WarSclerotic

Syrian uprising songwriter meets gruesome end – CBS News.

In this Friday, July 22, 2011, a citizen journalism image made on a mobile phone and provided by Shaam News Network, Syrian anti-regime protesters gather during a rally in al-Assy square in the western city of Hama, Syria. The Arabic on banner reads:”we will never forget our martyrs and prisoners.” (AP Photo)

(AP)

BEIRUT — Ibrahim Qashoush’s lyrics moved thousands of protesters in Syria who sang his jaunty verses at rallies, telling President Bashar Assad, “Time to leave.” So when his body was dumped in the river flowing through his hometown, his killers added an obvious message: His throat was carved out.

Qashoush’s slaying underlines how brutal Syria’s turmoil has become as authorities try to crush a persistent uprising. His fellow activists are convinced he was killed by security forces and fear it could mark a new campaign to liquidate protest leaders.

An estimated 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests that have been raging around Syria for more than four months, most from shootings by troops on anti-Bashar rallies. Qashoush’s case was a rare, targeted killing of a prominent activist — made more chilling by the clear intention to send a bloody message.

The 42-year-old Qashoush, a father of three boys, was a fireman in the central Syrian city of Hama who wrote poetry in his spare time, said a close friend, Saleh Abu Yaman. Before the uprising began in mid-March, he’d write about love or hard economic times.

“All the poems and songs he wrote were by instinct. He used to be sitting with his friends and then start reciting a poem,” Abu Yaman said.

But once the protests erupted and spread, Qashoush turned his pen to the uprising. Hama became one of the hottest centers of the demonstrations. In early June, security forces shot dead 65 people there, and since than it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing it, conducting overnight raids into the city.

The hometown son’s star rose with the city. At nearly every protest, the crowds were singing his most popular lyric, “Come on, Bashar, time to leave.” It was put to a bouncy tune, and his poems rang with a down-to-earth, jokey

“Screw you, Bashar, and screw those who salute you. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!” hundreds of thousands sang behind a singer on stage in Hama’s central Assi Square during a rally at the beginning of the month. “Freedom is at our doors. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!”

Two days later, on July 3, Qashoush disappeared.

Abu Yaman says he was told by witnesses that Qashoush was walking to work in central Hama when a white vehicle stopped, several men jumped out and muscled him into the car. They then sped away.

“We immediately knew he was captured by security agents,” Abu Yaman told The Associated Press.

Early the next day, residents found his body in the Orontes River, which cuts through Hama. His throat had been cut away. YouTube footage of his body shows him being put on a bed, his head flopping loosely to show a gaping, bloody wound on the front of his neck where his throat used to be.

“This is a purely criminal act,” said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which track the protests in Syria. “They executed him.”

Repeated calls to Qashoush’s home by the AP were unanswered over the past days. It is nearly impossible to independently verify the claims on either side of the conflict in Syria, where the government has banned most foreign journalists and restricts coverage by reporters inside the country.

Since the uprising began, there have been several cases of protesters being detained by security force, only to have their bodies handed over later to their families, often with brutal marks of torture. Among them were two boys detained during protests in the southern province of Daraa in April. The body of one, 15-year-old Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, was bruised, his teeth broken in; the other, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, had a gaping wound in his skull, a broken neck and was mutilated — his penis severed.

But Qashoush’s case appeared distinct. Many prominent activists have been arrested, but there have been few instances of them being swiftly killed and dumped in a way so overtly intended to send a message.

Idilbi said he fears it could signal a new tactic of targeting protest organizers. The singer who sang Qashoush’s song has gone into hiding, activists say.

Like the two slain boys, Qashoush has since become a rallying point for protesters. Thousands attended his funeral on July 4, at Hama’s northern cemetery of Hamra was attended of thousands of Hama’s residents. Crowds have sung his songs at protests since. A video posted on a Facebook page dedicated to Qashoush proclaims, “They killed him in order to silence him. They don’t know that he lives in the hearts of millions.”

“He was the nightingale of the revolution,” Abu Yaman said.

Poll: Arab views of Iran plummet in wake o… JPost – Middle East.

    WASHINGTON – Arab attitudes towards Iran have worsened sharply in recent years, according to a new six-nation poll released by the Arab American Institute Wednesday.

Since 2006, Iran’s favorability has plummeted from the 70-90 percent range among Arab countries to a current range of 10-40%, with the average favorability rating at just 27.5%. Of the six countries surveyed – Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – only Lebanon’s, at 63%, has a majority favorability rating. Saudis’ views are the worst, with only 6% viewing Iran favorably.

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“Their quest for hegemony is one that is very disconcerting in the Arab world. There’s not an interest in seeing Iran in the role that Iran seeks for itself, which is the main power in the Gulf region,” assessed AAI president James Zogby, who conducted the poll.

“It is a regime attempting to insert itself in Iraq, insert itself in other countries, and play off of regional alienation.”

He said those actions made a big difference in the changing context of the region.

In 2006, after the Lebanon war and with hostilities high between Israel and Hamas, Iran had been able to position itself as “the challenger to the US and the challenger to Israel,” according to Zogby. “It knew it could play off Arab anger and alienation by becoming the pole to draw people in the region, to draw their outrage, and to present itself as the champion.”

But amidst the recent regional upheaval, in which Iran has sought to intervene in places where Arab publics are challenging their leaders, such as Bahrain, has lead many to view Tehran as a “nuisance,” he said.

Increasingly, Arabs voice concern over Iran’s nuclear program, see it as not leading to peace and stability, and its behavior in Arab countries.

All of the publics surveyed, for instance, had only a small minority agreeing with the statement that “The Middle East would be more secure if Iran were a nuclear power.”

“One would use the term plummeting or free fall to describe the situation,” Zogby said.

However, despite the widespread Arab discomfort with Iran, Zogby assessed that there was not a clear consensus on what policy path was preferred.

The survey found a strong divide on the posture the Gulf Cooperation Council, an organization of [what] states], should take toward Iran. While majorities in Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE thought the GCC should “reject” Iran’s role in the region, only a third of Egyptians and Lebanese agreed. Though no country had a majority that thought the GCC should “welcome” Iran’s role, large pluralities in many thought “do nothing” was the best option.

“There’s a wariness. How governments in the region respond to a country viewed as a problem is going to vary. Some are going to want to confront it. Some are going to want to reach out to it, engage it.”

He suggested that “if there’s any policy implication for this for the United States, it’s to leave well enough alone,” warning that one way to disrupt to the current slide in Arab opinion toward Iran would be for it to interfere.

“The way to change that dynamic would be if countries that have a lower favorability rating than Iran [in the Arab world] were to take action against Iran, giving Iran an opportunity to once again take advantage of that situation,” he said.

The polls was conducted among 4,000 Arab respondents over the course of three weeks in June. The margin of error in Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia was +/- 3.5% and +/-4.5% in Lebanon, Jordan and the UAE.

Israel readies for rocket barrage | AHN.

No one can say when the next war will come, but when it does, Israel’s main cities will almost certainly come under sustained bombardment by thousands of tons of warheads. That scenario has the military commanders responsible for protecting its citizens in a frenzy of preparedness.

Across the country this summer Israelis have been subject to home front drills, sending people scurrying into shelters, sirens blaring and gas masks distributed. Defense planners want to use underground parking garages and road tunnels as massive bomb shelters. Israel’s enemies – Hizbullah in the north, Hamas in the south, and Syria and Iran to the east – are stocking up missiles on an unprecedented scale.

“Most of the rockets that are in the world today are pointed at Israel,” Avi Schnurr, executive director of the Israel Missile Defense Association, told The Media Line. “The work that has been done in Israel, the leadership shown in terms of missile defense, has been extraordinary.”

Matan Vilnai, Israel’s minister for home front defense, told a conference on missile defense on Monday that Palestinian rockets will hit Tel Aviv in any future conflict in the Gaza Strip.

“In the next conflict with Gaza, even if it is at a much lower intensity than a war, missiles will fall on Gush Dan — for all intents and purposes, inside Tel Aviv,” Vilnai said, referring to the heavily populated center of the country.

“Terror organizations are making great efforts in order to threaten our heartland,” he added. “Today we understand that the next war there will be no difference between the rear and the front line.”

“There is no country in the world that is threatened like the State of Israel,” Vilnai said, adding that only South Korea came close.

Last month, Israel carried out a massive five-day exercise drilling its home front on dealing with a massive missile attack. Dubbed “Turning Point 5,” the drill involved testing the nationwide siren-alert system, distribution of nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) protection kits, evacuations and shelter procedures. For the first time, lawmakers also participated in the exercise.

The way the drill was played out saw Hizbullah launching rocket attacks on Israel, joined by missile barrages from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Finally, Syria joins in with rocket strikes. Israeli intelligence estimates that among the 50,000 rockets in Hizbullah’s arsenal, at least a few hundred can reach Tel Aviv. Syria’s formidable arsenal of Scud rockets are tipped with chemical and possibly biological warheads, and can reach nearly every location in the country.

“Syria possesses one of the largest ballistic missile-development programs in the region. Its arsenal already includes hundreds of mobile SCUD-class and short-range ballistic missiles,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Frank Rose said in Tel Aviv on Monday.

Speaking at the missile conference, Rose said the U.S. would continue to collaborate with Israel on its missile defenses and said that it was soon dispatching to the region another early-warning radar system to enhance Israel’s missile-detection capabilities.

The civil defense exercises have coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, which saw Hizbullah fire more than 4,000 rockets at northern Israel. That was seen as many as an impetus for the reforms, but the true turning point in Israel’s history came 20 years ago in the aftermath of the First Gulf War when nearly 40 Iraqi Scud rockets struck its city centers.

“This was the first time that we understood that we have to pay attention to what we call the rear, citizens trying to live their normal lives back home,” Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of security studies at Tel Aviv University, told The Media Line.

Israel developed a multi-layered active defense against missiles that include systems such as the Arrow, Iron Dome and David Sling to intercept rockets. Israeli citizens are arguably one of the most protected in the world. By law, all apartments or houses built since 1991 must have a bomb shelter and the bulk of the population is equipped with gas masks.

In December, Israel’s Air Defense Command inaugurated a national warning system called the Ballistic Picture Control Center that links all early-warning radars detecting missile strikes. In June, the Personal Message System came on line that sends text messages to mobile phones in an area where a missile is expected to hit.

Intelligence reports were leaked last week saying that the embattled Syrian regime had been transferring missiles to Hizbullah in Lebanon, including 10 Scud-D class rockets due to the unrest sweeping the country. If true, this would mark the first time that a non-state organization holds such destructive weaponry.

The motivation behind the transfer seems to be concern that anti-government protesters may raid the warehouses, a further sign that Hizbullah’s benefactor Iran may sense President Bashar Al-Assad’s rule was ending.

The reports appear to have been sidelined by other issues in Israel that the public has found more pressing and tangible, such as rising housing costs, striking doctors and the price of cottage cheese.

But according to Amir Rapaport, a former military analyst for the daily Ma’ariv, there is another reason for this behavior: suppression.

“As in recent years, the Israeli public prefers to suppress the dramatically expanding missile threat from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza,” Rapaport wrote, adding that Israel’s options in the matter were limited to aggressive diplomatic warnings, or attacking them, thus risking igniting a Third Lebanon War.

The IDF’s Home Front command is predicting that another confrontation with Hizbullah will see at least 400 rockets pounding the northern port city of Haifa. For this reason, it is working to turn the Carmel Tunnel into a public bomb shelter able to hold some 6,000 people. There are also plans to prepare a field hospital in the tunnel.

The National Emergency Authority is also reportedly seeking legislation giving it the power to expropriate parking lots and other underground spaces to provide the public with vital services during an emergency.

While the leaders and commanders in Israel have been highlighting the risk of nuclear-tipped missile from Iran, they have rarely spoken of the other, potentially more deadly in scope, threat that comes from chemical weapons. These are aimed at Israel in staggering quantities.

According to the Israel Defense website, Germany has offered to give Israel eight TEP 90 decontamination systems free of charge.

In the future, the warheads are expected to be more numerous and deadlier. They won’t just damage apartment buildings, but topple them. Some have warheads weighing hundreds of kilos such as the M-600, Fateh-110 and Scud Ds with a nearly half ton warhead. The drills are as much psychological preparation as they are physical.

“The effect of rockets and missiles is pretty much psychological and the way to deal with it is to train and explain and instruct the population so they understand what they have to do to reduce their physical load,” said Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a former director of research and development at Israel’s Defense Ministry.

Paradoxically, it was Israel’s ability to vanquish it enemies on the battlefield that led them to seek other methods of threatening the Jewish state. Missiles allow them to bypass the army, slip by its air force and hit its civilian soft underbelly where it hurts the most.

“Almost all of our hostile neighbors chose to move in the direction of missiles and rockets because it was a kind of a weak point on our side,” Ben-Israel said.

Analysis: Syria faces slide … JPost – Features – Week in review.

    LONDON – The popular upheaval in Syria is growing bolder and the cracks in the establishment are getting deeper, yet there is a long and bloody road ahead if protesters are to unseat President Bashar Assad and end his family’s 40 years in power.

The price of stalemate is rising daily: sectarian mayhem, a growing protest movement and a faltering economy, with no sign that Bashar and his minority Alawite clan are considering an exit strategy after four decades in power.

Yet so far, there is no sign of a tipping point that would assure success for protesters, as in Tunisia and Egypt, where millions took to the streets to topple autocratic leaders.

“The situation has not reached a critical mass,” said Patrick Seale, biographer of Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad.

“Damascus hasn’t risen, the security services haven’t split yet, the economy hasn’t collapsed. The regime looks weak and the opposition looks weaker,” he said.

Sectarian killings in the city of Homs this month may be a foretaste for a country with an ethnic and religious mix and a long history of repression by the Alawite-led security forces.

The Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shi’ite Islam, is a minority in Syria, which has a Sunni Muslim majority, as well as smaller numbers of Druze, Christians and non-Arab Kurds.

A group of Alawite men, including four security men, went missing on July 14. The bodies of four of them were found killed. Some Alawites from their neighborhood in Homs took to the streets, torched and destroyed shops belonging to Sunnis.

The danger of sectarian strife is real, analysts say. It might even appeal to the authorities, and some of their opponents, as a way to break the deadlock. But it carries high risks for the Assad dynasty, as well as the opposition.

“This is a dangerous strategy for a regime trying to survive,” said Eugene Rogan, director of the Middle East Centre at Oxford University. “You watch your army disintegrate if sectarianism becomes an issue.”

Analysts say the Homs killings were provoked by a ferocious security clampdown, including the arrest, disappearance and torture to death of hundreds of men. Islamists, long persecuted by the security forces, have their own axe to grind.

“The security solution hasn’t worked. The regime has decided to go for civil strife because it senses that it is losing. The protests are spilling over and spreading to the capital,” said a Damascus-based Arab journalist who declined to be named.

Alawite villagers say authorities have been arming young men to fight the insurgency. Mutilated bodies of some Shabbiha men, handed over by security forces to their families for burial, served to incite sectarian hatred in those villages.

Sectarian paranoia is evident, with Assad trusting only two elite units commanded by his brother Maher, the 4th Armoured Division and the Republican Guard, as well as secret police and Alawite militia, known as Shabbiha, to deal with dissent.

“The coherence (of the security forces) is already in question. Sectarianism is already a problem, the loyalty of other units cannot be counted on,” Rogan said.

While the authorities blame the upheaval on a “bunch of Islamists”, the reality appears more complex.

Some Syria-watchers say the protest movement is driven mainly by youths and includes rural Sunni tribes, nationalists, leftists, secularists and also Islamists, united in their goal of overthrowing an autocratic and corrupt government.

Geographically, the protests have spread since March to many rural and tribal regions, cities such as Hama and Homs, and even to Damascus, although not on a huge scale in the capital.

Security forces and Shabbiha militiamen, armed with metal bars, are everywhere. The army has deployed tanks around the main cities to keep out protesters from the countryside.

“The savagery of the regime has increased 180 degrees. The hostility against it has massively increased too among ordinary people, not just protesters. There are wide-scale arrests in all areas, in cities and villages,” the Syrian journalist said.

U.S. Missile Defense and Regional Security.

Remarks

Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Hezbollah on edge in face of Syria revolt.

The unprecedented revolt threatening the regime in Syria has placed key ally Hezbollah in a tight spot and prompted the Lebanese militant group to adopt a more measured attitude, analysts say.

“Hezbollah’s margin of manoeuver is currently very limited because the strategic Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis is threatened by the revolt and this forces the group to act prudently,” said Paris-based Middle East expert Agnes Levallois.

The Shia party, also backed by Iran, is the most powerful military and political group in Lebanon and is a key player in the new government formed last month.

But the upheaval in neighboring Syria caught Hezbollah off guard and threatens its position, analysts say.

When the revolt erupted in mid-March, “Hezbollah initially thought the Syrian regime would be able to quickly put down the revolt and that it would not be affected,” Levallois told AFP.

“But with the revolt showing no signs of dying down, Hezbollah is realizing that it needs to protect itself by commenting little on the situation in Syria so as not to be at odds with what is happening on the ground and not to alienate itself,” she added.

The party, blacklisted as a terrorist organization by Washington, has adopted the Syrian regime’s official line in blaming the unrest on armed extremist gangs and outside agitators.

This has prompted anger among protesters in Syria who, in what would have been unthinkable a few months ago, have torn down and burned pictures of Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, according to images posted on YouTube.

Nasrallah has also been criticized for acting like a “Syrian television presenter,” prompting his party to adopt a more low-key approach.

“The Syrian regime became aware that Nasrallah’s popularity was not serving its interest in this case, but quite the contrary,” said Paul Salem, head of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center.

The deep crisis threatening the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could also impact on Hezbollah’s weapons supply through Iran and Syria, analysts believe.

Intelligence officials estimate that Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of more than 40,000 short- and medium-range missiles which the party has said could reach deep into Israel.

“There is no question that they are worried, because if the regime [in Syria] collapses, that would affect them strategically speaking, especially if the new regime that takes over is keen on exacting revenge on Iran and Hezbollah,” Salem said.

“If there is chaos, a new regime or a continuation of the current regime, which has been weakened, all of these scenarios don’t bode well for Hezbollah,” he added.

The party’s image has also been dented given its support for the other revolutions shaking the Arab world, including Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but not Syria.

“Nasrallah is torn between his support for Assad’s regime and his image as a resistance leader keen on defending the people’s rights,” Levallois said.

The Arabic-language daily An-Nahar, which is close to Lebanon’s opposition, summarized the dilemma facing the party in an editorial over the weekend.

“Tomorrow, when the Syrian regime falls – and it will fall – what will Hezbollah, which supported those who assassinated women, children and the elderly, say?” it asked.

Nadim Shehadeh, a fellow at the London-based Chatham House, said Hezbollah was in a bind given the platform on which it has built support.

“Their power is based on such big words as freedom and liberation and their constituency follows them blindly on this,” he told AFP.

“But they supported the Arab spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, everywhere except Syria, and that is contradictory,” Shehadeh said.

For now, analysts say, Hezbollah will probably continue to adopt a low-key approach and avoid any confrontation.

“We thought that Damascus would ask Hezbollah to launch an attack against Israel to divert attention,” Levallois said.

“But the Syrian regime understood that it could loose on all fronts if it did so because it is too weak.”

-AFP/NOW Lebanon

Israel and USA are killing Iranian Scientists – English pravda.ru.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 26, 2011, 12:54 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Syrian uprising   Bashar Assad   US   Saudi Arabia   Iran 

Syrian forces abuse protesters

Iranian intelligence experts in Damascus have been disrupting the Syrian opposition movement’s telephone and Internet links with the outside world and among fellow-protesters in the country. To bridge the communications gap, the US and Saudi Arabia have in the last two weeks smuggled thousands of satellite phones into Syria and put them in the hands of opposition leaders, debkafile reports.
The new phones will also overcome the latest Syrian steps, also on the advice of their Iranian advisers, to slow down the speed of the Internet to impede the transmission of images – most of all live video – of brutal attacks by Syrian security and military forces on protesters.

US and Saudi intelligence services are picking up the tab for the satellite phones and have given the providers a free hand to place no limits on their use.

This is the first time the Obama administration has stepped in with direct assistance for the Syrian opposition in its drive to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad – in way, moreover, that challenges Iran’s contribution to the regime’s survival.

Monday, July 25, Washington also ramped up its criticism of the Assad regime: “The behavior of security forces, including such other barbaric shootings, wide scale arrests of young men and boys, brutal torture and other abuses of basic human rights, is reprehensible,” said a State Department spokesman.
The Saudis have gone still further: On July 19, a new television station “Shabab Syria” (Syrian Youth), financed by Riyadh, went on the air and began broadcasting anti-Assad opposition’s messages to all parts of the country.

In a statement to Iranian news media, the Syrian ambassador to Tehran Hamed Hassan denied that Saudi Arabia was supplying the Syrian opposition with arms. He insisted that relations between the two countries were good, but then added: “Certain people and groups in Saudi Arabia are providing the Syrian opposition financial and media assistance, or issuing fatwas which fan the flames of sedition in the country.”

Israel, US to hold massive missile defense dri… JPost – Defense.

    In the face of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Israel and the United States will hold a large-scale missile defense exercise in the beginning of next year aimed at improving operational coordination between both countries’ defense systems.

Called Juniper Cobra, the exercise will be held in early 2012 and will include the Arrow 2 and Iron Dome as well as America’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. The exercise will likely include the actual launching of interceptors from these systems.

The Israeli Air Force’s Air Defense Division, the United States Missile Defense Agency and the US Military’s European Command (EUCOM) have held the Juniper Cobra exercise for the past five years. The upcoming exercise though is planned to be one of the most complex and extensive yet.

Last week, Air Force commander in the EUCOM Gen.Mark Welsh visited Israel for talks with Israel Air Force commander Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, which focused also on the upcoming missile defense exercise. The last Juniper Cobra exercise was held in October 2009.

The purpose of the exercise is to create the necessary infrastructure that would enable interoperability between Israeli and American missile defense systems in case the US government decided to deploy these systems here in the event of a conflict with Iran, like it did ahead of the Gulf War in Iraq in 1991.

“Juniper Cobra shows us how to defend not only with Israeli assets but also with American assets,” Arieh Herzog, head of the Defense Ministry’s Homa Missile Defense Agency, said on Monday at the 2nd Annual Israel Multinational Missile Defense Conference near Tel Aviv.

Herzog, who will step down in January and be replaced by Yair Ramati, corporate vice president of marketing at Israel Aerospace Industries, said that Israel was facing a “growing ballistic missile threat.”

Frank Rose, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said the US planned to deploy another Aegis missile defense ship in the Mediterranean Sea alongside the USS Monterey, which is already deployed in the region.

He also said the US was looking to deploy an advanced X-Band radar – similar to the one the US gave Israel in 2008 – in southern Europe.

“Together we can work to protect what our adversaries would put at risk, both now and in the future,” Rose said. “Our mutual commitment to cooperation on missile defense research and development, on deploying proven technologies and weapon systems such as the Arrow, and on gaining operational experience through joint exercises and training, will go far in enhancing Israeli security and our mutual interests, and in further cementing and expanding our partnership.”

Ramati said at the conference that Israel is speeding up the development of the Arrow-3, which is supposed to serve as the upper tier missile defense system against Iranian long-range ballistic missiles.

The Arrow-3 is not expected to become operational until 2015 and the Defense Ministry will hold a first flight test of the new missile by the end of the year.

Col. Shahar Shohat, commander of the Israel Air Force’s Wing, responsible for Israel’s missile defense systems, expressed hope that the country’s enemies will realize that their investment in rockets and missiles is not worthwhile due to the deployment of new defense systems.

“This could happen if they understand that we have effective systems and they will not be able to attack what they want to attack,” he said.

Shohat added that the Iron Dome succeeded in preventing the IDF from needing to enter into a large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip in April, following an escalation that included an anti-tank missile attack on a school bus that killed 16-yearold Daniel Viflic. Iron Dome succeeded in intercepting eight rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

“The presence of the Iron Dome provided a response by intercepting the rockets and gave the leadership room to maneuver and make decisions without being under public pressure,” he said.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 24, 2011, 10:14 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iranian nuclear scientist Daryush Rezaee-Nejad

Daryush Rezaee-Nejad, 35, who died Saturday, July 23, when two motorcyclists shot him in the head and throat in front of his home in Tehran, was a rising star of the new generation of Iranian nuclear scientists. debkafile‘s Iranian sources disclose he was attached to one of the most secret teams of Iran’s nuclear program, employed by the defense ministry to construct detonators for the nuclear bombs and warhead already in advanced stages of development.

This was another in the series in the past year of mysterious attacks of top-flight scientists attached to the Iranian nuclear program.
Our sources disclose that while he may have fit the Iranian media’s description of “a university student studying for a master’s degree in electricity at the Khajeh-Nasser University, one of the defense ministry’s Institutes of Hydraulic Engineering and Structural Engineering,” that description applied only to one part of his work.
He was also to be found daily at the top secret Parchine nuclear and military laboratories in northeast Tehran, where most of the work on nuclear bomb components and operational warheads is conducted.

His employment in this dual capacity helped Tehran keeping these activities under deep cover.
It also accounts for the Iranian media’s conflicting accounts of Razaee-Nejad’s role.
Initially, he was described as “a nuclear scientist working for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.” That was Saturday shortly after his death. Sunday, they changed the story and called him “an electronics master’s student.” However, the Iranian Fars news agency alone suggested. “…the media had made a mistake in reporting Rezaee-Nejad’s specialty” and went on to insist that he had links with the defense ministry.
Further belying the claim that he was only a student, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani Sunday delivered a furious diatribe against “the American-Zionist terrorist act “against one of the country’s scientists as yet another sign of the degree of American animosity.”  He said:  “America should think carefully about the consequences of such actions,” and urged Iranian security sources “to deliver a strong response to these evil moves.”
debkafile‘s intelligence sources report that Tehran appears to have got in a muddle over the dead scientist’s job description after realizing that disclosing his connection with the nuclear program betrayed how deeply the scientific teams employed in uranium enrichment – and even the scientific manpower directly engaged in building a nuclear bomb – had been penetrated.
Iranian media experts tried hard to undo the damage by retooling that description for an additional reason: They needed to reassure the scientists employed on nuclear work and their families that they were not in danger lest they take fright and run for their lives.
Furthermore, neither the experts nor the public has forgotten that only nine months ago, on November 27, 2010, two leading lights of Iran’s nuclear program were targeted for assassination by the same method in the middle of Tehran: Prof. Fereydoon Abbassi, whom debkafile identified at the time as director of the uranium enrichment centrifuge facility at Natanz, and Dr. Majid Shariari, whom our sources revealed as in charge of the cyber war against the Stuxnet virus attacking the same facility.
Dr. Shariari died on the spot. Prof. Abbasi survived the attack and was appointed Vice President for nuclear affairs and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization.
Since Saturday, security has been tightened for Iranian nuclear experts and their families, using special units established for the purpose, according to debkafile‘s sources. But this last assassination indicates that the security belt designed to protect them may too have been penetrated.