WarSclerotic

‘US election increases chances o… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    ISTANBUL – An Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites may become likelier in 2012 if Israel calculates it has more room to act alone in a US presidential election year, a former US official and nuclear diplomacy expert said.

Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran watcher at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, told Reuters the latest report by the UN nuclear watchdog made him more worried that Iran was closer to mastering how to use nuclear power as a weapon.

Iran insists its nuclear program is for civilian energy only. But Fitzpatrick, who was a State Department official responsible for nuclear non-proliferation, said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report was damning.

It found that Iran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon and may be continuing research relevant to that end.

Fitzpatrick said an IAEA governing board meeting on Thursday and Friday in Vienna should demonstrate serious international concern over the findings. But he doubted whether Russia or China would go along with any resolution finding Iran to be in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

And he said he feared that if countries like Israel that felt most threatened by Iran lost faith in the international community to act firmly, they could act alone.

“When you consider that next year being the US presidential election year, and the dynamics of politics in the United States, this could increase Israel’s inclination to take matters into its own hands,” Fitzpatrick said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might not necessarily ask President Barack Obama for permission to mount a strike, Fitzpatrick said, if Israel believed Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon or place one in a site out of reach.

Netanyahu said on Sunday Iran was closer to getting an atomic bomb than had been thought.

“The most likely possibility is that Mr Netanyahu calls up Obama and says: ‘I’m not asking for a green light, I’m just telling you that we’ve just launched the planes, don’t shoot them down’,” Fitzpatrick said.

“And in a US presidential election year, I think it’s unlikely that Obama would shoot them down.” Israel enjoys strong support in the United States among politicians and the public.

An Israeli attack on Iran would raise the specter of a wider conflict in the Middle East, at a time when the Jewish state has become more isolated due to changes wrought by the Arab Spring.

Fitzpatrick said he did not think Israel was at that point yet but he saw the danger rising.

He said if Iran took the political decision it could produce a bomb within a year, given its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU).

But he doubted whether Iran would race to produce a single bomb, and it would take a couple of years to produce the handful needed to constitute a “real nuclear deterrent”.

Since last year, Iran has tested long range missiles, increased its LEU stockpile, and installed more advanced centrifuges for further enrichment, putting some deep inside a fortified mountain facility at Fordow.

Fitzpatrick said the onus was on governments to implement UN mandated sanctions against Iran to exert maximum pressure.

“There is still evidence that Iran is receiving nuclear and missile-related material from front companies in China and elsewhere,” he said. “There’s evidence that some of the Iranian front companies that had been operating out of Dubai have shifted base — some of them moving here to Istanbul.”

Fitzpatrick said it was clear that some countries were using every means at their disposal to retard Iran’s nuclear program, short of military action.

“I don’t have any direct evidence of sabotage efforts or so-called decapitation, but clearly Iranian scientists involved in the nuclear program and in the ballistic missile program are in danger,” Fitzpatrick said. “Some have been persuaded to defect, others have been assassinated.”

An explosion at a military base near Tehran last Saturday killed Brigadier Hassan Moqaddam and 16 other members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. Moqaddam was regarded as the architect of Iran’s missile defenses. Tehran has said the explosion was an accident.

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DEBKAfile Special Report November 16, 2011, 5:53 PM (GMT+02:00)

Binyamin Netanyahu duels with Tehran

A short statement was read out to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament by cabinet member Michael Eitan Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16. It read: “Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu informed the full Knesset plenum that all options are on the table when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program. The prime minister and the authorized bodies are acting to stop the nuclear armament of Iran. The efforts are ongoing and we will do everything possible to enlist states in the international community, “he continued “because the Iranian threat is adanger not only to the State of Israel but to world peace.”

The Knesset was due to devote a special session to the question of an attack on Iran.

debkafile‘s military sources report that this is the first statement of this nature the prime minister has ever delivered to Israel’s parliament. It was phrased notably in the present tense. “The authorized bodies” are thought to refer to the Israeli Defense Forces and its intelligence community.

Also worth noting is that Netanyahu sent a minister to read out his message. He himself absent from this key debate and so was the defense minister. For the first time too, there was no reference to sanctions which have figured hitherto in all Israeli official statements on the Iranian nuclear controversy.

The implication is that an operation against a nuclear Iran may be in the works. If so, a response from Tehran is to be expected shortly.
Earlier Wednesday, the supreme commander of Iran’s armed forces Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi said Israel’s cries of alarm about Iran’s nuclear development bespeak shock and fear. But nothing will save the Zionist regime from its bitter fate – a hint at Iran’s nuclear capability.
Firouz-Abadi said the massive explosion which killed Iran’s missile chief Saturday “had nothing to do with Israel or America.” It took place during “research on weapons that could strike Israel,” adding that the blast had delayed by only two weeks the development of an undisclosed military “product.”

The two statements together aroused lively speculation in the tense climate left by the latest nuclear watchdog agency’s evidence of Iran’s work on a nuclear weapon. Linking them might suggest that the Israeli prime minister had decided to refute the Iranian general’s claim. By stating that “efforts are ongoing” to stop Iran’s nuclear armament, he may have been implying that  the explosion at the Guards base Saturday was indeed a covert Israeli operation in line with those efforts.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Top Iran general: Blast targeted anti-Israel weapons program – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

General says Saturday’s explosion at military base ‘temporarily stopped’ weapons research program to be used against Israel; Iran denies Israel behind blast.

By DPA

A blast at a military base in Iran happened while the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were working on a weapon research program to be used against Israel, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff said Wednesday. Saturday’s explosion at a military base near Tehran killed 17 IRGC members.

“The incident happened during a research program which could have become a severe punch on Israeli regime’s mouth,” General Hassan Firouzabadi said.

	A man holding a picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while walking on representations of the U.S. and Israeli flags in Qom, south of Tehran February 11, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

ISNA news agency quoted the general as saying that due to the incident “the program was only temporarily stopped but would resume again soon.”

The general gave no details about the program and what weapons were researched – but ruled out sabotage by either Israel or the United States as being behind the blast.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker on Wednesday denied press speculation that Israel was behind the blast. “Whatever the enemies say about the IRGC base incident is fiction and therefore not important,” Ali Larijani told Fars news agency.

Time Magazine cited a Western intelligence official speculating that Israel was behind Saturday’s blast in the ammunition depot at Malard and Shahriar base, west of Tehran.

The Revolutionary Guard said a senior commander, Gen. Hasan Moghaddam, was killed in the blast, adding that he was a key figure in Iran’s missile program.

The Shahab-3 and Zelzal missiles reportedly have sufficient range to reach any part of Israel. Iran has several times warned that if its nuclear sites were attacked by Israel, the missiles would be used against the Jewish state.

While praising Moqaddam as “one of the shining members of the IRGC,” speaker Larijani said that “there are tens of thousands who would continue the way of martyr Moqaddam.”

Israel, Arab nations to attend rare round of nuclear talks next week – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran has yet to say whether it will take part in the meeting to be hosted by the IAEA in Vienna; meeting seen as symbolically significant in bringing together regional fores at the same venue to start a dialogue.

By Reuters 

Powers make ‘progress’ on IAEA I… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    VIENNA – World powers are making progress in narrowing their differences on how to respond to a UN watchdog report that aired intelligence suggesting Iran has worked on designing a nuclear weapon, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

They said officials from the six big powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain – were in intense negotiations on drafting a resolution on Iran for a Nov. 17-18 board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
But they said it was still uncertain whether a text that all six could agree on would be ready in time for the two-day meeting of the 35-nation IAEA board, in view of remaining divisions between the Western states and Russia and China.

“I’m certainly more optimistic than I was yesterday. Progress is being made,” one diplomat said.

Another Western diplomat estimated there was “more than an even chance” of an agreement.

There has been concern that if the powers cannot close ranks on isolating Iran to nudge it into serious negotiations, then Israel – which feels endangered by the nuclear aspirations of its arch-enemy – will attack it.

The IAEA report, which lent independent weight to Western allegations, laid bare of a trove of intelligence suggesting it is seeking the capability to “weaponize” nuclear material.

The unprecedented document exposed divisions among the big powers, with Russia criticizing the report as politicized and Western states seizing on it to try and ratchet up pressure on Tehran in the form of harsher economic sanctions.

Western countries faced a dilemma ahead of this week’s IAEA governors meeting: press for a strongly-worded resolution and risk Russian and Chinese opposition, or accept a weaker text in order to preserve big power unity.

Any board resolution would likely stop short of taking concrete action – such as referring Iran once again to the United Nations Security Council – in view of Russian and Chinese reluctance, diplomats said.

It is expected to express concern about Iran’s nuclear work and call on the country to address issues raised in last week’s report by the IAEA, the Vienna-based UN nuclear body, one of the Western diplomats said.

“I think we will get to a point where it (the text) is manageable to all of us,” the diplomat said. Another Western envoy spoke of “good chances” an agreement would be reached.

The main goal of such a resolution would be to demonstrate a big power common front and warn Iran about the need to engage in good-faith talks about its nuclear program.

Iran, which says it is enriching uranium only for fuel for power plants and not nuclear weapons, condemned the IAEA’s findings as “unbalanced” and “politically motivated” but has yet to offer detailed answers to the allegations.

Russia, which has significant trade ties with Iran, has been softer on Tehran than the United States and the European Union, and has worked with China to water down previous UN Security Council sanctions. China is a big importer of Iranian oil.

Moscow has said the IAEA report contained no new evidence and was being used to undercut efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the long-running nuclear dispute with Iran.

The United States and its allies have made clear their intention to tighten sanctions on Iran after the IAEA report.

Despite such differences, US President Barack Obama said on Saturday he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “reaffirmed our intention to work and shape a common response so we can move Iran to follow its international obligations when it comes to its nuclear program.

Netanyahu: ‘All options are on the table’ re… JPost – Headlines.

    Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu informed the full Knesset plenum of that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program Wednesday. MK Michael Eitan read a statement from the prime minister to the special Knesset session dedicated to “the dilemma of whether to attack Iran.”

“The prime minister and the authorized bodies are acting to stop the nuclear armament of Iran,” Eitan told the plenum.

“The efforts are ongoing and we will do everything possible to enlist states in the international community,” he continued, “because the Iranian threat is a danger not only to the State of Israel but to world peace.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Special Report November 16, 2011, 12:59 PM (GMT+02:00)

Assad as the angel of death

The Assad regime suffered a major shock Wednesday Nov.16 when self-styled “Free Syrian Army” deserters firing shoulder-borne rockets and heavy machine guns struck its biggest security complex at Harasta west of Damascus on the highway to Aleppo.This was the first time an armed anti-Assad force went for a major strategic target with live ammo, far beyond ambushing military vehicles on the move and killing soldiers. It was a sign of the opposition’s growing confidence in their ability to shake the high military command’s support for Bashar Assad.

It also attested to the high degree of its military organization and command ability for deploying large units and sharply escalated its campaign to unseat Bashar Assad.
The outcome of the attack and extent of casualties and damage are hard to assess in view of the news blackout clamped down on the event. Arab sources report it ended only after Syrian assault helicopters were brought in.

“The Air Force Intelligence Service,” targeted for the attack is a misnomer. Commanded by Gen. Jamil Hassan, who is directly subordinate to the younger Assad brother Maher, it has nothing to do with the air force. This 20,000-strong body is the regime’s primary covert arm for suppressing opposition and shoring up its minority Alawite rule. Its officers are posted in every Syrian diplomatic and trade mission abroad, while its elite units specialize in cutting down the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other foes and keeping the Kurdish, Druze and Syrian Catholic minorities in check.

The first military-style attack on the Harasta complex was also highly symbolic for the eight-month uprising. In June, this town staged a particularly bloody rally against Assad.  An image which received wide international coverage depicted a blood-covered young man marching along one of its main streets shouting he is not afraid of Syrian army fire and is willing to die for the Assad family’s removal.
The Syrian Army’s 4th Division – the Republican Guard – which is commanded by Maher Assad went into brutal action to smother resistance in that key town.
Wednesday’s potential game-changing attack was undoubtedly part of a well-laid plan to topple Assad laid by the coalition formed by Turkey, the Persian Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources report this would be the first concerted effort from inside the region to oust Iran’s closest ally.

From Wednesday, four threats are closing in on Assad:

1. The Arab League, under the leadership of Egypt’s Supreme Military Council in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, is planning to submit a motion to the UN Security Council on the Syrian crisis that would open the door to outside military intervention in the Syrian crisis. If the motion is defeated by Russia or China, the Arab League will act on its own as the paramount Arab authority in the region.
The AL took the first step in this direction Tuesday, Oct. 15, with the announcement of plans to create a force of 500 monitors for sending into Syria. The next step would be a joint Arab force to safeguard the monitors.

2. The Security Council and/or the Arab League will expand economic sanctions against Syria. Assad is already strapped for cash to sustain the military crackdown on the spreading challenge to his rule..

3. Turkey is leading the way for a pan-Arab offensive by reiterating its threat to invade Syria and establish a military buffer zone as a haven for Syrian rebels and refugees – unless the massacre of civilians stops. The Syrian opposition would then have its first territorial base inside the country under Turkish protection.
Until now, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, have limited their intervention in Syria to weapons and funding. Now they have begun paying Iran back for its subversive troublemaking in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.
From now on, the GCC proposes to make the upgrading of its support for anti-Assad rebels commensurate with the level of Iranian meddling against Arab rulers.  Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has forged a pact with the GCC, gave due warning of this strategy Monday, Nov. 14, when he became the first Arab ruler to openly call for Bashar Assad to step down. This call, say debkafile‘s sources, was a signal marking the approach of a regional conflict.

Iran: Missile base blast was cau… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    TEHRAN – A massive explosion that killed 17 troops including an officer regarded as the architect of Iran’s missile defenses last week took place during research on weapons that could strike Israel, the armed forces chief of staff said on Wednesday.

Hassan Firouzabadi, quoted by the student news agency ISNA, denied that Israeli or US sabotage was to blame.

“This recent incident and blast has no link to Israel or America but the outcome of the research, of which the incident happened as a consequence, could be a strong smack to the mouth of Israel and its occupying regime,” he said.

Iranian news sites identified one of the dead as Brig.- Gen. Hassan Moghadam, a top IRGC officer responsible for the development of some of Iran’s most advanced weapons. The explosion took place inside a base called Bid Ganeh, west of Tehran, which is reportedly used to manufacture and store Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles.

The cause of the explosion was unknown and Iran claimed it occurred when soldiers were moving explosives between bases. There was some speculation on Sunday that sabotage had caused the blast and Israel was involved with the assistance of local Iranian opposition groups.

It was not the first time that mysterious explosions struck in Iran. In recent years, a number of scientists have been killed in car bombings and dozens of IRGC officers have also been killed in various plane crashes.

On Wednesday, a roadside bomb in blew up near a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims in northern Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding 18 others, security and hospital sources said.

The bus was attacked as the pilgrims returned from a visit to a Shi’ite Muslim shrine in the city of Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi security forces are trying to quell a stubborn Sunni Muslim insurgency more than eight years after the US-led invasion that ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

Israel’s war of nerves with Iran escalates | The Canadian Jewish News.

Reports emanating from Israel suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak have tried to muster a majority in cabinet for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

These accounts, augmented by a chilling warning from Israeli President Shimon Peres that Israel may soon take military action against Iran, came to light about a week before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a damning report on Nov. 8 accusing Iran of working to build a nuclear bomb.

Despite assertions that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, Iran has itself fed speculation about its intentions.

Last June, Iran declared it is planning to triple the production of nuclear fuel, thereby bringing it ever closer to a technical ability to manufacture enriched weapons-grade uranium. And for years now, Iran has declined to answer questions from the IAEA about its weapons design capabilities. Further, in two rounds of fruitless talks with six world powers sponsored by the United Nations, Iran has steadfastly refused to discuss a suspension of its nuclear enrichment activities, saying that neither sanctions nor the threat of a military attack will deter it.

By all accounts, Iran is building a militarized nuclear program with the objective of achieving dominance in the Middle East. With an eye on its glorious past, Iran has imperial ambitions in the region, striving to surpass Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria in terms of influence.

But since Iran categorically rejects Israel’s very existence, regularly calls for and predicts its destruction and fervently supports militant groups – Hezbollah and Hamas – at war with Israel, one must at least wonder whether the Iranian leadership would consider using a nuclear device to destroy the Jewish state.

Reports out of Israel suggesting that Netanyahu and Barak are in favour of hitting Iran’s nuclear installations should be viewed within the context of Iran’s hostility toward Israel and Israel’s escalating war of nerves with Iran.

In these reports, Israel is not necessarily signalling its intentions to bomb these sites, though this could happen one day under the most extreme of circumstances. Israeli sabre-rattling notwithstanding, Israel knows that an attack on Iran carries profound risks and would probably not succeed in attaining all its objectives.

Iran’s possession of thousands of homemade long-range missiles means that an Israeli attack would invite immediate and furious Iranian retaliation, as Iran’s chief of staff warned recently.

The Iranian response would dwarf previous Iraqi, Hezbollah and Hamas missile attacks on Israel. Property damage would be devastating and the death toll would be fearsome. Israel would likely respond, setting off a long and ruinous regional war with unforeseen consequences.

In all probability, Hezbollah, if not Hamas, would be dragged into the conflict, sooner rather than later.

Though some Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia, would secretly welcome an Israeli bombing campaign, it would seriously isolate Israel in the region and might even prompt pivotal countries – Egypt, Jordan and Turkey – to sever their existing diplomatic relations with Israel.

The bombing of Iran, which would doubtless increase the price of oil by a hefty margin, would not go down well in the United States – Israel’s chief ally – the European Union or Russia or China, and would damage Israel’s global standing.

At best, Israel could inflict only some damage on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, since it is spread out widely in a huge country and lies deep underground. Within about two years, Iran could regroup and recover, experts believe.

And finally, foreign intervention in Iran – a country that has been subjected to colonial machinations – would indubitably rally Iranian nationalist opinion around an Islamic regime that had no compunctions in crushing a popular uprising in 2009.

So why, in light of these compelling theoretical factors, have Netanyahu and Barak reportedly attempted to achieve a consensus in cabinet that Israel should reduce Iran’s nuclear facilities to rubble?

Netanyahu – who has compared Iran to Nazi Germany and promised to eliminate Iran’s nuclear arsenal – presumably realizes that attacking Iran would be akin to ripping open a hornet’s nest. Indeed, the former director of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has said it would be a “stupid thing” to do.

Israel has bombed Arab nuclear reactors in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007), but they were relatively easy, cost-free targets to obliterate. One must assume that Netanyahu is using the threat of military action to bring pressure to bear on the international community to upgrade economic sanctions against Iran, or to induce the United States to do the job.

Two weeks ago, as Israeli pundits reported on Netanyahu’s supposed plans, he declared that Iran should be the object of yet more “diplomatic pressure and sanctions.” Last January, in a still more revealing comment that may be indicative of his thinking, Netanyahu said that while sanctions have hurt Iran, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will not bend to global pressure “without a credible military option.”

In other words, while Netanyahu wants to keep the potentially destabilizing military option on the table, he might be satisfied with tougher sanctions, which Israel’s former Israeli chief of staff, Gen. Gadi Ashkenazi, recommended as the best possible outcome for now .

Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. secretary of state, agrees with that assessment. Last week, she said that only continuous sanctions would dissuade Israel from attacking Iran, echoing an earlier remark by U.S. President Barack Obama of the need to maintain “unprecedented pressure on Iran.” The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran in an attempt to induce it to halt the production of enriched nuclear fuel. The European Union, the United States, Canada and other countries have followed suit.

According to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the former American chief of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, sanctions have had a discernible effect, having slowed down Iran’s nuclear program. Sanctions have apparently cut into Iran’s oil exports, squeezed Iran’s access to financial markets and excluded Iran’s shipping line from some foreign ports

Ahmadinejad claims that Iran’s economy has not been affected by sanctions. True or not, Iran has used dummy companies, murky financial transactions and concealed shipping methods to circumvent the bite of sanctions. Apart from the regimen of sanctions, Iran’s nuclear aspirations have been hobbled by other means.

The Stuxnet computer virus, a joint U.S.-Israeli venture, wiped out a fifth of Iran’s centrifuges and set back its nuclear program by up to two years. Dagan believes that Iran will not be able to assemble an atomic device until 2015 at the earliest.

Assassins, perhaps Mossad operatives, have killed several Iranian nuclear scientists in broad daylight in Tehran. This, too, has had an impact.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, however, has apparently not yet decided whether Iran should proceed with the next momentous step: manufacturing a deliverable bomb.

Although Iran is methodically working on this project, years may elapse before it becomes a nuclear power, like Israel.

But Israel does not want to wake up to learn that Iran has already acquired the atomic bomb.