WarSclerotic

Saudis pull Syria monitors, urge world pre… JPost – Middle East.

    Saudi Arabia will withdraw its observers from Syria because the mission has failed to end 10 months of bloodshed and will call on the international community to apply “all possible pressure” on Damascus to end the violence, its foreign minister said Sunday.

“My country will withdraw its monitors because the Syrian government did not execute any of the elements of the Arab resolution plan,” Prince Saud al-Faisal told Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo. The statement was obtained by Reuters after he spoke.

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“We are calling on the international community to bear its responsibility, and that includes our brothers in Islamic states and our friends in Russia, China, Europe and the United States,” Prince Saud said, calling for “all possible pressure” to push Syria to adhere to the Arab peace plan.

The Saudi statement came after the BBC reported that the Arab League had ruled to extend its monitoring mission in Syria by one month on Sunday. The League also decided to add more monitoring members to the mission and to provide them with additional resources, according to the report.

Hundreds of Syrians have been killed since the monitoring mission began its work in late December and political opponents of President Bashar Assad are demanding the League refer Syria to the United Nations Security Council.

The foreign ministers met Sunday to debate the findings of the month-long monitoring mission, whose mandate expired on Thursday, to decide whether to extend, withdraw or strengthen it.

Arab states had been divided over how to handle the crisis in Syria and critics say the monitoring mission is handing Assad more time to kill opponents of his rule.

Some wanted to crank up pressure on Assad to end a 10-month-old crackdown on a popular revolt in which, according to the United Nations, more than 5,000 people have died.

Others worry that weakening Assad could tip Syria, with its potent mix of religious and ethnic allegiances, into a deeper conflict that would destabilize the entire region, and some may fear the threat from their own populations if he were toppled.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) says the observers lack the resources and clout to truly judge Assad’s compliance with an Arab peace plan that Syria signed up to in November and has called upon the Arab League to refer the Syrian crisis to the United Nations Security Council.

But Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia told the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, that they would oppose such a move, a League source said on Sunday.

“The three states support solving the Syrian crisis inside the Arab League,” the source told Reuters.

The head of the monitoring effort, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, was presenting his findings to the League’s Syria committee.

Syrian opposition activists said Assad’s forces killed 35 civilians on Saturday and 30 unidentified corpses were found at a hospital in Idlib. The state news agency SANA said bombs killed at least 14 prisoners and two security personnel in a security vehicle in Idlib province.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report January 22, 2012, 5:58 PM (GMT+02:00)

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta aboard the USS Enterprise

Three weeks after Tehran threatened action against any US aircraft carrier entering the Strait of Hormuz, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed Sunday, Jan. 22, that the USS Enterprise Carrier Strike Group is heading for the Persian Gulf and would steam through the strategic strait in March. This was a direct message to Tehran that the US would continue to deploy ships there.

debkafile‘s military sources report that the Iranian threat was issued on Jan 4. The USS Stennis aircraft carrier passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Sea of Oman on Dec. 28 during a big Iranian naval exercise Velyate 90 and was then prevented by the threat from re-entering. That was the last time an American warship navigated the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is shipped to market.

However Panetta, on his first visit to a carrier during operations at sea, clad in the uniform of the ship’s crew,  told an audience of 1,700 personnel that the US would maintain a fleet of 11 carriers in the Persian Gulf despite budget pressures.

“That’s what this carrier is all about. That’s the reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East… We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

debkafile‘s Washington sources note that Panetta was the first high-ranking administration official to give Tehran an ultimatum: Accept the American offer to negotiate terms for halting your nuclear weapon program, or face up to America’s mighty fleet of American aircraft carriers.

“Our view is that the carriers, because of their presence, because of the power they represent, are a very important part of our ability to maintain power projection both in the Pacific and in the Middle East,” said the defense secretary.

His statement gave Iran a time frame for responding to the US ultimatum, just over a month. If by March, Tehran has not accepted the offer to negotiate, President Barack Obama will order the Enterprise to sail through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saturday, Jan. 21, the Washington Post disclosed that Obama had sent a special emissary to Tehran with an oral message proposing that Iran join the United States for resumed nuclear negotiations.

The emissary was not named – although there was some speculation that the Turkish Foreign Minister was chosen for the mission – nor was Iran’s reply revealed.

According to the WP, the message ran as follows: The United States and the international community have a strong interest in the free flow of commerce and freedom of navigation in all international waterways… Since taking office, the president has made it clear that he is willing to engage constructively and seriously with Iran about its nuclear program.
Also on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards stated it considered the likely return of US warships to the Gulf part of its routine activity.

Some American and Israeli media interpreted this as Iran climbing down from its truculent threat to US aircraft carriers entering the Strait of Hormuz. debkafile‘s Iranian sources don’t think so. The Guards issued their statement only after they saw the USS Stennis, the object of their threat, exiting the Gulf Friday, Jan. 20, and decided it was the Americans who had backed down.

Panetta’s comments Sunday aimed at correcting that impression and making it very clear to Tehran that although the Stennis was gone, the Enterprise would take its place and be “fully prepared to deal with any contingency.”

US, Iran and Israel in shadow play | The Australian.

(This is the most complete and intelligent analysis of the situation that I’ve read to date.  The only thing he {and everyone else} fail to consider is the possibility of either Israel or the US using an EMP rather than a conventional attack.  This would neutralize both Iran’s nuclear program as well as disabling any possibility of a counter attack.  It would also pretty much guarantee the fall of the regime. – JW}

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama September 21, 2011 at the United Nations Building in New York City. Picture: Mandel Ngan Source: AFP

THIS year either Israel or the US will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or the regime of the ayatollahs will move beyond the point of no return in its quest for nuclear weapons.

The victory of right-wing insurgent Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina presidential primary in the US makes an attack more likely. Although Mitt Romney will still likely be the nominee, the Gingrich surge will push him further to the Right on foreign policy.

Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran are locked in an intense, almost desperate and partly invisible struggle over the future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

After three weeks in the Middle East spent talking to senior officials, government leaders, intelligence analysts, soldiers, politicians and academics of several nationalities, a clear picture of the starkly different calculations in each capital emerges.

In Jerusalem, Washington and Tehran, three different clocks are running, but they are all set to strike midnight this year.

Two weeks ago, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me in an exclusive interview that for the first time he thought Iran was beginning to wobble under the pressure of international sanctions, especially the threat of sanctions on its central bank.

Natanyahu further said that if the sanctions were coupled with a credible threat of military force should Iran continue with its weapons program, this could cause Tehran to back off.

This story was worldwide news. Netanyahu doesn’t give many interviews and it was interpreted in Washington, and reported in the US press, and later cited by the White House, as indicating Netanyahu was supporting the US strategy on Iran and was unlikely to take unilateral action. This was probably a mistake, though an understandable one. In private comments a week later to Israeli politicians, which were strategically leaked, Netanyahu seemed to pull back from this position.

He told the Israeli politicians the sanctions were useful but didn’t go far enough and might not stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu, the most straightforward and at times bluntest of leaders, is not telling lies here, either in his interview or his reported comments to Israeli politicians. But maintaining a real degree of uncertainty about what it might do is central to the Israeli government’s strategy.

The Israelis face a series of acute dilemmas. One senior Israeli soldier told me the decision on whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities would be the toughest any Israeli leader has faced. That sober judgment must be seen against the backdrop that Israel has three times fought full-scale conventional wars.

Nothing about the Israeli decision is easy. Every aspect of it is drenched with risk and uncertainty. The most senior Israelis believe they do have a military option against Iran. It’s not a perfect option but they believe that even today they could severely degrade Iran’s nuclear program with aerial strikes. Some recall that when they bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 they thought they might delay Iraq’s program by three to five years. In fact, they delayed it by 10 years and the US subsequently carried out Operation Desert Storm and put the Iraqi nuclear program out of business for good.

But the Israeli military option is running out for three reasons, two of them technical and one to do with the US political cycle.

First, the Iranians are attempting to immunise their program from aerial strike. They are doing this by moving as much of it as possible deep underground and by creating so many facilities they become too numerous to bomb.

Second, there will come a point at which the Iranians have developed so much nuclear expertise in depth that even if their physical facilities were damaged they could quickly reconstitute these and press ahead to weapons.

The Iranian program is troubled, not least because of Israeli, and presumably US, covert actions against it. The Iranians are having a lot of difficulty producing the next-generation centrifuges. A number of their nuclear scientists have been killed. Some foreign firms have apparently provided them with faulty gear. They are having great difficulty miniaturising weapons to put on missiles and they don’t have long-range bombers that could deliver non-miniaturised weapons.

There are two paths Iran could take to a nuclear break-out capacity. One is to continue with its existing, ostensibly peaceful nuclear energy program. This will eventually give them enough nuclear expertise and material to make a sprint for weapons in a relatively short time frame, perhaps in a few years’ time.

But there is also the possibility that the Iranians have a parallel secret process in place – another facility – as has been periodically exposed in the past. This could make a final breakout a much shorter process and could mean the Iranians could do this without expelling the international inspectors involved with their program now.

Some intelligence people feel the Iranians are fairly transparent to foreign intelligence agencies, making another secret facility unlikely. Others are not so sure.

The US presidential election dynamic is fundamental to Israeli decision-making. Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama don’t get on very well. That’s well known, but like the hard-headed political leaders they are, they co-operate.

But in many ways Netanyahu has outplayed Obama, in international politics and in domestic American politics. He has gone around Obama to appeal directly to the Republican-dominated congress where he is a superhero. But he also has strong support among congressional Democrats.

All Republican presidential candidates, except the marginal Ron Paul, have made a hard line on Iran an essential part of their foreign policy pitch. Obama, who authorised the killing of Osama bin Laden, deployed extra troops to Afghanistan and massively increased the killing of targeted terrorists by predator drone strikes, is not, as the Israelis say, a vegetarian. But Iran is the one security issue on which, until the sanctions were announced, he has looked weak.

If the Israelis strike Iran this year Obama will be almost forced to support them by the pressure of his own congress and the position of his Republican challenger, whether that’s ultimately Romney or Gingrich. Such an outcome would probably destroy Obama’s outreach to the Muslim Middle East. If Obama is re-elected in November, especially with a less Republican congress, he would be more at liberty to oppose the Israeli action.

So the US electoral cycle is another clock ticking loudly for the Israelis.

There is, in Israel, an alternative view that, ticking clocks notwithstanding, this is all a giant bluff by Jerusalem. This could be a bluff on two levels. One, the Israelis may be trying to bluff the Americans into action. Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the US will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly.

Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.

If the Americans carry out the strike, they will probably get European, Canadian, Japanese, South Korean and Australian support, in other words the bulk of the US alliance system. If the Israelis do it, even with US support, they will get less international backing than that, with Europe certain to be divided and Japan and South Korea likely to stay on the sidelines.

The Israelis could be bluffing in another way, too. No Israeli official will say this, but some Israeli analysts believe their government has decided to live with a nuclear-armed Iran and rely on the certainty of terrible retribution, the normal logic of deterrence, to make sure Iran never uses any nuclear weapons it acquires.

In this case the threat of early military action is really designed only to scare the world into comprehensive sanctions. The sanctions have strong benefits even if Iran goes ahead with its nuclear program. As well as delaying Iran’s nuclear program, they make Iran a substantially weaker enemy for Israel. Imposing a big cost for Iran in going nuclear is also important to discourage other nations – Saudi Arabia and Egypt come to mind – from following suit.

The equation, then, would be that although possessing nuclear weapons does insulate a nation from full-frontal military assault, it carries with it enormous economic cost.

The idea that Israel has accepted a nuclear-armed Iran is based on several considerations, among them the enormous damage Iran could do in retaliation to an early strike and the tremendous success the Israeli economy and society are enjoying right now. There is a deep reluctance to disturb that. Some Israelis also believe that Washington simply will not countenance another Middle East conflict and that Israel’s position could be gravely weakened by unilateral action.

For Obama the calculations are scarcely less complex than they are for Netanyahu.

His nation does not face existential threat from Iran, but he profoundly wants to avoid becoming the president who failed to deliver a Palestinian state but who did preside over Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state.

Although his administration is divided on this, there is a real chance that if he is convinced that everything else has failed, he would countenance a US strike on Iran.

But because of America’s technical superiority he has longer time lines than Netanyahu. The problem, though, is that if the Israeli military option disappears, as it might by the end of this year, the pressure for US action would be much less.

Within Iran itself there is real evidence of economic distress and internal division. But no significant part of the ruling group is in favour of abandoning the nuclear program. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is in a losing struggle with the supreme leader, Ayatalloh Ali Khamenei. Parliamentary elections are due next March and analysts discern volcanic dissatisfaction among the Iranian public with a government that has delivered them nothing.

Nonetheless, the remaining ideological props for the ayatollahs are religious zealotry, ultra-nationalism expressed largely through nuclear defiance, and being in the business of destroying Israel.

This does not mean Iran’s leaders would court their own destruction by launching a war against Israel. But their ideological and religious hatred of Israel is real and, more importantly, continual expression of this hatred is essential to their position within Iran.

One scenario is that Iran just keeps going with its existing program, making it ever harder to hit but stopping short of developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. This makes justification for a strike against it more difficult, it means that when it finally decides to break out it can do so quickly and it develops most of what Tehran sees as the strategic benefits of nuclear weapons without yet incurring their full costs.

Taken altogether, this is the most explosive mixture the world has seen probably since the Cuban missile crisis. There are so many moving and interlocked parts no one can predict the outcome.

But if by the end of this year Iran has not negotiated the abandonment of its nuclear weapons program, if sanctions have not comprehensively crippled its economy and if its nuclear program has not been degraded by Israeli or US air strikes, then it becomes overwhelmingly likely that Iran has survived the Western bluff and will in due course acquire nuclear weapons.

What that means for the world is not pretty to contemplate. As Julia Gillard might remark, 2012 will indeed be the year of decision and delivery.

Presidential politics bring Iran to… JPost – Magazine – Opinion.

Iran becomes key talking point as GOP candidates seek to unseat Obama.

Photo by: REUTERS/Jason Reed

Convention seems to indicate that the upcoming Presidential election will be focused on jobs and the economy. If employment is up and the markets are steady, the pundits say US President Barack Obama will be a formidable candidate. If not, he is highly vulnerable. But as the threat of Iranian nuclear belligerence becomes more pronounced, Obama has been forced to expose an even greater vulnerability and address growing international fear over Iran. Republicans would do very well then, to start really pushing the issue to fore.

Unlike economic matters, which are often complex and are reflective of multiple fluctuating components, the subject of Iran is fairly straightforward. While the case for or against various economic initiatives allow much room for dispute and is at times highly subjective, quantifying progress on Iran is fairly elementary on all fronts – both for candidates to explain it and for the public in turn to grasp.

Overall, most people would gladly give up the opportunity to amass more wealth in favor of living safer, longer and without fear. That being the case, and since Obama has nothing substantial to show for himself so far, Republicans should seize the opportunity to bring the issue of Iran to center stage.

In dealing with the Iranian crisis, there are three primary options on the table: sanctions, covert action and military strikes. Yet at least as far as the public is concerned, Obama has addressed all three.

On the first path, sanctions, the President has talked a big game, but bottom line is that implementations have been far weaker than what is necessary. So much so that New Jersey Senator, Robert Menendez, usually a staunch Obama ally, publicly expressed anger and frustration with the administration last month over a crucial bill aimed at sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran. As Foreign Policy reported:

Two senior administration officials testified……that the current bipartisan amendment to impose new sanctions on the CBI (Central Bank of Iran) and any other bank that does business with them is a bad idea that could alienate foreign countries.

On Sunday, Israel’s largest daily newspaper,Israel Hayom, reported:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is not pleased with the way the US administration is managing its sanctions campaign against Iran, according to a senior Israeli diplomat. Netanyahu is said to be urging the US to target Iran’s Central Bank and crude oil industry.

With the second path, covert action, the nature of the beast means that it is obviously harder to quantify Obama’s position. But various reports and public statements made by the administration about covert operations – especially over the January 11 assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan – are indicative that the President is not in favor of any such actions. The US denied any role in the assassination and Victoria Nuland of the US State Department released the following statement: “We condemn any assassination or attack on an innocent person, and we express our sympathies to the family.”

Israel’s Channel 2 TV station also quoted a source within “Netanyahu’s bureau” that claimed that Obama had asked for an explanation regarding Israel’s involvement in the assassination. For his own part, in an interview that aired on Dutch television Thursday night, Netanyahu declined to comment about the assassination, only saying that, “Anytime something happens in Iran, Israel is accused, but that doesn’t make it true.” He continued by saying that Israel doesn’t “respond to these kinds of [accusations of involvement] ever, including many cases in which we are not involved.”

With respect to the third option – actually launching a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities – the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend:

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike.

This begs the question, what exactly should Israel’s recourse be? Should the Jewish State close its eyes and just continue holding the hand of the US President in absolute faith and trust, while keeping in mind that it is the obliteration of Israel that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to deliver?  Positioned within striking distance of long range Iranian missiles and within touching distance of both of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel simply cannot afford to take that risk. Considering the overwhelming degree of solidarity that voting Americans feel with their Israeli counterparts, this is a point that candidates would do well to highlight time and again.

Obama defenders point to economic risk over oil prices as a reason to move slowly with Iran, but one thing we can be certain of is that a nuclear Iran will create far greater economic instability. Additionally, forcing Iran into a limited oil market would allow their primary customers, such as China, to offer far less for Iran’s oil – possibly even forcing the oil prices down around the world.

Other supporters have expressed the possibility that Israel and the United States are actually working together in dealing with Iran, staging a good cop, bad cop “delay, delay, delay” dynamic. However, the only method that may actually have some impact on Iran right now is a unified bad cop, bad cop message.

Mitt Romney got the tone right in a November debate when he said “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, they will not have a nuclear weapon.” Since, at least for the time being, the economy is showing signs of improvement, the prescribed course of action for Republicans should be to up the ante on the Iran threat.

The writer is the director of the Algemeiner Journal and the GJCF. He can be contacted at defune@gjcf.com.

From the Arabic: Attack Iran Today, Not Tomorrow – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

‘Obama to Get 12 Hours Notice before Hit on Iran’ – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

F-15 fighter jet

Israel news photo: Wikimedia Commons/US Air F

Israeli officials told visiting USS Chief Joint of Staffs Martin Dempsey that it would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran, The London Times reported Sunday.

The Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic, according to the report, the latest in a number of suposed scenarios concerning cooperation or lack of it between Jerusalem and Washington.

It is left to speculation whether the rumors are based on facts or are leaked by officials to mask the possibility of secret military coordination.

The London Times said its sources explained that that Israel fears that President Obama would try to torpedo an Israel attack if more notice were given because he is concerned that Iran will respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a rise in the price of oil that could cripple Western economies. If the attack were to occur in the next 10 months, it would put President Obama in a tight spot on the eve of his bid for re-election.

President Shimon Peres told Dempsey, “I am sure that in this fight [against Iran] we will emerge victorious. It is a fight that does not belong exclusively to the United States or Israel, but a global struggle to create a safe world for all peoples.”

Dempsey, on his first official visit to Israel, was wined and dined by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gants, who went so far as to arrange an IDF orchestra rendition of song made famous by Frank Sinatra, one of Dempsey’s favorite singers.

Dempsey tried to play down the postponement of what was billed as the largest-ever joint military drill between the Israeli and American armies, involving thousands of U.S. Army soldiers.

Published reasons for the delay have ranged from budgetary constraints, logistical problems to a signal from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he distrusts President Obama’s commitment to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Dempsey maintained that the delay, which was announced by Israel, will give both countries more time to prepare and “achieve a better outcome.”

The top American general left Israel on Friday, before the Sabbath began.