WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 17, 2011, 11:10 AM (GMT+02:00)

US Ambassador Robert Ford recalled before warming his seat

debkafile‘s Washington sources report exclusively that President Barack Obama has finally resolved to stamp down hard on Syrian President Bashar Assad in person as the man responsible for the inhuman Syrian crackdown on protest against his regime and the massacre of hundreds of dissenters. Before his much-awaited speech on US relations with Middle East Muslim nations Thursday, May 19, Obama is preparing to impose sanctions on the Syrian president.  The White House is working on the final text of the announcement but has already decided to recall the newly-appointed US Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford for consultations.
An American ambassador was last recalled from Damascus in 2005. It took five years for Obama to appoint Robert Ford to the post in late 2010.
The administration has also decided to authorize the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to report to the UN Security Council that Syria was building a plutonium reactor for military purposes at Deir A-Zour, which it was bombed by Israeli in September 2007. Damascus has refused to cooperate with the nuclear watchdog in making the site available for inspection. The IAEA is therefore urged to seek the same Security Council for Syria as those imposed on Iran for its nuclear activities.
Barack Obama was finally convinced that Assad must be stopped without delay by the horrifying discovery of five hastily-dug dug mass graves near the protest center of Daraa in southern Syria. They containing scores of bodies of men, women and children shot in the head. This raised the civilian death told from Assad’s savage three-month crackdown on dissent well past 1,000.

It is taken into account, debkafile‘s military sources report that tough American measures targeting Assad will bring forth heightened Syrian-Israeli border tensions, potentially in the form of a limited Syrian military strike into Israel or Lebanon or both. Indeed his cousin Rami Makhlouf threatened that instability in Syria would cause instability in Israel.
The expectation of trouble to come was strengthened by the information reaching Washington that Syrian military intelligence and Ahmed Jibril’s PFL-General Command had organized the forcible crossing of the Israeli border on the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, Sunday, May 15, of thousands of Palestinians streaming out of the camps in which they are held near Damascus. The operation was also synchronized with the Lebanese Hizballah.
According to this information, Syria and the PFL-GC are planning another mass incursion in the same format for June 5, the 44th anniversary of the 1967 War, when Syria lost part of the Golan after attacking Israel.
In advance of the event, the Israeli Defense Forces and Lebanese army have reinforced the units guarding their borders and are on a high state of preparedness.

The IDF’s engineering corps has embarked on a crash operation for building a proper defense system with physical obstacles along the 220-kilometer Israeli-Syrian border in place of the fragile fence that crowds of Palestinians trampled on May 15.

Washington’s impatience with Syria was evident in the harsh tone of the White House rebuke of Syria as “inciting protests on the Golan Heights” and therefore responsible for the clash and loss of life which resulted: “The Jewish state has the right to prevent unauthorized crossing at its borders,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney Monday.

The White House’s allusion to Israel’s borders in the Golan context was deliberate, our Washington sources report.It signposted Barack Obama’s intention to emphasize the importance the US attaches to Israeli border security as a matter of policy when he meets Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House Friday, May 20 and again when he addresses the conference of the US-Israeli lobby AIPAC Sunday, May 22.
According to our sources, too, the US President has no intention of outlining a Middle East peace plan for dictating to Israel in his address to the Muslim world Thursday, May 19.

This suggestion which is the subject of heated debate in Israel did not originate with US administration sources but political opposition elements at home which have an interest in pushing the Netanyahu government to the wall.

Entebbe, bin Laden raids underscore US-Israel alliance.

This was one of history’s most audacious raids, combining precision intelligence and operations well inside hostile territory. The commandos had only minutes to penetrate a heavily guarded building, complete their mission and return safely to base.

Entebbe revolutionized the very concept of special forces operations. The raid is studied at US service academies and command colleges. It deeply influenced the thinking of American commanders such as Vice Adm. William McRaven.

A veteran Navy SEAL and head of Joint Special Operations command, McRaven is a longtime friend of Israel who visited our country many times and worked closely with our special forces. His classic book, “Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare,” contains an entire chapter on the Entebbe raid. It was Bill McRaven who commanded the stunning raid against Osama bin Laden.

Israelis exuberantly praised the operation. We shared the pain that Americans had suffered at bin Laden’s hands. We, too, have known that pain. America’s success in ridding the world of bin Laden’s scourge was our victory, too.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, however, the reaction was radically different. The Iranian regime claimed that America had exploited bin Laden as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and had eliminated him in order to prevent him from leaking valuable intelligence.

Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, condemned the operation as “another example of America’s desire to spill Arab blood” and hailed bin Laden as a “holy warrior” and a “martyr.”

The contrast between Israel’s response to the operation and that of many of our neighbors underscores the essence of the US-Israeli alliance. Your enemies are our enemies. Those who seek to kill Americans also threaten us. Your security is our security, just as our security is yours.

Just as American commanders once studied Entebbe, Israeli officers will now study the raid on bin Laden. We will learn from the similarities between the two operations, but also from their differences. Israel sought to rescue the victims of terrorism, while America sought justice for past victims and security against further terrorism in the future.

Thankfully, no American troops were killed in bin Laden’s compound. But at Entebbe one Israeli soldier did fall — the commander, Yoni Netanyahu.

Yoni was the older brother of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In a recent CNN interview, the prime minister said that Yoni’s death profoundly impacted him.

“I think of my brother,” he said, “I think of our children; I think of the Palestinian children. We could have a better world … a world of peace.“

The vision of a better world was in the minds of both Americans and Israelis on that Fourth of July in 1976. Not surprisingly, Israelis immediately associated Entebbe with the bicentennial. Cartoons appeared in the Israeli press showing a battle-soiled Israeli soldier standing beside the Statue of Liberty. Together they held aloft the torch of freedom.

Beyond their conceptual and tactical similarities, further even than the ways both will influence future special ops, the Entebbe and bin Laden raids reveal the fundamental bonds between Israel and America.

We share the commitment to defending our citizens from dangers both near and far. We share the determination to defend our democracies from those who seek to destroy them. We know that freedom is not inherently free, that it comes at a cost and must always be protected, sometimes at considerable risk.

Shortly before his death, Yoni Netanyahu wrote of his belief in “the eternity of the striving for freedom and the idea of freedom in Israel.” That same belief permeates the American people.

Israel and America: We stand together against common threats, we strive together for common ideals, for security and peace. Together we uphold the biblical injunction “justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

‘Die Welt’: Iran building rocket bases in Venezuela.

  BERLIN – The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran’s most important South American ally.

Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard’s Air Force, participated in the visit, according to the report. Die Welt cited information from “Western security insiders.”

The rocket bases are to include measures to prevent air attacks on Venezuela as well as commando and control stations.

The Iranian military involvement in the project extends to bunker, barracks and watch tower construction. Twenty-meter deep rocket silos are planned. The cost of the Venezuelan military project is being paid for with Iranian oil revenue. The Iranians paid in cash for the preliminary phase of the project and, the total cost is expected to amount to “dozens of millions” of dollars, Die Welt wrote.

The Paraguaná Peninsula is on the coast of Venezuela and is roughly 120 kilometers from America’s main South American partner, Columbia.

According to Die Welt, the clandestine agreement between Venezuela and Iran would mean the Chavez government would fire rocket at Iran’s enemies should the Islamic Republic face military strikes.

Meanwhile the German press agency (DPA) reported on Friday that Germany will not contest the placement of the Hamburg- based European- Iranian Trade Bank (EIH) on the EU sanctions list at the end of the month. The US Treasury Department sanctioned the EIH last year, saying it was one of the most important institutions in Europe for financing Iran’s missile and nuclear proliferation programs. Germany was the subject of criticism from American, French, British and Israeli officials because it refused to shut the EIH.

The EIH plays a crucial role in facilitating financial transactions for midsize German firms that are active in Iran. German- Iranian total trade amounted to over 4 billion euros in 2010, making German Iran’s No. 1 EU trade partner.