WarSclerotic

Assad: Syria will shower Tel Aviv with rockets if attacked by foreign powers – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

(These threats from Syria, Turkey, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran are reminiscent of April 1967.  The justification for a preemptive strike is already in place.  Something must change and soon. – JW)

Iranians news agency quotes Syrian president as warning West against ‘crazy measures,’ adding that it would take Damascus, Hezbollah 6 hours to launch a joint strike against Israel.

By Haaretz

Syria will strike Israel and “set fire” to the Middle East if foreign forces choose to launch a military strike on the protest-ridden country, Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Tuesday.

During a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Assad was quoted by the Iranian semi-official news agency Fars as saying that Syria would not hesitate to strike major Israeli cities if it was attacked.

	Syrian President Bashar Assad delivering a speech in Damascus, Syria, on June 20, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

“If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than 6 hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv,” Assad said.

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In addition, Fars reported indicated that the Syrian president told the Turkish FM that he would also call on Hezbollah in Lebanon to launch a rocket attack on Israel, adding: “All these events will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack the U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and the U.S. and European interests will be targeted simultaneously.”

Assad’s comments to the Turkish FM came after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier Tuesday he would set out his country’s plans for sanctions against Syria after he visits a Syrian refugee camp near the border in the coming days.

The move heralds a further deterioration in previously friendly relations between Ankara and Damascus since the start of Assad’s crackdown on protesters.

“Regarding sanctions, we will make an assessment and announce our road map after the visit to Hatay in southern Turkey, setting out the steps,” Erdogan told reporters, adding he expected to visit the region at the weekend or the start of next week.

Some 7,000 Syrians have taken refuge in camps established in Hatay, in flight from President Assad’s security forces.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 4, 2011, 5:03 PM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian troops facing Turkey

War tensions between Turkey, NATO and Syria shot up again Tuesday, Oct. 4, with the announcement from Ankara that Turkey embarks Wednesday on a 10-day “mobilization” exercise in the southern province of Hatay along the Syrian border, through which arms are being funneled to Syrian protesters. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is expected on the same day to visit the 7,000 Syrians who have taken refuge in Hatay from President Bashar Assad’s troops.

debkafile reported earlier Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad has for three months staved off a military attack by Turkey or NATO for halting the exceptional brutality of his crackdown on protest by explicitly holding Greater Tel Aviv’s 1.2 million inhabitants under threat of missile retaliation.

Our military sources note that the Turkish exercise was announced the day after US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta held talks with Israeli leaders, during which he emphasized the importance of restoring ties with Turkey for deterring Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah menaces.
And a week ago, on Sept. 27, NATO’s European commander Gen. James Staviris visited Ankara. Both visits were apparently part of the build-up for the Turkish exercise, which will involve the 39th mechanized infantry brigade and 730 reserve soldiers. Its target: the mobilization of reserves and their rapid transfer to the Syrian border.

The drill may well revive speculation in Damascus that Turkey is preparing to go ahead with a plan to carve out a buffer enclave inside Syria to protect civilians and provide rebels with shelter and logistical and medical assistance. The Assad regime would no doubt regard this act as a direct attack on sovereign Syrian territory by a NATO member.

The announcement from Ankara added that Turkey would soon announce a roadmap for further sanctions to be imposed against Syria in addition to those already underway.

Earlier Tuesday, debkafile‘s exclusive sources reported:

For the past three months, Syrian President Bashar Assad has staved off a military attack by Turkey or NATO for halting the exceptional brutality of his crackdown on protest by explicitly holding Greater Tel Aviv’s 1.2 million inhabitants under threat of missile retaliation. Iran and Hizballah are exercising the same deterrent. This standoff was the main theme of the talks US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta held with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv Monday, Oct. 3.

According to Western intelligence sources, Syria, Iran and Hizballah have charted a coordinated military operation for flattening metropolitan Tel Aviv, Israel’s financial, industrial and cultural center, with thousands of missiles launched simultaneously by all three – plus the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami firing from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have never publicly  admitted that this threat is on record, but Western intelligence sources have reported that Israel reacted with a warning of its own: If a single Syrian missile explodes in Tel Aviv, Damascus will be first to pay the price, and if the missile offensive persists, one Syrian town after another will be destroyed.
The Israeli message to Assad cited the warnings Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other government members addressed in the past year to Hizballah, that if Tel Aviv comes under attack from its missiles, not only Beirut but all of Lebanon would go up in flames. Assad was given to understand that Syria would go the same way as Lebanon if it engaged in missile belligerence against Israel.
Bashar Assad’s threat to Israel was very much on Leon Panetta’s mind when he told reporters on the plane carrying him to Israel Monday for his first visit as defense secretary: “Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength,” he said.

Western military sources say that he was not only referring to Syria, Egypt and the Palestinians by this and other statements, but pointing at the widening rift between Israel and Turkey.

The US official believes that this rift plays into the hands of the Syrian ruler and grants him the freedom to issue dire threats against Israel to hold Turkey and NATO back from using military force against his vicious regime. For Panetta, this is a prime example of Israel failing to project its military strength for diplomatic gains that would be beneficial to the West in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world. The loss of Turkish-Israeli military cooperation, albeit not initiated by Israel, ties the hands of the US and NATO against striking Syria. Those sources report that Panetta does not absolve Ankara of responsibility for this situation.

Syria first threatened Israel with retaliation on Aug. 9 when Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spent six hours with Bashar Assad in an effort on behalf of his own government and NATO to persuade him to stop the carnage his troops were perpetrating against his people.

Davutoglu warned Assad that if he did not desist from his actions he would share the fate of Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of NATO and Turkish forces.

The Syrian ruler’s response was harsh: From the moment a shot is fired against Syria, “it will take only six hours for Syria to devastate Tel Aviv and ignite the entire Middle East,” he said.
Assad was spelling out the warning issued on May 10 by a close crony, international business tycoon Rami Makhlouf, who said then: “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel. No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

The barrage of Syrian threats was reinforced from Tehran Monday, Sept, 26 by Ayatollah Jafar Shoujouni, a close associate of the all-powerful Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Shoujouni recalled that when he visited Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last May, he assured him: “If Israelis come near Tehran, we will destroy Tel Aviv.”

The Iranian cleric and the Syrian businessman spoke in the same vein in the same month. This was no coincidence. Their threat has since been repeated with greater emphasis to provide the Assad regime with insurance for its survival against foreign military intervention while continuing its pitiless onslaught on dissent.

Syria and Turkey are increasingly at odds, debkafile‘s military sources report. This week, Damascus accused the Turks of smuggling automatic and anti-tank weapons to the protesters, claiming to have uncovered a consignment in the protest center of Homs.

Ankara has initiated the process of freezing  Assad family members’  bank accounts and assets whose worth is estimated at half a billion dollars.
Turkey is also weighing unilateral sanctions after the UN Security Council last week imposed an arms embargo on Syria although Russia succeeded in blocking a tough council resolution. Moscow was punishing the West for its military intervention in Libya and flatly opposed to giving NATO another such opportunity in Syria.
Damascus repeatedly warned Turkey in the past week of reprisals if its inspectors dare open freights on transit to  Syria by ship, plane or land vehicle to search for embargoed arms.
At a time of dangerously spiralling tensions, there is no knowing when the Assad regime will determine that the first Turkish shot was fired and how it will retaliate.

Our World: Turkey’s house of card… JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

    To the naked eye, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be moving from strength to strength.

Erdogan was welcomed as a hero on his recent trip to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. The Arabs embraced him as the new face of the war against Israel.

The Obama administration celebrates Turkey as a paragon of Islamic democracy.

The Obama administration cannot thank Erdogan enough for his recent decision to permit NATO to station the US X-Band missile shield on its territory.

The US is following Turkey’s lead in contending with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s massacre of his people.

And according to Erdogan, the Obama administration is looking into ways to leave its Predator and Reaper UAVs with the Turkish military when US forces depart Iraq in the coming months.

Turkey requires the drones to facilitate its war against the Kurds in Iraq and eastern Anatolia. The Obama administration also just agreed to provide Turkey with three Super Cobra attack helicopters.

Despite its apparent abandonment of Iran’s Syrian client Assad, Turkey’s onslaught against the Kurds has enabled it to maintain its strategic alliance with Iran. Last month Erdogan announced that the Turkish and Iranian militaries are cooperating in intelligence sharing and gearing up to escalate their joint operations against the Kurds in Iraq.

Erdogan is probably the only world leader that conducted prolonged friendly meetings with both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US President Barak Obama at the UN last month.

Then there are the Balkans. After winning his third national election in June, Erdogan dispatched his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Kosovo, Bosnia and Romania to conduct what the Turks referred to as “mosque diplomacy.”

Erdogan’s government has been lavishing aid on Bosnia for several years and is promoting itself as a neo-Ottoman guardian of the former Ottoman possessions.

EVEN ERDOGAN’S threats of war seem to be paying off. His attacks on Israel have won him respect and admiration throughout the Arab world. His threats against Cyprus’s exploration of offshore natural gas fields caused Cypriot President Demetris Christofias to announce at the UN that Cyprus will share the revenues generated by its natural gas with Turkish occupied northern Cyprus.

Christofias said Cyprus would do so even in the absence of a unification agreement with its illegally occupied Turkish north. Moreover, due to Turkish pressure, Cyprus has agreed to intensify reunification talks with the Turkish puppet government in the northern half of the island. Those talks were set to begin in Nicosia last Tuesday.

Then there is the Turkish economy.

On the face of it, it seems that Turkey’s assertive foreign policy is facilitated by its impressive economic growth.

According to Turkey’s statistics agency, the Turkish economy grew by 8.8 percent in the second quarter of the year – far outperforming expectations. Last year the Turkish economy grew by 9 percent. With this impressive data, Erdogan is able to make a seemingly credible case to the likes of Egypt that it can expect to be enriched by a strategic partnership with Turkey.

For Israelis, these achievements are a cause for uneasiness. With Turkey building itself into a regional powerhouse largely on the back of its outspoken belligerency towards Israel, many observers argue Israel must do everything it can to mend fences with Turkey. Israel simply cannot afford to have Turkey angry at it, they claim.

If Turkey’s position was as strong as the conventional wisdom claims, then maybe these commentators and politicians would have a point. But Turkey’s actual situation is very different from its surface image.

Turkey’s aggressive, peripatetic foreign policy is earning Ankara few friends.

Erdogan’s threat to freeze Turkish-EU relations if the EU goes ahead as planned and transfers its rotating presidency to Cyprus next July has backfired.

European leaders wasted no time in angrily dismissing and rejecting Erdogan’s threat. So too, Germany and France have been loudly critical of Turkey’s belligerence towards Israel.

Then there is Cyprus. Turkey’s ever escalating threats to attack Cyprus’s natural gas project have angered both the EU and Russia. The EU is angry because as an EU member state, Cypriot gas will eventually benefit consumers throughout the EU, who are currently beholden to Russian suppliers and Turkish pipelines.

Russia itself has announced it will defend Cyprus against Turkish threats.

Russia is annoyed by Turkish courtship of the Balkan states. It sees no reason to allow Turkey to throw its weight around in Cyprus. Doing so successfully will only strengthen Ankara’s appeal in the Balkans and among the Turkic minorities in Russia.

THIS BRINGS us to the Muslim world. Despite Erdogan’s professions of friendship with Iran, it is far from clear that their alliance is as smooth as he presents it. The Iranians are concerned about Turkish ascendance in the Middle East and angry at Turkey for threatening Syria.

In truth if Assad is able to ride out the current storm and remain in power, he will owe his survival in no small measure to Turkey. Since the riots broke out in the spring, Turkey has restrained Washington from taking any concerted steps to overthrow the Syrian dictator.

Had it not been for Erdogan’s success in containing the US, it is possible the US and Europe might have acted swiftly to support the opposition.

But whether he stays in power or is overthrown, it is doubtful that Assad will feel any gratitude towards Erdogan.

Rather, Assad will likely blame Erdogan for betraying him. And if Assad is toppled, the Kurds of Syria could easily forge alliances with their brethren in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, to Turkey’s strategic detriment.

Since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February, Turkey has been making a concerted effort to build an alliance with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Ankara has reportedly transferred millions of dollars in aid to the Islamic group, and of course continues to support Hamas as well as Hizbullah.

Yet for all of his efforts on the Muslim Brotherhood’s behalf, the Brotherhood issued a sharp rebuke of Erdogan during his visit to Egypt. Brotherhood leader Essam el-Arian rejected Erdogan’s call for Egypt to adopt the Turkish model of Islamic democracy as too secular for Egypt.

As for the Turkish economy, a closer analysis of its financial data indicates that Turkey’s expansive growth is the result of a credit bubble that is about to burst. According to a Citicorp analyst quoted in The Wall Street Journal, domestic demand accounts for all of Turkey’s economic growth.

This domestic demand in turn owes to essentially free loans the government showered on the public in the lead-up to the June elections. The loans are financed by government borrowing abroad.

Turkey’s current accounts deficit stands at nearly 9 percent of GDP.

Greece is engulfed in a debt crisis with a current accounts deficit of 10 percent.

Analysts project that Turkey’s deficit will eclipse Greece’s within the year. And whereas the EU may end up bailing Greece out of its debt crisis, Turkey has no one to bail it out of its own debt crisis.

Consequently, Turkey’s entire economic house of cards is likely to come crashing down very rapidly.

It is hard to understand why Erdogan is acting as he is given the poor hand he is holding. It is possible that he is crazy.

It is possible that he is so insulated from criticism that he is unaware of Turkey’s economic realities or of the consequences of his aggressive behavior. And it is possible that he is hoping to combine a foreign policy crisis with Turkey’s oncoming economic crisis in order to blame the latter on the former. And it is possible that he believes that US backing gives him immunity to the consequences of his actions.

No matter what stands behind Turkey’s actions, it is clear Ankara has overplayed its hand. Its threats against Israel and Cyprus are hollow. Its hopes to be a regional power are faltering.

The only thing Israel really needs to be concerned about is the US’s continued insistence that Turkey is a model ally in the Islamic world. More than anything else, it is US support for Turkey that makes Erdogan a threat to the Jewish state and to the region.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Erdogan’s blood libel against the… JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

    The Jewish debt to the Turks goes back centuries to when the Ottomans took in thousands of Jewish refugees after the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions of 1492 and 1497. Moreover, when Israel was shunned for decades by nearly every Muslim country, it was Turkey that was Israel’s military ally, friend and commercial trading partner. And even in the midst of growing Turkish hostility, it behooves the Jewish state not to forget this debt of gratitude.

I have personally visited Istanbul as a Yarmulke-wearing, tzitzis-flying rabbi, and was warmly welcomed by Muslims everywhere. On her way back from Israel last year, my wife went through Istanbul with five of our children, including our baby, and was amazed at how many Muslim merchants gave the baby presents. My family came away smitten with Turkey.

But my call for Jewish memory and gratitude is becoming increasingly strained by the mouth of Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has made himself into a living fountain spewing anti- Israel invective.

His latest attack on the Jewish state, to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, beggared belief. Israel, he said, “shows no mercy” and is “cruel” in its treatment of Palestinians. Not content to feed the worst anti-Semitic, Shakespearean stereotypes of Jews being vindictive and heartless, he trivialized Jewish suffering due to the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas before offering an unbelievable blood libel, claiming “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed” as a result of military action by Israel. Earlier he had accused Israel of acting like “a spoiled child” and described the flotilla raid as “savagery.”

Erdogan claims that Israeli actions border on genocide and that Israel indiscriminately kills Palestinians when the truth is that the Israeli military is, given the level of threat it faces, one of the most humane and restrained in the world. Even if it were true that Israel has killed anything near that number it would still have to be seen in the context of the Palestinian people declaring a non-stop war of annihilation against the Jewish state and Israel being forced to defend itself.

Hamas’s 1988 charter, which calls for the complete obliteration and dissolution of Israel, captures the level of hatred the Palestinians have harbored against Israel.

Some choice nuggets include: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him… The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone… Jews control the world media (and use their) wealth to stir revolutions… There was no war that broke out anywhere without their (Jews’) fingerprints on it.”

Hamas Imam Sheik Yunus al-Astal talked about a verse from Koran suggesting “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” And, “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” (NYTimes.com, April 1, 2008) That Erdogan would speak as if Israel callously attacks a group which has for years launched rocket attacks against Israeli hospitals, kindergartens and family homes is an indication of a deep-seated hostility to the Jewish state which he spares no opportunity in maligning.

But Erdogan’s numbers are grotesque exaggerations designed to portray Israel as a genocidal power. The exact number of Palestinians killed in the last two Intifadas, beginning in 1987, is difficult to glean, but the most accurate numbers as assembled in Wikipedia from the United Nations, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and assorted Human Rights groups put Palestinian casualties from the beginning of the first intifada in 1987 until 1993 at 1,376 by Israeli security forces and 1,000 murdered by the Palestinians themselves.

The second intifada, from 2000 till the present, is said to have seen the death of 4,850 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and 594 Palestinians killed by Palestinians. It bears mentioning that during the second intifada 1,062 Israelis died at Palestinian terrorist hands.

It goes without saying that this is a far cry from Erdogan’s libel of hundreds of thousands of deaths and the attempt to decontextualize the deaths of even these thousands.

Starting in the 1960’s, the PLO made a global name for itself through international terror. In 1969 alone, the PLO hijacked 82 planes. In the 1972 Olympics it murdered 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. Since the Oslo Accords were signed, Palestinians have killed 53 Americans and injured 83 Americans. (Jewish Virtual Library) IF ERDOGAN is truly concerned about Palestinian life, as indeed he and all of us ought to be, he would condemn the unbelievable Arab-on-Arab violence that has left far greater numbers dead. In the first two years of the al-Aqsa intifada, more than 1000 Palestinians were killed by the PLO for supposedly “informing” for Israel.

(Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002) According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in Gaza, Hamas has killed and tortured thousands of other Palestinians who oppose their rule. By 2007, More than 600 Palestinians died during the struggle between Hamas and Fatah. (Ynetnews.com, June 6, 2007) Between 1986 and 1989, the Al-Anfal genocidal campaign in Iraq against the Kurdish people and others have Saddam Hussein’s army killing 200,000 of his own civilians in that period. (The Middle East: A History, 2004) And The New York Times has reported that Saddam Hussein has “murdered as many as a million of his people.” (Oct. 7, 2007) The vast majority of these people were, of course, Arabs.

I am a religious Jew who believes that Arabs are my brothers and are, of course, equal children of God in every way. The death of even a single Palestinian is a tragedy. But what choice does Israel have when the Palestinians launch wave after wave of horrific terror against innocent Israeli men, women and children? Will Erdogan next condemn the United States for the thousands of Taliban fighters it has killed in Afghanistan? Will he deplore American Predator strikes against al Qaida in Pakistan? Since when is there a moral equivalence between the taking of a life in self defense and the taking of a life in an act of cold-blooded murder? Just as it is proper for Jews to try and overlook Turkey’s current leader and remember the age-old friendship between the two peoples, it behooves the Turks themselves to rein in their Prime Minister from his character assassination of the Jewish state.

The writer is founder of the Global Institute for Values Education, has just published Ten Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself (Wiley) and in December will publish Kosher Jesus. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

Erdogan: Israel is a nuclear thre… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that while the West may presume that Israel and its surrounding nations would be under threat from a nuclear-armed Iran, it is Israel that possesses nuclear weapons.

In a Time magazine article published on Tuesday, Erdogan dismissed claims that the agreement to install NATO radar in Turkey was a response to the nuclear threat posed by Iran.

He said that the “radar system is executed under the framework of NATO obligations,” and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not concerned with the issue.

Erdogan continued to insist that UN sanctions on Israel would help solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, saying “had these sanctions been imposed, the Palestine-Israel conflict would have been resolved a long time ago.”

The Turkish prime minister also reiterated his demands for restoring ties between Ankara and Jerusalem, which include an apology and compensation to the families of the activists who lost their lives in the IDF raid of the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara and an end to the blockade on Gaza.

Former Mossad chief: Iran far from achieving nuclear bomb – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Dagan says military strike is not Israel’s preferred option for dealing with Islamic Republic’s growing nuclear program; also says Israel has contributed to its own deteriorating strategic situation.

By Amos Harel

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said Monday that a military strike on Iran was “far from being Israel’s preferred option,” telling the Council for Peace and Security that “there are currently tools and methods that are much more effective.”

Dagan also said Iran’s nuclear program was still far from the point of no return, and that Iran’s situation is “the most problematic it has been in since the revolution” in 1979.

	Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan
	Photo by: Olivier Fitoussi

But Israel’s strategic situation is also “the worst in its history,” he warned, adding that Israel itself has contributed a lot to this deterioration. As an example, he cited Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s decision to humiliate the Turkish ambassador last year by demonstratively seating him on a low chair.

Dagan made his remarks on the same day that visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta passed on a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

At a joint press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Panetta stressed that any steps against Iran’s nuclear program must be taken in coordination with the international community.

The United States, he said, is “very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary” to keep Iran from posing “a threat to this region.” But doing so “depends on the countries working together,” he added.

He repeated the word “together” several times in this context.

Panetta cited Iran’s nuclear program as number one on the list of issues he had discussed with Barak. He voiced concern not only about the nuclear program, but also about Iran’s support for terror, its efforts to undermine regional stability and the fact that it had supplied weapons that were used to kill American soldiers.

At the press conference, which took place at Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Panetta also stressed America’s deep commitment to Israel’s security.

His message for Barak, at their second meeting in two weeks, appeared to be simultaneously embrace and restrain: America is standing by Israel, but an uncoordinated Israeli strike on Iran could spark a regional war. The United States will work to defend Israel, but Israel must behave responsibly.

Washington has been worried by statements various senior Israeli officials have made recently that seemed to take an aggressive line on Iran. The issue has taken on new urgency because, in the view of many Western military experts, the window of opportunity for an aerial assault on Iran will close within two months.

In normal winter weather conditions, it would be very difficult to carry out such a complex assault.

During his visit, Panetta also urged Israel to conduct negotiations on a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. Earlier, in a conversation with American journalists on the flight over, he had warned that Israel was suffering regional isolation following the crises in its relations with Turkey and Egypt.

Asked by reporters why the United States refuses to free Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying on Israel’s behalf, Panetta replied merely that there is much opposition to freeing Pollard from within the administration, given the serious crimes of which he was convicted. Consequently, he said, U.S. President Barack Obama “and others” have made it clear that it won’t happen.

Panetta also met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with senior PA officials in Ramallah. He made his way Tuesday to Egypt, where, according to reports in the Arab media, he will also discuss the release of Israeli-American Ilan Grapel, who was arrested a few months ago on suspicion of espionage.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 4, 2011, 11:12 AM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian troops facing Turkey

For the past three months, Syrian President Bashar Assad has staved off a military attack by Turkey or NATO for halting the exceptional brutality of his crackdown on protest by explicitly holding Greater Tel Aviv’s 1.2 million inhabitants under threat of missile retaliation. Iran and Hizballah are exercising the same deterrent. This standoff was the main theme of the talks US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta held with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv Monday, Oct. 3.

According to Western intelligence sources, Syria, Iran and Hizballah have charted a coordinated military operation for flattening metropolitan Tel Aviv, Israel’s financial, industrial and cultural center, with thousands of missiles launched simultaneously by all three – plus the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami firing from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have never publicly  admitted that this threat is on record, but Western intelligence sources have reported that Israel reacted with a warning of its own: If a single Syrian missile explodes in Tel Aviv, Damascus will be first to pay the price, and if the missile offensive persists, one Syrian town after another will be destroyed.
The Israeli message to Assad cited the warnings Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other government members addressed in the past year to Hizballah, that if Tel Aviv comes under attack from its missiles, not only Beirut but all of Lebanon would go up in flames. Assad was given to understand that Syria would go the same way as Lebanon if it engaged in missile belligerence against Israel.
Bashar Assad’s threat to Israel was very much on Leon Panetta’s mind when he told reporters on the plane carrying him to Israel Monday for his first visit as defense secretary: “Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength,” he said.

Western military sources say that he was not only referring to Syria, Egypt and the Palestinians by this and other statements, but pointing at the widening rift between Israel and Turkey.

The US official believes that this rift plays into the hands of the Syrian ruler and grants him the freedom to issue dire threats against Israel to hold Turkey and NATO back from using military force against his vicious regime. For Panetta, this is a prime example of Israel failing to project its military strength for diplomatic gains that would be beneficial to the West in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world. The loss of Turkish-Israeli military cooperation, albeit not initiated by Israel, ties the hands of the US and NATO against striking Syria. Those sources report that Panetta does not absolve Ankara of responsibility for this situation.

Syria first threatened Israel with retaliation on Aug. 9 when Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spent six hours with Bashar Assad in an effort on behalf of his own government and NATO to persuade him to stop the carnage his troops were perpetrating against his people.

Davutoglu warned Assad that if he did not desist from his actions he would share the fate of Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of NATO and Turkish forces.

The Syrian ruler’s response was harsh: From the moment a shot is fired against Syria, “it will take only six hours for Syria to devastate Tel Aviv and ignite the entire Middle East,” he said.
Assad was spelling out the warning issued on May 10 by a close crony, international business tycoon Rami Makhlouf, who said then: “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel. No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

The barrage of Syrian threats was reinforced from Tehran Monday, Sept, 26 by Ayatollah Jafar Shoujouni, a close associate of the all-powerful Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Shoujouni recalled that when he visited Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last May, he assured him: “If Israelis come near Tehran, we will destroy Tel Aviv.”

The Iranian cleric and the Syrian businessman spoke in the same vein in the same month. This was no coincidence. Their threat has since been repeated with greater emphasis to provide the Assad regime with insurance for its survival against foreign military intervention while continuing its pitiless onslaught on dissent.

Syria and Turkey are increasingly at odds, debkafile‘s military sources report. This week, Damascus accused the Turks of smuggling automatic and anti-tank weapons to the protesters, claiming to have uncovered a consignment in the protest center of Homs.

Ankara has initiated the process of freezing  Assad family members’  bank accounts and assets whose worth is estimated at half a billion dollars.
Turkey is also weighing unilateral sanctions after the UN Security Council last week imposed an arms embargo on Syria although Russia succeeded in blocking a tough council resolution. Moscow was punishing the West for its military intervention in Libya and flatly opposed to giving NATO another such opportunity in Syria.
Damascus repeatedly warned Turkey in the past week of reprisals if its inspectors dare open freights on transit to  Syria by ship, plane or land vehicle to search for embargoed arms.
At a time of dangerously spiralling tensions, there is no knowing when the Assad regime will determine that the first Turkish shot was fired and how it will retaliate.