WarSclerotic

IAF sets new guidelines for reconnaissance fli… JPost – Defense.

    Due to the ongoing instability in the Arab world, the Israel Air Force has instituted new guidelines for surveillance and reconnaissance flights in the region to minimize the risk that such flights will lead to a military escalation.

Under the new guidelines, only experienced and advanced pilots can fly the reconnaissance flights, which are conducted regularly over Lebanon. In addition, the flights can only be conducted when a senior officer is present in the IAF control room in Tel Aviv. Such flights are usually approved by the IDF Chief of General Staff.

“We need to consider the effect such flights can have, considering the changes in the region,” a senior officer said this week. “We understand that there is a short distance between a tactical mistake and a larger crisis.”

Israeli flights over Lebanon have been the source of continuous tension between Israel and Lebanon since the end of the Second Lebanon War five years ago. The flights are conducted by manned aircraft such as fighter jets as well as IAF unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition to Lebanon, Israeli aircraft also fly over the Red Sea where they track ships suspected of transferring weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israel claims it needs to continue flying over Lebanon to track Hezbollah’s military buildup and particularly the flow of arms from Syria to the Iranian-backed guerrilla group. On Monday, as an example, Lebanese media said six Israeli planes flew over the Bekaa Valley, a known Hezbollah stronghold.

Israel’s concern is not just about the potential diplomatic fallout from such flights and how they could fuel already growing anti-Israel sentiment in the region, but also stems from concern that Hezbollah will receive advanced surface-to-air defense systems.

Media reports recently revealed Hezbollah was transferring advanced high quality weaponry that it had been storing in Syria to Lebanon. The move was made out of concern for the weaponry’s fate in the face of the ongoing unrest in the country and the possibility that President Bashar Assad, the group’s close ally, will be overthrown.

Hezbollah’s air defense systems are believed to have been recently boosted by the arrival last year of a sophisticated radar system to Syria.

The radar is perceived as a significant challenge for Israel’s continued operational freedom and is reportedly believed to be capable of providing Syria with early warning of Israeli sorties.

Iranians suspected in hacking of Mossad, CIA, MI-6 info – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

By forging security certificates, the hackers were also able to steal information from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter.

By Oded Yaron

Hackers thought to be of Iranian origin managed to steal security certificates from the websites of the Mossad, the CIA, and the Israeli internet portal Walla, according to a report by a security official for Mozilla, publishers of the popular web browser Firefox, whose website was also breached.

The Mozilla report also claimed that security certificates were stolen from British intelligence agency MI-6, Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook and others, as well. There are reports of 531 stolen certificates in total thus far, including a break-in to Google’s servers, which occurred in July and were reported in late August.

	Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
	Photo by: AP

The security certificates allow web browsers to communicate securely with web servers over the internet, according to Blogger Lior Kaplan. The SSL certificates are created by special companies that provide this service and are generally thought to be dependable and trustworthy.

“Forging certificates allows malicious people to play the ‘man-in-the-middle’ trick, impersonating the secure site with a fake certificate, and then passing the user’s information on to the actual site. It then passes the reply on to the user. In this way, the malicious person sits between the two parties and listens in on their conversation,” Kaplan wrote in his blog.

“Encryption is not synonymous with secure data,” said Raviv Raz, CEO of Hybrid Security, experts on preventing internet fraud. “You can encrypt all over the place, but it’s not worth a thing if you don’t know who you’re talking to on the other end of the line.”

Many people believe that those behind the thefts are Iranian hackers, perhaps even connected to the Iranian government. These suspicions arose after Google reported that the stolen certificates affiliated with it were used to attack web users in the general area of Iran.

IDF general: Likelihood of regional war growing – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Senior IDF officer warns of ‘radical Islamic winter’ that may lead to regional war, could prompt use of WMDs; new, more lethal weapons discovered in hands of terrorists during latest round of fighting in Gaza, Major General Eisenberg says

Yoav Zitun

Recent revolutions in the Arab world and the deteriorating ties with Turkey are raising the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday.

“It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter,” he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing,” the IDF general said.

“Iran has not abandoned its nuclear program. The opposite it true; it continues full steam ahead,” he said. “In Egypt, the army is collapsing under the burden of regular security operations, and this is reflected in the loss of control in the Sinai and the turning of the border with Israel into a terror border, with the possibility that Sinai will fall under the control of an Islamic entity.”

Iranian missile (Photo: Reuters)

“In Lebanon, Hezbollah is growing stronger within government arms, but it has not lost its desire to harm Israel, and the ties with Turkey aren’t at their best,” Major General Eisenberg added.

Weapons of mass destruction?

Referring to what he characterized as the possibility of a “radical Islamic winter,” Major-General Eisenberg said: “This raises the likelihood of an all-out, total war, with the possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used.”

During his address, the senior IDF official revealed that new, more lethal arms surfaced in the hands of Gaza terror groups during the latest round of fighting in the area. As result of the disturbing development, Israeli civilians were instructed to adopt greater precautions, he said.”We discovered a new weapon, and as result of this we instructed the public to hide under two roofs, rather than only one,” he said.

Eisenberg added that some 25% of local authorities in Israel are ill prepared to face emergency situations.

Israel: Turkey wants confrontation – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Officials in Jerusalem not surprised by detention of Israeli passengers at Istanbul airport, say Turkey seeking clash; ‘Turkish economy will be hurt, businesspeople and tourists will refrain from traveling there,’ one source says

Attila Somfalvi

 Officials in Jerusalem say they were not surprised by reports that Israeli passengers were held up at the Istanbul airport Monday, charging that Ankara is seeking to provoke an open confrontation with Israel.

“The Turks are trying to forcefully lead us into an open confrontation and street fights in the international arena, but we shall not give them this pleasure,” one diplomatic source told Ynet Monday afternoon. 

“The operation against the flotilla was justified, the Gaza Strip blockade was justified, and the detention of Israelis at a Turkish airport is unacceptable – yet things may further deteriorate,” she said. “It won’t end with delays at the airport.”

Dozens of Israeli passengers on board a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul were held for several hours by local police after their passports were taken away from them. Some of them said they underwent a humiliating investigation by local authorities before being released. Israelis who frequently make the trip told Ynet such incident was unprecedented.

“I think that the police officers didn’t even know what they were looking for,” one of the passengers told Ynet. “They apparently got an order to detain us, one by one. Everyone was in shock; we didn’t know what they were going to do to us. Obviously this was done intentionally in order to create an unpleasant feeling.”

“We were not surprised by what happened there. After all, the Turks promised to harass us, and this is one way of doing it,” an Israeli official said. “Yet at the end of the day, the Turkish economy will be hurt after it loses businesspeople and tourists. Who would want to arrive in Turkey with such treatment?”

“We can obviously expect a difficult period vis-à-vis Turkey, yet this is something that was taken into account,” one official said.

Turkey’s decision to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel was taken after Israel’s refusal to apologize for the raid in a Gaza-bound Turkish vessel in 2010.

Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni also addressed Monday’s incident in Istanbul, saying that Turkey recognizes Israeli weakness and allows itself to do things that were not done in the past.

Gunfire, explosions at Syrian military airport as more troops defect.

Al Arabiya

Monday, 05 September 2011

Clashes broke out this morning between defected Syrian troops and forces loyal to President Basar al-Assad in a military airport near Damascus, activists said. (File Photo)

inShare9

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report September 5, 2011, 1:14 PM (GMT+02:00)

Advanced IR-2m centrifuge

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency Friday, Sept. 2 stressed its increasing concern “about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency continues to receive new information.”

The nuclear watchdog was also alarmed by three disclosures made by Fereydoon Abbas, head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Monday, Aug. 29, attesting to the speeding-up of its military nuclear program and preparations for a possible attack on its installations.
1. Abbasi boasted that Iran’s nuclear fuel production already far exceeded its needs. debkafile‘s military sources report that this first public announcement meant that Tehran was about to move on from 20 percent enriched uranium to 60 percent – the last step before the 90 percent enrichment for weapons-grade fuel.

According to several sources, Iran has already stocked 4,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, which would be enough for four nuclear weapons after further enrichment.
2.  Abbas pronounced “dead” the 2009 proposal for the West to supply Iran with new fuel for its small research reactor in return for an end to Iranian production of the fuel. “We will no longer negotiate a fuel swap and a halt to our production of fuel,” he said.

3. The head of Iran’s atomic agency also revealed the imminent transfer of its critical enrichment facilities from Natanz to a heavily fortified subterranean facility near the holy city of Qom to keep it safe from air, missile and cyber attack.

Tehran has made it clear that the facility will not be open to international oversight and will use the most advanced centrifuges – IR-4 and IR-2m – for speeding up the production of highly-enriched uranium.

Western intelligence sources estimated Sunday, Sept. 4, that Iran’s advances had brought forward to the spring of 2012 the potential completion of between two and four bombs and the ability to conduct  a nuclear test.

At the White House, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council said that the Iranian plan “to install and operate centrifuges at Qom is a violation of their United Nations security obligations and another provocative act.”

While demonstrating the arrogance of a would-be global nuclear power, Iran suffered an unexpected diplomatic snub Sunday, Sept. 4, when parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani was informed at the last minute that he would not get to meet the Chinese and North Korean heads of state when he visited Beijing and Pyongyang – only low-ranking officials. He thereupon cancelled his trips.
China and North Korea appear to have decided to keep their distance from the nuclear miscreant in Tehran.
Last Wednesday, Aug. 31, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned, “Iran’s attempts to build long-range missiles and nuclear weapons could lead unnamed countries to launch a pre-emptive attack.”