WarSclerotic

Just who’s foiling Jerusalem? – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

For Iran, this is the right time to push for the bomb without fear of an American military sanction.

By Avigdor Haselkorn

What Happens After Israel Attacks Iran | Foreign Affairs.

Since its birth in 1948, Israel has launched numerous preemptive military strikes against its foes. In 1981 and 2007, it destroyed the nuclear reactors of Iraq and Syria, operations that did not lead to war. But now, Israelis are discussing the possibility of another preemptive attack — against Iran — that might result in a wider conflict.

The public debate in Israel about whether Jerusalem should order a strike on Iran’s nuclear program is surprisingly frank. Politicians and policymakers regularly discuss the merits of an attack in public; over the past year, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have sparred regularly and openly with former Mossad director Meir Dagan, the most prominent opponent of an Israeli operation. But much of the conversation is focused on whether Israel should strike, not on what might happen if it does — in other words, the result on the “day after.”

Indeed, the analysis in Israel about the possible effects of an operation against Iran is limited to a small, professional elite, mostly in government and behind closed doors. This intimate circle that does consider scenarios of the “day after” concentrates almost exclusively on what an Iranian response, direct or through proxies, might look like. This is not surprising, given that Israel must worry first and foremost about the immediate military implications of an Iranian counterattack. But in doing so, Israeli policymakers are ignoring several of the potential longer-term consequences of a strike: the preparedness of Israel’s home front; the contours of an Israeli exit strategy; the impact on U.S.-Israel relations; the global diplomatic fallout; the stability of world energy markets; and the outcome within Iran itself. Should Israel fail to openly debate and account for these factors in advance of a strike, it may end up with a strategic debacle, even if it achieves its narrow military goals.

Israeli officials have thought extensively about how the first moves of a military conflict between Jerusalem and Tehran might play out. Ephraim Kam, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and deputy head of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), reflected the general consensus in the security establishment when he wrote in the Institute’s 2010 strategic assessment that Iran may respond in two possible ways to an Israeli attack: missile strikes on Israel, either directly or through allied organizations such as Hezbollah or Hamas; or terror attacks, likely on Israeli targets abroad by Iranians or those proxy groups.

A direct Iranian response would involve a missile barrage from Iran onto Israeli territory, similar to the volley of rockets launched at Israel by Iraq during the first Gulf War. Only one Israeli citizen died then, and it seems that Israeli officials estimate that the damage of a similar Iranian strike would be greater, but still limited. This past November, Ehud Barak, referring to possible direct and proxy-based Iranian retaliation, said that “There is no scenario for 50,000 dead, or 5,000 killed — and if everyone stays in their homes, maybe not even 500 dead.” Barak’s calm also reflects Israel’s previous experience in preempting nuclear threats. Iraq did not respond when Israel destroyed its nuclear facility in 1981, disproving the doomsday predictions made by several Israeli experts prior to the strike, and Syria remained silent when Israel bombed its nascent reactor in 2007.

Israeli policymakers also do not seem particularly concerned about the prospect of a proxy response. They recognize that Hezbollah, as it did in 2006, can target Israel with a large number of rockets. Yet in an interview with Ronen Bergman in The New York Times late last month, several Israeli experts argued that, regardless of a potential battle with Iran, the probability of an extended conflict with Hezbollah is already high. According to this logic, an attack on Iran would merely hasten the inevitable and might actually be easier to sustain before, not after, Iran acquires nuclear weapons. In addition, the new constraints now operating against Hezbollah — the ongoing revolt in Syria chief among them — might even limit the ability of the organization to harm Israel in a future conflict. Indeed, over the past several months, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has emphasized the group’s independence, saying on February 7 that “the Iranian leadership will not ask Hezbollah to do anything. On [the day of an Israeli attack on Iran], we will sit, think and decide what we will do.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli security establishment remains confident that Iran and its proxies will have trouble staging large-scale attacks on Israeli or Jewish targets abroad. Iran and Hezbollah have done so successfully in the past, most notably in response to Israel’s assassination, in 1992, of Hezbollah’s first secretary general (they are strongly suspected to have directed suicide bombings against the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, respectively). Israeli experts such as Kam agree that such attacks could occur again in the wake of a strike on Iran, but argue that Tehran’s ability to respond is limited, likely due to its own handicaps and the restrictions posed by the post-9/11 global effort against terrorism. They gained support for their theory in mid-February, when, according to preliminary evidence, Iranian agents staged clumsy, botched attacks on Israeli targets in Georgia, India, and Thailand, injuring only one person in New Delhi and ending in humiliation in Bangkok, with one operative accidentally blowing off his legs.

Balanced against these threats is the expected benefit of an Israeli bombing campaign. According to Bergman, the Israeli defense community estimates that it can inflict a three-to-five-year delay on the Iranian nuclear project. But in its optimistic estimation about the success of an attack and about Israel’s ability to deter any response, it has failed to address, at least publicly, several crucial factors.

Although Israel has buttressed its home-front preparedness since its 2006 war with Hezbollah, it seems that it must do much more to ready the country for the rocket and missile attacks that it is expected to endure after a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. In a move that Israelis are now sardonically mocking, the former minister for home front defense, Matan Vilnai, left his post in February to become Israel’s ambassador to China. Before departing, Vilnai staged an angry outburst during a Knesset subcommittee meeting on February 7 over the lack of homeland preparedness, creating such a stir that the chairman had to end the meeting. Data presented at the session reveal the source of Vilnai’s frustration: a quarter of all Israelis do not have the most basic physical shelter needed to weather sustained rocket fire. Gas masks, a basic safety measure against a chemical attack, are available to only 60 percent of the population. And Vilnai’s former ministry lacks the bureaucratic muscle to win the resources and funds necessary to improve the situation. When the Netanyahu administration established the ministry early last year, the Israeli journalist Ofer Shelah called it “the big lie” because it “has no authority, no independent budget, and no ability to affect national priorities.”

The lack of readiness within Israel is all the more worrisome in light of the fact that Israeli analysts have spent little time discussing an exit strategy. An Israeli strike might follow a version of the previous attacks against the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs, which did not lead to conflict. Or, following the example of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, it might spark a prolonged war. That operation, intended to remove the threat of armed Palestinian groups within two days, instead lasted 18 years, and contributed to the evolution of a new enemy in Hezbollah. Similarly, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 had no clear exit strategy and lasted an unexpected 33 days, ending in confusion. Without serious public discussion about the possibility of a long war with Iran, Israel could enter an extended conflict unprepared to provide for and defend its citizens.

Israeli leaders have also failed to address in public the effect of an Israeli strike on U.S.-Israel relations. There is, of course, much conversation about whether the United States and Israel agree on the need for a strike, and, if so, when it should occur. So far, it seems, Jerusalem and Washington remain united in their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, but are not yet in agreement about the time for military action; indeed, Israel has refused to commit to warning Washington in advance of an attack. Should Israel bomb Iran, it could easily provoke a crisis with or without first informing the United States, especially if the Obama administration has to intervene. Once again, Israeli strategic thinking on the issue is likely informed by the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The attack infuriated the White House, which condemned it and, in punishment, suspended the delivery of some aircraft to Israel. Yet Washington retroactively approved of the strike and restored and even strengthened its relationship with Jerusalem — a process that Netanyahu may expect to repeat itself. The prime minister might also be calculating that, in an election year, Obama would prefer to avoid openly criticizing Israel after an attack.

In addition, the broader diplomatic impact of an Israeli strike has also received little open attention. The former Mossad director Meir Dagan has raised the possibility that an attack might disrupt the existing international pressure on Iran, which is now beginning to place severe strain on the regime, and make it harder for that coalition to re-form in the event that Iran restarts its program. On the whole, however, Israeli leaders have not confronted that possibility, seeming to place faith in the efficacy of the three-to-five year delay that they hope a strike will achieve.

Also largely missing from Israel’s public analysis is the question of how a bombing campaign would affect worldwide energy markets. As a small country with a limited global perspective, Israel rarely needs to consider the international impact of its actions. The few Israeli analysts who have looked into this question have tended to underplay Iran’s intention, and capability, of acting on its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. Last month, for example, Amos Yadlin, the former director of Israel’s military intelligence, and Yoel Guzansky, the former head of the Iran desk of Israel’s national security council, argued in a paper for the INSS that it is highly doubtful that Iran would block the waterway.

That lack of perspective extends to what might happen inside of Iran after a strike. The public discourse about an attack rarely includes any consideration of whether a bombing campaign would galvanize Iranians to rally around the current leadership, ruining any chance of the regime change that might ultimately be necessary to end the threat of a nuclear program. Israel remains unwilling to estimate whether a strike would hurt or help the cause of the dissidents; its failure to predict the Arab Spring has humbled its proclivity for making such forecasts.

And so there is a gap in Israel’s debate about Iran. Although Israeli experts focus heavily on the immediate implications of the “day after,” they neglect, with a few exceptions, the broader repercussions of an attack. Ironically, then, at the core of the elite, scientific calculations regarding an attack on Iran and its aftermath stands a certain kind of fatalism. It is based on the traditional trust that Israelis place in their leaders, and on their sense that open conversation might in fact harm Israeli interests. But the lack of public debate may, in the event of an attack, leave Israel handicapped both in its ability to strike and to defend itself.

In particular, a lack of open discussion leaves the Israel Defense Forces as the primary source of information and analysis on a strike. The IDF, given its narrow focus on the military aspects of an attack, may fail to fully consider its potential political and diplomatic impact. A more public debate might strengthen those in the bureaucracy who are urging the Israeli government to weigh those other factors as carefully as the military planning. The elevation of those voices could then prevent Israeli leaders from operating on the basis of limited information and faulty assumptions. If history is any guide, Israeli policymakers could benefit from such an expansion of the conversation. Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 began with a war plan that the public had not vetted. The operation ended after overwhelming pressure from civil society, a process that took nearly two decades. To avoid a similar strategic blunder in confronting Iran’s nuclear program — either as a result of an attack, or a failure to do so — Israel should give the public a stake in the debate about the “day after” much sooner than that.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iranian voters go to the polls on March 2 to choose their next parliament (Majlis) amid mounting political chaos within the Islamic regime and a potential war.
Their two top figures, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are venting their mutual antipathy with mounting stridency. Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officers are branching out to establish a religious center to challenge the supreme authority of the Qom-based clerical establishment and find a replacement for Khamenei who would place paramount rule of the country into Guards hands.
These violent fluctuations in the destiny of the Islamic Republic’s 80 million inhabitants take place under the potential threat of an attack by Israel – alone or with the United States – to destroy their vaunted nuclear achievements.
Tehran’s counter-threat of a preemptive strike against its “enemies” is a measure of its misgivings, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources.
Khamenei’s axe-men are using all their wiles to thwart the election of contenders from the rival Ahmadinejad’s faction. They accuse the president of diverting vast amounts of state funds valued at millions of dollars to buy votes, sending his supporters on canvassing expeditions to weddings and funerals and staging his own performances on “national” stages attended prominently by his favorite candidates.
Ahmadinejad is “a heretic” – Khamenei, infallible

Ahmadinejad is now accused of propagating – under the influence of his closest adviser Esfandyar Rahim Mashaee – a heretical brand of “Iranian Islam” versus the Supreme Leader’s’ “Arabic Islam.”
This charge has a bizarre ring against the sound and fury of the uprising against the rule of Bashar Assad, Iran’s closest ally.
The president hit back by calling for Ayatollah Khamenei to submit to the oversight of state institutions and jurisdiction of elected bodies.
Khamenei’s backers fought off this demand by declaring the Supreme Leader (Valy-e Faqih – Custodian and Religious Prodigy) above the law and outside any lay jurisdiction.
In the heat of the debate, the extreme fundamentalist cleric Seyyed Abbas Nabavi quoted the Supreme Leader as emphasizing at a closed meeting that on no account would he expose himself to criticism. He cited the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, who limited the authority of the Council of Experts to examining the legality of a Supreme Leader’s election but certainly not sit in judgment on his performance.
His followers are trying to drag Ahmadinejad and his friends into the multi-billion corruption trial which opened last week. The 32 defendants in the dock face death sentences if found guilty. The charge sheet, said by informed sources to run to 12,000 pages, lists some of the president’s closest cronies among the accused.
Ahmadinejad threatened in the past that if his colleagues were incriminated, he would publish the dossiers of scores of senior regime officials guilty of embezzling and robbing state coffers. Khamenei was not deterred from ordering the prosecution to refer two of the president’s closest aides for trial.
Two-thirds of Iran’s factories shut down, enrichment continues regardless

The feud between the two men is exacerbated by Iran’s plunging economy and the shortage of foreign currency in consequence of international sanctions.
Two big industrialists, Reza Qasri and Mehdi Mir-Abdolahyan, disclosed this week that only 38 percent of Iran’s industrial plants are still working; 25 percent have shut down and 17 percent are on their last legs. The factories are perishing for lack of foreign currency to purchase raw materials, the cancellation of state subsidies and the cheap Chinese products flooding the markets.
Not long ago, Ahmadinejad promised five million new jobs within a year. This promise has become farcical in the light of Iran’s empty state treasury.
His unpopularity is such that some circles are demanding not just to keep his supporters out of the new Majlis but to abolish the presidency altogether. They prefer a prime minister appointed by the Supreme Leader instead of an elected president. Khamenei is said to quite fancy the idea.
At the same time, the two rivals agree that even extreme economic deprivation is an acceptable price to pay for the sake of Iran’s national nuclear program. No slowdown is therefore to be expected in response to sanctions. Indeed, Iran continues to expand highly enriched uranium production apace heedless of the damage sanctions are causing its economy.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Jay Carney

A slightly softer breeze blew in from Washington on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “Israel and the United States share the same objective, which is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
But the US controversy with Israel over the Iran question eased by no more than a notch. Carney spoke only for Washington when he went on to say: “There is time and space for diplomacy to work, for the effect of sanctions to result in a change of Iranian behavior.”
While the first sentence of this statement was fair, Jerusalem strongly doubts the availability of time and space for diplomacy to work and does not believe for a moment that sanctions will change Iran’s behavior.
Neither did Carney’s statement represent the understanding Washington and Jerusalem reached in high-powered dialogue this week. Both sides worked hard to apply brakes to the downturn in relations before the dispute over a nuclear Iran exploded into public friction at the White House meeting March 5 between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It was necessary to avoid a brawl during the former’s campaign for re-election.
The key understanding they reached, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report, was for the US and Israel to conduct a joint reevaluation or reassessment of pooled intelligence on Iran’s nuclear progress, after which each side would present its conclusions with a view to working toward agreed action.
Obama and Netanyahu will determine the reevaluation’s upshot

The ultimate decision for crystallizing steps against Iran would be made by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
US National Director of Intelligence James Clapper was due in Israel Thursday, Feb. 23 to kick off the process by talks with Israeli intelligence and military chiefs.
The agreed reassessment would be designed to address the three most pressing issues confronting Jerusalem and Washington:
1. Iran is determined to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and develop a rapid breakout capacity and is forging ahead relentlessly towards these goals. Two interconnected cascades of 174 IR-1 centrifuges each have already been installed at the underground Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) near Qom. Only half (348) are being fed with 20-percent enriched uranium, which UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines classify as Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU). The other half will be activated soon to expand 20 percent enrichment. By producing larger quantities of highly enriched uranium, Iran will shorten the timeline for achieving breakout capacity.
Enriched uranium stocks rise constantly

Raising the level to 90 percent, or weapons grade, would require a minimum of additional work and time.
Tehran’s claim that 20-percent grade uranium was being produced solely for its medical research reactor was knocked down by US Central Intelligence Director David Petraeus, who testified that stocks far exceed this reactor’s needs.
Iran’s accumulating stockpile of HEU, soon to be augmented by increased production at Fordo, will reduce the time needed to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon to six weeks (as debkafile reported exclusively on Feb. 22). From that moment on, Iran can assemble a nuclear bomb or warhead any time the Islamic regime in Tehran so decides.
2. According to additional intelligence input reaching the IAEA in Vienna, the military complex at Parchin is used for experiments simulating various stages of a nuclear explosion.
Therefore, notwithstanding US and European sanctions, Iran is forging ahead without pause to build up its enriched uranium stocks and at the same developing nuclear explosive materials.
Israel believes Iran is just one step short of a nuke

Given these data, Israel regards Iran’s nuclear progress as way past breakout capacity, with only one more stage left to go before the manufacture of an operational nuke. This Israel cannot afford to let happen.
Tuesday, Feb. 21, the IAEA inspection team visiting Tehran cut short its stay after being refused access to Parchin and being stonewalled when its members asked questions about activities at the installation.
3. Tehran also reached breakout point in its military pugnacity Tuesday when Deputy Armed Forces Commander Gen. Mohammad Hejazi suddenly announced that Iran would not wait to be attacked but would strike its enemies first.
Both the US Pentagon and Israel’s high command are taking this threat very seriously.

DEBKA.

Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has come up with a plan for putting a stop to the Syrian bloodbath by Western-Arab military intervention. Last Saturday, Feb. 18, the plan was conveyed to US President Barack Obama’s desk from Paris through confidential intelligence channels.
Before deciding on a response, the US president sent copies to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey with a request for their comments.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly publishes hereunder the first exclusive account of the eight-point Sarkozy plan for Syria from its military and intelligence sources:
1. A group of nations led by the United States will reserve a quarter of Syrian territory (185,180 sq. km) as a safe haven for protecting more than a quarter of the nation’s population (5.5 million people) under a collective air shield.
2. The operation will be exclusively airborne. No foreign boots will touch the ground in Syria. American, Turkish, French, Italian and British Air Force planes will fly out from three Middle East air bases – Incirlik and Diyarbakir in Turkey, where the US maintains substantial air force strength, and the British facility in Akrotiri, Cyprus.
3. France has offered to make its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle available but accepts that without US air power, spy satellites and operational and logistical resources, the operation will not be feasible.
A safe haven under an air shield, off limits to Syrian troops

4. The safe haven will range from Tarkush on Syria’s northern border with Turkey and include the besieged towns of Jabal Al Zaweya, Idlib, Hama, Homs and their outlying villages. Tarkush is now the scene of fierce Syrian military clashes with rebel forces, heavier even than the widely-reported pounding of Homs, because it has become a primary logistics hub for the influx of rebel fighters and arms from Turkey. Syrian forces are fighting to sever this primary rebel supply line.
5. The safe haven will be placed off limits to Syrian military and security personnel and its air space declared a no fly zone. Syrian air intruders will be challenged by the Western fighter-bombers shielding the protected area.
6. The makeup of the coalition force for saving Syria is still a work in progress. Sarkozy has obtained the consent of Britain, Italy, Turkey and Qatar and is in discussion with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Participation of the last two would make it possible to expand the safe haven to southern and eastern Syria, to include the restive towns of Daraa, Deir a-Zour and Abu Kemal.
7. A regional Syrian administration assisted by Western liaison officers will run the the safe haven’s day-to-day affairs. The coalition will take care of the population’s food, medicines and medical care needs.
8. The Western-Arab expedition will not seek Bashar Assad’s ouster as a mission goal or engage in combat with Syrian forces outside the safe haven.
What if Russia steps in to save Assad from collapse?

In the call Sarkozy put through to the White House to explain his plan to Obama, he said he hoped that the safe haven he proposed would be a magnet for large sections of the Syrian army which had not defected but stayed in their quarters and refused to take part in Assad’s savage crackdown in defiance of orders. In the French president’s view, his plan would expedite the collapse of the Assad regime’s military support base and the regime itself.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources review key considerations giving Obama and his senior strategists pause:
– If Assad decides to mount resistance to the coalition scheme, does he have the military resources to do so?
– Can the coalition field enough forces to defend the safe haven against Syrian might?
– What are the political and military ramifications of a possible decision by Moscow to counter the US-led operation by declaring the Damascus region or other parts of Syria Russian-protected areas and deploying the Russian Air Force in defense of the Assad regime?
Eyes in Washington anxiously watched the vigorous exchanges Russian President Dmitry Medvedev conducted Wednesday, Feb. 22, with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to explore a possible alliance for thwarting Western-Arab intervention in Syria.
– Will Iran send forces to fight this intervention? Tehran has repeatedly warned Ankara against allowing the US or NATO powers to use Turkish bases for action against the Assad regime, threatening to strike back at those bases.
– Will Assad carry out his standing threat to set the Middle East on fire and burn Tel Aviv with missiles if his regime is backed up against a wall?
Our Washington sources report that Obama informed Sarkozy Thursday, Feb. 3, the day before the Friends of Syria conference was due to open in Tunis that he needed just a few days to reach a decision on the French military plan.

DEBKA.

Gen. Mohammad Hejazi

The US Pentagon and Israeli High Command are taking Iran’s threat of preemptive military action with the utmost seriousness, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report. Ears pricked up in both places Tuesday, Feb. 21, when Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, Deputy Commander of Iran’s armed forces warned that his government would not wait to be attacked before defending itself. “Our strategy now,” he told the Fars news agency, “is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests… we will act without waiting for their action.”
The source of the threat was also found to be significant. Tehran has never before put forward Gen. Hejazi, Head of the Iranian Armed Forces Operations Division, as the regime’s strategic mouthpiece. As commander of the Basij popular militia in 2009, he showed himself to be ruthless and hardnosed in ordering the crackdown which crushed popular protest against the presidential elections. He was evidently chosen as the right man for delivering a warning with a powerful punch.
Textual analysis of its content brings to light two separate messages for Washington and Jerusalem:
1. Tehran is alert to every US move in the region

The Hejazi warning was intended to tell the Americans: You can’t surprise us, but we can surprise you. We proved as much when we downed the your Sentinel RQ-17 stealth drone over Iran in December 2011 and again when we dogged your aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 14 every inch of the way through the Strait of Hormuz from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman.
You can’t hide your slightest military and naval movement in our vicinity. We have eyes and ears in most of the Persian Gulf emirates as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep us informed of everything you do.
Tehran also seems to believe that the Americans have no resources beyond electronic surveillance for keeping track of events in Iran and following its military, air force and naval movements.
The threat Hejazi conveyed to Washington hinted broadly at Iran’s superior capability for instantaneous response to threatening US moves with attacks on US bases and assets close by – before Washington is aware of the danger.
2. Syrian conflict closes down Tehran’s intelligence sources on Israel

In contrast, Tehran is seriously short of intelligence input and surveillance assets on Israel.
It has no spy satellites over Israel, spy drones capable of covering the distance to the Jewish state or eavesdropping facilities on the spot comparable to its resources in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bahrain.
The Syrian crisis has cut off the flow of Syrian and Hizballah intelligence data on Israel; their resources have been diverted to the task of keeping Bashar Assad a step ahead of the uprising against him and shoring up his regime.
Iran has also lost the feed it received from the Russian electronic early warning and listening station atop Jabal Al Harrah south of Damascus, which covered military and civilian movements in the northern half of Israel as far south as Tel Aviv. Israel was placed on a back burner when the Russian station turned its resources around to collecting data for helping Assad stay afloat.
But most of all, Tehran was saying it could not trust the Russians to share all their intelligence with Iran any more than Israel could count on the Americans to fully expose all the intelligence they had to hand.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources, Gen. Hejazi was delivering Iran’s last warning to Washington and Jerusalem.
It was issued to provide Iran with grounds for claiming international legitimacy for any preemptive military action launched against Israel or American targets as lawful self-defense.

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu and Barak Obama

The first seeds of the US-Israel fall-out on Iran were sown six months ago. They were planted at the United Nations – paradoxically in the middle of a rare honeymoon period.
It was September 21, 2011, and Barak Obama had just delivered one of the warmest pro-Israel speeches ever heard from a serving US President at the General Assembly. For good measure, Washington leaked reports of a secret shipment of 55 heavy US GBU-37 bunker busters to Israel. Obama also promised to veto Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral application for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood when it came before the UN Security Council.
Everything in Washington appeared to be going swimmingly for Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – that is, until the moment he asked the US president if he had a reply for the plan Israel submitted earlier that month for preempting Iran’s nuclear program.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources reveal that at that point the sunny day suddenly clouded over.
The plan is described by those sources as the most detailed and far-reaching strategic-military program Israel had ever handed a US president. It was built around a secret Israeli undertaking to refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, or any other Iranian target, on one condition: that the United States promised to lead an offensive against Iran in the event of one of the following happening: The start of Iranian enrichment of uranium up to weapons grade; the building of a nuclear bomb; the development of nuclear warheads adapted to ballistic missiles; or the sinking of more underground bunkers as fortresses for Iran nuclear facilities.
(About the two eventualities which have since materialized, more in a separate article.)
Six months of mutual US-Israeli distrust

Netanyahu offered to counter this US pledge with a commitment to obey to the letter any guidelines and directives Washington issued with regard to Iran and its Middle East allies, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas.
For instance, if Israel suffered a missile attack in reprisal for the US strike against Iran, its government would follow US orders to retrain from hitting back at the aggressors.
Obama answered Netanyahu on that occasion with a query of his own: What about my counter-proposal?
He was referring to the US request for a secret Israeli commitment to refrain from military action against Iran until the tough sanctions, then due to be announced on Iran’s oil exports and international financial deals financial dealings, were given time to prove their worth.
This commitment the Prime Minister refused to give.
Ever since that conversation, relations between the two allies have gone downhill. While the administration continues to assert its unshakeable support for Israel’s security and Israel stresses the undying friendship between the two allies, neither trusts the other.
Washington is constantly on guard for Israel to suddenly launch an attack on Iran without prior warning, while Israel feels it is subjected to three kinds of American harassment, some of it clandestine, to coerce it into narrowing its military option for preempting a nuclear Iran:
World is warned of chaos if Israel strikes Iran

1. A US-European scare campaign is in progress to demonstrate that an Israeli attack on Iran would result in Middle East chaos and financial, military and political destabilization across the globe.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague admitted Sunday, Feb. 19, that “the world faces the real risk of conflict or the prospect that an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would result in a second Cold War if economic sanctions did not force Tehran to change course.” But he added: “An Israeli attack on Iran would be destabilizing.”
2. Washington has enlisted a chorus of media, think tanks, nuclear mavens, and Western intelligence and military personalities, some of them old warhorses of Israeli services, to promote two propositions:
– Iran is still far from developing a nuclear weapon and there is still plenty of time before it decides to do so;
– Israel’s military capabilities are not equal to destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities and if it persists in exercising its military option, America will be forced to step in at some point “in order to finish the job” and defend Israel from the missile assault unleashed by Iran and its Middle East allies.
The New York Times played its part in the campaign by running an article Monday, Feb. 20 under the caption “Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets.” It dredged up recycled arguments long outdated which denigrated Israel’s military capabilities. The paper was not deterred by the contrary assessment voiced a day earlier by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the joint US Chiefs of Staff, who said unreservedly: “Israel has the capability to strike Iran.”
Undercover US spotters for alerting Washington

3. Israeli officials are convinced that since the fateful Obama-Netanyahu encounter six months ago a powerful US intelligence network has been at work inside the country with a dual mission: to give Washington early warning of an impending Israeli attack and to file an alert when war preparations are detected.
The American spotters were told to watch the civilian front because US intelligence strategists believe war preparations there will be easier and quicker to spot than military readiness.
They will be looking out, for instance, for Home Front Command directives placing first responders such as the Fire Brigade command and Magen David first aid service on emergency standby and instructions to local councils to open public bomb shelters.
With sufficient prior warning before Israel strikes, the Obama administration will have time to rush a procession of high officials to Jerusalem with two urgent tasks:
First, to check the reliability of the information by seeking out telltale signs of an approaching attack in talks with Israeli officials;
Second, to keep President Obama’s top advisers continuously present at crunch time, in the hope that their presence will pressure Netanyahu, Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz into stepping back at the last minute for fear of burning all their bridges to Washington.
The Clapper mission and Iranian threat of preemptive action

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources in Washington and Jerusalem think that this very scenario may have already played out in the last ten days.
When on Feb. 19, the Israeli military spokesman announced that an Iron Dome rocket interceptor battery would be stationed in the Tel Aviv region next day, suspicious minds in Washington decided this was either tangible evidence of an impending Israeli attack or an exercise in deception.
The IDF spokesman’s “explanation” was: “Iron Dome is being incorporated into the heart of the Israeli military system. As part of this process, batteries will be positioned at various sites including the central Gush Dan region in the coming days, as part of the annual training plan for this system.”
The White House, opting to play it safe, sent out a procession of top advisers to Jerusalem, starting with Lt. Gen. Dempsey, followed by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon who, unusually except in special emergencies, was forced to spend last weekend in tough talks in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu only allowed the visitor access to three people: himself, the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff – other ministers and even the heads of Israel’s intelligence services were kept out.
To fill the gap, Obama decided to send his National Director of Intelligence James Clapper over for talks with Israel’s intelligence and military heads, arriving Thursday, Feb. 23, just two days after Donilon’s departure.
The plot thickens

Then, Wednesday, Feb. 22, the Israeli military spokesman said plans for the anti-rocket interceptor had changed. Instead of Tel Aviv, three Iron Dome batteries would be posted at Ashdod, Ashkelon and Beersheba, which are regular targets for Palestinian missile barrages from Gaza.
But meanwhile, Tehran, which keeps a weather eye on every Israeli move, is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources, as having reached the same conclusion as Washington and taken the Iron Dome deployment as a pointer to an approaching Israeli attack.
It fell to Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, Deputy Commander of Iran’s armed forces, to shake the Islamic Republic’s fist: “Our strategy now,” he said, “is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions. Iran will not wait to be attacked before defending itself.”
The complex background to this threat and the Clapper mission are studied in detail in the next article.