WarSclerotic

Coping with the Iranian challenge – Views – livemint.com.

Reports of the crash of the US ultra-secret unmanned stealth spy aircraft, the RQ-170 Sentinel, deep within Iran reflects a dangerous escalation between the adversaries at a time when neither can afford another confrontation, and underlines the urgent need to explore diplomatic options.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. Photo: Bloomberg

There is, however, no disagreement over the mission: to provide real-time intelligence of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities and, possibly, identify potential targets for an impending military attack; a Sentinel was similarly deployed just before the successful raid to kill Osama bin Laden. The Sentinel operation over Iran is particularly ominous, given the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on Tehran’s nuclear weapons ambitions and the simultaneous ratcheting up of the rhetoric, notably from Israel, for exercising the military option.

Israel calls for paralysing sanctions on Iran | Reuters.

Israel’s Barak calls for isolating Iranian central bank

* Predicts end of Assad rule in Syria within weeks

* Signals tougher action against Gaza militants

VIENNA, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Iran’s ruling clerics could use nuclear weapons to strengthen their grip on power and the world must urgently impose crippling sanctions to prevent them from building such arms, Israel’s defence minister said on Sunday.

Ehud Barak also predicted that Syria’s ruling Assad family could fall within weeks and that this would be a “blessing” for the Middle East.

“Something is wrong with this family, the way they suppress the will of the Syrian people, killing them, slaughtering their own people,” he told a conference in Vienna.

Asked about prospects for an Israeli attack on its arch foe Iran’s nuclear sites, Barak said he still believed that it was “time for urgent, coherent, paralysing” punitive steps targeting Iranian oil trade and its central bank.

“Nothing short of this kind of sanctions will work,” Barak said, adding there was a need for a “direct attack, isolation, by the whole world” of the Iranian central bank.

Speculation that Israel, which sees Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat, could launch preemptive strikes against Iran was fuelled by a U.N. report last month which said Tehran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon.

The Islamic Republic, which often lashes out at Israel over its assumed atomic arsenal, says allegations that it is seeking nuclear arms are based on forged evidence.

Barak said he would “love to see the Arab Spring jumping over” the Gulf into Iran, referring to political upheaval in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere over the last year.

“This regime in Iran, the ayatollahs, they will be not be there I believe in 10 or 15 years. It is against the nature of the Iranian people and what happens all around the world.

“But if they turn nuclear they might assure another layer of immunity, political immunity for the regime in the same way that Kim Jong-il assured his,” Barak said, referring to the North Korean leader and that country’s development of nuclear weapons.

He suggested that the Libyan conflict could have taken a different course if Muammar Gaddafi had declared at the outset that “he has three or four nuclear devices”.

Earlier this month, Barak said that an Israeli attack on Iran was not imminent. He has also said there were several months left in which to decide on such action.

Turning to events in neighbouring Syria, he predicted on Sunday the end of the 41-year rule of the Assad family. “They are going to disappear, probably in a few weeks…The falling down of this family is a blessing for the Middle East.”

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have cracked down on a revolt that began in March with peaceful protests but has become increasingly violent. Army deserters are now fighting state security forces.

The way the situation develops “is beyond our control…we don’t think we have to intervene in any way,” Barak said.

He said Israel might at some stage have to “take more assertive action” in Gaza, where Palestinian militants responded with rocket attacks on Israel after an Israeli air strike killed two militants last Thursday.

Barak: End of Syria’s Assad would be ‘a blessing for the Middle East’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Defense Minister Barak tells World Policy Conference Assad will be out in weeks; at least 18 killed in latest Syria violence Sunday, Arab League says will meet to discuss situation within ten days.

By The Associated Press, DPA and Reuters

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday that the downfall of Syrian President Bashar Assad would be a “blessing for the Middle East.”

Speaking at the World Policy Conference in Vienna, Barak predicted that Assad and his clique would be forced out of power within weeks.

	Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the World Policy Conference in Vienna, December 11, 2011.
	Photo by: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry

Barak additionally discussed sanctions against Iran and its nuclear program, saying there is still time for crippling world sanctions on Iran’s energy sector and its leadership to force Tehran to give up nuclear programs that could be used to make such arms.

Syrian security forces on Sunday killed at least 18 people in several areas of the country that observed a general strike to protest the government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, said the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, an opposition online group.

Sunday also saw hundreds of army defectors in southern Syria fought armored loyalist forces Sunday in the biggest armed confrontations in the nine-month uprising against President Bashar Assad, residents and activists said.

The Arab League said Sunday it would meet in “seven or 10 days” to discuss the situation in Syria.

“There is an agreement until now that the Syrian crisis should be solved within an Arab framework,” said the head of the pan-Arab organization Nabil al-Arabi, in the Qatari capital Doha.

He added that the exact date of the meeting of the Cairo-based bloc’s foreign ministers had yet to be set.

Al-Arabi told reporters that economic sanctions endorsed by the Arab League were to take effect starting on December 27.

The organization ordered the unprecedented sanctions on Damascus last month and said they would be lifted once Syria allowed Arab monitors into the country.

Syria set lifting the sanctions as a condition for agreeing to receive observers.

Syrian opposition: Bloodbath could be imminent in Homs – CNN.com.

(CNN) — The Syrian government has warned protesters in the city of Homs to stop demonstrations, hand in weapons and surrender defecting military members by Monday night or face bombardment, an opposition leader said.

A 72-hour warning was given Saturday, said Lt. Col. Mohamed Hamdo of the Free Syrian Army.

The Syrian National Council, the country’s leading opposition movement, had warned earlier of a potential bloodbath at the hands of the Syrian regime in Homs.

“If the world continues to watch, then the massacre of Hama in the 80s will be repeated,” said Hamdo, referring to 1982, when Syria’s military — acting under orders from current President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad — launched an assault on the city, killing thousands.

The military has dug trenches around Homs, Hamdo said.

“There is no electricity, water, or communication whatsoever now and the communication breakdown has extended even closer to the Turkish border,” he said.

The Syrian government denied reports of water and electricity being out in the city, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

The government made no mention of the reported deadline on the news agency’s website Sunday morning.

SANA reported that the “bodies of 13 martyrs from the army, security and police forces” were taken “to their final resting place.” Four were from Homs.

Authorities in Homs arrested “armed men who tried to impose an obligatory sit-in” and who shot at people in cars and streets, SANA said.

As violence raged Sunday in parts of the country, the death toll reached 23, according to the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCC). Five of the dead were children, the group said.

The toll includes six people in Hama; six in Homs; five in Idlib; three in suburbs of Damascus, and three in Daraa, according to the LCC, a network of anti-regime activists in the country.

One of the deaths in the Daraa area took place in Jasem, where a man was arrested and then returned to his family dead after about three hours, the LCC said.

In the city of Aleppo, security forces burned down a factory in an industrial area that was participating in a nationwide “strike of dignity” in support of the opposition, the LCC said.

CNN cannot independently confirm events because the Syrian government restricts access of international media to the country.

The Syrian government said authorities in Idlib “confronted members of an armed terrorist group” who were blocking a road and “killed and injured a number of its members.” Authorities also chased another “armed gang” and killed two of its members, SANA said.

In Hama, Syria said, officials arrested “a member of armed terrorist groups” who was trying to plant an explosive device near residential buildings. SANA said the military dismantled the bomb and no one was injured.

Throughout the Syrian uprising, government officials have described some opposition fighters as armed terrorists and gang members.

There were clashes Saturday in Khan Sheikhon, where authorities “arrested a number of the terrorists and killed three of those groups’ prominent leaders,” SANA said in a report Sunday.

In the city of Kfar Takharim, “a number of the members of armed terrorist gangs were killed or injured in clashes with the authorities on Saturday evening,” SANA said, adding that one member of the authorities was killed and six others were injured.

Fierce clashes were underway Sunday in the Daraa Province village of Busra al-Harir as Syrian troops battled defectors, leaving many people wounded, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gets information from people in different parts of the country.

Residents said members of Syria’s 12th Armored Brigade, which is based near the border with Jordan, “stormed” Busra al-Harir. They said they heard explosions and heavy gunfire in the city and just north of it in Lujah, where defectors were believed to be hiding, the observatory said.

Security forces in Idlib were using mosque speakers to threaten residents to end their strike and to force people to reopen businesses, the observatory said, citing eyewitnesses.

Several videos posted on Youtube purported to show government loyalists breaking locks of shops that closed in support of Sunday’s anti-government strike.

The Arab League announced it will hold emergency meetings this week in Cairo. In a statement on Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency, an Arab League official said leaders will “discuss the Arab response to a message from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem to approve the signing of an agreement on an Arab League observing mission to Syria with conditions.”

World leaders have widely condemned Syria’s crackdown and called on it to halt violence against the opposition.

On Saturday, France expressed its concerns about events in Syria, and warned against Syria launching a military operation against the city of Homs and its population, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Al-Assad’s regime has denied targeting peaceful protesters.

The regime’s actions have outraged world powers and sparked sanctions by the Arab League, Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday described Syrian President al-Assad as a “killer,” implicitly comparing him to Libya’s ousted ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

“The world decided — including the Arab world — to intervene when a leader is beginning to kill his own citizens,” Peres told CNN in an interview. “It happened in Libya; it’s happening in Yemen; it’s happening by the Arab League, for the first time in their experience. They decided to put pressure on an Arab state because the leader is killing his people.”

The United Nations said this month that more than 4,000 people have died in Syria since the crackdown began in mid-March.

Protesters have been demanding the end of the al-Assad regime and democratic elections. Al-Assad has been in power since 2000; his father, Hafez, ruled Syria for three decades.

Local elections are set to take place Monday for municipal posts.

In its 2010 Human Rights Report about Syria, the U.S. State Department said Syria’s elections have not been fair in the past.

“Although the constitution provides the right for citizens to peacefully change their government through elections, in practice they did not have that right because elections were neither free nor fair,” the report said.

Juppe: Syria behind attack on French troop… JPost – Middle East.

    France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Sunday Paris believed Syria was behind attacks on its troops in Lebanon earlier this week.

A roadside bomb wounded five French peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, in the third attack this year on United Nations forces deployed near the frontier with Israel.

“We have strong reason to believe these attacks came from there (Syria),” Juppe said on RFI radio. “We think it’s most probable, but I don’t have proof.”

France – with Britain, Germany and the United States – has been pushing for the UN Human Rights Council to take up the issue of Syria again. In October, Russia and China vetoed a resolution that would have condemned Damascus’ crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and threatened possible sanctions.

Paris is now pushing for the creation of humanitarian corridors to provide aid to the population.

When asked if he believed Hezbollah had carried out the attack on behalf of Damascus, Juppe said: “Absolutely. It is Syria’s armed wing (in Lebanon).”

The attack follows attacks in May and July against French and Italian peacekeepers and comes as the United Nations prepares a review of its 12,000-strong operation, which was beefed up after Israel’s 34-day war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Juppe called on the Lebanese government to ensure the safety of peacekeeers in the country and said the review at the UN assess the consequences of the attacks and redefine the objectives of the UNIFIL mission.

The UN Security Council agreed on Friday to France’s request for a briefing on Syria’s crackdown from the UN human rights chief, overcoming resistance from Russia, China and Brazil, Western envoys said.

Juppe said Syrian President Bashar Assad had lost all legitimacy and Paris was pushing Russia to change its stance at the United Nations where Moscow has refused to endorse any Security Council resolution against Syria.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(To the readers: I have to admit that reading this story made me feel literally sick to the stomach.  I am trying to cling to the possibility that the whole thing is a “con”. – JW)

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis December 11, 2011, 6:37 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian air defense S-300 missile

Iran is driving a hard bargain for granting access to the US stealth drone RQ-170 it captured undamaged last week, as Russian and Chinese military intelligence teams arriving in Tehran for a look at the secret aircraft soon found. debkafile‘s Moscow sources disclose that the price set by Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Ali Jaafari includes advanced nuclear and missile technology, especially systems using solid fuel, the last word on centrifuges for enriching uranium and the S-300PMU-1 air defense system, which Moscow has consistently refused to sell Tehran.

This super-weapon is effective against stealth warplanes and cruise missiles and therefore capable of seriously impairing any large-scale  US or Israeli air or missile attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent Russian-speaking Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Moscow on Dec. 7 to try and dissuade Prime Minister Vladimir Putin from letting Iran have the S-300 batteries as payment for access to the captured US drone.

Sources in Washington report that before sending Lieberman to Moscow, Netanyahu first checked with the White House at the highest levels.

Although he had his hands full with stormy demonstrations in Moscow protesting alleged election fraud, Putin received Lieberman at the Kremlin.  But the interview was short. The Russian prime minister refused to discuss the episode with his Israeli guest or even confirm that Moscow was engaged in any deal with Tehran.
In answer to reporters’ questions, Lieberman commented: “Russia’s positions on the Middle East were not helpful.”
American efforts to reach President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin on the drone deal through other channels were likewise rebuffed.

debkafile‘s sources report that the Israeli prime minister’s decision to sent Lieberman post-haste to Moscow to intercede with Putin followed intelligence tips which indicated to Washington and Jerusalem that the Russians may have played a major role in Iran’s capture of the RQ-170 on Dec. 4. They are suspected of even supplying Iran with the electronic bag of tricks for downing the US stealth drone undamaged.
If that is so, it would mean Moscow is deeply involved in helping Iran repel the next and most critical stage of the cyber war that was to have been launched on the day the US UAV was brought down.

Our exclusive intelligence sources add that that the RQ-170 was the first US drone of this type to enter Iranian skies. Its mission was specific.

Iran’s success in determining the moment of the unmanned vehicle’s entry and its success in transferring command of the drone’s movements from US to Iranian control systems is an exceptional intelligence and technological feat in terms of modern electronic warfare.

Western intelligence watchers keeping track of the Russian and Chinese teams in Tehran have not discovered where the negotiations stand at this time or whether the Iranians have taken on both teams at once or are bargaining with each separately to raise the bidding.

Saturday, Dec. 10, the Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Gen. Hossein Salami, said Iran would not  hand the captured drone back to the United States. He boasted: “The gap between us and the US or the Zionist regime and other developed countries is not so wide.”

He sounded as though the bargaining with the two visiting teams was going well.

Attack on peacekeepers in Lebanon was ‘a message from Syria’: Hariri.

Sunday, 11 December 2011

Wounded French U.N. peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon receive treatment close to the site where a bomb exploded on the outskirts of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon on December 9, 2011. (Reuters)

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The bombing that wounded five French U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon was a message from Syria, pro-Western opposition leader and ex-premier Saad Hariri tweeted on Sunday.

“Another message from Bashar” al-Assad, Hariri wrote on Twitter of the Syrian president whose regime has killed at least 4,000 people, according to the United Nations, in its crackdown on dissent since mid-March.

“Another Syrian message,” added Hariri, who has been living abroad for several months.

The five French members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were wounded Friday when a bomb targeted their patrol on the outskirts of the coastal city of Tyre. Two passers-by were also wounded.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the third this year on UNIFIL soldiers.

Friday’s blast took place amid heightened tension over the revolt in Syria, with politicians and diplomats warning the unrest could spill into Lebanon, whose government is dominated by the pro-Syrian militant group Hezbollah.

The UNIFIL force stationed in the south of the country is considered an easy target if unrest did spread to Lebanon.

A security official in Tyre told AFP that two people are being sought in connection with Friday’s attack. They were seen in a Mercedes car in the area more than an hour before the blast.

The device, “made up of four or five kilos of TNT, was set off from a distance just before the UNIFIL Jeep passed, destroying the front of the vehicle,” the official said.

“If it had gone off at the very moment the Jeep was passing, none of them would have survived,” he added.

Spain currently commands the 12,100-strong UNIFIL force, which was founded in 1978 and expanded after a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

France has one of the largest contingents with 1,300 soldiers.

In July, six French UNIFIL troops were wounded, one of them seriously, in the southern coastal town of Sidon, in an attack similar to Friday’s. In May, six Italian peacekeepers were wounded in Sidon, also in a roadside bombing.

Three Spanish and three Colombian peacekeepers were killed in June 2007 when a booby-trapped car exploded as their patrol vehicle drove by.

Syrian activists call for general strike; defectors fight loyalist forces in the south.

Sunday, 11 December 2011

Demonstrators protesting against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad march through the streets in Homs on December 6, 2011. (Reuters)

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Activists called a general strike on Sunday to step up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime as hundreds of army defectors in southern Syria fought tank backed loyalist one of the biggest armed confrontations in the nine-month uprising.

Troops, mainly from the 12th Armored Brigade, based in Isra, 40-km (25 miles) from the border with Jordan, stormed the nearby town of Busra al-Harir. The sound of explosions and heavy machineguns was heard in Busra al-Harir and in Lujah, an area of rocky hills north of the town, where defectors have been hiding and attacking military supply lines, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, in a civil disobedience campaign, anti-regime protesters were organizing sit-ins, the closure of shops and universities, and the strike.

The Local Coordination Committees, which organizes protests on the ground in Syria, has predicted the campaign would snowball, and said the strike was “the first step in an overall civil disobedience” campaign to overthrow the regime.

But the opposition Syrian National Council and activists have warned of a looming bloody final assault on the city of Homs in central Syria.

Witnesses in Homs, besieged by government troops, have reported a buildup of troops and pro-regime “shabiha” militiamen in armored vehicles who have set up more than 60 checkpoints, the SNC said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights warned of “inhabitants’ fears of a large invasion of the city,” in a statement issued on Saturday.

“The arrival of hundreds of armored vehicles to the city of Homs during the last two weeks estimated, according to witnesses,” to number more than 200, the Britain-based rights watchdog said in the English-language statement.

“The spread of security leaks that the regime decided to extinguish the revolution in Homs within 72 hours by giving the security forces and Shabiha (militia) unlimited powers to not be merciful towards the unarmed civilians.”

The United States, France and Britain have all warned Damascus against any bloody assault on Homs and said the regime would be held responsible for any heavy loss of life.

The bloodshed, meanwhile, continues to claim more lives, with activists reporting more than 50 deaths since Friday when the Observatory said at least 41 civilians, including seven children, were shot dead by security forces.

The Damascus region and Homs paid the heaviest price.

And at least 14 civilians were reported killed Saturday, including four hit when security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at mourners in Maaret Numan in Idlib province and three others hit by “machinegun fire in Hama.”

On Friday, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said: “It is extremely concerning that in places like Homs we have huge number of reports that they are preparing something large-scale.

“They are not going to be able to hide who’s responsible if there is a major assault on the weekend.”

Syria rejected that characterization of events: “There is no policy of crackdown,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi told Reuters in an e-mail. “The Syrian forces are there to protect civilians and maintain law and order that is breached by those who are carrying arms against the State.

“The story of peacefulness of the protest is no longer a valid story in some places,” he said. “Syria needs evolution and not armed confrontation.”

Separately, the official Syrian news agency SANA said the so-called BRICS group of developing economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – “reiterated its absolute rejection to any interference in Syrian affairs”.

It cited a message from Russia’s U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin to the United Nations Security Council, which has been the forum for sharp divisions over Syria between the Western powers on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.

Such differences, and Syria’s pivotal position at the heart of a web of regional conflicts, mean few see much possibility for the kind of Western military action seen this year in Libya.

The Arab League has been pressing Syria, under threat of sanctions, to remove troops from its towns and let in observers. Egypt’s MENA news agency said on Saturday Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo at the end of the week to discuss a response to what it called a conditional Syrian acceptance of monitors.

Syria, which blames the violence on armed “terrorist” gangs, wants the bloc to lift sanctions in return for allowing in observers.

Turkey warned Syria on Friday it would act to protect itself if the crushing of protest threatened regional security and unleashed a tide of refugees on its borders.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has said more than 4,000 people have been killed in the government crackdown on dissent in Syria since the anti-regime protest movement broke out in March.

Pillay is to brief the U.N. Security Council on Syria and the wider Middle East at a meeting on Monday.

Egypt denies ‘Post’ report that Hamas set … JPost – Middle East.

    An Egyptian official has denied a Jerusalem Post report that Hamas has established forward bases and rocket production facilities in the Sinai Peninsula in an effort to protect them from Israeli air strikes.

The Post revealed Sunday that Israel has called on Cairo to increase its efforts to restore order in Sinai and to prevent attacks, but the Egyptian military has held back from dismantling the Hamas infrastructure in the peninsula.

“No one can ever bring in military tools or erect missile bases in Sinai. Egypt would not allow such a breach to its sovereignty,” Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted an Egyptian official as saying in response to the Post report.

The official added that Sinai is completely under the control of the Egyptian authorities and that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel remains in place.

He further supported his refutation of the existence of Hamas bases and weapons production facilities in Egypt by pointing to the presence of UN peacekeepers in northern Sinai who, he claimed, would be aware of such a development were it to occur.

More than a dozen Egyptian army battalions allowed into Sinai with Israel’s permission (required because of limits placed on Egyptian forces there under the peace treaty) are still operating there, although with limited success in stopping terrorist activity and arms smuggling to the Gaza Strip.

Recent arms smuggled into Gaza have included advanced weaponry stolen from Libyan military storehouses such as Russian- made shoulder-to-air missiles.

Israel’s primary concern with Sinai is that it is being used by Palestinians to launch attacks into Israel while taking advantage of the open southern border.

The IDF has beefed up its forces along the border and recently established a new regional brigade that is responsible for defending Eilat and nearby areas.

On Thursday, the IDF bombed a car traveling in northern Gaza and killed a senior Aksa Martyrs Brigades operative who the army said was plotting an attack.

The terrorists were supposed to cross from Gaza into Sinai and then into Israel, similar to the attack that took place in August when eight Israelis were killed.

The bombing of the car is part of an IDF understanding that since it cannot operate in Egypt it needs to stop such attacks while they are still in the planning stages in the Gaza Strip.

Defectors fight loyalist forces in south… JPost – International.

    AMMAN- Hundreds of army defectors in southern Syria fought loyalist forces backed by tanks on Sunday in one of the biggest armed confrontations in a nine-month uprising against President Bashar Assad, residents and activists said.

Troops, mainly from the 12th Armoured Brigade, based in Isra, 40-km from the border with Jordan, stormed the nearby town of Busra al-Harir.

The sound of explosions and heavy machine-guns was heard in Busra al-Harir and in Lujah, an area of rocky hills north of the town, where defectors have been hiding and attacking military supply lines, they said.

“Lujah has been the safest area for defectors to hide because it is difficult for tanks and infantry to infiltrate. The region has caves and secret passage ways and extends all the way to Damascus countryside,” one of the activists, who gave his name as Abu Omar, said from the town of Isra.