WarSclerotic

Sa’ad Hariri: Issuing of indictments a ‘hi… JPost – Middle East.

  Former Lebanese prime minister on Thursday welcomed indictments issued in his father’s 2005 assassination, calling the move a “historic moment.”

The comments came after Lebanese State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza announced that he had received indictments over former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination, and four arrest warrants.

The four suspects are Mustafa Badreddine, Salim al-Ayyash, Hasan Aineysseh and Asad Sabra, The Daily Star reported, quoting a judicial source. Badreddine is cousin and a brother-in-law of slain Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008.

Earlier Thursday, officials from the UN-backed tribunal investigating the assassination met Lebanon’s state prosecutor. Lebanese media reported that the four arrest warrants presented were for Hezbollah members.

Neither Mirza nor the delegation from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon commented immediately after the talks.

On Monday, London-based Asharq Alawsat had reported that five high ranking Hezbollah officials were expected to be indicted by the special tribunal. The report added that once the indictments are released, the identities of the accused will be kept secret for a short period in order to allow the Lebanese government to investigate and arrest them.

Also Thursday, Lebanon’s interior minister was quoted as saying that the indictments are  “a big deal.”

“Why the big deal? It’s just an indictment and not a final verdict. So why all this hubbub?” Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel asked during a Voice of Lebanon interview, according to The Daily Star.

Charbel said that he hoped the Special Tribunal for Lebanon decision would “satisfy” the Lebanese people.

Syrian troops kill 11 dissidents, as US mounts pressure on Assad.

Al Arabiya

Thursday, 30 June 2011

A woman takes part in a sit-in for the people killed during recent protests, in Damascus. (File Photo)

US to resume Muslim Brotherhood ties – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Analysts say growing clout of Islamist party, which doesn’t recognize Israel, leaves US little choice

Reuters

The United States has decided to resume formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a senior US official said on Wednesday, in a step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its US backers.

“The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”

The official sought to portray the shift as a subtle evolution rather than a dramatic change in Washington’s stance toward the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.

Under the previous policy, US diplomats were allowed to deal with Brotherhood members of parliament who had won seats as independents – a diplomatic fiction that allowed them to keep lines of communication open.

Where US diplomats previously dealt only with group members in their role as parliamentarians, a policy the official said had been in place since 2006, they will now deal directly with low-level Brotherhood party officials.

There is no US legal prohibition against dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt and which is not regarded by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization.

But other sympathetic groups, such as Hamas, which identifies the Brotherhood as its spiritual guide, have not disavowed violence against the state of Israel.

The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the Feb. 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

Stirring up demons

US President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.

Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made clear the pro-Israel group’s deep skepticism about the group in a speech last month.

“While we all hope that Egypt emerges from its current political transition with a functioning, Western-oriented democracy, the fact is the best-organized political force in Egypt today is the Muslim Brotherhood – which does not recognize Israel,” Kohr said.

Former US diplomats said the United States had to engage with the Brotherhood given its influence in Egypt.

“We cannot have a free and fair election and democracy unless we are going to be willing to talk to all the people that are a part of that democracy,” said Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel who now teaches at Hamilton College.

“It’s going to stir up demons,” he added. “You have got an awful lot of people who are not very happy with what the roots of the Brotherhood have spawned … There will be people who will not accept that the Brotherhood is of a new or different character today.”

Egypt’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for September and its military rulers have promised to hold a presidential vote by the end of the year.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 30, 2011, 12:16 PM (GMT+02:00)

Putin imposes secrecy on nuclear Iran

Our Iranian and intelligence sources offer details on the British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s allegation Wednesday, June 29, that Iran has carried out secret tests of missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in breach of UN resolution 1929: Three of those tests, four in all, were carried out between October 2010 and February 2011and the fourth on Tuesday, June 28, in the course of the Prophet Mohammed war games currently in progress.
Iran is clearly continuing to upgrade and improve the accuracy of the missiles in its armory that are capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
It was the last test of the four that led Hague to break the Russian-imposed US-Israeli blackout on the critical tests, thereby leaving Iran free to push ahead at top speed with its program for attaining an operational nuclear weapon. Click here for debkafile‘s June 29 report of Hague disclosures.

debkafile‘s military and Moscow sources now report exclusively: In early October 2010, Russian intelligence learned that Iran was about to begin test launches of missiles for carrying nuclear warheads. They reported this to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

He then took three steps: He conveyed the information to US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and bound them to secrecy.  With their pledges in hand, he used backdoor intelligence channels to persuade Tehran to refrain from bragging about its dramatic progress and keep the tests of the nuclear-capable missiles quiet in order to avert a world outcry against the violation of all their international commitments.  The Iranians bought the deal.

In this way, the Russian leader raised a wall of silence around Iran’s advances towards ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and pre-empted condemnations, Security Council action, and other forms of American, European and Israeli action for keeping a nuclear bomb out of Iranian hands.

This was the last straw – at least for the British government. Hague in consultation with Prime Minister David Cameron went public about what Iran was really up to with a statement to parliament.

debkafile‘s military sources disclose that Iran has now tested two types of missile for carrying nuclear warheads: the Shahab-3 Kadar and the Sejjil – both powered with solid fuel and having a maximum range of 2,510 kilometers.
Two of the first three tests – one by Sejjil and one by Shahab-3 Kadar – were successful. A third apparently failed. Tuesday of this week the Iranians conducted another successful Shahab-3 test.

Saudi official: Riyadh will seek nukes if … JPost – Middle East

  Saudi Arabia would be forced to seek nuclear weapons if Iran became nuclear-armed, the Guardian quoted a senior Saudi official as saying on Wednesday.

“We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don’t. It’s as simple as that,” the official said. “If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit,” the official said, clarifying an earlier statement from Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal.

Faisal had told NATO officials that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon “would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences”.

US State Department cables uncovered by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks last year, revealed a Saudi leadership wary of Iran and its nuclear aspirations.

A cable from 2008 quoted former Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir recalling Saudi King Abdullah’s  “frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. ‘He told you to cut off the head of the snake,’ he recalled to the Charge, adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.”

The document says that the Saudi foreign minister called for “severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending.” It added that, “the foreign minister also stated that the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out.”

In its assessment, the US Embassy cable concluded that the Saudis, “are eager to work with the US to resist and reverse Iranian encroachment in Iraq.”

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Military defections expose cracks in Syrian army | Reuters.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A growing number of Syrian soldiers are deserting the army to avoid taking part in the military crackdown against protesters demanding the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Unwilling to open fire on demonstrators who have taken to the streets chanting the revolutionary slogans of uprisings across the Arab world, some Syrian troops have chosen to lay down their arms and flee to neighboring countries like Turkey.

It is difficult to estimate how many have done so, partly because they are afraid to speak out and partly due to severe restrictions on foreign media reporting in Syria, which makes it hard to corroborate accounts inside the country.

But Internet videos have begun increasingly to surface in recent weeks of men displaying military insignia and identification cards who say they have left an army that has used tanks and guns to suppress protesters calling for freedom.

Assad has relied on the armed forces, whose commanders are mostly from his minority Alawite sect, to crack down on protesters, who are mostly from the majority Sunni population.

The shabbiha, irregular Alawite loyalists, have also been deployed. Often clad in black, witnesses and activists say these are among the harshest enforcers of a crackdown that has left at least 1,300 civilians dead, according to rights groups.

In a sign cracks are appearing in the army, Turkey’s Anatolian news agency said high-ranking Syrian soldiers and police were among more than 12,000 refugees seeking shelter in Turkey during attacks on protesters in northwestern Syria.

Reuters spoke by telephone to two men presented by Syrian opposition activists as soldiers who had deserted. One was of ethnic Kurdish descent who had escaped to Turkey and another was a captain who said he was originally from the rebellious town of Jisr al-Shughour and was now somewhere by the Turkish border.

Syrian authorities say “armed gangs” and “terrorists” are to blame for the violence. They say at least 500 soldiers and police have been killed by militants.

“SAW TRUTH IN DERAA”

The first deserter, a 21-year-old conscript from the mainly Kurdish northeastern province of al-Hasaka, told Reuters that officers would force soldiers to watch Syrian television showing “infiltrators” — a term used by authorities to mean militants entering or backed from abroad — shooting at protesters.

“Before we went to Deraa, they would tell us there are infiltrators and gunmen among civilians who were opening fire on the army,” the conscript said, referring to the southern city where the uprising against Assad began in March.

“And we were eager to go and fight. We believed it, but when we arrived in Deraa, we no longer believed this story.

“We saw the truth in Deraa. We saw that the gunmen were under the protection of the state,” he said, referring to the shabbiha. He said he saw militiamen ordered by army officers to kill protesters — “to show that infiltrators were doing it.”

The 21-year-old, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family in Syria, said had been drafted to the 14th Brigade in December, arrived in Deraa on April 25 and fled a month later. Dressed in civilian clothes, he escaped from Deraa via Damascus and Hasaka, to Turkey, leaving his family behind.

“You were forced to open fire on protesters,” said the soldier. “I used to fire in the air, at walls, on the ground, just so they could see that ammunition was being fired.

“In the army, you defend yourself in time of war, but don’t go and kill the people of your country, your brothers and your family. My conscience is clear now I don’t have to kill people.”

ARMY LOYALISTS

Witnesses and opposition activists have reported several occasions when they said soldiers refused to fire on protesters, or when soldiers were killed for refusing to kill demonstrators.

Assad still commands loyalty among the mainly Alawite units led by his brother Maher, including the Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Division, each of which have about 10,000 men backed by tanks.

They are better trained and paid than the rest of the army, which numbers over 200,000 troops including conscripts, and are helped by smaller formations of loyalists and Alawite militias in several parts of the country.

A doctor in a military hospital in Damascus said earlier this month that 17 soldiers with gunshot wounds were brought in from Deraa: “I was working in the emergency room and the soldiers were brought in on trucks,” he told Reuters.

“They told me they were shot by shabbiha because they refused to fire on protesters.”

Most of the statements from self-declared deserters that have been aired on Arab satellite television channels or in online videos seem to be from the Sunni rank and file, some of whom appear to have been angered to hear news from home of killings in their native provinces.

Experts say that as the crackdown continues in restive regions, defections could draw in more and more senior soldiers.

A man who described himself as Captain Ibrahim Majbour told Reuters by telephone that he had refused to allow his unit to go to places of unrest to fire on protesters. He said he went to the central province of Homs in an unofficial capacity in May where he said shabbiha and security forces were raiding homes.

“I did not participate in the repression of protests,” he said, adding that he had feared for his own life and decided to defect. A statement by him is posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMEsc5eGW9M&feature=youtu.be).

Majbour said he commanded a unit in the special forces of the 14th Brigade and was originally from Jisr al-Shughour, where the army launched an intensive assault this month.

“I am from Jisr al-Shughour before I am an officer in the army,” he said, adding he was angered by seeing “my family homeless and my town destroyed.” Speaking from an undisclosed location in the same region, on the Turkish border, he warned:

“The officers will come back to achieve victory for the country and to protect protesters.”

He declined to elaborate, but shortly after he spoke on Tuesday a group calling itself the Free Officers Movement said in a statement it was giving the army one week to “determine its position toward the regime and to side with the protesters.”

Reuters could not independently determine the authenticity of the group, or how much support it might have.

A man who said he was a Syrian journalist read out the group’s statement near the Turkish border. It listed the group’s aims, including electing a transitional council, and appointed a Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush, whose defection has been documented on video, as its official spokesman.

The journalist said the group consisted of 16 officers in refugee camps in Turkey and some 35 still in Syria.

While the capabilities of the group remain unclear, such defections signal a potentially violent new element in the three-month-old unrest that has posed the gravest challenge to Assad’s tight control over Syria.

For now, the 21-year-old conscript said, the balance of power is with those with the guns: “How can the regime change when the people have no weapons and the government has them?”

(Additional reporting by Omer Berberoglu in Turkey; Editing by Dominic Evans and Alastair Macdonald)

Syria tank assault kills four near Turkey … JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Syrian troops shot dead four villagers on Wednesday, an activist said, as authorities pressed on with a tank-led assault that has already driven thousands of refugees across the northwest border with Turkey.

“The four died in random firing on the village of Rama from tank machine guns, which has become customary in these unjustified assaults. The tanks started firing on surrounding woods then directed their fire on the village,” Ammar Qarabi, president of the Syrian National Human Rights Organization, told Reuters from exile in Cairo.

The assault on Jabal al-Zawya, a region 35 km south of Turkey that has seen spreading protests against Assad’s 11-year rule was launched overnight, a day after the authorities said they would invite opponents to talks on July 10 to set a framework for a dialogue promised by President Bashar Assad.

Opposition leaders have dismissed the offer, saying it is not credible while mass killings and arrests continue. The Local Coordination Committees, a main activists’ group, said in a statement on Wednesday that 1,000 people have been arrested arbitrarily across Syria over the last week alone.

“Jabal al-Zawya, was one of the first regions in Syria where people took to street demanding the downfall of the regime. The military attacks have now reached them and they will likely result in more killings and in more refugees to Turkey,” said Qarabi, who is from the northwestern province of Idlib.

He said he based his information on several witnesses’ testimony. Syria has banned most international media, making it difficult to independently verify accounts of violence.

A resident of Jabal al-Zawya said he heard heavy explosions overnight around the villages of Rama and Orum al-Joz, west of the highway linking the cities of Hama and Aleppo.

“My relatives there say the shelling is random and that tens of people have been arrested,” he said.

Another resident said 30 tanks went to Jabal al-Zawya on Monday from the village of Bdama on the Turkish border, where troops broke into houses and burnt crops.

Rights campaigners say Assad’s troops, security forces and gunmen have killed over 1,300 civilians since the uprising for political freedom erupted in the southern Hauran Plain in March, including over 150 people killed in a scorched earth campaign against towns and villages in Idlib.

They say scores of troops and police were also killed for refusing to fire on civilians. Syrian authorities say more than 500 soldiers and police died in clashes with “armed terrorist groups”, whom they also blame for most civilian deaths.

Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told Sky News: “We hope that by conducting and hastening the national dialogue, we will be able to isolate any militant or violent group and work together with the international community to overcome that big problem.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report June 29, 2011, 5:14 PM (GMT+02:00)

Kavoshgar-5 can carry a nuclear payload

British Foreign Secretary William Hague stated Wednesday, June 29:  “Iran has also been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches, including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in contravention of UN resolution 1929.”

This was reported first by debkafile last year and repeated in the face of US and Israeli denials. Hague was the first  Western leader to confirm debkafile disclosures up to and including our report Tuesday on Iran’s 10-day exercise. Our military sources stressed that Iran’s plan to launch a monkey into space – and therefore a 330-kilo payload – by the Kavoshgar-5 was evidence that it had developed a rocket capable of delivering a nuclear warhead at any point on the planet. Click here for this report.

Hague also pointed out in a statement to parliament that Iran had announced plans to triple its capacity to produce 20 percent enriched uranium – “enrichment levels far greater than is needed for peaceful nuclear energy.”
debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources note that the Foreign Secretary’s words follow the concentration of large-scale American naval, air and marine forces in the Mediterranean, the Aden and Oman straits, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. This seaborne army is positioned for strikes against targets in Iran, Syria and Libya at 12 hours’ notice. It may be safely assumed that Hague’s ominous disclosure was pre-arranged with Washington.
In the past month, our sources have also quoted several Saudi royal princes as warning that if Iran attained a nuclear capability, it would not be the only Persian Gulf nation to be armed with a nuclear weapon and missiles for its delivery.
As Iran’s military exercise went into its third day, Aerospace commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced the launching of the new Ghadir radar system which he said had been “designed and manufactured to discover air targets, stealth planes, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and satellites at low orbits.” The system, claimed to have a range of 1,100 kilometers in radius and height of 300 kilometers, was said to be operational in Iran for the first time.

In another blatantly hostile gesture towards the United Sates, Hajizadeh announced that Russian military experts had been allowed to examine American drones said to have been shot down in the Persian Gulf for a close-up examination.
This disclosure came on top of his announcement Tuesday that the fourteen 2,000-kilometer range missiles tested Tuesday were designed exclusively to hit American bases in Afghanistan and Israel.
He referred to the downed US drones in the plural while not indicating where, when and how they were shot down. The sort of inspection permitted the Russian military delegation of the pilotless aircraft’s electronic systems is normally conducted discreetly so as not ruffle relations. This time, it was most unusually made public – not a good message for Russian-US ties especially in view of Moscow’s steps against Washington’s war on Libya and bid for sanctions against Syria.
By letting Russia know how they were shot down and displaying models constructed by reverse engineering, Tehran and Moscow indicated they shared the secrets of the US drones’  vulnerabilities to attack.

Six months ago, Iran announced it had downed two American drones on January 2. At the time, Revolutionary Guards navy commander Ali Fadavi said the planes shot down were among the most modern US navy drones with a long-range capability.
The US Fifth Fleet operating in the Persian Gulf never responded to this Iranian statement but it did not deny it either. Generally, the American navy in the Middle East uses the unmanned MQ-8B Fire Scout helicopter for information-gathering missions, but the Iranians did not specify whether the American drones came from ships or from other air bases in the Middle East.

Britain: Iran testing missiles w… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  Iran has been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday.

He told parliament the tests were in clear contravention of UN resolution 1929.

Iran denied the claims.

“None of the missiles tested by Iran is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead,” Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeman, told Reuters.

Iran is carrying out a 10-day military exercise in a show of strength it hopes will warn Israel and the United States against any attack.

As part of the exercise, it test-fired surface-to-surface missiles on Tuesday with a maximum range of 2,000 km.

On Wednesday it was also announced that Iran has tested a new radar system. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division, said the new radar system, called Ghadir, was used for the first time.

“The Ghadir radar has been designed and built to detect airborne targets, radar-evading planes, cruise and ballistic missiles and low-orbit satellites,” he was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.

The radar has a range of 1,100 km (680 miles) and a height of 300 km (190 miles), he said.

As part of the “Great Prophet 6” exercise, Iran test-fired surface-to-surface missiles on Tuesday, with a maximum range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), emphasizing it could hit Israel or US targets in the region in the event of attack.

The United States and Israel have said they do not rule out military strikes on Iran if diplomatic means fail to stop it developing nuclear weapons. Tehran says its uranium enrichment program is geared to producing electricity, not atom bombs.

Saudi Arabia signs nuclear-energy deal with Argentina.

(This is the beginning of the Arab response to Iran’s nuclear program. – JW)

Al Arabiya

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

A desalination plant in the eastern city of Khubar, Saudi Arabia. (File Photo)