WarSclerotic

Head of Syria’s main opposition says group plans to cut ties with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah.

(This is what Israel and the West have been working towards, and what the Iranians fear most.  After Assad falls, Iran will have no direct access to the Middle East and it’s proxies, Hamas and Hizbollah will be cut off from weapons supply. – JW)

Al Arabiya

Friday, 02 December 2011

Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, says the new Syria will have no special relationship with Iran. (Reuters)

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War with Iran is happening now—Benny Avni – NYPOST.com.

Pundits have been debating the wisdom of an Israeli or US war to stop Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, that war is already upon us — but how effectively?

For now, it’s all cloak-and-dagger, so only a few can really assess our effort. As President Obama’s former national-security adviser, James Jones, said recently, “There are still some tools in our tool kits” short of a full-blown assault on Iran.

This week, such “tools” may have been on full display, as a series of “mysterious” incidents rattled Iran’s nuclear industry.

Monday brought a deadly blast at an Isfahan facility where raw uranium (“yellow cake”) is converted to UF6 gas — a key early enrichment phase. Citing Israeli intelligence sources, the Times of London reported that the explosion (“no accident”) crippled the operation.

Two weeks ago, another blast rocked an Iranian missile site near Malard. Satellite images show major damage, although experts say they can’t tell whether the explosion was an accident or sabotage.

Earlier this year, several top Iranian nuclear scientists were killed in “accidents” and random drives-by. Plus, cybergeeks are fascinated by “Duqu,” a sophisticated piece of computer malware dubbed “son of Stuxnet” — the worm that reportedly crippled Iran’s enrichment program last year.

A caveat: In this kind of war, those who know what’s really going on rarely talk, and those who talk mostly don’t know. Nevertheless, it looks and smells like an attack on Iran’s nuclear program is ongoing and escalating — and, like any war, it isn’t one-sided.

Yesterday, officials in Berlin confirmed that they’re investigating an Iranian conspiracy to sabotage America’s German military facilities. (Ramstein and other US Air Force bases are likely to play a key role in any air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.) And US officials recently exposed an Iranian-backed conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Earlier this week, thugs — er, “students” — took over and ransacked the British embassy in Tehran. (Europe is preparing a new set of Iran sanctions. London has joined Paris in spearheading the move.)

In another incident on Monday, after two calm years, northern Israelis rushed to bomb shelters as three rockets were shot from Lebanon’s “Hezbollah-land,” named after Iran’s proxy terror group that controls it.

So here we are: Someone seems to be targeting Iran’s nukes, and Tehran seems to be signaling how it would react, by targeting enemies here and in Europe and Israeli civilians. It may not be hot war, but it ain’t peace, either. Even if it’s only a perception, such tit for tat is hard to control and can quickly turn into a full-blown war.

Meanwhile, note that Iran’s installations are being damaged, while Tehran’s retaliatory attempts appear clumsy and unsuccessful. On the other hand, even escalating sabotage of Iran’s nukes has a long way to go if it’s to set the program back enough to end Iran’s atomic inspirations.

But some lessons can be gleaned at this early stage: Anti-war types constantly warn us that the mullahs will surely use an attack on their nuclear facilities to unite the public against the West. But so far, Tehran’s reaction to the “accidents” is confused, and the ayatollahs are at each other’s throats. Moreover, the Iranian public is losing respect for the regime as its most prized asset — the nuclear program — is crippled (along with an economy besieged by sanctions and ineptitude). Perhaps future attacks on Iran’s nukes will do more to undermine the regime than bolster it.

Also, while we shouldn’t disregard Iran’s capacity to retaliate, we also shouldn’t overestimate it. The regime is weakening, and its proxies, including Hezbollah, are being shaken by Arab Spring-related events.

This week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told Reuters that Israel may not warn Washington of its war plans. Yesterday, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Israel Radio that, “for now,” Israel doesn’t plan to attack.

Ignore it all. Obama, along with Israel and Europe, has vowed to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran’s hell-bent on getting them. A war, by any other name, is on. Are we prepared to win it?5ZIDE2

‘Conficker worm helped sabotage Iran’s nuke programme’ – The Times of India.

A cyber warfare expert claims he has linked the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010 to Conficker, a mysterious “worm” that surfaced in late 2008 and infected millions of PCs.

Conficker was used to open back doors into computers in Iran, then infect them with Stuxnet, according to research from John Bumgarner, a retired US Army special-operations veteran and former intelligence officer.

“Conficker was a door kicker,” said Bumgarner, chief technology officer for the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit group that studies the impact of cyber threats. “It built out an elaborate smoke screen around the whole world to mask the real operation, which was to deliver Stuxnet.”

While it is widely believed that the United States and Israel were behind Stuxnet, Bumgarner wouldn’t comment on whether he believes the Americans and Israelis also unleashed Conficker, one of the most virulent pieces of so-called malware ever detected. He wouldn’t name the attackers he believes were behind the two programs, saying the matter was too sensitive to discuss.

The White House and the FBI declined to comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which oversees Israel’s intelligence agencies, also declined comment.

If Bumgarner’s findings, which couldn’t immediately be independently confirmed, are correct then it shows that the United States and Israel may have a far more sophisticated cyber-warfare program than previously thought. It could also be a warning to countries other than Iran that they might be vulnerable to attacks.

His account leaves unresolved several mysteries. These include the severity of the damage that the program inflicted on Iran’s uranium enrichment facility, whether other facilities in Iran were targeted and the possibility that there were other as yet unidentified pieces of malware used in the same program.

The analysis may be met with skepticism in some quarters because dozens of researchers teamed up in 2009 and spent months studying Conficker, yet nobody concluded that the worm was used to attack Iran. Still, the bulk of that work was concluded long before Stuxnet was even discovered.

Bumgarner – who wrote a highly praised analysis of Russia’s 2008 cyber assault on Republic of Georgia – says he identified Conficker’s link to Stuxnet only after spending more than a year researching the attack on Iran and dissecting hundreds of samples of malicious code.

He is well regarded by some in the security community. “He is a smart man,” said Tom Kellermann, an advisor to the Obama Administration on cyber security policy and the chief technology officer of a company called AirPatrol.

His analysis challenges a common belief that Conficker was built by an Eastern European criminal gang to engage in financial fraud.

The worm’s latent state had been a mystery for some time. It appears never to have been activated in the computers it infected, and security experts have speculated that the program was abandoned by those who created it because they feared getting caught after Conficker was subjected to intense media scrutiny.

If confirmed, Bumgarner’s work could deepen understanding of how Stuxnet’s commanders ran the cyber operation that last year sabotaged an underground facility at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are enriching uranium using thousands of gas centrifuges.

He provided Reuters with his timeline of the attack, which indicates it began earlier than previously thought. He said that it was planned using data stolen with early versions of Duqu, a data stealing tool that experts recently discovered and are still trying to understand. The operation ended earlier-than-planned after the attackers got caught because they were moving too quickly and sloppiness led to errors.

Who did it?

The view that Stuxnet was built by the United States and Israel was laid out in a January 2011 New York Times report that said it came from a joint program begun around 2004 to undermine Iran’s efforts to build a bomb. That article said the program was originally authorized by US President George W Bush, and then accelerated by his successor, Barack Obama.

The first reports that the United States and Israel were behind Stuxnet were greeted skeptically. There are still a handful of prominent cyber security experts, including Jeffrey Carr, the author of the book “Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld,” who dispute the US-Israel idea. He says that circumstantial evidence paints a convincing case that China was behind Stuxnet.

According to Bumgarner’s account, Stuxnet’s operators started doing reconnaissance in 2007, using Duqu, which spied on makers of components used in Iran’s nuclear and critical infrastructure facilities.

In November 2008, Conficker was let loose and it quickly spread, attacking millions of PCs around the world. Its initial task was to infect a machine and “phone home” with its location. If it was at a strategic facility in Iran, the attackers tagged that PC as a target. The release left millions of untagged machines infected with Conficker around the world, but no damage was done to them.

In March 2009, Bumgarner says, the attackers released a new, more powerful version of Conficker that started the next phase of the attack on April 1 by downloading Stuxnet onto the targeted PCs. After it completed that task, Conficker’s mission on those machines was complete.

Cracking the case

It took Bumgarner months to conclude that Conficker was created by the authors of Stuxnet.

First, he noticed that the two pieces of malware were both written with unprecedented sophistication, which caused him to suspect they were related. He also found that infection rates for both were far higher in Iran than the United States and that both spread by exploiting the same vulnerability in Windows.

He did more digging, comparing date and time stamps on different versions of Conficker and Stuxnet, and found a correlation — key dates related to their development and deployment overlapped. That helped him identify April Fool’s Day, April 1, 2009, as the launch date for the attack.

Bumgarner believes the attackers picked that date to send a message to Iran’s leaders. It marked the 30th anniversary of the declaration of an Islamic republic by Ayatollah Khomeini after a national referendum.

He also identified two other signals hidden in the Stuxnet code, based on the dates when key modules were compiled, or translated from programming text into a piece of software that could run on a computer.

One coincided with a day when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his nation would pursue its nuclear program despite international objections, and another with the day that he made a highly controversial appearance at Columbia University in New York.

Futbol fans

The operators communicated with Stuxnet-infected computers over the Internet through servers using fake soccer websites that they built as a front for their operation: http://www.mypremierfutbol.com and http://www.todaysfutbol.com.

If Iranian authorities noticed that traffic, they would be deceived into assuming it was from soccer fans, rather than suspect that something was awry, Bumgarner said.

Once Conficker had pulled Stuxnet into computers in Iran there was still one big hurdle, he said. Those infected computers weren’t yet in the target – the underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Getting the virus in there was one of the trickiest parts of the operation

The war against Iran’s nuclear program has already begun – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Explosions, deadly computer viruses and other sorts of ‘accidents’ – someone is targeting Iran’s nuclear project: either the Western intelligence agencies, internal opposition groups, or both.

By Yossi Melman

The war is under way, though no one declared it and no one will confirm it. This is the secret war against Iran’s nuclear project. It did not start this week or last month. It has been under way for years, but only faint echoes have reached the public.

In June 2010, the press reported that the computer system operating the uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz had been infected with a virus. A deadly worm, known as Stuxnet, had infiltrated the controllers, manufactured by Siemens.

	Photo by: Alon Gaash

Two weeks ago, a huge blast ripped through a Revolutionary Guards military base 40 kilometers west of Tehran. The explosion could be heard as far away as the capital. Dozens of people were killed, including the head of Iran’s missile development project, General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam. This week, there was a powerful explosion in Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city, which has a uranium conversion plant on its outskirts. It is not yet clear what was damaged in the blast.

These incidents involved three key elements of Iran’s nuclear program. The first is uranium conversion (which comes after the mineral has been mined ), the second is enrichment, and the third is the delivery means.

Coupled with other incidents, including the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists, these events have worried the ayatollahs’ regime, causing reactions ranging from embarrassment to anger. The public response usually follows a pattern: first a sweeping denial, then a limp and stuttering admission that “something happened,” and finally the claim that it was an “accident.” This shows that the regime does not know exactly what to say, and that its voice is not uniform. It also reflects the fierce dispute within the regime’s top ranks. The leadership is divided, and the reactions come from a range of ministries, rival organizations and competing media outlets.

The kind of sabotage used in Iran requires sophistication, financial and technological resources, agents and precise intelligence. Someone, for example, had to know that General Moqaddam would be at the base that day to supervise a test, apparently of a new missile engine.

Infecting the computers required access to them: A person with a flash drive had to have plugged it into the system. The prevailing assumption is that foreign intelligence agencies are initiating, managing and executing the secret operations.

The Iranians, and international media outlets, believe these operations are the work of Israel’s Mossad and possibly also a Western partner such as the CIA or Britain’s MI6.

The Mossad’s campaign to assassinate the Black September members behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre was code-named “Wrath of God.” This week, when asked whether God had carried out the recent operations in Iran, former Mossad head Meir Dagan smilingly said yes. Dagan is known to be an ardent supporter of secret operations, as he told Yedioth Ahronoth explicitly this week. He believes it will be at least two years until Iran can assemble a functioning nuclear weapon. This assessment may be based on past secret operations and on Dagan’s faith that future actions can indeed disrupt Iran’s progress.

A senior American official went even farther. President Barack Obama’s special assistant and coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism, Gary Samore, said in May 2011, “I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated.” Do we need any clearer statement that humans are behind the “hand of God”?

Even if the Mossad or the CIA are not involved in these incidents, the speculation that they are serves Western intelligence bodies by enhancing their image as “omnipotent,” and heightening the Iranian leadership’s fear. This is known as psychological warfare.

Still, with all due respect for Western intelligence’s great efforts – including what is probably unprecedented operational coordination – it is unlikely these operations could have succeeded without inside support, meaning from individuals or groups ready to help sabotage the ayatollahs’ regime. It should be remembered that Iran is a mosaic of ethnic minorities, and almost all have reasons for disliking the regime; some have their own underground armed militias.

The theory about inside-help gains traction given that, in addition to the military targets, other sites – including oil facilities, gas pipelines, trains and military bases – were also damaged over the past year. Last year there was a considerable increase, of at least 10 percent, in “breakdowns” and “accidents” at Iran’s strategic infrastructure sites. Some were caused by poor maintenance, due in part to the international sanctions, but the volume of these incidents may also indicate the “hand of God” was involved. If this is the case, then it’s possible that internal Iranian opposition groups (as opposed to exiles ) are stronger and even better organized than generally thought.

It is almost certain that Tehran’s patience is about to run out. This was evidenced by the student mob’s “conquest” of the British embassy this week. This was not spontaneous rage: It was a warning from a regime that realizes someone has declared war on it without leaving marks or fingerprints.

Sooner or later, the ayatollahs’ regime will decide to react and will order its secret intelligence and operational units to retaliate. If and when this happens, Iran will take steps to conceal its involvement in such activities. However, past experience proves that despite the caution and sophistication of the Iranian secret services, they have often failed in obscuring their fingerprints.

‘Syrian rebels attack intelligence base, k… JPost – Middle East.

    BEIRUT – Syrian army deserters killed eight people in an attack on an intelligence building in the north of the country, an opposition group said on Friday.

It said the attack took place on Thursday in Idlib province, between the towns of Jisr al-Shughour and the Mediterranean city of Latakia.

“A group of army defectors … attacked the Air Force Intelligence center,” the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “A clash ensued for three hours which lead to the death of at least eight members of the Air Force Intelligence.”

The Observatory and other activists also said at least 20 civilians were killed by Syrian security forces across the country on Thursday, mainly in the provinces of Hama and Homs.

On Thursday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that Syria is now in a state of civil war with more than 4,000 dead and increasing numbers of defecting soldiers taking up arms against the government of President Bashar Assad.”

“We are placing the figure at 4,000, but really the reliable information coming to us is that it is much more than that,” the top United Nations human rights official told a news conference.

Turkey, Syria’s biggest trade partner, suspended all financial credit dealings with Damascus and froze its assets, joining the Arab League in isolating Assad over his military crackdown. The United States urged other countries to follow suit.

The world’s largest Muslim body, the Organization of Islamic Conference, urged Syria on Wednesday to “immediately stop the use of excessive force” against its citizens so as to avert any prospect of foreign intervention.

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

    SEOUL – The last tunnel was discovered in 1990. It is about one-and-a-half kilometers long, two meters in height and two meters in width. Its exit point is located about 50 km. north of Seoul and is large enough to facilitate the transfer of approximately 30,000 armed troops accompanied by heavy guns and equipment in a single hour.

According to South Korean intelligence, a couple of dozen more tunnels, yet to be uncovered, are still located along the border. Their exact locations are unknown.

Walking through one of the tunnels, one is struck by its size and meticulous construction. The tunnel was dug using dynamite sticks hammered into the rock and blowing away a few feet of it at a time. Workers then had to chip away at the granite to smooth out the edges.

Israel is no stranger to tunnels, hundreds of which are believed to line the Philadelphi Corridor where they are used to smuggle arms from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.

Additional tunnels are believed to exist under Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip as part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s plans to infiltrate Israel to either carry out an attack against a nearby IDF outpost or Israeli town or to try to abduct a soldier. One such tunnel was used by the terrorists who abducted Gilad Schalit in 2006.

The comparisons and similarities between Israel and South Korea, though, neither begin nor end with the challenge the countries face from tunnels. A greater comparison might be made today with how both countries deal with nuclear threats.

While Israel is embroiled in a debate about whether or not it should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, claiming that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat, South Korea already lives under a constant nuclear threat from the North.

One senior Korean general told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to South Korea last week that the Republic of Korea Air Force has drawn up operational plans to bomb North Korea’s nuclear reactor but that such an operation would require political approval. “We are always ready for war,” the general said.

Such a strike today would be unlikely after Pyongyang has already tested two nuclear weapons and is believed to have several more in its arsenal. The fear of a nuclear attack exists in South Korea but does not overshadow the country, which has refused to allow the threat to stop its impressive economic rise in recent years.

At the same time, the similar challenges faced by South Korea and Israel – both countries still in active conflicts – has led to a new alliance with important opportunities for Israel’s economy and particularly for its defense industry.

“We are both countries that are in a constant state of war and therefore have similar security requirements,” Home Front Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i recently told the Post. “They already live under a nuclear threat and we are facing a similar challenge as well.”

Both countries’ strong partnership with the United States and reliance on American military assistance and platforms have contributed to the bolstering of the Israeli-Korean alliance, but its real test has yet to come. In the next few months, the Defense Ministry will determine the identity of the winner of a tender it has issued for new advanced combat training aircraft.

While Defense Ministry tenders are not a new concept, this one is the first time the 1970s in which Israel is looking outside of the US to purchase fighter jets. In previous tenders – like when the F-15 competed against the F-16 – it didn’t really matter whether Israel signed the deal with Boeing or with Lockheed Martin since either way the jets were purchased from the US.

This time, though, politics are playing a major role, especially since both aircraft the Israel Air Force is considering – the Italian M-346 and the Korean T-50 – are similar in their capabilities.

The Italians for example have offered Israel to do the deal in barter – Israel would get 30 trainers in exchange for special Airborne Warning and Control Systems aircraft. Korea, in contrast, has offered Israeli defense contractors lucrative multi-billion dollar contracts, which are particularly attractive at a time when defense exports are expected to drop due to the global economic downturn.

Last week, Korean Aerospace Industries – manufacturer of the T-50 fighter jet – invited a group of Israeli military reporters to see the plane from up close and to learn more about the potential economic benefits Israel has to gain from purchasing its aircraft.

One point the Koreans made extremely clear was that future industrial cooperation with Israel will depend on Israel’s decision in the tender. This has the executives of Israel’s leading defense companies like Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries – who stand to gain the most from future deals with Korea – extremely concerned.

On the other hand, business with Italy could also prove beneficial for Israel. As it faces growing diplomatic isolation, Israel could use a friend in Europe, even one that might be bankrupt. A deal with Italy could also be used as a way to get the European country to cut its economic ties with Iran and to institute independent sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

“There are many different factors that come into play in this deal – some economic, some operational and some diplomatic,” a senior defense official explained.

While South Korea’s economic boom is impressive, the country has yet to shake the sense of conflict that hangs perpetually in the air. Schools hold frequent drills to prepare children for the event of a nuclear attack from the North and newspapers regularly carry pictures of Korean fighter jets taking off in exercises simulating war on the peninsula.

That is why South Korea can be looked at differently depending on how you view the Iranian nuclear challenge.

Opponents of an Israeli strike against Iran turn to South Korea as an example of how a country can not only exist but also thrive despite living under a nuclear threat. Proponents of military action use the Korean model as an example of how the world failed to stop Pyongyang from obtaining the bomb and how ultimately Israel will be left to care for itself.

For the time being, though, it seems that Israel has moved the military option to the back burner – at least until springtime when clouds disperse over the Middle East and the effectiveness of the international sanctions on Iran becomes clear.

While the war drums are not being beaten anymore in Jerusalem, the cacophony on Iran is far from over.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who at least once a week issues another declaration on Iran, tried to explain this week that he has no choice. “Once it is in the public discourse, the defense minister needs to speak as well,” he claimed.

Not everyone agrees with Barak. Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon would both like Barak to tone down the rhetoric. Barak, however, believes that his provocative statements – such as “Israel won’t act right now” or “it will be impossible to attack Iran in a year” – are aimed at encouraging the international community to take action against Iran and that if it doesn’t, Israel will.

Even though Israel might not have bombed Iran yet, a shadow war is waging behind the scenes as made clear by the series of mysterious explosions that have rocked Iran in recent weeks. First there was the blast in the missile base and then on Monday an explosion reportedly in the Isfahan uranium conversion facility, a key component of the republic’s nuclear program.

It is unclear whether these were accidents or the result of sabotage but either way, for Israel, any delay in Iran’s success of obtaining a nuclear weapon is welcome. The thinking within the defense establishment is that a combination of effective diplomacy and tough sanctions with covert action could significantly delay the program.

This week, former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin decided to throw his hat into the ring and to speak publicly for the first time about Iran since he retired last year. Like former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Yadlin is of the opinion that Israel still has time before it will need to take military action.

While the threat is urgent, Iran is not yet building a bomb and is not even enriching uranium to military-grade levels, Yadlin said. Once that happens – and Israel will know when it does – it will need to consider taking action, he stressed, using slightly different words from Dagan’s claim that a military option should only be considered once a sword is up against Israel’s neck.

The reason Yadlin chose to speak this week was out of concern that Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have already made up their minds to attack Iran, a concern shared by Dagan who also gave a revealing interview in which he warned against attacking Iran.

When Iran goes to the breakout stage and begins enriching uranium to military levels, Israel will have to make a choice: either come to terms with a nuclear Iran and try to duplicate South Korea or to attack and potentially set the Middle East on fire

Saba Farzan: Iran’s Real Hostages – WSJ.com.

In the wake of the attack on the British Embassy in Tehran, Europe should establish a full diplomatic isolation of the regime.

By SABA FARZAN

If someone had told me 10 years ago that in November 2011 Iran would see a replay of the events of November 1979, I wouldn’t have believed it. But sadly, what happened at the British Embassy in Tehran this week is 1979 all over again. The Iranian regime has returned to its major business of attacking the West.

Over the regime’s three long decades, it has betrayed values dear to every Iranian. Hospitality, for instance: Guests enter our homes as strangers but leave as close friends, no matter how long they stay. Another core value is our respect and admiration for other cultures and religions. The pillar of the regime’s strength—its resentment of the West—is therefore fundamentally un-Iranian from the perspective of Iranian civil society.

The regime’s supposed sources of strength reveal its true weakness. Two generations of Iranians inside Iran have grown up respecting what the West stands for and hoping that someday their own country, too, will stand for liberty and democracy. Despite the regime’s medieval propaganda, and despite the fact that most Iranian youth aren’t even able to travel to most Western countries, their sense of Western society and what shapes it has always been sharper than that of some regime officials who collected degrees at Oxford, Cambridge or MIT before they started careers as representatives of a barbaric system.

So let me be clear about those who attacked the British Embassy. They weren’t students. They were terrorists.

For a long time Europe’s democratic nations believed that Iran’s Islamist terrorism was only directed at the United States and Israel. European diplomats ignored the Islamic Republic’s role in killing European soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq as they continued their dialogue with one of the most brutal regimes in the world. They ignored the millions of innocent Iranians kept as hostages by their own government. Not until the summer of 2010, when the European Union passed very strong sanctions against Iran, did it become clear that the time for dialogue had ended.

Friends asked me after Tuesday’s news: Why now? My answer is that the Islamic Republic is weaker now than anyone has imagined. It is weakened inside the country. It is weakened because the end of Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad is near. It is weakened by isolation in the international community.

The United Kingdom was right to withdraw its diplomatic corps from Tehran and to expel Iranian diplomats from Britain. The decisions of France and Germany to recall their ambassadors is another strong step. The message sent out through these joint measures cannot be overstated: Europe is done with the Iranian regime. A complete diplomatic boycott should follow.

The EU ought to have pushed ahead with full diplomatic isolation many years ago. If not now, when?

Ms. Farzan is an Iranian-born journalist based in Germany.

Israel’s Iran dilemma – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Not only is Barak’s vision unlikely to be realized, but in fact a military attack is probably what would make nuclear Iran and regional proliferation real. What an irony.

By Avner Cohen

Oman Tribune – the edge of knowledge.

ANKARA Turkey’s foreign minister has conveyed Ankara’s concerns about an Iranian commander’s recent remarks that Teheran will hit Nato’s missile shield in Turkey if threatened, a ministry official said on Thursday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu “verbally conveyed our concerns to his Iranian counterpart,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Davutoglu met on Wednesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on the sidelines of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Jeddah.

The commander of the aerospace division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards recently said Teheran will target Nato’s missile shield in neighbouring Turkey if it is threatened by military action.

“We are prepared to first target the Nato defence missile shield in Turkey if we are threatened. And then we’ll move on to other targets,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

Although Iranian officials have said several times they could retaliate with ballistic missiles against Israel if attacked, Hajizadeh’s remark was the first time the Revolutionary Guards spoke of targeting Turkey.

Turkey has agreed to host an early warning radar system in its southeast as part of Nato’s shield which the United States says is aimed at thwarting missile threats from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

Turkish officials insist that the shield targets no specific country.

Turkey offers Syrian civilian opposition, army rebels ground for 1st meeting as EU bolsters sanctions.

Al Arabiya

Thursday, 01 December 2011

Syrian protesters in al-Baidah town near Homs carry a banner that reads: “Yes to freedom, no to sectarianism, no to Assad’s gang.” (Reuters)

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