WarSclerotic

Russia says UN Iran report to st… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    MOSCOW – Russia warned the UN on Tuesday against publishing a report which is expected to heighten suspicion over Iran’s nuclear program, saying to do so will strain diplomatic efforts to resolve the major powers’ dispute with Tehran.

The Foreign Ministry said the timing of the UN nuclear watchdog’s report, due next month, could block any chance of serious talks.

It urged greater delicacy surrounding the publication and chided the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) information about the subject and tone of its upcoming quarterly report.

“It would without a doubt strain the atmosphere and may hinder the start of serious negotiations,” the Russian ministry said in a statement on its website.

“This sensitive topic requires unbiased, delicate and responsible handling, which can hardly be possible given the promotional hype that began even before the publication (of the) IAEA director general’s report,” it added.

The IAEA is expected to release a strongly worded document spelling out in detail why it voiced mounting concern last month that Iran may be seeking to build an atom bomb.

Western powers suspect Iran is using its nuclear program to develop nuclear missiles, but Tehran says it needs to refine uranium for a planned network of nuclear power plants.

Moscow, which has long-standing commercial and diplomatic links with Iran, has positioned itself as a mediator in the search for a solution to Teheran’s nuclear row with the six major powers – the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

Turkey says ‘yes’ to Israeli eart… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

    Turkey on Tuesday finally accepted Israel’s earthquake aid, two days after a devastating temblor hit eastern Turkey, and following a number of rebuffed Israeli government offers of assistance.

According to a Foreign Ministry spokesman, the Turks made a request through Israel’s embassy in Ankara for Israel to send mobile homes to the devastated Van province where the earthquake hit.

The Defense Ministry chartered a civilian 747 plane Tuesday night to take seven mobile homes to Turkey on Wednesday. According to a Defense Ministry official, this will be the first of a number of planes that will be sent carrying aid.

The official would not comment on whether the reason a civilian plane was hired, and that an IDF transport plane was not being used, was because of a Turkish ban on Israeli military flights over Turkey since the Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010.

Since the earthquake hit on Sunday, both President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu contacted their Turkish counterparts and offered assistance.

At this point the Turks have not asked for Israeli personnel to help rescue and recovery efforts. After a massive earthquake there in 1999, Israel dispatched a  search and rescue team of some 250 people, plus a field hospital.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak set up a small team in the ministry on Tuesday to look at what other aid can be supplied, and how to best to get it there.

One foreign ministry source warned against reading any diplomatic significance in the Turkish acceptance of the Israeli assistance, saying all this showed was that there was a massive humanitarian tragedy in Turkey and a real need for help dealing with it. The number of dead in the earthquake rose Tuesday to over 430, with that number expected to grow in the coming days.

Turkey sent a firefighting airplane to Israel in December to help put out the Carmel Forest fire. This gesture did not lead to a breakthrough in thawing the tensions between Israel and Turkey, though initially there was some hope it would do so.

Ahmadinejad says West set to plunder Libya… JPost – Middle East.

    TEHRAN – Western countries supported Muammar Gaddafi when it suited them but bombed the Libyan leader when he no longer served their purpose in order to “plunder” the north African country’s oil wealth, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.

While Tehran has applauded the people of Libya for overthrowing the man it considered an illegitimate dictator, Ahmadinejad warned Libyans that the West now aimed to run their country for them.

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“Show me one European or American president who has not traveled to Libya or has not signed an agreement (with Gaddafi),” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live in which he accused the West of ordering the former leader’s execution.

“Some people said they killed this gentleman to make sure he would not be able to say anything, just like what they did to bin Laden,” he said.

Iran accuses the West of helping create the Sunni Muslim militant group al Qaeda run by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in May.

Ahmadinejad derided the West’s approach to the Security Council, which he called an “organization with no honor”, saying the UN resolution to take action against Gaddafi was used as an authorization to “plunder” Libyan oil.

“Any decision that would strengthen the presence, domination or influence of foreigners would be contrary to the Libyan nation’s interests,” Ahmadinejad said.

“The expectation of the world of the Libyan nation is that they stand and run the country themselves.”

The downfall of Gaddafi, after he gave in to pressure to abandon nuclear work, has reinforced the view of hardliners in Tehran that no good would come of making concessions to the West.

Iran has been subjected to four rounds of sanctions by the United Nations since 2006 over its disputed nuclear program. Western powers accuse Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapon, but Tehran insists its program is peaceful.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report October 25, 2011, 2:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli missile-carrying UAV for Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s election to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council brings to the world body for the next two years a government which has cultivated lively military and economic ties with Israel.
Those ties are constantly challenged by Turkey’s military industries, giving Ankara yet another reason to scowl at Jerusalem. Russia, Armenia and Iran also view this collaboration with distrust, especially the rapid arming of the Azerbaijan army with assorted types of Israeli drones co-produced in new factories established in Azerbaijan.

Both Moscow and Tehran are actively looking for ways to torpedo this expanding military partnership.

debkafile‘s military sources report that within the next two months, the Azerbaijan army will take delivery of 60 drones of two types, the Orbiter 2M, whose altitude ceiling is 4-6 kilometers and can stay in the air up to 5 hours; and Aerostar, which can go as high as 10 kilometers and stay aloft for 12 hours.
Seventy percent of their components are manufactured in Israel, 30 percent in the new Azerbaijan factories.
This collaboration may be just the beginning.

At the end of September, Yavar Jamalov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense Industry, talked about building missile-carrying drones. It was the first hint that the two governments had reached terms on joint production of this advanced unmanned aerial craft.

Our sources report he was referring to the Hermes 450 produced by Elbit, having already absorbed the Hermes 450 in his armed forces. According to Western intelligence sources, Jerusalem and Baku are also deep in discussion on the sale of Israeli military spy satellites.

Tehran is worried. debkafile‘s Iranian sources report that in addition to the radar stations Israel has installed on the Caspian shore with an open eye on Iran, it is about to acquire bases in Azerbaijan for long-range drones able to keep the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites under surveillance.

Turkey, for its part, made an unsuccessful effort to freeze Israel out of the Azerbaijan drone market.

On a recent visit to Baku, the Secretary of Military Industry at the Turkish defense ministry, Murat Bayar, tried to persuade the government to buy its long-range Anka drone instead of the Israeli tactical aerial vehicle. He promised Turkish financing for the construction of a special factory in Azerbaijan.
However, the prototype of the Turkish drone is still under construction and won’t be finished until next year. Only then will it starting gaining operational experience. The Azerbaijanis did not say no to the Turkish official but invited him to come back after the finished drone had been put through its paces.

On Sept. 12, an Israel-made and operated drone with Azerbaijan Air Force markings was downed over the Martuni district of Nagorno Karabach, with which Azerbaijan is at war.

The Nagorno Karabakh Ministry of Defense in the capital of Stepanakert said the Azerbaijani drone had been brought down “as a result of ‘special measures’ taken by its antiaircraft units.”
In its Sept. 22 issue 510, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources reporting the incident interpreted those “special measures” as a combination of Russian antiaircraft officers who entered the tiny Caucasian republic from neighboring Armenia and advanced anti-drone equipment owned by Nagorno Karabakh’s antiaircraft defense units.

Western sources believe Moscow had the Azerbaijani drone shot down as a one-off incident for four objectives:

1. A hands-off road sign to Israel to stay out of the Caspian Sea region and its conflicts.

Moscow has taken note of Israel’s deepening economic and military footholds in four countries: Azerbaijan, which is the largest, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Georgia, and regards its supply of arms to these countries as unwanted interference in Russia’s backyard.

2.  Revenge for Israel reneging on its 2009 commitment to build a drone factory in Russia. Moscow decided to confront Israeli drone technicians with Russian antiaircraft crews with an unwinnable ambush.

3. Moscow was also telling Tehran that it was serious about cooperating with the Iran to safeguard its rights in the Caspian Sea and willing to use diplomatic, military and intelligence means to halt the spread of Azerbaijani and Israeli influence in the region.
4. The Defense Ministry in Stepanakert published pictures of the downed drone deliberately exposing its camera as a warning to Jerusalem and Baku that if Azerbaijani drones continue to fly, Moscow may turn the drone’s wreckage over to Iranian intelligence experts and let them unravel its secrets.

Explaining Iran’s approach toward the… JPost – Opinion – Op-Eds.

    What drives Iran’s ambition to become the dominant power in the Middle East at the expense of the Sunni Arab Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)? Is it solely an issue of Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist ideology?

It is worth recalling that many of Iran’s assertive and expansionist policies predate Khomeini’s revolution and rise to power in 1979. For example, Iran’s claim to Bahrain goes back to the secular Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s resolution in November 1957, declaring the island to be Iran’s fourteenth province. Eventually, the Shah let go of Bahrain for the time being, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.

Nonetheless, he seized control of the Persian Gulf islands of Abu Musa and the Tunbs in 1971. This forms the basis of Iran’s ongoing dispute with the UAE over control of the islands. Furthermore, Teheran’s current policy of providing support for armed groups in Iraq represents a continuation of the Shah’s approach towards Iran’s western neighbor.

Tensions were particularly aggravated because the Shah disliked the Arab nationalist Baathist regime amid disputes over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and thus backed Kurdish separatists in Iraq until the Algiers Accord of 1975.

Most importantly, like the current Islamist regime, the Shah sought to acquire nuclear weapons while publicly insisting that his nuclear program was solely for civilian purposes. As Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, has noted, the Shah let slip his real aims when he told Le Monde in 1974 that one day, “sooner than is believed,” Iran would be “in possession of a nuclear bomb.”

Granted, the Shah was certainly no enemy of Israel and did not have a habit of making hostile statements along the lines of calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and it is undeniable that the present Iranian government’s hatred of the Jewish state is religious in nature.

He also had cordial ties with Saudi Arabia in so far as both were against Nasser’s pan-Arab nationalist Egypt. Yet the Shah’s obsession with military spending, lies about the country’s nuclear program, as well as the aggression against the UAE and Iraq, demonstrate that regional hegemony was certainly on his agenda.

The excessive military expenditure ostensibly served as a deterrent against the Soviet Union, but that was a mere pretext since the United States was more than capable of protecting the Shah’s regime against Moscow’s designs.

SO WHAT is the source of the continuity between Iran’s policies now and those of the Shah? It is notable that, like the Islamists, the Shah hated Arab nationalism.

Is the underlying factor therefore an Arab-Persian ethnic rivalry? A recent interview by Al Arabiya with prominent Iranian intellectual Sadek Zibkalam, who is closely linked to former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would appear to support this thesis.

In that story, Zibkalam said, “The phenomenon of hating Arabs is very common among intellectuals… Whenever Iran issues any fiery statement about our neighbors… you can easily detect that they revolve around a belief that Persians are superior.”

He added that “Iranians’ constant attacks on Sunnis stem from their hatred of the Arabs,” that the animosity extends partially to some non-Persian groups in Iran like the Lur and Baloch, and that these attitudes are firmly ingrained both at the public and government levels.

Indeed, Iranian belief in Persian racial superiority is not something to be taken lightly. The Pahlavi dynasty that preceded the 1979 revolution featured “Aryamehr” as one of the Shah’s titles, meaning “Light of the Aryans.” As for the link between anti-Sunni and anti-Arab sentiment, it is notable how many pan- Iranist and Iranian nationalist factions such as SUMKA and the Aryan League view Shi’ism in Iran as a form of “Aryanized Islam.”

More recently, confirming Zibkalam’s analysis is an article written by Ayatollah Mohammed Kharrazi, the head of the Hezbullah-Iran organization and an elite member of the current regime. Published on the Hezbullah-Iran’s website (translation courtesy of MEMRI), the piece did not attract any condemnation from other leading members of the government.

Arguably, Kharrazi’s most egregious claim is that the Koran was revealed in Arabic so that the Arabs, “the greatest infidels and hypocrites,” could know the book’s wonders “in the poorest of the world’s languages,” in stark contrast to Persian, which is supposedly “the most superior language of the dwellers of Paradise.”

Kharrazi goes on to call for the subjugation of the Arabs and other ethnic groups (e.g. the Lur and Baloch, who feature higher up the racial hierarchy than Arabs) between Israel and Afghanistan under an Islamist Greater Iran, the true “homeland of Islam.”

In short, the continuing tensions between Iran and the Gulf Arab states in particular are at least in part the product of traditional Arab-Persian racial animosity, predating the rise of the Islamist regime.

Thus, even with regime change and an end to an Iranian existential threat to Israel, the nation will still strive to shift the balance of regional power and influence in the Middle East away from Saudi Arabia, provided there is no common enemy to fight, and will likely continue its nuclear program to achieve this goal.

The writer is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an intern at the Middle East Forum.