WarSclerotic

Report: Mossad killed Iranian scientist – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Western intelligence sources tell Time Mossad behind assassination of nuclear expert last week; ‘I don’t feel sad for him,” Israeli official says

Dudi Cohen

Israel’s Mossad was behind the recent killing of a senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Western intelligence sources told Time Magazine.

“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,” Time reported Saturday.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Wednesday, prompting officials in Iran to blame Israel for the assassination.

“Yeah, one more,” a senior Israeli official reportedly told Time in reference to Roshan’s killing. “I don’t feel sad for him.”

Intelligence sources told the magazine last week’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.”

Speaking in Cuba, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commented Thursday on the latest assassination, saying that Iran was “being punished for no reason.”

Speaking before students at Havana University, Ahmadinejad said: “Have we ever attacked anyone? Have we sought more than we need? Never. We only want to pursue justice.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Thursday that those behind the killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran would be punished.

ElBaradei pulls out of Egyptian presidency race | Reuters.

(Note: Not Iran related, but says more about the failed Egyptian spring than anything else I’ve read.  I wanted my readers to know about it. – JW)

(Reuters) – Mohamed ElBaradei pulled out of the race to become Egyptian president on Saturday, the Nobel Peace Prize winner saying “the previous regime” was still running the country which has been governed by army generals since Hosni Mubarak was deposed.

“My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a real democratic system,” said the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, once seen a frontrunner for the post Mubarak held for three decades.

ElBaradei has been a vocal critic of the military council which has been governing Egypt since Mubarak was toppled in February, swept from power by mass protests that were driven by demands for accountable and democratic government.

The military council’s opponents say it is seeking to preserve power and privilege in the post-Mubarak era and do not believe the generals’ repeated promises that they will surrender power to civilian rule at the end of June.

A favourite of Egyptian liberals and initially seen as a leading candidate, the withdrawal of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head until 2009 was, in part, an admission that he could not win, experts said.

“ElBaradei acknowledges he may not have the grassroots support to win in this presidential election,” said political analyst and activist Hassan Nafaa. “He also realizes that the next president will not have full powers and will be bound by the current system,” he added.

“By pulling out of the presidential race, he is aligning himself with the youth movement and the liberals, who have been sidelined in the interim process by Islamists.”

The bespectacled lawyer’s campaign had been weakened by divisions. In November, some of his campaign staff quit, saying he had become cut off from his grassroots base.

ElBaradei took aim at the way the transition was being managed. “The randomness and the mismanagement of the transitional period are pushing the country away from the aims of the revolution,” he said in a statement.

His remarks added to a recent wave of criticism targeting the generals. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said this week they looked unlikely to surrender all of their powers by the middle of the year, as promised.

His Carter Center, which has been monitoring the legislative elections, said the council’s lack of transparency had created “uncertainty about their commitment to full civilian leadership.”

Headed by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the man who was Mubarak’s defense minister for two decades, the military council says it has no interest in government and is working to move Egypt towards democracy.

BROTHERHOOD MEETS PM

Egypt’s strongest political force, Islamist groups, have dominated elections for the lower house of parliament which got underway in November and are now coming to a close.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, says it has won 46 percent of the seats, with the more hardline Nour Party winning some 23 percent of the seats. The Brotherhood, entering politics in the shape of the Freedom and Justice Party, supports the military council’s transition plan.

FJP leaders on Saturday discussed their legislative agenda with Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, appointed by the council in November. The FJP says it will work with the Ganzouri government, due to stay in office until the middle of the year.

“We aim to find common ground between the government and parliament,” Saad el-Katatni, the FJP secretary-general, told Reuters, adding: “We have not decided on who we will join forces with once parliament convenes.”

One of Egypt’s main liberal political parties said on Monday it would boycott upper house elections later this month in protest against what it says were violations committed by Islamist parties in earlier voting rounds.

ElBaradei said he would now work to help Egypt’s youth become part of the political process.

Reflecting on the achievements of the uprising, he said: “The most important gain is that the barrier of fear has been broken and that the people have regained their faith that they are capable of change.”

In a move typically undertaken by a head of state, Tantawi will go to Libya on Monday, his first diplomatic mission since the end of parliamentary elections. An official source told Reuters Tantawi plans more diplomatic missions in the region.

There has been speculation that the army chief might run for president, effectively extending the army’s grip on power. A campaign backing him for president was launched in October. Tantawi has denied any such plan.

(Additional reporting by Lin Noueihed; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Matthew Jones and Ben Harding)

Countering Iran’s Menacing Persian Gulf Navy – Jeffrey Goldberg – International – The Atlantic.

Jeffrey Goldberg

The United States is warning the Iranians not to provoke a conflict in the Persian Gulf. U.S. officials are preoccupied by the threat posed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, which controls a large fleet of speedboats that could harass shipping in the Gulf:

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.

I wrote about the Revolutionary Guard Navy threat last October in my Bloomberg View column; here’s an excerpt:
This February (2011), a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion surveillance plane, on routine patrol over the Persian Gulf, drew some unwelcome attention. An Iranian aircraft made such a close pass that the American pilots reported that they could see the faces of their Iranian adversaries. The Pentagon was quickly notified of the near- collision.

Two months later, the British warship HMS Iron Duke, patrolling the waters off Bahrain, was suddenly challenged by an approaching speedboat. Every sailor in every Western navy is acquainted with the al-Qaeda suicide-boat attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 Americans were killed, so the Iron Duke’s crew was quickly ordered to fire warning shots to the side of the speedboat. The two men in the approaching craft took the suggestion to heart, and sped away. The identities of the men are unknown, but some British and U.S. officials reached the highly plausible conclusion that they were part of the growing navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Yes, the Revolutionary Guards have their own navy — a bigger one, in fact, than Iran’s traditional navy. (The traditional navy has 18,000 sailors; the IRGC’s navy reportedly has 20,000 personnel, as well as a large fleet suitable for waging the sort of asymmetric warfare it favors.) And the guards — protectors of Ayatollah Khomeini’s dystopian vision for a radicalized Muslim world, enthusiastic exporters of terrorism, and rulers of a state within a state — are becoming ever more aggressive in the Gulf.

This year has seen a spike in such encounters. Western ships in the Gulf are now regularly shadowed by the smaller crafts of the Iranians. When U.S. strategists make lists of the many challenges posed by Iran, the capabilities of the IRGCN, as it is known, quickly rise to the top. The Gulf, of course, is indispensable to the smooth flow of energy resources (in 2009, more than 15 percent of oil traded worldwide moved through the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint between the Gulf and the Arabian Sea), and the Iranians are well aware of their ability to strangle the global economy.

Only Iran’s nuclear program — the one its leaders claim is entirely peaceful in nature even as they develop the technology to make triggers for nuclear weapons — is a greater preoccupation.

The Navy Is Depending on Dolphins to Keep the Strait of Hormuz Open – Global – The Atlantic Wire.

If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world’s daily oil trade: send in the dolphins.

The threat of Iran closing the strait has reached a fever pitch, reports today’s New York Times, with U.S. officials warning Iran’s supreme leader that such moves would cross a “red line” provoking a U.S. response. Iran could block the strait with any assortment of mines, armed speed boats or anti-ship cruise missiles but according to Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analysis, “The immediate issue [for the U.S. military] is to get the mines.” To solve that problem, the Navy has a solution that isn’t heavily-advertised but has a time-tested success rate: mine-detecting dolphins.

“We’ve got dolphins,” said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy’s use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy:

KEATING: They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects.

NPR’s TOM BOWMAN: Dolphins were sent to the Persian Gulf as part of the American invasion force in Iraq.

KEATING: I’d rather not talk about whether we used them or not. They were present in theater.

BOWMAN: But you can’t say whether you used them or not.

KEATING: I’d rather not.

The invasion of Iraq was the last time the minesweeping capability of dolphins was widely-touted. “Dolphins – – which possess sonar so keen they can discern a quarter from a dime when blindfolded and spot a 3-inch metal sphere from 370 feet away — are invaluable minesweepers,” reported The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2010, the Seattle Times reported that the Navy has 80 bottlenose dolphins in the San Diego Bay alone. They are taught to hunt for mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby. The photo above shows a dolphin with a tracking device attached to its fin. According to a report in 2003, the dolphins only detect the mines. Destroying them is left up to the Navy’s human divers. Still, the mammals are large enough to detonate a live mine, a prospect that doesn’t delight animal rights groups.

When this was an issue in 2003, lobbying for the rights of dolphins was much more politically sensitive given that scores of U.S. men and women were being sent into battle as well. “We’re not going to second-guess the Navy at a time of war,” said Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society. “But we don’t support the use of marine mammals for military use.” According to the Chronicle, the two groups emphasized that “they were not placing the lives of animals above those of troops. But they questioned the ethics and wisdom of using wild animals to ensure safe passage through hostile waters.” Petitions have also been sent to the Defense Department protesting the use of dolphins:

[Since] forces regard the Navy dolphins as enemy dolphins, there might be attempts on the dolphins lives. There is also the risk of indiscriminate killing of wild dolphin populations because any dolphin can potentially be an enemy dolphin. Also, the inherent danger that a dolphin may be injured or killed in mine-hunting operations remains a very real threat.

Back in 2003, Tom LaPuzza, a spokesman for the San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, cast aside the skepticism about how the dolphins were treated:

By nature, dolphins are naturally reliable and trustworthy animals who seem to enjoy pleasing their human handlers, LaPuzza said. When they are released into the ocean for missions, “they come back to the handler, the trainer” ashore or on a ship.

Nasrallah responds to Ban: Hezbollah won’t… JPost – Middle East.

( A chip off Khamenei ‘s block… – JW)

    Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah shot back at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Saturday, saying that Hezbollah will not give up its weapons and that the top UN official’s concern over its armament “pleases” him.

During a visit to the Lebanese capital over the weekend, Ban said he was “deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hezbollah and … the lack of progress in disarmament.” Nasrallah responded a day later, “We want you (the UN), the US and Israel to be concerned.”

“Our concern is that our people are comforted that there is a resistance in Lebanon and we will not allow a new occupation or another violation,” Nasrallah said in a video message to a Shi’ite religious event.

The Hezbollah leader added that he will not disarm or slow the group’s armament, saying that path is the “only guarantee” to safeguarding Lebanon. “We confirm that our choice is the path of resistance and the arms of the resistance,” he added.

“The resistance,” Nasrallah boasted, “is here to stay. Its power and its readiness will continue to grow.”

Ban Ki-moon demanded on Friday the disarmament of the anti-Israel movement, which had said his visit to Lebanon was not welcome.

“I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hezbollah and … the lack of progress in disarmament,” he told a news conference after meeting Lebanese leaders.

“That is why we discussed this matter very seriously and I strongly encouraged President (Michel) Suleiman to initiate a convening of this national dialogue to address these issues…All these arms outside of the authorized state authority, it’s not acceptable,” Ban declared.

The UN secretary-general’s trip to Lebanon made waves even before he arrived, with one Hezbollah leader saying he was not welcome, a stance criticized by Lebanese politicians opposed to the armed Shi’ite Islamist movement and its Syrian and Iranian patrons.

Hezbollah accepted an expansion of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the south after its devastating 2006 war with Israel, but rejects a UN Security Council resolution that demands that it lay down its military arsenal, as all other Lebanese armed groups did after the 1975-90 civil war.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Israeli official: Report of Mossad agents posing as CIA spies ‘absolute nonsense’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Senior Israeli government official issues complete denial of Foreign Policy report that Mossad agents posed as CIA officers to recruit Pakistani terrorists to carry out attacks in Iran.

By Amir Oren

A senior Israeli government official has called “absolute nonsense” a Friday report in Foreign Policy that Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran.

Quoting U.S. intelligence memos, Foreign Policy’s Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

Perry quoted a number of American intelligence officials and claimed that the Mossad agents used American dollars and U.S. passports to pose as CIA spies to try to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization that has carried out a series of attacks in Iran and assassinations of government officials.

Israel generally refrains for responding to reports on alleged Mossad activities. However, in the wake of Perry’s report as well as the official U.S. condemnation of the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran earlier this week, Israeli officials were quick to issue a complete denial of the report.

The concern was that leaving Perry’s report without a response would revive tensions that existed between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities following the Jonathan Pollard affair in the 1980s. Pollard was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison after being convicted of spying for Israel.

The senior Israeli government official said that if there were any truth the claims in Perry’s report, Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad at the time of the alleged operation, would have been declared a persona non grata in the U.S. and that “Dagan’s foot would not have walked again in Washington”.

Qatar emir suggests sending troops to Syri… JPost – Middle East.

    BEIRUT – The emir of Qatar has suggested sending Arab troops to halt the bloodshed in Syria, the first Arab leader to propose such a move, in an interview to be broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes”.

Asked if he was in favor of Arab nations intervening in Syria, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said: “For such a situation to stop the killing … some troops should go to stop the killing.”

CBS said on its website that the interview would be broadcast on Sunday.

Qatar’s prime minister heads the Arab League committee on Syria and has said killings have not stopped despite the presence of Arab monitors sent there last month to check whether the authorities are complying with an Arab peace plan.

In the preview of the interview on the website, the emir did not spell out how any Arab military intervention might work.

US official says Iran arming Syria to suppress protests

A recent visit of the heads of the Quds force to Syria is the “strongest indication yet” that Iran is supplying the Assad regime with weapons, AFP quoted a senior US official as saying Saturday.

Major-General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force, visited Syria this month, AFP reported. “We think this relates to Iranian support for the Syrian government’s attempts to suppress its people,” the senior US official said.

“We are confident that he was received at the highest levels of the Syrian government, including by President Assad,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “The US government believes Iran has supplied Syria with munitions” for use in the military crackdown.

The United States has long suspected Iran of supplying Damascus with weapons as Assad struggles to cope with mass protests against his rule.

Earlier in the week, Turkish customs officials intercepted four trucks suspected of carrying military equipment from Iran to Syria.

Iran officially denied reports about arms shipments to Syria. A statement by the Iranian embassy in Turkey obtained by CNN Friday stated: “We deny such claims and we would like to state that the Islamic Republic of Iran sees people’s demands to be paid attention to as a way of providing domestic security and stability and believes that dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition is the way out from the current situation.”

The United Nations has said that more than 5,000 civilians have been killed in the unrest which erupted in March, inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere. Authorities accuse armed Islamist militants of killing 2,000 members of the security forces.

The crackdown against protest has been ongoing despite an Arab League monitoring mission, now about 165 strong, which began work on December 26. Its task is to verify if Syria is complying with an agreement to halt the crackdown. Some reports indicate that the killing of protesters has actually increased since the arrival of the League monitors.

‘CIA, MI6 operations helped kill … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

    Iran protested the United States and United Kingdom for their roles in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Wednesday, implicating the two nations in the attack, the official Iranian Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Saturday.

Iran sent a letter to the Swiss embassy in Tehran – the only official diplomatic channel between Iran and the United States in Tehran – saying that CIA-led operations in the Islamic Republic are known, and blaming the US for supporting “terrorist groups against Iran.”

Tehran also sent a letter to the British Foreign Ministry, claiming British intelligence operations aided in the killing of the 32-year-old Roshan in a car bomb.

The letter cited a quote by Foreign Intelligence Service Head (MI6) John Sawers, who said that the UK was beginning intelligence operations against Iran, according to IRNA.

Iran demanded a response from both governments.

The Islamic Republic has blamed the violent death of Roshan on the CIA, Israel and now MI6. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton summarily denied the charges and Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge.

Roshan is the fourth Iranian scientist to be killed since 2007.

IDF Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday that 2012 would be a critical year regarding Iran and that there may be more “unnatural” events that happen to them.

“2012 will be a critical year in the connection between Iran gaining nuclear power, changes in leadership, continuing pressure from the international community and events that happen unnaturally,” he said.

Iranian ships taunt US Navy vessels in Persian Gulf | Herald Sun.

Iranian navy speed boats attend a drill in the sea of Oman. AP

The incidents in the strait, one of the world’s most important oil routes, occurred in early January and involved the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport dock, and the Coast Guard Cutter Adak, the military said as it released videos of the incident.

Iranian speed boats are seen in one of the videos approaching the USS New Orleans within about 500 yards last Friday.

“The Iranian boats did not respond to whistle signal or voice queries from the New Orleans, disregarding standard maritime protocols,” Central Command said.

In the incident involving the Adak, “communications were established with a larger Iranian ship operating in the area and the speed boats ceased their harassment”.

One senior defense official told FOX News that the Iranians “intended to be harassing” but it did not go much beyond that. No shots were fired.

Iran, which recently held war games in the area, has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz if provoked, and it has warned US Navy ships to steer clear.

The rising tensions coincide with increased pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, which the West fears is merely a front for Iran’s clandestine work on developing nuclear weapons

Israel uses risky ‘hits’ in deadly shadow war with Iran – Politics & Economics – ArabianBusiness.com.

Israel’s secret service Mossad has denied killing Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan

If Mossad assassins were behind the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist on Wednesday, it would be the latest chapter in a long history of Israeli covert action against foes best not confronted with full force.

As always, Israeli officials declined any comment on the death of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who was blown up in his car, while Iran itself immediately pinned the blame on Israel.

Cold-eyed calculus guides what Israeli officials call “precision thwarting”, a euphemism that strives to focus blame on those marked for death while conveying reluctance to escalate the shadow war.

Critics condemn all such attacks on moral grounds, and also question the long-term efficiency of targeted killings, but Israeli officials believe they play a vital role in defending the state.

When it comes to Iran, whose uranium enrichment and ballistic missile projects have suffered a surge of spectacular and often bloody mishaps in recent months, Israel measures the gains in terms of the delays they cause.

“They are not keeping to the schedules they would like to keep to,” former Mossad spymaster Meir Dagan said in a recent television interview, crediting the apparent sabotage spree to “God, who controls everything”.

The daylight killings of atomic technicians such as Ahmadi-Roshan – who, like others before him, fell victim to an explosive device attached to his car by a passing motorcyclist – obviously deplete Iran’s pool of nuclear experts.

It also provokes panic in surviving colleagues, said an Israel official, generating a phenomenon that Mossad veterans dub “virtual defection”.

“It’s not that we’ve been seeing mass resignations, but rather a sense of spreading paranoia given the degree to which their security has been compromised,” said the official, who has extensive Iran expertise.

“It means they have to take more precautions, including, perhaps, being a little less keen to stand out for excellence in their nuclear work. That slows things down.”

The activation this week of an Iranian enrichment plant deep in a mountain drew condemnation from world powers which, along with many Gulf Arabs, see bomb-making potential in a nuclear programme that Tehran insists is for peaceful energy needs.

Ahmadi-Roshan was at least the third expert linked to Iran’s nuclear programme to be killed in the last two years.

Happy to deflect the blame, Israeli officials say many people have an interest in sabotaging Iranian operations.

“I think several players, not only Israel, are active [in Iran],” former Mossad deputy director Ilan Mizrahi said. “It’s not only countries, it is movements. You have the Iranian opposition, which is very strong. They have their own capabilities inside Iran.”

Yet Israel has an admitted history of state-sponsored assassination and intimidation, from letter-bombs it sent German scientists serving Egypt’s missile programme in the 1960s to the Mossad hunt, using guns and booby-traps, for Palestinians involved in killing 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

More recently, Israeli air-launched missiles and special forces picked off Palestinian uprising leaders. In 1995, motorbike-borne gunmen killed Islamic Jihad chief Fathi Shiqaqi in Malta, and another suspected Mossad team smothered Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel in 2010.

Proponents of such tactics say they stave off more ruinous open war and few voices are raised in Israel in condemnation. Mabhouh had helped smuggle rockets to Palestinians, a threat Israel cited in justifying its 2008-2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip, amid international outcry at the high civilian toll.

“When you are fighting terror, targeting the heads of terror organisations is positive,” Mizrahi said, justifying killings.

Against Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel – like the United States – has hinted it could resort to military force.

But neither is keen to further destabilise the region by opening a new Muslim front, and military experts say Israel alone does not have the firepower to kill off Iran’s nuclear programme in a single swoop.

Assassinations carry their own incalculable risks, as the Mossad learned in 1997 when the men it sent to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman bungled the job and were caught.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his first term, had ordered the hit under pressure to retaliate for Hamas suicide bombings. He ended up having to repair ties with Jordan by freeing Hamas’s spiritual mentor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, from prison- an unexpected boon for Palestinian radicals.

Despite widespread speculation, Iran denied Israeli sabotage was to blame for a blast last November that killed a Revolutionary Guards general. On Wednesday it was swift not only to blame Israel, but also to publish the sensitive nature of the victim’s work at the uranium enrichment facility of Natanz.

“The Iranians are exposing this in order, ultimately, to provide a large degree of rationale and justification, both domestically and abroad, for what they will eventually consider as a reprisal,” said Uzi Rabi, a Middle East expert at Tel Aviv University.

He predicted an “unavoidable showdown”, most likely in the Gulf, where Iran has threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, with a possible spillover in the form of Israeli and Western air strikes on Iran.