WarSclerotic

Iran says talks to reestablish diplomatic ties with Egypt under way – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast to meet his Egyptian counterpart on sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement conference in Indonesia.

By DPA

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that talks to reestablish diplomatic ties with Egypt were under way and it was hopeful ties would be resumed soon.

Mehmanparast said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar-Salehi was to meet his Egyptian counterpart, Nabil al-Arabi, this month on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement conference in Indonesia.

	Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, November 18, 2010.
	Photo by: Reuters

Before that, the two sides would meet at the deputy foreign minister level in Cairo, Mehmanparast said.

Tehran had urged Cairo to take a “courageous step” to upgrade diplomatic ties despite resistance from the United States and Israel.
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had rejected Iran’s overtures for 15 years.

Al-Arabi said in March that Cairo was ready to “open a new page with Iran” in the post-Mubarak era, but it has so far taken no concrete steps to restore relations.

Iran and Egypt have had no diplomatic ties since Iran’s 1979 revolution because of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, but the two governments cooperate on diplomatic affairs at a non-ambassador level.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 10, 2011, 10:20 AM (GMT+02:00)

NATO airstrikes in Libya

Tripoli was shaken early Tuesday, May 10, by five huge blasts which flattened another set of mostly empty government buildings in Muammar Qaddafi’s capital, but aroused little interest, even among Western journalists.It is common knowledge that the ruler, his family and top lieutenants abandoned the city after May 1 when NATO missiles struck a Qaddafi family residence, missing him but killing his son and grandchildren.

It is now suspected in Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels that advanced electronic counter-measures imported recently to one of the foreign embassies in Tripoli tipped him off to the incoming missile attack and gave him just enough time to get away.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources report that since those devices were activated two weeks ago, NATO finds itself increasingly targeting empty government buildings and abandoned military installations.

Hence the comment by NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen Sunday, May 8: After repeating, “The game is over for Qaddafi” and denying the war had reached a stalemate, he added there was “no military solution for the civil war in Libya.”
Our military sources sum up the balance of the two-month NATO operation backing the Libyan rebellion:

The combined coalition campaign has failed to loosen Qaddafi’s grip on power, dent his army’s fighting spirit and combat ability, divide Libya’s main tribes against him or shake the loyalty of his high commanders and government heads.
The fundamental fact that without substantial American military intervention, NATO powers lack the air, sea and missile resources for overcoming Qaddafi has remained unchanged ever since the US handed the campaign’s command role over the NATO on April 4.

Theoretically, if the current military stalemate goes on, NATO bombardment would be able to destroy the pro-Qaddafi army in the course of time – but only if no other factors are taken into account. At the present intensity of its air and sea strikes, NATO would need five years – not months – to bring that army to breaking point. And in the meantime, Qaddafi and its external backers – Russia, China, most African and some Balkan countries – are not idle – witness the arrival of advanced electronic gear for helping to tipping the balance in his favor. According to intelligence updates, the Libyan ruler continues to take in a steady supply of ammunition, missiles and advanced weapons to replenish the stocks NATO airstrikes have destroyed.

The situation in which NATO finds itself in Libya has wider military implications. If the Atlantic Alliance, and especially Britain and France which are spearheading the Libya campaign, are short of the resources they need for overcoming a Libyan army consisting essentially of four to five brigade-strength military frameworks fighting without air cover, hard questions must be asked about the alliance and its 26 members’ real military worth.

Those questions apply in particular to Europe and bear on its political strength.
Syria’s Bashar Assad has gathered from NATO’s shortcomings in the Libyan arena that he has a free hand to set his army, tanks, artillery and live ammunition on protesters and suppress the uprising against him with an iron hand without fearing that the European UNIFIL contingents from France, Italy and Spain in Lebanon may turn their guns on him. Iran is also watching intently. And Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are showing diminishing interest in taking up NATO’s invitation to associate themselves with the alliance by military pacts.

The coalition’s limitations have reduced the fighting in Libya to two battle arenas, with NATO involved directly in only one:
1. Misrata, 185 kilometers west of Tripoli, the only rebel stronghold in western Libya: Were it not for NATO’s air support, pro-government forces would have recaptured the town in the third week of the April.

Although Monday, May 9, the rebels repulsed a government assault on their positions, they have not managed even with NATO help to break the pro-Qaddafi forces’ siege of the town or halt the Grad missile and artillery bombardment.
Neither have the rebels been able to dislodge Qaddafi’s forces from Misrata airport, where light planes and helicopters flying beneath the no-fly zone are able to land bringing fresh reinforcements, supplies and ammo for Qaddafi’s forces and take off with the wounded.
2.  The Nafusa Mountains which cut through the center of western Libya. The Berber tribes which populate the mountain towns of Gharyan, Yifrin, Kabaw, Nalut and Ziztan are in revolt against the Qaddafi regime.

Their cause is quite separate from the Benghazi-based rebels’ goal to overthrow the Qaddafi regime. The Berbers are fighting for an independent state. If they succeed, they hope to be joined by fellow tribesmen in Algeria and Morocco in a state spanning much of North Africa.

This battlefield is small in scope with little impact on the main thrust of the war. The Berbers are a small, scantily armed fighting force and government forces avoid taking them on, except for desultory rocket and artillery fire on their towns. Those towns can only be reached through rough, unpaved, mountain trails.
Qaddafi has split his ground forces into armored columns of 60 tanks and armored vehicles each to enhance their speed of movement and make them tougher targets for NATO jets to strike.
He is taking care to keep them away from the Berber mountain trails where they would be easy prey.

Ahmadinejad: Iran to attend new nuclear talks in Turkey.

  ISTANBUL – Iran will hold the next round of nuclear talks with major powers in Istanbul, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday.

“I hope that this important issue (nuclear) will reach its final result in the (next) Istanbul talks,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Istanbul, broadcast live on Iranian state television.

After talks with his European Union counterpart in Geneva in February, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he hoped there would be further meetings, but no date was set.

Iran’s last nuclear talks with six world powers in January ended without progress, in part because of Iran’s refusal to consider any limits on its disputed uranium enrichment program in exchange for various trade and diplomatic benefits.

Several United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for the program’s suspension to enable talks on an agreement to defuse Western suspicions that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons via enrichment.

The Islamic Republic denies this, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate more electricity for a growing population so it can export more of its oil and natural gas.

‘Dagan Thinks That Barak Is Crazy Enough to Strike Iran’ – Jeffrey Goldberg – International – The Atlantic.

May 9 2011, 9:28 AM ET

The former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s decision to speak out forcefully and publicly against the idea of striking Iran’s nuclear facilities from the air was prompted by his fear that the defense minister, Ehud Barak, and to a lesser extent, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are still considering taking precipitous action against Iran, three Israeli sources told me over the weekend. Dagan, as you can read here, called the notion of an Israeli preemptive strike “foolish,” saying that it would accrue no benefits to Israel. This brought him some pushback, especially from Barak. According to The Jerusalem Post, Barak said “that all of the country’s security and defense organizations – the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) – were tasked with building up capabilities and submitting recommendations to political leaders, who are charged with making the final decision. ‘In the end, these are decisions that belong to the political echelon,’ he said.”

As I reported in an Atlantic cover story last year, it would ultimately be Netanyahu’s decision to order a strike, but it would be somewhat difficult for Netanyahu to order an attack without the acquiescence of what is known in Jerusalem as The Seven, the members of the inner cabinet. And it would near-impossible for him to order a strike without the approval of Barak. For a while, I had been under the impression that Netanyahu was the key figure keeping alive the idea of a strike against Iran, but it seems as if Barak is even more gung-ho about the possibility of using the military option.

Dagan, it is widely-believed, is embittered by Netanyahu’s decision not to extend his term as chief of the Mossad, but his motivation in the matter of Iran is said to be to counter Barak’s influence. “Dagan thinks that Barak is crazy enough to strike Iran,” one official told me. The official said that Dagan was spooked earlier this year by something Barak said to a group of senior security officials. “I don’t know the wording exactly, but Barak was communicating the idea to them that if the Americans fail to stop Iran, Israel could handle the problem quickly and efficiently. Dagan’s view is that the international fallout for an Israeli strike would be intense. He also thinks that the Air Force couldn’t reach all of Iran’s facilities in any case.”

I asked several other Israelis with knowledge of the internal security-apparatus dynamic what they thought of the Dagan-Barak contretemps. One person noted: “It doesn’t matter that much. Barak is the one with power. Dagan is an ex-Mossad chief, and even when he was in the Mossad, he didn’t control this decision.”

Another former security chief disagreed, saying, “Dagan makes Bibi and Barak’s lives difficult. He has credibility on the Iran issue because he’s spent so much time killing Iranian scientists.”

One aspect of this that especially interests me is the matter of Dagan’s timing. A couple of people I spoke to said that Dagan is worried that Barak would like to put a potential strike on the table sooner rather than later, and this is what prompted Dagan’s rhetorical intervention. But one observer I exchanged e-mails with said: “I believe he simply used the opportunity to open his mouth and speak boldly about his true feelings re Israel-Iran, after years of forced silence. It followed Bibi’s Holocaust Day speech (“never again” re Iran) and Barak’s calming statement in an interview: “Iran will not drop a bomb,” he said, somewhat qualified. I’m not aware of an imminent decision he was trying to block, but what do I know?”

Barak, from time to time, softens his rhetoric on Iran, mainly to calm the Israeli public. Netanyahu, on the other hand, seldom calms the rhetoric. On Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day) last week, both he and Israeli President Shimon Peres were explicit about the threat posed by Iran:

Netanyahu concluded his speech with a last lesson: “We can’t leave our fate in the hands of others.”

He said, “If we don’t defend ourselves, the world won’t stand by our side. It is appropriate to declare here, today, and now to all of our enemies that they should know one thing: When the people of Israel and the army of Israel say to the world ‘never again’, we mean every word.”

Another Israel, a former official, wrote me this when I asked him to explain Dagan’s motivations: “You can imagine that he twice poured a ton of ice on their heads not because he suspects but because of what he’s heard them say and because of how he interprets their mode of thought.”

I asked Alon Pinkas, a former diplomat and military correspondent, what he thought of Dagan’s speech. He said: “Dagan believes that high-technology-based covert operations are far more effective and carry significantly less risk in terms of possible ramifications and consequences than an air strike.” He went on, “He is also genuinely warning against what he thinks would be a reckless military action underlined more by political expediency than by a cost-effective analysis.”

To be continued, undoubtedly.