WarSclerotic

The Days After – Forward.com.

Editorial

The new year begins with a blizzard of stories, reports, analyses and exhortations about the threat of a nuclear Iran and the means — if they exist — to stop it. For now, we will leave it to the experts to argue over whether a military strike can be effective, prosecuted by Israel alone or with some assistance, acknowledged or not, from the United States. Our concern for the moment is more political and civic: What happens the days after? And is the public ready for the consequences?

By public, we mean both Israelis and Americans. For even though Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has made it clear that it will go it alone if necessary in preventing what it considers an existential threat, Israel’s actions will inevitably draw in the United States. We ought not to pretend otherwise. American lives will be at risk of retaliation, just as Israelis will be, just as the citizens in both countries will bear the cost of regional chaos, disruption of the oil supply and potential terrorist reprisals.

And is the public ready? Not so far.

First, Israel. A November 2011 poll commissioned by Haaretz found the public there evenly split — 41% in favor of an attack, 39% opposed, the rest undecided. A Brookings Institution poll released in December found a similar divide, with 43% of Israeli Jews opposed and 41% supportive. Israel’s Arab population, however, is far more negative about an attack, and when its opinions are included in the survey (as they should be), the balance shifts, with more Israelis opposing. Given the ubiquitious debate on the issue in the Israeli media and the aggressive stance of government officials, this communal ambiguity is not insignificant — it either means leaders have still not done enough to educate their public about the danger of a nuclear Iran, or people know and are still opposed.

This is a significant point because Israel’s readiness to sustain the consequences of Iranian retaliation is reportedly one of the conditions that must be met before an attack is launched. In his recent New York Times Magazine cover story, Ronen Bergman, a respected Israeli analyst and journalist, argued that Israeli leaders “have grappled with questions of how it will manage the repercussions” by strengthening the country’s civil defenses, holding civilian disaster exercises and distributing gas masks to the population.

But in a subsequent interview with the Forward, Bergman walked back from those assertions, and even some Israelis who favor an attack and believe it will happen this year bemoan the shortage of shelters and gas masks, and the overall lack of preparation. Meir Dagan and Rafi Eitan, former leaders in the Mossad who have been outspoken in their opposition to a pre-emptive strike against Iran, also have said flatly that the homefront is not ready.

Neither are Americans. Polls here routinely show that Americans have no appetite for yet another conflict with yet another country, despite the belligerant swagger heard on the Republican presidential campaign trail.

Of course, strong leadership looks beyond polls and public recrimination to take the courageous moves essential for survival, and it may be that both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama, separately or in concert, decide that the costs of inaction are too lethal. But leadership also must do all it can to minimize the collatoral damage of a strike, and there, it seems, while Obama has mobilized strong international support for sanctions that appear to be having an effect, Netanyahu has fallen short.

If Iran is the greatest threat to Israel’s survival, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the 21st-century Adolf Hitler, if Israel stands in the shadows of a second Holocaust, then one would expect the prime minister to do all he could to strengthen Israel’s standing in the world community and take other, serious distractions off the agenda, or at least minimize their presence. Yet despite entreaties by the United States. and many others allies, Netanyahu continues to employ stalling tactics in peace negotiations with the Palestinians, while extending the reach of settlements in disputed territory and declining to engage in the sort of tension-easing offerings that could help win diplomatic friends.

Those who support attacking Iran sooner rather than later argue that even the worst-case scenario for the days after could not be as horrific as the specter of a nuclearized nation run by a maniacal, anti-Western dictator unleashing its own retaliation, engaging its terrorist proxies to do so or triggering an “accidental Armageddon,” in Jeffrey Goldberg’s words. This is an awful choice, and a fair reading of history leaves little opportunity to see what genuinely could have made a difference.

But gone are the days when elected governments can act unilaterally in defiance of their publics. The Arab Spring and its counterparts are messy and inconclusive, but the forces they represent, compounded by the reach of social media and rising expectations, are very likely unstoppable. This is all the more reason for Israeli leaders to mean what they say and say what they mean to a public that remains skeptical, unprepared and anxious for what might be its greatest challenge yet.

HYPE OR REALITY: WILL ISRAEL ATTACK IRAN BEFORE THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? « The Race for Iran.

Posted on February 2nd, 2012

Today, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius devoted his column, see here, to growing concerns within the Obama Administration that “Israel will attack Iran militarily over the next few months.”  Ignatius describes U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as believing “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June—before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb.”  Ignatius goes on to note,

“Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon—and only the U.S. could then stop them militarily.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.”

Ignatius’ column comes, of course, on the heels of the publication of Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman’s article in the current New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Will Israel Attack Iran?”, see here, in which Bergman concludes, “After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012.”  In our own conversations, around Washington and elsewhere, we are hearing many of the same expressions of concern echoed by Ignatius—the American military, in particular, is increasingly inclined to believe that Israel will strike, perhaps even earlier than the time frame suggested by Panetta.

We will consider below various strategic and political factors affecting an Israeli decision to attack Iran.  The immediate, tactical variable driving Israel’s apparent push toward war is the ongoing installation of centrifuges in the new enrichment facility at Fordo, near Qom.  The Fordo facility is, according to reports, located inside a small mountain, making it very difficult to destroy from the air, at least not without using nuclear weapons.  The installation and operation of centrifuges at Fordo is proceeding under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, but, from an Israeli perspective, that does not matter—for it is Fordo that is creating the “zone of immunity” (the phrase, it seems, was coined by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak) over which the Israelis are so agitated.

All of the relevant unclassified assessments and, it would seem, the U.S. military believe that Israel would strike Iranian nuclear facilities primarily from the air.  The operation would be at the outermost levels of Israel’s military capability.  The number of Israeli strike aircraft that can operate at the necessary ranges (assuming no problems with aerial refueling) is such that Israeli forces could not strike very many targets inside Iran.  For Natanz (Iran’s first and most developed enrichment site) as well as Fordo, Israeli pilots would have to hit their aim points not just with precise aim but also with precise timing, tightly sequencing their bombs so that the blasts penetrate deeply enough to damage their intended targets.  To be sure, multiple sources have told us over the past several years that the Israeli air force has been practicing this sort of mission intensively.  Nevertheless, with Fordo now in the picture, reports, e.g., see here, that Israel has set up a new commando unit charged with carrying out missions “deep inside enemy territory” suggest that the Israeli attack plan might include the deployment of commando forces on the ground, with the assignment to fight their way into the new facility and ensure that it was truly destroyed.

All of these considerations have made us skeptical that the Israelis would take a decision to strike Iranian nuclear targets on their own—and to do so in the face of nearly universal assessments that even a maximally successful attack would not inflict that much damage on Iran’s nuclear program.  Periodically intense speculation about an Israeli military campaign against the Iranian program has seemed to us as highly useful for leveraging the United States and its international partners to impose ever tighter sanctions against the Islamic Republic, launch ever more covert operations against Iran, and so on.  But actually to decide to strike, with all of the attendant and enormous risks—for Israel, for oil prices and the world economy, and for America’s position in the Middle East—has seemed to us a low-probability outcome.

We remain skeptical that the Israelis will take such a decision.  No less than Jeffrey Goldberg noted, in commenting on Bergman’s article, that the same sources which persuaded Bergman that Israel will attack in 2012 had persuaded Goldberg, in 2010, that Israel would strike Iran by July 2011.

However, we must note that Israeli “spin” (if spin is all it remains) about the risk of an attack has reached levels and taken forms that we have not seen in several years.  So, we thought it timely to re-evaluate the factors that might plausibly lead Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli leaders to opt for preventive war.  Beyond development of the Fordo facility, three factors strike us as especially relevant in this regard.

–The first is the prospect of President Obama’s re-election.  Israelis with access to the Prime Minister’s office tell us that Netanyahu and his inner circle have long believed that Obama is politically vulnerable.  From this perspective, ordering an Israeli strike before the U.S. presidential election in November could seem the “smart” play:  it would be very hard for Obama to try to distance himself from the Israeli action (something that, according to Ignatius, the Obama Administration seems to believe it can do) without seriously jeopardizing his re-election; at the same time, if Obama were to win re-election, it is better, from an Israeli perspective, to have this potentially unpleasant business of an illegal war against Iran out of the way before he is sworn in for a second term.  (Recall that, the last time that the Israeli military invaded Gaza, it did so at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, to ensure that the campaign would be over before Obama was first sworn in.)

–The second factor is Israeli perceptions of the strategic fallout from the Arab spring.  Mubarak’s fall, especially, has spooked Israeli political and military leaders.  One might think that, at such a time of tumultuous change and uncertainty in the region, Israel would be best served by hunkering down and staying out of (more) trouble (than it is already in).  But, based on a lot of experience dealing with Israeli national security professionals while we served in the U.S. government, we can envision a scenario in which Israeli decision-makers persuade themselves that this is precisely the time to re-establish the credibility of what Israeli elites like to call their “deterrent edge”—a misuse of the term deterrence, for it really refers to Israel’s ability to use force first, whenever, wherever, and for whatever purpose it wants.

–Third, with the withdrawal of American military personnel and assets from Iraq, Iraq is left with, effectively, no air defense capability—which means that Israeli planes would have a more-or-less clean shot into Iran through Iraqi airspace.

We are going to watch this one very, very closely.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Khamenei: Zionist regime is a cancer – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Tehran’s supreme leader promises Iranian people the world will soon be rid of ‘cancerous Zionist regime’; says Iran will help anyone fighting Israel

Dudi Cohen

“The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed,” Teheran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday.

Khamenei addressed thousands of worshipers attending a Tehran University prayer service marking the Fajr celebration.

The crowd met the statement by chanting “Death to Israel.”

The Iranian Revolutionbrought freedom and dignity to Iranian people and “destroyed the anti-Islamic regime, and brought Islamic regime instead… Dictatorship was changed to democracy,” he said.

Khamenei further downplayed the possibility of a United States’ strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities: “A war would be 10-times deadlier for the Americans… These threats indicate America’s weakness and the Americans need to know that the more threats they make, the more they damage themselves.”

He also dismissed the West’s sanctions on Iran, saying that they will not make Iran forfeit its nuclear ambitions: “They said they would impose crippling sanctionsto punish us, but the sanctions are good for us – they make us rely on our own talented people.”

He also reiterated Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, saying that “when the time comes we will execute our warning.”

Khamenei also addressed the Arab Spring, saying he believed the Palestinians will soon follow the example of the Arab world. He promised that “Iran would assist any country or organization that would fight the Zionist regime, which is now weaker than ever,” he said.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, said that Iran has helped Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas in their fights against Israel.

Khamenei warns over military str… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Articles: How Israel Keeps Us Safe.

By Karin McQuillan

Canada plays dangerous game with stance on Iran.

The wizened mullahs who rule Iran are odious and unhinged. But are they suicidal? Would they take actions that would see themselves, their country and millions of their people burn in the nuclear fire?

This is a question we must ask as the Canadian government continues to quietly but unmistakably set the stage for eventual involvement in a looming Israeli military campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. If it happens, the already tenuous balance of chaos in the Middle East will crack like an eggshell, with unknown consequences.

First, let’s establish this: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Minister John Baird are indeed laying the table – using very careful, deliberate language.

First came Harper’s Jan. 16 interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge. Said the PM: ” … these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious world view, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes.”

Then this past week came a foray in the Globe and Mail by Baird, in which he responded to an earlier article by left-leaning commentator Gerald Kaplan.

Baird’s piece was intriguing for several reasons. For one thing it was well written and subtly argued, belying his popular image (until recently) as a mere partisan attack dog.

More interesting though was the time the minister spent on establishing that the Iranian leadership is, in fact, insane to the point of being suicidal.

Baird writes: “Their (Iran’s) stated goal is the complete destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Will they carry out their promise? No one can be one hundred per cent sure. But if the 20th Century taught us anything, it is that when fanatics issue clear threats, it is smart to take them at their word.”

If there were clear evidence that Iran was imminently poised to deploy a weapon of mass destruction, chemical or nuclear, against Israel, the West would be entirely right to prevent it using any means necessary.

But that is not the case, now. Those who compare the current situation with Iran to that with Nazi Germany in 1939 ignore this: By the time war broke out, Hitler had already annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. Iran’s leaders periodically make outrageously bellicose noises, but there is no evidence they plan to use weapons of mass destruction on Israel, or anyone else.

The reason for that is simple: Were they to do so, they and their country would be destroyed. Israel possesses an estimated 200 nuclear weapons. The United States possesses thousands, and could within a few hours turn all of Iran into a radioactive pyre. By what logic can anyone assume the Iranians would unilaterally deploy nukes if they had them?

Far more plausible is that, in seeking nuclear weapons, the Iranians intend to forever alter the balance of power in the Middle East, creating for themselves an insurance policy of the kind enjoyed by Pakistan, North Korea, India and others. North Korea, charter member of Bush’s axis of evil, went nuclear and was not invaded. Saddam Hussein had no WMD and was deposed and hanged. Gadhafi gave up his WMD and was deposed and shot.

Neither Pakistan nor North Korea can be said to be stable, clearly. Would either country deploy a nuke, knowing the retaliation that would follow?

And why would Iran be any different?

The base-case question, it seems to me, is this: Is maintaining the current balance of forces worth igniting a conflict that may be impossible to contain? And would any conflict, short of invasion and occupation, in fact maintain that balance of forces, or merely accelerate Iran’s underground nuclear development? Is the West prepared to make war on, invade and occupy Iran?

It is clearly not in Canada’s interest for Iran to go nuclear. But neither is it in our interest for Israel to launch World War Three.

Punitive economic sanctions, together with a proffered carrot of re-admittance into the community of nations, will change Iranian behaviour, given time. That should be the focus of Canada’s Iran policy.

‘Certain countries’ could take Iran nuclear matter into their own hands, U.K. official says – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Deputy PM Nick Clegg would not speculate whether or not Britain would take part in the military conflict expected to erupt following an attack of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

By The Associated Press

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Thursday he has concerns there could be a military conflict with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, refusing to say whether or not Britain would “participate” in such a clash.

Clegg was quoted as telling The House Magazine, a weekly British political journal, that he feared Israel could carry out a pre-emptive strike on Iran amid suspicion in the West that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

	Liberal Demoracts leader Nick Clegg
	Photo by: AP

Tensions have been heightened over Iran’s intentions, leading UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday to warn Israel that the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program must be resolved peacefully.

Asked if he feared Israel could launch an attack against Iran, Clegg — leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior member of Britain’s coalition government, acknowledged he had concerns.

“Of course I worry that there will be a military conflict and that certain countries might seek to take matters into their own hands,” Clegg was quoted as saying.

He said Britain had been attempting to demonstrate “that there are very tough things we can do which are not military steps in order to place pressure on Iran.”

Last week, the European Union agreed to tougher sanctions, including an embargo on Iranian oil imports.

However, Clegg said he would not speculate on whether “Britain would participate” if the standoff eventually led to a military response.

“I think of course you don’t in a situation like this take any options off the table,” Clegg was quoted as saying. “When you are in a major standoff with a country which appears to have a sort of hostile intent on these issues, of course you don’t do that. But equally we have been very very clear that we are straining every single sinew to resolve this through a combination of pressure and engagement.”

Iran has in recent weeks claimed it is ready to resume talks with six world powers over its nuclear program.

Postscript: Oops, sorry! – JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

The Iranians did not invent suicide bombing, but they certainly promoted its use, especially by their surrogates against Israel.

By REUTERS

Barak: If sanctions fail, Iran m… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By YAAKOV KATZ 02/03/2012 00:47

Ya’alon says Tehran is developing missiles capable of reaching the United States.

By Rauf Mohseni/Reuters

Claiming that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities are vulnerable and that a military option is real and ready to be used if sanctions fail, Israel’s top political and military leadership issued a series of warnings to the Islamic Republic on Thursday in some of the most candid comments on the nuclear threat in years.

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said there was a consensus among many nations today that if diplomacy and sanctions failed to stop Iran, a military strike should be launched.

“If sanctions don’t achieve the desired goal of stopping [Iran’s] military nuclear program, there will be a need to consider taking action,” he declared.

Barak said he saw Iran as nearing a stage “which may render any physical strike as impractical.”

“A nuclear Iran will be more complicated to deal with, more dangerous and more costly in blood than if it were stopped today,” he said. “In other words, he who says in English ‘later’ may find that ‘later is too late.’”

Barak’s threat was backed up earlier in the day by Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon who said that Iran needed to be stopped “one way or another” and that a credible military threat needed to be on the table, a message also delivered by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz on Wednesday evening.

Ya’alon, a former IDF chief of staff, dismissed arguments that underground Iranian nuclear sites such as the Fordow facility might be invulnerable to bunker-buster bombs.

“From my military experience, human beings will know how to penetrate any installation protected by other human beings. Ultimately all the facilities can be hit,” he said.

Earlier in the day, OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said that Iran has created a stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used to manufacture four nuclear weapons.

Kochavi said that once Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the decision to go to the “breakout stage” and begin enriching uranium to military-grade levels, it would take the Iranians a year to make a crude device and another year or two to manufacture a nuclear warhead that can be installed on a ballistic missile.

Iran, he said, has obtained 4 tons of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and another 100 kilograms enriched to 20%.

“Iran’s motivations are: to create hegemony in the region; deterrence; and to become an international player,” Kochavi said. “They claim that they are developing the program for peaceful purposes but our intelligence shows without a doubt that Iran is continuing its work on developing a nuclear weapon.”

Israel’s increased threats came as The Washington Post reported that US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta believes Israel will attack Iran in April, May or June.

According to the report, written by the paper’s senior opinion writer David Ignatius, Panetta is concerned that Israel will attack before Iran enters the so-called “immunity zone” when its nuclear facilities will be heavily fortified and a military strike will no longer succeed.

The term “immunity zone” has been coined by Barak in reference to Iran’s recent decision to activate the Fordow enrichment facility that is buried close to 100 meters under a mountain near the city of Qom. Barak has said in the past that Fordow could not be destroyed in a conventional military strike.

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action,” Ignatius wrote. According to the report, Israel’s strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities could last five days, which would be followed by a United Nations-brokered cease-fire.

In his speech, Ya’alon revealed that Iran had been developing a missile with a range of 10,000 km. that would have been capable of reaching the United States. He said that the missile was destroyed, though, in the mysterious explosion that rocked a missile base near Tehran on November 12, killing 17 Iranian troops, including the father of Iran’s missile program.

According to Ya’alon, the missile was based on a solid fuel propellant and would have significantly increased the Islamic Republic’s offensive capabilities.

Ya’alon also said that Turkey is helping Iran bypass the sanctions that have been imposed on it in recent months.

According to the vice premier, who was in the United States last week for talks on Iran with senior officials from the Obama administration, Turkey was helping Iran circumvent the sanctions by allowing it to use its banking system.

Ya’alon said that the Israeli government was committed to stopping Iran’s nuclear program “in one way or another.”

“We need a credible military option. The Iranians understand the West has capabilities, but as long as the Iranians don’t think that the West has the political stomach and determination to use it they will not stop,” Ya’alon said. “Currently they don’t think that the world is determined.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

‘Iran successfully launches sate… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

(Better EMP them before they EMP the  States! – JW )

IRNA quotes head of Iranian Space Organization as saying Navid satellite would be placed into orbit between 250, 270 km.

By Marc Israel Sellem