WarSclerotic

Are Iran’s “Red Lines” Equally Red? | Battleland | TIME.com.

Panetta was so busy talking about “red lines” over the weekend, you could be forgiven for thinking he was a hockey player — or a racecar driver. Of course, the defense chief’s red lines dealt with Iran – and it’s worth noting, for those of you keeping score at home – that one red line is far more crimson than the other.

He said – twice – on CBS’s Face the Nation that Tehran’s current efforts to “develop a nuclear weapon” is a “red line” it had better not cross. He said – once – that any Iranian effort to shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the nozzle through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil flows, would be a second “red line” Tehran had better not breach.

So which line is redder?

Make no mistake about it: even though Panetta spoke more about Iran’s nuclear program than the Strait of Hormuz, any action by Iran to shut down shipping through the strait would warrant quick U.S. military action to re-open it. Most experts agree that Tehran would be violating international maritime law by impeding free passage through the waterway.

Iran’s nuclear program is far less scarlet. Panetta seemed to concede as much: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.”

One can never prove a negative, which makes Panetta’s bald no startling. Nations that have hidden their ultimately successful nuclear work from the world’s prying eyes include India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.

Developing nuclear weapons is a process. Iran insists that isn’t its destination, but the world’s nuclear-proliferation experts don’t believe it. Yet – unless Iran has a nuclear site unknown to the rest of the world – its efforts to enrich nuclear fuel to the level required for weapons is six months to a year away — once it begins that enrichment process. Only then would the countdown to war over Iran’s nuclear program begin in earnest, U.S. officials suggest.

But shutting down the strait would send the global economy into a tailspin overnight. While soaring oil prices might only be temporary – and the U.S. military could certainly reopen it within weeks, if not days — neither Washington nor the rest of the world community could tolerate such a willful flouting of international law.

One other thing to keep in mind: any decision to attack Iran over its nuclear program will be led, or allowed (if Israel conducts the raids) by Washington. It’s a choice, to be made at a time of Washington’s choosing. Conversely, the timing of any decision to block the Strait of Hormuz rests with Iran. It’s always easier, militarily and politically speaking, to retaliate, rather than initiate.

So it’s best to think of the Strait of Hormuz as the true red line. Tehran’s nuclear ambition –- at least as of today – trends more towards pink.

israel today | Reports: Israel resigned to nuclear Iran, while Obama ready to strike? – israel today.

Syria’s Assad vows to stay in power, says ‘victory is near’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Speaking at Damascus University for first time since he agreed to Arab league plan to halt the crackdown on dissent, Assad accuses media of pushing Syria to collapse.

By The Associated Press

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Tuesday he will not step down, insisting that he still has his people’s support.

“We will declare victory soon,” he said in the speech at Damascus University broadcast live on state television. “When I leave this post it will be also based upon the people’s wishes,” he said in his first speech since he agreed last month to an Arab League plan to halt the government crackdown on dissent.

	In this image made from video, Syrian President Bashar Assad delivers a speech in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012.
	Photo by: AP

Assad repeated his claim that a foreign conspiracy is behind the unrest, and he said it was failing.

The president has made few public appearances since the anti-government uprising began in March, inspired by the revolutions sweeping the Arab world. The regime’s crackdown on dissent has killed thousands and led to international isolation and sanctions.

Assad also accused hundreds of media outlets of working against Syria to “push us toward … collapse.”

“They failed, but they have not given up,” he said, standing at a podium between two Syrian flags.

Since the start of the uprising, Assad has blamed a foreign conspiracy and media fabrications for the unrest – allegations that the opposition and most observers dismiss. The regime has banned most foreign news outlets and prevented independent reporting.

In recent months, Syria’s conflict has turned increasingly violent as army defectors turn their weapons on the regime and some protesters take up arms to protect themselves.

Syria agreed in December to an Arab League-brokered plan that calls for an end to the military crackdown on protesters, but killings have continued.

About 165 Arab League monitors are in Syria to determine whether the regime is abiding by the plan to stop violence and pull heavy weapons out of the cities.

The UN estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,000 people have been killed since March. Since that report, opposition activists say hundreds more have died.

Ex-adviser: Obama ready to strik… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    No one should doubt that US President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the president’s former special assistant on Iran said Monday.

Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear-armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview.

“There are consequences if you act militarily, and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who in a two-hour interview at the Bloomberg Washington office laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily.

The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.

His comments came the day after Obama’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line, precipitating a US strike.

“They need to know that if they take that step, they’re going to get stopped,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Jan. 8 on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” On the same program, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he has been responsible for planning and positioning assets to be ready if ordered to take military action.

Challenging Iran’s claim

Iran, the world’s third largest oil exporter, insists its nuclear program is for civilian energy and medical purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last Nov. 8 detailing nuclear activities it said had no other use than for military purposes, bolstering the US case that Iran is seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons even if it hasn’t yet made a decision to do so.

While some Iran analysts have suggested an alternative to military strikes would be to “contain” a nuclear Iran, much as the US managed to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, Ross said the analogy doesn’t translate to the situation in the Mideast. Countries in the region, he said, lack equivalent Cold War-era “ground-rules,” lines of communication, and a protected second-strike nuclear capability, which deterred a surprise attack during US-Soviet tensions.

A nuclear-armed Iran would set off a atomic arms race among neighbors, pose a risk of proliferation to other states or terrorist groups, and increase the chances of a nuclear strike resulting from miscalculation, he said.

Potential for miscalculation

“You don’t have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger – where they can’t afford to be second to strike, the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high,” he added.

Ross acknowledged that a military strike would have serious consequences as well, including Iranian retaliation, either directly or through terrorist proxies around the world, a possible effort to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and a spike in oil prices.

Understanding those risks, “nobody uses military force lightly,” he said, and “nobody commits to using military force one minute before they have to.”

US credibility

Ross underscored that US willingness to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons affects decision-making in other countries that fear Iran, including Israel and Gulf states. If the White House abandoned a pledge to stop Iran made by Obama and former US president George W. Bush before him, the US would lose all credibility, he said.

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”

Ross stressed he believes there is still time for diplomacy to work, as the financial pain of sanctions may yet persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

“Force is not inevitable,” he said. “Diplomacy is still the desired means. Pressure is an element of the means.”

Oil embargo

Coordinated efforts to tighten penalties, including the European Union’s preliminary agreement on an oil embargo, new US sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, and pressure on Japan and South Korea to reduce their imports of Iranian oil, may finally persuade Iran’s leaders to give up the program rather than suffer a shutdown of their economy, Ross said.

The latest measures are the first “really affecting the core of their revenue, which is their sale of oil,” Ross said. Historically, “when they’re really pressured, they look for ways out.”

The leaders of Islamic Republic of Iran only accepted a cease-fire with Iraq, halted the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Europe, and abandoned the enrichment of uranium in 2003 when “it wasn’t worth the cost” anymore, Ross noted.

The latest round of punishing sanctions target oil sales, which fund a majority of Iran’s government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Iran is “feeling pain in a much more dramatic way” than ever, Ross said.

Iranian ‘Bluster’

He dismissed threats by certain Iranian officials to retaliate against oil sanctions by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits, as “bluster” aimed to send a message at home and abroad, as Iranian leaders vie for power in a struggle that Ross said is as intense as any since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The IAEA yesterday confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium to as much as 20 percent U-235 at the underground Fordow underground site near the holy city of Qom, as Iranian leaders had pledged to do last year. The site is monitored by IAEA inspectors to detect any attempt to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level necessary for a nuclear bomb.

“There really is no justification for it,” Ross said of the latest enrichment activities. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of doubt that they are embarked on a program that can produce, at a certain point, weapons.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report January 10, 2012, 11:19 AM (GMT+02:00)

An underground nuclear test

According to debkafile‘s Iranian sources, Tehran is preparing an underground test of a one-kiloton nuclear device during 2012, much like the test carried out by North Korea in 2006. Underground facilities are under construction in great secrecy behind the noise and fury raised by the start of advanced uranium enrichment at Iran’s fortified, subterranean Fordo site near Qom.
All the sanctions imposed so far for halting Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon have had the reverse effect, stimulating rather than cooling its eagerness to acquire a bomb.

Yet, according to a scenario prepared by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University for the day after an Iranian nuclear weapons test, Israel was resigned to a nuclear Iran and the US would offer Israel a defense pact while urging Israel not to retaliate.

As quoted by the London Times Monday, Jan. 1, INSS experts, headed by Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, deduced from a simulation study they staged last week that. Their conclusion is that neither the US nor Israel will use force to stop Iran’s first nuclear test which they predicted would take place in January 2013.

Our Iranian sources stress, however, that Tehran does not intend to wait for the next swearing-in of a US president in January 2013,  whether Barack Obama is returned for a second term or replaced by a Republican figure, before moving on to a nuclear test.

Iran’s Islamist rulers have come to the conclusion from the Bush and Obama presidencies that America is a paper tiger and sure to shrink from attacking their nuclear program – especially while the West is sunk in profound economic distress.

debkafile‘s sources stress that both Tehran and the INSS are wrong: The Tel Aviv scenario is the work of a faction of retired Israeli security and intelligence bigwigs who, anxious to pull the Netanyahu government back from direct action against the Islamic Republic, have been lobbying for the proposition that Israel can live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Our Washington sources confirm, however, that President Obama considers the risk of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action.

Monday, Jan. 9, top administration officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line and precipitate a US strike. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: “If Iran takes the step to develop a nuclear weapon or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, they’re going to be stopped.” He was repeating the warnings of the past month made by himself and Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Martin Dempsey.

As for Israel, Dennis Ross, until recently senior adviser to President Obama, reiterated in a Bloomberg interview on Jan. 10: “No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail.”
As for Israel, Ross said: “I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”

Israel’s media screens and front pages are dominated these days by short-lived, parochial political sensations and devote few words to serious discourse on such weighty issues as Iran’s nuclear threat.
This is a luxury that the US president cannot afford in an election year.  Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb and conduct of a nuclear test would hurt his chances of a second term. The race is therefore on for an American strike to beat Iran’s nuclear end game before the November 2012 presidential vote.

The INSS have also wrongly assessed Russia’s response to an Iranian nuclear test as “to seek an alliance with the US to prevent nuclear proliferation in the region.”
This fails to take into account that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running himself for a third term as president in March, has already committed Moscow to a new Middle East policy which hinges on support for a nuclear Iran and any other Middle East nation seeking a nuclear program. This is part of Russia’s determined plan to trump America’s Arab Spring card.

Israel prepares for nuclear Iran; western powers concerned over new enrichment work.

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

If Iran does test a nuclear weapon, the Institute for National Security Studies predicts a profound shift in the Middle East power balance. (File photo)

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Leon T. Hadar: Another War That Nobody Wants.

Reports that members of the European Union (EU) were planning to impose an embargo on Iranian oil as part of a U.S.-led strategy to force Teheran to end its alleged nuclear military programme should not have come as a major surprise. Iran has been developing surface-to-surface missiles with a maximum range of 2,000km, that equipped with nuclear weapons could put France and its European partners — as well as Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East — within its range.

Or to put it differently, if Iran with nukes is indeed a strategic threat, it is the Europeans more than the Americans who should be worried about it.

Some Europeans were hoping to pursue once again their all-too-familiar approach of free riding on U.S. military power — counting on the United States and/or Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities (Win I for Europe) while allowing European nations that depend heavily on Iranian oil to continue doing business with the Islamic Republic (Win II for Europe). They could have then distanced themselves from the American and/or Israeli action while facing no disruption in the flow of Iranian oil into their economies (Win III for Europe).

But as the Obama administration has already demonstrated in Libya, with the U.S. military overstretched (hence, the plans to shrink it) and the American fiscal house in a mess (while the Europeans continue to maintain their expensive welfare programmes), the Americans were not going to allow the Europeans to do more free riding on their military power in the Middle East — which is (and that includes Iran) in Europe’s strategic backyard.

Hence, the Obama administration has made it clear that it would not launch a unilateral military strike against Iran and would instead pursue a ‘graduated’ strategy of slowly escalating economic and military pressure on Iran. But that would require a unified Western front for it to succeed, since any proposed sanctions would not bite Iran without EU participation.

The expected EU decision to ban Iranian oil imports comes after President Barack Obama signed into law last month a measure (included in the Defense Bill) targeting Iran’s central bank and financial sector following similar steps against Iran’s financial institutions that the British had taken last November (in retaliation for demonstrators’ storming of the British embassy in Teheran).

The new measures signed by Mr. Obama in December would punish foreign firms that continue dealing with Iran’s central bank to facilitate oil transactions by imposing restrictions on their access to the American economy and its financial sector.

But it would take some time for the U.S.-EU moves to go into effect. The southern European countries that are heavily dependent on Iranian oil import (and are also in the midst of a devastating financial crisis) will probably resist the planned EU ban.

Moreover, Turkey and Japan have already requested waivers from the U.S. financial sanctions against Iran (and Mr. Obama has the authority to grant them), while China and Russia, two leading trade partners of Iran, could circumvent the sanctions, by shifting to barter deals with Teheran.

Feeling the heat

It is obvious that the Iranian economy has taken a hit in the form of rising food prices and a dramatic drop in the value of the Iranian currency as a result of the sanctions imposed on it by the U.S. and the United Nations in recent years. So the new sanctions that would target Iranian oil exports on which its economy is dependent could have the effect of forcing it to the brink of bankruptcy.

But it is not clear that these Western steps are going to bring about the desired changes in Iranian policy. If anything, against the backdrop of the Iranian parliamentary elections in March and a growing split inside the leadership — pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his political allies against even more conservative clerical groups — policymakers in Teheran are under pressure to project diplomatic and military toughness vis-Ã-vis Washington and its partners. That explains Teheran’s threats to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions were imposed on its oil exports. It also threatens to stop U.S. warships crossing this strategically important strait.

The West has cheered the emergence of the anti-clerical and more liberal Green Movement in Iran. But Iran’s clerics and its notorious Revolutionary Guards could exploit the confrontation with the U.S. to mobilise public support by stirring up nationalist sentiments.

The set of financial sanctions imposed on Iran by the U.S. in September 2006, and that were integrated into a UN Security Council resolution in March 2008, have targeted Iran’s elites and highlighted the growing isolation of the country. It also allowed the Obama administration to demonstrate that its non-military strategy on Iran was working while insisting the military option world ‘remain on the table.’

White House officials argue that a war with Iran would not be cost-effective in terms of securing long-term U.S. interests. A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities could perhaps slow down Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons by a year or so. But it could also ignite an all-out Middle Eastern war involving Israel and the Hizbollah (Iran’s allies in Lebanon) and lead to a major rise in world energy prices that could bring the U.S. economic recovery to a halt.

At the same time, the Obama administration is facing enormous pressure from the Israeli government that has threatened to use military force against Iran if intelligence reports indicate that the Iranians are close to manufacturing a nuclear bomb. Interestingly enough, leading Israeli national security figures have echoed the American view by arguing that a war with Iran would result in many casualties while failing to end its nuclear programme.

Playing into the hands of Israeli and American supporters of the military option was a report issued earlier in the year, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that expressed its concerns that Iran may be on the threshold of making a nuclear warhead small enough to be put on top of a ballistic missile.

Republican lawmakers and the leading presidential candidates of the party — and their neo-conservative allies in the media and the think tanks — have accused the Obama administration of failing to force the Iranians to end their nuclear programme and have urged that Washington take immediate military action — or at least give Israel a green light to do the job.

Saddam-era scenario

These let’s-bomb-Iran crowd consists of the same politicians and pundits that not so long ago were warning that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the world-as-we-know-it would come to an end unless the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Recent reports suggest that the Israelis have agreed to refrain from taking military action against Iran while the Obama administration continues to use diplomatic means and widen the anti-Iran international coalition to pressure the clerics in Teheran to change course. American and Israeli officials have apparently drawn a set of ‘red lines’ that would determine if and when a use of a military option against Iran becomes acceptable to both sides.

Mr. Obama and his diplomatic and national security aides are confident that they have a relatively long window of opportunity — at least until after this year’s presidential and congressional elections — in pursuing their diplomatic option. They believe that the collapse of the Assad regime in Damascus is imminent and this has deprived Iran of a central regional partner, making it much more difficult for the Iranians to provide support for Hizbollah if war breaks out with Israel. At the same time, the withdrawal of U.S. military from Iraq makes it unlikely that American troops there would be threatened by Iranian retaliation in case of a war with Iran.

These developments coupled with the more assertive anti-Iran position of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies (that pledged to increase oil exports to the West and China if tighter sanctions on Iran’s oil exports go into effect) may have weakened the diplomatic bargaining power of Iran and putting may be more pressure on Teheran to reach a compromise of sorts with the U.S. and its European allies.

Turkey’s role

Turkey, which notwithstanding some of the recent tensions with Washington and Paris — not to mention Israel — remains a Nato member and a key U.S. ally, is emerging as a leading Middle Eastern power that is counter-balancing Iran and certainly does not want to see Teheran with nuclear arms.

But it also wants to avert a military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran and could play a major role in trying to facilitate a diplomatic deal under which Iran could agree to put its nuclear programme on hold in exchange for enhanced diplomatic and economic ties with the West.

Moreover, notwithstanding the heated rhetoric coming out of Teheran, its leaders are worried about its growing diplomatic and economic isolation and the disastrous impact that a war with the U.S. could have on the ability of the regime to continue maintaining its power in the long-run.

Similarly, there is very little support for a war with Iran in the Obama administration, which recognises that such a course could draw the U.S. into a new costly military quagmire in the Middle East. And considering that both on Iraq (over the issue of maintaining U.S. military presence there) and on Afghanistan (over the issue of changing the timeline for withdrawing troops) Mr. Obama has been able to resist the pressure from the political right, it is not inconceivable that he could continue pursuing his graduated approach on Iran and counter the calls to go to war.

But things can go wrong. As Britain’s prime minister during World War I, David Lloyd George, explained in his memoirs: ‘Nobody wanted war’ in 1914. ‘The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay,’ he recalled.

Indeed, the danger is in a regional and global strategic environment under which the balance of power remains very shaky. U.S. power is being challenged. The Iranian leadership feels that it is being pushed into a corner. The Israelis are feeling isolated as the Middle Eastern political system continues to go through dramatic changes.

Unexpected provocations and miscalculations could lead the kind of war that once again nobody wants.

Goldberg: To Avoid All-Out War Give Iran One Last Chance – Bloomberg.

Three years ago, President Barack Obama came into office with a very good idea: He would reach out to the mullahs in Iran to see whether they were interested in rethinking their hate-based relationship with the U.S.

So Obama, despite criticism from Republicans, wrote private letters to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and made a public appeal for a fresh start.

“In this season of new beginnings, I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders,” Obama said in a message broadcast in early 2009. “We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.”

When the Iranian people rose up later that year, Obama only tepidly endorsed them, and he was measured in his criticism of the vicious manner in which the Iranian leadership suppressed the protests. He may have been motivated partly by an assessment that the uprising wouldn’t succeed, and that the U.S. would still have to grapple with the Iranian theocracy. His approach was neither morally nor emotionally satisfying, but it showed a certain cold logic.

Nothing happened, of course: The ayatollahs showed no interest in Obama’s entreaties.

Getting Tougher

Fast-forward three years. The Obama administration is now tougher on Iran than was the administration of George W. Bush. It has imposed the most sweeping sanctions ever placed on the country, including sanctions against the Iranian central bank. It is helping coordinate a threatened international boycott of Iranian oil (IATBXOIL). And, according to diplomatic sources I spoke to last week, it has asked its Gulf Arab allies — including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to sharply limit their contacts with official Iranian delegations.

So Republicans who still call Obama soft on Tehran are either delusional or cynical. His administration has moved a long way from engagement. In fact, it now appears to be moving inexorably toward war.

The issue that will provoke that war is the Iranian nuclear program. The administration has left itself no maneuverability on this question. Last month, Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, told a group of Jewish leaders that he was furious “that there are people out there who doubt our resolve to stop Iran.”

On Jan. 8, Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, said that the U.S. would act if it found that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon: “I think they need to know that if they take that step — that they’re going to be stopped.”

It appears that Iran is unmoved by such threats. Not only has it intensified its belligerent rhetoric — threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz to oil-tanker traffic (OPCRIRAN) and suggesting that U.S. aircraft carriers aren’t welcome in the Persian Gulf – – it has sentenced to death a former Marine named Amir Mirzaei Hekmati on charges that he spied against Iran for the CIA. (The U.S. denies that Hekmati was a spy.)

More ominously, the pro-regime Iranian newspaper Kayhan reported that uranium enrichment has begun at a nuclear site called Fordow near the holy city of Qom. This is a consequential move: Most of Iran’s nuclear sites are vulnerable to air attack, but Fordow is a hardened underground site. Because Israel has only a limited ability to penetrate deeply buried bunkers, a decisive move underground by Iran could push Israel to attack preemptively.

U.S. Attack Possible

The argument is also being made in Washington that the U.S. should strike Iran now, or in the very near future.

Some Republican presidential candidates have been agitating for a preemptive strike, and their cause has been buttressed by an influential article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear-security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, who says that a U.S. attack could set back the Iranian program decisively, and even cause the regime to abandon it.

Kroenig argues that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten U.S. allies and be prohibitively expensive to contain. He writes: “Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war. Faced with that decision, the United States should conduct a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, absorb an inevitable round of retaliation, and then seek to quickly de-escalate the crisis.”

Kroenig is correct to identify the Iranian nuclear program as a foremost threat to American national security. But he is wrong — or at least premature — to advocate for a preemptive strike. A strike now would exchange a theoretical nightmare (a difficult-to-contain nuclear Iran) with an actual nightmare (an all-out conventional war across the Middle East).

The U.S. may one day have to stop Iran’s nuclear program by force. Before it takes such drastic action, it should, once again, attempt to show Iran the possibility of a different future, one in which it is allowed to rejoin the community of nations.

The president would have to spend significant political capital, in an election year no less, by once again reaching out to America’s foremost adversary. He could do it in such a way that doesn’t convey weakness, but simply horror at the prospect of war.

Obama would have to convince the Iranians that he is offering one final chance at real dialogue — not out of weakness, but because, as a peace-loving person, he doesn’t want to order the destruction of Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure. And he could offer material prospects for normalized relations with the West, which might be more meaningful now that he has demonstrated his commitment to isolating the regime economically (IAGDPYOY).

The chance for success is slim. Anti-Americanism is a pillar of the Iranian regime’s faith, and the case of Muammar Qaddafi, who gave up his weapons of mass destruction and then saw the U.S. aid the rebels who eventually did him in, is on the minds of Iran’s leaders. And Israel, along with the U.S.’s Arab allies, would have to be convinced that this is a time-limited offer.

A war with Iran could be a disaster for everyone involved, and even those uninvolved. A last attempt at dialogue — a last attempt to build an offramp for the Iranians — seems to have fewer downsides than a rush to war.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

The Buildup for War with Iran continues apace | Ottawa Citizen.

It was only a few days ago that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was warning us that Iran is the greatest threat to global security and the country’s theocratic dictators were not only looking to acquire nuclear weapons, but possibly to use them. He was particularly concerned that Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz – one of the crucial oil shipping routes – only highlighted the dangers posed by the mad mullahs.

“Iran is a very serious threat to international peace and security. In my judgment, it is the world’s most serious threat to international peace and security,” Harper told a Calgary radio station.

Interestingly, Harper’s warning came at about the same time that, American, French, British and Russian air and naval forces began gathering off the Syrian and Iranian coasts.

So far as I know the Harper government hasn’t ordered any of the Royal Canadian Navy’s ships to join an Iran-watch flotilla, but it is interesting to note that HMCS Charlottetown departed Halifax on Sunday morning for the Mediterranean Sea. Ostensibly, the frigate, with 250 sailors, was embarking on a six-month counter-terrorism mission as part NATO’s Operation Active Endeavour.

Is this a coincidence? Not likely. Are we being readied for yet another war? Quite likely. Consider what’s happening.

According to DEBKAfile, there’s been a significant military buildup of western naval forces in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea in the last two days. The USS Stennis aircraft carrier, which the Iranians have said they won’t permit to re-enter the Strait of Hormuz after it transited the strait in late December, has apparently launched one of its huge RQ-4 Global Hawk’s spy drones to do surveillance over the Iranian coast along the Persian Gulf. The aircraft carrier and its strike force are cruising in the Sea of Oman, near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

The Global Hawk’s mission, according to the U.S. Navy, is “to monitor sea traffic off the Iranian coast and the Straits of Hormuz.” The navy has been ordered to watch this traffic following statements Sunday by Iranian Navy chief Adm. Habibollah Sayyari that the strait was under full Iranian control and had been for years.

The Americans responded the same day, saying no way. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Iran has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time.” However, he also said there was no way the U.S. was going to allow the Iranians to keep it blocked. “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that. Yes, they can block it. We’ve described that as an intolerable act and it’s not just intolerable for us, it’s intolerable to the world. But we would take action and reopen the straits.”

But it’s not just the U.S. Navy that’s getting ready for whatever happens. Thousands of U.S. troops began arriving in Israel last week, according to Debkafile. They may be staying up to the end of the year as part of a U.S.-Israel Defence Force deployment in preparation for possible military action against Iran. The troops are to be joined by a U.S. aircraft carrier, whose warplanes will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. Most of the 9,000 American servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers.  Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, during a visit to Israel wo weeks ago, described the arrival of the troops as more of a “deployment” than an “exercise,” effectively confirming that the U.S. is getting ready in case it decides to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, or for a war emergency created by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Americans aren’t acting alone. The British government ordered the HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer armed with new technology for shooting down missiles, to the Sea of Oman. It should arrive there at about the same time as the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. France has also consigned an air defense destroyer Forbin to the waters off Tartus to keep an eye on the Russians.

Naturally, the Russians are being unhelpful, undermining a coordinated western response to the Iranian threat. The Putin regime has ordered the Admiral Kuznetsov to anchor at Syria’s Tartus port on the Mediterranean. It arrived Sunday, along with the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and frigate Yaroslav Mudry.

No doubt, the Russians want to protect those expensive nuclear facilities they’ve sold to the Iranians, along with all those Russian nuclear scientists. (It’s always been a puzzle to me why Russia would help a Muslim state like Iran acquire nuclear weapons when it has so many problems itself with Muslim terrorists, whom, presumably, Iran’s mullahs would be only too happy to provide with nuclear materials. Think of what a Chechen terrorist could do in Moscow with an Iranian-supplied “dirty” suitcase bomb.)

To observe all of this is not to suggest the preparations aren’t necessary. Better to tackle Iran now than when it has nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, this is a lesson westerners have a hard time accepting even though it’s one that history teaches time after time.

As that great political realist Niccolo Machiavelli once wrote, describing reasons for the success of the Roman Empire against troublesome barbarians: “The Romans, seeing inconveniences from afar, always found remedies for them and never allowed them to continue so as to escape war, because they knew that war may not be avoided but is deferred to the advantage of others. So they decided to make war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece in order not to have to do so in Italy.”

In other words, if you don’t fight the wars that you can win you can be sure that sooner or later you’ll have to fight a bigger one in which the odds of success might not be in your favour.

Given Harper’s concerns about Iran, I find it difficult to believe he hasn’t considered making the HMCS Charlottetown – and anything else Canada has to offer — available for Iran-watch duties, and whatever that entails.

Analysis: Israel’s red line – JPost – Defense.

    For the past year, Israel and the West have reportedly spoken about a clear red line that, if crossed, meant military action was likely the only way to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

This imaginary line has delineated the point where the Iranians go to the so-called “breakout stage,” kick out international inspectors from their facilities, start enriching uranium to military- grade levels and begin building a nuclear bomb.

According to updated intelligence assessments, if this were to happen tomorrow, it would take the Iranians anywhere from six to 18 more months to complete a device.

The announcement on Monday that the Fordow facility near Qom has been activated has the potential of becoming a game-changer and could ultimately lead the Israeli government to move up its attack plans against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There is a very simple reason for this: Fordow can store several thousand centrifuges as well as between one and two tons of enriched uranium.

It is burrowed under hundreds of feet of mountain and, as Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said in the past, is immune to conventional military strikes.

This means that the dispersal of such capabilities to Fordow could make a military strike ineffective since even if the other key facilities – Arak, Natanz, Isfahan and Bushehr – are destroyed, the enriched uranium at Fordow would survive and could still be used to build a bomb.

For this very reason, while Israel has agreed with the West that Iran is not yet building a bomb, its timeline has not been based solely on that consideration. Israelis have also always spoken about the parallel, but independent, process that is moving forward all the time – the fortification, dispersion and increasing immunity of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

For Washington, the activation of Fordow is not, in of itself, a red line. This was made clear by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Sunday when he appeared on the television program Face the Nation and said that, for the United States, the red line was the development of a nuclear weapon, not just the capability.

It is also not completely clear if the activation of the facility is on its own enough of a red line for Israel that it would prompt a military strike. This is particularly true now that the world appears to be cracking down harder than ever on Iran’s economy – the US recently imposed new sanctions and the European Union is looking to ban Iranian oil.

Israel might prefer to let that move play itself out first.

But even without Fordow in the equation, Israeli and American intelligence agencies need to ask themselves a very basic question: Do they would know if Iran has gone to the breakout stage and is building a bomb.

Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz is under IAEA supervision, and if the military- grade enrichment is done there the world would know.

There is, however, always the possibility that somewhere else in Iran there is nuclearrelated activity taking place that nobody knows about.

While Israel and the US are confident that they have a good handle on developments there, intelligence blunders have cost both countries dearly.

They cannot afford another one when it comes to Iran.

That is why, while the activation of the Fordow facility is a source for concern, Israel is not expected to immediately fuel its jets and fly to bomb Iran.

There is a lot of signaling going on in the region right now – the British are sending a warship to the Persian Gulf, the US and Iran are exchanging threats over the Straits of Hormuz, and the US and Israel are gearing up for the largest-ever joint missile defense exercise.

The announcement that Fordow is being activated could be an attempt by Tehran to increase its leverage ahead of new talks with the West, reported to be scheduled to resume soon in Turkey.

Either way, the nuclear clock is ticking, and today it is moving faster than before.