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DEBKAfile Special Report June 3, 2011, 8:24 AM (GMT+02:00)

Iran’s nuclear clock ticks steadily

The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, American’s scientific watchdog on world nuclear weapons production, estimates that by Dec. 2008, Iran had accumulated enough U-235 to fuel one nuclear bomb; by 2009, enough for a second, by August 2010 material for a third bomb and by April 2011, enough enriched uranium for a fourth bomb.
These estimates presuppose an Iranian decision to further process low-enriched material to weapons grade – a process taking no more than a couple of months.
Iran, says the Wisconsin Project, is consolidating its status as a “virtual” nuclear weapon state – meaning it can set about building a bomb whenever its rulers so decide.
In its twice-annual report published Thursday, June 2, Wisconsin revealed three further developments in Iran’s nuclear drive:

1. Since November 2010, when Iran stopped enriching uranium in all cascades at the Natanz plant for about a week (the report does not give the reason for the stoppage – possibly a Stuxnet virus invasion of its computer control system), the enrichment rate has increased. The 5,000 centrifuges spinning in February 2011 increased to nearly 6,000 in May 2011.
debkafile‘s Iranian sources add: Prof. Ferei-doon Abbasi Davani has taken over as director of the enrichment complex at Natanz. He was formerly in charge of combating the Stuxflex worm.  Last November, Prof. Abbasi Dayani escaped with light injuries from an attack by a pair of motorcyclists who attached a sticky bomb to his car. It occurred near the Imam Hossein University in Tehran where most of Iran’s secret nuclear labs are located.

2.  Wisconsin quotes the International Atomic Energy Agency’s May 2011 report that one of its seals was broken in the “feed and withdrawal area” of the Natanz enrichment plant.
This means that Iran took action to conceal the real amount of is enriched uranium stockpile from the nuclear watchdog and the fact, as Wisconsin reports, that it has accumulated enough material for building four nuclear bombs. Its steady progress will go undetected until the next IAEA inventory in October or November.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources point out that Tehran has won a period of six to seven months for keeping its nuclear activities hidden from oversight with no one in the West or in Israel able to find out what is going on at the Natanz enrichment plant.
3.  Wisconsin goes on to state: “Uncertainties about the number of centrifuges operated by Iran make it difficult to draw a conclusion about the performance of individual machines.”  More machines may be switched on when IAEA inspectors are not present while less, more advanced centrifuges, may take over after the inspection is over.
Our sources stress that these revelations are highly pertinent to the controversy taking place in Israel over the surprising comments by ex-Mossad Director Meir Dagan.
Dubbed “Mister Stop the Bomb” for reputedly directing covert operations that held off Iran’s nuclear threat for five or six years – though this may an exaggeration – Dagan suddenly began speaking out strongly against any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Wednesday, June 1, he implicitly warned that such an attack would precipitate a regional war in which Israel would fare badly.

Israel’s political and defense establishments have always had their doves but Dagan is sounding one like for the first time.

The controversy around his comments reflects a similar argument afoot in US political and defense circles over whether the time has come to smash Iran’s nuclear capability or stand by and let the Islamic Republic becomes a “virtual nuclear weapon state.”

In the last three years, the two schools of thought for and against military action against Iran have been joined by a third, which affirms that the US and Israel can live with an Iran armed with one or two nuclear bombs because this number would be dwarfed even by Israel’s reputed stock let alone the American arsenal. Therefore, until Iran stockpiles a serous arsenal of weapons, it does not constitute an existential threat to Israel.
The Wisconsin Project’s latest report explodes this argument because it exposes the steady accumulation of materials for four bombs in two-and-a-half years and Iran’s dogged advance toward a serious arsenal unless it is stopped.
That is the reason why the military option is back on the table in Jerusalem.

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BBC News – Syria: Attack on central town of Rastan ‘kills 15’.

Syrian government troops have heavily bombarded Rastan, near Homs, in the centre of the country, killing at least 15 people, activists say.

More than 50 people have been killed in Rastan since a military operation there started at the weekend, reports say.

The offensive comes despite an amnesty offer by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the release of hundreds of detainees.

The initiatives have been dismissed by Syrian opposition groups.

The opposition groups, which are meeting in Antalya in neighbouring Turkey, say the Syrian government’s concessions have come too late, correspondents say.

The groups are working on what they hope will be a roadmap for peaceful transition.

The Local Co-ordinating Committee, which helps to organise and document the country’s protests, gave the names of the people it said were killed in Rastan in the latest artillery and tank bombardments.

The committee said the offensive had hit at least two mosques and a bakery, as well as houses that collapsed, killing entire families.

Eyewitnesses told BBC Arabic that army and security forces are not able to take control the town, even though it has been surrounded by tanks over the past few days.

Detainees released

Following the announcement on Tuesday of a conditional amnesty, hundreds of detainees have been released.

More seem to be on the way, although it is not clear if the authorities intend to free all the 10,000 or more people they are believed to have detained in the past 10 weeks and the thousands already in jail before that, says the BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut.

The authorities have announced the formation of a high-level commission to oversee a proposed national dialogue aimed at stabilising the situation.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Syria since an uprising against President Assad began in March, activists say.

Reports from Syria are hard to verify independently, as foreign journalists are not allowed into the country.

No such thing as the better devil – JPost – Opinion – Op-Eds.

  Swiss bankers usually have a good sense for where the wind is blowing. So Syria’s Bashar Assad has every reason to be worried by the announcement that Swiss banks might freeze his personal accounts. Is this the beginning of the end of the 41-year Assad family regime in Syria? We may not know the answer for some time, but indications are that it will never be the same.

So is that good or bad – and does it make a difference? More or less everything in the Middle East has in recent months revolved around the so-called “Arab Spring” and the supposedly dichotomic changes in the Arab world.

Some, especially in America, view this as a great popular movement in the spirit of Jefferson and Madison, inspired by the teachings of Locke and Voltaire – while others, more realistic, like political scientist Robert Kaplan, have warned that in the Middle East, as central authority dissolves, the issue is not democracy but the threat of anarchy, and one might add autocracy or theocracy – and any or all of those developments are conceivable – certainly in Syria. Though it is a unified state, it isn’t a unified people; tribal and denominational differences far outweigh any joined identity (just as the Palestinians are basically a tribal society, boding ill for possible statehood).

One cannot, of course, discuss Syria without mentioning its central role as an agent of terror. In the US there are voices which hold that with the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the war on terror is over. This would mean, at least implicitly, that there are different sorts of terrorists, and that the criteria applied to al-Qaida or its Pakistani host do not necessarily fit Hamas or Hezbollah and their protector, Syria (there is justified anger in the US at the fact that bin Laden’s headquarters was located only a few miles from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad – but what about Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s headquarters, plumb in the middle of Damascus?) US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have had a largely unfocused view about relations with Syria, as did quite a few Israelis – with the result that American policy was to engage rather than confront. There was a brief moment after the demise of Saddam Hussein when this could have been changed, but the Bush administration didn’t pursue it. The Obama administration naively tried to open a new chapter with Damascus – to no avail, misinterpreting the real priorities of the Assad dictatorship.

Sometimes détente works; it worked in Europe and it worked with Egypt after the Yom Kippur war – president Sadat wanted to rid himself of the Soviet Union and cast his lot with America. The eventual Egyptian-Israel peace treaty was part of that. But are there any convincing reasons to believe that Syria wants to sever its ties with Iran and cast its lot with America? Syria, which murders its citizens? Syria, which (with the help of North Korea) tried to build a nuclear reactor? Syria, which has amassed the largest missile arsenal in the world, many with chemical warheads? Syria, which refuses to loosen its stranglehold on Lebanon, and which, with Iran, is one of the world’s biggest founts of terrorism? BUT WHAT about Israel, or more to the point, the chances for peace between Syria and Israel? Conventional wisdom, which in the Middle East is often more conventional than wise, maintained that as the Assads’ regime had kept the Golan border quiet, why risk toppling it? True, it has kept it quiet – and why wouldn’t it, with the IDF sitting more or less on top of Damascus? But was the Syrian-Israeli border quiet until 1967, when the Golan was Syrian? It was nothing of the kind – in fact, it was Israel’s most dangerous border, with civilians in the north almost continuously under attack. Neither before 1967 nor after did Syria’s rulers have a real interest in peace with Israel, among other things because the state of war served as an excuse for maintaining their brutal military hold. Four Israeli prime ministers – Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak and Olmert – explored the possibility of peace with Syria, only to be disabused by Syria’s disingenuousness, including its insolent demand to keep the eastern shore of the Kinneret and the Hamat-Gader region, a part of mandatory Palestine which it had grabbed by force after the establishment of the State of Israel.

Turkey’s real or sham efforts to broker a deal between Damascus and Jerusalem look somewhat suspect in light of its behavior since then. Those who over the years urged Israel to renounce helter-skelter its claim to the Golan – supposedly in order to come to an arrangement with the Assad regime (“everyone knows what the price for peace is”) now look pretty foolish.

Syria is indeed a dangerous place, more than Libya even.

Nothing positive can be said about its present regime, but nor is there any certainty about who could or would replace it. Another army general? Extreme Sunni Muslims? Nobody knows. As for Israel, contrary to the state of affairs with Egypt, about which the concern is that a reasonably stable situation might unravel – with regards to Syria, an already bad situation can only become worse. So this is not a case of “better the devil you know” – but rather that one of the candidates – Assad or those who might replace him – might be a dangerous and questionable lot.

The writer is the former Israel Ambassador to the US and currently heads the Prime Minister’s forum of US-Israel Relations.

Peres: World needs missile-defen… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  President Shimon Peres said that there should build a missile-defense system to protect the world from Iran, in a Thursday interview with Israel Radio.

He added that the US, NATO and Middle Eastern countries should make building such a defense system their mission.

“Every country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are in Iranian missiles’ range,” Peres said.

The president said that Israel has short-range missiles, and should obtain medium-range missiles as well. He plans to discuss the matter during his trip to Italy on Thursday.

Peres flew to Rome to celebrate Italy’s Republic Day, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the country’s unification as the guest of President Giorgio Napolitano, whom he hosted in Israel last month.

Together with 80 other world leaders, Peres will witness a colorful military parade, after which he will have lunch with some of Italy’s most important opinion-makers. In the evening he will attend a gala 150th anniversary concert that Napolitano has organized for his guests, and attend a state dinner at the presidential palace.

On Friday, Peres will officially open the Israeli pavilion at the Art Biennale in Venice, and in the evening he will be the guest of the Italian Jewish community.

Greer Fay Cashman contributed to this report

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 2, 2011, 8:52 AM (GMT+02:00)

Ahmadinejad urges Egypt to rebuild ties – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Iranian president tells Egyptian academics bilateral cooperation will see emergence of new power which will force ‘Zionists’ out of region, urges Cairo to sever ties with US

News agencies

ranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Egypt on Wednesday to rebuild diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, saying the emergence of a new “great power” would force “Zionists” to leave the region.

At a meeting with Egyptian academics, clerics and media representatives in Tehran, Ahmadinejad pushed his plan to rebuild links with Cairo after the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February.

“I proudly announce that we are ready to give all our experiences to the Egyptian nation … if there is an investment opportunity in Egypt we are proudly willing to do that,” state broadcaster IRIB quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Under Mubarak, Egypt was a close US ally which maintained its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and shared Saudi Arabia’s suspicions of Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.

Ahmadinejad in Tehran (Photo: EPA)

“Our enemies do not want us rebuild our ties because they know a great political and economic power will emerge from our cooperation,” Ahmadinejad said.

“Then all the Zionists along with other enemies of nations must leave and escape this region.”

Ahmadinejad said an alliance with Iran would remove Egypt’s need to rely on US support.

“If we stand together, there is no need for their (American) help because Iran and Egypt have needs which can be met by relying on each other’s capabilities,” he said.

Ties between Cairo and Tehran were severed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and Egypt’s signing of the peace treaty with Israel. Although Egypt and Iran do not have full diplomatic relations, each has a diplomatic mission in the other’s capital.

‘Islamic awakening’

Tehran sees improved ties with Egypt as a desirable outcome of what it calls the Arab world’s “Islamic awakening”, which it hopes will reduce US influence and unite Muslim countries.

Last week Egyptian authorities briefly detained and questioned an Iranian diplomat on suspicion of spying. He was released when his diplomatic status was confirmed and returned to Iran.

Two Iranian naval ships passed through Egypt’s Suez Canal in February, the first to be allowed to do so since the Islamic revolution, a move Israel described as a “provocation”.

On Tuesday Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was reported as saying that Tehran was “optimistic” about boosting ties with Egypt.

“We are optimistic about the future of ties between the two countries,” Salehi was quoted as saying by state television’s website.

Reuters and AFP contributed to this report

Australia to UN: Refer Assad to I… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

  The UN should consider referring Syrian President Bashar Assad to the International Criminal Court, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said on Wednesday, according to an AFP report.

Rudd said he had widened sanctions on Syria to include more individuals associated with the Assad, and that he would discuss additional legal steps with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“I believe it is high time that the Security Council now consider a formal referral of President Assad to the International Criminal Court,” Rudd was quoted as saying to the National Press Club. “I am corresponding with the UN secretary general today and the president of the Security Council today on that matter.”

Rudd’s comments come after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said the reported torture of a Syrian boy shows the “total collapse” of Syrian authorities’ willingness to listen to anti-government protesters.

In some of her harshest comments about Syria’s crackdown on the protests, Clinton suggested the Assad government’s hold on power was weakening, while a US spokesman described the 13-year-old boy’s reported treatment as “horrifying” and “appalling.”

“Every day that goes by the position of the government becomes less tenable and the demands of the Syrian people for change only grow stronger,” Clinton said.

Also commenting on the torture of the 13-year-old boy, Rudd was quoted by AFP as saying, “When you see the large-scale directed action by a head of government against his own civilian population, including the murder of a 13-year-old boy and his torture, then the deepest question arises in the minds of the people of the world as to whether any claim to legitimacy remains,” Rudd said.

The Australian foreign minister added that the “brutal act” was carried out by a “desperate regime,” and that he believed the boy’s death would “further galvanize the international community in their attitude to the brutality being deployed in Syria at present by the regime against innocent people.”

In the latest round of violence on Monday, four civilians were killed with when Syrian security forces entered the central town of Talbiseh to crush dissent against Assad, a human rights group reported.

Obsessed with Israel, Western Leaders Ignore Iran’s Nukes « Commentary Magazine.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be laughing his head off. As Abe noted yesterday, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report unveiled evidence that Iran has been working on technology to arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. It also disclosed evidence of Tehran’s work “on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon.” If a smoking gun were needed, this is it.

Yet the “international community” hasn’t uttered a peep about the report. It’s too busy obsessing over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead.

Two days after the report’s publication, the G8 met in Deauville. Its concluding statement devoted six paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, notable for both their specificity (“we express our strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by President Obama on May 19, 2011”) and their urgency (“The time to resume the Peace Process is now.”)

In contrast, Iran’s nukes merited exactly one content-free paragraph:

We note with deep concern the recent report by the IAEA which underlines that Iran is not implementing a number of its obligations, that areas of concern remain regarding possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme and that the Agency is therefore unable to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. . . . We regret that while Iran finally met twice with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union High Representative, following their intensive diplomatic efforts and the adoption of measures in UNSCR 1929, it was not possible to reach any substantive result, Iran having not yet entered into a genuine dialogue without preconditions. Depending on Iran’s actions, we will determine the need for additional measures in line with the dual-track approach.

Translation: At some unspecified future time, the G8 may—but then again it may not—decide on some unspecified new measures against Iran. But there’s no hurry, because it still hasn’t even concluded that Iran is pursuing nukes. The G8 is merely “unable to conclude” the opposite.

The same warped perspective characterized Obama’s May 19 speech. Granted, it predated the latest IAEA report, but Iran’s nuclear program isn’t new. Yet in a major Middle East policy address, Obama devoted exactly half a sentence to it: “Our opposition to Iran’s intolerance and Iran’s repressive measures, as well as its illicit nuclear program and its support of terror, is well known.” No hint of urgency there, or of any plans to stop the program.

In contrast, the president devoted 12 full paragraphs, almost one-fifth of the speech, to detailing his vision of an Israeli-Palestinian deal, which he deemed “more urgent than ever.”

Objectively speaking, Iran is by far the more important problem. Its strategic location on the Persian Gulf enables it to shut off much of the world’s oil supply at will, and even without nukes, it has fomented terror worldwide; with nukes to deter attack, Iran would have the West at its mercy. Israel, by contrast, controls no vital natural resources; its location is strategically insignificant; and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hasn’t spread beyond its own borders in decades.

Yet the West continues blithely pursuing its pet obsession, leaving Tehran free to laugh all the way to the bomb.

Obama’s new security staff may approve attack on Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Obama has chosen the summer of 2011, about a year before the election season warms up in 2012, to refresh his national security staff, a move that may have serious repercussions on Israel.

By Amir Oren

Israeli acquaintances of General Martin Dempsey, the chairman-elect of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, speak extremely highly of him. He is a pro, keeps away from politics and from self-aggrandizement, a military authority, and serious. President Barack Obama announced his appointment, which has to be approved by the Senate, four months before the term of office of Admiral Michael Mullen ends. Alongside him, and slightly above him, Dempsey will encounter a new Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, the successor to Robert Gates who will retire at the end of the month.

	General Martin Dempsey.
	Photo by: AP

Obama has chosen the summer of 2011, about a year before the election season warms up in 2012, to refresh his national security staff. Within a few short months, he released his national security adviser, the retired General James Jones, in favor of his deputy, Tom Donilon; he parted from Gates; he transferred Panetta from the CIA to the Pentagon and General David Petraeus from commanding the forces in Afghanistan to the CIA; and he signed another round of senior military appointments. His image as supreme commander was strengthened following the success of the campaign against Osama bin Laden.

Dempsey, like Petraeus and others of their generation, is a thinking officer who reads and writes a great deal. As head of Tradoc, the Training and Doctrine Command of the ground forces, he aimed at enhancing it as an organization that can learn new things, and adjust to surprises and new and unknown rivals. Most of his time in the past two decades has been devoted to the Middle East – as an operations officer with the armored corps in the 1991 Iraq war, as a planner in the joint chiefs of staff, as the head of the American delegation that upgraded the Saudi Arabian national guard, as the commander of an armored division in Iraq in 2003, as the person responsible for training the new Iraqi army, and as the replacement for a commander who was ousted in the Central Command that covers Iran and Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

Dempsey is familiar with the Israel Defense Forces both from his days in Tradoc that first gained praise for studying the lessons of the Yom Kippur War just when the young Dempsey, a fresh Second Lieutenant from West Point, preferred the armored corps to the other corps, and from exchanges of information and opinions between the ground forces of both armies in recent years. The IDF has a permanent liaison officer with Tradoc at its headquarters in Virginia. Tradoc has also studied in depth the lessons of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead and the war against terrorism in the territories.

The head of the chiefs of staff does not command the corps but serves as the senior military adviser to the president. During the 1990s, only generals from the ground forces served in this position – Colin Powell, John Shalikashvili, and Hugh Shelton (whose bureau Dempsey headed ). In the past decade, only officers from the Air Force, Marines and Navy were appointed. Dempsey’s appointment reflects the decisive part played by the ground forces, which Dempsey headed for only a few weeks, in American intervention overseas, mainly in the Middle East. It is deeply involved with its current assignments and does not have strength for further involvements.

Therefore the changes in leadership at the Pentagon are not merely an American story. The chance that Dempsey, at the start of his term of office, would advise Obama to attack Iran, or to permit Israel to do so, is not high. The outgoing head, Mullen, is likewise not enthusiastic about that but his ties with the IDF’s general staff are close and it can be assumed that, if Benny Gantz was persuaded to sign a plan by Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Mullen would not be happy but would also not torpedo it.

The conclusion is that between the end of June and Gates’ retirement, and the end of September and Mullen’s retirement, the danger that Netanyahu and Barak will aim at a surprise in Iran is especially great, especially since this would divert attention from the Palestinian issue. As the Supreme Court explained to Moshe Katsav’s lawyers, some plans for summer vacations might be canceled.