WarSclerotic

Why Should Israel Make Peace With Failed States? | The New Republic.

“Living Dead: Why is Syria Going Up in Flames?” is the second article, really an interpretative essay on Syria where a new writer for TNR, Theo Padnos, lived for several years. We think we know a dictatorship by how it behaves in exigent threat. But Padnos actually conveys the essence of how “normal” life prepares people slowly, almost casually, for dread. You can even sing along with the fashionable young of Damascus in the jolly days. But you’ll end up being cannily knowing about the erratic and also almost completely static rhythm of the police state. How well the tyranny plays off these two impulses determine its destiny. Maybe Assad will win this call. But maybe he won’t.

Still, the Obama administration has been wishing him well for at least two years. Or, rather, it should be said that Obama administration initiatives involving Syria—had they been successful which, of course, they were not—would have propped up the dictatorship by exaggerating its intrinsic sway, its own freedom of movement and the justice of its grievance against Israel. It is as if we have suddenly decided that a regime that tries to capture another country and loses territory in the process has the right to have it repatriated as if nothing had ever happened. Try, try, and try again, so to speak.

This is especially the case in the Levant where the diplomacy of boundaries going back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire—whose power had been wielded at a time from Vienna to Central Asia—was so scrawly and shifting that no one could know from one day to the next where this scepter held sway and that one did not. A propos these vagaries, in the diplomatic talks between France and England following the signing of the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 up to 1923 the biblical phrase “from Dan to Beer-Sheva” was the template of any map. But, of course, the words were more evocative than determinate, metaphoric than concrete. And so the cartographic war, from then and now, continues. What are Syria’s real claims to the Golan Heights? There were Syrian Arabs in the Golan prior to 1967. But no one actually thought of himself as ethnically or nationally Syrian. Instead, they replicated the diversity of hate, the permanent schismatics of difference. Moreover, the resident Alawite contingent—surprise! surprise!—is quite loyal to Israel. And there are Druze whose affinities are hard to judge since they are neither Arab nor Jew. In any case, what is Syria? It is certainly not a coherent or cohesive nation, what with its constant incitement of sectarian strife. And then there is the hydrostrategics of its geography, a permanent temptation for anyone governing from Damascus.    

Spotted around Israel are failed states. I doubt that the states to the north, Lebanon and Syria, can be mended. Their essence was always difference. But certainly not as democracies where the rights of diverse groups are honored. Nobody sang hymns to variety and diversification in the lands of the Arabs. Have we already forgotten Iraq where the colonials established Sunni rule over a vast preponderance of Shia? In Syria, 10 percent of the population governs. The majoritarian rest, the Sunnis and their Muslim Brotherhood vanguard, have been cowering since 1982 … until they had just cowered too much. Pity the Alawites when the Sunnis will strike for revenge. On the other hand, how much can you pity the Alawites who have been plundering and imprisoning and also murdering for four decades?

What had Obama in his head when he tried to jumpstart Israeli negotiations with Syria? Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, what else? The answer is simple and transparent: Israel’s retreat from territories it had captured while they were being used by enemies trying to vitiate Israel itself. But this is the president’s steady trope. Israel should withdraw from the West Bank and ancient Jerusalem and East Jerusalem and, yes, the Golan Heights, too, without a shred of evidence that it would be protected, could be protected from attack by armed soldiers, armed aircraft and armed terrorists, by a deadly admixture of regular troops with guerrillas somehow coddled by human rights organizations which define the latter virtually as civilians. Do you believe that the Arabs truly want peace? Does President Obama? Well, I don’t. There is always the ministration that NATO could force the keeping of a peace. But Obama has blown that alternative, too, by virtually opting out of its venture against Qaddafi and leaving the leadership to Great Britain and France, whose bona fides are suspect.

Why am I not a believer? Because the only unifying strand in the disparate state systems of the Arabs is their struggle against the Jews, the Zionists, the Israelis. Nothing else motivates them so doggedly. The Christians also are targets of the various Muslim governments under which they live, and their numbers are falling in every country of the region—except Israel where those who kneel at the cross are experiencing what one might even call a revival. This is especially so in Jerusalem where, quietly but decisively, the communicants of Jesus are hitching their future to Zion. Ironic, no?

But the future plight of the Christians in the region has been foreshadowed in Egypt where yet another slaughter of innocents took place on May 8 after a string of fiery incidents. “We are in a jungle,” cried a Coptic bishop. Eleven men and women, both Christian and Muslim, were left for dead, with about 250 wounded, of which some 50 were shot. Two churches were incinerated. It was an assault by Salafists who make the Muslim Brothers appear moderate.

We are now being sermonized, mostly by journalistic oracles, to believe that these last months are a Prague Spring for Muslims. They have an agenda and it is to convince Israel not to be a killjoy but to join the party and ease the path to peace. I happen to believe that Arabs need to learn to live with each other before Israel opens itself to its neighbors’ villainy now being practiced on their own.

“Living Dead: Why is Syria Going Up in Flames?” is the second article, really an interpretative essay on Syria where a new writer for TNR, Theo Padnos, lived for several years. We think we know a dictatorship by how it behaves in exigent threat. But Padnos actually conveys the essence of how “normal” life prepares people slowly, almost casually, for dread. You can even sing along with the fashionable young of Damascus in the jolly days. But you’ll end up being cannily knowing about the erratic and also almost completely static rhythm of the police state. How well the tyranny plays off these two impulses determine its destiny. Maybe Assad will win this call. But maybe he won’t.

Still, the Obama administration has been wishing him well for at least two years. Or, rather, it should be said that Obama administration initiatives involving Syria—had they been successful which, of course, they were not—would have propped up the dictatorship by exaggerating its intrinsic sway, its own freedom of movement and the justice of its grievance against Israel. It is as if we have suddenly decided that a regime that tries to capture another country and loses territory in the process has the right to have it repatriated as if nothing had ever happened. Try, try, and try again, so to speak.

This is especially the case in the Levant where the diplomacy of boundaries going back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire—whose power had been wielded at a time from Vienna to Central Asia—was so scrawly and shifting that no one could know from one day to the next where this scepter held sway and that one did not. A propos these vagaries, in the diplomatic talks between France and England following the signing of the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 up to 1923 the biblical phrase “from Dan to Beer-Sheva” was the template of any map. But, of course, the words were more evocative than determinate, metaphoric than concrete. And so the cartographic war, from then and now, continues. What are Syria’s real claims to the Golan Heights? There were Syrian Arabs in the Golan prior to 1967. But no one actually thought of himself as ethnically or nationally Syrian. Instead, they replicated the diversity of hate, the permanent schismatics of difference. Moreover, the resident Alawite contingent—surprise! surprise!—is quite loyal to Israel. And there are Druze whose affinities are hard to judge since they are neither Arab nor Jew. In any case, what is Syria? It is certainly not a coherent or cohesive nation, what with its constant incitement of sectarian strife. And then there is the hydrostrategics of its geography, a permanent temptation for anyone governing from Damascus.    

Spotted around Israel are failed states. I doubt that the states to the north, Lebanon and Syria, can be mended. Their essence was always difference. But certainly not as democracies where the rights of diverse groups are honored. Nobody sang hymns to variety and diversification in the lands of the Arabs. Have we already forgotten Iraq where the colonials established Sunni rule over a vast preponderance of Shia? In Syria, 10 percent of the population governs. The majoritarian rest, the Sunnis and their Muslim Brotherhood vanguard, have been cowering since 1982 … until they had just cowered too much. Pity the Alawites when the Sunnis will strike for revenge. On the other hand, how much can you pity the Alawites who have been plundering and imprisoning and also murdering for four decades?

What had Obama in his head when he tried to jumpstart Israeli negotiations with Syria? Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, what else? The answer is simple and transparent: Israel’s retreat from territories it had captured while they were being used by enemies trying to vitiate Israel itself. But this is the president’s steady trope. Israel should withdraw from the West Bank and ancient Jerusalem and East Jerusalem and, yes, the Golan Heights, too, without a shred of evidence that it would be protected, could be protected from attack by armed soldiers, armed aircraft and armed terrorists, by a deadly admixture of regular troops with guerrillas somehow coddled by human rights organizations which define the latter virtually as civilians. Do you believe that the Arabs truly want peace? Does President Obama? Well, I don’t. There is always the ministration that NATO could force the keeping of a peace. But Obama has blown that alternative, too, by virtually opting out of its venture against Qaddafi and leaving the leadership to Great Britain and France, whose bona fides are suspect.

Why am I not a believer? Because the only unifying strand in the disparate state systems of the Arabs is their struggle against the Jews, the Zionists, the Israelis. Nothing else motivates them so doggedly. The Christians also are targets of the various Muslim governments under which they live, and their numbers are falling in every country of the region—except Israel where those who kneel at the cross are experiencing what one might even call a revival. This is especially so in Jerusalem where, quietly but decisively, the communicants of Jesus are hitching their future to Zion. Ironic, no?

But the future plight of the Christians in the region has been foreshadowed in Egypt where yet another slaughter of innocents took place on May 8 after a string of fiery incidents. “We are in a jungle,” cried a Coptic bishop. Eleven men and women, both Christian and Muslim, were left for dead, with about 250 wounded, of which some 50 were shot. Two churches were incinerated. It was an assault by Salafists who make the Muslim Brothers appear moderate.

We are now being sermonized, mostly by journalistic oracles, to believe that these last months are a Prague Spring for Muslims. They have an agenda and it is to convince Israel not to be a killjoy but to join the party and ease the path to peace. I happen to believe that Arabs need to learn to live with each other before Israel opens itself to its neighbors’ villainy now being practiced on their own.

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.

Syrian tanks shell residential area in coastal city, activists say – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Syrian security forces arrested scores of people in Homs and in Baniyas, the latest focus of Assad’s escalated crackdown against protesters; EU okays new sanctions.

By Reuters

Syrian army tanks shelled the Bab Amro residential district in the country’s third largest city of Homs on Wednesday, a human rights campaigner in the city said.

“Homs is shaking with the sound of explosions from tank shelling and heavy machineguns,” said Najati Tayrara.

	A man throws a rock at a passing tank in a location given as Deraa on April 25, 2011, in this still image from an amateur video
	Photo by: Reuters

Earlier this week, Syrian security forces arrested scores of people in Homs and in Baniyas, two restive cities where President Bashar Assad has sent troops to crush a seven-week-old revolt against his authoritarian rule.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said people were detained in the central cities on the Mediterranean coast — the latest focus of Assad’s escalated crackdown against protesters, as well as other regions.

Meanwhile, the European Union member states have agreed to issue a weapons embargo against Syria and impose sanctions upon 13 of its nationals, paving the way for the restrictive measures.

The embargo is meant to block weapons “that could be used for internal repression” from being exported to Syria, the European Council said late Monday.

Syria’s upheaval began on March 18 when protesters, inspired by revolts across the Arab world, marched in the southern city of Deraa. Assad initially responded with vague promises of reform, and last month lifted a 48-year-old state of emergency.

What Do Israel’s Leaders Really Think About Iran? – Global Spin – TIME.com.

Israel bombing Iran could, indeed, be a spectacularly stupid idea, but does the Israeli public really need to hear that? That not-in-front-of-the-kids message seemed to be the gist of Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak’s criticism of Meir Dagan, recently retired head of the Mossad intelligence agency, who last week warned publicly that the idea of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities was “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard”.  Barak on Monday expressed doubt about the veracity of Dagan’s reported remarks (although the man himself hasn’t yet contested them), but added, “if we are to deal with these matters responsibly, then it is not right to share these thoughts – even if they are legitimate – with the public.”

Two of Dagan’s predecessors in the Mossad job didn’t agree, and raced to endorse Dagan’s view — and also his right to open such a potentially cataclysmic question for public discussion.  Dagan had previously annoyed his boss by making public his assessment, on his last day at the Mossad, that Iran would not have nuclear weapons before 2015, and that covert action and sanctions are the most effective response. And he warned that while an air strike could not be guaranteed even to destroy Iran’s facilities, which are scattered and in some possibly concealed, the consequence of such as strike would be that “There will be war with Iran.  This is one of the things we know how to start, but not how to end.”

Dagan’s views are plainly at odds with the line that his political bosses are putting out: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, has made a habit of putting forward alarmist assessments of Iran’s capabilities and apocalyptic warnings of Israel’s own intentions in response. Even some in Washington are unconvinced. A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable from the Tel Aviv Embassy, published by WikiLeaks, includes the following in respect of meetings between U.S. Defense Department officials and their Israeli counterparts:

“Israel continues to offer a worst-case assessment of the Iranian nuclear program, emphasizing that the window for stopping the program (by military means if necessary) is rapidly closing. General [Yossi] Baidatz argued that it would take Iran one year to obtain a nuclear weapon and two and a half years to build an arsenal of three weapons. By 2012 Iran would be able to build one weapon within weeks and an arsenal within six months. (COMMENT: It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States).”

If so, Dagan’s assessments weren’t exactly helping. But even  Barak,  himself reportedly  in the bomb-Iran camp within Israel’s cabinet, has shown a willingness to publicly differ with Netanyahu on the implications of  the Iran threat. Netanyahu, as opposition leader, in 2006, told a group of foreign ambassadors visiting Israel, “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.” That, as Fareed Zakaria pointed out was preposterous hyperbole. Germany in 1938 was by far the most powerful military nation in the world. “Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion,” wrote Zakaria. “It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century.”  In the geopolitical tableau of 1938, Zakaria told a TV interviewer, Iran would be Rumania.

Not that Bibi Netanyahu pays much heed to the assessments of Fareed Zakaria. He’s still insisting that Iran represents a mortal threat to the Jewish State. On Holocaust remembrance day on May 1, Netanyahu warned that Iran is “openly working to destroy the Jewish state” and is “arming [itself] with nuclear weapons in order to realize those ambitions.”

But the message that a nuclear-armed Iran spells doom for Israel is too much even for Barak. Last October, the defense minister said bluntly that “I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel.” That was because Israel’s own military capacity meant that despite Iran posing a major geopolitical challenge, it did not threaten Israel’s existence.  “Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat.”

Days after Netanyahu’s Holocaust remembrance speech, Barak reiterated his message, in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz  newspaper,  that even if Iran built a nuclear weapon, it would not drop such a bomb on Israel.  Barak’s point: Even if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be unlikely — as long as its leaders had not lost their minds — to court obliteration by Israel’s massive (but unacknowledged) nuclear arsenal, with its second-strike capacity via submarine, by attacking the Jewish State. Barak believes that the suggestion that an Iranian bomb would destroy Israel is dangerous, because it could prompt a brain-drain of Israel’s best and brightest.

Not that Barak opposes bombing Iran: Even if he believes Iran wouldn’t attack Israel, the Defense Minister sees the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon as changing the regional balance of forces by removing Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, thereby emboldening enemies such as Hamas and Hizballah and giving Iran greater scope to support their proxy warfare without fear of Israel’s wrath.

Barak and Bibi reportedly agree is on maintaining the option — and the belief, in the West  that Israel maintains the option– of unilateral military action. (The Iranians don’t believe that Israel would bomb them, but they do believe that the Israelis are waging a sustained covert war, through computer viruses and assassination of scientists, against Iran’s program. If so, that would have been Dagan’s department.)  That belief keeps pressure on Western capitals to do more to pressure Tehran. And it also helps the Israelis put Iran, rather than the Palestinians, at the top of the agenda when the U.S. and other Western countries are dealing with Israel.

The Israelis may even be feeling a heightened sense of urgency in putting Iran back on the table because the Arab Spring has, in fact, weakened the U.S.-Israeli position on Iran — and has helped drive what Barak warned was a “diplomatic tsunami” heading for Israel in September, in the form of diplomatic support for Palestinian statehood regardless of Israel’s preferences. Where President Hosni Mubarak, for example, had been a pivotal Arab figure in the U.S.-led campaign against Iran and also against other enemies of Israel such as Hamas, the regime that replaced him, more mindful of Arab public opinion, has   moved to normalize ties with Tehran and with Hamas.

While Barak may be sending what amount to mixed messages as a result of the dual concerns to keep pressure on Iran but also to avoid spooking Israelis into fleeing, Dagan may be addressing a second danger posed by Netanyahu’s apolocalyptic talk: In a state whose national identity is constructed on the ashes of the Holocaust, telling the public that Iran’s nuclear program represents  a latter-day Auschwitz actually paints Israel’s own leadership into a tactical corner, creating an expectation of decisive military action among its own citizenry. Dagan appears to believe that initiating a war with iran as potentially causing more problems for the Jewish State than it solves. That’s a position shared by outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  And the current assessment of U.S. intelligence is that while Iran continues to assemble, under the rubric of its energy program, the means to build nuclear weapons, it has not yet taken a strategic decision to go ahead and build such weapons.

But with Netanyahu due in Washington shortly, unlikely to be bringing with him any offer likely to be accepted by the Palestinians as a basis to restart peace talks, it’s a safe bet that we’re going to be hearing a lot more about Iran’s nuclear program in the coming weeks than we had been during the Arab Spring.

Israel to spend $2B on missile defense – UPI.com.

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 10 (UPI) — Israel’s announcement that it will spend $2 billion on building up its anti-missile defense system over the next few years, on top of whatever it can squeeze out of the Americans, underlines the military’s deep concerns that the country faces a new kind of war.

The military is wrestling with how to fund multiple objectives over the next few years at a critical juncture in Israel’s 63-year history.

Defending military installations and Israel’s cities, for the first time vulnerable to firestorms of missile attacks, is just one priority, but a pressing one.

Arms procurement is another, split between bolstering the air force, acquiring new German submarines that, reports say, will be capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles and maintaining sizeable ground forces.

Right now getting Israel’s multilayered missile-defense system in place is a key priority because missiles and rockets will be the spearhead of any assault by Iran or Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip — or all four together.

The political pressure to protect Israel’s population centers has become intense amid fears a new war is looming.

On Monday, the Haaretz daily quoted the director general of the Defense Ministry, Reserve Maj. Gen. Udi Shani, as saying Israel plans to invest $1 billion in the development and production of the Iron Dome interception system.

This radar-guided system, designed to shoot down rockets and missiles with a range of 3-45 miles, as well as mortar shells, was deployed in southern Israel earlier this year.

But it remains under development by the Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

So far there are only two batteries, which in March shot down eight of nine Grad-type rockets fired from Gaza. But the system has yet to be tested against a major, sustained rocket bombardment.

Each battery costs $80 million. Israel needs at least 13 more but Shani spoke of another 10-15. Of these, a U.S. grant of $205 million will pay for four.

Shani said another $1 billion will be spent on the Magic Wand air-defense system, designed to down intermediate missiles with ranges of 25-185 miles. This two-stage system, also known as David’s Sling, is being developed by Rafael and the U.S. Raytheon Corp.

“I hope that by 2012 we’ll have the first operational capabilities,” Shani said. “We need to accelerate the process.”

Along with the third, high-altitude tier, the Arrow 3 built by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries in conjunction with the Boeing Co., the Israeli air-defense system “will be the largest technological development project in the field of missile interception in the world,” Shani observed.

The defense establishment’s expensive focus on building an anti- missile shield was given great impetus by the 34-day war with Hezbollah in 2006.

During that conflict, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel in the most sustained bombardment the Jewish state has ever endured.

Today, that threat has grown immensely and, outside of nuclear attack, is the greatest danger the Jewish state faces.

Israel’s military is bracing for a war that could last up to two months, probably in the summer months, this year or next. Major military campaigns in the Middle East generally take place during summer.

That’s the best time for Israel because its air power is most effective with clear skies, while ground forces can maneuver more easily.

“Having in mind the massive arms buildup in the region during the past few years, we can expect any large conflict to be unusually brutal,” Israel-based analyst Victor Kotsev observed.

“Israeli military planners have predicted that hundreds of missiles will rain on Tel Aviv — mostly from Syria and Lebanon — and have issued grim warnings that they will do whatever it takes to curtail the fire.”

The Israelis say Hezbollah, armed by Iran and Syria, has more than 42,000 missiles and rockets, including several hundred long-range weapons capable of hammering Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest urban area and its financial and industrial center.

The Palestinian Hamas, also aided by Syria and Iran, has an estimated 5,000 rockets, Israel claims.

Since it could take two months for Israeli forces to clear Hezbollah out of south Lebanon and knock out its heavily fortified missile sites, Israel could be hit by up to 400 missiles a day during that period.

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.

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.