WarSclerotic

The Associated Press: Israel says Iran ‘drifting’ toward nuke goal line.

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press – 31 minutes ago

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a “surgical” military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran’s oil and banks so that “we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program.”

Iran insists its atomic program is only aimed at producing energy and research, but has repeatedly refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium.

“We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table and Iran should be blocked from turning nuclear,” Barak told reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them,” he said.

Barak called it “a challenge for the whole world” to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran but stopped short of confirming any action that could further stoke Washington’s concern about a possible Israeli military strike.

Separately, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged a resumption of dialogue between Western powers and Iran on their nuclear dispute.

He said Friday that Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear development program is not directed to making arms.

“The onus is on Iran,” said Ban, speaking at a press conference. “They have to prove themselves that their nuclear development program is genuinely for peaceful purposes, which they have not done yet.”

Ban expressed concern at the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency that strongly suggested that Iran’s nuclear program, which it long has claimed is for development of power generation, has a military intent.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Davos session that “we do not have that much confidence if Iran has declared everything” and its best information “indicates that Iran has engaged in activities relevant to nuclear explosive devices.”

“For now they do not have the capacity to manufacture the fuel,” he said. “But in the future, we don’t know.”

In spite of his tough words to Iran, Ban said that dialogue among the “three-plus-three” — Germany, France and Britain plus Russia, China and the United States — is the path forward.

“There is no other alternative for addressing this crisis than peaceful … resolution through dialogue,” said Ban.

Ban noted that there have been a total of five Security Council resolutions so far on the Iranian nuclear program, four calling for sanctions.

As tensions have been on the rise recently, some political leaders in Israel and the United States have been speaking increasingly of the possibility of a military strike to eliminate, or at least slow down, what they allege is a determined effort by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

John Daniszewski contributed to this report.

Oil Markets Seen Withstanding Iran Attack: Poll – Bloomberg.

More than 70 percent of investors said an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would create only a short-term disruption in oil markets, according to a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll.

Only about a third of the 1,209 global investors, traders and analysts surveyed Jan. 23-24 said an attack could trigger an oil shock leading to a global recession.

While regional conflicts could affect oil markets over a longer period of time, investors may have “lurking confidence that other oil-producing nations would step up to increase production,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., the Des Moines, Iowa-based company that conducted the survey for Bloomberg.

A plurality of the respondents, 46 percent worldwide, said they were maintaining their current exposure to crude oil investments over the next six months, while 21 percent said they would increase that exposure, and 17 percent said they would reduce it. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

Forty-three percent expected crude oil prices to rise in the next half year, while 22 percent said they would fall.

Crude for March delivery today was at $99.86 a barrel, up 18 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract settled at $99.70 yesterday, the highest closing price since Jan. 19. Prices are up 17 percent in the past year.

Blockade Views

Amid the increased tensions and a stepped-up campaign by the U.S. and the European Union to impose strict sanctions on Iran’s petroleum sales, its banking sector and its ability to engage in international trade, most investors surveyed said they were confident that a military conflict and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz aren’t likely.

Only one in five respondents said it is very likely or fairly likely that Iran will make good on its threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, a transit route for one-fifth of globally- traded oil.

Fifty-four percent of those surveyed expressed confidence that there won’t be military action against Iran’s nuclear program in 2012, while 30 percent said there will be a strike.

Also, 54 percent of those surveyed said a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would provoke a regional conflict, and 42 percent said Iran would retaliate by attacking Israel.

Nuclear Iran

As for the best response from the international community if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, 45 percent worldwide said it was “such a lethal threat that military action against Iran” would be necessary, while 34 percent globally said it was a situation the world could live with. Twenty-one percent said they had no idea.

While more than half of U.S. investors — 57 percent –said military action would be necessary if Iran (OPCRIRAN) acquired a nuclear weapon, just 39 percent of those outside the U.S. said they feel that way. Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed overseas said the world could live with a nuclear-armed Iran, a sentiment shared by only one in four in the U.S.

Fifty-nine percent of the U.S. customers surveyed said an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely prompt attacks on U.S. civilian and military targets in the Middle East; a slim minority of investors outside the U.S., 46 percent, share that view.

Tougher Sanctions

Respondents also were divided about the effects of tougher sanctions on Iran. While 43 percent said the recent sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank diminish the chances that Iran will make concessions over its nuclear program, 36 percent said the sanctions may push Iran to the negotiating table.

On Nov. 21, the U.S., U.K. and Canada took coordinated action targeting Iran’s financial sector, with implications for any entities that do business with both Iran and Western nations. On Dec. 31, President Barack Obama signed into law congressional sanctions on Iran’s central bank aimed at complicating payments for Iranian oil by refiners in any country.

This week, the EU imposed an embargo on Iranian oil imports to the 27-nation bloc effective July 1; banned trade in gold, precious metals, diamonds and petrochemical products from Iran; and imposed an asset freeze on Iranian banks and port operators that will make tens of billions of euros in annual trade with Iran almost impossible.

The U.S., European allies and Israel accuse Iran of trying to acquire the ability to build nuclear weapons. Iran’s leaders say their program is solely for civilian energy and medical research.

In a Nov. 8 report, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency raised questions about possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

To contact the reporter on this story: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net

Syrian security forces launch all-out assault on Douma – Telegraph.

Syrian security forcesare waging an all-out assalt on a rebel suburb of the capital Damascus which had become the second town to force the army out in two weeks.

Demonstrators gather during a protest against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad near Damascus Photo: REUTERS

Romney: Obama ‘threw Israel under the bu… JPost – International.

By REUTERS

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Thursday night that US President Barack Obama “threw Israel under the bus” by designating the pre-1967 borders as a starting point for peace talks, while Newt Gingrich reiterated his controversial remark that the Palestinians are an “invented” people.

Speaking at a CNN Republican debate in Florida ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the two candidates skewered Obama for not being a strong enough ally to Israel.

Romney said Obama had “disrespected” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. When Obama spoke at the United Nations, Romney said, he raised the issue of settlement building, but said nothing about rockets being fired on Israel from Gaza.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama touted his credentials on Israel, indicating his efforts to impose tough sanctions on Iran and saying, “Our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”

Gingrich, who drew fire in December for calling the Palestinians an “invented” people, stood by his statements Thursday. Prior to the 1970s, he said, Palestinians simply considered themselves Syrian and Jordanian Arabs.

The candidates’ statements came in response to a question from a Palestinian-American audience member (who specified that he was also a Republican: “We exist,” he said).

Both Romney and Gingrich blamed the Palestinian leadership for lack of progress in peace negotiations with Israel.

“There’s the belief that the Jewish people do not have a right to a state” Romney said of Palestinians, offering Hamas’s presence in the Palestinian government, schoolbooks that advocate killing Jews and rejectionist political discourse by Fatah as examples.

Gingrich said his goal was for Palestinians to live in peace with Israel, and that “they can achieve it any morning they say Israel has a right to exist.”

The former speaker of the House noted that 11 rockets were fired at Israel in November. “How many of you would be for a peace process and how many would say ‘that looks like an act of war?'”

While Romney promised “I will stand with our friend Israel,” if he were elected president, Gingrich promised to issue an executive order moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on his first day in office.

Dempsey: Strike against Iran wou… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The US is committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and is prepared to use force to that end, but a military strike against the Islamic Republic would be “premature” at this juncture, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with the National Journal on Thursday.

“I do think the path we’re on – the economic sanctions and the diplomatic pressure – does seem to me to be having an effect,” Dempsey said. “I just think that it’s premature to be deciding that the economic and diplomatic approach is inadequate.”

Dempsey, who last week visited Israel for the first time since taking the reins of the US military in October, warned against the consequences of a military strike against Iran.

“A conflict with Iran would be really destabilizing, and I’m not just talking from the security perspective,” he told the National Journal. “It would be economically destabilizing.”

Dempsey admitted differences in opinion between the US and Israel’s leadership on the Iranian threat and how soon to act against it.

“We have to acknowledge that they … see that threat differently than we do. Its existential to them,” he said. “My intervention with them was not to try to persuade them to my thinking or allow them to persuade me to theirs, but rather to acknowledge the complexity and commit to seeking creative solutions, not simple solutions,” he said.

While Dempsey warned of the destabilizing effects of a military strike against Iran,  The New York Times reported Thursday that Israeli intelligence estimates cast doubt on the scenario by which an attack on the Islamic Republic would set off regional war, lead to widespread terrorism and send oil prices soaring.

According to the report, these intelligence estimates, backed by academic studies, see the threat of Iranian retaliation to a strike against its nuclear facilities as partly bluff. The Times report claimed that senior Israeli security officials have largely adopted this point of view.

Citing conversations with current and recent top Israeli security officials, The New York Times posited that Israel is prepared to give newly minted sanctions against Iran’s oil industry and central bank time to work, but the measures are viewed as insufficient. A military strike remains a very real option.

“Take every scenario of confrontation and attack by Iran and its proxies and then ask yourself, ‘How would it look if they had a nuclear weapon?’ ” a senior official said. “In nearly every scenario, the situation looks worse.”

Another official was quoted as saying, “I’m not saying Iran will not react. But it will be nothing like London during World War II.”

DEBKA.

The passage through the Strait of Hormuz by the aircraft carrierUSS Abraham Lincoln and three destroyers – one American, one British and one French, early Monday, Jan. 23 – surprised the world, but not apparently Tehran, which let the warships sail through without interference or incident.
Just two days earlier, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) deputy commander Hossein Salami made an uncharacteristically mild comment: “US warships and military forces have been in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East region for many years, and their decision in relation to the dispatch of a new warship is not a new issue, and it should be interpreted as part of their permanent presence,” he said.
These events were the first outward sign of back-channel talks afoot between the emissaries of US President Barack Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Earlier that day, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, posing in the uniform of an aircraft carrier officer, stood in the vast hangar of the giant Enterprise Carrier Strike Group and informed the 1,700 crewmen and women assembled there that their ship would be dispatched to the Strait of Hormuz in March.
Panetta said: “… 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.”

The Abraham Lincoln carrier tested Hormuz waters

The White House, which had fully approved Panetta’s gesture, decided not to wait until March but to put Salami’s words to the test forthwith by sending the Abraham Lincoln through the Strait of Hormuz that very night.
But first, President Obama put in urgent calls to French PresidentNicolas Sarkozy and to British Prime Minister David Cameron, and obtained their approval for British and French warships to enter the strategic strait in convoy with the Lincoln. As an extra precaution against trouble, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report that US Ambassador to Baghdad James Jeffrey contacted Hassan Danaifa, his Iranian opposite number in the Iraqi capital, and let him know that the US-led convoy would be crossing through the Strait of Hormuz shortly.
Ambassador Danaifar promised to pass the message to Tehran. When after a few hours, there was no answer from the Iranian government, Washington decided to take the silence as assent and ordered the Lincoln and escort to begin crossing through the Strait of Hormuz to the Persian Gulf.
The experiment paid off and Washington was encouraged to keep its secret exchanges with Tehran moving forward:
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources report that those exchanges are advancing on three tracks:

Channels through Baghdad, Ankara, Vienna

1. The Baghdad Track: Ambassadors Jeffrey and Danaifar have taken to meeting in the Green Zone of Baghdad every few days. Their conversations are exploratory, with each side demanding good faith gestures from the other to jump the dialogue forward.
Sources familiar with this track report that Ambassador Jeffrey holds up President Obama’s message to Khamenei last month (through Turkish intermediaries, according to some sources; through Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, according to others, including Iranians), which the Iranian leader neglected to answer. The American diplomat insists on the Iranian leader replying to the US president’s missive and relating to his proposals before confidence-building gestures are discussed.
Iranian lawmaker Hussein Naqavai claimed this week, “Obama proposed a red telephone between Tehran and Washington. This is an admission that Iran should be consulted on major international issues.”
But this is precisely what Washington wishes to avoid: Reciprocal confidence-building gestures are not intended to convey United States recognition of Iran’s pretensions as a regional superpower.
And, according to a Western source in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration is also refusing to succumb to Iran’s bagaining tactics for selling Persian carpets, i.e. the more a buyer simplifies the transaction to lower the price, the higher the Iranians climb.
2. The Turkish track: Tehran is not happy with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu acting as brokers, in view of their animosity towards Syria’s Bashar Assad. However, they are keeping the Turkish track open in consideration of Erdogan’s close ties with Obama, while at the same time stirring up trouble between him and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Tehran hopes that the dispute over the latter’s persecution of Iraq’s Sunni community will raise tensions enough to eventually undermine the Turkish track.

Back channels are not yet generating results

In the latest round of acrimony, Al Maliki accused Ankara of meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, to which Erdogan retorted Tuesday, Jan. 24: “The idea that Turkey is interfering in your domestic affairs is a very ugly and unfortunate one. Mr. Maliki must know very well that if you initiate a period of clashes in Iraq based on sectarian strife, it is impossible for us to remain silent.”
3. The Viennese track: The miles of corridors at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in the Austrian capital, are an ideal venue for backdoor, off-the-record encounters between American and Iranian diplomats. There, ideas can be freely proposed and unofficial papers traded concerning Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
The three tracks have yet to produce results, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington and Iranian sources report.
Just as President Obama was pushing tough sanctions hard, managing this week to get the European Union to approve an oil embargo on Iran and a freeze on its central bank’s assets, Washington and Tehran came to a quiet understanding: The new US and EU sanctions would only start taking effect on July 1, leaving six months for negotiations to get underway.
But there is still a way to go before this happens.
And both Washington and Tehran are already girding up for the dialogue to break down even after it starts, according to sources familiar with the calculations on both sides. At that point, the military option will resurface at full blast.
US preparations for a military flare-up are covered in the first article.

DEBKA.DEBKA-Net-Weekly #526 January 26, 2012

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told Al-Arabiya television last week that the Saudi government takes Iran’s threats seriously. He pointed in particular to the words of Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who warned that Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi‘s promise to boost oil production by 2.7 million barrels a day (bpd) to make up for any shortfall caused by sanctions on Iran, would “create all possible problems later.”
Prince Turki said he personally did not believe the oil kingdom would engage in military action but added:
“It’s a direct threat to our national interests and a direct threat to our industrial installations on the coast.”
Other Saudi officials in Riyadh were less diplomatic: “Iran’s threats could be interpreted by Saudi Arabia as an act of war,” said a senior Saudi defense official bluntly.
This week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report, Saudi Arabia began deploying its military in the kingdom’s oil regions in the east opposite the Persian Gulf.
Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 intercept missile batteries were installed around the oil fields and oil terminals; Saudi special forces stationed around the kingdom’s main export terminal at Ras Tanura; and special marine and naval forces trained to defend the installations began conducting sea patrols off shore.
Saudi armored forces were furthermore stationed at the main junctions of the pipelines and pumping stations and its air force and navy put on a state of alert.
While the whole world talked about Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to an embargo on its oil exports, the Saudis were far more concerned with the reality of the second half of that threat: They are certain that the menace of an Iranian strike at Saudi oil targets will loom ever larger as US-European sanctions bite deeper into Iran’s oil sales and Riyadh steps up its oil production to make up for the Iranian shortfall.

Tehran resorts to smuggling after its oil sales shrink

The Saudis envision a panoply of aggressive Iranian operations: Missiles striking their oil fields and export terminals – aimed from speedboats zooming up close to target and launched from small unpopulated Persian Gulf islands occupied for the purpose by especially trained Iranian units.
Iranian frogmen may come ashore to sabotage oil installations and pipelines; kamikaze pilots crash their planes into the oil tankers; and booby-trapped speedboats piloted by suicide attackers try to ram oil installations or tankers.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Gulf sources report that Riyadh challenges assessments in the West and Israel that the oil embargo has not yet touched Iran. According to Saudi figures, Tehran is already losing buyers and its regular export volume of around 2.5 million barrels a day has dropped by 15-20 percent.
To make up the difference, says Riyadh, the Iranians have in recent weeks set in motion a major enterprise for smuggling their oil out to market through certain Persian Gulf countries.
They are using large and medium sized oil tankers without flags or identifying markings to drop anchor in Gulf ports, most frequently in Abu Dhabi and Oman. Shrewd traders specializing in the sale of smuggled oil then purchase quantities of crude with cash and transport it to various buyers who don’t ask questions about its provenance.
This week, Saudi officials, accompanied by oil, security and intelligence experts, visited Abu Dhabi and Oman and asked the authorities there to put a stop to Iranian oil smuggling. But Riyadh understands that its effort to dry up the Iranian oil smuggling machine may bring Tehran still closer to a decision to go on the offensive against Saudi Arabia.

DEBKA.

While quietly casting lines to draw Tehran into talks on their nuclear dispute, President Barack Obama is reported exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources to have secretly ordered US air, naval and marine forces to build up heavy concentrations on two strategic islands – Socotra, which is part of a Yemeni archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the Omani island of Masirah at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz.
Socotra is situated 80 kilometers east of the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometers southeast of the Yemeni coastline. It lies athwart the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. A military base there is in a position to oversee the shipping moving in and out of those strategic naval waterways.
Lushly verdant, Socotra is approximately 120 kilometers long by 40 kilometers wide. Its population of 55,000 has its own distinct language and culture. Since 2010, the US has been quietly building giant air force and naval bases on Socotra with facilities for submarines, intelligence command centers and take-off pads for flying stealth drones, as part of a linked chain of strategic US military facilities in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
The Socotra facilities are so secret that they are never mentioned in any catalogue listing US military facilities in this part of the world, which include Jebel Ali and Al Dahfra in the United Arab Emirates; Arifjan in Kuwait; and Al Udeid in Qatar – all within short flying distances from Iran.
Additional US forces are also being poured into Camp Justice on the barren, 70-kilometer long Omani island of Masirah, just south of the Hormuz entry point to the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea.
US military facilities were established there after the signing of an access agreement with Oman in 1980.

Up to 100,000 US troops present by early March

For the new buildup on Socotra, Washington had to negotiate a new deal with Yemen’s ousted ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Injured in an assassination attempt last year, Saleh demanded permission to travel to the United States for medical treatment. The Obama administration first refused, then relented when Saleh made it his condition for consenting to additional troops landing on the island.
Western military sources familiar with the American buildup on the two strategic islands tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that, although they cannot cite precise figures, they are witnessing the heaviest American concentration of might in the region since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.
Then, 100,000 American troops were massed in Kuwait ahead of the invasion. Today, those sources estimate from the current pace of arrivals on the two island bases, that 50,000 US troops will have accumulated on Socotra and Masirah by mid-February. They will top up the 50,000 military already present in the Persian Gulf region, so that in less than a month, Washington will have some 100,000 military personnel on the spot and available for any contingency.
US air transports are described as making almost daily landings on Socotra and Masirah. They fly in from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, one of America’s biggest military facilities, just over 3,000 kilometers away. The US military presence in the region will further expand in the first week of March when three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups plus a French carrier arrive in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea: They are the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Enterprise and the Charles de Gaullenuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
A fourth US carrier will be standing by in the Pacific Ocean, a few days’ sailing time from the water off Iran’s coast.

Obama may debunk Republican charges that he is weak on Iran

By early March, therefore, America will have piled up enough military strength within reach of Iran to exercise its consistently avowed military option.
Tuesday, Jan. 24, in his State of the Union address, the president said: “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”
Our military sources have also picked up reports of British and French air, naval and special forces landings this month in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
All these military concentrations and Obama’s latest word on the Iranian nuclear issue tend to confirm that nothing has changed since DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington first reported in November 2011 on the US president’s resolve to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the course of 2012.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 515 of Nov. 4: Targeting Tehran: Obama Set to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Sites by the fall of 2012),
The only difference may be the possibility of the date moving up from fall to spring, depending on three developments:
1. The outcome of the secret exchanges taking place between Washington and Tehran on which we have reported exclusively;
2. An Israeli decision to go ahead with a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
President Obama has not been able to convince Israel to drop this option and leave military action entirely to the United States.
3. The US presidential election campaign: Obama may decide to go for an attack to cripple Iran’s nuclear program and preempt its production of a bomb to gain a winning hand for trumping his Republican rivals’ accusation that he is weak on Iran.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report January 26, 2012, 10:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Strait of Hormuz   Saudi Arabia   GCC   oil embargo   US military action 

Strait of Hormuz

Military tensions in the Persian Gulf shot up again Thursday, Jan. 26, after Dubai police commander Gen. Dhahi Khalfan said on Al Arabiya television that an imminent Gulf war cannot be ruled out and first signs are already apparent. “The world will not let Iran block Hormuz but Tehran can narrow the strait to the maximum,” he said.

He echoed DEBKAfile‘s predictions that Iran will not shut down the Strait of Hormuz completely, but gradually cut down tanker traffic which carries 17 million barrels, or one-fifth of the world’s daily consumption, through the waterway. Our Iranian sources report that the rule of thumb Tehran has devised for confront sanctions is to respond to the tightening of an oil embargo by having the Revolutionary Guards gradually narrow the tankers’ shipping lanes through the strategic strait. This will progressively cut down the amount of oil reaching the markets.

Tehran will not go all the way and shut the channel down completely for fear of provoking a military showdown with the United States. But each time Washington manages to stop Iran supplying a given country, the IRGC will shut down another section of the strait.
General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted on Jan. 8 that Iran has the capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily but the US would get it reopened within a short time.

Saudi Arabia and Dubai are skeptical about the ability of the American navy and Gulf forces to keep the Strait of Hormuz open at all times in the face of continuous Iranian attacks.
The prevailing view in Gulf capitals is that for the six months from February through July 1, when the European embargo on Iranian oil and the Iranian national bank freeze kick in, a war of attrition will unfold as Iran carries out sporadic strait closures, either by mining the waterway or firing missiles at tankers from unmarked speedboats.

These operations will push up the price of oil and so drum home to oil-dependent Asian and European governments the high cost to them of the alternate opening and closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

A Saudi official said Wednesday, Jan. 1, that Tehran’s threats to punish Riyadh for offering to make up the shortfall incurred from the oil embargo against Iran “could be seen by Saudi Arabia as an act of war.”

The Iranian threats followed the pledge made this week by Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi to raise daily production by up to 2.7 million barrels per day to supply the countries caught short of supplies from Iran.

However, the Saudi minister could not say how the oil would make its way out of the Persian Gulf to destination if the Strait of Hormuz were to be shuttered partially or fully.

DEBKAfile‘s military and Gulf sources report that Persian Gulf capitals are talking less these days about an outbreak of armed hostilities over Iran’s nuclear program and more about the coming war over the oil shipping routes out to market.

The Dubai general’s remarks Thursday about an imminent conflict referred not only to the flow of American reinforcements to the Gulf region but also to the new deployments of the armies of Gulf Cooperation Council states. They are moving into position in expectation of a military confrontation with Iran.

Will Israel Attack Iran? (And If It Does, Can It Really Stop Tehran’s Nuclear Program?) | Global Spin | TIME.com.

Nir Elias / Reuters

An Israeli air force F-15I fighter flies over an air force pilots’ graduation ceremony at Hatzerim air base in southern Israel Dec. 29, 2011.

In the effort to stir global action against the Iranian nuclear program, Israel has played its hand brilliantly.  Having twice sent fighter-bombers to erase nuclear reactors in hostile states — to Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 — its conspicuous preparations against Iran form a firm flank in the effort to corral world opinion. This week, as the European Union joined the United States in launching exceptionally potent sanctions on Iran’s petroleum industry and central bank, a senior French official explained the urgency as follows:  ”We must do everything possible to avoid an Israeli attack on Iran.”

But could Israel go it alone?

The question is addressed in detail in the latest print edition of TIME. The full article is available to subscribers here. But as quoted by a senior security official, the assessment offered to the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last autumn was not altogether encouraging:

“I informed the cabinet we have no ability to hit the Iranian nuclear program in a meaningful way,” the official quoted a senior commander as saying. “If I get the order I will do it, but we don’t have the ability to hit in a meaningful way.”

The key word is”meaningful.” The working assumption behind Israel’s military preparations has been that, to be worth mounting, a strike must be likely to delay Tehran’s nuclear capabilities by at least two years. But given the wide geographic dispersion of Iran’s atomic facilities–combined with the limits of Israel’s air armada–the Jewish State can expect to push back the Iranian program only by a matter of months — a year at most, according to the official, who attributed the estimate to the Atomic Energy Commission that Israel has charged with assessing the likely effect of a strike.

That assessment comes as no surprise to military experts both inside and outside Israel.  ”That’s a perfectly logical calculation, for somebody who actually knows how Israel assesses this,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Perhaps the most respected military analyst working stateside, Cordesman went on for a while in our telephone interview about how weary he’d grown of reading back-of-the-envelope estimates of “former Israeli officials.”  The reality, he says, is that the decisive, actual capabilities are known only to the military professionals who have the details in front of them.  Even then, the course of action – in this case, whether Israel will launch the attack it has spent more than a decade equipping and training its military for — will be determined by more than strictly military matters:

Israel is going to act strategically. It’s going to look at the political outcome of what it says and does, not simply measure this in terms of some computer game and what the immediate tactical impact is.

What everyone agrees, however, is that as formidable as the Israeli Air Force is, it simply lacks the capacity to mount the kind of sustained, weeks-long aerial bombardment required to knock down Iran’s nuclear program, with the requisite pauses for damage assessments followed by fresh waves of bombing.  Without forward platforms like air craft carriers, Israel’s air armada must rely on mid-air refueling to reach targets more than 1,000 miles away, and anyone who reads Israel’s order of battle sees it simply doesn’t have but a half dozen or so.  Another drawback noted by analysts is Israel’s inventory of bunker-busting bombs, the sort that penetrate deep into concrete or rock that shield the centrifuge arrays at Natanz and now Fordow, near Qum.  Israel has loads of GBU-28s, which might penetrate Natanz. But only the U.S. Air Force has the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator that could take on Fordow, the mountainside redoubt where critics suspect Iran would enrich uranium to military levels.

Still, Israel could launch a surprise strike of a single wave and do significant damage.  And sometime this year it probably will, according to the Israeli author of  ”Will Israel Attack Iran?” the New York Times Magazine story that went online Wednesday.  The piece begins in the high-rise apartment of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and more or less maintains that perspective throughout.  The bottom line is attributed not to an individual or institution but to a state: “Israel believes that these platforms have the capacity to cause enough damage to set the Iranian nuclear project back by three to five years.”

It’s also entirely possible, of course, that Israel’s credible threat to go it alone is both sincere and, at the same time, understood as a wonderfully effective motivator for sanctions and other coercive measures short of war. (Indeed, amid another round of Strait of Hormuz threats by Iranian politicians, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared today that his country was ready to talk about its nuclear program–though he insisted it was not going to give it up.) The world paid a lot more attention than it might have to the Nov. 8 report of the IAEA — the one detailing Iran’s efforts to prepare a nuclear weapon — because in the fortnight before its release, Israel fairly thrummed with debate over whether it should launch an attack.  There’s surely a limit how many times the threat can be made and remain credible. Already, the dynamic between Jerusalem and Washington is being compared to Fred and Grady in  ”Sanford and Son” — “Hold me back!”  But as enriched uranium piles up inside the mountain outside Qum, the calendar may well provide the suspense.