WarSclerotic

The Associated Press: Syria troops raid villages as Russia boosts regime.

The U.N. said Monday that the death toll has reached at least 2,600 from the government’s violent crackdown on protests over the past six months.

Although the crackdown has brought widespread international condemnation, Assad’s authoritarian regime has the support of Russia and China, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto powers.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that Moscow believes any U.N. resolution on Syria must be aimed at both the government and the opposition.

“Russia proceeds from the assumption that it’s necessary to approve a resolution on Syria that will be tough, but well balanced at the same time that would address both parties to the conflict — President Bashar Assad’s government and the opposition,” Medvedev said. “Only in that case could it be successful.”

“The resolution must be tough, but it mustn’t automatically involve sanctions,” he said. “There is absolutely no need now for any additional pressure.”

Both Russia and China oppose a draft U.N. Security Council resolution backed by European nations and the United States that would impose an arms embargo and other sanctions on Syria. Moscow has introduced a rival resolution calling for Assad’s government to halt its violence against protesters and expedite reforms.

The raids around the central city of Hama began after security forces cut all roads leading to the area along with electricity and telephone lines.

The death toll from Monday’s raids around Hama and violence elsewhere was not immediately clear.

The activist network called the Local Coordination Committees said there were civilian casualties from Monday’s raids but there was no exact figure.

Syria-based rights activist Mustafa Osso says at least five people were killed.

Another group, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said one person also was also killed in the Damascus suburb of Douma when security forces opened at a funeral.

Syrian protesters are increasingly calling for some sort of outside help — although not necessarily military action like the NATO intervention that helped topple the Gadhafi regime in Libya. Instead, they are calling for observation missions and human rights monitors who could help deter attacks on civilians.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Monday that the new death toll of 2,600 is based on “reliable sources on the ground.”

Syria has disputed accounts of civilian deaths and says the regime is fighting terrorists and thugs — not true reform seekers. A senior Assad adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, said Monday that the toll was really 1,400 — evenly split between security forces and the opposition.

Shaaban also said the West should follow Russia’s steps in trying to end the crisis in Syria through peaceful means. She was scheduled to meet Monday with Mikhail Margelov, the Russian presidential envoy to the Middle East.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(Erdogan would do well to remember that the IDF Navy is supported by the IDF Air Force. – JW)

DEBKAfile Special Report September 12, 2011, 4:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

Turkish Navy destroyer

The Erdogan government sharply ratcheted up its threat of war on Israel Monday, Sept. 12 with a report that three Turkish Navy frigates are to sail for the eastern Mediterranean “to ensure freedom of navigation and confront Israeli warships if necessary.”
As Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was set to start a visit to Egypt, Turkish naval sources reported: “If Turkish warships encounter an Israeli military ship outside Israel’s 12-mile territorial waters, they will advance up to 100 meters from the ship and disable its weapon system.”
The threat bluntly applied to Israel’s naval enforcement of its UN-approved blockade of the Gaza Strip.
debkafile‘s military sources report that this is more than a threat of belligerence against Israeli naval shipping; it is also an attempt to dictate the terms of its threatened military engagement at sea with Israel and arbitrarily lay down the outer limits of Israel’s territorial waters. One of its goals is to deprive Israel’s deep sea gas wells of naval protection.
Turkish naval sources report that the frigates assigned the mission against Israel belong to its Southern Sea Area Command.
debkafile reported earlier Monday, Sept. 12:
While Egypt and Israel acted to cool the crisis in relations sparked by last Friday’s mob attack on the Israeli embassy, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan threatened another inflammatory speech against Israel during his Monday visit, Sept. 12 – this one from Tahrir Square in a bid to buy the popularity of the Arab street. Jerusalem and Washington are concerned that it will have the effect of stirring up anti-Israel riots in Egypt and Jordan, Israel’ second peace partner, as well as encouraging the Palestinian terrorist Jihad Islami lurking in Sinai to proceed with its threatened cross-border attack.

Sunday, Sept. 11, the military rulers of Egypt instructed the local media to tone down their coverage of the mob attack on the Israeli embassy Friday night. They announced that 130 rioters would be put on trial.  Israel too made every effort to play the episode down by focusing attention on the “courageous stand” taken by the six security guards “only a door away from death” in order to distract attention from the absence of an Israeli ambassador in Cairo after thirty years of normal relations.
debkafile‘s sources report that while Israel and Egyptian report efforts to reinstate the envoy soon, it will be some time before the next Israeli ambassador Yakov Amitai takes up his post. First, Israel will have to build a fortified embassy building like US and British premises in Cairo and other world capitals, for which the necessary Egyptian permission cannot be taken for granted.

Political sources in Washington and Jerusalem are profoundly concerned by four fraught developments
unfolding this week – all capable of sending Israel’s ties with Egypt and Turkey into another perilous tailspin:

1. The Turkish prime minister’s Tahrir Square speech Monday afternoon. His anti-Israel campaign has drawn from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood an enthusiastic welcome and the promise of a mass turnout. The MB declared the mob attack on the Israeli embassy a legitimate protest operation in defiance of the Egyptian government’s position.

Above all, Erdogan will not stand for the Arab League foreign ministers’ session in Cairo on the same day – to approve the Palestinian bid for UN membership – stealing the thunder of his official visit to Egypt.
Concern about the coming speech was heightened when the full, unedited text of the Turkish prime minster’s interview to the Arabic television station Al Jazeera Thursday, Sept 8 reached Washington and Jerualme and was compared with the adulterated version circulated by Ankara and TV channel.

It reveals that Erdogan actually called Israel’s interception of the Mavi Marmora in May 2010 (during which nine armed activists were killed) an Israeli casus belli for Turkey and extended his threat of aggression to the off shore oil and gas wells of Israel and Cyprus.

According the original text of the speech, Erdogan declared that Turkey will never accept the accord Israel and Cyprus concluded last year marking out their maritime zones for exploration. What Israel is doing, he said “will not happen” – a phrase he repeated with great determination.

The adulterated version released by Erdogan’s office Friday, Sept. 9, the day after the interview read: “As long as Israel does not interfere in the freedom of navigation, we do not plan on sending any warships to escort humanitarian aid ships.”
This is termed by debkafile‘s sources no more than a play on words leaving the first threat to have Turkish warships escort aid vessels to the Gaza Strip and visit the eastern Mediterranean fully in place. The potential for a Turkish-Israeli clash at sea appears to be low but remains credible.
He knows Israel is determined not to lift the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip – certainly not after the UN pronounced it legal and necessary. He also knows therefore that his warships cannot avoid running into the Israeli Navy. His purpose remains provocative, because Turkey is free to consign unlimited humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through Egypt – not to mention Israel.
debkafile‘s sources disclose that this “amended” statement was produced in response to heavy pressure from NATO leaders to quit his belligerent stance against Israel.
2.  The Turkish prime minister said Sunday that his campaign against Israel has five stages of which only two have been implemented.
Word has reached Jerusalem that Erdogan is preparing more sanctions against Israel to be enforced in days. They include cutting off diplomatic ties, a ban on Turkish trade with the Jewish state and acquitting Turkish businesses and industrialists of their contractual obligations to Israel firms, including debts totaling $400 million.
3.  Israel’s government and military leaders worry that the Palestinian Jihad Islami terrorists lurking in Sinai for the past three weeks will choose this moment to strike – whether to kidnap Israelis still vacationing on its beaches or a cross-border attack in Israel.  The gunmen have met no Egyptian military interference and they will no doubt be encouraged to take advantage of the incendiary climate generated by the Turkish prime minister and Cairo mob’s sacking of the Israeli embassy.

The Palestinian group’s Iranian and Hizballah sponsors will not miss the chance of further undermining Israeli security. Sunday night saw the first indications of trouble when an Israeli border patrol north of Eilat came under fire from Egyptian Sinai. No one was hurt but Israeli troops guarding that precarious border are more on their toes now than ever.
4.  The Muslim Brothers, Hamas and other radical Palestinian organizations in Jordan have used Facebook to rally “a million-strong march” on the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital of Amman for Thursday evening, Sept. 15, to push for the expulsion of Israeli Ambassador Danny Nevo.
Jordan security forces are on alert to prevent the Israeli embassy sacking in Cairo from being repeated in Amman.

Iran inaugurates first nuclear power plant, pledges full UN access – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Head of Iran’s atomic program: Start of Bushehr plant shows the world how a country can maintain freedom and independence through resistance.

By DPA

Iranian and Russian officials Monday inaugurated Iran’s first nuclear power plant in the southern Gulf port of Bushehr, the Khabar news network reported.

The ceremony was attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi and nuclear chief Fereydoun Abbasi, as well as Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and the head of Russia’s state-run nuclear power corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, Khabar reported.

	Technicians measuring parts of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant in this undated photo.
	Photo by: AP

Forty per cent of the 1,000-megawatt capacity is to be connected to the national energy grid in the initial phase, and full capacity is scheduled to be reached in November.

The plant uses Russian-made fuel and its nuclear waste is to be returned to Russia. Iran and Russia have granted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full supervision of the joint plant.

“This is the first nuclear power plant in the Middle East, and Iran and Russia have set an example for peaceful nuclear cooperation,” said Abbasi, Iran’s vice-president and head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization.

“The start of the Bushehr plant symbolically shows to the world how a country could maintain its freedom and independence through resistance,” he added, in reference to Western opposition towards Iran’s nuclear programs.

Responding to concerns from neighboring sheikhdoms, Abbasi said in his inauguration speech that safety was a top priority at the Bushehr plant.

In a joint press conference, Shmatko said that all internationally required safety measures should be fully implemented before using the plant at full capacity.

“Based on clear international regulations and standards, more tests should be made before starting the plant at full capacity and Iranian experts should not sacrifice safety for the sake of reaching the final phase earlier,” Shmatko said.

While Iran wants the plant to reach maximum level as soon as possible, Shamtko stressed that the connection of the plant to the national grid was being made according to a very precise safety plan.

This includes switching off the plant’s reactor several times to carry out additional tests before gradually increasing output to 50, 75 and finally 100 per cent of the total capacity of 1,000 megawatts.

“All relevant tests made so far have been approved by the IAEA and further tests are necessary to make sure that the plant will work safely for decades,” the Russian official said in the press conference, shown by Khabar TV.

Abbasi confirmed that Iran and Russia had made initial agreements to build further nuclear power plants, probably in or near Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, but did not rule out cooperation with other countries.

“As our final aim is to reach production of 20,000 megawatts and we cannot realize this aim just by our own experts, we are open to cooperation with other countries as well,” Abbasi told reporters.

The Iranian nuclear chief once again reiterated that Iran had a legitimate right to pursue peaceful nuclear programs, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. International pressure and United Nations sanctions would not hinder Iran’s nuclear work, he said.

“We are committed to all international nuclear regulations but not beyond that,” Abbasi said, referring to IAEA demands that Iran responds to Western intelligence reports accusing Tehran of working on a secret nuclear weapon program.

Western media representatives were not allowed to attend the inauguration ceremony, and only Iranian and Russian reporters were dispatched to Bushehr.

The construction of the plant was started in 1975 by a German company, which dropped the project in the 1990s due to political considerations.

In 1995, Russia signed a contract to complete the plant but the start-up date was delayed for technical and political reasons.

Iran and Russia are reportedly to have equal shares in the joint venture operating the Bushehr plant, but gradually all shares are to be transferred to the Iranian side.

Moscow plans to hand the facility completely over to Iranian hands within the next three years, but Tehran wants full control much sooner.

Report: Turkish frigates to confront Israeli ships in Mediterranean.

Turkish frigate TCG Giresun is seen near Turkey’s Aksaz naval base in this June 2009 file photo. (Photo: AA)

The Turkish Navy is planning to dispatch three frigates to the Eastern Mediterranean to ensure freedom of navigation and to confront Israeli warships if necessary, a Turkish news report said on Monday.

The Turkish frigates, to be dispatched by the Navy’s Southern Sea Area Command, will provide protection to civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, blockaded by Israel since 2007, the Turkish daily Sabah reported. If the Turkish warships encounter an Israeli military ship outside Israel’s 12-mile territorial waters, they will advance up to 100 meters close to the ship and disable its weapon system, in a confrontation that resembles dogfights in the Aegean Sea with Greek jet fighters, according to the report. The report comes days after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkish warships will escort civilian aid ships headed to Gaza to prevent a repetition of last year’s Israeli raid on a Turkish-owned ship that killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American, setting the stage for a potential naval confrontation with its former ally. Turkey announced a set of sanctions against Israel after it refused to apologize for the 2010 raid, expelling the Israeli ambassador and other senior diplomats and suspending military agreements with Israel. Turkey also promised to take measures to ensure freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said Erdoğan’s remarks were “harsh and serious,” but stressed that Israel was not interested in a war of words with its once-close ally. “Our silence is the best response. I hope this phenomenon will pass,” he said on Friday.

Report: Turkish Navy sending 3 warships to e… JPost – Headlines.

UN nuclear chief increasingly co… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    VIENNA – The UN atomic agency chief said on Monday he was “increasingly concerned” about possible military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and he urged Tehran to cooperate fully with his inspectors.

“Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable the agency to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran,” Yukiya Amano told the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, saying its program is aimed at generating electricity.

The statement comes after Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili wrote to the European Union foreign affairs chief on Sunday to announce the Islamic state’s readiness for fresh nuclear talks with major powers, according to the the foreign minister.

“A few days ago, Mr. Jalili’s letter was sent to Ms. Catherine Ashton … saying Iran is prepared for talks … to reach bilateral agreements,” Ali Akbar Salehi said in a news conference, when asked about Iran’s nuclear work.

“We have received the letter, and we will study it carefully,” a spokesman for Ashton said on Sunday.

Iran’s nuclear talks with major powers in January failed after the Islamic state refused to halt its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

The United States and its European allies fear Iran is trying to build atomic bombs under cover of its nuclear program. Tehran denies it, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

After talks with his European Union counterpart in Geneva in February, Salehi hoped there would be further meetings, but no date was set.

In May, the EU rejected a similar letter from Tehran requesting nuclear talks, saying it contained nothing new that would justify a further round of meetings.

Iran has been hit by international sanctions for refusing to halt its sensitive nuclear activities, which it says is only aimed at generating electricity.

US condemns killing of Syrian activist; opposition refuses any resolution with Assad.

Al Arabiya

Monday, 12 September 2011

Demonstrators set fire on an effigy of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad during a protest at the courtyard of Fatih mosque in Istanbul. (Photo by Reuters)

inShare0

Israel, Iran and the New Middle East.

In recent years, Israeli strategists have identified an Iran-led regional alliance as representing the main strategic challenge to the Jewish state. This alliance looks to be emerging as one of the net losers of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This, however, should be cause for neither satisfaction nor complacency for Israel. The forces moving in to replace or compete with Iran and its allies are largely no less hostile.

The Iran-led regional alliance, sometimes called the muqawama (“resistance”) bloc, consisted of a coalition of states and movements led by Tehran and committed to altering the US-led dispensation that pertained since the end of the cold war.

It included, in addition to Iran itself, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, the Sadrist movement and other Shia Islamist currents in Iraq, Syria’s Assad regime, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation. It appeared in recent years also to be absorbing Hamas.

The muqawama bloc presented itself as the representative of authentic Islamic currents in the Middle East, and as locked in combat until the end with the west and its clients. These included Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, and above all, Israel.

However, the alliance always had a rather obvious flaw: while presenting itself as an inclusive, representative camp, it was an almost exclusively Shia Muslim club, in a largely Sunni Muslim Middle East.

The Iranians evidently hoped that militancy against the west, above all on behalf of the Palestinians, could counteract the league-of-outsiders aspect of their alliance.

For a while, this project appeared to be working. The Iran-created and sponsored Hezbollah movement managed to precipitate Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, and then avoided defeat in a subsequent round of fighting in 2006. In a poll of Arab public opinion taken in 2008, the three most popular leaders were Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in that order.

But this sense of inexorable ascendancy in which the Iran-led bloc liked to cloak itself has fallen victim to the Arab spring. First, the Saudis crushed a largely Shia uprising in Bahrain which the Iranians backed. But more importantly, Iran’s tooth and nail defence of the brutal Assad regime in Syria is progressively destroying its already shallow support Sunni Muslims.

Thus, a recent poll by the Arab-American Institute asked more than 4,000 Arabs their view of Iran. In Saudi Arabia, 6% had a positive view – down from 89% in 2006. In Jordan, the positive rating fell from 75% to 23%, in Egypt from 89% to 37% in the same period.

The uprising in Syria placed Iran in an impossible position. Maintaining its ally in Damascus formed an essential strategic interest. Iran hoped, following the US departure from Iraq, to achieve a contiguous line of pro-Iranian, Shia states stretching from Iran itself to the Mediterranean. But keeping this ambition alive in recent months required offering very visible support to a non-Sunni regime engaged in the energetic slaughter of its own, largely Sunni people. This has led to the drastic decline in the standing of the Iranians and their friends.

Such a decline was probably inevitable. Outside the core areas of Shia Arab population, Iran’s support was broad but shallow. It is noteworthy that since the Arab Spring, Hamas appears to have distanced itself both from Assad and from the Iranians. According to some reports, this has led to Iranian anger and a cessation of the flow of funds to the Hamas enclave in Gaza.

These setbacks do not mean the end of Iran and its allies as a regional power bloc. Assad has not yet fallen. The Iranian nuclear programme is proceeding apace. Tehran’s Hezbollah client is in effective control of Lebanon. But it does mean that in future the Iranian appeal is likely to be more decisively limited to areas of Shia population.

The less good news, from Israel’s point of view, is that the new forces on the rise in the region consist largely of one or another variant of Sunni Islamism. AKP-led Turkey has emerged as a key facilitator of the Syrian opposition, in which Sunni Islamist elements play a prominent role. Turkey appears to be in the process of making a bid for the regional leadership also sought by Iran.

In Egypt, too, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces look set to reap an electoral dividend in November. The Sinai area has already become a zone of activity for Islamist terror directed against Israel, because of the breakdown in law and order in recent months. The attacks on the pipeline bringing Egyptian gas to Israel, and the recent terror attack in Eilat, are testimony to this.

So while the “Shia crescent” may have suffered a strategic setback as a result of the upheavals in the Arab world, the space left by the fall of regional leaders looks to be filled largely by new, Sunni Islamist forces.

Israel remains capable of defending itself against a strategic threat posed by any constellation of these elements. But the current flux in the region is likely to produce a more volatile, complex Middle East, consisting of an Iran-led camp and perhaps a number of Sunni competitors, rather than the two-bloc contest of pro-US and pro-Iranian elements which preceded 2011.

Iran parliament voices support for Israeli embassy attack in Cairo – Monsters and Critics.

Sep 12, 2011, 9:27 GMT