked with two other friends in different parts of Cairo and their internet is not working either.

The news of the Internet outage came minutes after the Associated Press published a video of an Egyptian protestor being shot.

CNN reporter Ben Wedeman confirmed Internet is down in Cairo and writes, “No internet, no SMS, what is next? Mobile phones and land lines? So much for stability. #Jan25 #Egypt”

The Los Angeles Times is also reporting that BlackBerry Internet has been taken offline in Egypt.

UPDATE (7:05 p.m. ET) Reuters confirms “major network disruptions” for Egypt Internet users at this time, with reports in Cairo that there is no Internet altogether. A top state official declined to comment.

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UPDATE: (7:30 p.m. ET) The Associated Press also confirms widespread Internet outages in Egypt. Italy-based Seabone, a major Internet service provider for Egypt, reported early Friday there was no Internet traffic going into or out of the country after 12:30 a.m. local time.

UPDATE: (7:35 p.m. ET) AFP reports that cell phone text messaging also appears to be down in Egypt.

UPDATE: (7:45 p.m. ET) Independent citizen media organization Global Voices just posted a report on Egypt’s “Internet black hole” and notes it will attempt to file future reports from Egypt via phone calls and other communication methods.

UPDATE: (9:45 p.m. ET) Internet intelligence authority Renesys has just weighed in with a blog post on recent developments:

Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers. Virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

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Muslim Brotherhood joins Egyptian protesters. Three cities locked down

January 28, 2011

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 27, 2011, 10:47 PM (GMT+02:00)

Millions of Muslim worshippers to turn out Friday

The Mubarak regime was badly shaken Thursday night, Jan. 27, when Egypt’s most powerful opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, ordered its teeming membership to join the protest movement raging in Cairo and other cities since Tuesday after Friday (Jan. 28) prayers.
debkafile‘s Cairo sources report that the capital’s poor districts, like Shubra which houses four million inhabitants, were bustling Thursday night with preparations for street action the next day. The question on all lips now is: Can the security forces control the many millions of protesters expected to suddenly pour into city streets across the land as of Friday and defend the regime against them.

The police, almost a million security officers and units of the Interior Ministry’s special units, have been on their feet for three days quelling outbreaks. They are exhausted and demoralized. They managed to keep the demonstrations from getting out of hand, but not to suppress them. Now that millions of Muslim Brotherhood loyalists have been told to throw in their lot with the protest movement, the beleaguered 82-year old President Hosni Mubarak can no longer avoid sending the army in to stem the unrest, which looks increasingly like turning into a popular revolution.
The trouble is that no one can be sure of the army’s total loyalty to the regime. The president cannot be sure that officers will agree to order their men to shoot demonstrators if need be, or whether the soldiers will obey such orders.

Even after three days, debkafile‘s sources report signs that the president and his immediate circle of advisers and ministers have not grasped the extent of their peril. For hours, security forces commanders begged the president to sign curfew decrees for the most troubled cities, but he refused.

In the end, they clamped curfews down on their own initiative in Suez and Ismailia on the banks of the Suez Canal and across the canal in the northern Sinai town of El Arish close to the Israeli and Gaza borders. During the day, violent clashes between police and rioters occurred in all three towns, whose combined population is 1.7 million, eaving casualties whose numbers are unknown. Thursday night, their streets of the three towns were deserted except for heavy security patrols. No one was allowed to leave without a special permit.

The ministry responsible for mosques and preachers Thursday night issued directives to the imams who are state employees to focus their sermons Friday on calls to keep the peace and not participate in the anti-government demonstrations.

But those preachers, although their pay checks come from the public purse, are unlikely to go against the popular mood or dare defy the Muslim Brotherhood.

Later Thursday, rumors were floating around Cairo that President Mubarak was about to sack the government and promise early parliamentary elections. Neither was confirmed.

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An Iranian Naval Base Planned in Beirut

January 27, 2011

Iran Prepares for War, Buttresses its New Domain with Military Steel

Najib Miqati

Iran’s leaders do not trust the popular assumption in the West that the military option against Iran is not on the cards for now and prefer to actively prepare the country and the armed forces for war.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence and Iranian sources report that these preparations are going forward under the close supervision of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is strengthening the top military command and getting regional proxy forces lined up, with warships on the move to flashpoint arenas, back-up command centers ready to go up on Iran’s five borders and an Iranian naval base planned for Beirut, Lebanon.
According to those sources, when Khamenei learned from Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi Monday, Jan. 24 of the Iranian-Syrian success in installing Najib Miqati as Lebanon’s next prime minister, the first thing he did was to phone the Al Qods Brigades commander Gen. Ghassam Soleimani to inform him he had been promoted to major general, the second highest Iranian military rank.
Our military sources believe Khamenei has tabbed Soleimani for the supreme command of the Revolutionary Guards – IRGC – as better able than the incumbent Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari to slap Iran’s armed forces into shape should the country be attacked over its nuclear program.
As Al Qods Brigades commander for 15 years since 1996, Soleimani has been running Iran’s clandestine, covert, sabotage and subversive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also been in charge of the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah’s terrorist cells in West and East Africa and the Shiite militia’s operations in Lebanon. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza is also part of his watch.
Soleimani – Iran’s top expert in terrorist and military warfare
The only Western statesman advocating a tough hand with Iran is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
(Friday, January 21, he said in London: “I say this to you with all the passion I possibly can – At some point the West has got to get out of what I think is a wretched policy… [towards Iran], or posture of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing (the nuclear plan… They’ll carry on doing it unless they are met by the requisite determination and, if necessary, force.”)
However, Iran’s leaders believe that the soft policy Blair denigrated is a front; they rate high the likelihood of an eventual US or Israeli strike on their nuclear facilities. They therefore attach high importance to laying the groundwork for a stance of “mighty steadfastness.”
Soleimani’s value in a war scenario would come into play if and when Tehran made good on its oft-repeated threat to set the Middle East and the whole world on fire if attacked. It would be up to the Al Qods Brigades commander to stir into life the active and sleeper cells he has planted at strategic points in Iraq, Afghanistan, the oil Emirates and other Arab countries for large-scale terrorist attacks against American forces.
Against Israel, he has Hizballah units ready to go from Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas from Gaza.
The supreme leader has decided it is imperative to put Soleimani in place as supreme commander of all Iran’s armed forces and military assets. After winning plaudits at home for the terrorist campaigns he waged against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has the proven expertise, experience and knowledge for managing both Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in the region.
Injecting Iranian steel in the Lebanese coup
Another key military move preceded the Beirut coup and Soleimani’s promotion by one day.
Sunday, January 23, the commander of the Iranian navy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari and his deputy Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Bi-Gham, announced that a fleet of warships led by a destroyer would be sent soon to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, to be followed later by long-distance submarines. Iran had resolved to extend its naval reach on the high seas, they explained.
This was partly a counter-measure for the deployment of the USS Enterprise Strike Force with 6,000 sailors and marines and 80 fighter bombers, off the coast of Beirut, on Friday, January 21. But, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, Iran is secretly planning to establish a naval base in Beirut harbor. The new Mediterranean-Red Sea deployment will fit into this plan.
A showy Iranian military move is regarded by the ayatollah as essential for buttressing the Lebanese coup with steel. Then, if the US Congress orders the administration to halt military aid and funding for the Lebanese army under its pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian controllers, Tehran and Beirut will be ready to sign a military cooperation accord. Iran would then move in to replace the United States as Lebanon’s military patron.
Tehran has only two provisos: Iranian instructors must be imported to train Lebanese units; and Iranian infantry will conduct joint maneuvers with Lebanese forces in Lebanon.
Our sources report that, even before President Michel Suleiman asked Najib Miqati to form a government Tuesday, Jan. 25, these matters were settled between the designated prime minister, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his superior, Gen. Hossein Mahadavi of the Al Qods Brigades who is Soleimani’s man in Lebanon.
(See also: Iran’s grab for Lebanon with figurehead prime minister in debkafile of Jan. 25)
Khamenei is betting on the US and Israel staying clear of Iran’s unfolding military grip on Lebanon, just as they failed to intervene in the pro-Iranian coup that took place in Beirut this week.
Tehran placed a third block in the military edifice it is building across the region with an announcement by Gen. Ahmad-Reza Pour-Dastan, Iranian ground forces commander, that his forces would soon establish five autonomous regional command centers on the country’s five borders. They will serve as emergency back-up in case the central military command is destroyed and carry on fighting in their respective sectors.

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Russia Fears a Chernobyl Disaster in Iran

January 27, 2011

New Virus Attack Caused Iran to Miss the Bushehr Reactor Start-up

Iran was to have fully activated its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr Tuesday, Jan. 25. This did not happen. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and Moscow sources reveal that at the last minute, Iran’s hand on the switch was held by Moscow. Sergei Kiriyenko, chief of Rosatom (the Russian national nuclear energy commission which oversaw the reactor’s construction), came hurrying over to warn Tehran that its activation posed the danger of a big explosion on a scale even larger than Chernobyl.
He informed Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he had received word from the Russian engineers employed at the reactor that the Stuxnet malworm which had sowed devastation in Iran’s nuclear control systems ever since June 2010 was back. There was no way of telling if those systems were functioning properly at Bushehr or not.
Kiriyenko pointed out that a key feature of the virus is that while the systems’ screens show everything is working normally, its depredations though invisible continue and may be fatal. The Russian reactor that blew up in Chernobyl, Ukraine in April 1986 released 400 times more radioactive material than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, killing 25,000 people instantly or slowly by radiation poisoning.
An explosion at Bushehr, the Russian official warned, could cause deaths running into hundreds of thousands or even a million.
Tehran wanted to prove it had beaten Stuxnet, whatever the cost
The Rosatom chief complained to Ahmadinejad of the impression gained by his engineers that the Iranian staff at Bushehr had been ordered to activate the reactor at all costs to prove that the Islamic Republic had beaten Stuxnet. This was their overriding concern rather than the safety of the Iranian and Persian Gulf populations.
The consequences of ignoring this fearful hazard, said Kiriyenko, were unthinkable and would destroy the revolutionary Islamic regime in Tehran in their wake.
Our Iranian sources report that, after seeing the Russian official off, Ahmadinejad without further ado ordered the reactor to stay shut down.
In Jerusalem, Tuesday, Maj-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, the new head of IDF military intelligence – MI, who appeared before the Knesset Security and Foreign Affairs Committee for his first briefing, said Bushehr could be quickly converted from producing electricity for civilian use to a military reactor for incorporation into Iran’s weapons program.
The next day, Jan. 26, Moscow took the unusual step of demanding a NATO investigation into last year’s computer attack on the Russian-built nuclear reactor in Iran lest it cause a nuclear catastrophe. (According to recent US and British news reports, Israel and American cyber experts secretly developed Stuxnet together with British and German assistance.)
Russia fears another Chernobyl
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said the virus that hit the computer system at the Bushehr reactor had caused centrifuges to spin out of control.
“This virus, which is very toxic, very dangerous, could have very serious implications,” he said, describing the virus’s impact as being like “explosive mines”.
“These ‘mines’ could lead to a new Chernobyl. NATO should get to investigating the matter… This is not a private topic.”
In his haste to avert a catastrophe and avoid blame being attached to Russia which built the Bushehr reactor, Rogozin made a factual error. He said Stuxnet had caused the centrifuges at Bushehr to spin out of control. However, there are no centrifuges at Bushehr – unless Iran has hidden a secret uranium enrichment facility there.
Tehran took another beating from the Russian official’s public warning.
Not only is its prized reactor shut down, but Iranian intelligence boasts that the cyber attack bedeviling its nuclear program had been routed are proved to be wide of the mark. Far being exorcized, Stuxnet is back in full force with no knowing where it will strike next.

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Inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, Yemenis join in anti-government protests

January 27, 2011

Inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, Yemenis join in anti-government protests.

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 27, 2011; 7:26 AM

SANAA, YEMEN – Thousands of Yemenis took the streets Thursday demanding an end to the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled this impoverished Middle Eastern nation for more than three decades.

The rally–one of the largest demonstrations this capital has seen in recent memory– unfolded in four different neighborhoods and was inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

The unrest here represented a widening of the upheavals unfolding across the Arab world, and poses yet another threat to the stability of this U.S. ally, which Al Qaeda militants are using a base to target the West and its allies.

“Look at Tunisia with pride,” the crowds chanted. “Yemen has strong people, too.”

But unlike the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Thursday’s rally here was peaceful, fueled by boisterous opposition party members, from socialists to Islamists, and youth activists.

Protesters shut down streets, sang songs and shouted patriotic slogans, as soldiers and riot police wearing helmets and carrying batons and shields watched. Security was tight around the capital.

“The people want the president replaced,” the crowds chanted. “Live free, Yemen.”

The poorest country in the Middle East, Yemen is struggling with many of the same problems faced in other Arab nations, including high unemployment, low wages, rising prices and widespread corruption. In addition to the threat posed by Al Qaeda, the weak government is grappling with a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

In the wake of the Tunisian rebellion and growing tensions here, Saleh raised the salaries of the army and denied accusations that he was trying to anoint his son as his successor. He also ordered income taxes cut in half and sought adequate controls on inflation.

But despite his efforts to defuse the unrest, Yemenis from all walks of life have taken to the streets over the past two weeks, calling for Saleh’s removal–a demand that few citizens in the past would have dared to utter.

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