WarSclerotic

IDF: Unrest along Israel’s northern borders bears Iran’s ‘fingerprints’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

At least eight people were reportedly killed on Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, after IDF troops opened fire on masses of protesters attempting to infiltrate.

By The Associated Press

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday accused Iran of orchestrating two waves of fighting along its northern borders, as Palestinian protesters tried to infiltrate from Syria and Lebanon during demonstrations to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the “catastrophe” of the creation of the State of Israel.

At least eight people were reportedly killed on the two frontiers, when IDF troops opened fire on masses of protesters attempting to infiltrate into Israel. The protests, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said, bore Iran’s “fingerprints.”

	Hezbollah fighters parade during the inauguration of a cemetery for fighters who died while fighting Israel, in southern Beirut on Nov. 12, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

“We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations,” he said.

The IDF confirmed opening fire as scores of Palestinian refugees spilled into the town of Majdal Shams, which runs along Israel’s border with Syria. At least four people, apparently Palestinian refugees, were killedt.

Mordechai also confirmed that the IDF fired at a crowd of Lebanese protesters who approached the border with Israel and began vandalizing the fence.  The spokesman had no details on the number of casualties, but Lebanese sources said there had been four fatalities.

Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees and its leadership, now facing fierce internal unrest, had in previous years prevented protesters from reaching the frontier fence.

“This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that
regime is facing at home,” said a senior Israeli government official who declined to be named.

BBC News – N Korea and Iran ‘sharing ballistic missile technology’.

North Korea and Iran appear to have been exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of sanctions, a leaked UN report shows.

The report, obtained by Reuters, said regular transfers had been taking place through “a neighbouring third country”, named by diplomats as China.

The sanctions were imposed on Pyongyang by the UN after it conducted a series of nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

They ban all trade in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea.

They also imposed an arms embargo and subjected some North Korean individuals to travel bans and assets freezes.

North Korea has twice tested nuclear devices and said in September last year that it had entered the final phase of uranium enrichment.

The country is believed to have enough plutonium to make about six bombs, but is not thought to have developed a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

‘New challenges’

The report was written by a UN panel of experts monitoring Pyongyang’s compliance with the sanctions.

It said that “prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea] and the Islamic Republic of Iran”, using regular scheduled flights on national carriers Air Koryo and Iran Air.

For arms and related material, “whose illicit nature would become apparent on any cursory physical inspection”, Pyongyang appeared to prefer the use of chartered cargo flights, Reuters quoted it as saying.

The flights would travel “from or to air cargo hubs which lack the kind of monitoring and security to which passenger terminals and flights are now subject”.

This presented “new challenges to international non-proliferation efforts”, said the panel.

The report said North Korea’s uranium enrichment programme was “primarily for military purposes” and so Pyongyang should be “compelled to abandon” it and have it placed under international monitoring.

It also raised concerns about safety at the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, warning of an “environmental disaster” if it were to be decommissioned or dismantled without care.

The report said the transfers travelled through “a neighbouring third country”. The country was not named in the report but one diplomat told the BBC some sanctions-busting takes place through China.

He said Beijing was unhappy with the experts’ report, and that the Chinese member of the panel had not signed off on it.

Iran warns West it will allow transit of drugs to Europe if criticism continues – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran lies on a major drug route between Afghanistan and Europe and authorities regularly confiscate large amounts of drugs from traffickers, mainly opium and heroin.

By News Agencies

A senior Iranian official has threatened to allow the transit of illegal drugs through its territory to Europe should the West continue criticizing the Islamic nation’s human rights record.

Mohammad Javad Larijani also defended Iran’s record on fighting the drug trafficking, noting that 74 percent of executions in Iran are related to drug offenses.

	Burning of seized narcotic drugs in Myanmar, March 7, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

The comments by Larijani, who is the head of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, were posted on the Iranian judiciary’s website Saturday.

Iran lies on a major drug route between Afghanistan and Europe and authorities regularly confiscate large amounts of drugs from traffickers, mainly opium and heroin.

Every year Iran burns some 66 tons (60 metric tons) of seized narcotics to signal its determination to fight drugs.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the oil minister and two other ministers on Saturday, news agency ISNA reported.

“Ministers of oil, social welfare and industries and mines were dismissed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in order to slim down the government’s ministries from 21 to 17,” ISNA said.

A shake-up of the department in charge of the world’s fifth- biggest oil exporter, was expected after some officials said earlier this month that the oil and energy ministries and
labour and social welfare ministries would be merged.

No announcement was made about who will take over any new merged protfolios. Parliament would have to approve the remit of any new ministry.

Getting approval from parliament, whose speaker Ali Larijani has publicly criticised Ahmadinejad’s domestic and economic policies, will not be easy.

Iran’s top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a discretion over key ministries, including oil, foreign, ntelligence and interior.

Protests erupt in Hama, eastern Syria as death toll rises.

  AMMAN – Thousands of Syrian Kurds demonstrated in the east of the country on Friday to demand an end to military actions that have killed hundreds of protesters, a Kurdish opposition leader said.

“The demonstrations are expanding in numbers,” Habib Ibrahim told Reuters, adding that demonstrations erupted in the provincial capital of Qamishli and in the smaller towns of Amouda and Derabasiyeh near the border with Turkey. The witness said pro-democracy demonstrators chanted “We want the overthrow of the regime.”

Syria defers run for seat of UN Rights Council

Thousands of people also converged on a square in the Syrian city of Hama for a pro-democracy demonstration, a witness said.

“I am moving among a huge crowd… They are coming from every direction,” said a witness in Hama where the military crushed an Islamist-led uprising in 1982.

Earlier Friday,a  United Nations human rights office in Geneva said the death toll in Syria may be as high as 850 and thousands of demonstrators have been arrested during a two-month military crackdown.

“We again call on the government to exercise restraint, to cease use of force and mass arrests to silence opponents,” Rupert Colville, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing.

The toll of 700-to-850 dead, based on information provided by human rights activists, was “quite likely to be genuine”, he added.

Syria has blamed most of the violence on “terrorist groups” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators. But a rights campaigner, speaking ahead of Friday prayers that have become a rallying point for protesters, said President Bashar Assad has ordered troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.

A high-level UN human rights mission was preparing to go to Syria, as well as neighboring countries, but had not yet received a reply from Damascus, according to Colville.

“We hope to be ready to deploy as soon as we are granted access,” he said.

“We have many reports of use of snipers, use of tanks in a number of towns. The government is reporting that soldiers and police have been killed, that is why we want to get in there and see for ourselves,” he added.

Colville also voiced concern about arrest and torture of dissidents in Bahrain, including the death of four detainees while in custody, and announced that Yemen had accepted a visit by a UN human rights mission, suggesting a date of late June.

On Thursday, Syrian forces surrounded Hama, the scene of a bloody 1982 crackdown by the father of President Bashar Assad, and dispersed a rally in the second city of Aleppo, in the latest signs that the unrest could turn into a drawn-out, bloody revolt.

The Associated Press quoted a human rights activist saying troops backed by tanks had deployed around Hama, a central city in which then-president Hafez Assad killed some 20,000 people in putting down a Muslim Brotherhood insurrection.

In Aleppo, 2,000 students rallied at the city’s prestigious university in the first indication that the rebellion had reached the northern city.

Tanks advanced in the southern towns of Dael, Tafas, Jassem and al-Harra – just a few kilometers east of the Golan Heights – ahead of post-prayer Friday demonstrations that have become hallmarks of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

The Associated Press: Israeli soldiers train to shoot down missiles.

FILE – In this March 26, 2007 file photo, an image released by the Israel Aerospace Industries, an Israeli Arrow interceptor anti-tactical ballistic missile is test fired from an unknown location in Israel. For the first time, the Israel military on Thursday, May 12, 2011, allowed foreign journalists to enter the missile defense control room at the Palmachim air base to view simulations of aerial attacks and speak with the soldiers who would be responsible for pushing the intercept button.

PALMACHIM AIR BASE, Israel (AP) — Israel has put together a multilayered shield designed to intercept rockets and missiles capable of striking it from as close as the Gaza Strip and as far away as Iran, reflecting concern that future conflicts will target Israel’s civilian population centers.

At this sprawling air base in central Israel, soldiers in a fortified control room are training to activate a cornerstone of this shield — the Arrow missile defense system, meant to protect Israel from its enemy Iran’s expanding array of missiles.

The Arrow, produced jointly by state-run Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. and Chicago-based Boeing Co. at a cost of more than $1 billion, is being deployed in Israel after successful tests in both Israel and the U.S. It has not been tested in combat, but the system is already in its third generation, having been fine-tuned to deal with increasingly complicated threats.

The Arrow was designed to counter Iran’s Shahab ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and whose range of 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), puts Israel well within striking distance. Despite Iranian denials, Israel is convinced Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Threats also come from much closer to Israel.

In 2006, Israel fought a fierce monthlong war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, when Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel. That pointed up two stark facts: Israel had no tool to knock them down — neither did anyone else — and Israel’s civilian population, concentrated mostly along the nation’s Mediterranean coast, was increasingly vulnerable to attack.

In response, Israel has developed additional systems: “Magic Wand,” aimed at stopping intermediate-range missiles, and the “Iron Dome,” which shoots down rockets fired from short distances of just a few miles (kilometers) from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Last month, Israel successfully introduced the Iron Dome and shot down several Palestinian-fired rockets from Gaza. Palestinian militants have fired thousands of crude, short-range weapons at Israel in recent years, and up to then the military had no answer except airstrikes after the fact.

The Arrow, first deployed in 2000, was the first brick in what Israel hopes will be a wall of protection against incoming rockets and missiles.

The Israel military on Thursday allowed foreign journalists to observe the Arrow missile defense control room at the Palmachim air base.

Entry is through a set of 3-inch-thick steel doors. The control center is reinforced against nuclear attack, a military official indicated.

An aerial map of the Middle East appears on each of a dozen screens around the room, where soldiers “intercept according to the type of threat,” said an officer identified only as Lt. Col. O, according to military regulations.

Soldiers are trained to cope with situations where as many as hundreds of rockets are fired simultaneously, said Maj. Tal Mast, a former Arrow commander who has spent 13 years in air defense and still trains twice a month as a reservist.

After detecting an incoming missile, soldiers have minutes at best and seconds at worst to assess what type of projectile it is, calculate its trajectory and decide whether it needs to be shot down or whether it might land in an open field or the sea, making interception unnecessary.

The computer system helps make the decisions.

An “X” on the screen designates an incoming missile as “irrelevant” — meaning it is not expected to hit anything and need not be shot down.

If the decision is to fire, a missile is dispatched from a transportable, trailer-mounted Arrow launcher with six missile tubes that can be reloaded in 15 to 20 minutes, officials said.

At one point in a drill, the screen showed two Scud missiles, designated by yellow triangles, homing in on central Israel from Lebanon, and two others from Syria. A blinking blue triangle, signifying the Arrow’s interceptor missile, homes in on one of the incoming missiles. Their paths cross, and both disappear from the screen. The other missiles, deemed nonthreatening, are allowed to continue on their course.

In real life, the “fire” button is a simple F2 stroke on the computer keyboard, Lt. Col. O said.

Syria arrests prominent rights activist, as US seeks more pressure on Assad.

Al Arabiya
Thursday, 12 May 2011

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, center in blue tie, arrives to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier during Martyrs day in Kasiyoun mountain in Damascus, Syria. (AP photo)

Assad said to order troops not to fire on protesters as Washington issues warning.

Al Arabiya
Friday, 13 May 2011

A girl with a Syrian flag painted on her face during a demonstration against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. (File Photo)

‘Russia blocks UN report on Iran arms sales to Syria’.

  UNITED NATIONS – Russia is attempting to suppress a United Nations report that says Iran has been breaking a UN arms embargo by shipping weapons to Syria, Western diplomats said on Thursday.

“Russia has objected to the publication of the report as an official Security Council document,” a council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Several other diplomats confirmed it.

“It’s obviously an attempt to protect (Syrian President) Bashar Assad,” who is coming under increasing international pressure over his violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, another council diplomat said.

The confidential report, obtained by Reuters, said most of Iran’s breaches of the embargo have been deliveries of weapons to Syria, which Western diplomats say were to be passed on to Lebanese and Palestinian militants.

The report by the UN Security Council’s so-called Panel of Experts, a newly formed committee that reports on compliance with four rounds of UN sanctions imposed on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program, also says Tehran flouts the sanctions as it continues to develop its atomic program.

Diplomats said Russia offered a procedural justification for objecting to the publication of the report — it should first be discussed by the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee before being released to the public.

“Eventually they’ll have to give in but we don’t know how long it will take,” a diplomat said.

Russia is able to block the Iran report because decisions about such reports are made by consensus among the 15 members of the Security Council.

Russia’s decision to block the report comes as diplomats said Britain and France were attempting to revive plans to have the Security Council condemn Syria for its crackdown against demonstrators.

A previous attempt failed after Russia, China and India objected to the proposed condemnation.

A spokesman for Russia’s UN mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has prevented the publication of similar U. expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan, two countries that Beijing routinely tries to shield from Security Council criticism, for as long as half a year.

Russia has long acted as a kind of protector for Iran on the council, working hard to dilute the four sanctions resolutions on Iran between 2006 and 2010 before voting in favor of them. It also has close commercial ties to the Islamic Republic.

A senior Russian diplomat was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying on Thursday that Iran’s Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant will be fully operational within weeks.

The Media Line.

Written by Arieh O’Sullivan Published Thursday, May 12, 2011

TML Photo/Arieh O’Sullivan Still basking in first historic interception of rockets last month PALMACHIM AIR BASE, Israel — “Two Scuds launched from Syria,” says an Israeli Air Force lieutenant colonel in command of an Arrow 2 anti-ballistic fire control center. “This is a drill, this is a drill,” a female voice crackles over the loudspeakers. Nevertheless, the young officers at the control panels eagerly follow the radar tracking of the rockets closing in on central Israel and prepare an air defense response to launch interceptors.  “The fire button is not so sexy,” says the commanding officer, who could only be identified as Lt.-Col. O. “It’s the F-2 button on the keyboard. Once I press it, I give authorization for the system to do what I have programmed it to do.” Israel’s air defense network is arguably one of the densest in the world. Not only are all aircraft in the region monitored, but also every drone, rocket and missile launch is detected and monitored from as close as the Gaza Strip to as distant as Iran, some 1.300 kilometers (810 miles) away. “It‘s not a secret that Israel is being threatened by rockets and missiles from a very short range to a very long range,” says Brig.-Gen. Doron Gavish, head of the IAF Air Defenses. “The Israeli Defense Forces came up with a concept in order to counter this threat based on attack, early warning, active defense and passive defense.” Officers and soldiers were still euphoric a month after the successful interception of an incoming rocket fired by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Iron Dome system, a home-grown anti-rocket weapon designed to shoot down short-range missiles. In March, two Iron Dome batteries were rushed in to field operation before the system had completed its final development to meet an escalation of tensions along the border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Last month, the batteries successfully intercepted eight out of nine Grad-type rockets fired at Israeli cities.  “This is the first time in history that such a system was being deployed and it is the first time in history that a missile shot one of the rockets,” Gavish told The Media Line on a visit to air defense installations. The Air Force recently integrated a national Ballistic Picture Control Center (BPCC) in order to enhance its early warning capabilities. It was part of a reorganization of the Air Defense Corps, which also changed its name from Anti-Aircraft Corps to reflect its role in shooting down rockets and missiles. (The last time it shot down an aircraft was during the 1982 Lebanon War.) While Israel’s traditional enemies like Syria and Lebanon have most outdated combat air craft, other states in the region such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, are equipped with top-of-the-line warplanes. Asked if the recent upheaval in Egypt was changing the focus of Israel’s air defense strategy, the senior officer said Israel was constantly on alert for all possible threats. “The weather here is beautiful. The view fantastic, but the neighborhood is challenging,” he quipped. “This is why we need a strong air force with a classic anti-aircraft defense. We have even increased the number of anti-aircraft batteries and built up our battle order to meet against any scenario.” The Israeli active defense against missiles included the Arrow 2 for long-range ballistic missiles, U.S.-made Patriot batteries for anti-aircraft and mid-range missiles and the Iron Dome to intercept short-range rockets like Grad, Katyushas and Qassams fired by the Hizbullah in Lebanon or the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “Israel and the IDF will introduce in the coming years some new systems, one of them is David’s Sling and the other one is the Arrow next generation,” Gavish said.  Each Iron Dome battery costs some $80 million. A senior officer said Israel is planning to procure another six to 11 batteries so that the entire area under missile threat is covered. A top Israeli defense official was quoted as saying last week that the Ministry of Defense planned to invest $1 billion for development and manufacturing of Iron Dome defenses. This reportedly included a U.S. grant of $205 million. The officer, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said that last month’s successful interception had created deterrence against further rocket strikes. “If the ones who are firing the rockets understand that you can now intercept them, it is more problematic for them,” he said. “They will understand that there would be an act of active defense (by Israel) so I think it’s helping deterrence.” The Israeli 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, putting nearly one million Israelis under threat.

NTI: Global Security Newswire – U.S. Seen Boosting Covert Action’s Role Against Iran.

Thursday, May 12, 2011