WarSclerotic

israel today | Israel News | West abandoning Israel in face of Iran threat? – israel today | Israel News.

Report: Iranian ships disrupt Syrian opposition communications – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Egypt security sources, Syrian opposition members say Iranian vessels that docked at Tartus port over the weekend have ‘military communications jamming devices’

Roi Kais

Egyptian security sources and members of the Syrian opposition are claiming that the two Iranian ships docked off the Syrian coast are equipped with “military communications jamming devices that are disrupting communications made by the Syrian opposition via satellite,” the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Monday.

Related articles:

• Assad: Syria faces attempts to divide it
• Iran increases presence in Syria
  

According to the report, an Egyptian security source noted that recently the Syrian regime has been finding it hard to monitor opposition calls after it began using secure communication lines.

The regime in Damascusis finding it particularly difficult to monitor calls made by of the Free Syrian Army and the Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary Committees, the source told the newspaper.

Two Iranian navy ships docked at the Syrian port of Tartus over the weekend.

The flotilla, consisting of a destroyer and a supply ship, arrived at Tartus port, 220 kilometers (137 miles) northwest of the Syrian capital Damascus after receiving permission from the Egyptian armed forces to sail through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea on their way to the Syrian coast.

On Sunday Asharq al-Awsat quoted a State Department official as saying that the US was concerned by the arrival of Iranian vessels to Syria and considers it an Iranian attempt to aggravate the situation in the region.

Israel should try talking to Iran before launching a strike – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

For dialogue with Tehran to succeed, the insolent tone and threatening language of the Israeli government spokespeople and their neoconservative friends in the United States must be toned down.

By Akiva Eldar

Israel must listen to U.S. warnings against Iran attack – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Does Iran truly intend to use nuclear technology for military purposes, or do its leaders recognize that the international response to such a development could jeopardize its very survival?

Haaretz Editorial

Fear of Iran’s nuclear program is pushing Israel into a dangerous corner. The state could find itself in a conflict of interest, or even on a collision course with the American administration just when it needs U.S. support more than ever before.

It’s enough to hear the warning of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, that a strike on Iran could be harmful to Israel, and to see the stepped-up pace of visits here by senior U.S. officials to realize just how anxious Washington is about the prospect of Jerusalem deciding to bomb Iran.

	A worker in the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran.
	Photo by: AP

The United States in particular, or the West in general, cannot be accused of ignoring the Iranian threat. The burden of sanctions imposed on Iran, together with Washington’s frequent declarations that the military option is still on the table, demonstrate the administration’s concern over Tehran’s nuclear program. The big question for the United States is not only about the effect of an Israeli attack against Iran on American interests in the region, but also about the efficacy of such a strike and concern about its potentially disastrous implications for Israel.

Israel and the United States are in agreement on both the dimension of the threat and the understanding that Iran has not yet decided to obtain nuclear weapons. Not enough attention has been paid to the big question − why that decision has not been made − and there is no consensus on the answer.

Does Iran truly intend to use nuclear technology for military purposes, or do its leaders recognize that the international response to such a development could jeopardize its very survival?

Dempsey believes, correctly, that Iran is a “rational actor” that considers the political implications of its actions. He concludes from this that the sanctions must be given a chance before trapping the region and the world in a war the final outcome of which is unknowable.

One can disagree with the American assessment that the sanctions are already having an effect, and one can find data that prove the opposite. But the fact that even in Israel there is disagreement on the issue indicates that there’s a chance the sanctions could prove effective. Israel, which succeeded in enlisting the Western countries to take action against Iran, must listen to the warnings coming out of Washington and refrain, for now, from unilateral measures.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 20, 2012, 12:53 PM (GMT+02:00)

Natanz nuclear site air defenses

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon faced an acrimonious Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in two hours of stormy conversation in Jerusalem Sunday, Feb. 19, according to updates reaching senior US sources in Washington. The main bones of contention were Iran’s continuing enrichment of uranium and its ongoing relocation of production to underground sites.
Israeli officials declined to give out any information on the conversation. Some even refused to confirm it took place.
According to debkafile’s sources, Netanyahu accused the Obama administration of drawing Iran into resuming nuclear negotiations with world powers by an assurance that Tehran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium in any quantity, provided it promised not to build an Iranian nuclear weapon. The prime minister charged that this permit contravened US administration guarantees to Israel on the nuclear issue and, moreover left Tehran free to upgrade its current 20 percent enrichment level to 90 percent weapons grade. This Israel cannot tolerate, said Netanyahu, so leaving its military option on the ready.
He warned the US National Security Adviser that no evidence whatsoever confirms Washington’s claim that Tehran intends suspending enrichment and other nuclear advances when negotiations begin. Quite the contrary: Even before the date was set, Iran started working at top speed to build up its bargaining chips by laying down major advances in its nuclear program as undisputed facts.
Tehran now claims to have progressed to self-reliance in the production of 20 percent-enriched uranium, the basis for the weapons grade fuel, in unlimited quantity. Once the talks are underway, Netanyahu maintained, there would be no stopping the Iranians without stalling the negotiating process. Going by past experience, Tehran would use dialogue as an extra fulcrum for its impetus toward weapon production without interruption.
Monday, Donilon and his delegation meet Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The mission of this high-powered US delegation in Israel takes place to the accompanied of a resumed US media campaign for discouraging Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear installations.
Sunday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, offered this opinion to CNN: “Israel has the capability to strike Iran and delay the Iranians probably for a couple of years. But some of the targets are probably beyond their reach.”
Monday’s New York Times carried an assessment by “American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon” under the caption, “Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israel Jets.” debkafile’s military sources report the main argument, dredged up from the past and long refuted, is that Israeli Air Force bombers cannot cover the distance to Iran without in-flight refueling.
That array of “analysts” apparently missed the CNN interview and therefore contradicted the assessment of America’s own top general that “Israel has the capability to strike Iran…”
Reality has meanwhile moved on. Four events in the last 24 hours no doubt figured large in the US delegation’s talks with Israeli leaders:
1.  Monday, the IAEA sent to Tehran its second team of monitors this month for another attempt to gain access to nuclear facilities hitherto barred by the Iranians. The inspectors will also demand permission to interview scientists which according to a list drawn up at the agency’s Vienna headquarters hold key positions in their nuclear program.
2. The Russian Chief of Chaff Gen. Nikolai Makarov estimated that the attack on Iran would be “coordinated” by several governments and “a decision would be made by the summer.”
3.  Moscow recalled Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kutznetsov from the Syrian port of Tartus to its home base at Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula.
4. Turkey is beinding over backward to assure Iran that data collected by the US missile shield radar stationed at its Kurecik air base will not shared with Israel. It is especially anxious not to annoy Tehran after foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi announced that the resumed nuclear talks with the five Permanent Security Council members and German (P5+1) would be held in Istanbul.
However, the Iranians certainly know exactly what is going on after watching the recent joint US-Israeli radar test which demonstrated that Israel is fully integrated in the missile shield radar network and that the US radar station in the Israeli Negev interfaces with its station in Turkey and Israel’s Arrow missile Green Pine radar.
When he visited Ankara last week, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen assured his Turkish hosts that “Intelligence data collected within the missile defense system will not be shared with third countries. It will be shared with the allies within our alliance.”
His statement was quite accurate – except for the fact that the radar stations collecting the intelligence data are not controlled by NATO but by US military teams, both of which, including the Turkish-based radar, are integrated and coordinated with Israeli radar and missile interceptors.

PM: I Was Right to Doubt ‘Arab Spring’ – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Netanyahu

Israel news photo: Flash 90

Speaking at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Sunday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reminded listeners at the opening of the meeting that he had warned last year not to be overly optimistic about the effects of the “Arab Spring”. At the time, Netanyahu said, he was accused of “not being optimistic enough,” but that his prediction then, that the revolutions in the Arab world could be hijacked by Islamic groups. “It turned out that we were right,” he said.

One result of the revolutions in the Arab world, he said, was an increase in Israel’s security levels, and as a result, it was now more difficult to consider coming to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority. “As we see a major change in the region, we realize that we are going to have to takes steps to defend ourselves,” Netanyahu said.

The Prime Minister thanked the heads of the 38 largest American Jewish organizations that had gathered for their annual meeting in Jerusalem for their groups’ activities on behalf of Israel. However, he said, assistance by Jews and others around the world were no guarantee of success for Israel. “Only one source exists that will be able to help us grow – and that is through the growth of the Israeli economy,” Netanyahu said. “As Israel’s economy has grown, we have been able to fund our defense and other needs.

“That growth must continue,” the Prime Minister added. And how could he guarantee that the economy would continue to grow? “By continuing what we have been doing,” Netanyahu said, referring to the present policies of the government and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.

Sunday night: 2 Qassam rockets explode in Negev – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Rockets fired from Gaza after midnight land in open areas; no injury, damage reported

Ilana Curiel

Two Qassam rockets launched by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza exploded in open areas within the limits of the Sdot Negev Regional Council Sunday night. There were no reports of injury or damage.On Friday a rocket fired from Gaza exploded south of Ashkelon. There were no injuries in that attack either.

The rockets were fired at around 12:30 am. Residents reported hearing the “Color Red” alert system before the projectiles landed.

Israeli aircraft attackeda number of targets in Gaza overnight Sunday. At least six Palestinians were injured in the strikes.

The attacks came in response to the launching of three Grad rockets from the Hamas-ruled territory Saturday morning. The rockets landed in open areas near Beersheba, and caused no injuries or damage.

Iran Raid Seen as Complex Task for Israeli Military – NYTimes.com.

(This analysis, like all the others, presumes that Israel must use its warplanes to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program.  As I have repeatedly pointed out, this is simply untrue. – JW ) 

Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press

One possible Israeli target, the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, was guarded in 2007 by antiaircraft artillery.

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.

That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.

“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.

Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries have escalated. In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Sunday, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be “destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that attacking Iran would not be “the wise thing” for Israel to do “at this moment.”

But while an Israeli spokesman in Washington, Lior Weintraub, said the country continued to push for tougher sanctions on Iran, he reiterated that Israel, like the United States, “is keeping all options on the table.”

The possible outlines of an Israeli attack have become a source of debate in Washington, where some analysts question whether Israel even has the military capacity to carry it off. One fear is that the United States would be sucked into finishing the job — a task that even with America’s far larger arsenal of aircraft and munitions could still take many weeks, defense analysts said. Another fear is of Iranian retaliation.

“I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’ll say, ‘Here’s how it’s going to be done — handful of planes, over an evening, in and out,’ ” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a former Pentagon official who is now director of the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force, which does extensive research for the United States Air Force.

Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009, said flatly last month that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program were “beyond the capacity” of Israel, in part because of the distance that attack aircraft would have to travel and the scale of the task.

Still, a top defense official cautioned in an interview last week that “we don’t have perfect visibility” into Israel’s arsenal, let alone its military calculations. His views were echoed by Anthony H. Cordesman, an influential military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There are a lot of unknowns, there are a lot of potential risks, but Israel may know that those risks aren’t that serious,” he said.

Given that Israel would want to strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites — the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan — military analysts say the first problem is how to get there. There are three potential routes: to the north over Turkey, to the south over Saudi Arabia or taking a central route across Jordan and Iraq.

The route over Iraq would be the most direct and likely, defense analysts say, because Iraq effectively has no air defenses and the United States, after its December withdrawal, no longer has the obligation to defend Iraqi skies. “That was a concern of the Israelis a year ago, that we would come up and intercept their aircraft if the Israelis chose to take a path across Iraq,” said a former defense official who asked for anonymity to discuss secret intelligence.

Assuming that Jordan tolerates the Israeli overflight, the next problem is distance. Israel has American-built F-15I and F-16I fighter jets that can carry bombs to the targets, but their range — depending on altitude, speed and payload — falls far short of the minimum 2,000-mile round trip. That does not include an aircraft’s “loiter time” over a target plus the potential of having to fight off attacks from Iranian missiles and planes.

In any possibility, Israel would have to use airborne refueling planes, called tankers, but Israel is not thought to have enough. Scott Johnson, an analyst at the defense consulting firm IHS Jane’s and the leader of a team preparing an online seminar on Israeli strike possibilities on Iran, said that Israel had eight KC-707 American-made tankers, although it is not clear they are all in operation. It is possible, he said, that Israel has reconfigured existing planes into tankers to use in a strike.

Even so, any number of tankers would need to be protected by ever more fighter planes. “So the numbers you need just skyrocket,” Mr. Johnson said. Israel has about 125 F-15Is and F-16Is. One possibility, Mr. Johnson said, would be to fly the tankers as high as 50,000 feet, making them hard for air defenses to hit, and then have them drop down to a lower altitude to meet up with the fighter jets to refuel.

Israel would still need to use its electronic warfare planes to penetrate Iran’s air defenses and jam its radar systems to create a corridor for an attack. Iran’s antiaircraft defenses may be a generation old — in 2010, Russia refused to sell Iran its more advanced S-300 missile system — but they are hardly negligible, military analysts say.

Iranian missiles could force Israeli warplanes to maneuver and dump their munitions before they even reached their targets. Iran could also strike back with missiles that could hit Israel, opening a new war in the Middle East, though some Israeli officials have argued that the consequences would be worse if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon.

Another major hurdle is Israel’s inventory of bombs capable of penetrating the Natanz facility, believed to be buried under 30 feet of reinforced concrete, and the Fordo site, which is built into a mountain.

Assuming it does not use a nuclear device, Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could damage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.

Earlier this month, a Bipartisan Policy Center report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obama administration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well as three advanced refueling planes.

The two said that they were not advocating an Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improve Israel’s credibility as it threatens a strike.

Should the United States get involved — or decide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.

Nonetheless, defense officials say it would still be tough to penetrate Iran’s deepest facilities with existing American bombs and so are enhancing an existing 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” that was specifically designed for Iran and North Korea.

“There’s only one superpower in the world that can carry this off,” General Deptula said. “Israel’s great on a selective strike here and there.”

Israel to deploy battery of rocket interceptors; Iran stages land military exercises.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Israel’s decision to deploy rocket interceptors in Tel Aviv comes amid heightened regional tensions and speculation about a possible attack targeting Iran’s controversial nuclear program. (File photo)

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IDF factions push for offensive in Gaza – JPost – Defense.

(Over a month ago, I was told by a friend “in the know” to expect a Gaza offensive in the middle of February.  The “chance” “per-scheduled” deployment of the Iron Dome battery to “test” protecting Tel Aviv makes me believe he may have known what he was talking about. – JW )