WarSclerotic

Report: Russia warships to enter Syria waters in bid to stem foreign intervention – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Syrian official says Damascus agrees ‘in principle’ to allow entrance of Arab League observer mission; 22-member body proposed sending hundreds of observers to the to help end the bloodshed.

Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country’s civil unrest.

Also on Friday, a Syrian official said Damascus has agreed “in principle” to allow an Arab League observer mission into the country.

	Russia President Dmitry Medvedev, right, and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, May 10, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

But the official said Friday that Syria was still studying the details. The official asked not to be named because the issue is so sensitive.

The Arab League suspended Syria earlier this week over its deadly crackdown on an eight-month-old uprising. The 22-member body has proposed sending hundreds of observers to the country to try to help end the bloodshed.

The report came a day after a draft resolution backed by Arab and European countries and the United States was submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, seeking to condemn human rights violations in the on-going violence in Syria.

Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were among Arab states that joined Germany, Britain, and France to sponsor the draft submitted to the assembly’s human rights committee. In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. would sign on as a co-sponsor of the resolution.

The draft demanded an end to violence, respect of human rights and implementation by Damascus of a plan of action of the Arab League.

The move comes as clashes escalated in Syria and after Russia and China used their veto in October to block a Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Syrian government of President Bashir for the violence.

Such a veto is not applicable in the 193-nation assembly, which will consider the issue after the human rights committee reports back to it.

The UN says more than 3,500 people have been killed since unrest erupted in spring against Assad.

Top U.S. senator unveils a legislation to impose sanctions on Iran’s central bank.

Al Arabiya

Friday, 18 November 2011

Mitch McConnell, a Republican Senate Minority Leader, is pushing for sanctions against Iran’s central bank. (Reuters)

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Pentagon Successfully Tests Flying Bomb – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

The Pentagon held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound on Thursday, AFP reported.

The bomb will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour, the report said.

The “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, was launched by rocket from Hawaii and proceeded to glide through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is located about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which is maneuverable.

Hypersonic speeds are classified by scientists as those that exceed five times the speed of sound — 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) an hour, AFP said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman told the French-based news agency the test aimed to gather data on “aerodynamics, navigation, guidance and control, and thermal protection technologies.”

The U.S. Army’s AHW project is part of the “Prompt Global Strike” program which seeks to give the U.S. military the means to deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within an hour.

The timing of the test may raise some eyebrows, in the wake of the recent controversy regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

In its latest report, the IAEA said last week that it was able to build an overall “credible” impression that Iranian scientists were engaged in carrying out “activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”

Iran has dismissed the report as “baseless.” Nevertheless, there has been wide speculation of a military attack on Iran which might be launched by Israel.

Recent reports suggested that the U.S. might also support a strike on Iran’s nuclear program: The Obama administration is reportedly considering arming Qatar with huge bunker buster bombs, raising the possibility of an American-Israel-Arab attack on Iran.

The U.S. Air Force has received a shipment of 30,000-pound bombs, six times larger than those now in use, which can penetrate concrete bunkers. Iran has buried new nuclear plants in rocky mountainous areas and has buried them so deep under concrete to minimize the damage of an aerial attack, even if bunker buster bombs are used.

The Air Force began receiving the new monster bombs in September, and Boeing may build as many as 16 of the weapons, a U.S. military spokesman told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.

DEBKA.

Last Tuesday, Nov. 8, Iran announced that its warships in the Red Sea had foiled a pirates’ attempt to hijack an Iranian oil tanker. The Iran Navy’s deputy commander, Rear Adm. Seyed Mahmoud Moussavi, explained that 15 Somali pirate speedboats had tried to box the tanker in off the eastern coast of the Yemeni Red Sea island of Hanish al-Kubra – only to be thwarted by the timely action of the Iranian destroyer Jamaran.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that on Oct. 9, Iran posted two vessels on the Red Sea, the home-made Jamaran and the IRI Bandar Abbas warship, referring to them as its Sixteenth War Fleet.
They replaced the Fifteenth War Fleet, which also comprised submarines, stationed there in early July.
US Fifth Fleet and Saudi Navy sources are most skeptical about the Iranian admiral’s account of the scale of the clash, especially in the absence of information about the number of pirate vessels sunk and numbers taken prisoner. Never before has a large pirate fleet of 15 speedboats ever attacked an oil tanker. They therefore suspect the tale has an ulterior motive, such as a reminder from Tehran to Washington that sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil imports, exports and by-products could be easily trumped by the secret hoard of crude Iran has salted away in supertankers on the Red Sea.
It is large enough to spark a massive hike of oil prices on the world markets, thereby bringing many European economies to sudden collapse and piling extra economic hardship on America.
Iran squirrels away 50 million barrels of crude
The size of this trump card is indeed formidable, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources disclose: It consists of Iran’s entire reserve of 38 million barrels of crude oil stored in 19 Very Large Crude Carriers – VLCC, which can each carry 2 million barrels of oil.
This is arguably the largest oil reserve any oil-producing country maintains offshore and outside its borders – although some international oil market sources doubt this quantity, claiming they only know of the existence of 16 VLCCs. It amounts to approximately six percent of US Strategic Petroleum Reserve-SPR, which is estimated at around 727 million barrels.
The tankers are kept floating on the Red Sea not far from the Egyptian oil terminal of Ain Sukhna, from which the 360-kilometer/220-mile SuMed pipeline carries crude from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
Ain Sukhna is situated at the confluence of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba.
In addition to the giant tankers, Iran maintains another 12 million barrels of crude oil in short-term storage at the land terminal.
Iran has therefore squirreled away 50 million barrels of black gold, most of it atop the waves of the Red Sea. The Iranian warships and submarines clustered there serve as close escort for its precious oil reserves rather than as Tehran pretends, a contribution to the international fleet combating piracy.
A tool for bypassing sanctions, manipulating prices
Our Iranian sources report five pressing motives caused Tehran to banish this vital asset far from its shores:
1. It takes up excess production which Iran cannot sell and for which it lacks adequate tank and underground storage space.
2. It puts the crude on a cheap transporting route by pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea and European customers.
3. Iran can use its Red Sea emergency reserve to bypass any sanctions imposed on its oil industry.
4. In a war blockade on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz gateway and/or the Bab al-Mandab Straits to the Red Sea, Iran can continue to sell oil from its floating reserve and still earn revenue to cover its war costs.
5. Tehran can manipulate world oil prices – either by a waiting game until prices lift or by opening and closing the tap to push market prices up and rake in huge profits.
No barrel of laughs between the US and Israel
Iran’s floating oil reserve has become a bone of contention between the US and Israel, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report. In some ways, it encapsulates the dispute between Washington and Jerusalem over how to tackle Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program.
In the past, US administrations were concerned to hold Israel back from military activism, especially on Iran. Today, in the case of Iran’s Red Sea oil reserve, the positions are reversed.
On Oct. 3, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was en route to Israel, he told U.S. journalists traveling with him: “Is it enough to maintain a military edge if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena? Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort, as well as a strong effort to project your military strength.”
The journalists presumed Panetta was talking about the military passivity of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak in general terms. Our Washington sources disclose that Panetta meant the specific case of Iran’s Red Sea oil fleet.
Since September, the Obama administration has been pushing hard for Israeli action to chase Iran’s Very Large Crude Carriers and their naval escorts away from its southern back door. The Netanyahu government should not need reminding that its southern lifeline to Africa and the Far East through the Gulf of Aqaba was blockaded twice by its enemies. Iranian warships are parked less than 200 kilometers from Israel’s southern port of Eilat in the perfect position to seal Israel off once again.
You go first. No you.
Instead of badgering world governments to enact harsher sanctions to stifle Iran’s oil exports, US officials have urged Israeli leaders to strike out on its own while the iron is hot – or rather the oil is afloat and within reach.
It is obviously unacceptable to blow up supertankers carrying millions of barrels of oil because of the catastrophic ecological damage to the Red Sea and its riparian nations. But, say the US officials, the Israeli navy and air force can pursue tactical steps to harass the tanker-warship fleet and keep it on the run. Some would give up and go and so reduce the maneuverability Tehran has gained by its strategic Red Sea presence.
To push Israeli leaders into consenting, Panetta informed them in October that the Supreme Military Council ruling Egypt had promised not to interfere with an Israeli operation against the Iranian oil fleet and would allow its warships and submarines a free run into the Red Sea.
Netanyahu and Barak were noncommittal: The US deploys a sizable fleet in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, they pointed out. So why shouldn’t an operation against the Iranian oil tankers be an American or a joint American-Israeli one – an idea Washington immediately shot down.
For lack of an agreed plan between Washington and Jerusalem, Iran’s oil reserves continue to navigate the Red Sea undisturbed, providing the Islamic Republic with a powerful strategic and economic presence on one of the Middle East’s most sensitive seas.

DEBKA.

When they started coming in Monday, Nov. 14, the first US and Israeli spy satellite images of the explosions at the Alghadir Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) base 45 km west of Tehran further deepened the mystery of their cause, two days after the event. The devastation was staggering. Within seconds, a 52-square kilometer (20 sq. mile) area around the base was laid waste, as though ravaged by a nuclear blast – except for the absence of radioactivity or any other symptoms of fissile activity.
Since the explosions, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian intelligence sources report, no human or vehicular movement has been sighted in this vast area, which IRGC guards keep strictly off limits.
Even the pillar of smoke rising from the explosion seen in photos taken from 15 kilometers away and released by Tehran two hours after the calamity attested to a blast far too large to have been caused by the explosives contained in the shaped charge surrounding a plutonium or uranium core.
The initial assessment by Israeli and American intelligence experts that the explosion was caused by the first Iranian attempt to mount on a Sejil-2 ballistic missile a nuclear warhead, filled at this stage with conventional explosives, is still only hypothetical in the absence of intelligence corroboration.
Four signs of an experiment on a new missile and warhead
Even so, it cannot be ruled out altogether, especially when this possibility is raised by new evidence presented in the IAEA report’s section on Iran’s military related activities.
This section describes how Iran tried to re-engineer the Shahab-3 missile’s reentry vehicle. It suggests that Iran had some knowledge of advanced nuclear weapon design and had tested some of its components, although it had not used actual nuclear material in those experiments.
Our sources postulate that last Saturday, the missile experts at the Alghadir base were attempting another of these experiments, only it went badly wrong.
Our sources draw attention to conspicuous signs that Iran was in the process of conducting an advanced experiment on a new Iranian missile and warhead to rival the Jericho 3 ballistic missile which Israel test-launched on Nov. 2. The upgraded Jericho was shown to be capable of carrying a 750-kilogram nuclear warhead to a distance of 7,000 kilometers – and still farther if the warhead were smaller.
Those sources point to four of these signs:
1. On the fateful Saturday, Nov. 12, all of Iran’s military, religious and political bigwigs were ordered to stay in Tehran on call to be summoned to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for an important decision.
US and Israeli intelligence evaluators conclude that they were on standby for the outcome of the test at the IRGC base. Had it been successful, the assembled top officials would have been called on to publicly unveil the new advanced missile and warhead to the world as an act of defiance against Israel and a hoot of contempt for the detrimental IAEA report released five days earlier.
Why were all Iran’s bigwigs on standby in Tehran?
2. Regarding the presence at the test of the senior architect of Iran’s missile program, Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, who died in the explosion, Western intelligence services had been aware for months that he was working on a clandestine project for developing advanced nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles, possibly the one referred to in the IAEA report. This would account for his otherwise unexplained presence at the site of the explosion.
3. The utter mayhem among Iranian leaders when the massive explosion at the IRGC base rattled Tehran at around 1:10 pm Saturday. The lines linking the bureaus of Ayatollah Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and IRGC headquarters broke down. The IRGC units entrusted with guarding the regime against a coup d’etat and a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, charged into the capital on the alert for trouble.
It took more than two hours for Iran’s ruling institutions to recover control.
4. The entire Iranian leadership turned out in force Sunday, Nov. 13, for the funerals of the officers killed in the explosion at the Alghadir bases, a manifestation of public mourning at the highest level unprecedented in the 32 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The next day, the coffins of the eight most senior officers who died were brought to the Supreme leader’s bureau for a memorial service which he conducted in person.
Our Iranian sources report that whereas Tehran reported only 17 officers had been killed in the explosion, they were able to count 36 funerals.
Unprecedented leadership honors for dead missile officers
The list of officials who visited the grieving families is instructive. It attests to the tremendous importance the regime heads attached to the missile test which failed. It also serves as an updated who’s who of the men who hold the most influential positions in Tehran.
They included Ali Larjani, Speaker of the Iranian parliament (the Majlis), and Mohsein Rezaei, Secretary of the Expediency Council and ex-commander of the IRGC, who was himself in mourning 12 hours after learning of his son’s murder in Dubai.
(See a separate report on the new wave of assassinations against opponents of the Iranian regime).
Other visitors to the bereaved homes were Saeed Jalili, Director of the National Security Council and designated senior nuclear negotiator; Hossein Salami, of the IRGC; Hojat al-Eslams Ali Saeedi and Moussa Qorbani, the IRGC’s most senior clerics; and Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Al Qods Brigades, the Guards’ external operations arm.
Soleimani’s public appearance in Tehran at a private event – even on a visit of condolence – is unheard of. The Al Qods chief is the most secretive and closely guarded figure in Iran today. His appearance was further evidence that Iran’s leaders were satisfied that the explosion was not an act of foreign sabotage, as some Western analysts were quick to speculate.
What happened to the new device the late Brig. Moghaddam was testing?
Some Middle East missile experts quoted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources are focusing on three likely causes of the mishap:
One: The Iranian-designed core tested may have had small irregularities and therefore fell short of the most exacting of tolerances required for a warhead’s optimum fit, and so would have caused an aborted detonation; or –
Two: The Russian, Chinese or other suppliers may have given Iran old warheads. Deteriorated mechanisms in their shaped charge, explosive material, or timing circuits, may have caused the explosion; or
Three: The warhead(s) could have been altered to blow before they were shipped to Iran, or when they were transferred after arrival to the Alghadir Revolutionary Guards missile base.
Since Iranian scientists, engineers and military are known for their fanatical adherence to safety precautions, the main question to be answered now is not which outside clandestine agency, Mossad or CIA, engineered the deadly explosion, but what new Iranian weapons system, scarcely known in the West, was in the works when it blew.
It must have been pretty powerful to shatter windows at least 45 kilometers away in Tehran, and generate the sensation of an earthquake in the capital.