WarSclerotic

Iran conducting final pre-start tests at nuclear plant.

  TEHRAN – Iran is conducting final tests at its first nuclear power plant and it is expected to start generating electricity in the next two months, Iranian media said on Monday.

Meant to be the first of a network of nuclear power stations Iran says it is planning, the Russian-built Bushehr complex has missed deadline after deadline to come on stream, most recently fuel had to be removed and checked for technical problems.

Fars news agency said Bushehr would start injecting power into the national electricity grid in the next two months.

“Right now, after the fuel rods that were unloaded from the reactor core were washed, they are being loaded again and final tests are under way,” Gholamali Miglinejad, a member of a parliamentary committee monitoring Bushehr, was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.

Iran began loading fuel into Bushehr last August in front of foreign and domestic media, touting it as a symbol of resistance to international sanctions imposed by countries that suspect the Islamic state is seeking nuclear weapons, something it denies.

At that time, Iranian officials said it would take two to three months for Bushehr to start producing power, and that it would generate 1,000 megawatts, about 2.5 percent of Iran’s electricity usage. Russia is providing the fuel for Bushehr.

But the start-up of the plant has been hit by several delays since then, with some analysts blaming the mysterious Stuxnet computer virus. Tehran said Stuxnet had afflicted staff computers at Bushehr but not affected major systems there.

Security experts say the computer worm may have been a state-sponsored attack on Iran’s nuclear programme and have originated in the United States or Israel. Neither country has mentioned any link with Stuxnet.

Diplomats and security sources say Western governments and Israel view sabotage as one way of slowing Iran’s nuclear work.

Nuclear sabotage in Iran?

Some analysts believe Iran may be suffering wider sabotage aimed at slowing its nuclear advances, pointing to a series of unexplained technical glitches that have cut the number of working centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

Natanz is at the core of Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions since the country, without any nuclear power plants other than Bushehr, has no current civilian use for enriched uranium. Western leaders believe Iran, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, secretly aims to refine uranium to the high degree suitable for atom bombs.

Earlier this month, an Iranian official said his country had been hit by a new malware called “Stars”. But foreign experts have voiced doubt that this represented a second cyber attack.

The Bushehr plant was begun by German electronics giant Siemens in the 1970s but the project was halted by Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Russia later completed the plant and will supply its fuel.

To ease concerns abroad that Iran might reprocess spent fuel rods from Bushehr into bomb-grade plutonium, Russia will repatriate the used fuel. The plant will also be regularly monitored by inspectors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

Western officials have urged Iran to join the 1996 Convention on Nuclear Safety, saying the Islamic state would be the only country operating a nuclear reactor which is not part of the international pact once Bushehr is launched.

The convention, with 72 signatory states at present, was designed to boost global nuclear safety, an issue that has gained more significance in light of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis, through a system of peer review and mutual oversight.

“The plant’s location on the coast makes the safety of Iran’s nuclear programme a regional security concern,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, said in a report last month.

It noted that Bushehr, like Fukushima, is in an earthquake zone. But Iran does not need to fear a tsunami of the size that knocked out the electricity and back-up cooling systems at Fukushima, as Bushehr is located by the Gulf and not an ocean.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.
By Victor Kotsev

TEL AVIV – Much was written about the Osama bin Laden assassination in the past week. The larger-than-life arch-terrorist sparked the imaginations of many, and each in a different way. To the West he was a monster, even a bit of a Frankenstein who turned against his former patrons (lest we call them creators) of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and spread a radical ideology of hatred and violence with bone-chilling success.
To many Arabs – including the Palestinian militant movement Hamas – he was a “martyr” and a “holy warrior”. To some, such as his former bodyguards, he was a charismatic Arsenal fan who quoted Charles de Gaulle and had a passion for natural remedies. [1] To others, for example to certain Iranian politicians, he was a “Zionist stooge”. [2]

Similarly to most Americans, most Israelis on the street greeted the news of Bin Laden’s death with sincere joy. After all, the late

al-Qaeda leader was one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish state. A laconic “Finally!” was among the most common reactions. On a political level, the event is far more ambiguous, as it could herald a showdown between newly-empowered United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; nevertheless, no Israeli politician could afford to be seen as regretting it.

“The state of Israel shares the American nation’s joy on this historic day,” Netanyahu reportedly told Obama right after the operation. “This is a ringing victory for justice, freedom and the values shared by all democratic nations fighting determinedly shoulder to shoulder against terrorism.”

Netanyahu certainly gained an argument once Obama pulled out the six-shooter. The Israeli prime minister was preaching against terrorism before any American administration became fully aware of its dangers; back in 1995, he even wrote a book on how to combat it. When he arrives in Washington in less than two weeks’ time, we should look for “I told you so” undertones in his rhetoric. Before the raid on Bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout, the American president, dubbed by some “no-drama Obama”, was widely perceived as soft and conciliatory vis-a-vis terrorists and their state patrons.

The Pakistan raid speaks particularly poignantly to the policy of targeted assassinations against Palestinian militants that Israel has intermittently pursued for over a decade (indeed all the way since the 1972 Munich massacre by Black September terrorists). During the second intifada (Palestinian uprising), in particular, Israel killed hundreds of Palestinian terrorists and leaders in this way, drawing significant international condemnation (a case that stands out is the assassination of wheelchair-confined Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in 2004, which also killed a number of bystanders).

Prominent American pro-Israeli commentator and lawyer Alan Dershowitz argues that the Bin Laden killing “vindicated” Israel’s own targeted assassinations program. [3] An Israeli right-wing academic, Professor Rafi Israeli, even suggests a new strategy to the country’s leaders:

When we are accused, smeared and slandered, we should dare to complain, openly compare our actions with those of others fighting terror, and initiate debates in the UN general assembly, Security Council, and Human Rights Council, even if we don’t achieve immediately success. If we bombard them with our arguments and present evidence to all, ultimately something will be grasped by global public opinion, where we are used to retreat, apologize and defend ourselves.

The argument that the killing will bring Israel’s position closer to the US’s is bolstered by other circumstances such as the effects of the Arab uprisings in general, and the intra-Palestinian reconciliation in particular. Israeli analysts have long argued that after a number of “friendly” dictators were exposed as unpopular tyrants, and, what is worse geopolitically, unstable partners, the American administration would have no choice but to recognize Israel as its only firm ally in the region.

After the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation accord, moreover, the White House has come under increasing pressure from the US Congress to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority and, in effect, to show stronger support for Israel. [4]

However, all this is only half the story. An ultimate nightmare scenario for mainstream Israeli observers involves the possibility of Obama winning a second term. With the wave of domestic excitement that the Bin Laden operation generated, that possibility just became a whole lot more possible.

While the president is in the middle of an election campaign, this narrative goes, and especially if he is perceived as losing, we cannot expect him to put sufficient pressure on Israel to make critical concessions to the Palestinians. If he gets re-elected, however, and can no longer seek another term, this is another story.

There is a long tradition of American presidents leaving more controversial policies for their second mandates – Jimmy Carter, for example, plotted to open up to Cuba and even to seek a comprehensive Middle East settlement in the second term that never materialized. Then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin narrowly managed to deflect the massive pressure during Carter’s first term, by agreeing to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and signing a separatist peace treaty with Egypt.

Obama has often been compared to Carter, and his current stint in office similarly involved a series of skirmishes with the Israeli prime minister (see my article US-Israeli spat plants seeds of crisis, Asia Times Online, March 23, 2010). Ultimately, he backed off (more specifically, he stopped insisting publicly on a full Israeli settlement construction halt), but should he win another term, this will most likely prove only a tactical retreat.

It is unclear if a single bold stroke, such as the Bin Laden operation, will be enough to reverse the quagmire in which the US finds itself in in the Middle East. With the new popularity come also greater expectations, and Obama has not been handling the Arab revolutions – let alone the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in a very coherent way so far. In a particularly lucid analysis in Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Ari Shavit predicts that Egypt will implode before the year is over, and outlines four major challenges facing Obama in the Middle East.

“The summer of 2011 is the summer of Barack Hussein Obama,” Shavit concludes. “If he does not stabilize the Middle East this summer, a regional avalanche will take place by summer’s end. Obama will bear personal responsibility if the Arab spring turns into a cold and bleak winter.” [5]

Things look a bit murky right now, even as American voters have been known to re-elect widely unpopular presidents who make major foreign policy blunders (what better proof of that than George W Bush’s re-election in 2004). In any case, Obama enjoys at least a temporary position of strength, and some prominent analysts speculate that renewed American pressure on Netanyahu will already start to manifest itself during the latter’s upcoming trip to Washington. In what can be interpreted as an early evasive maneuver, the Israeli prime minister recently announced that he might even support a Palestinian state “under the right conditions”. [6]

“During his visit to Washington in less than three weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet an American administration which is credited by the free world with the killing of the arch terrorist Osama bin Laden,” a recent Ha’aretz editorial reads. “… In his address before congress, after congratulating President Obama on his important achievement against terrorism, Netanyahu must present a serious and credible Israeli peace initiative.”

Another, seemingly less-related front that is silently heating up in the region is the standoff with Iran. It is unclear that Bin Laden’s assassination means much to the Israeli-Iranian confrontation in particular, even though Netanyahu attempted to ride that wave by announcing that following the terrorist’s demise, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was “the biggest threat to peace in the world”. [7] Moreover, as David Goldman of Asia Times Online has argued, the assassination probably has a strong bearing on the Iranian-Saudi Arabian front. [8]

There has been some renewed, if muted, debate about a possible Israeli attack on Iran recently, even though most analysts don’t see it as a realistic possibility. On Friday, influential former Mossad chief Meir Dagan came out publicly against such a strike, calling it “the stupidest thing I have ever heard”. [9]

Another influential Israeli official, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, also made recent comments to the effect that he did not believe Iran would ever drop a nuclear bomb on Israel. Prior to these comments, Barak was perceived as an ardent hawk on Iran.

Despite the apparent lack of appetite of the Israeli leadership for military action against the Islamic Republic, and despite the staggering logistical challenges such an operation would pose, some analysts contend that practically all daring Israeli operations in the past have been preceded by campaigns of mixed messages and disinformation. Against the background of deepening political strife inside Iran, [10] it would make sense for any foreign power that wishes to intervene to at least wait a while; nevertheless, it is important to at least consider the possibility that the Bin Laden’s assassination is a marker of a broader American policy change, perhaps including in some way Iran.

Overall, the much-publicized American commando raid in Pakistan will most likely contribute significantly to the overall impact of the Arab revolts on Israeli foreign policy. Its impact, however, will be mixed, and carries dangers as well as opportunities. For now, Netanyahu is keeping his cards close to his chest, and the earliest certain clue that we can expect will come during his speech before the US Congress on May 20.

Notes
1. ‘Bin Laden was an Arsenal fan, quoted de Gaulle’, Jerusalem Post, May 4, 2011.
2. ‘Bin Laden Israel’s stooge against Islam’, Press TV, May 3, 2011.
3. Targeted Killing Vindicated, Huffington Post, May 2, 2011.
4. Democrat senators to Obama: Cut PA aid, Ynetnews, May 7, 2011.
5. With bin Laden dead, Obama has to turn to the Mideast, Ha’aretz, May 4, 2011.
6. Netanyahu: Israel could support Palestinian state before September under right conditions, Ha’aretz, May 5, 2011.
7. With bin Laden dead, Iran is Israel’s greatest fear, PM says, CNN, May 5, 2011.
8. Osama a casualty of the Arab revolt, Asia Times Online, May 2, 2011.
9. Former Mossad chief: Israel air strike on Iran ‘stupidest thing I have ever heard’, Ha’aretz, May 7, 2011.
10. Ahmadinejad row with Khamenei intensifies, al-Jazeera, May 5, 2011.

Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv.

ANALYSIS-Arab upheaval sharpens Israeli debate on Iran strike | News by Country | Reuters.

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM, May 8 (Reuters) – Behind Israel’s tepid welcome of the popular uprisings convulsing Arab neighbours like Egypt and Syria, a long-running debate is gathering pace: Might the turmoil be enough to spur it to attack Iran?

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been quiet about a war option that would stretch the Israeli military to the limit, confidants say the drum of pro-democracy protests is only honing his ear to the clock ticking on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The prospect of pro-Western regimes from Cairo to the Gulf falling in with Iran resonates with Netanyahu, who has cast the Islamic republic as a global menace.

Such is the sense of decisions looming, that a former Mossad spymaster’s public ridiculing of air strikes on Iran as a “stupid idea” that would imperil Israel was widely interpreted as a warning to Netanyahu to back down.

“The ‘Arab Spring’ is definitely bolstering those who argue that we’re in this alone against Iran, with all that entails in terms of planning,” an Israeli government adviser said.

Spikes in the price of oil, of which Iran is a major exporter, have blunted U.S.-led sanctions against Tehran that Israel had cautiously endorsed. The U.S. administration’s mounting Middle East engagements have further shaken Israelis’ faith in the ability of their biggest ally to tackle their foe.

“There’s an opposing view (in the Netanyahu government), a hope that political revolution may reach Iran as well, defusing the nuclear threat,” the Israeli adviser said. “But that has not been carrying too much weight.”

Even were it to inflict lasting damage on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel would have to contend with the aftermath, from direct reprisals to border conflicts to foreign censure.

“Attacking the reactors from the air is a stupid idea that would have no advantage,” Meir Dagan, a retired army general who stepped down as Mossad director in January after an 8-year tenure, told a forum of Israeli civil servants on Friday.

“A regional war would be liable to unfold, during which missiles would come in from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon,” he said, according to a transcript circulated to the media.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Asked about the remarks, an Israeli security official and one-time Dagan colleague said they were likely intended for Netanyahu, and to discredit the war option in public opinion.

As Mossad director, Dagan had counselled a mix of diplomatic pressure and sabotage against Iran, which denies seeking a nuclear bomb. According to the Israeli security official, Dagan’s view was shared by former chief of Israel’s armed forces Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, who retired in February.

“With the old guard gone, and the successors still finding their place, it seems Dagan felt that there wasn’t enough of a counterweight” to Iran hawks in the cabinet, the official said.

Since Ashkenazi’s departure, the military has developed the Iron Dome rocket interceptor, billed as a bulwark to the main weapon of Hezbollah and of Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

While Hamas is, like Hezbollah, an Iranian ally, it has an added incentive to avoid a fight with Israel in the unity pact it has been forging with the Western-backed Fatah faction as part of Palestinians’ drive to declare an independent state.

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon denied Dagan’s views would affect government decision-making. But he took the former spymaster to task for undermining the Israeli and U.S. strategy of threatening attacks in order to deter Iran and keep other world powers serious about crisis diplomacy.

“For the Iranian regime to be persuaded to give up its nuclear capability, it has to be presented by the choice between getting a bomb and surviving, and such statements do not help present Iran with such a dilemma,” Yaalon told Israel Radio.

Whatever the reality of the closed-door cabinet discussions, Netanyahu’s government has issued mixed messages on Iran.

Asked last month about the Palestinian rapprochement, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in a broadcast interview Israel should concentrate on upgrading its “capability for operating in Iran and the ability to defend ourselves from rockets”.

He shifted tone by telling an Israeli newspaper a few days later that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unlikely to attack Israel, believed to have the region’s only atomic arsenal.

Yaalon left dangling the possibility of subterfuge.

“I hope that the Iranians see an Israeli conspiracy in this. That could help,” he said. (Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Inside The United States’ Secret Sabotage Of Iran : NPR.

Enlarge Ebrahim Norouzi/APA photo taken on Aug. 22, 2010, and released by the International Iran Photo Agency shows a worker standing at the entrance of the reactor of Bushehr nuclear power plant, outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran. Work was stopped on the reactor to ascertain whether it had been affected by the Stuxnet computer virus — apparently developed in Israel with the help of the CIA.

First in a three-part series

For years, the United States has been trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program and change what it says is Iran’s bad behavior in the Middle East and beyond.

The United States has used economic sanctions, censure by the United Nations, diplomatic engagement and the threat of military action to accomplish these goals — all with little or no success.

At the same time, other, unacknowledged activities have been under way. They have included cyberattacks, assassinations and defections. As it turns out, these efforts have had some success.

‘A Covert War’

Covert action is meant to stay just that — covert, clandestine, in the shadows.

And in Iran, it did, for quite some time. But in the last year, much has become known about intelligence operations in Iran, says Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who is now an analyst with the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.

“There’s little doubt that there’s a covert war under way against Iran,” he says. “There are at least two players in it, the United States and Israel.”

And often, it appears, those players work together.

That was especially true with the Stuxnet worm. The computer virus, apparently developed in Israel with the help of the CIA, was launched in 2009. Sometime the following year, the worm found its way into the computers that control Iran’s most important nuclear facility, the uranium enrichment operation at Natanz.

It told the gas centrifuges that enrich uranium to spin too fast. Many broke and destroyed other centrifuges — nearly a thousand of them.

The impact of the worm spread even wider, says Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California who writes for the website Tehran Bureau.

“In fact, not only it destroyed a thousand centrifuges at Natanz — it also forced the government to actually shut down the enrichment facility for a few days,” Sahimi says.

That was last year. Computer security companies got wind of it, in part because it may also have affected companies and equipment outside of Iran. And the story became public.

Other Viruses On The Way?

Computer security experts believe the original worm was programmed to mount multiple attacks. That may have occurred, but only up to a point, says David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

“This idea of multiple destruction was built into the planning of the program, and Iran thwarted it just by the simplest of steps — which is panic and shut down everything until you get a sense of what’s going on,” he says.

One of the benefits of these kind of programs is that over time it builds paranoia and fear inside the Iranian nuclear program — that they have to be extremely careful that anything they buy may turn out to be a self-destructive pill once it’s ingested inside the Iranian program.

– Bruce Riedel, an analyst with the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution

Given the success of the Stuxnet worm, it’s likely its creators may be constructing Stuxnet 2.0 right now. Or other viruses targeting Iran.

Iran may have had to buy new computers to replace those that were affected, and it can’t be sure that new computers won’t be sabotaged.

In fact, nothing that Iran buys on the international market that could be used in its nuclear program is safe from sabotage, says Sahimi.

“To say the least, probably the uncertainty whether there is a virus somewhere that they haven’t detected, that causes a lot of problems for them,” he says.

Sabotaging Equipment

Among those problems, the Russians who are finishing the Bushehr nuclear reactor — Iran’s first — stopped their work to ascertain whether it had been infected with the worm.

And this worm isn’t the first instance of sabotage, Albright says.

“It’s one of many efforts that I think are under way to try to constrain Iran from being able to basically, in a sense, either outfit its centrifuge program or to try to actively disrupt it and break things,” he says.

Among the parts of the centrifuges that have been sabotaged, according to Albright, are motors and vacuum pumps. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered equipment at Iran’s nuclear facilities that had passed through one of the U.S. national laboratories, Albright says.

“So you had a case where the U.S. government, at least, what it was doing was buying equipment on the open market and apparently modifying it in some way,” he says.

Then the equipment was apparently delivered to front companies that in turn sold it to Iran.

It could have been used for sabotage, or if it was bugged equipment, it could provide information on the location of secret nuclear facilities in Iran.

Building Paranoia

In any case, Iran’s leaders are certainly worried about what they might face next, says Riedel of the Brookings Institution.

“One of the benefits of these kind of programs is that over time it builds paranoia and fear inside the Iranian nuclear program — that they have to be extremely careful that anything they buy may turn out to be a self-destructive pill once it’s ingested inside the Iranian program,” Riedel says.

In fact, just last week, one of Iran’s key nuclear officials disclosed that another computer virus had hit Iran.

The Iranians are calling it the “Stars” virus. They say they have taken care of it.

So far its existence has not been confirmed by computer security specialists outside of Iran. Nevertheless, the effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, through cyberattacks or other methods, is certain to continue.

Iran’s Place In A Brave New Middle East – International Business Times.

The Islamic Republic of Iran finds itself grappling with new realities in a Middle East that has been turned upside-down by an unprecedented wave of revolt and rebellion. While Tehran has almost always had somewhat troubled relations with its Middle East neighbors, it now faces an entirely new paradigm – one that seems to be changing by the day, by the hou

Israel to invest one billion dollars in Iron Dome missile defense system – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News..ense Ministry director general tells Haaretz: Five countries interested in Israel’s anti-missile system.

By Amos Harel

Defense Ministry director general Maj. Gen. (res. ) Udi Shani says that Israel plans to invest nearly $1 billion in the coming years for the development and production of Iron Dome rocket interception batteries. Shani reveals that five countries have already expressed an interest in the system, especially following its successful operational interception of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip last month.

In his first press interview since his appointment in January 2010, Shani was keen to put the success of Iron Dome into perspective. “We need to adjust expectations in relation to Iron Dome, both in regard to the citizens but also vis a vis the political leadership,” Shani said.

	Defense Ministry director general Udi Shani
	Photo by: Moti Milrod

“We have [accomplished] a significant achievement in reaching operational capability sooner than expected, but this is not a system that can ensure the interception of every rocket in every situation,” he added. “These batteries, when they are deployed, will limit the number of casualties from rockets and will provide, in case of fighting, decision-making space. But in the end, it is also a matter of physics and technology. The technology cannot stand alone.”

Shani is referring to the amount of time it will take Rafael, the maker of the Iron Dome system, to produce a large number of batteries and interception missiles, and for the Israeli Air Force to train personnel in usage of the systems.

The director general said that Iron Dome is considered one of the central systems as the new IDF multi-year plan takes shape.

“We are no longer approaching this in terms of initial operational capabilities but are defining the final target for absorbing the systems, in terms of schedule and funds. We are talking about [having] 10-15 Iron Dome batteries. We will invest nearly $1 billion on this. This is the goal, in addition to the $205 million that the U.S. government has authorized,” Shani said.

The U.S. grant is expected to cover four extra batteries, in addition to the two that have already been delivered to the IDF. The final number of batteries will depend on the chosen “mix” between batteries and interception missiles, which are costly.

In addition to Iron Dome there are plans to invest, over the coming five years, another $1 billion in the continued development of Magic Wand, a medium-level missile interception system (also developed by Rafael ).

“I hope that by 2012 we will have the first operational capabilities,” Shani says, “but our intention is to close procurement contracts within a few months. Traditionally you first wait for the completion of development, but we now need to accelerate this process.

“Along with the third system, Arrow Mark III, whose development is done with the Americans,” Shani added, “it will be the largest technological development project in the field of missile interception in the world. The success of Iron Dome has increased interest. Five countries have issued requests for information about the system.”

Shani, 54, was appointed to his position by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, after spending most of his career in the armored corps. He is responsible for a vast number of projects: It ranges from the infrastructure budget, to the building of the separation fence, to the new fence along the border with Egypt, to the procurement of weapons systems, and to the supervision of defense exports, which in the past two years peaked at a record $7 billion per year.

The five-year plan and the budget now top his agenda. Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz will hold a workshop this month to discuss IDF expectations for the coming years; the program will need to be approved by the Defense Minister and then the government later in the year.

“We are three and a half years into the current five-year plan. We have nearly accomplished 100 percent of it, with the exception of the procurement of new naval vessels that will not be carried out,” Shani said.

Meanwhile there are delays in the production of the new Air Force fighter the F-35, and these will affect its effective entry into the IAF. The delay may be as long as three years, with the first aircraft arriving only in 2018.

“During the last visit by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Israel a month ago, we were told that the delay may be shorter than they originally thought. In any case, I am not nervous about it,” Shani said.

“This [delay] may actually serve our interests. I favor an aircraft with as many Israeli-made systems as possible,” he added. “We will see how they try to meet our requests over this time. In the original timetable, it was argued that there was no time [to incorporate Israeli systems into the Israeli F-35s]. We will hear their conclusions and I expect a dialogue with the Americans over the new timetable and the changes.”

The idea that the Air Force will, in the meantime, acquire another squadron of F-15s in order to meet the gap that will be created “is not relevant.” The delay may mean that in the future there will be more aircraft coming to Israel in a shorter period of time, and the numbers procured may rise from 20 to 30.