WarSclerotic

Barbour: Iran biggest threat to global security.

Mississippi Governor and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Haley Barbour on Wednesday said that Iran is the world’s top threat to peace and stability. Barbour made the comments while speaking at the Herzliya Conference.

Barbour stated that world leaders should be judged by their success in responding to Iran’s nuclear program and what he says is its support for terrorism and destabilizing governments abroad.

The popular governor received a warm ovation from the prestigious security conference.

Barbour also congratulated Israel on its recent offshore gas discoveries.

Barbour, whose own state is an energy producer, criticized an American moratorium on drilling put in place by the Obama administration after last year’s BP oil spill. He said the ban “is inflicting a disaster on America.”

Barbour is on a five day visit to Israel sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

He was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his visit.

The Mississippi governor has not officially announced his intentions to run for president, but has said he will decide by spring whether or not to seek the Republican nomination.

Barbour’s trip to Israel followed visits by Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6684255/with-friends-like-this-who-needs-enemies.thtml

I have previously noted (here, here and here) that the Cameron government is shaping up to be one of the most hostile towards Israel in living memory. David Cameron himself and Foreign Secretary William Hague have consistently treated Hamas propaganda about casualty figures in any war with Israel as reliable, even though they are invariably a pack of lies, and have furthermore astoundingly replicated the Arab strategy of turning Israeli self-defence into aggression at every opportunity. While he was in opposition, Hague infamously condemned Israel’s behaviour during the 2006 war in Lebanon as ‘disproportionate’; Cameron himself condemned Israel for its ‘attack’ on the Turkish terrorist boat the Mavi Marmara and designated Gaza a ‘prison camp’.

Now Hague is at it again. With the Arab world convulsed by the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt and with the acute danger that such instability will result in the region lurching even further into Islamic theocratic tyranny, the British Foreign Secretary’s response is – to bash Israel. Never mind that the uproar in Egypt and Tunisia, along with the nervousness in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that their regimes may also be swept away by rising extremism, demonstrates the utter absurdity of the claim that regional tranquillity depends on resolving the issue of ‘Palestine’. Hague makes a point of declaring that the casualty of the unrest will be… the Middle East peace process.

Never mind that this process has stalled because Abbas and co won’t even negotiate. Never mind that even these so-called ‘moderates’ insist they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, and thus refuse to renounce their nine-decade long war of extermination against the Jewish presence in the land. Never mind that they continue to incite their people and their children to hate Jews and murder Israelis. Hague knows that Israel is to blame. As the Times (£) reports:

The Middle East peace process is in danger of becoming a casualty of the revolutionary tidal wave sweeping the Arab world, and Israel is putting itself at risk by failing to compromise, William Hague told The Times yesterday. Speaking on an emergency peace mission covering five countries in three days, the Foreign Secretary issued a blunt instruction to Israel to tone down the belligerent language used by Binyamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister, since the uprising and protests, which have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

… Mr Hague responded to increasingly militaristic pronouncements by Mr Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for ‘any outcome’ and vowing to ‘reinforce the might of the state of Israel’. The Foreign Secretary said: ‘This should not be a time for belligerent language. It’s a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process.’

Belligerent? Israel is currently petrified that, if Islamists come to power in Egypt and tear up its 30-year old peace treaty as the Muslim Brothers have said they will do, it will face the nightmare of a renewed threat of war from the south as well as from Iran/Hezbollah in the north and Iran/Hamas in Gaza. It will be thus encircled by truly ‘belligerent ‘ enemies. It will have to turn its entire military and strategic thinking upside down in order to defend itself against such a grim prospect – and yes, of course it will have to reinforce its defences. Even more young Israelis will have to be called up to army service and face the risk of death to prevent their country from being wiped off the map. For William Hague to represent the warnings by Israel’s Prime Minister that his country must now prepare itself for this terrifying eventuality as ‘belligerency’ is simply obscene.

Let us hear no more nauseating hypocrisy from Cameron or Hague about how they are Israel’s staunch allies. With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies?

Egypt: Hizbullah, Iran want to ‘ignite the region’.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is “walking in the footsteps of his mentor,” Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Husam Zaki told the Saudi daily al-Watan on Wednesday.

The spokesman accused the two Shi’ite leaders of wanting “to ignite the region.”

“Nasrallah does not have the right to accuse Egypt of being a follower of Israel and the US at a time when he works on shattering the unified front in Palestine and Lebanon to implement Iranian agendas,” Zaki said.

Hizbullah did not address comments from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, but it did say that one of its senior members who escaped from an Egyptian prison during the unrest surrounding anti-government protests in that country was still in Egypt. Reuters had previously reported that Sami Chehab had arrived in Lebanon, according to London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat Arabic language newspaper.

Hizbullah said that it would have properly welcomed Chehab, who was arrested last year for allegedly plotting to attack targets in Egypt, if he had arrived in Lebanon.

Also on Wednesday, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman said that terror organizations are the primary threat to the security of Egypt and that many operatives of Al-Qaida and other Jihadist organizations had escaped from the country’s prisons recently. Suleiman also told Egyptian paper Al-Ahram that those terrorist organizations had refused to stop the violence and unrest in Egypt, which he seemed to blame on them.

IDF says enlisting hackers – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Spokesman tells panel on internet ‘as strategic weapon’ army wants 120 ‘new media fighters’

Boaz Fyler

IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu said Tuesday that the army is currently in the process of enlisting “new media fighters”.

Benayahu told a panel on the subject of “the digital medium as strategic weapon” that the army was searching for “little hackers who were born and raised online”.However, Aliza admitted, “we are still learning and we have a long way to go”.

“We screen them with special care and train them to serve the state,” the spokesman told the panel, which was part of the Herzliya Conference. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally supporting the venture and that he had supplied a budget of NIS 6 million ($1.63 million) for the enlistment of 120 soldiers.

Benayahu said the internet had had a significant effect on recent uprisings in Arab nations such as Tunisia and Egypt. “We cannot but be impressed at how Western technology harms regimes at the other end of the spectrum, such as Iran, or at how one cell phone camera can harm a regime more than any intelligence agency’s operations,” he said. Egypt, however, “still does not understand the power that is being given to the public, while slowly being taken away from its leader”.

The spokesman said he also plans to establish blogs for other spokesmen and commanders as a PR tool. “We are at this front and proceeding slowly,” he said, and recommended that the government appoint a “new media minister”.

“The army is too involved with internal public relations. The army must not fill a space left by the state – it should be taking care of this.” Aliza, a lone soldier from the US, explained about the new unit at the IDF Spokesperson’s Office. “We began to work with new media during Operation Cast Lead. Bloggers are very important and very influential,” she said.

This is about the democratization of information, and about the fact that you cannot stuff information down people’s throats but you can make it more palatable.” Aliza said the office’s YouTube channel is currently its most successful venture. “Photos catch the eye and constitute visual proof that is better than words,” she said, adding that IDF footage from the flotilla raid became the most-watched videos online and affected “media reports in the world as well as online debates”.

Mullen to arrive in Israel to bid farewell to Ashkenazi.

In an unprecedented farewell gesture to IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, will arrive in Israel on Sunday to give a personal sendoff to the retiring Israeli army head.

Ashkenazi and Mullen have met close to 20 times over the past four years, and next week’s visit will be Mullen’s fifth trip to Israel.

When he made his first trip in 2007, he became the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs to visit Israel in a decade.

IDF sources said Mullen will arrive Sunday morning and hold a final working session with Ashkenazi. He will attend a farewell party for Ashkenazi that the IDF is planning for Sunday night on the campus of Tel Aviv University, where he is expected to speak.

Mullen will also attend the change-of-command ceremony at the Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv, and immediately afterward will sit down with incoming chief of General Staff Maj.- Gen. Benny Gantz. The two know each other well from the period that Gantz served as the IDF’s attaché in Washington.

Over the years, Ashkenazi and Mullen have developed a unique friendship that has assisted Israel in retaining its strong strategic ties with the US even during the increase in tension between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration.

Mullen was last in Israel in June when he made a brief stopover on his way home from visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. During that trip, Mullen said he always tried to view regional threats from an Israeli perspective.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 8, 2011, 11:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

USS Kearsarge with Marine helicopters

A fresh surge of popular anti-Mubarak protest ripping across Egypt Tuesday, Feb. 8 has brought the country closer to a military coup to stem the anarchy than at any time since the street caught fire on Jan. 25.

Vice President Omar Suleiman warned a group of Egyptian news editors that the only choice is between a descent into further lawlessness and a military takeover in Cairo. The distinguished political pundit of the 1960s and 1970s Hasnin Heikal saw no other way out of the crisis but a government ruling by the army’s bayonets.

The arrival of US naval, marine and air forces in the Suez Canal’s Greater Bitter Lake indicated that the crisis was quickly swerving out of control.

debkafile‘s military sources report that the American force consists of the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group of six warships. Helicopters on some of their decks are there to carry and drop the 2,200 marines of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit which has been bolstered by two special operations battalions.

The flotilla has a rapid strike stealth submarine, the USS Scranton, which is designed to support special forces’ operations.

The US strike force has taken up position at a strategic point opposite Ismailia between the west bank of the Suez Canal and its eastern Sinai bank. It is poised for rapid response in the event of the passage of about 40 percent of the world’s marine freights through the Suez Canal being threatened or any other extreme occurrence warranting US military intervention.

For a few hours Tuesday, it looked as through Egypt was finally going back to normal after a two-week popular uprising. But then, suddenly, thousands again took to the streets and squares of Egyptian towns – from the Western desert on the Libyan border up to the northern Sinai town of El Arish in the east, recalling Hosni Mubarak’s warning of chaos if he were to depart too soon.

Tuesday, the protesters mounted their biggest demonstrations of their campaign to oust Mubarak – in Cairo, Alexandria, the Delta Cities, the industrial belt around Mahalla-el-Kebir and the steel city of Heluan, shouting “Death to Mubarak!” and “Hang Mubarak!”
Although reforms and pay hikes have been pledged by the new Egyptian government, large groups of workers, mainly in Cairo, rebelled against state-appointed managements and set up “Revolutionary Committees” to run factories and other work places, including Egyptian state TV and Egypt’s biggest weekly “Ros el-Yusuf.”

The stock market and the pyramids remained closed and traffic blocked solid on the streets of Cairo.