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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 30, 2012, 9:38 PM (GMT+02:00)

President Bashar Assad supported by his brother and cousin

According to exclusive reports reaching debkafile, President Bashar Assad Sunday, Jan. 30, pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored divisions commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the northern rebel centers and over to Damascus. He ordered them into battle positions in the capital for the first time in the ten month uprising after receiving an intelligence tipoff that western powers had won over one of the armored division commanders posted in the capital and persuaded him to stage a coup d’etat to topple him.

The renegade general, whose identity is unknown, was reported to be planning to take advantage of the absence of the most trusted regime troops in trouble spots across the country to lead 300 tanks into the capital and seize power.
The conspirators were planning to make their move on the night of Monday Jan. 30 or early Tuesday Jan. 31, just before the UN Security Council was to convene in New York and air plans for him to step down. The putsch would have presented its members with the accomplished fact of Assad’s overthrow by the military.
The information passed to Assad, apparently from an external source, did not name the division commander who accepted this role from Western hands. If it turns out to be true, the scheme would strongly recall the US-led NATO-Qatari-Jordanian operation for the Libyan rebels to seize power in Libya by taking Tripoli by storm in the third week of August 2011.
Forewarned, the Syrian ruler is making every effort to ward off the threatened coup.

debkafile‘s military sources report that, aside from the Republican Guard and 4th division which Assad recalled to the capital, present there too are the 1st, 3rd and 9th armored divisions.

The fight rebel forces put up at the gates of Damascus Monday night was perceived by the Assad regime as part of the coup conspiracy. Western and military sources described the combat as a search, arrest and kill operation to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance around the capital, rather than battles.
Monday night, the White House issued a statement saying the UN Security Council must not let the Syrian President Assad continue the violence.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to address the Council meeting Tuesday. She has urged the forum to act before the violence in Syria spills over and destabilizes its neighbors.

Moscow has made it very clear in recent weeks that it will on no account let the Assad regime go the way of Qaddafi. Russia is adamant about vetoing the Security Council motion the US and European powers are gathering Tuesday in New Yorkto table in support of the Arab League transition plan for a national unity government to rise in Damascus within two months and implement Assad’s handover of power to vice president Farouk a-Shara. A Russian bid to bring the opponents to the negotiating table failed after the main Syrian opposition party demanded that Assad step down first.

At least 27 people were killed Monday in the central city of Homs – which was heavily shelled again – the northern province of Idlib and southern province of Daraa, where the revolt against Assad began in mid-March. Another 41 deaths were reported Sunday.The Syrian regime stepped up the violence in the days before the Security Council session to quell resistance and demonstrate its grip on the country.
debkafile reported earlier Monday, Jan. 30:

Ten months after the Syrian people launched an uprising against its ruler, Bashar Assad, if not yet safe in the saddle, has recovered the bulk of his army’s support and his grip on most parts of the country

Protesters have mostly been pushed into tight corners in the flashpoint towns and villages, especially in the north, hemmed in by troops and security forces loyal to the president.

Monday, Jan. 30, Syrian forces were close to purging the suburbs and villages around Damascus of rebel fighters. The operation began Sunday with 2,000 troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Six soldiers were killed when their vehicle blew up on a roadside bomb near Sahnaya, east of the capital.

The rebel Free Syrian Army and opposition groups continue to report heavy fighting in the Damascus area, and especially the international airport where they claim to have prevented Assad’s wife and children from fleeing the country. However, military watchers do not confirm either the fighting or the Assad family’s attempted flight.

While both sides spin propaganda, the extreme hyperbole of opposition claims attests to their hard straits and the Syrian president’s success in weathering their efforts and the huge sacrifices in blood paid by the people (estimated at 8,000 dead and tens of thousands injured) to oust him.
Having got rid of the Arab League monitoring mission, which gave up in despair of halting the savage bloodbath, Assad will shrug off the Arab-Western backed motion put before the UN Security Council Tuesday, Jan. 30, calling on him to step down and hand power to his vice president Farouk a-Shara. He will treat it as yet another failed effort by the combined Arab-Western effort to topple his regime.

The conflict is not over. More ups and downs may still be to come and there are signs of sectarian war evolving. But for now, Assad’s survival is of crucial relevance in seven Middle East arenas:
1. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah bloc is strengthened, joined most recently by Iraq;

2.  Iran chalks up a first-class strategic achievement for counteracting the US and the Saudi-led Gulf Arab emirates’ presentation of the Islamic regime as seriously weighed down under by the crushing burden of crushing international sanctions imposed to halt its drive for a nuclear bomb.
3.  Hizballah has won a chance to recover from the steep slide of its fortunes in Lebanon. The Pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite group stands to regain the self-assurance which ebbed during Assad’s hard times against massive dissidence, re-consolidate its bonds with Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad and rebuild its political clout in Beirut.

4.  It is hard to calculate the enormous extent of the damage Saudi Arabia and Turkey have suffered from their colossal failure in Syria. The Palestinians too have not emerged unscathed.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their security agencies, which invested huge sums in the Syrian rebellion’s removal of the Assad regime, were trounced by Syria’s security and intelligence services and the resources Iran provided to keep Bashar Assad afloat.
The Arab League, which for the first time tried its hand at intervening in an Arab uprising by sending observers into Syrian trouble spots to cut down the violence, watched impotently as those observers ran for their lives. Assad for his part first accepted than ignored the League’s peace plan.
Turkey, too, after indicating its military would step across the border to support the Syrian resistance and giving the FSA bases of operation, backed off for the sake of staying on good terms with Iran.
5.  Russia and China have gained credibility in the Middle East and points against the United States by standing up for Assad and pledging their veto votes against any strong UN Security Council motions against him. Moscow’s arms sales and naval support for the Assad regime and China’s new military and economic accords with Persian Gulf emirates have had the effect of pushing the United States from center stage of the Arab Revolt, held in the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, to the sidelines of Middle East action.
6.  The Syrian ruler has confounded predictions by Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he can’t last more than a few weeks. His survival and the cohesion of his armed forces have contributed to the tightening of the Iranian military noose around Israel.

The Syrian army was in sustained operation for almost a year without breaking and suffered only marginal defections. It is still in working shape with valuable experience under its belt in rapid deployment between battlefronts. Syria, Iran and Hizballah have streamlined the cooperation among their armies and their intelligence arms.
7.  The Palestinian rivals, Fatah and Hamas, have again put the brakes on the on-again, off-again reconciliation after it was galvanized by Hamas’ decision to create some distance between Iran and the embattled Syrian regime. Seeing Assad still in place, Hamas’ Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh will visit Tehran this week and Meshaal may delay his departure from the Syrian capital.

White House: Assad’s fall inevitable – Israel News, Ynetnews.

US officials estimate that Syrian president’s regime has lost control, urge UN Security Council to adopt resolution that would stop violence, facilitate political transition

Yitzhak Benhorin

White House: Assad’s fall inevitable

US officials estimate that Syrian president’s regime has lost control, urge UN Security Council to adopt resolution that would stop violence, facilitate political transition

Yitzhak Benhorin

Washington – The White House estimated Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s government is on the verge of collapse and called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would facilitate a political transition in Syria.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Assad’s fall in inevitable, noting that the Damascus regime has lost control over the country.

“As governments make decisions about where they stand on this issue and what further steps need to be taken with regards to the brutality of the Assad regime, it’s important to calculate into your considerations the fact that he will go. The regime has lost control of the country and will eventually fall,” he said.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice accused the Security Council of “inaction” and “neglect” during 10 months of Syrian violence, urging the global body to endorse an Arab League plan for a political transition there.

Rice was speaking a day before Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby and Qatar’s prime minister are due to plead with the 15-nation Security Council to back the league’s plan for Assad to transfer powers to his deputy to prepare for free elections.

“We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this council over the course of the last 10 months, not because the majority of the council isn’t eager to act – it has been,” Rice told reporters.

“But there have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place,” she said. “That may yet still be the case.”

Rice was referring to Russia and China, which vetoed a European-drafted Security Council resolution in October that would have condemned Syria and threatened it with possible sanctions.

Clinton: Violence must end

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will attend Tuesday’s council meeting with Elaraby, along with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, also urged the council to adopt a European-Arab draft resolution endorsing the Arab League plan.

“The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security,” Clinton said in a statement. “The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin.”

Clinton voiced concern that if the crisis in Syria isn’t stopped, it could spread.

“The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region,” she said.

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said last week that he was willing to engage on the European-Arab draft resolution, but said the draft was unacceptable in its current state.

Diplomats said Elaraby would be meeting with Churkin behind closed doors in New York to explain to him that vetoing the draft resolution would be tantamount to vetoing the Arab world.

Earlier, a French diplomat said that at least 10 members of the Council support a resolution calling for a political transition in Syria.

A vote on the draft resolution is unlikely before Thursday or Friday, Western diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

Reuters contributed to the report

‘Israel sees narrowing window for Iran strike’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

International sanctions on Iran are constraining Israel from taking military action against Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, which must be mounted by summer, officials say

Associated Press

Israeli officials are quietly conceding that new international sanctions targeting Iran‘s suspect nuclear program, while welcome, are further constraining Israel’s ability to take military action – just as a window of opportunity is closing because Tehran is moving more of its installations underground.

The officials said that Israel must act by the summer if it wants to effectively attack Iran’s program.That has raised speculation that Israel’s veiled threats are no more than attempts to get Iran to back down

A key question in the debate is how much damage Israel, or anyone else, can inflict, and whether it would be worth the risk of a possible counterstrike.

Israel has been a leading voice in the international calls to curbIran’s nuclear program. Like the West, it believes the Iranians are moving toward nuclear weapons capability – a charge Tehran denies.

Obama: No options off table on Iran nuclear program

Israel contends a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its survival. It also fears an Iranian bomb would touch off a nuclear arms race in a region still largely hostile to Israel.

Israeli leaders say they prefer a diplomatic solution. But – skeptical of international resolve – Israel refuses to rule out the use of force, saying frequently that “all options are on the table.”

Is time running out?

After calling for tougher sanctions against Iran at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday: “We must not waste time on this matter; the Iranians continue to advance (toward nuclear weapons), identifying every crack and squeezing through. Time is urgently running out.”

Key Israeli defense officials believe that the time to strike, if such a decision is made, would have to be by the middle of this year.

Complicating the task is the assessment that Iran is stepping up efforts to move its work on enriching uranium deep underground.

Several officials at the heart of the decision-making structure, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing some of Israel’s deepest secrets, said they feel compelled to give the sanctions time.

In this way, somewhat paradoxically, the new economic sanctions the US and Europe are imposing – while meeting a repeated Israeli request – have emerged as an obstacle to military action.

Iranian nuclear facility (Photo: EPA) 

An Israeli strike would risk shattering the US-led diplomatic front that has imposed four additional rounds of sanctions on Iran and jolt the shaky world economy by causing oil prices to spike. Still, the officials said that if Israel feels no alternative but to take military action, it will do so.

The US has sold Israel dozens of 100 GBU-28 laser-guided “bunker-buster” bombs. The 2.5-ton bombs are capable of penetrating more than 20 feet of solid concrete.

It’s not clear how much damage the bunker-busters could actually do. Iran’s main enrichment site at Natanz is believed to be about 25 feet (6 meters) underground and protected by two concrete walls.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Wall Street Journal last week that even more sophisticated US bunker-busters aren’t powerful enough to penetrate all of Iran’s defenses.

‘Strike won’t really delay Iran’

Many believe that in the event of a strike, Iran would likely unleash its large arsenal of missiles capable of striking Israel.

Iran’s local proxies, Hezbollah to Israel’s north and Hamas to the south, possess tens of thousands of short-range rockets and missiles. American soldiers in the Persian Gulf might come under fire. Islamist backers of Iran could target civilians all over the world.

The prospect of a new conflagration in the Mideast is one reason cited by some influential Israeli figures, like recently retired spy chief Meir Dagan, when arguing against an Israeli military attack.

Perhaps the biggest factor in the Israeli thinking is how much damage an airstrike could even cause.

“What will tip the scales in favor or against an attack is whether we will really be able to do inflict serious damage,” said Yiftah Shapir, an expert in nuclear arms proliferation at Tel Aviv University. “That will be more important than whether we are ready to absorb (the casualties) of an attack.”

Israeli officials believe the Iranian nuclear program is so far advanced that any attack would delay it by two to three years at best, but not destroy it.

“It’s a very advanced program with many facilities, some very large and some very fortified. To destroy them you need a series of massive assaults for two to three weeks, a month, something like that,” Shapir said.

A one-time surgical strike, the most likely attack by Israel, “can’t do more than politically declare that we aren’t willing to tolerate” a nuclear Iran, Shapir said.

Hamas’ prime minister in Gaza embarks on trip to Iran – latimes.com.

REPORTING FROM GAZA CITY — Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ prime minister in the Gaza Strip, left Monday for a regional tour that will include stops in Qatar and Iran.

Haniyeh’s tour will focus on raising investment and reconstruction funds for the war-torn coastal enclave, said Yusuf Rizqa, his political adviser.

It is the second foreign trip in two months for Haniyeh, who some believe is trying to raise his international profile as part of a power struggle with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal. Haniyeh recently visited Sudan, Turkey and Tunisia.

Meshaal has also been on the move, this week making his first visit to Jordan since 1999.

Haniyeh will stop in Iran at the official request of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Taher Nono, a spokesman for the prime minister.

Iran has been a strategic supporter and donor for the Islamist militant movement, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. But Tehran reportedly cut back its funding of Hamas recently because Hamas has refused to express public support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is fighting to retain power amid a 10-month-old popular revolt in his country.

Though Haniyeh has remained in Gaza, other Hamas leaders, including Meshaal, have used Damascus as a base. But the recent unrest in Syria has caused most Hamas officials to leave the country.

Clinton to back U.N. resolution on power transfer in Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will join the foreign ministers of France and Britain at the United Nations to push for a resolution on the transfer of power in Syria, the BBC reports.

Update at 3 p.m. ET: In a message to besieged Syrians, Clinton said in a statement: “We stand with you,” Clinton told them in a statement.

“The status quo is unsustainable,” Clinton said. “The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region.”

Original post: Talks on the resolution will begin at the U.N. in New York on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.

CAPTION

Ugarit News group via APTN

France says 10 of the 15 countries on the Security Council now support the Arab League’s proposal for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to a deputy, the BBC says.

Russia, however, has that it will use its veto to block a resolution.

“This document isn’t balanced and it opens the door to intervention in Syrian affairs,” Gennady Gatilov said, according to the Interfax news service as reported by Bloomberg News.

The latest draft resolution proposed by the West isn’t fundamentally different to an October resolution on Syria vetoed by Russia, and “obviously can’t be supported by us,” he said.

Syrian forces heavily shelled the restive city of Homs today and troops pushed back dissident troops from some suburbs on the outskirts of Damascus in an offensive trying to regain control of the capital’s eastern doorstep, activists said, according to the AP.

Activists reported at least 28 civilians killed today.

The United Nations estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,400 people have been killed in Syria’s crackdown since the uprising against Assad’s rule began in March.

The bloodshed has continued since — with more than 190 killed in the past five days — and the U.N. says it has been unable to update the figure, the AP reports.

BBC News – Russia ‘to block’ Syria vote at UN Security Council.

Russia has said it will block a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for a transfer of power in Syria because it “leaves open the possibility of intervention” in Syria’s affairs.

The US, the UK and France are lobbying on behalf of the Arab League’s draft text, which calls for President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to a deputy.

The White House said Mr Assad had lost control of Syria, adding “he will go”.

But Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister said the text was “not balanced”.

Meanwhile, fighting in Syria continued as government troops bombarded the central city of Homs. Heavy machine gun fire was reported in the restive Bab Amr district.

At least 225 tank shells were fired at the suburbs of Damascus, activists said.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, a network of anti-government groups, said 58 people were killed on Monday.

Their claims could not be independently verified, as the the BBC other international media are severely restricted inside Syria.

Earlier, reports said the Syrian army had regained control of some Damascus suburbs recently held by rebel forces.

Qatari backing

Moscow, which has maintained its ties to Damascus, has so far resisted moves for a UN resolution condemning the violence in Syria. Russia has a naval base in the country and supplies arms to Syria.

“The current Western draft… certainly cannot be supported by us,” Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the Interfax news agency.

Mr Gatilov said the draft was “not balanced” and “leaves open the possibility of intervention in Syrian affairs”.

The White House said it supported a political solution to end the violence in Syria. However, spokesman Jay Carney said President Assad had lost control of his country and his regime would fall.

France says 10 of the 15 countries on the Security Council now support the Arab League text. A minimum of nine council members must lend their backing in order for a resolution to be put to a vote.

However, Russia – as one of the five permanent council members – can veto any proposed resolution.

The BBC’s Barbara Plett, at the UN, says Russia views the resolution as a first step towards regime change.

The UK has urged Moscow to reconsider its opposition.

“Russia can no longer explain blocking the UN and providing cover for the regime’s brutal repression,” said a spokeswoman for Prime Minister David Cameron.

On Monday, Russia also offered to mediate talks between the Syrian government and the opposition – a suggestion the opposition rejected out of hand.

The Syrian government has rejected the Arab League plan, which would see Mr Assad’s deputy forming a national unity government within two months.

The prime minister of Qatar and the secretary-general of the Arab League are also going to New York to seek support for the draft text. Qatar heads the League’s committee dealing with the Syrian crisis and has previously called for Arab countries to send troops into Syria.

On Saturday, the Arab League announced it was suspending its month-old monitoring mission in Syria because of an upsurge of violence.

Tank shells

Reports from Damascus say residents in some areas heard the sound of bombing in the early hours of the morning.

Heavy fighting has taken place in the eastern suburbs for several days.

Over the weekend, troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive targeting several areas under the control of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).

They retook control of the suburb of Ghouta, with activists saying the FSA had beaten a “tactical” retreat.

On Monday, the Syrian army held funerals for 22 of its members killed in the previous 24 hours. The BBC’s Jim Muir, in neighbouring Lebanon, says on average 20 members of the security forces are being killed each day.

Reports have emerged suggesting security forces may have killed senior army defector Lt-Col Hussein Harmoush, one of the first military officers to publicly declare his opposition to Mr Assad last year.

However, the Free Syrian Army, many of whose members are based in Turkey, said they could not confirm the death.

Syria Troops Fight Rebels Near Damascus Before UN Security Council Meeting – Bloomberg.

Syrian troops battled for control of rebel-held suburbs of Damascus ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting to address an Arab proposal to end the crisis.

The government sent tanks and armored vehicles into the areas yesterday, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Mahmoud Merei, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights. Forty-one people were killed yesterday, Abdel Rahman said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European foreign ministers will attend tomorrow’s Security Council meeting to support an Arab League plan calling for Assad to step down in favor of a national unity government.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the escalation of the Syrian regime’s violent and brutal attacks on its own people,” Clinton said in a statement today. She said that tomorrow “the international community should send a clear message of support to the Syrian people: We stand with you.”

The violence has left more than 5,000 dead since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March and has intensified since the Arab League halted its observer mission last week.

Eleven months into the unrest, the European Union and the U.S. have yet to overcome Russia’s resistance at the UN’s decision-making body to hold Assad responsible for the crackdown. His government has blamed “terrorists” and foreign provocateurs for fomenting the protests.

‘Brutal Repression’

“We believe the United Nations must act to support the people of Syria and Russia can no longer explain blocking the UN and providing cover for the regime’s brutal repression,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokeswoman, Vickie Sheriff, told reporters in London today.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Syria’s government agreed to hold talks with the country’s opposition in Moscow. Russia is waiting for a response from opponents of Assad, the ministry said in a statement published on its website today.

Burhan Ghalioun, leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, rejected talks with the Syrian government unless Assad is removed, Al Arabiya reported. The council is demanding “the departure of Assad as a first step in the transition process,” its spokeswoman, Bassma Kodmani, said in a text message today.

Clashes between government forces and the Free Syrian Army, made up of defectors and armed civilians, have been ongoing for three to four days in the Damascus suburbs of Douma, Saqba, Harasta, Irbin and Zamalka, Merei said.

An “armed terrorist group” attacked a pipeline transporting gas between Homs and Banias, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported today.

Echoes of 1967 in Israel’s Iran Dilemma « Commentary Magazine.

One of the interesting aspects of yesterday’s New York Times Magazine cover story about Israel’s decision whether or not to strike at Iran’s nuclear program came from a passage in which author Ronen Bergman describes his meeting with former Mossad chief Meir Amit. Amit, who headed Israel’s intelligence agency at the time of the 1967 Six-Day War, described a meeting with the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv during the lead up to that conflict. According to the transcript of the meeting, which was given to Bergman, the American spy threatened Israel and did all in his power to prevent the Jewish state from acting to forestall the threat to its existence from Egypt and other Arab states that were poised to strike.

The lessons of this confrontation certainly put Israel’s current dilemma about attempting to pre-empt Iran’s ability to threaten the Jewish state with extinction via a nuclear weapon in perspective. Bergman provides no firm answer to the question of whether or not Israel will go ahead and strike Iran even if, as was initially the case in 1967, it must happen over the objections of the United States. But he does attempt to give a coherent framework for how the decision can be made as well as providing a bit more background on the chief Israeli critic of a strike on Iran.

According to Bergman, Israel has three criteria for deciding to act on their own on Iran:

 1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

For the first time since the Iranian nuclear threat emerged in the mid-1990s, at least some of Israel’s most powerful leaders believe the response to all of these questions is yes.

I’m not sure he’s right about that, especially when it comes to the first two points. While Israel can inflict serious damage on Iran, there’s no question that to do the job properly it will require American involvement. And though it may well be that ultimately the Obama administration will give Israel the same blinking green light it got in 1967, a close read of most of the statements coming out of Washington lately on the subject may lead to a different answer. It remains to be seen whether Obama is more afraid of the terrible consequences of an Iranian nuclear device for the world as well as Israel as he is of the fallout from an Israeli attack. Elsewhere in the piece, Bergman presents an Israeli assessment of what many believe is a feckless American stand on the issue that seems more the product of magical thinking than an analytic process:

“I fail to grasp the Americans’ logic,” a senior Israeli intelligence source told me. “If someone says we’ll stop them from getting there by praying for more glitches in the centrifuges, I understand. If someone says we must attack soon to stop them, I get it. But if someone says we’ll stop them after they are already there, that I do not understand.”

Just as fascinating is his account of the activities of Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief who has been quoted incessantly in the American press largely because he is a vocal critic of the idea of an Israeli strike on Iran.

Bergman allows Dagan his say on the matter in which he bitterly criticizes both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak. But his is one of the rare accounts in the U.S. press to also note the spymaster carries a political grudge against the two because they did not reappoint him to his position after the fiasco in which Mossad personnel were exposed while carrying out a hit on a Hamas terrorist in Dubai.

Though he is often represented in the Western press as someone who minimizes the danger from Iran, Bergman also corrects this impression. Dagan seems as intent on stopping Iran as Netanyahu and Barak, but he thinks it can be better achieved by Mossad’s cloak-and-dagger assassinations of Iranian scientists and/or sabotage of Iranian facilities. But it’s far from clear the Iranians haven’t already overcome those tactics.

The other Israeli critic of a strike on Iran that he cites is Rafi Eitan, the 85-year-old former spook whose most famous achievement in his field was the Jonathan Pollard disaster (something Bergman fails to note). He believes it is a foregone conclusion that Iran will go nuclear and thinks the only way to avert the danger is to promote regime change. While the replacement of the Islamist dictatorship with a democratic government would be an improvement, waiting around for that to happen doesn’t seem particularly prudent, especially when you consider the consequences.

Bergman’s conclusion is Israel will attack Iran sometime this year because of a growing consensus it has no choice but to do so. If Barack Obama wishes to avert that overcome, he is going to have to prove to the Israelis he means business about sanctions that will bring the Iranian economy to its knees. But given the ambivalent signals emanating from Washington on that subject, everything Netanyahu and Barak are hearing is more likely to be hardening their conviction that, as Bergman writes, “only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.”

Behind the Cover Story: Ronen Bergman on Whether Israel Will Attack Iran – NYTimes.com.

‘Iran renaming ships to circumve… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By REUTERS

Using a series of legal loopholes, Iran has renamed over a dozen cargo ships in the past year as it seeks to circumvent sanctions on arms transfers and the supply of nuclear-related equipment, according to a new study released on Monday.

The report was published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and included an analysis of reported incidents of illicit arms and drug transfers in recent years.

According to the report, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) has renamed a total of 90 out of its 123 ships since 2008. The company has also reflagged a significant percentage of its fleet, which dropped off the list of the top 100 fleets in the world last April. It previously was ranked as the 23rd largest container line in the world.

Israel has captured a number of Iranian arms ships transferring weaponry to terrorists groups in the region in recent years. Last week, The Jerusalem Post reported on efforts by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz to recruit EU countries to help counter Iranian smuggling throughout the region. Gantz raised the issue with European counterparts he met at NATO headquarters earlier this month.

Last March, Navy commandos seized the Victoria, which was transporting 50 tons of weaponry – including advanced radar-guided anti-ship missiles – to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The ship was owned by a German company and was flying a Liberian flag.

In late 2009, the Navy seized the Francop which was carrying hundreds of tons of weaponry en route to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was also owned by a German company and was flying an Antiguan flag.

“The Iranian ships are being shuffled like a deck of cards in a Las Vegas casino,” explained Hugh Griffiths, one of the authors of the report and an arms trafficking expert at SIPRI. “There is a constant game of cat and mouse being played and the renaming and reflagging of vessels of different states is a way of trying to avoid inspection because of sanctions.”

The report, Griffiths said, was the culmination of two years of work by SIPRI during which it created the Vessel and Maritime Incident Database which contains information on countries and shipping lines suspected of illicit activity.

According to the SIPRI report, in October 2010 Germany removed ships suspected of being owned by IRISL from its shipping registry after the European Union imposed sanctions on the state-owned shipping company. The report claims however that despite the sanctions, other EU member states – Cyprus and Malta – continue to have Iranian ships on their registries.