WarSclerotic

Netanyahu Says Military Strength Guarantees Israeli Security – Businessweek.

By Jonathan Ferziger

Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who yesterday announced plans to visit the U.S. in March, said turmoil in neighboring Arab states and threats from Iran show that Israel must build up its military.

“In such a region, the only thing that ensures our existence, security and prosperity is our strength,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet in Jerusalem in remarks broadcast on Israel Radio. “We are obligated to continue to develop the military, economic and social strength of the state of Israel.”

Israeli leaders have been warning publicly that time is running out for a military strike that could stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. U.S. President Barack Obama said on NBC News yesterday that “our preferred solution is diplomatic but we’re not going to take any actions off the table.”

“I don’t think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do,” Obama told NBC. Obama said the two countries have “closer military and intelligence consultation than ever before” and “we are going to work in lockstep to try to solve this, hopefully diplomatically.”

Netanyahu will visit Washington in early March and speak at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to an announcement. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman arrives in the U.S. today for a series of meetings with government officials, his office said.

The Israeli prime minister clashed with Obama during a visit to the White House last May over the issue of negotiating borders with the Palestinians. He was later given 29 standing ovations when he addressed a joint meeting of Congress.

Iranian Cruise Missile

Iran has said it won’t give up its nuclear program, which it says is for civilian purposes and not for developing weapons. The country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Feb. 3 that a strike would damage U.S. interests in the Middle East “10 times over,” the Associated Press reported.

Iran has been developing its arsenal of conventional weapons and has started to mass produce a new, short-range, naval cruise missile, the Zafar, Tehran Times reported, citing Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi.

The Zafar is a short-range, anti-ship, radar-guided cruise missile which can be installed on various types of vessels and is able to hit small- and medium-size targets with high precision, Vahidi said, according to the newspaper.

Referring to Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that will be cut, Khamenei said in his Friday, Feb. 3, sermon that “if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will help.”

The acting commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brigadier-General Hossein Salami, said yesterday that “any location that may be used by the enemies to launch an attack against Iran will face retaliatory aggression by units of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.” His remarks were reported by the state-run Fars news agency.

Sarkozy

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a political journal that Iran may face military action by Israel if it doesn’t stop its threats and nuclear program.

“We know that some in Israel are seriously considering” military intervention, Sarkozy said in an interview with the quarterly Politique Internationale published yesterday. “If Iran continues its senseless race to get the bomb and continues to threaten its neighbors, we are facing the risk of a military intervention,” he said.

At a security conference in Munich, Germany, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu yesterday said a military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations “will create a disaster.” Davutoglu said negotiations between Iran and the West would be preferable to military action.

Barak’s ‘Operation’

Netanyahu told his Cabinet that Middle East peace efforts also require Israel to bolster its military.

“This is the only guarantee for the existence of peace and the only defense for Israel should the peace unravel,” Netanyahu said. “Developing Israel’s strength is this government’s main issue.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Feb. 2 that Israel must consider conducting “an operation” before Iran reaches an “immunity zone,” referring to Iran’s goal of protecting its uranium enrichment and other nuclear operations by moving them to deep underground facilities.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declined to comment directly on a report by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June. Panetta and other U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Israel not to act alone.

–With assistance from Ladane Nasseri in Dubai, Jonathan Tirone in Munich, Helene Fouquet in Paris and Hans Nichols and Roxana Tiron in Washington. Editors: Louis Meixler, Ann Hughey.

In Israel, Talk of Attacking Iran Transcends Idle Chatter – NYTimes.com.

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Israelis like to say that when it comes to military and security operations, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know. But the intense and increasingly public debate about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities is challenging that piece of conventional wisdom.

The standard view has been that successful attacks rely on secrecy and surprise, so the more talk there is about an operation, the less likely it will occur.

One year ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to support that theory. He told foreign journalists that Iran briefly stopped working on a nuclear weapon only once, in 2003, because that was when the United States attacked Iraq, and Iran feared it might be next.

“The paradox,” Mr. Netanyahu said then, “is that if there is a credible military option, you won’t have to use it.”

In other words, the more noise you make about war, the less likely you will have to resort to it.

But few who have spent time with Israel’s decision makers in recent months have come away believing that the talk of a military assault is merely a well-scripted act of public diplomacy. It is that, to be sure, but there is more. It is also a window into the government’s thinking.

Israel believes that its threats to attack Iran have been the catalyst that has pushed much of the world to agree to harsh sanctions on Iran’s energy and banking sectors, sanctions that otherwise would not have been agreed to. It believes further that the Iranian economy is fragile and the popularity of the Tehran government is low, so that there is a small chance the sanctions could force a change of policy or a political crisis in Iran.

But Israel’s top leaders also worry that the sanctions are too late and that, in the end, a military assault is the only way to accomplish their goal — stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. So the talk in this crisis is not made instead of action, but in addition to it — and perhaps as a prelude to it.

This was clear again last Thursday evening when the defense minister, Ehud Barak, spoke publicly about what he viewed as the existential nature of the Iranian issue. He said the decisions he and his colleagues faced today were “no less fateful” than those facing the Zionist leaders who founded Israel in 1948 or those just before and during the wars of 1967 and 1973.

“The leader has to decide when to act and when to wait, when and what to declare and when to keep silent,” Mr. Barak told the annual Herzliya Conference devoted to Israel’s security.

He said that never in Israel’s history had a topic of such import been debated with such thoroughness and frankness as this one. An Iran with nuclear weapons, he asserted, would be “far more complex, dangerous and costly in blood and money than stopping it today would be.”

“Those who say ‘later,’ may find that later is too late,” he warned, and added, “We mean what we say.”

Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, but the United States, European states and Israel believe that Iran’s goal is to build weapons. Israel is more worried than the others, however, because Iran has singled it out, calling it a “tumor” that should be removed, and the government in Tehran finances and arms violent anti-Israel groups.

Opinions in Israel, however, are far from unanimous on the idea of an assault. The military establishment is unenthusiastic, and that includes several of the most important generals, active and retired. Many reject the conclusion that Mr. Barak and Mr. Netanyahu have embraced, that an Israeli attack would produce only a limited and bearable conflict.

Alex Fishman, a military analyst for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, wrote on Sunday that a former commander of the air force, Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliahu, likened the situation to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when President John F. Kennedy threatened to bomb Cuba if Soviet nuclear missiles were not removed from there.

The Cuban crisis stood on three legs, he said: a naval blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States, military threats and a diplomatic channel of dialogue that allowed the Soviets ultimately to back down. The Iranian crisis, General Ben-Eliahu was quoted as saying, has two of those legs — sanctions and military threats — but it is far from clear that it has the needed diplomatic channel.

The discussion here of an Israeli attack has grown so loud lately that some now worry that it has become counterproductive as a diplomatic tool. Amos Yadlin, a retired general who used to direct military intelligence in Israel, said on the radio on Sunday that it was time to quiet that talk.

“These statements have reached the point where they have crossed the line from bringing benefit and are beginning to cause damage,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. I saw on an Iranian Web site this morning thoughts like, ‘If this is the situation, maybe we should attack first.’ I think there is a danger of escalation that will get out of control. Right now we should do what Israel knows how to do well — keep quiet.”

Israel’s intentions toward Iran remain unclear – latimes.com.

A worker rides a bike in front of the reactor building at the Bushehr nuclear power plant near Bushehr, Iran, in this 2010 photo. (Majid Asgaripour, Mehr News Agency / February 5, 2012)

Analysts differ on whether Israel’s threat of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is a bluff to spur tougher sanctions, or a real warning.

By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

6:24 PM PST, February 5, 2012

Reporting from Jerusalem

Israel Not Preparing to Attack Iran, Obama Says – NYTimes.com.

By SCOTT SHANE

President Obama said Sunday that he did not believe Israel was preparing to attack Iran to disrupt its nuclear program and that diplomacy remained the “preferred solution” to resolving the standoff over what Western leaders believe is Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, broadcast before the Super Bowl on Sunday night, the president also said that administration officials “don’t see any evidence” that Iran had the “intentions or capabilities” to mount an attack on United States soil in retaliation for a strike on its nuclear facilities.

Asked by Mr. Lauer if he deserved a second term, Mr. Obama said he did, despite the slow economic recovery.

“I deserve a second term, but we’re not done,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve made progress, and the thing right now is to just make sure we don’t start turning in a new direction that could throw that progress off.”

Much of the interview, however, focused on the issue of Iran.

Mr. Obama’s remarks appeared to be intended to ratchet down emotions after a series of alarming public statements and reports. Leon E. Panetta, the defense secretary, did not dispute a report last week by David Ignatius of the Washington Post that Mr. Panetta believed Israel might strike Iran this spring.

And on Tuesday, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., said in testimony to the Senate that the apparent plot to kill the Saudi envoy in Washington showed that Iranian leaders “have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Mr. Obama said he shared Israel’s concern about a nuclear-armed Iran.

“I don’t think Israel has made a decision. I think they, like us, believe that Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program,” Mr. Obama said in the interview, broadcast live from the White House. “Until they do, I think Israel rightly is going to be very concerned, and we are as well.”

Mr. Obama noted that his administration had worked to escalate sanctions against Iran. “We have mobilized the international community in a way that is unprecedented, and they are feeling the pinch. They are feeling the pressure,” he said.

In keeping with longstanding American policy, Mr. Obama did not rule out military action by the United States if diplomacy failed and if Iran moved close to building a nuclear bomb.

“I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating an arms race, a nuclear arms race, in a volatile region,” he said.

He declined to describe conversations between American and Israeli officials, but said that “we are going to make sure we work in lock step and work to resolve this, hopefully diplomatically.”

Syria’s most senior defector predicts Assad’s army collapse.

Sunday, 05 February 2012

General Mustafa al-Sheikh said the Syrian army could soon meet a dead-end in its violent crackdown on dissent. (Reuters)

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The most senior Syrian army defector has said that Bashar al-Assad’s army is close to collapse this month.

“The army will collapse during February,” General Mustafa al-Sheikh told The Telegraph in his first full-length newspaper interview.

“The reasons are the shortage of Syrian army personnel, which even before March 15 last year did not exceed 65 percent. The proportion of equipment that was combat ready did not exceed that, due to a shortage of spare parts.” General Sheikh added.

“The Syrian army combat readiness I would put at 40 per cent for hardware and 32 per cent for personnel.

“They are sending in elements from the Shabiha (militia) and the Alawite sect to compensate, but this army is unable to continue more than a month. Some elements of the army are reaching out to the FSA to help them to defect.”

General Sheikh also said the crisis threatens to disturb the rest of the Arab world.

“The situation is now very dangerous and threatens to explode across the whole region, like a nuclear reaction,” he said.

General Sheikh fled the army after 37 years of service when the Assad regime’s crackdown on anti-government turned violent, now resulting in the death of more than 6,000 people since protests began in mid-March.

He said what pushed him to leave had been a sexual assault incident, in which soldiers took turns to attack a young bride at a village near the town of Hama.

He believes the army has become a “crazy killing machine,” and that without a solution within a fortnight, “the whole region will flare up,” the Telegraph reported.

“There is no time,” he said. “There is a serious acceleration under way due to the collapse of the army and the security system.

“We want very urgent intervention, outside of the security council due to the Russian veto. We want a coalition similar to what happened in Kosovo and the Ivory Coast.”

Analysis: Pilot over Auschwitz – maybe Iran to… JPost – Defense.