WarSclerotic

Iran and Syria to escape reprimand of IAEA board – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

IAEA reports receiving new information concerning possible military nuclear activities in Iran, but Western diplomat says report does not contain a new element that would justify a resolution against Tehran.

Iran and Syria’s alleged nuclear activities are high on the agenda for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board, when it starts meeting on Monday in Vienna, but no action against them is expected for now, diplomats said.

As Western board member states are undecided over how much pressure to apply, and as diplomats’ attention is focused on unrest in Arab countries, the IAEA body is unlikely to take action before its next meeting in June, the diplomats said.

	Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Yukiya Amano of Japan
	Photo by: AP

The IAEA recently received new information concerning possible military nuclear activities in Iran, it said in a report late last month, without giving details.

The report also highlighted previous allegations about seven Iranian research or development projects for a nuclear warhead that officials in Tehran have refused to explain. Iran says the intelligence is fabricated.

A Western diplomat said the new report was more precise than previous ones, but added that “it does not contain a new element, especially concerning possible military dimensions, that would justify a resolution.”

In its Syria report, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said the country has not allowed additional inspections either of a suspected nuclear reactor that Israel bombed in 2007, or of three possibly related sites that his inspectors have not yet visited.

The IAEA is aware of intelligence information that one of the sites could have been set up to make reactor fuel, diplomats said.

However, Syria decided one week before the board meeting that it would allow a visit to a fourth location, a civilian chemical plant that produces uranium as a by-product.

While diplomats acknowledged that Syria’s blocking undermines the IAEA’s authority, they questioned what a resolution or a so-called special inspection would achieve at this point.

Syria might refuse such an inspection, the Western diplomat said. “What does the agency do then?”

Another diplomat said it was difficult to take action on Syria also because of its complex connection with Middle Eastern politics, referring to the tendency of developing countries on the board to support Israel’s perceived enemies.

Besides these questions of tactics, diplomats said their capitals are not focused on these two nuclear issues right now, but rather on the political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa.

A European diplomat said raising diplomatic pressure at the IAEA would be counterproductive now.

“It would not be good to pour oil into the fire, because the region is already bubbling,” he said.

The axiomatic enemy.

We Israelis didn’t even know it, but according to some, on both sides of the great turbulence lately sweeping across the Arab world, the underlying cause of all the havoc is – as ever – Israel.

The assorted hoaxes share persistent common denominators – Israel’s long hand stirs the Arab pot, manipulates the naïve Arab masses and stage-manages their current melodramas.

From the side of the beleaguered rulers, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh last week conjured images of a nefarious command center in Tel Aviv that orchestrates the varied Arab riots. The demonstrators, according to what Saleh contended when addressing students and academics at Sanaa University, are Israel’s lackeys, “who do its bidding and who serve Zionist purposes.”

Saleh’s allegations were unexpected, as he’s considered pro-American and relatively accommodating in the battle against al-Qaida. The recipient of hefty US military aid, Saleh indeed reconsidered and phoned the White House to apologize for a “misunderstanding.”

But his harangues before the cameras belie his excuses.

As hundreds of thousands marched in Yemen’s streets clamoring for his ouster, Saleh was evidently attempting to besmirch his opponents as traitors in cahoots with the enemy, which, axiomatically in the Arab setting, just had to be Israel.

“I am going to reveal a secret,” Saleh repeatedly intoned to his audience. “There is an operations headquarters in Tel Aviv which oversees the aim of destabilizing the Arab world. The operations room is in Tel Aviv, and it is run by the White House.”

Saleh’s fanciful theories can easily compete with the classic canards that have emanated from the Arab world in the past, among them the bald-faced assertions that it was Israel which engineered and executed the 9/11 attacks, that Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat or that the US Air Force colluded with Israel in 1967. We may dismiss the falsehoods as absurd cock-and-bull stories, but the multitudes who fall for them throughout the Muslim/Arab realm frame them in a more sinister context.

ANOTHER ACCUSATION hurled at Israel last week was that the same Tel Aviv nerve center, which purportedly kick-started the extensive Arab uprisings, was also slyly plotting against the dissenters. Thus Al- Jazeera professed to divulge the identity of the co-conspirators who have ostensibly enabled Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi to unleash mercenaries against his own population.

Here are some of the highlights from Al-Jazeera’s “revelations,” in turn eagerly picked up by Iran’s Press TV online, about Israel’s machinations: “Israeli arms distribution company Global CST has, under the authorization of Tel Aviv, provided Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi with African mercenaries to clamp down on anti-government protesters. Egyptian sources have revealed that the Israeli company has so far provided Gaddafi’s regime with 50,000 African mercenaries to attack the civilian anti-government protesters in Libya.

“The arms company was previously convicted in an African country over illegal deals. Sources say Global CST had obtained the permission for providing the mercenaries to Gaddafi from the Israeli officials in advance.

“Earlier, Global CST general manager had met with the head of the Israeli Intelligence Agencies (Aman) and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and obtained the permission for the measure. The company representatives also met with Abdullah Sanusi, the head of Libyan Internal Intelligence, in Chad to discuss the details for a final agreement.”

The question of why Israel would even remotely contemplate aiding a sworn enemy like Gaddafi is never addressed. Tainting anyone with suspected Israeli associations suffices to cast him beyond the pale.

THIS PREMISE of Israel as the ubiquitous bogeyman is the most worrisome aspect of the tall-tales, amusing as we ourselves may be tempted to consider them.

Lies trigger dynamics and take on lives of their own.

If nurtured, they grow, multiply and spawn untold ramifications.

Lies bind and enslave. Spurious grievances confine and scourge those they ensnare. Real freedom – the real freedom so many in the Arab world so plainly seek – is predicated on enlightenment, not benighted deception.

EDITORIAL: Obama’s state of Islamic denial – Washington Times.

Note to Barack: ‘Allahu akbar’ is a Muslim war cry

U.S. troops are gunned down by a shooter who screams “Allahu akbar!” before opening fire. Official statements are rushed out: The perpetrator was a lone wolf; his motive was unclear; there are no links to terrorism. Sound familiar? It should, because when Islam is the cause of American tragedy, President Obama hides his head in the sand.

On Wednesday, a young Kosovar named Arif Uka opened fire on a bus load of U.S. Air Force personnel in Frankfurt, Germany, killing two and wounding two more. Witnesses say he repeatedly shouted the jihadist battle cry, “Allahu akbar” as he emptied his weapon and screamed “Jihad! Jihad!” when tackled by German police. Uka’s victims had been heading to the fight in Afghanistan but because the jihadists have a global battlespace, the war came to them instead.

Mr. Obama made a typical noncommittal statement shortly after the shooting, saying it was a “stark reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making all around the world to keep us safe, and the dangers that they face all around the globe.” He made no mention of the nature of the threat or the reason for the sacrifices. In this respect, he was behaving true to form.

The Frankfurt shooting is the latest in a troubling series of jihadist terror attacks in which the Obama administration refuses to face reality. Among the first was the June 1, 2009, shooting at a recruiting station in Little Rock. Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who had recently travelled to Yemen, killed one U.S. Army recruiter and wounded another. Muhammad told police if other troops had been available, he would have shot them too. The White House waited two days before making a statement that omitted any reference to the attacker or his jihadist motives.

The Nov. 5, 2009, Fort Hood massacre, in which 14 were killed and 30 wounded, was given a persistent coat of whitewash from the Obama administration. The first coat was applied with initial statements that shooter Nidal Malik Hassan was a “lone wolf” and continued through the comprehensive “force protection review” that somehow omitted any reference to Hasan’s jihadist motives or contacts with al Qaeda.

The Obama team had a similarly slippery reaction to the Dec. 25, 2009, attempted “underwear bomb” attack on Northwest flight 253. Al Qaeda-linked bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was initially not even charged with attempting to commit an act of terrorism. Faisal Shahzad, who attempted the Times Square bombing in May 2010, was also called a lone wolf with no ties to terrorism and was even described as more a victim of the economic downturn than a committed Islamic extremist. In all these cases, the initial assessments turned out to be wrong, yet the White House still obstinately refuses to discuss the jihadist motives of the terrorists involved.

The Obama administration’s knee-jerk instinct to deny reality in hopes it will go away is clearly not working. How many Americans have to die before Mr. Obama at long last admits the nature of the Islamist threat that killed them?

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 5, 2011, 8:56 PM (GMT+02:00)

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates

President Barack Obama Saturday, March 5, asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to set out for Cairo without delay on an emergency mission as the unrest in Egypt veered out of control, debkafile‘s exclusive sources report from Washington. Friday night, thousands of protesters seized control of the headquarters Egyptian security police (Mahabis Namn El Dawla) in Alexandria, Cairo and the nearby 6 of October town, shutting down its operations across the country.

In the last hours, information reaching Washington indicated that control was slipping out of the hands of the Egyptian military junta ruling the country since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow; anti-American elements energized by Iran appeared to have strengthened their hold on the protest movement, causing deep concern in the White House.
The capture of the three Mahabis centers opened to disaffected elements the secret files on every political and military leader in the country, confidential information once accessible only to ex-intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman before the uprising.

While the Obama administration has a better inside picture of Egypt’s opposition groups than it has about Libya, intelligence is still inadequate about the shape of the local leadership of those groups and to whom they defer.

Last Wednesday, March 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Iran of stirring the pot when she addressed the House Appropriations Committee: “They (the Iranians) are using Hizballah… to communicate with counterparts… in (the Palestinian movement) Hamas who then in turn communicate with counterparts in Egypt,” she said.
debkafile‘s sources report that large sums of Iranian petrodollars have reached the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and radicalized its message to the Egyptian people. Military young leaders are believed to have executed a coup and displaced the veterans. The Palestinian Hamas has turned its well-oiled smuggling machine into a channel for transmitting Iranian cash to keep Egyptian Islamic extremists on the march.

The Israeli government is the only one in the region to show no concern about violent mayhem spurting up across its border, and has apparently shrugged off the key role played by the Palestinian rulers of Gaza in stirring up trouble in Egypt at Tehran’s behest ,and the rising strength of the Muslim Brotherhood – both of which have a dangerous impact on Israeli security.