WarSclerotic

‘Sanctions not only option against Iran’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

US ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro says Washington has alternatives ready should sanctions on Islamic Republic fail

Maor Buchnik

US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said Thursday that Washington has prepared a set of alternative options to deal with Iran‘s nuclear program, should the financial sanctions prove futile.

Shapiro made the remarks ahead of US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey ‘s first visit to Israel.

Shapiro, who took part in Haifa University’s America Day, reiterated the assertion that Iran’s atom program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, adding that financial pressure against the Islamic Republic must be stepped up in order to make Tehran understand that its actions have a price.

The ambassador noted that when it comes to the Iran, the ties between Washington and Jerusalem have improved since President Barack Obama came to power. “It’s natural for friends to disagree occasionally,” he added.

Addressing the turmoil in Israel’s neighboring nations, Shapiro said that the situation has turned unpredictable. He said that while the US cannot decide who will rule Syria and Egypt, there is a chance that the revolutions there will take a dangerous turn.

“We must make sure that Israel can deal with these changes,” he said.

Shapiro also tackled the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, stressing that the two-state solution serves both sides’ interests. He said that progress on the issue can only be made through dialogue, and that any such progress would reassert Israel’s legitimacy within the international community.

Top U.S. General to meet with IDF chief on joint Israel-U.S. security challenges – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

IDF says joint discussion with senior IDF staff would deal with cooperation between the two countries’ armies and the joint security challenges they face.

By Gili Cohen

The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, will meet with his Israeli counterparts on Friday in a bid to coordinate steps and clarify Israel’s intentions with regard to a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Thursday on his first visit to the country. He will meet on Friday with Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, followed by a meeting with the head of the IDF planning division, Maj. Gen. Ido Nechushtan, and the head of the IDF’s intelligence division, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi.

	Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Martin Dempsey.
	Photo by: AP

The IDF said the joint discussion with senior IDF staff would deal with cooperation between the two countries’ armies and the joint security challenges they face.

Gen. Dempsey will also meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, and will pay a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

On Thursday, evening Dempsey had dinner in Tel Aviv with Gantz. The two also met earlier in the week at the NATO headquarters, where they discussed enhanced regional cooperation to prevent weapon smuggling in the Middle East.

DEBKA.

USS Abraham Lincoln

A mosquito came to the lion one day with a challenge. The mosquito said to the lion, “I am not afraid of you, for you are not stronger than me. You don’t agree? Well, what kind of strength do you have? Claws to scratch with and teeth for biting? I am, in fact, far stronger than you. Let’s go and fight it out. The mosquito sounded his trumpet and flew onto the lion’s face, biting the lion around the nose where his face was not covered with hair. The lion could only wear himself out by scratching about with his claws in vain, until he finally admitted defeat.
This old fable is an apt allegory for the contest between Iran and the United States.
Iran’s leaders see overwhelming force piling up around them but retain their arrogant pose of superiority. Three US aircraft carriers, the USS Stennis, the USS Carl Vinson, the USS Abraham Lincoln and their strike forces are cruising around their doorstep and thousands of US Marines are on their way to the Gulf region as reinforcements.
The Israeli Defense Forces – IDF is getting set to strike the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Tuesday, Jan. 17, even the Israeli ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert added his voice to the advocates of military action by stating Israel has the resources and ability to go it alone.
Tehran also suspects a sting operation in the cancelling of the joint US-Israeli Austere Challenge 12 military exercise. The ten-day gap between the first joint communiqué of Jan. 5 on the landing of thousands of US troops and equipment for the exercise, and the announcement of its postponement, has led Iran’s strategists to believe that no exercise was in fact planned. It was just a cover story to camouflage the concentration in Israel of US military assets for attacking Iran, either by America or Israel.
Tehran is not put off by US emphasis on Iranian weaknesses
This buildup was followed by a flood of Western accounts of Iran’s weaknesses.
Tehran was depicted as isolated and plagued by factional infighting with its top figures, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at daggers drawn. Iran’s Islamic leaders were said to be more scared of the March elections to the Majlis than of an impending military confrontation, because they know that it will be much harder to fake the election results this time than it was in 2009.
Iranian military prowess is also derided. The important Saudi website Arabnews.com ran an analysis by a former Saudi naval officer who maintained that Iran does not have the warships, submarines, planes and pilots for closing the Strait of Hormuz, only old iron equipped with outdated electronics.
The Saudi officer wrote: “In the military sense, Iran could float empty barrels in the middle of the navigation channel and declare to the world that they are mines.”
Instead of being downcast by the scorn heaped on their heads, Iran’s leaders welcome it as bolstering their Mosquito-beats-the Lion stance, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian sources, or what Western military experts refer to as “The Iranian Swarming Tactic.”
Superior military prowess is not an issue because no Iranian war planner contemplates a large-scale naval battle No one in Tehran has any intention of pitting the Iranian fleet against US naval might for a major battle over the Strait of Hormuz. Even if a clash gets out of control, they don’t intend sinking a US aircraft carrier for fear of bringing American nuclear fury down on their heads.
Pinpoint harassment against superior military might
What the war planners in Tehran are charting is a mosquito-like campaign of pinpoint harassment against superior military might: an electronic trap for downing another US drone like the RQ-170 stealth drone Iran captured on Dec. 4, 2011, or the launching of one of their thousands of speedboats manned by suicide bombers against a small US or Gulf emirate warship.
These speedboats are not berthed at Iranian Revolutionary Guards naval bases. Disguised as fishing boats they mingle with the packs of fishermen and smugglers frequenting the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, and are available at any moment to dart in for sudden strikes against warships or big oil tankers. The volunteer crews are willing to die in the fires they set if they cannot escape.
Iranian strategists are not overly scared of an American or Gulf Arab troops landing on their soil. They take it for granted that the any ground troops sent in by the US, Israel or an emirate will not seek to occupy Iranian territory. Even if battles ensue, Iran will hold the moral high ground of a defending power. Hitting an enemy aircraft or vessel can be magnified by its propagandists as a great Islamic Republican victory. Any fires set at its facilities will produce striking images to feed Iran’s propaganda machine.
That machine is already ticking over. Official Iranian rhetoric has been impregnated in the past month with blowhard arrogance, fist-shaking and crude threats.
Iran gambles on the American lion having no answers for the Iranian mosquito
Turkish intelligence was frankly fed information about Al Qods Brigades cells heading for Turkey to attack the US embassy and consulates Tuesday, Jan. 17, the day before Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi arrived in Ankara for the third round of high-level Iranian-Turkish talks since Jan. 5.
His arrival coincided with a harsh warning to Ankara to stop meddling in Syria in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards weekly Sobh’eh Sadeqh.
The paper accused Turkish troops of crossing into Syria as part of a Western campaign to destabilize the regime of President Bashar Assad: “Should Turkish officials insist on their contrary behavior and if they continue on their current path, serious issues are sure to follow. We will be put in the position of having to choose between Turkey and Syria. Syria’s justification in defending herself along with mirroring ideological perceptions would sway Iran toward choosing Syria.”
Tehran is setting the Syrian scene, therefore, for an Iranian-Turkish clash of arms.
The higher the flames of confrontation, the more profit Iranian leaders bargain for. They are gambling on the American lion failing to come up with an answer for the tactics of the Iranian mosquito.

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated that Iran has already decided to become a nuclear state. He urged action before it is too late, indicating that Iran must be stopped before it crosses the threshold to complete the construction of a nuclear weapon.
This statement came at the end of his talks in Holland with Dutch leaders Thursday, Jan. 19. It reached Gen. Martin Dempsey, who had just arrived on his first visit to Israel as Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and gave him due notice of the subject of his conversation with the prime minister the next day.
This was also the message conveyed to President Barack Obama.
Because Netanyahu has kept the Iranian cards close to his chest, his words caught his own ministers, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, wrong-footed when in the last 48 hours they asserted that Iran had not yet decided whether to build a nuclear bomb and there was still time for US-led sanctions to work.
In any case, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Jerusalem and Washington advised taking these assertions with a large pinch of salt for two reasons:
1. When an informed Israeli official talks about Iran not yet building a nuclear weapon, he means that Tehran has not yet begun fitting a combat-ready nuclear warhead atop a missile.
2. None of the spokesmen or pundits on the Iranian issue knows exactly where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stands on the Iranian nuclear program or is in a position to judge whether, when or how he may order the Israeli Air Force and missiles to go into action against Iran’s nuclear sites.
Netanyahu’s only confidant on his military plans is Defense Minister Ehud Barak. But our sources say that even he has been kept in the dark on Iran.
Netanyahu keeps his own counsel on Iran
Barak’s only card is that the prime minister is constitutionally barred from picking up the phone to the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, or any other general, and giving them direct orders, the way the US President as commander-in-chief can call top American generals. Netanyahu can only communicate instructions to the chief of staff after first obtaining the defense minister’s consent and approval.
But Netanyahu did not have to check with the defense minister before he informed President Barak Obama in their late-night phone conversation Thursday, Jan. 15, that Israel was canceling the Austere Challenge 12 joint US-Israeli war game scheduled for April.
So when word of the exercise’s postponement was announced from Washington last weekend, it sent shock waves through Israel’s military and security establishment. They had received the impression that the Obama administration had made the decision, which was unprecedented in the history of US-Israeli joint drills.
They received their second shock when the US was seen halting the transfer to Israel of substantial numbers of troops who were scheduled to take part in joint practices of anti-missile systems including highly sophisticated interceptors.
It looked to Israel’s defense and military chiefs like a serious and dangerous diversion of US military plans for war with Iran and/or a potential regional flare-up in its wake.
Israel’s security elite received its third shock Tuesday, Jan. 17, when debkafile‘s military sources revealed for the first time that it was Netanyahu who called off the exercise – not President Obama.
Netanyahu does not trust sanctions to work or Obama to strike
On Wednesday, Jan. 18, Defense Minister Barak tried to limit some of the damage to US-Israel relations. He told an Armed Forces Radio interviewer that the government was still “very far from a decision” about attacking Iran over its nuclear program.
He was trying to smooth the path to the talks ahead of Gen. Dempsey with Israel’s security and military chiefs.
But Washington is fully aware that until the US general hears these words from the horse’s mouth, i.e., Prime Minister Netanyahu neither he nor Washington can be sure whether Barak spoke for himself or represented Netanyahu.
As to the prime minister’s motives in calling off the joint exercise, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources report that it was his way of “banging on the table” over what he sees as US procrastination on Iran on several counts:
1. Netanyahu does not trust American and European sanctions to produce the desired result of slowing Iran’s momentum toward a nuclear weapon, or believe that President Obama will ever give the order to strike Iranian nuclear sites. And even if he does at some point, it will be too late: Once Iran starts building its first nuke, it will have the capacity to produce at least three more every year and build a veritable nuclear arsenal.
The prime minister is utterly convinced that Israel cannot afford to let Iran attain nuclear weapons. He is also aware of the solemn pledges he made in his 2008 election campaign and thereafter to stop Iran going nuclear. Breaking this pledge after nearly three years at the helm would discredit him in the eyes of the Israeli voter and very likely cost him his chances of being returned to power in the 2013 general election.
Washington neglects to pick up Iran’s gauntlets
2. Netanyahu feels that Israeli understandings with the US on the Iranian nuclear issue are eroding Israel’s defense credibility and deterrent strength. A high-ranking Israeli source complained this week that President Obama and his Iranian policy strategists have chosen to ignore the gauntlets the Iranians keep on throwing down at their feet, starting from the downing of the US RQ-170 stealth drone over Iran on December 4.
Tuesday, Jan. 17, Tehran after ignoring President Obama’s demand Dec. 12 for the drone’s return, made a sneering offer to send Washington a small toy model of the missing drone in red plastic.
The Obama administration also turned the other cheek to the announcement on Jan. 9 that 20-percent grade uranium enrichment had begun at the underground Fordo plant.
For three weeks, Washington has avoided challenging the threat made on Jan. 3 by Lt.-Gen. Ataollah Salehi, commander of the Iranian Army, to forcibly bar the USS Stennis aircraft carrier or “any enemy ships” access to the Strait of Hormuz.
So far, no American aircraft carriers have put the Iranian threat to the test, notwithstanding Defense Secretary Leon Panetta‘s definition of freedom of navigation through the strategic strait as a red line for the United States.
The Iranians didn’t bother to answer the letter President Obama sent their Supreme Leader last week.
Israel committed to action after Fordo went on stream
Israel finds it hard to understand why Obama administration officials made such a hullabaloo about the assassination of the senior Iranian nuclear scientist Prof. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy chief of the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, in North Tehran on Jan. 11. Their emphatic condemnation and denial of responsibility implicitly directed the finger at Israel.
3. Three months ago, Defense Minister Barak warned twice that Israel would not be able to live with the wholesale transfer of Iran’s forbidden nuclear facilities underground, starting when Fordo went on stream. Barak noted that from that moment on, neither the US nor Israel would have access to those sites for surveillance. They would find themselves totally in the dark about Iran’s nuclear activities. Before that happened, he warned, Israel would have to take action.
Netanyahu is of the opinion that Israel cannot afford to lose credibility in the eyes of Iran. He also thinks that by letting these Iranian provocations go by without response, Washington is not only encouraging Iran to persevere in its course but also strengthening the hands of its allies, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the radical Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
(See a separate item in this issue on Syria).
Tehran for its part does not credit the US-Israel rift and believes it is an exercise in deception to pull the wool over Iranian eyes. (More on Iran’s take in a separate article.)