WarSclerotic

DEBKA.

Nuclear concerns hovered over the Middle East this week, heralded by a disclosure by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sources Tuesday, Nov. 1 that Syria had once built a uranium enrichment facility for developing a nuclear bomb at Al-Hasaka near the junction of the Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish borders.
It was identical to the plant the late Muammar Qaddafi built for making a Libyan atom bomb.
Both obtained the plans from the clandestine network run by Dr. Abdel Qader Khan, father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb and source of the nuclear programs of China, Burma and North Korea.
Today a cotton spinning mill stands on the site.
Our sources revealed that in early March 2003 Syria received low-level enriched uranium and other nuclear equipment from Iraq. Saddam Hussein had decided to transfer most of his nuclear equipment and WMD to Syria, a fact which the West has refused to acknowledge.
Syria planned to enrich this uranium to higher levels at the Hasaka facility.
The IAEA sources further disclosed that letters were exchanged in the late 1990s between a senior official of the Syrian Atomic Energy Committee called Muhidin Issa and Dr. Khan in Pakistan, about a visit by Issa to Pakistan’s nuclear labs.
Syria is thus exposed as having sought to make a nuclear weapon as far back as 13 years ago. But it did not stop there. DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report that in email exchanges four years ago between Khan and American researchers, he said he had visited Syria twice.
The first time was in the late eighties, when he and his colleagues were changing flights in Damascus and decided together to break their journey and spend two days touring Syria’s historical mosques, tombs and sites, and again with a delegation attending a Science Conference.
But Khan denied any nuclear deals with Syria.
The next IAEA report – “a game-changer on the Iranian dossier”
According to our sources, the Syrian disclosure was part of IAEA’s advance publicity for its forthcoming report on Iran to be published next Tuesday, Nov. 8 in Vienna. Some western officials are already calling it “a game-changer in the Iranian nuclear dossier” because of the substantial amount of unpublished data gathered for seven years which could only be for the design and development of a nuclear warhead.
“It is going to be hard for even Moscow or Beijing to downplay its significance,” they said.
They had less to say about the possibility of an extreme Iranian reaction to these findings, especially if they generate harsh sanctions such as Tehran has already warned would be seen as an act of war.
Given the content disclosed in the second article in this issue (Why Are Israelis Sure a War with Iran is Impending?), the connection between the nuclear disclosures from Vienna on Syria and Iran and Israel’s decision to unveil its first nuclear-capable ballistic missile, Jericho 3, Wednesday, Nov. 2, is obvious.
Many of the details the IAEA promises to disclose will be familiar to veteran DEBKA-Net-Weekly readers, although their public disclosure now is important.
They will show that Iran is far closer than usually admitted in the West to a nuclear weapons capability.
Without saying so explicitly, the report will confirm a widely-known fact that the sanctions on which Washington counted for compelling Iran to give up its military nuclear program were non-starters.
The US, Iran and Israel line up their responses
Three governments, the US, Iran and Israel, had advance knowledge of the contents of the nuclear watchdog’s report, which is expected to be earthshaking, and had two weeks to prepare their reactions.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports exclusively on those preparations:
Washington:
President Barack Obama has ordered a total embargo on the sale and purchase of Iranian oil to be ready to go. It will be imposed unilaterally by the US and Western Europe because this measure would be defeated by Russia, China and India if tabled at the UN Security Council. Transactions with or through Iran’s state bank will also be banned, cutting Tehran off from financial dealings in the West.
(Details below on Tehran’s maneuvers for bypassing sanctions)
These are the penalties which Tehran has warned in the past would be deemed acts of war. Obama hopes that they will choke Iran financially.
Tehran:
Iran’s top officials have been running around in circles for the past week, trying to decide how to respond to the revelations in store against them. DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian sources report they are wavering between four options:
1. Coming partially clean on their nuclear weapons program – either by disclosing components or launching a nuclear-capable ballistic missile to a range of over 5,000 kilometers. Iran has steadily denied its nuclear program was anything but peaceful. By making this disclosure a day or two before the IAEA report, Tehran would break its own rules but also steal the nuclear watchdog’s thunder.
2. Conducting a nuclear test – not necessarily of a warhead or a bomb, which Iran does not have – but of some device. This would boost Iran’s image as a leading Middle East and Muslim power, particularly after the downfall of Muammar Qaddafi, a Muslim Arab ruler whose reign ended in the dust after he waived his nuclear option and handed it over to the West.
3. Raising military tensions on the Syrian, Lebanese and Gaza borders with Israel as per a longstanding contingency plan, accompanied by a campaign of terror against US targets in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. None of the first three options. Instead, using help from Russia, China, India and Brazil to bypass the most damaging sanctions. The machinery is already in place. Our sources have reported that Iran’s foreign oil trade is conducted these days through a Russian-Iranian sales agency based in Moscow and out of reach of American and Western powers and their oversight. Transactions are conducted through Russian and Chinese banks in Russian rubles and Chinese yuans instead of US dollars and the euro.
Iran has therefore shown it can ride out the next round of American sanctions by using Moscow and Beijing to cushion itself against their impact. To apply an arms embargo and boycott Iran’s central bank, the Obama administration would find itself in collision with Beijing and Moscow. Tehran calculates that given the current state of the Western economies, the US and its allies are in no fit state to enter into a clash of superpowers at this time.
Jerusalem:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak, both committed by election pledges to pre-empt Iran’s attainment of a nuclear weapon, decided now to pre-empt the IAEA’s Iran report rather than waiting for Iran’s reaction.
Wednesday, Nov. 2, they ordered the first public test-launch of a new Israeli intercontinental ballistic missile, Jericho 3. Foreign correspondents were encouraged to stress that the new weapon is capable of carrying a 750kg nuclear warhead over a distance of up to 7,000 km – farther still with a warhead weighing only 350kg. According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a salvo of 42 conventional missiles would “severely damage or demolish” Iran’s core nuclear sites at Natanz, Esfahan and Arak.
For underground facilities like the Fordo plant near Qom, Israel obtained in the third week of September 55 American GBU-28 bunker buster bombs.
This first glimpse of a part of Israel’s nuclear capabilities carried three messages to Tehran:
1. Israel would not hesitate to use its nuclear ability to wipe out Iran’s military nuclear program. For the first time in its 62 years, Israel is challenging a hostile Muslim country with a nuclear threat.
2. To this end, Israel did not wait for Iran to pre-empt the IAEA report by abandoning its nuclear ambiguity but jumped in before them both.
3. Jericho 3 forced Tehran to make a tough choice: Ignore it and be seen as a nuclear paper tiger in the Muslim and Arab world, or hit back and precipitate a dangerous escalation of war tension in the Middle East.

DEBKA.

Jericho missile

A hysterical sense that the Israeli government is seriously considering attacking Iran’s nuclear installations has swept the country. It was first cued by media reports two weeks ago and has been fed by vague hints from Israeli leaders suggesting something momentous was in the wind and a flurry of military activity, mostly involving Israel.
Much of this activity was packed in a single day. Wednesday, Nov. 2, saw an avalanche of military events, starting with Israel’s successful test-launch of Jericho 3, an upgraded intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead across a distance of 7,000 kilometers.
The IDF then released footage of Israeli Air Force squadron leaders on Italian air base runways reporting to the media on joint exercises in long-range maneuvers. They were carried out with the Italian air force “and other NATO nations” in Sardinia, to familiarize the IAF with NATO military tactics.
After that, the IDF’s Home Command announced a large-scale exercise Thursday morning, Nov. 3, to prepare central Israel for missile attack
Finally, Defense Minister Ehud Barak left on an unscheduled trip to London shortly after a secret visit to Israel by the British chief of staff Gen. Sir David Richards earlier this week as guest of Israel’s top soldier Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.
Suspense is building up ahead of the publication next Tuesday, Nov. 8 of the International Atomic Agency’s report which is expected to put Iran in the international dock. The foreboding over Tehran’s response to its findings and to more sanctions ties in with the threats from Damascus as the Assad regime nears its moment of truth.
Barak: Israel may have to fight alone
Before leaving for London, Barak delivered an ominous warning to the opening of the Knesset winter session Tuesday. Israel must brace itself, he said, for the need to defend its security interests over long distances – alone and without regional or other foreign support.
He did not mention Iran. Neither did he say outright that the United States would not be there to provide military aid or even diplomatic support. He simply let those shocking inferences stand.
In all the seven wars and two military confrontations with the Palestinians (intifada) which Israel has fought in its 62 years, America was always there, with air and sea corridors for needed arms and spare parts and friendly diplomacy for negotiating ceasefires or armistices. Now, Barak, who is a regular visitor to Washington every few weeks, was telling Israelis that next time they would be on their own.
“We live in uncertain times,” he went on to say. “The outcome of the Arab Spring is hard to predict. The threats are multiplying with Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Iran in the background,” Barak said. And if Israel reduces its defense spending to meet social protesters’ demands, the United States may likewise cut down on military aid to Israel.
He then called on his government colleagues to augment the state budget by an extra NIS 8 billion ($2.2 billion) to cover “imminent unforeseen security requirements” and social protesters’ demands.
The 2011 state budget stands at a peak NIS 348,185,234 (app. $99.5 billion) of which NIS 53.2 billion ($13.5 billion) is earmarked for defense, i.e. 6.3% of expected gross domestic product and 15.1% of the total budget outlay.
Fear of a combined Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah-Hama offensive
Finance minister Yuval Steinitz and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman upbraided Barak for his outspokenness on matters best left to backroom discussions. Lieberman denounced media reporting as “99 percent untrue.”
But the damage was done.
The juxtaposition of “alone” and “imminent unforeseen security requirements” was enough to convince the Israeli street that an operation against Iran was around the corner with Tehran’s Iran’s allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami joining the fray against Israel.
Monday, Oct. 31, ultra-Orthodox Shas Minister Eli Yishai, another senior member of the prime minister’s exclusive “Forum of Eight,” was recorded making an agonized confession to a closed session of party activists. He said he was not sleeping nights because of the hard decisions to make in a region so fraught with peril and complexity that they could result in 100,000 rockets descending on Israel.
No more words were needed to feed the hysteria. Every Israeli knows the math: Only Syria, Hizballah and Hamas command that many missiles between them. Therefore, Yishai could only have been talking about a potential Israeli-Iranian war.
The sense of doom further deepened when opposition leader Tzipi Livni of Kadima turned to Binyamin Netanyahu during her Knesset address and said with great pathos: “Mr. Prime Minister, don’t attack Iran. Listen to your security chiefs.”
An Israeli decision to strike Iran now is flatly denied
This was the first time any senior politician had openly mentioned the unmentionable. That comment and the rest of it were drawn from unverified Israeli media speculation which claimed that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo and the Shin Bet chief Yaacov Cohen had lined up solidly against an Israeli military action against Iran because, it was said, they believed it would place Israel’s very existence in question.
None of this was directly confirmed.
This may be why those assumptions drew no initial reactions from Washington, Moscow, any European capital or even Tehran. They were also ignored by the world media although not so long ago, this story would have been the stuff of thick headlines. Certainly, the West is too deeply concerned with its sinking economy to take an interest in yet another Middle East crisis – even on the scale of a major clash with Iran – after getting its fill of the Arab Spring.
Interest did perk up somewhat Wednesday in the unusual spate of military activity revolving around Israel and NATO only three days after the Western alliance packed up and departed Libya.
So is it true that Netanyahu and Barak decided without consulting anyone else to go to war on Iran before year’s end? The answer given by all DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources is a resounding no.
And indeed, this week, Defense Minister Barak finally and flatly denied any such decision when asked by an Army Radio interviewer.
But if attacked Israel may hit back at Iran
Our military and intelligence sources are certain a more nuanced question would have drawn a less categorical negative. For instance, had Barak been asked whether Israel would take advantage of a Middle Eastern war to strike Iran’s nuclear program, he might have replied: That depends on how the war goes. Instead of a definite “no,” he would most probably have said, “possibly yes” for at least six reasons:
1. Israel’s government, military and intelligence heads are convinced that while Syrian President Bashar Assad has dampened, though not extinguished, the flames of revolt against him, in the end he will buckle under the combined foreign military pressure to oust him.
It is coming directly or indirectly from US, NATO allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on behalf of the Persian Gulf rulers. Although NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied the organization’s present or future military involvement in Syria – “My answer is very short. NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out” – the alliance is very much there, largely through one of its members, Turkey, and Qatar, senior Arab partner in the NATO military operation against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.
Ankara is arming the rebels with weapons and training in special camps on its soil where too rebel leaders have established commands centers. Qatar, a primary arms and funding supplier, has along with Saudi Arabia officers training Syrian rebels in Turkey and Lebanon.
Israel expects Bashar Assad to go down fighting to the last bullet
2. Knowing he was in line for the sort of NATO treatment that eventually brought Qaddafi to a violent death, the Syrian president granted his first interview in the nine-month uprising against his regime to a Western media outlet on Sunday, Oct. 30. Using Sunday Telegraph as his platform, he issued a harsh threat to “burn the Middle East” and “another Afghanistan” if the West intervened in Syria.
Syria is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, he insisted. It “is the fault line, and if you play with the ground, you will cause an earthquake.”
Israel is convinced that sooner or later the outside pressure building up against him will drive Assad to lash out against the Jewish state to ignite a major regional conflagration and so “burn the Middle East.”
Less than a month ago, he warned Turkish Foreign Minister Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who visited Damascus on Oct. 4: “If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than six hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv.”
Israel’s analysis of Assad’s psychology supports the belief that Assad means what he says.
He is not like the deposed Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who tried to stay in step with Washington up to and including his exit from power, or the Libyan ruler Qaddafi who lived in fear of a Western attack – not only in 2011 but in 2003, when he dismantled his nuclear program against an American promise of immunity. The Syrian ruler is expected by Israeli intelligence watchers to fight to the bitter end, up to the last Syrian, last ally and last bullet.
This reading of the Syrian ruler’s nature and the presumption of Iranian participation in an anti-Israel offensive were reflected in Yishai’s anxious “100,000 missiles” comment.
US aid for Israel under attack is not taken for granted
3. Israel and most Arab and Persian Gulf capitals take it for granted, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report, that if Iran does attack Israel, the Obama administration cannot stand afford to aside but will have to intervene militarily.
In that case, one scenario postulates a three-way division of labor: The US and certain NATO allies would attack the sites developing Iran’s nuclear weapons and housing the bases of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Islamic Republic’s military and financial prop; Israel would concentrate its military resources on repelling attacks from Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad on itself and allied interests, while Turkey and Qatar would deal with Syria’s domestic strife.
For Israel, this would be the optimal scenario. But what if the Obama administration opts out of the campaign for fear of jeopardizing its gains from the Arab revolt? If the worst came to the worst, Israeli’s contingency plan for striking Iran’s nuclear program singlehanded and without American aid would have to come into play.
This is what Defense Minister Barak meant when he said Israel might have to fight alone across long distances.
The Gaza missile offensive – a dress rehearsal
4. Many Israeli military officials regard the multi-missile offensive from the Gaza Strip this week as a dress rehearsal staged by Tehran and Damascus for a full-scale showdown against the Jewish state.
Jihad Islami’s sudden four-day barrage against southern Israel from Saturday, Oct. 29, followed by its rejection of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, was seen at first as the Assad regime’s comeback for US and Egyptian efforts to move the Hamas headquarters and political bureau out of Damascus and over to Cairo and Amman.
(On Tuesday, Nov. 1, the new Jordanian Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh said banishing Hamas political secretary Khaled Mashaal and his staff 12 years ago was “a legal mistake.” He thus paved the way for their return to Jordan.)
However, as masses of arms from Libya continued to pour into Gaza for the Jihad Islami, Iran’s Palestinian protégé, a different picture emerged: Iran and Damascus appeared to be setting the scene for the opening of a more comprehensive military venture, possibly kicking off the earthquake Assad threatened last Sunday.
Syria and Iran seem to be pursuing a stop-go strategy, raising and lowering the military tension in time with Western steps while keeping it simmering.
The next IAEA report- a game-changer for Iran
5. Next week, harsh international sanctions await Iran as well as Syria following publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in Vienna which, according to early reports, will disclose new details about the Iranian nuclear military program that prove Tehran’s denials are false.
“This will be a game-changer in the Iranian nuclear dossier,” a western official predicted. “It is going to be hard for even Moscow or Beijing to downplay its significance.”
These disclosers and the events of the Syrian revolt are potential accelerants for military flare-ups across the region.
6. Lastly, the heated public debate in Israel over whether or not to strike Iran’s nuclear program before it is too late conceals another argument: Should Israel abandon its policy of never confirming or denying its own nuclear capability in the event of Iran owning up to developing a nuclear weapon or conducting a secret nuclear test?
A decision is needed in the short term following the disclosure Thursday that Iran has acquired a simulation program for designing and testing a potential weapon in secret.

DEBKA.

Barack Obama

Straight after the United States was disencumbered of NATO’s eight-month Libyan campaign on Oct. 31, President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs.
The news switched on six fast-moving processes:
1. A race against time. Will Iran be able to complete the transfer of all its nuclear installations and ballistic missiles to underground facilities in the remaining months? Or will the West and Israel get in first while the program is still vulnerable?
If it is not attacked by the onset of winter 20012, Western intelligence experts bet on Iran beating the rap; the chances of its programs sustaining serious damage would declines by 60 percent.
2. Having polished off the Qaddafi regime, Obama is perceived by the Sunni Muslim kings and emirs of the Persian Gulf, Middle East and North Africa, as setting his sights on Shiite Iran with dire knock-on consequences for Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah.
By demolishing the Islamic regime’s mainstay, the Revolutionary Guards and its terrorist-intelligence branch, the Al Quds Brigades, a US-led attack would have a good chance, they believe, of encompassing the downfall of the regimes in Tehran and Damascus and knocking the stuffing out of Hassan Nasrallah, head of Iran’s Lebanese surrogate Hizballah.
However, the same Sunni rulers are also certain that Iran, Syria and Hizballah will not go down without a fight and will stand up to the Western offensive to their last breath. So the year 2012 promises to see Arab Spring domestic struggles transmuted into regional wars.
NATO members dust off contingency plans, hold joint maneuvers with Israel
3. In the opposite camp, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report that Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead. They have begun joint military exercises to improve cooperation among their military and intelligence systems.
Although air, sea and missile forces will bear the brunt of a projected US-led assault on Iran, the partners are preparing Special Forces for landing small units at nuclear installations and other strategic sites.
Their combined training exercises have five purposes:
– Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years. Those governments must now check to see if the plans are still pertinent, update them if not, and ascertain that their military forces are armed with the right munitions and systems.
Last April and May, when the Libyan war was in full spate, NATO jets ran out of precision bombs and missiles and British and French warships out of ordnance.
– NATO and Israeli army chiefs need another two-to-three months to study the lessons of the Libyan campaign which, in the course of overthrowing the Qaddafi regime, used the embattled country as a testing ground for tactics and equipment in readiness for the Iran offensive.
NATO members gained valuable experience there in air and sea combat as well as in the use of small Special Operations units on the ground.
Arab leaders hope the US is ready for a fresh start in the region
– DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources in the Gulf report that NATO and Persian Gulf leaders are treating the prospect of a US strike against Iran with the utmost seriousness in view of the imminent exit of American troops from Iraq next month.
They hope that by turning its back on the Iraq venture, Washington is paving the way for a fresh start in the region.
The word from Washington that after Iraq, America plans to rebuild its Gulf presence, is seen as marking the end of the eight-year Iraq war era, in which Tehran was allowed to grow stronger and expand its regional grip, and the beginning of a new US focus on cutting Iran down to size.
The stakes are high: Obama administration’s failure to measure up would cost the US all of its positions in the Middle East.
– Israel stands out from the rest as unsure that Obama’s decision on Iran is indeed final and definite. This is why IDF preparations and joint maneuvers with Italy and other NATO members in the last two weeks are accompanied by doom-laden comments by Israeli leaders about the possible need to attack Iran unaided.
(See the next article in this issue.)
– Tehran, Damascus, Hizballah in Beirut and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza have no such doubts. For them, the danger of facing attack in 2012 is very real. Like NATO members and Israel, they have set in train preparations for fighting back.
Our military and intelligence sources report that Hassan Nasrallah, for example, has spent the last ten days inspecting Hizballah units and bases. He is taking commanders from the ranks of lieutenant through general aside and explaining that the Lebanese Shiite militia might find itself fighting singlehanded against NATO and Israeli forces, separately or combined, with no hope of support from Iran or Syria.
The bellicose Hizballah chief does not intend waiting for the enemy to fire the first shot. He proposes starting the war on his own account by loosing 10,000 rockets in a surprise attack on Israel.

Security and Defense: Rattli… JPost – Features – Week in review.

    On Wednesday, Israel test fired a long-range ballistic missile believed, according to foreign reports, to be a version of the Jericho 3 missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads up to ranges of 4,000 kilometers.

That same day, the Israel Air Force announced that it had returned from a week of joint maneuvers with Italy over Sardinia that included long-range flights, midair refueling and complicated bombing runs. On Thursday, the Home Front Command held a large-scale civil defense exercise aimed at preparing the public for missile attacks in the center of the country.

On their own, these exercises do not seem overly exciting, especially since they were planned months in advance. Israel’s missile tests are not something done randomly; they require immense preparations, particularly since they are launched to the west, over the Mediterranean Sea. Joint exercises with foreign countries cannot be planned at the spur of the moment and also require months of advanced planning.

At the same time, these events are also part of Israel’s saber-rattling and are Jerusalem’s way of signaling to the world that it is serious about the need for Iran’s nuclear program to be put to a stop. This message is being conveyed in the run-up to the report set to be published next week by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is expected to cast some new light on Iran’s weapons program.

The IAEA is under pressure to release the report in response to the recently uncovered Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

The report is expected to say that Iran is moving forward with its weapons program, something the US National Intelligence Estimate was unable to ascertain in late 2007.

If the report is damning to Iran, it could serve as the basis for a major crackdown would likely focus on economic sanctions, for example against the Iranian Central Bank, which has yet to be targeted, before any military action would be taken.

On the other hand, the report could also serve as a justification for military action against Iran, either by Israel, by the US or by a coalition of countries. A report by the IAEA, which is considered to be an objective UN agency, is not the same as having a country’s own intelligence agencies claim that the country is developing weapons of mass destruction, as in the case with Iraq in 2003.

Either way, there is no question that something is afoot. Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to the US in September and two weeks later US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta came to Israel for another round of talks, during which he urged Israel to “work together” with the international community to stop Iran.

New CIA chief David Petraeus recently visited Israel as well, as did head of the European Command Adm. James Stavridis and additional US military officials.

British Chief of Defense Staff Gen. David Richards secretly visited Israel this week, after which Barak flew to London for talks with the defense and foreign secretaries. The Guardian reported that the British military was drafting plans for the part it will play in a potential US-led attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

While this all seems dramatic and as though Israel is on the verge of launching a war, it is something that has happened in the past.

In early 2010, for example, US Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA director Leon Panetta, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, National Security Council strategist Dennis Ross, Deputy Secretaries of State Jim Steinberg and Jack Lew, head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee Sen. John Kerry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen all passed through the gates of Ben-Gurion Airport in the span of just six weeks.

This time appears to be different though – not necessarily because of a change in Israel but because of developments in Iran, where sanctions are not believed to have had a major impact on the progress of the nuclear program.

On the contrary. Israeli intelligence believes that the moment Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decides to make the bomb (he is not believed to have made the decision yet), it would take about a year to make a crude device and around two to three years to make a weapon that could be installed on the wing of an aircraft or on a ballistic missile.

Iran is also continuing to disperse its capabilities and has announced intentions to move some of its advanced centrifuges to the Fordo facility near the city of Qom, which Barak has said before is immune to conventional military strikes. As reported last month in The Jerusalem Post, this has led to an assessment among analysts that the window of opportunity for a strike against Iran is quickly closing.

The debate among the inner cabinet members regarding the Iranian issue are not new. Likud party cabinet members Dan Meridor and Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon are known opponents of such a strike and believe that Israel should not be placing itself at the forefront of efforts to stop it. On the other side are Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Barak, the latter having been accused of sparking the recent media focus on the issue.

In a country like Israel where the censor often imposes restrictions on issues that are far less sensitive for national security than the Iranian problem, it is telling that there has been no censorship in this case.

The past two times that Israel bombed a nuclear reactor – in Syria in 2007 and in Iraq in 1981 – there was not nearly as extensive a debate as there is today. In the Syrian case, for example, the public did not even know that President Bashar Assad had built a nuclear reactor to begin with.

That is why on the one hand the government might actually want this debate, which began with Nahum Barnea’s sensational headline in last Friday’s Yediot Aharonot, to be held in the media. This way the message will get out to the world, which will then hopefully take action.

On the other hand, maybe the news was not originally intended for publication. If that is the case, then there is actually something comforting in the ongoing debate in the media and the public regarding military action against Iran.

Unlike the operation in Syria, which was hidden from the public, Iran’s nuclear program has been a threat to Israel for over a decade and the public, which could face unprecedented rocket and missile fire following a strike, has the right to know where their government is leading them, what the risks are and what they potentially stand to gain.

Barak and Netanyahu could in fact gain from this ongoing discourse. On the one hand, it takes the attention away from the doctors’ strike and the social protests and allows them to focus on the really important issues that they believe they were elected in order to deal with. It also could potentially lead the US and Europe to take more decisive action against Iran – starting with economic sanctions – that have not been taken before.

The problem is that it’s possible that the increased tension between Israel and Iran will cause one of the sides to make a mistake that could lead to a war that neither side currently wants.

Iran’s response to an Israeli attack could vary. Israel’s greatest concern stems from the Hizbullah’s missile arsenal, which is estimated at 50,000 with the ability to cover the entire State of Israel. For that reason, there are some estimates that when and if it attacks Iran, Israel will also simultaneously attack some of the known Hizbullah targets with an emphasis on the group’s long-range missile.

But one of the main questions we are left with is how long such a war would last. Judging by the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, which lasted eight years, when Iran is determined and driven by radical ideology and religion almost nothing can stop it. It is therefore possible that Iran will continue fighting for as long as it feels like it is achieving its goal of hurting Israel.

What’s the Real Audience for Israel’s Iran Attack Speculation? « Commentary Magazine.

Your Latest Iran Nuclear Round-Up – Jeffrey Goldberg – International – The Atlantic.

Nov 3 2011, 8:54 PM ET Most people outside of Israel don’t seem to realize this, but there’s a full-on crisis over there about plans — or non-plans — to bomb Iran’s nuclear program. I’ll round-up more of this news as it comes over the transom, but this struck me as particularly interesting: Polls by Haaretz show that the Israeli public is split on the matter. On the issue of the attack itself, the results are split with 41% of Israelis (both Arabs and Jews) in favor of a strike, 39% against it, 20% undecided. Most definitively, 80% of Israelis believe that a strike on Iran will draw Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon into a war with Israel, with 59% responding that scenario playing out would be highly likely, the other 21% responding that it would be only fairly likely.

However, to Prime Minister Netanyahu, this last scenario is much less interesting. In his view, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran would inevitably draw Israel into conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah because both groups would be able to operate more freely against Israel with a nuclear Iran behind them. From my cover story in the Atlantic last September:

The challenges posed by a nuclear Iran are more subtle than a direct attack, Netanyahu told me. “Several bad results would emanate from this single development. First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

Meanwhile, the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet is reporting that Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi is, unsurprisingly, saying bring it on. (It is possible to imagine Iran benefiting from such an attack — for one thing, an attack could legitimize the very program Israel is hoping to wipe out.) Jackson Diehl at The Post is less convinced about the prospects of an attack:

The new burst of speculation, like those before it, does serve a couple of purposes for Israel, however. It refocuses attention on the Iranian threat, and takes it away from the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations; it raises the pressure on the United States and its allies to increase sanctions and other nonmilitary pressure on Tehran.

All the smoke also helps to obscure Israel’s real intentions. After so many cries of “Wolf!,” it seems fairly probable that when Israel really does prepare to attack, no one will believe the press leaks. That includes now.

International pressure on Iran rising, from media leaks to military exercises – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Israel’s government and the international community remain divided over whether or not to attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

By Amos Harel

It’s hard to believe, but for 24 hours there hasn’t been a single controversial statement by a single Israeli official regarding the possibility of attacking Iran. Nothing. Nada. Either our politicians finally came to their senses, or they’ve simply run out of things to say after a week of nonstop talk.

When Israel falls silent, attention turns to what the rest of the world is saying. The most important statement yesterday came from U.S. President Barack Obama. After a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama said the two “agreed on the need to maintain the unprecedented international pressure on Iran to meet its obligations.”

	Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, Tuesday, May 18, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

To some extent, Obama’s statement provides the missing piece of the puzzle of the past few days. His statement must be seen against the background of Wednesday’s report by British newspaper The Guardian, which said that London was preparing for a possible military strike on Iran, and of the recent spate of leaks from Israel about a dispute among senior officials over whether the time for such a strike is near.

The picture that is emerging is, in all likelihood, as follows: Israel’s government remains divided over whether to attack Iran, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak support the idea in principle. Israel apparently switched to intensive muscle-flexing. It seems that a recent spate of well-publicized activity such as media leaks, was aimed at upping the pressure on Tehran, and above all, on the international community, which will discuss the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear program next week.

The threat of Israeli military action increases the chances of the world taking a firm stand on the Iranian issue. It is possible, for instance, that the Security Council will now discuss imposing new, harsher sanctions on Tehran. With this in mind, it’s interesting to note that the crude Israeli hints about military action over the past week haven’t elicited the slightest objection from either Washington or London.

Yesterday, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida reported that Netanyahu had ordered the Shin Bet security service to investigate the recent leaks on the Iranian issue. Somehow, over the last two years, the Kuwaiti press has become the Israeli establishment’s preferred channel for leaks on sensitive subjects (including investigations of such leaks ). Indeed, it seems the Prime Minister’s Bureau has often been the source of these leaks itself.

So here’s a safe bet: Chances are high that the Shin Bet investigation, if it takes place at all, will hit a dead end. The reason is simple. Over the past few weeks, there is virtually not a single senior Israeli official, current or former, who hasn’t taken part, whether openly or off the record, in media discussions about Iran. So, if Netanyahu really wants to delve into the matter, he’s liable to discover that he needs to fire half his cabinet – possibly even including himself.