WarSclerotic

The Associated Press: Iran’s navy tests cruise missile as part of drill.

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press – 30 minutes ago

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran test-fired a surface-to-surface cruise missile on Monday during a drill that the country’s navy chief said proved Tehran was in complete control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-sixth of the world’s oil supply.

The missile, called Ghader, or Capable in Farsi, was described as an upgraded version of a missile that has been in service before. The official IRNA news agency said the missile “successfully hit its intended target” during the exercise.

No other details were released about Ghader. An earlier version of the same cruise missile had a range of 124 miles (200 kilometers) and could travel at low altitudes. There were suggestions it could counter the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s 10-day navy drill, which ends Tuesday, was Tehran’s latest show of strength in the face of mounting international criticism over its nuclear program. The exercise came amid conflicting comments from Iranian officials over Tehran’s intentions to close the Strait of Hormuz, and U.S. warnings against such an ominous move.

“The Strait of Hormuz is completely under our control,” Iran’s navy chief Adm. Habibollah Sayyari said after Monday’s test. “We do not allow any enemy to pose threats to our interests.”

The latest version of the Ghader was delivered in September to the naval division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which is assigned to protect Iranian sea borders. At the time, Tehran said the missile is capable of destroying warships.

“In comparison with the previous version, the highly advanced Ghader missile system has been upgraded in terms of its radar, satellite communications, precision in target destruction, as well as range and radar-evading mechanism,” said Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi, a spokesman for the drill.

State TV showed footage Monday depicting the launch of two missiles, which were fired into the sky and which the TV said could hit targets “hundreds of kilometers (miles) away” from the point of origin. The broadcast said two more missiles, with a shorter range, were also tested Monday.

“We conducted the drill … to let everybody know that Iran’s defense and deterrence powers on the open seas and the Strait of Hormuz are aimed at defending our borders, resources and our nation,” said Sayyari, the navy chief.

The testing comes a day after Iran test-fired an advanced surface-to-air missile called Mehrab, or Altar in Farsi, which was described as medium-range.

Iran had said the sea maneuvers would cover a 1,250-mile (2,000-kilometer) stretch of water beyond the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, as well as parts of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.

A leading Iranian lawmaker said Sunday the maneuvers served as practice for closing the Strait of Hormuz if the West blocks Iran’s oil sales. After top Iranian officials made the same threat a week ago, military commanders emphasized that Iran has no intention of blocking the waterway now.

Mousavi on Sunday also emphasized that Iran has no plan to choke the strait. “We won’t disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. We are not after this,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Mousavi said the drill was “tactical” and meant to show Iran was capable of assuming full control over the strait in case this became necessary.

The West fears Iran’s program aims to develop atomic weapons — a charge Tehran denies, insisting it’s for peaceful purposes only.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Barak: Iran is feeling the pressure – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Defense minister says Tehran not oblivious to pressures exerted by the West despite US’ seemingly ‘softer’ stance

Moran Azulay

Defense Minister Ehud Barak briefed the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on regional developments Monday.

Barak told the committee that Iran was “feeling the pressure” exerted by the West, and stressed that while the United States’ hegemony in the region may be fraying, its strategic cooperation with Israelis close.

“We see the situation in Iran almost identically,” he said, but remained mum as to the possibility of a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Washington’s dominance in the region in faltering because the US administration has to contend with a “full internal agenda,” Barak explained. Nevertheless, the United Statesremains the “only true superpower,” he added.

Barak further added that Tehran was “feeling the effects of the Arab Spring. It’s concerned with the events in Syriaand the possibility of losing its strategic link with Damascus; as well as with the possibility of protests in Iran getting out of hand.”

Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons despite the hurdles posed by the West, the defense minister said. “The chances of imposing truly crippling sanctions are slim, but on the other hand Iran’s Central Bank and its petroleum industry are under a lot of pressure.”

Barak reiterated that all signs are indicating to the fact that “Assad’s regime in Syria in on its last legs… it’s hard to say when it will meet its end, but there’s no doubt that it’s nearing the end of its days.”

Syria, he noted, has yet to come up with an alternative to the current regime: “The international community understands that, which is why – at this point – it’s refraining from intervening in Syria.”

The Arab world’s aversion of Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s brutality also serves a pressure factor on Damascus and, as are the dwindling ranks of the Syrian Army and the dire financial and political straits the country has been gripped by since March 2011.

“The regime’s fall will be a massive blow to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis,” he concluded.

Iran test fires 2 long-range mis… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

The European Union is considering a ban – already in place by the United States – on imports of Iranian crude.

The US Fifth Fleet reacted to Iran’s threat to stop oil flows, saying it will not allow any disruption of traffic in the Gulf.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the Islamic state’s nuclear row with the West.

Iran said it had no intention to close the Strait of Hormuz.

“No order has been given for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But we are prepared for various scenarios,” state television quoted navy chief Habibollah Sayyari as saying.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 2, 2012, 9:30 AM (GMT+02:00)

Assad with his top generals

As Arab League monitors fail in their mission to curb brutal regime violence in Syria and the ten-month popular defiance continues to rage, President Bashar Assad is digging in for a full-scale civil war:  debkafile reports exclusively that a fortress is under construction for the Syrian ruler, family, his loyal generals and ruling elite in the northwestern Alawite (Al-Ansariyyah) Mountains – should Damascus become too hot for them.

From there, the Assads will continue to fight for their survival.
These mountains have the only dense forests in the vicinity of Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The Al-Ansariyyah range averages 32 kilometers (20 miles) in breadth and a peak elevation of just over 1,200 meters. The tallest mountain, Nabi Yunis east of Latakia, is 1,562 meters (5,125 feet) high. The range slopes down from its northern tip to an average altitude of 900 meters (3,000 feet) and 600 meters in the south.
Our military and intelligence sources report Syrian engineering corps crews working at speed to build a fortified encampment, partly inside caves and tunnels, on the wooded slopes. Its perimeter is enclosed with anti-tank defenses armed with anti-air batteries.
When finished, the camp will be one of the most heavily fortified strongholds in the Middle East.
In support of the Syrian dictator, large groups of Alawite families began moving in the last week of November from the mixed towns of Latakia, Hama and Homs to new homes in the encampment – apparently on a signal from Assad’s intelligence and security services.
Fortified facilities stocked with supplies are being provided for Alawite families unable to leave their towns and villages.

This mass relocation encompasses around a million Alawites, or a third of the 3.5 million members of this deviant offspring of this ruling Shiite Muslim faith, which numbers just over one-tenth of Syria’s total population.
By reestablishing his headquarters in a mountain fortress, Bashar Assad hopes to achieve two goals:
1. To keep his Alawite following out of harm’s way in a full-scale civil war. They face bitter Sunni revenge for the brutal persecution its adherents have suffered from Assad father and son for 37 years.
2. Clustering Alawite families in protected cantons will guarantee their loyalty to Bashar Assad and his clan.
Our Middle East sources report that not all Alawite clan leaders are willing to following the ruler into his mountain bastion. Some communities have gone over to the other side, for the first time in the ten-month popular uprising against his regime.
In the flashpoint Homs and Hama regions, a dozen Alawite village chiefs have struck deals with local rebel militia chiefs including the Free Syrian Army for guaranteed immunity from attack provided their sons refuse to join Assad’s state-backed private paramilitary Shabiha.

The inability of Assad and his henchmen to prevent these desertions from his own clan betokens the president’s declining authority beneath the bloody surface of the contest in the strife-torn country.

Arab League monitors leave Syria as violent crackdown claims more lives.

Al Arabiya

Monday, 02 January 2012

Arab League observers take photos for anti-government protesters on the streets in Idlib. (Reuters)

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The first mission of Arab monitors left Syria to the Egyptian capital after spending ten days during which they toured various Syrian cities, Al Arabiya reported on Monday.

On arrival at the Cairo International Airport, Arab League Assistant secretary General Samir Saif al-Yazal refused to give any statements regarding the vision of the monitors on the reality of the situation in Syria.

“All new developments will be included in a statement by the Arab League Secretariat,” Yazal told reporters. The Arab League forthcoming statement is expected to include a full report on the work of the Arab monitors as well as Syria’s compliance with an Arab peace plan that calls for Assad to withdraw troops and tanks from the streets, release detainees and talk to his opponents.

In a video released by the Observatory, a man wearing an orange vest with the Arab League logo said in Deraa: “There are snipers; we have seen them with our own eyes.”

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby had said it should take only a week to see if Assad was keeping his word.

Syrian security forces, meanwhile, killed twelve more protesters on Sunday.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, keen to prevent huge protest rallies under the monitors’ eyes, have killed at least 286 people since Dec. 23, the day before the mission’s leader arrived in Syria, according to activists who tally casualties.

Some of Sunday’s deaths occurred when security forces fired on protesters in the Damascus suburb of Daria, they said.

On Sunday, a seven-year-old boy was killed in the central city of Hama when his father’s car came under a hail of bullets, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“The first victim of 2012,” the Britain-based watchdog said in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.

Activists have accused the regime of posting snipers on rooftops, and that issue appears to have triggered a dispute among the observers.

In a video released by the Observatory, a man wearing an orange vest with the Arab League logo said in Deraa: “There are snipers; we have seen them with our own eyes.”

“We ask the authorities to remove them immediately; if they don’t remove them within 24 hours, there will be other measures,” the unnamed speaker in the video, which was dated Friday, told a crowd of people.

The Arab Parliament, an 88-strong advisory committee of delegates from the Arab League’s member states, said the violence was continuing to claim many victims, according to Reuters.

“For this to happen in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission,” its chairman, Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas, said in Cairo.

“This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League,” he said.

Assad’s opponents, while welcoming the Arab mission as a rare chance for outsiders to witness events in Syria, had few illusions that the observers could halt a crackdown on dissent that U.N. officials say has cost over 5,000 lives since March.

“The presence of monitors has not affected the behavior of the regime with hundreds killed and no let-up,” said Rima Fleihan, from the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC).

The Arab Parliament was the first body to recommend freezing Syria’s League membership in protest at the bloodshed.

Arab monitors visiting Deraa, a southern town viewed as the cradle of the nine-month-old revolt, went to the home of Sheikh Ahmad Hayasneh, the elderly imam of the Omari mosque where the first big protests against Assad’s 11 years in power erupted in March.

It was unclear if the monitors met Hayasneh, who residents say has been under house arrest for at least five months.

Some statements by Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, the mission’s leader, have suggested a soft approach to the Syrian authorities, although some monitors have not minced their words.

“We saw snipers in the town, we saw them with our own eyes,” one observer filmed in Deraa said in Arabic, visibly concerned. “We’re going to ask the government to remove them immediately. We’ll be in touch with the Arab League back in Cairo.”

Dabi later told the BBC the observer’s remarks, shown on a YouTube clip posted on Saturday, had been misreported.

In another incident, shown on Al Arabiya, a monitor in the embattled neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs appealed to the authorities by telephone to stop firing there.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in the past week in an apparent effort to show the Arab monitors the depth of their rejection of Assad’s government.

“The Syrians want a modern regime in the New Year,” read a placard carried by protesters in a suburb of Damascus.

Assad blames the unrest on foreign-backed armed Islamists who officials say have killed 2,000 security personnel.

He retains the support of much of his minority Alawite community and, despite some defections, of the armed forces. While anti-Assad sentiment runs high in the provinces, there have been few protests in central parts of Damascus or Aleppo.

YouTube videos circulating on the Internet showed protesters across Syria welcoming 2012 in with fireworks and holding up signs pledging “Freedom for Life” and denouncing President Assad as the enemy.

A YouTube video shot in Zabadani near Damascus, shows hundreds of people dancing around a Christmas tree and chanting: “The people demand the ouster of the assassin.”

AFP: Iran defiant as US unleashes new sanctions.

TEHRAN — Iran defiantly announced on Sunday that it had tested a new missile and made an advance in its nuclear programme after the United States unleashed extra sanctions that sent its currency to a record low.

The developments raised the stakes in a budding confrontation between the longtime foes, as concerns mounted that Iran could make good on threats to close the world’s most important oil route, the Strait of Hormuz, if it is backed into a wall.

Ten days of Iranian naval war games are to climax on Monday with vessels practising “a new tactical formation” to be used to close the strait if so ordered, navy spokesman Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

On Sunday, “for the first time, an anti-radar medium-range missile was successfully fired during the massive naval drills,” Mousavi said, according to state media.

The Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation followed that up with its own announcement that its scientists “tested the first nuclear fuel rod produced from uranium ore deposits inside the country.”

The statement suggested Iran had made progress in becoming a self-sufficient nuclear nation and had technological prowess the West thought it lacked.

It also fed into broader Western fears that Iran’s real aim is to develop a capability to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level necessary for a nuclear bomb, an ambition Tehran strongly denies.

Those fears are at the heart of the Western push to halt Iran’s nuclear programme through successive sets of sanctions.

US President Barack Obama on Saturday signed into law the latest such package, measures targeting Iran’s central bank and financial sector.

Iran’s currency, the rial, slipped to a record low Sunday on that news.

The state news agency IRNA and an Iranian website tracking the currency said it slid to around 16,000 to the dollar.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an annual meeting of senior central bank officials that their institution was “the backbone of dealing with the enemies’ pressure.”

He said the bank “must with strength and self-confidence have the solidity to eliminate all of the enemies’ plots,” according to a statement on the presidency website.

Ahmadinejad said that “currently there is no particular problem in the economic sector.”

The extra US sanctions aim to further squeeze Iran’s crucial oil sales, most of which are processed by the central bank. They will make foreign firms choose between doing business with the Islamic republic or the economically mighty United States.

Iran, the second-biggest producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, depends on oil sales for 80 percent of its foreign currency earnings.

The European Union is also mulling an embargo on Iranian oil purchases, and a decision could be announced at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting at the end of the month.

Iranian leaders and military officials have warned that additional Western sanctions could push them to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf.

Those warnings became more strident in recent days, with Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi vowing last Tuesday that “not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz” if more sanctions were imposed.

Oil prices spiked on that declaration, before subsiding somewhat on analysts’ views that Iran would devastate its own economy by taking such a drastic step. It would also lose the international diplomatic protection it enjoys from Russia and China, they said.

Twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making it the “most important choke point” globally, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Ahmadinejad says Iran’s central bank will face new U.S. sanctions with ‘strength’.

Al Arabiya

Sunday, 01 January 2012

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Islamic Republic’s central bank will confront the new U.S. sanctions with strength and self-confidence. (File Photo)

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Muslim Brotherhood: Israel peace deal isn’t binding – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Leader in Egyptian Islamist movement says it won’t recognize Israel under any circumstances, and might put up peace treaty with ‘Zionist entity’ up to referendum; ‘Israel is enemy entity,’ he says

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will not recognize Israel under any circumstances and might put the peace treaty with the Jewish state up to a referendum, the movement’s second in command told the Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview that was published Sunday.

The announcement comes days before the final round in the first parliamentary elections in post-uprising Egypt. The Islamist movement has emerged as the biggest winner in polls, capturing nearly half of the seats so far.

The Muslim Brotherhood “did not sign the peace accords,” Rashad al-Bayoumi told the London-based newspaper. “We are allowed to ask the people or the elected parliament to express their opinion on the treaty, and (to find out) whether it compromised the people’s freedom and sovereignty.

“We will take the proper legal steps in dealing with the peace deal,” he added. “To me, it isn’t binding at all. The people will express their opinion on the matter.”

While the Brotherhood intends to temporarily honor Egypt’s international pacts, al-Bayoumi told noted, “each side has the right to reexamine the treaty.”

‘Israel is enemy entity’

He stressed that under no circumstances will the Brotherhood recognize the State of Israel.

“Is rising to power conditional on recognizing Israel?” al-Bayoumi wondered. “That’s out of the question, no matter what the situation is. On no condition will we recognize Israel. It is an enemy entity, an exploiting, criminal occupier.”

According to al-Bayoumi, no member of the Muslim Brotherhood will ever meet with Israelis.

“I won’t allow myself to sit down with a criminal,” he said. “We won’t cooperate with Israel in any situation.”

The final stage in the elections is scheduled to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Egyptian Salafi movement’s Al-Nour party, which is currently placed second in the parliamentary elections, said recently that it intends to maintain the peace with Israel, but stressed that it will make efforts to amend the treaty’s “exploitative clauses” using all legitimate means.

Iran fires medium-range missile during Strait of Hormuz naval drill – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Testing of new anti-radar weapon comes as top Iranian military official defends Tehran’s right to respond to western threats by closing off the strategic waterway.

By Haaretz

Iran test fired a medium-range anti-radar missile for first time during its 10-day naval drill near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s state television Press TV said on Sunday.

State TV says the missile is designed to evade radars and was developed by Iranian scientists.

	An Iranian vessel fires a missile during navy exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, Dec. 30, 2011.
	Photo by: AFP

Earlier Sunday, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Hossein Salami defended his country’s right to close off the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the distribution of global crude oil supplies.

“We will respond to any threat by intensified threat and this fact has no time or geographical limitation,” Salami told the semi-official Fars news agency adding that “the Strait of Hormoz is a part of our defense geography as well.”nm

News of a new Iranian test launch came a day after Iran’s senior navy commander denied reports that Iran had test-fired long-range missiles during the naval drill on Saturday, saying the missiles would be launched in the next few days.

Mahmoud Mousavi told Press TV that “the exercise of launching missiles will be carried out in the coming days.”

The Fars news agency, Press TV and the state-run IRNA news agency had originally reported that Iran had test-fired long-range and other missiles during the exercise on Saturday.

“All kinds of surface-to-sea, sea-to-sea and surface-to-air as well as shoulder-launched missiles will be tested in the coming days,” Mousavi told Press TV.

The 10-day naval drill, which began last Saturday, coincided with increased tension in Iran’s nuclear row with Western powers, after the European Union said it was considering a ban – already in place in the United States – on imports of Iranian oil.

Iran says the drill is aimed at showing Iran’s resolve to counter any attack by enemies such as Israel or the United States.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out a military option if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.

The U.S. and its allies say Iran wants to build nuclear bombs under cover of a civilian program of uranium enrichment. Iran denies this.

State media reported on Saturday that Iran is ready to resume nuclear talks with world powers.

Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said in a meeting with a visiting Chinese official in Tehran that Iran was ready to resume talks with the six world powers over its nuclear programs.

Arab body says monitors should quit Syria … JPost – Middle East.

    CAIRO – An Arab League advisory body called on Sunday for the immediate withdrawal of the organization’s monitoring mission in Syria, saying it was allowing Damascus to cover up continued violence and abuses.

The Arab League has sent a small team to Syria to check whether President Bashar Assad is keeping his promise to end a crackdown on a nine-month uprising against his rule.

The observer mission has already stirred controversy. Rights groups have reported continued deaths in clashes and tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to show the observers the extent of their anger.

The Sudanese head of the mission also infuriated some observers by suggesting he was reassured by first impressions of Homs, one of the main centers of unrest.

The Arab Parliament, an 88-member advisory committee of delegates from each of the League’s member states, on Sunday said the violence was continuing to claim many victims.

“For this to happen in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission,” the organization’s chairman Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas said.

“This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League,” he said.

The Arab Parliament was the first body to recommend freezing Syria’s membership in the organization in response to Assad’s crackdown.

An Arab League official, commenting on the parliament’s statement, told Reuters it was too early to judge the mission’s success, saying it was scheduled to remain in Syria for a month and that more monitors were on their way.

The parliament called on Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby to convene a meeting of Arab foreign ministers to adopt a resolution to withdraw the mission immediately.

The continued abuse and killing of innocent Syrian civilians was a “blatant violation to the Arab League’s protocol”, Dekbas said.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said there had been “massive demonstrations” throughout Syria on Friday in support of Assad, and denouncing “the plot which Syria is exposed to.”

It said demonstrators had denounced “the pressure and biased campaigns targeting Syria’s security and stability” and the “lies and fabrications of the misleading media channels.”

Syrian authorities have accused foreign powers of arming and funding “terrorists” in the country and say 2,000 of the government’s soldiers and police have been killed.