WarSclerotic

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.

Shapiro: US, J’lem planning for ‘… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

U.N. panel on Syria claims orders to kill protestors came straight from the top.

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Demonstrators take part in a protest against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Jerjenaz, near Idlib. The sign reads: “Enemies of humanity your dark night will go and the new dawn of freedom will rise.” (Reuters)

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‘Iran set to expand nuclear acti… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo by: REUTERS ‘Iran set to expand nuclear activity in mountain bunker’ By REUTERS 23/02/2012 Diplomats: Iran “working toward full installation” of uranium enrichment centrifuges at underground facility, “the time when Iran’s efforts to build a bomb will become immune to a strike is fast approaching.”

Turkey plans to buy 100 U.S. F-35 fighters: report.

(Given Turkey’s Islamic tilt and its hostility to Israel, should the US sell its most advanced fighters to them? – JW)

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Turkey has long planned to purchase about 100 jets to replace its ageing F-4 and F-16 fleet, but increasing costs have hindered the procurements. (File photo)

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Syria forces roll into Homs after lengthy siege, opposition says – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Rebel district of Baba Amr has sustained 20 days of bombardment, with dozens killed and hundreds wounded.

By Reuters

Armored forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad moved into the rebel district of Baba Amro in Homs on Thursday after 20 days of sustained bombardment, opposition sources said.

“Tanks have entered the Jobar area in the south of Baba Amro,” activist Abu Imad told Reuters from the city.

	A Syrian army tank is seen in the neighbourhood of Erbeen, near Damascus, February 20, 2012.
	Photo by: Reuters

Earlier this week activists said that Syrian military sent columns of tanks and other reinforcements toward Homs.

A flood of military reinforcements has been a prelude to previous offensives by the authoritarian regime, which has tried to use its overwhelming firepower to crush an opposition that has been bolstered by defecting soldiers and hardened by 11 months of street battles.

“Most of the deaths occurred in the province of Homs. Others were killed in the provinces of Idlib and Hama,” Omar Idlibi, the LCC spokesman in Beirut, told dpa.

Wednesday’s violence followed shelling by Syrian forces on Tuesday that killed at least 65 people in Homs, activists said, describing the attacks as the heaviest since the start of an assault on the restive city early this month.

	Syria security forces shell the Baba Amro district of Homs.
	Photo by: AFP

Activist Omar Homsi told DPA that more than thirty people were also wounded in the city’s besieged neighborhoods of Baba Amr, Al-Khalidiyeh, and Inshaaat and the region of al-Kussair.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Red Cross called for a daily two-hour cease-fire in Syria so that it can deliver emergency aid and reach people who are wounded or sick.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 23, 2012, 10:29 AM (GMT+02:00)

Secret Homs press center

Despite public denials, military preparations for intervention in the horrendous Syrian crisis are quietly afoot in Washington, Paris, Rome, London and Ankara. President Barack Obama is poised for a final decision after the Pentagon submits operational plans for protecting Syrian rebels and beleaguered populations from the brutal assaults of Bashar Assad’s army, debkafile’s Washington sources disclose.
This process is also underway in allied capitals which joined the US in the Libyan operation that ended Muammar Qaddafi’s rule in August, 2011. They are waiting for a White House decision before going forward.
In Libya, foreign intervention began as an operation to protect the Libyan population against its ruler’s outrageous crackdown on dissent. It was mandated by UN Security Council. There is no chance of this in the Syrian case because it will be blocked by a Russian veto. Therefore, Western countries are planning military action of limited scope outside the purview of the world body, possibly on behalf of “Friends of Syria,” a group of 80 world nations which meets for the first time in Tunis Friday, Feb. 24, to hammer out practical steps for terminating the bloodbath pursued by the Assad regime.
The foreign ministers and senior officials – Russia has excluded itself – will certainly be further galvanized into action by the tragic deaths of two notable journalists Wednesday, Feb. 22, on the 19th day of the shelling of Homs.
Preparations for the event are taking place at the Foreign Office in London. Wednesday, Foreign Secretary William Hague said: Governments around the world have the responsibility to act…and to redouble our efforts to stop the Assad regime’s despicable campaign of terror.”
Hague pointedly said nothing about removing the Syrian ruler. Nor did he spell out the efforts need to stop the campaign of terror. debkafile’s military sources note that he left these issues open because a decision by President Obama about if and how the US will act is pending until the Pentagon submits operational plans to Commander-in-Chief Obama.
The US president is also waiting for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s report on the mood at the Tunis conference. He wants to know in particular if Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and the UAR will support US-led Western intervention in Syria, both politically and financially.
The Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and the French Figaro video-photographer Remi Ochik died Wednesday in the heavy shelling of a fortified building which housed Western journalists making their way into Homs under the protection of Syrian rebels. Three other Western journalists were injured. Western military sources reported Thursday that this undercover Western press center was maintained by the rebels in tight secrecy. The building was practically gutted by a direct hit, suggesting that Syrian forces located it with the help of advanced electronic measures.
Another Western source noted that the journalists covering the atrocities in Homs from this hideout used coded channels of communications protected by anti-jamming and anti-tracking devices. The Syrians must therefore have called on Russian satellites or advanced Iranian electronic systems to locate it.
The authorities in Damascus decided to treat the press hideout as the first step in overt Western intervention in the Syrian conflict. It was accordingly razed totally with its occupants.

Gantz: Nuclear Iran is an Existential Threat – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz

Israel news photo: Flash 90

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz warned on Wednesday that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an existential threat to the State of Israel.

Speaking at a memorial ceremony for Major Eitan Belachsan, who was killed by Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon in 1999, Gantz said, “The Iranian nuclear development is an existential threat. Even though there is a crack between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, Lebanon is being strengthened.”

Gantz also referred to the changes in the Middle East in light of the Arab Spring and said that “this is a very complex reality. The Middle East of 14 months ago is not today’s Middle East and is not necessarily the Middle East of 14 months from now.”

Commenting on the subject of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, Gantz said, “The peace treaty with Egypt is very important to us and we should make every effort to preserve it while at the same time keeping a close watch” on what is going on in Egypt.

The extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which clinched the majority in recent parliamentary elections in Egypt, threatened to cancel the peace treaty with Israel by putting the issue up for a referendum and letting Egyptians decide. Potential presidential candidate Amr Moussa later rejected the possibility that Egypt will cancel the peace treaty it signed with Israel in 1979.

Finally, the Chief of Staff addressed Tuesday’s decision by the Supreme Court that the ‘Tal Law’ for religious exemptions from the IDF is illegal.

“We need to find a way to integrate everyone in the army,” said Gantz. “Military service is mandatory in Israel and not a possible alternative. Everyone can and should serve – it is a necessity.”

He added, “The challenges in the Middle East have changed but what should not change is our commitment to ourselves and to our actions. The security challenges not the only ones in Israel, but they are valid – active, present and threatening.

“There is a continuing growing trend among those who join the army of people who want to do more, but at the same time there is also a decrease in the percentage of those who join the army,” said Gantz. “The reality in which the majority serves in the military may change and the State of Israel should be concerned about that reality.”