WarSclerotic

New bill to press Obama on Iran strike? – Israel News, Ynetnews.

(Please contact your representative to support this measure! – JW)

US senators lead bipartisan effort to block any foreign policy option that might allow for nuclear Iran; some Democrats reluctant to support measure.

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – As tensions rise over the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, US Senators Lindsey Graham (R) and Joe Lieberman (I) are spearheading a resolution calling on Congress to block any foreign policy that might accept a nuclear Islamic Republic, Washington’s congressional paper, The Hill, reported.

According to the report, however, some Democratic senators are reluctant to back the measure that aims to press President Barack Obama to take more aggressive action against Iran.

The legislative measure has gotten support from Senator John McCain (R) as well as several Democrats – while others have opted not to interfere with the commander in chief during an election year.

The unwilling senators have expressed concerned that the resolution is essentially a step towards an authorization of a military strike – an option that is highly unpopular with liberal voters.

Graham, Lieberman and McCain with DM Ehud Barak (Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry)

But sources close to the as yet unpublicized bill told the newspaper that the legislation leaves channels for a diplomatic solution, and does not serve as an authorization for military action.

Obama ready to accept nuclear Iran?

The dispute is an indication of Obama’s own difficulties in deciding how to deal with Iran during an election year, should the diplomatic efforts fail to put an end to Tehran’s ambition to obtain atom weapons.

According to the report, some lawmakers and policy experts posit that Obama is prepared to accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

“Many in Congress suspect correctly that Barack Obama has every intention of tolerating Iran with a nuclear weapon despite his protestations to the contrary,” Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, was quoted as saying. “The administration seems more concerned about an Israeli strike on Iran than Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

On Wednesday, the Washington Post has urged the Obama Administration to spell out which Iranian actions will cross its red lines, and what the retribution would be.

Obama campaigning in Wisconsin (Photo: MCT)

“(…) Can the Netanyahu government count on the Obama administration to act if a moment of truth arrives?” the editorial pondered.

“For now, several top Israeli officials are skeptical. That is where Mr. Panetta and Mr. Obama should be making an effort. Rather than publicly arguing with Israel, they should be more clearly spelling out US willingness to take military action if Iran is discovered taking steps toward bomb-making.”

‘Give diplomacy a chance’

Obama’s diplomatic aspirations have received reinforcement from his former aide on the Mideast, Dennis Ross, who said in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday that regardless of Tehran’s recent boastful statements, it might be looking for a way out of the “crippling pressure” that global sanctions have put on the country’s economy.

Ross said that Iran is more isolated than ever, and that “The Obama administration has now created a situation in which diplomacy has a chance to succeed.”

Addressing a possible Israeli strike on the Islamic Republic, Ross claimed that the Jewish state is disinclined to wait and see how the diplomatic option plays out because it might lose the military option.

“That said, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have consistently called for ‘crippling sanctions,’ reflecting a belief that Iran’s behavior could be changed with sufficient pressure,” he writes.

“The fact that crippling sanctions have finally been applied means that Israel is more likely to give these sanctions and the related diplomatic offensive a chance to work. And it should.”

PM in Cyprus: sanctions on Iran … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By Amos Ben Gershom / GPO

NICOSIA – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tour of Iranian centrifuges halls Wednesday is an indication that the worlds sanctions against Iran are not working, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Thursday.

Netanyahu’s comments came during a press conference in Nicosia with Cypriot President Demetris Christofias.

“If anybody needed a reminder that the sanctions have not stopped the nuclear program, it was the guided tour by the Iran’s president in the centrifuge hall yesterday,” he said. “I hope they work, but so far they have not.”

Netanyahu characterized Iran as a regime that “breaks all the rules.” A regime that was formed through the taking of the US embassy in Tehran, Iran — Netanyahu said — has ever since continued to show no respect for international rules. The most recent example, he said, was attacking foreign diplomats and their wives.

“They send children into mine fields, they have suicide bombers, they send tens of thousands of rockets into our cites and towns,” Netanyahu said. “Such a regime should obviously not have an atomic bomb, and I believe that the international community is becoming aware by the day of what it means for Iran” to have nuclear potential, he said.

Asked about whether the US should fear an Israeli attack on Iran, Netanyahu said that Israel, the US and the rest of the world should be concerned about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

(Watch this vid Its about 15 minutes long and Bergman is the Israeli journalist that has been so oft quoted over the last week. – JW )

Vodpod videos no longer available.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report February 16, 2012, 1:59 PM (GMT+02:00)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak with Army Chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz

By suddenly stating, contrary to all informed estimates, that Iran’s nuclear arms program has not yet reached the point of no return, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak implied that Israel was in no hurry to strike its nuclear facilities, a message for which Washington has been angling for months.
In a Kol Israel interview from Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 16, the defense minister’s pronouncement contradicted every reliable evaluation, including those of Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi on Feb. 2 and his predecessor Amos Yadlin who wrote on Jan. 26 that Iran had passed  the point of no return four or five years ago. But his words were a perfect fit for the recent assertions by US President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that Israel had not yet made up its mind to attack Iran.
Kochavi’s information was detailed: He reported that Iran had amassed 10 kilos of 20-percent enriched uranium and four tons of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent. In his view, nothing remains to stop Iran building a bomb but a decision by its ruler. Once taken, Iran’s nuclear program could produce its first bomb or warhead by the end of this year or early 2013 and four or five by 2015.
The defense minister backtracked on a second issue: While noting that Iran was scattering or burying its nuclear facilities to “impede a surgical strike,” he avoided his previous estimate that no more than three to six months were left before all those facilities had been hidden in what he himself called “zones of immunity.”
Before these changes in outlook, Barak was indirectly criticized by Obama administration officials for underlining the mortal threat to Israel of a nuclear Iran. One official complained, “Israelis are looking at the problem too narrowly.”
The defense minister also toed the Washington line on the show Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put on Wednesday by inserting a home-made 20 percent grade nuclear fuel rod in a research reactor in Tehran. Listing its nuclear successes, the Iranians also claimed they had installed 3,000 fourth generation centrifuges in Natanz to speed up enrichment to 20 percent.
The US State Department spokesperson dismissed Iran’s claims as “not terribly new and not terribly impressive” – implying there was no cause for rushing into military action.
Barak put it this way: “They are describing a situation that is better and more advanced than the one they are in, in order to create a feeling among all the players that the point of no return is already behind them, which is not true.”
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources recall that, when two years ago, Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials boasted they were on the way to self-production of nuclear rods and ending their reliance on Russia, American and Israeli insiders belittled the claim. Two years on, Iran has indeed made the leap and is also advancing rapidly on the plutonium-based weapons track.
If Iran can supply all the nuclear fuel rods for fueling the Bushehr reactor, which is now running on recycled fuel rods from Russia, it will be able to use these rods to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs or warheads.
Why the defense minister suddenly changed course is unclear. It is also hard to know if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu okayed his radical departure from Israel’s information strategy on the nuclear Iran issue.
What is apparent, debkafile’s sources report, is that the change of tune coincides with the reports circulating in Washington and Jerusalem that the US and Iran have agreed to resume nuclear talks shortly.
Those sources point to an article in the New York Times by Dennis Ross, President Obama’s former senior adviser on Iran, entitled “Iran is ready to talk.” Ross is too experienced to go out on a limb and make this sort of statement without being sure of his facts.

Report: Attempt on Barak’s life foiled in Singapore – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper claims Israel was able to prevent assassination attempt on defense minister during his recent visit to Singapore

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper reported Thursday that Israel was able to prevent an assassination attempt on Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during his visit to Singapore this week.

According to the report, the Mossad – collaborating with local authorities – was able to stop the assassins, who planned on targeting Barak during his visit to the Singapore Air Show.

The newspaper based its report on information from “high ranking Israeli defense officials.”

Al-Jarida went on to quote the sources as saying that prior to Barak’s visit, the Israeli intelligence agency contacts Singapore authorities and gave them “highly classified information suggesting a cell comprising of Iranian and Hezbollahoperatives were planning to assassinate the Israeli defense minister.”

A covert operation based on the information resulted in the arrest of three suspects.

The paper added that the cell had “very accurate information” about Barak’s itinerary and planned to have him under surveillance during his stay in Singapore. The assassination was to take place in Barak’s hotel.

According to the report, the Mossad is taking an active part in the suspect’s interrogation.

Barak: Iran nuclear moves meant … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By Marc Israel Sellem

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday Iran’s announcement of new nuclear achievements was exaggerated and meant to fend off action against the Islamic republic.

“They are describing a situation that is better and more advanced than the one they are in, in order to create a feeling among all the players that the point of no return is already behind them, which is not true,” Barak told Israel Radio.

Iran on Wednesday proclaimed advances in nuclear know-how, including new centrifuges able to enrich uranium much faster, a move that may heighten its confrontation with the West over suspicions it is seeking the means to make atomic bombs.

Barak said those announcements were meant to create an impression that any action taken by world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program would be too late. Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.

Tension between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear work has mounted since November, when the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon.

Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only atomic power, has said a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to its existence. Both Washington and Israel have not ruled out military action to stop Tehran developing atomic bombs.

“They are definitely making progress, but in order to deter anyone dealing with them, or perhaps even to make this seem superfluous, they are priding themselves on achievements that do not yet exist,” Barak said.

The United States, which called Wednesday’s Iranian announcement of nuclear progress “not terribly new and not terribly impressive”, and the European Union have imposed tighter sanctions in recent weeks on both Iran’s oil exports and international financial transactions with Tehran.

US balks as Assad proposes referendum, elections –.

Republicans blast Obama on missile defen… JPost – International.

Israel hedges its bets on Syria – Features – Al Jazeera English.

Widespread protests and army defections are attempting to bring down the Assad administration in Syria [Reuters]

Herzliya, Israel – Officials here are waffling over what position to take in response to the Syrian uprising. During the early days of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, officials in Tel Aviv kept a low profile in relation to their northern neighbour. In conventional wisdom, they pursued what has been termed as a policy of “better the devil we know” – that supporting the status quo was better than not knowing what came next.

Although the Israeli government has been no friend of the Assad administration, policymakers in Tel Aviv maintained a “strategy of silence” towards the Syrian opposition. Given Syria’s perceived geographic vulnerability, and limited military resources, the chances of Assad leading a successful military campaign against Israel are relatively low. The Israel-Syria border has remained rather quiet since 1973. Even when the Israeli army killed 26 Palestinian protesters in June 2011, as they marched towards the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, tensions did not escalate towards a potential conflict between the two states.

Given the recent outburst over containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the seeming obsession with a 2012 confrontation, many Israeli officials and analysts have recommended taking a stronger position in support of the Syrian opposition. They view the prospective collapse of the house of Assad through the prism of Israel’s realpolitik, as a way to break the so-called Tehran-Damascus axis and as a means of weakening Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that maintained political offices in Syria’s capital. Tel Aviv reportedly sees the current climate as an opportunity to redraw the map of the region, isolating Iran and bringing Syria into its orbit.

Iran’s Achilles heel

Some Israeli officials say the plight of the Assad government would not only threaten to break ties between Iran and Syria, which has been a long-term goal of both Israel and the US, but would also cut Iran’s lifeline to the rest of the Middle East (excluding Iraq). Tehran would lose its channel for providing military, financial and logistical aid to Hamas in Gaza and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, they maintain.

“[Israel] should look at Syria and see Syria as the Achilles heel of Iran. It is a great opportunity, an enormous opportunity, and this is where the strategy of the Israeli government should be,” former Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy said at the Herzliya conference, the annual confab of Middle East security players and watchers, held in early February.

This year’s security rendezvous – entitled “In the eye of the storm” – concentrated on Israel’s response to the Arab uprisings of the past year.

At the conference, Aviv Kochavi, the military intelligence chief in Israel, said that changes in the region “spell a decrease in the power of the radical axis: Iran-Syria-Lebanon-Hezbollah on the one hand, and Iran-Hamas-Islamic Jihad in Gaza, on the other hand”.

These various axes are by no means set in stone, yet have entered our lexicon in an axis-of-evil fashion.

Danielle Pletka, the Vice President of Foreign and Defence Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank, added: “The lowest-hanging fruit is Syria, and one of the things that struck me and my colleagues as we met with people around Israel this last week is the apathy around the question of Syria.”

Some Israeli officials have argued that Assad is busy with internal problems, and is therefore unable to focus his energies against Israel. However, others worry that if Assad perceives that he is going down, he may try to attack Israel as a distraction to rally people around his cause.

Despite the uncertainty over what Israel’s position to the Syrian uprising should be, Tel Aviv is increasingly confident that the regime is on the verge of collapse. In January, Israel’s military chief, Benny Gantz, addressed a closed parliamentary session and said that, in the event of Assad’s demise, Israel was prepared to absorb refugees in a buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights. The plans include humanitarian assistance and defence measures, mainly aimed for the minority ruling Alawite sect. Following years of animosity between Israel and the Alawite community, critics questioned whether Gantz’s statement was just impractical posturing. Why the Alawites would prefer the Golan Heights to South Lebanon also remains unknown.

“The premise of his [Gantz’s] remarks – that Alawites would be forced to flee for their lives after Assad fell – isn’t a statement that Syria’s opposition will welcome. Gantz’s statements may have been anti-Assad, but they weren’t pro-revolution,” David Kenner, the associate editor at Foreign Policy, wrote.

Scramble for Syria

Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s vice prime minister, was asked on Israel Army Radio what contact Israel has had with the Syrian opposition. Ya’alon responded: “Whether there’s contact or not, you don’t expect me to discuss these things in the media.”

Is Israel hesitant to publicly support the opposition because it prefers to do so secretly – or because a weakened and discredited Assad is in Israel’s strategic interest?

The possible fall of Assad would present a panoply of unknowns for Israel. Syria is seen as a key player in the Middle East. Damascus is central to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US-Iran conflict, and the Iraq War.

As the possibility of international intervention strengthens with the fiasco over last week’s UN resolution, the Syrian uprising is transforming itself into a playground for international powers to exert influence, with Israel anxiously watching from the sidelines.

Joshua Landis, the director of the center of Middle East Studies at Oklahoma University, said: “If Israel thinks he [Assad] is going down, why take risks by getting involved? … For Israel to get involved, it would be counterproductive.”

Landis, who blogs at Syria Comment, further explained: “You have an extremely weakened Gaza, Syria is still holding together as a country, and there aren’t militia that can run around and make trouble for Israel. They are making trouble for Assad, and that way Assad cannot act as an enabler of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is sitting there very anxious, Iran is anxious, and this is good for Israel.”

State Dept.: Russia and Iran still arming Bashar al-Assad | The Cable.

Foreign Policy

Russia and Iran are continuing to send arms to the Syrian regime that can be used against protesters, a top State Department official said today.

“Iran is resupplying Syria and through Syria has supplied weapons to Hezbollah,” said Tom Countryman, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, at a Wednesday morning breakfast meeting of the Defense Writers Group in Washington.

Countryman’s bureau plays a major role in monitoring international compliance with nonproliferation and arms control rules. He declined to go into specifics on what arms Iran and Russia are giving the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but he confirmed that both countries are still supplying arms that can be used to attack civilians and opposition groups inside Syria, who are engaged in an increasingly bloody struggle with the government.

“We do not believe that Russian shipments of weapons to Syria are in the interests of Russia or Syria,” he said.

According to Countryman, the Iranian weapons being funneled through the Syrian government to Hezbollah are not being used by Hezbollah inside Syria, but are being transferred to Hezbollah groups inside Syria’s neighbor Lebanon.

Countryman also said the U.S. government is working with allies to try to get a handle on the stores of conventional, biological, and chemical weapons inside Syria, to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands if and when the Assad regime collapses.

There are “tens of thousands” of MANPADS – shoulder-fired missile systems — in Syria and nobody really knows where they all are, Countryman said. Unlike Libya, Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, so there is no official reporting on its store of those weapons, but the effort to locate them is underway.

“We have ideas as to the quantity and we have ideas as to where they are,” Countryman said. “We wish some of the neighbors of Syria to be on the lookout… When you get a change of regime in Syria, it matters what are the conditions — chaotic or orderly.”

He also commented on the news that Iran has sent a letter to EU High Representative Catherine Ashton proposing a new round of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries, a letter that Ashton has already said does not contain enough new concessions to justify a new meeting.

“This would be a good day for [Iran] to answer a letter sent four months ago,” Countryman said, but what Iran really needs to do is open up fully to IAEA inspectors and directly address all of the questions about its nuclear program.

“There is a path forward where Iran can pursue peaceful use of nuclear energy,” he said.

Former National Security Council Senior Director Dennis Ross argued in a New York Times op-ed today that the window for diplomacy with Iran is now open again because of the pressure wrought on Iran by international sanctions.

“The Obama administration has now created a situation in which diplomacy has a chance to succeed,” wrote Ross. “It remains an open question whether it will.”