WarSclerotic

Who Killed an Iranian Nuclear Expert? Israel Isn’t Telling – TIME.

Like three previous Iranian scientists ambushed on their morning commute, the latest nuclear expert to die on his way to work was a victim of Israel’s Mossad, Western intelligence sources tell TIME. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an expert on a phase of uranium enrichment, perished on a Tehran street on Wednesday after an assassin in a passing motorcycle attached a magnetized explosive to the side of his Peugeot 405. “Yeah, one more,” a senior Israeli official said with a smile. “I don’t feel sad for him.”

Wednesday’s attack followed the pattern of previous operations planned by Mossad and carried out over the past two years by Iranians trained and paid by Israel’s spy agency, according to intelligence sources. The targets were chosen from the ranks of scientists seen as crucial to Iran’s nuclear effort — the country’s top physicist, Majid Shahriari, was killed by a magnetized bomb in October 2010 — then shadowed for weeks to determine their routines and points of vulnerability. (PHOTOS: 60 Years of Israel)

A year ago, Iranian television broadcast the confession of one alleged agent who described studying a scale model of the home of the scientist he helped assassinate by hiding a bomb on a motorcycle outside the front door. “It was the exact copy of the real one, even the size, material, its color, the tree next to it, its asphalt, the street curb, the bridge,” said Majid Jamali Fashi on the air. He said he viewed the model in Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, which he described in detail. Intelligence sources confirmed Fashi’s involvement in a Mossad cell that the sources claim was revealed to Iran by a third country.

Fashi was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of nuclear physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who suffered mortal shrapnel wounds in front of his house on Jan. 12, 2010. Three other nuclear scientists heard magnetic bombs snap onto their car doors during their commute to work — a method Fashi claimed he had also been taught by the Israelis. Besides Ahmadi-Roshan and Shahriari, the victims include Fereydoon Abbasi, a university professor who survived and was promoted to head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. (PHOTOS: Terror in Tehran)

A fourth scientist, Darush Rezaei-Nejad, was killed outside his home by shots fired from a motorcycle on July 23, 2011. A student of electrical engineering, his connection to the Iranian nuclear program remains a matter of dispute.

The similarities among the attacks were not lost on Iranian authorities, who immediately blamed both Israel and the U.S. for Wednesday’s attack. “The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists and is the work of the Zionists,” Tehran’s Deputy Governor Safar Ali Baratlou was quoted as saying by the Fars News Agency.

Israel is officially silent on the incident. However, its top spokesman for the country’s military posted this on Facebook: “Don’t know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but for sure I am not shedding a tear.” The Obama Administration insisted it had nothing to do with the attack. “The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declared. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her denial of U.S. involvement “categorical.” (LIST: Top 10 Players in Iran’s Power Struggle)

The contrast in responses reflects the good-cop, bad-cop roles the allies have assumed in the international effort to dissuade Iran from pushing ahead with its nuclear program. While Washington leads the global effort to press economic sanctions on Tehran, Israeli leaders frequently make thinly veiled suggestions that it may not be able to restrain itself from launching military action on Iran; they also never bother to deny a leading role in covert efforts to slow the nuclear program. In addition to the assassination campaign, Western intelligence sources say Israel was responsible for the massive explosion at a missile base outside Tehran in November.

In an interview published in a Hebrew-language newspaper on Thursday, however, the U.S. ambassador to Israel took pains to portray Washington and Jerusalem in sync on the need for action. The interview was framed by news that Iran was beginning to enrich uranium in a new facility outside Qom, built under a rock shield 200-ft. (60 m) thick. “We see eye to eye with Israel regarding the severity of the threat and the importance of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear country,” U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro was quoted as telling Ben Caspit in Ma’ariv. “President Obama has consistently stated that he will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he means every word. The best way to do this, and everybody agrees, including Israel and the United States and Europe, is through economic sanctions. We need to show the Iranian government that it must choose between the nuclear plan and the country’s economic existence. We’ve increased the sanction to an unprecedented degree, and the pressure will rise even more in the future. We haven’t yet achieved our goals, that much is clear, and the news today about the enrichment of uranium at the site near Qom proves that. Iran has further breached its international obligations in a very serious way.” (PHOTOS: Protesting Iran’s Election Around the World)

And if the sanctions don’t work?

“Because stopping a nuclear Iran is so important, we’ve said this before and I’m saying it again, all options are open. All the possibilities.” said Shapiro. “And I’ll say more than that, we are examining these possibilities actively, and we are drawing up the necessary plans to ensure that all these options exist, and I’m not ruling out any option. President Obama has clearly said that he will do everything and take every necessary step to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons, and I don’t think that it has anything to do with the timing of the elections or any other political issue, it’s important to a lot of these issues.”

Caspit said he asked the ambassador what he meant by “planning the options,” and whether they are also training for the implementation of these options, as foreign reports say the Israeli air force has been doing for some time. “Shapiro was quiet, and then said that America doesn’t need all that much training: ‘We have a massive military presence in the Persian Gulf, right?'”

A cease-and-desist policy, for now – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The IDF is arming its officers with some old arguments – some of them echoed in both past and current pronouncements by U.S. presidential hopefuls – about the value of containment and deterrence vis-a-vis Tehran’s nuclear project.

By Amir Oren

A big battle is in the offing. It will pit the one who under no circumstances will endure nuclear weapons in Iranian hands, against another who vehemently opposes Iran’s procurement of such weapons. Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama – you try to figure out the differences. There really aren’t any differences, other than those of personal pretension. One will declare, “I’ll do it better than this rookie”; the other will counter by saying, “He already tried and failed.”

Who was it who said “I want peace” – a statement befitting a Nobel Prize laureate? And who declared: “I will begin by imposing a new round of far tougher economic sanctions on Iran. I will do this together with the world if we can”? That is an Aesopian way of saying “Yes, we can,” but also, “We’ll do it unilaterally, if we have to.” And what about: “I will back up American diplomacy with a very real and very credible military option”? Or: “I will increase military assistance to Israel and coordination with all of our allies in the region”? These declarations are aimed at providing “an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, in full cooperation with its allies, will never allow Iran to attain nuclear weapon capability.”

	Iranian troops in a training exercise. Can the crisis be kept at bay another year?
	Photo by: AFP

The problem here is that all these statements were made by Romney (in “I Won’t Let Iran Get Nukes,” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2011), not Obama. They conjure up an impression of determined assertiveness, along the lines of the policy of “I won’t allow Iran to attain the nuclear bomb.” In reality, however, such declarations are hedged by qualifiers: There are innumerable statements about military power, but nothing is said about a firm commitment to an American strike against Iran, or about giving a green light to Jerusalem for an Israeli attack.

If there is any difference at all between them, Romney’s stance represents no more than a marginal alteration of a policy adopted by Obama, and the president’s predecessor, George W. Bush. One of Romney’s foreign affairs and security advisers, Eliot Cohen, served as the State Department’s Counselor during the latter Bush years. In his academic work, Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is an expert on military affairs, including the Israel Defense Forces. Among his pupils: the current head of the IDF Intelligence Corps, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi.

While Romney sounds assertive but determined not to tie up himself up with obligations that will make life difficult for him should he be elected, Obama – along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey – ceaselessly declaim the well-worn threat to Iran about not crossing the nuclear military threshold, while in the same breath expressing concern about instability in the Persian Gulf.

The main policy line is clear: The Obama administration is playing for time, trying to deter Iran from doing anything reckless this year in its bid for nuclear capability, whether by closing the Strait of Hormuz or sponsoring a large-scale terror attack that would necessitate responses. Such behavior on Iran’s part would require Obama to put his money where his mouth is, and launch a military operation he does not want during an election year.

Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who had virtually no public profile before he ran for president, like Obama four years ago, lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections after the Ayatollah Khomeini abused him, keeping captive dozens of hostages at the overrun U.S. embassy in Tehran, and even enticing Carter into attempting a woebegone rescue effort. Four years later, again on the eve of elections, Reagan made some bellicose pronouncements about Iran and its proxy states, but then made haste to pull out of Beirut following an attack perpetrated by Tehran’s proxies on U.S. Marines there. In 1984, Reagan easily bested the Democrat’s uninspired candidate, Walter Mondale; a dozen years later, a similar pattern was repeated when Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton defeated the Republicans’ phlegmatic challenger, Bob Dole.

In his reelection bid, Obama, of course, wants to be Reagan and Clinton, not Carter. It would help him were Romney to play the role of Mondale and Dole. Indeed, as things stand now, it seems Romney has indeed taken that part. He is no Reagan. Still, in any case, to stay on the safe side, Obama realizes it would be wise to defer confrontation with the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor, at least until 2013.

The revised U.S. security strategy disclosed this month by Obama, Panetta and Dempsey reflects this preference. It’s possible that Obama’s Republican opponent will occupy the White House soon, and might want to alter this hesitant strategy, but the problem would then be that the 2012 budget, incorporating the incumbent president’s wait-and-see attitude, would already be a done deal.

Obama’s new strategy is influenced by economic considerations in two ways: It reflects belt-tightening within the Pentagon and also a reorganization of priorities in terms of defense matters vis-a-vis other, socioeconomic issues.

Two fronts

Defense officials in Washington have apparently abandoned audacious aspirations about the ability, as the Afghan war winds down, to manage two regional conflicts concurrently – for instance, against Iran and North Korea. Their new policy envisions the management of one such conflict; very limited engagement would be used in a second one. At present, there is in Washington no actual power, nor desire in terms of policy, to wage full-scale engagements in two theaters. Obama will invest his main effort in attempts to revive America’s economy; without improvement on that front, his hopes of reelection could be compromised. On the less-important front, other things, meaning defense-related matters, are being held in abeyance.

Obama’s revised strategy is still fraught with deep concern about the Middle East – that is, the eastern flank of the region, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, which is seen as more important than the Israeli-Arab dispute, although the latter influences affairs in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. America has promised to maintain a presence in key Middle East areas, even after the withdrawal of forces from Iraq and (in three years’ time ) from Afghanistan. An important factor here is the sophisticated weaponry that will be supplied to Gulf states, particularly within the framework of Boeing’s F-15 deal with the Saudis – which includes the sale of 84 new fighter planes and the upgrading of 70 Saudi air force planes. In financial terms, this will involve a Saudi investment of nearly $30 billion.

From America’s standpoint, this is a perfect deal: Saudi Arabia will be in charge of American planes on the Gulf’s western side. But should Islamic fanatics wrest power in Saudi Arabia, carrying out a scenario that has frightened strategists for over three decades, these planes would never get off the ground, due to a lack of trained local technicians and pilots.

Most important, this deal promises 50,000 jobs for Americans for at least 10 years, in 44 states, sprawling over districts represented by an array of Congressmen. It also preserves the competitive balance in the U.S. economy by strengthening Boeing as a counterweight to the other enormous defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the work-in-progress F-35, which will be sold to Israel, and of the F-16, to be sold to Iraq. No politician, no matter how intensely he or she might wail about the possible Saudi threat to Israel, would be able to disrupt this corporate balance and the domestic advantages it offers.

Among others, Joint Chiefs chairman Dempsey has been recruited to the effort to market the Saudi arms deal to the American public; he was stationed in Saudi Arabia between 2001 and 2003. Dempsey’s involvement constitutes a mirror image of how the IDF exploits the economic and social implications of a change in the defense budget: When officers from the IDF General Staff lobby for allocations of billions of shekels for procurement of new armored personnel carriers or for upgrading tanks – they stress the harm that would be caused to scores of factories in Israel, particularly in peripheral regions, by slashes in defense spending.

In such struggles, the General Staff closes ranks with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but when it comes to Iran, the picture is different. Army officers are not happy with Barak’s public warnings about Iran’s attaining nuclear capacity within a matter of months. By contrast, the IDF’s carefully parsed latest assessment states that “possibly Iran will have nuclear operational capability sometime within the span of the next five-year plan,” which could stretch to between 2013 and 2017, or even to 2018. That is, the army hints: “An Iranian bomb? Possibly, but not during the current year.”

What exactly does the army mean by “operational nuclear capability”? The creation of the first nuclear warhead? If not that, how many nuclear missiles, dispersed around the country in hardened bunkers, providing Iran with a credible second-strike capability and the ability to deter a preemptive attack, would Iran be endowed with when it has “operational capability”?

2008 document

The IDF Intelligence Corps has altered its public formulations on the Iran issue. The former head of the corps, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, joined forces with the so-called moderate camp in internal discussions of the Iran issue held by the defense establishment; he supported the stance taken by then-IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Mossad chief Meir Dagan. But in public, army intelligence officers supported the campaign to persuade foreign powers, particularly the United States, not to rely on a vague policy of deterrence and “containment.” (During the Cold War, the concept of containment referred to the West’s effort to stop the spread of Soviet communism. )

“The strategy of containment and deterrence, and the arguments against this policy” – this was the title of a working paper drafted in 2008, during the last American election season, by the intelligence branch of the General Staff. The nine-page document related to “the consistent message delivered in domestic U.S. policy discussions and in claims made against Israel.” This message, the document explained, was “to become reconciled with a nuclear Iran, and to focus on a strategy of deterrence and containment.” It was upheld by important advisers to then-candidate Obama and also those of his rival, John McCain.

Here are examples of the pro and con arguments in the document related to the policy of containment and deterrence vis-a-vis Iran:

In favor: “No military option is feasible, not one undertaken by the Americans, and certainly not by Israel,” and even if one were to be attempted, “it would be a bad and dangerous idea due to its high price, and its uncertain and limited results.”

Against: Prior to Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term as prime minister, IDF strategists wrote that, “nobody is keen on a military attack, but such an attack could derail Iran’s nuclear program for a significant number of years.” In drafting “cost-benefit scenarios, there really is no place for alarmist scenarios that stress the price Iran might exact in response to an attack. In any event, a diplomatic effort that is not backed by viable options of force is liable to turn into a sterile endeavor that begets tragic results. Only a credible threat of American, or even Israeli, military action would enable the [leaders] of various states to explain to their constituencies why they are heeding the enforcement of rigorous sanctions against Iran.”

In favor: “There is no substantive evidence of the existence of a military nuclear program, and so there are no definite targets for an attack.”

And against: “The bottleneck in a nuclear program is not the state of the planning of a weapons system; instead, it is the enrichment process and the establishment of a wide nuclear infrastructure in Iran – and these can be taken care of effectively.”

Four years later, the arguments and the equivocations remain the same. All of the sides moved forward as best they could, but meanwhile the crisis remains on the horizon. If everything depends on the presidential hopefuls, who are worried about being held responsible for the rising gas prices that would inevitably follow an attack on Iran, the crisis will remain at bay, at least for another year.

It will be interesting to see who is more accurate in his assessment, Barak or Obama. Meanwhile, Iranian scientists keep getting blown up on the street.

Dangerous Tension With Iran – NYTimes.com.

With tensions rising over Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration has now warned the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz would provoke an American response. Earlier this week, international monitors confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium at a new underground plant. The United States and  Europe are tightening sanctions to choke off Iranian oil revenues. On Wednesday, an Iranian nuclear scientist died in a bomb attack en route to work, and a government newspaper signaled that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps might retaliate.

¶ Many officials, experts and commentators increasingly expect some kind of military confrontation. No one should want to see Iran, with its contempt for international law, acquire a nuclear weapon. But a military strike on the nuclear facilities would be a disaster.

¶ We don’t know whether any mix of sanctions and inducements could persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. There is another option besides force: negotiations with the United States and other major powers over curbing Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for ending sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Iran’s fractured leadership so far has not committed to serious talks, but President Obama and his allies have not paid enough attention to that alternative.

¶ The United Nations Security Council demanded that Iran stop enriching uranium more than five years ago. Iran claims it only wants access to nuclear technology for electricity and other peaceful purposes. But that excuse is hollow. The major powers have said that power generation would be guaranteed if Iran abandons its weapons ambitions. Instead, Iran is still enriching uranium and mastering other technologies that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon. According to the latest report from United Nations inspectors, Iran has created computer models of nuclear explosions, conducted experiments on nuclear triggers and completed advanced research on a warhead that could be delivered by a medium-range missile.

¶ An accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections — carried out mainly by Israel, according to The Times — is slowing the program, but whether that is enough is unclear.

¶ Economic pressure could be more effective if the United Nations Security Council ratcheted up its existing sanctions. A new round has been delayed by opposition from Russia and China. The United States and Europe have been imposing their own penalties, and Tehran’s recent threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz, gateway to one-fifth of the world’s oil trade, is an obvious sign of its growing economic desperation.

¶ A new United States law that would penalize foreign companies that do business with Iran’s central bank — which they must do to buy Iranian oil — and an oil embargo that European Union foreign ministers plan to approve on Jan. 23 could have an even bigger impact. The Obama administration and European officials seem likely to phase in these sanctions in a way that limits the damage to the world economy. On Thursday, Japan pledged to buy less Iranian oil, China and South Korea were looking for alternative suppliers, and India’s intent was unclear. Tehran is more likely to respond if all the major importers apply pressure together.

¶ The Americans and Europeans are working with Turkey to set up a new round of negotiations with Iran in Istanbul. The Iranians need to know that the economic pressure will not let up until they stop the nuclear program.

U.S. Warns Top Iran Leader Not to Shut Strait of Hormuz – NYTimes.com.

Ebrahim Noroozi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Iranian Navy conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz on Jan. 1. The government of Iran has threatened to close the strait.

By ELISABETH BUMILLER, ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.

The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line” if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closing of the strait.

The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.

Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe that Iran’s threats to close the strait, coming amid deep frictions over Iran’s nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil. Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran’s petroleum exports — and for its food and consumer imports — would amount to economic suicide.

“They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves,” said Dennis B. Ross, who until last month was one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran. “I don’t think they’re in such a mood of self sacrifice.”

But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait. Although Iran’s naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of “asymmetric warfare” — mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats and antiship cruise missiles hidden along Iran’s 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline — which have become a threat to the world’s most powerful navy.

“The simple answer is yes, they can block it,” General Dempsey said on CBS on Sunday.

Estimates by naval analysts of how long it could take for American forces to reopen the strait range from a day to several months, but the consensus is that while Iran’s naval forces could inflict damage, they would ultimately be destroyed.

“Their surface fleet would be at the bottom of the ocean, but they could score a lucky hit,” said Michael Connell, the director of the Iranian studies program at the Center for Naval Analysis, a research organization for the Navy and Marine Corps. “An antiship cruise missile could disable a carrier.”

Iran has two navies: one, its traditional state navy of aging big ships dating from the era of the shah, and the other a politically favored Revolutionary Guards navy of fast-attack speedboats and guerrilla tactics. Senior American naval officers say that the Iranian state navy is for the most part professional and predictable, but that the Revolutionary Guards navy, which has responsibility for the operations in the Persian Gulf, is not.

“You get cowboys who do their own thing,” Mr. Connell said. One officer with experience at the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said the Revolutionary Guards navy shows “a high probability for buffoonery.”

The Revolutionary Guards navy has been steadily building and buying faster missile boats and stockpiling what American experts say are at least 2,000 naval mines. Many are relatively primitive, about the size of an American garbage can, and easy to slip into the water. “Iran’s credible mining threat can be an effective deterrent to potential enemy forces,” an unclassified report by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the American Navy’s intelligence arm, concluded in 2009. “The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint that could be mined effectively in a relatively short amount of time” — with disruptions within hours and more serious blockage in place over days.

Although the United States would respond with minesweepers, analysts said American naval forces might encounter layers of simultaneous attacks. The Iranians could launch antiship missiles from their coastline, islands or oil platforms and at the same time surround any American ship with missile-armed speedboats. “The immediate issue is to get the mines,” Mr. Connell said. “But they’re going to have to deal with the antiship cruise missiles and you’ll have small boats swarming and it’s all going to be happening at the same time.”

The United States could take out the antiship missile launchers with strikes from fighter jets or missiles, but analysts said it could take time to do so because the launchers on shore are mobile and often camouflaged.

The tight squeeze of the strait, which is less than 35 miles wide at its narrowest point, offers little maneuvering room for warships. “It would be like a knife fight in a phone booth,” said a senior Navy officer. The strait’s shipping lanes are even narrower: both the inbound and outbound lanes are two miles wide, with only a two-mile-wide stretch separating them.

American officials indicated that the recent and delicate messages expressing concern about the Strait of Hormuz were conveyed through a channel other than the Swiss government, which the United States has often used as a neutral party to relay diplomatic messages to Tehran.

The United States and Iran have a history of conflicts in the strait — most recently in January 2008, when the Bush administration chastised Iran for a “provocative act” after five armed Iranian speedboats approached three American warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up. The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.

In 2002, a classified, $250 million Defense Department war game concluded that small, agile speedboats swarming a naval convoy could inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships. In that game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

“The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack,” Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military, said in 2008, when the results of the war game were assessed again in light of Iranian naval actions at the time. “The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 13, 2012, 12:00 PM (GMT+02:00)

USS Carl Vinson deployed opposite Iran

US President Barack Obama is busy aligning Middle East allies with the next US steps on Iran. Contributing to the mounting sense in Washington of an approaching US-Iranian confrontation, the Pentagon is substantially building up its combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait – two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region. The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis which was to have returned to home base and their strike groups will stay in the Arabian Sea.

Iran is caught up in the same pre-war swirl of activity. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani spent two days in Ankara this week. But Turkish leaders failed in their bid to sell their good offices as brokers for averting the expected collision between Tehran and the West. Before flying out of Ankara Friday, Jan. 13, Larijani commented: “We have different ways of doing things.”

debkafile‘s Iranian sources quote the Iranian official as telling his hosts that his country is prepared to take on any military aggressors. One of the responses weighed in Tehran to meet the rising military pressure might be an open declaration of Iran as a nuclear power. By accepting a visit by IAEA inspectors on Jan. 28 – to investigate charges that Iran is running a clandestine nuclear bomb program – Tehran may be moving toward that irreversible admission – or possibly its first nuclear test.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 528 disclosed exclusively on Nov. 25, 2011 that Iran may soon publicize its attainment of a nuclear weapon, a step still being debated intensely at the highest levels of the Islamic regime in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who will make the ultimate decision, is very much in favor of facing the world as a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. He calculates that this fait accompli has a good change of warding off a Western and/or Israeli military attack.

Thursday night, Jan. 12, President Obama put in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss coordinating US and Israeli moves for a military operation against Iran, which many US media believe to be imminent.
The New York Times wrote Friday under the caption: Dangerous Tension with Iran, “Many officials, experts and commentators increasingly expect some kind of military confrontation.”

Obama had similar conversations with other Middle East leaders this week. The and Saudi and Qatari foreign ministers, Prince Saud al-Faisal and Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, spent two days on Jan. 10-11 in Washington talking to the US president. The contents of their talks were kept under tight wraps. Friday, British premier David Cameron suddenly turned up in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayef.
Discussions on military preparations centering on Iran inevitably concern the need for urgent action to halt the unending carnage in Syria, Iran’s close ally.

Thursday, the Russian National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev, one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers, said ominously: “We are receiving information that NATO members and some Persian Gulf States working under the ‘Libyan scenario’ intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention.”

Moscow has consistently spoken out against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict – or even tough UN sanctions.

Russia’s NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has suggested more than once that the West would use a military adventure in Syria as the jumping-off point for an attack on Iran.

Another sign that Syria is under the military eye of the West came from an indiscreet comment Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made Tuesday, Jan. 10 in a briefing to a Knesset panel. Israel, he said, is preparing to absorb members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect after his downfall.

He later detracted his words. debkafile disclose that the context of the general’s comment was Israeli preparations to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan border to shelter Alawites fleeing the vengeance of their compatriots.

Turkey too has gone back to talking about setting up in northern Syria a Turkish buffer zone for refugees and anti-Assad dissidents.

Further fueling the war scare, two helmeted bombers on a motorbike assassinated the Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment center, in central Tehran Wednesday. Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States and Israel of a CIA-Mossad master plan, which Iranian sources claimed bore the title “Red Windows” and focused on training Iranian dissidents for hit and sabotage operations in Iran.

The U.S. will not attack Iran–and neither will Israel | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

The United States will not attack Iran to prevent her from acquiring nuclear weapons—and neither will Israel.

Top Iran leader is warned by U.S. on strait threat – San Antonio Express-News.

Ayatollah is told closing Hormuz would provoke response.

By Elisabeth Bumiller, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to U.S. government officials.

The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments and whether there had been an Iranian reply.

Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line” if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last weekend that the U.S. would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and, potentially, airstrikes.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closure of the strait.

The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of U.S. concern about rising tensions over the strait, where U.S. naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Republican Guard naval captain could do something provocative on his own, triggering a larger crisis.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.

Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe Iran’s threats to close the strait, coming amid frictions over Iran’s nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil.

Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran’s petroleum exports would amount to economic suicide.

“They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves,” said Dennis Ross, who until last month was one of President Barack Obama‘s most influential advisers on Iran. “I don’t think they’re in such a mood of self sacrifice.”

But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait.

Although Iran’s naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of “asymmetric warfare” — mines, fleets of heavily armed speedboats and anti-ship cruise missiles hidden along Iran’s 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline — which have become a threat to the world’s most powerful navy.

DEBKA.

Demetris Eliades

On Monday, January 9, Cyprus Defense Minister Demetris Eliades arrived in Tel Aviv for the signing of two defense pacts with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak covering their joint development of eastern Mediterranean oil and gas fields and measures for their defense.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources explain the urgency of those pacts.
Noble Energy, the big Texas-based energy company developing the new Israeli and Cypriot natural gas fields in their respective economic exclusion regions, had just notified Jerusalem and Nicosia that the Israeli Leviathan gas field discovered in 2010 – and estimated at holding as much as 20 trillion cubic feet of gas, and Cyprus A-, which is part of the Cyprus Block 12 gas field – and whose reserves are in the 3-9 TCF range – are actually the same field.
Aside from the thorny technical and economic complications raised by this discovery, new defense pacts had become urgent in the face of the frigate and two missiles ships Turkey has kept stationed opposite the Cyprus Block 12 gas field since mid-December.
The Turkish warships started out by holding daily cannon-fire practice near the narrow naval strip dividing the Israeli and Cypriot gas fields. The shelling stopped after debkafile’s website exposed this dangerous caper on Dec. 24, but the Turkish warships are still there.
Israel, Cyprus, Greece in a gas alliance
Ankara has since announced it won’t object to Noble Energy continuing its explorations and testing for gas reserves in Cyprus Block 12, but will absolutely not permit the gas to be exported, because a share belongs to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus-TNRC (which has never won international recognition).
As long as Greek Cyprus and Turkish Cyprus have not reached agreement on the distribution of the rights to the hydrocarbon reserves and the income thereof, Turkish warships will stand ready to forcibly prevent production.
A triangular relationship has developed between Jerusalem, Nicosia and Athens, which too plans to establish an economic exclusion zone for gas exploration. The day after Israel and Cyprus signed their defense pact, the Israeli defense minister was on a plane to Athens. Wednesday, Jan. 11, he signed another set of defense accords with Greek Defense Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that this finalized the laying of the cornerstone of a strategic, diplomatic and economic alliance binding Jerusalem, Athens and Nicosia.
“We are committed to work together to deepen our relations in defense and security,” said Barak at the signing ceremony. “We have to be prepared for many developments… We must think ahead of time and work together.”
Avramopoulos said: “The two countries are trying to make up for lost time,” stressing Greece’s commitment to deepening the alliance with Israel “… in the name of friendship, peace and stability for all the peoples of the region.”
Israeli provides military assets to secure both gas sectors
Under the triple accords, Israel, Greece and Cyprus are to establish a naval and air command and control center for directing military operations arising from Turkey’s obstruction of drilling, production or exports from either or both East Mediterranean gas sectors.
Israeli military strength, especially its naval and air forces, is already stretched by standby alerts in case the Syrian conflict and Iranian crises tip over into outright hostilities. The IDF will have to reshuffle units to make the necessary assets available for defending the Israeli and Cypriot gas fields. But it lost no time in doing so.
As soon as both defense pacts were in the bag, the Israeli Navy declared Wednesday night that it assumed responsibility for securing the eastern Mediterranean rigs going up at the Yam Thetis, Tamar and Leviathan drilling sites and patrolling Israel’s economic exclusion zone.
The Cypriot field was not mentioned, but our military sources report it was understood that Israeli missile ships would provide the small Cypriot Coast Guard boats with an umbrella against a potential Turkish assault.
On Jan. 3, the Israeli Navy conducted a snap drill at its home base in Haifa, which houses its Dolphin submarine fleet and missile boat flotilla of Sa’ar-5 corvettes and smaller Sa’ar 4.5 ships.
The drill tested the speed of the fleet’s responses to calls for action.
“We must maintain a high state of preparedness and be ready at all times to load our ships at top speed for sustained and lengthy operation at sea,” said Rear Admiral Eli Sharvit, the Haifa Navy Base commander.
By the end of the year, Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the US Army’s Corps of Engineers plan the comprehensive upgrading of Haifa base facilities.
The Israeli Navy Haifa Base undergoes renovation
The estimated $40 million renovation budget will pay for the hardening of structures and the construction of new hangars to accommodate Israeli Dolphin submarines. This outfitting is ostensibly designed to prepare Israel for war with Iran and its allies, Syria and Hizballah. But it will undoubtedly also enhance Israel’s naval resources for guarding the new gas facilities (in which Israel is planning to invest $6 billion in the next four years) and support the defensive role Israel has undertaken under its new strategic alliance with Greece and Cyprus.
The nascent gas fields are already regarded by leading international energy players as the next important source of energy, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources. The interconnected Israel and Cypriot fields are predicted to be the main source of Europe’s natural gas by 2020.
The financial infrastructure is being laid for the future underwater pipeline which will convey gas to Europe. It has already drawn covetous interest from the big boys of the world’s energy sector.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has become an extremely popular visitor at Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin‘s Kremlin office. He can hardly keep up with Putin’s invitations to Moscow. All the Russian prime minister wants to talk about is the eastern Mediterranean gas bonanza. He doesn’t bother to conceal his eagerness for a piece of the action, preferably for the Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom to be awarded the contract for laying the pipeline from the Israeli and Cypriot fields to Europe.
This would give Moscow control over the flow of natural gas to Europe.
Russian, Italian bids for gas pipeline contracts have no chance against America
Moscow has confirmed it has Ankara’s permission for Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline to central Europe to transit Turkey’s Black Sea exclusive economic zone.
Live on TV on Dec. 30, Putin ordered Gazprom to start construction work in “late 2012” on the pipeline from Russia to Bulgaria via Turkey’s Black Sea EEZ. But once European governments see Mediterranean gas becoming available, Russia’s Black Sea pipelines will lose their urgency.
Another bidder for the gas pipeline project is the Italian oil firm ENI, which has in recent weeks sent its salesmen to Tel Aviv and Nicosia.
But according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington, the United States holds the edge. The Noble Energy Company currently drilling in both exclusion zones is American, based in Houston, Texas. The US Sxith Fleet rules the waves in the eastern Mediterranean and protects broad US interests.
Jerusalem, Athens and Nicosia all checked in with the Obama administration when developing their natural gas resources.
They gained US blessing for going ahead notwithstanding President Obama’s entente cordiale with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. America has a strong interest in Israel and Cyprus diversifying European Union energy sources. American companies will therefore not only develop the gas fields, but also beat out the competition for contracts to build and operate the pipelines to Europe.

DEBKA.

Hillary Clinton and Saud al-Faisal

A rare, high-level meeting of minds behind closed doors took place in Washington this week to confidentially discuss policy alignments on China, Iran and Syria between the United States and the Persian Gulf emirates. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington report that for two days, Jan. 10-11, President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani hammered away at points at issue.
While this was going on, the US House Majority Leader, US Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), was sent to the Riyadh and spent hours sitting opposite Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in Riyadh to see how decisions made in the Washington marathon could be translated into actions in the Gulf.
The main topic was naturally the world oil market as affected by the tightening of the oil embargo on Iran.
President Obama and Clinton termed the embargo they are pushing in Europe and Asia against Iran’s oil exports and its central bank-CBI a great success. The pointed to Tehran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz against oil shipping from the Gulf – “not a drop of Gulf oil will go through ” – as proof that those sanctions were working.
“Tehran was shooting itself in the foot,” they said.
The fact is that Iran’s bellicose statements quickly brought Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun running to Tehran in the first week of January to tell the Iranians to cool it.
While Iran is usually accounted China’s biggest oil supplier, Saudi Arabia supplies 18 percent and Iran about 12 percent of its energy consumption. The strategic strait’s closure would therefore instantly lock down a major portion of Chinese industrial and economic activity.
Saudis say they are fully able to make up oil shortages
The Obama administration congratulated itself on another score. Right after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Wednesday, Jan. 11 to lobby for Beijing’s support for US sanctions on Iran’s oil revenue, Wen promised to discuss the Arab Spring with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar when he visited their countries later this month.
This was taken as willingness to cut down on China’s oil purchases from Iran and make up the difference by buying more from Iran’s rivals in the Gulf.
To give Beijing a push in this direction, Washington sources informed the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that China had begun to reduce its energy trade with Tehran. “This month, China’s crude imports from Iran have fallen by some 285,000 daily, more than half the total volume China regularly imports from Iran on a day-to-day basis. Chinese officials, moreover, have signaled that this reduction will continue into February and possibly beyond.”
To avoid blame from Beijing for any oil shortfalls accruing from its support for sanctions, the Obama administration questioned the participants at the Washington get-together – and checked with Riyadh – about Saudi Arabia’s reported difficulties in making up shortages induced by the new sanctions.
According to those reports, the oil kingdom was getting close to the limit of its production capacity. Saudi Arabia is now pumping just under record rates of 10 million barrels per day. It could manage an extra 500,000 barrels a day or so and, if pushed, could go up to 11 million.
But the Saudis denied this information as untrue, asserting they would have no difficulty in immediately stepping up daily production by 1-1.5 million barrels a day if this was called for.
For Saudis all-out US sanctions are no substitute for military action
But our sources in Washington report that the Saudi foreign minister, for his part, was far from satisfied by the Obama administration’s all-out sanctions campaign; nor was he impressed by the way top US officials, such as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta the Navy and Air Force chiefs Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Gen. Norton Schwartz were making light of Iran’s ability to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Prince Saud demanded clear answers from the White House about when and under what circumstances President Obama would order an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapon production facilities.
A senior Saudi source familiar with the Washington round table conference told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that while attaching the utmost importance to the US-led oil embargo on Iran, Riyadh does not believe it will go far enough to meet all the administration’s objectives.
Riyadh regards a nuclear Iran as the biggest peril facing the oil kingdom. So while crediting the US with willingness to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia still insists on the US administration providing an unequivocal, detailed statement of intent.
In this context, the Saudi prince questioned Obama and Clinton closely about the sequence of events around the Strait of Hormuz last week, according to the same Saudi source.
He wondered how it happened that Friday, Jan. 6, when Tehran’s threats to bar the strait to reentry by the USS Stennis aircraft carrier were most strident, that same carrier mounted an expedition to rescue 13 Iranian sailors from Somali pirates opposite the Omani capital of Muscat.
While humanitarian gestures were all well and good, Saud said, he was puzzled by the sudden US decision to rescue the Iranian seamen 45 days after they were captured.
The Saudi foreign minister’s tone was cynical. He seemed to believe that the rescue was a deliberate US ploy – both to defuse rising tensions around the key waterway and as an invitation to Tehran to come over and talk.
Riyadh is still skeptical about the steadfastness of Obama’s intentions, fearing he may waver at any time from a head-on challenge to Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions and swing around to appeasement.
Saudi al Faisal found the withdrawal of the USS Stennis from the Persian Gulf Wednesday and its replacement by USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its strike group even harder to understand. It gave the impression that America was pulling back from tackling the Hormuz issue because no general changes horses in mid-battle.

DEBKA.

Gen. Martin Dempsey

Countdowns have started ticking for an outbreak in 2012 of military hostilities centering on Iran.
In mid-January, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey arrives in Israel. At about the same time, Israeli command headquarters begins operating from US European Command – EUCOM in Germany, after US operational command posts were embedded in IDF General Staff, Navy and Air Force headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Thousands of US troops are already in place in Israel, equipped with THAAD systems (easily transportable Terminal High Altitude Area Defense hit-to-kill weapons) for the biggest US-Israel war game on record, which DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report may be brought forward to the second half of February, shortly before Iran’s general election on March 2 (See separate item about the pre-vote infighting in Tehran.)
The joint US-Israeli military exercise Austere Challenge 12 was officially scheduled for April 2012. But the race for seats in the next Majlis is expected to generate another wave of military heat around the Persian Gulf before then. The US will decide whether to station a US aircraft carrier opposite the Israeli coast depending on whether a confrontation looks realistic.
US and Israeli officials make no bones about the prospective joint military exercise serving as a platform for the military concentrations needed to strike the rapidly-advancing Iranian nuclear weapon program and the regional conflagration expected to flare in its wake.
This was frankly admitted by the commander of the US Third Air Force, Gen. Frank Gorenc, when he visited Tel Aviv in December to tie up the logistical ends of the mass arrival of US troops, when he said they would stay on as long as necessary.
Iran has begun building nuke components, preparing test site
In a two-hour interview Monday, Jan. 9, Dennis Ross, until two months ago a senior Barack Obama Middle East adviser on the National Security Council and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s special adviser on Iran, told the Bloomberg editorial board in New York, that 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. Obama has “made it very clear,” said Ross, 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 force” to stop them.
On the same day, the London Times quoted the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think-tank as having prepared scenarios for the day after an Iranian nuclear weapons test.
The INSS military and intelligence specialists agreed in a simulation study that Tehran will conduct a nuclear test in January 2013.
Tuesday, January 10, debkafile reported from its military sources that an underground test was to be expected, similar to North Korea’s ambiguous one-kiloton explosion in 2006. This timeline indicates that Iran has already reached the stage of building the components of a nuclear bomb and preparing the site for a test.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta took the opposite tack when said on the CBS news program “Face the Nation” on January 8: “The responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to force them (Iran) to do the right thing, and to make sure they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.”
US and Israel at odds on partnership for military action against Iran
Israeli military and intelligence experts assert that not only has this decision been made, but the countdown to an Iranian nuclear test has begun.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources report that although US-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation is broader and deeper than ever, the two are still divided on three major aspects of a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear sites:
1. President Obama and his strategists insist on an exclusive US operation which keeps Israel right out of military involvement. This would leave Washington with the sole prerogative for deciding when and how the attack should take place. Considering the tight military and intelligence give-and-take between IDF and US army chiefs, the Obama administration is counting on Israel not to land on Washington’s head a surprise unilateral attack on Iran.
2. US military strategists calculate Iran will retaliate for an attack with limited operations against American military targets in the Middle East, selected targets in Israel and Persian Gulf oil interests, including a partial and carefully calibrated closure of the Strait of Hormuz to warships and oil shipping.
Washington expects Israel’s consent to holding back from responding to an Iranian or Iranian-inspired attack and leave the entire payback option in American hands.
American officials have been laboring this point in one encounter after another with top-level Israeli government and military officials.
Washington asks Israel to toe the line on Syria too
They fear Israeli might overreact and throw the US military campaign into unforeseen imbalance.
According to our military sources, Washington sent over large US troop contingents armed with sophisticated missile interceptors at this early date to assure the Israeli government that the US was on top of the military moves against Iran – offensive and defensive alike.
3. On the Syrian crisis, Washington and Jerusalem see eye to eye in assessing that Bashar Assad’s regime cannot last more than a few months. (Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday Israel is preparing for the massing of refugees from his Alawite sect on the Golan border). However, here, too, Washington wants Israel to adjust its timetable and military planning on the handling of Syria and the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah to US strategy.
On these three vital issues, Israel and the United States are at odds, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Jerusalem conclude..
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak alone control the levers of decision-making on Iran. They have withheld any commitment to President Obama to abandon the unilateral military option or to leave an attack on Iran solely to the United States. They do not question the US President’s readiness “to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” as Dennis Ross has stressed. At the same time, Jerusalem is asking for the precise meaning of this proposition to be clarified.
Will an Iranian nuclear test be taken by Washington to mean Iran has succeeded in arming itself with nuclear weapons? Or will it be regarded by the Obama administration in the same way as the North Korean tests were treated by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama himself?
No Israeli commitment against a unilateral action against Iran
Israel’s leaders, for their part, are not prepared to tolerate a nuclear Iran on the North Korean model. They suspect that this week’s reports confirming that uranium enrichment up to 20 percent grade is on stream at the Fordo underground facility near Qom are a red herring, designed to draw attention away from rapidly advancing preparations for a nuclear test.
The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Dennis Ross Monday. He also said that if the White House abandoned the pledge to stop Iran attaining a nuclear bomb given by Obama and Bush before him, the US would lose all credibility.
But seen from Israel, these pledges and assurances do not specify when and under what circumstances the US would strike.
For all these reasons – and after standing by for years while US-led sanctions failed to throw Iran off course – the government in Jerusalem has reserved the option of a unilateral military action against its archenemy’s burgeoning nuclear program.
“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,” Ross said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”
This was the first time an American official frankly avowed that Israel is capable of running a military operation against the Iranian nuclear program after US officials for years insisted that the IDF lacked this capability.
Obama pushes Israel to toe the line
The strong White House condemnation of the assassination of the Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Deputy Director of the Natanz uranium enrichment center, by two helmeted motorcyclists in central Tehran Wednesday, was angrily resented in Israel’s top circles. By “absolutely” denying US involvement in the attack, Secretary of State Clinton turned the finger of blame for violence against “an innocent person” by default against Israel.
This was the first time out of four that Washington had condemned the slaying of a senior executive of Iran’s nuclear weapon program. This informed Tehran that the US had disassociated itself from Israel’s implied tactics. Our sources report that in Jerusalem, this departure from regular US practice was seen angrily as a message to Jerusalem, and a pressing one at that, that it would do well to toe Washington’s line on Iran.