WarSclerotic

US to cut funding for Israeli missile defense programs by $6.3M – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Obama’s 2013 budget proposal requests $99.8M for Israel’s missile defense, down some $20M from 2011. Republican Jewish Coalition head says cut ‘extremely dangerous, worrisome and reckless’

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama‘s 2013 budget proposal includes a $6.3 million reduction in the funding of Israel‘s missile defense programs, Ynet reported Tuesday.

US officials said this is the second consecutive year the Obama administration is cutting its support for the development of Israel’s Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense program and the Arrow System Improvement Program.

According to the officials, in 2011 the administration requested $121.7 million in military aid for Israel’s major missile defense programs. That number dropped to $106.1 million in the 2012 budget proposal, and dropped again to $99.8 million in President Obama’s newly released 2013 budget proposal.

The Obama Administration’s 2012 budget request proposed $106 million for the missile defense cooperation program with Israel, but Congress more than doubled the administration’s request by authorizing a cooperative program with Israel at more than $216 million.

Israel has yet to issue an official response to Obama’s budget proposal, but conservative elements in Washington criticized Obama for cutting the aid to Israel at a time when Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are threatening the Jewish state.

Obama’s budget proposal for 2013 also cuts funding for the US’s ballistic missile program. The program’s budget stands at $9.7 billion, down $700 million from last year.

Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s comptroller, said “there could be other Middle Eastern countries that we hope will either step up themselves or we will have to slow down some of our actions to improve their missile defenses.” He did not specify which ME countries the US provides military assistance to.

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, lamented the funding trend. “For an administration which tried to claim that it’s the best for Israel’s security, cutting critical funds for missile defense at a time when the threat from Iran has never been greater is extremely dangerous, worrisome and reckless,” he said.

‘Assad using chemical warfare in Homs atta… JPost – Middle East.

Barak: Iran, Hezbollah intent on … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

By HERB KEINON 02/14/2012 09:35

Defense minister accuses Tehran of standing behind coordinated terror attacks against Israeli interests in New Delhi and Tbilisi, says Israel must be at the forefront of fighting terror.

By REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday accused Iran and Hezbollah of carrying out Monday’s terror attacks in India and Georgia saying they were “intent on sabotaging the Israeli way of life and operating against Israelis all over the world.”

Speaking during a state visit to Singapore, Barak added that Israel must be at the forefront of fighting terror and continue to prepare for the challenges it faces as Iran and Hezbollah seek Israeli victims.

Within hours of Monday’s attacks in Tbilisi and New Delhi, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu placed the blame squarely on Tehran, saying Israel would continue to “systematically and with patience use a strong arm” against international terrorism originating from Iran.

Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of a diplomat stationed in New Delhi, was moderately wounded there, along with her driver and two passersby. In Georgia, no one was injured when the bomb under the car of a local embassy employee was discovered and neutralized.

Netanyahu said Iran, and its proxy Hezbollah, was responsible for a string of attempted attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in recent months, including in Thailand and Azerbaijan. In each of the previous cases, the the local authorities attacks helped thwart the attacks, he said.

“Iran, which is behind these attacks, is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world,” the prime minister said. “The Israeli government and its security forces will continue to work together with local security services against these terrorist actions.”

Israel raised the level of alert at all of its embassies and consulates overseas following the coordinated attacks.

Tehran, meanwhile, denied any responsibility for the attacks, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast saying it was another phase in Israel’s “psychological war” against the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA quoted him as saying that Israel itself was behind the attacks to “tarnish Iran’s friendly ties” with Georgia and India.

Herb Keinon and Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis February 13, 2012, 10:35 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli embassy car in New Delhi after bomb blast

This time, no one was killed although an Talya Yehoshua- KIoren, wife of the Defense Ministry representative in India, and three others were injured by a sticky bomb planted on her Innova SUV in New Delhi Monday, Feb. 13, at almost exactly the same time as a similar device was safely defused in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
In recent weeks, terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets were foiled in Thailand, Azerbaijan and Argentina. However much they deny this, Iran and Hizballah are clearly determined to keep on trying until they achieve their objective of killing targeted Israelis.
debkafile’s military sources say that the odds are on their eventual success, after failing in four out of five tries.
On this assumption, Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz summoned three senior staff officers to a conference as soon as the first reports came in from New Delhi and Tbilisi at around noon Monday. It was attended by Military Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavy, Air Force commander Ido Nehushtan and Operations Division chief Maj. Gen. Yaakov Ayash. The meeting’s level indicated that it was not limited to discussing the immediate import of the two bombing attacks but focused rather on the broader ramifications of a potential attack with Israeli fatalities and its impact on the prospects of war.
This assumption does not look far-fetched when it is recalled that deadly terrorist attacks in the past plunged Israel into two major wars.
On June 3, 1982, four terrorists gunned down Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov outside the Dorchester in London. He was in a coma until his death 21 years later. Three days after the attack, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon to fight the Palestinians and Syria.
Twenty-four years later, on July 12, 2006, Hizballah raiders crossed into Israel and attacked an IDF patrol. They killed three of its members and dragged two back into Lebanon to be held as hostages. Before the day ended, Israel was at war, this time with Hizballah.
So the agenda on Gen. Gantz’s urgent discussion with the IDF’s intelligence, air force and operations chiefs
was obviously not about plans to fly Israeli troops to New Delhi or Tbilisi, but for a calculus of the proximity of a full-scale war at some point in the ongoing wave of terror.
For some weeks now, the Middle East has been teetering at the edge of a precipice. A sudden shove could push it over the edge into full-blown armed hostilities without President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei being in control. The atmosphere is already dangerously charged over the crisis in Syria, reciprocal US and Iranian threats over the Strait of Hormuz, and US and Israeli preparations to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.
But wars may be ignited without notice by a small spark or a terrorist attack far from Middle East shores that would cause enough Israeli fatalities to satisfy its instigators in Tehran and Beirut and provoke an Israeli military response. This was dangerously close to happening in New Delhi Monday.

‘Iran says Israel attacked its ow… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Israel bombed its own embassies in New Dehli and Tbilisi in order to “tarnish Iran’s friendly ties with the host countries,” Iran said on Monday, after denying Israeli accusations that Tehran and its ally in Hezbollah launched the attacks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran,” according to the state Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

He said that such actions were in Israel’s “innate nature,” adding that Iran condemns terrorism in the strongest terms.

Earlier Monday, the Iranian ambassador to New Delhi rejected as “sheer lies” accusations that it was involved in a bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in India.

“Any terrorist attack is condemned (by Iran) and we strongly reject the untrue comments by an Israeli official,” Mehdi Nabizadeh was quoted as saying by IRNA. “These accusations are untrue and sheer lies, like previous times.”

Netanyahu placed blame for the dual attacks against Israel’s diplomatic missions in New Delhi and Tbilisi Monday squarely on Tehran, saying that Israel will continue to “systematically and with patience, use a strong arm” against international terrorism emanating from Iran.

Netanyahu said that Iran, and its proxy Hezbollah, is responsible for a string of attempted attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in recent months, including in Thailand and Azerbaijan. In each of the previous cases, he said, the attacks were thwarted with the help of the local authorities.

“Iran, which is behind these attacks, is the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world,” Netanyahu said. “The Israeli government and its security forces will continue to work together with local security services against these terrorist actions.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said that Israel knows exactly how to identify those responsible for the attacks and how to identify those who carried them out, after two seemingly coordinated attacks were launched on Monday against Israeli embassies abroad. Israel, he added, will not allow terrorism to affect its agenda.

“It just shows that Israel and its citizens face terror inside and outside of Israel,” Liberman said. “We deal with it every day. We know how to identify exactly who is responsible for the attack and who carried it out.”

“We will not allow this to affect our agenda,” the foreign minister concluded.

In the first attack, the wife of an Israeli diplomat was injured when a bomb exploded in her car in New Delhi, India. The woman succeeded in driving to the Israeli embassy where she was evacuated to a nearby hospital.

Local authorities were investigating the possibility that the bomb was planted under the car or alternatively that an assassin on a motorbike attached it to the vehicle as it was driving. Indian television cited witnesses who saw a motorbike following the car and possibly throwing an object toward it before the explosion.

In the second attack, an embassy staffer in Tbilisi, Georgia discovered a bomb underneath his car as he was driving to the embassy Monday morning. The staffer – a local Georgian national – heard something during the drive, pulled over to the side of the road, noticed the bomb and called local authorities. The bomb was dismantled before exploding.

Yaakov Katz and Jpost.com staff contributed to this report

Jeffrey Goldberg – Authors – The Atlantic.

I’m going to assume for the moment that the attacks on Israeli diplomatic vehicles in India and Georgia are the work of Hezbollah, which has promised attacks; which has recently been active in plotting attacks in Thailand, and which can reach into the rain forests of Latin America. It could be another group, of course, but Hezbollah is the obvious suspect. So: Does this mean war? No, not necessarily. This was not a fatal rocket attack across the Lebanese border. No one was killed in these attacks, and only one person was injured — the wife of a diplomat who had just dropped her children off at school in New Delhi. Yaacov Katz in The Jerusalem Post lays out the choices before the Israeli government:
Until the attacks on Monday, a debate had been raging within the Israeli defense establishment what the appropriate response should be to an overseas attack, if and when one took place.

Hezbollah is understood to prefer such an attack – against an embassy, an El Al plane or a consulate – rather than one along the northern border since this would allow it a level of deniability.

Nevertheless, there are some officials within the defense establishment who believe that such an attack needs to be met by a fierce response.

Just last month, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz warned Hezbollah not to test Israel’s resolve by perpetrating a terror attack against an Israeli target overseas. If Israel does not respond, it could be perceived as a paper tiger.

Other officials believe that Israel should not go to war over any attack and that the country’s reaction would need to depend on the chosen target and of course the outcome, i.e. the number of casualties.

Iran denies role in bomb attacks … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

By REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma

Iran rejects as “sheer lies” accusations that it was involved in a bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in India, the official IRNA news agency quoted the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to New Delhi as saying on Monday, after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu implicated Tehran and its ally Hezbollah in the attacks.

“Any terrorist attack is condemned (by Iran) and we strongly reject the untrue comments by an Israeli official,” Mehdi Nabizadeh was quoted as saying by IRNA. “These accusations are untrue and sheer lies, like previous times.”

Netanyahu placed blame for the dual attacks against Israel’s diplomatic missions in New Delhi and Tbilisi Monday squarely on Tehran, saying that Israel will continue to “systematically and with patience, use a strong arm” against international terrorism emanating from Iran.

Netanyahu said that Iran, and its proxy Hezbollah, is responsible for a string of attempted attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in recent months, including in Thailand and Azerbaijan. In each of the previous cases, he said, the attacks were thwarted with the help of the local authorities.

India, Georgia Bombings Target Israeli Diplomats.

NEW DELHI — Assailants targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia in near-simultaneous strikes Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed on archenemy Iran, and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

The bombing of an Israeli diplomat’s car in New Delhi by an attacker apparently on a motorcycle wounded four people, officials said. Israel said an attempted car bombing in Georgia was thwarted.

“Today we witnessed two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians,” Netanyahu told a gathering of lawmakers from his Likud Party. “Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world,” he said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks. But Netanyahu also said Israel had thwarted similar attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan and Thailand.

“In all those cases, the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protege, Hezbollah,” he said, vowing to “act with a strong hand against international terror.”

Both Hezbollah and Iran have deep grievances against the Jewish state.

Hezbollah battled Israel in a monthlong war in 2006, and on Sunday, it the Lebanese guerrilla group marked the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of one of its commanders, Imad Mughniyeh, in a bombing widely believed to have been carried out by Israel. Iran suspects Israeli involvement in a series of killings of officials and scientists involved in its nuclear program.

The New Delhi attack took place just a few hundred meters from the prime minister’s residence as the diplomat’s wife was heading to the American Embassy School to pick up her children, said Delhi Police Commissioner B.K. Gupta.

When the car approached a crossing, she noticed a motorcyclist ride up and stick something on it that appeared to be a magnetic device, he said.

The car drove a short distance, there was a loud sound and then an explosion and the car caught fire, he said.

“It was a loud explosion. We realized it’s not a firecracker, but an explosion, and rushed toward the car,” said Ravi Singh, 50, owner of a gas station near the blast site.

The blast left a charred minivan with blue diplomatic plates, its rear door apparently blown out.

Gupta said the woman, Tal Yeshova, was stable and conscious. Her driver, Manoj Sharma 42, sustained minor injuries. Two people in a nearby car sustained minor injuries, he said.

Israeli diplomats in India have been on constant alert since Pakistan-based militants rampaged across the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, attacking luxury hotels, the main train station and killing six people in the Chabad Jewish community center.

India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said India would cooperate closely with Israel in the investigation.

“I have just spoken to the Israeli foreign minister,” he said. “I assured him that the law of the land will take its course.”

Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia said an explosive device was planted on the car of a driver for the Israeli Embassy.

Shota Utiashvili, spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the driver noticed a package attached to his car’s undercarriage and called police.

Police found a grenade in the package and it was defused, Utiashvili said.

There was no immediate comment from Iran or Hezbollah. But speculation will undoubtedly be raised over the possibility of Iranian-linked payback for assassinations on nuclear scientists and other covert plots that Tehran has blamed on Israel’s spy agency Mossad and Western allies.

“There have been all kinds of mysterious things happening in Iran, and it could be an Iranian counterattack,” said Mike Herzog, a retired Israeli general and former top aide to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “It’s no secret that Iran uses Hezbollah globally, and Hezbollah has the capacity to carry out attacks around the globe.”

Hezbollah dominates the government of Lebanon, which borders Israel to the north.

Were Iran behind the New Delhi attack, it would be a stunning violation against one of its stronger allies.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has resisted U.S. and EU pressure to curtail trade with Iran over the nuclear issue. Energy-starved India relies heavily on Iranian oil imports and the two countries are working to find creative ways for India to pay for the oil by using rupees and investing in Iranian infrastructure projects.

Israel, like the West, accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons and has urged the international community to consider all means, including military action, to stop Tehran. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Last month, a director of Iran’s main uranium enrichment site was killed in a blast from a magnetic bomb placed on his car. The official, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was at least the fifth member of Iran’s scientific community killed in apparent targeted attacks in the past two years.

Iran blamed Israel. The official news agency IRNA said later it had “evidence” of alleged U.S. and British involvement in the Roshan killing.

In a signal that Iran could retaliate, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the spokesman for Iran’s Joint Armed Forces Staff, was quoted by ISNA last month as saying that Tehran was “reviewing the punishment” of “behind-the-scene elements” involved in the assassination.

“Iran’s response will be a tormenting one for supporters of state terrorism,” he said, without elaborating. “The enemies of the Iranian nation, especially the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime, or Israel, have to be held responsible for their activities.”

Iran also has blamed the U.S. and allies for a sophisticated computer virus, known as Stuxnet, that was programmed to disrupt the centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. Iran said the virus was detected in its systems, but claimed no serious setbacks occurred.

In January, a foreign suspect with alleged links to Hezbollah militants led Thai police to a warehouse filled with materials commonly used to make bombs. Police seized more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate at the warehouse in Samut Sakhon, on the western outskirts of Bangkok.

In January 2010, assailants detonated a roadside bomb near a convoy of cars carrying Israeli diplomats in Jordan. No one was hurt, and there was no claim of responsibility.

In 1992, a bombing attack at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killed 29 people. Two years later, a bombing at a Jewish community center in that city killed 85 people.

Argentines have long suspected high-level Iranian diplomats were involved in the 1994 bombing.

Activists: Syrian rebels repel attack on town – CBS News.

(AP)  BEIRUT — Syrian rebels repelled a push Monday by government tanks into a key central town held by forces fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime as the country’s 11-month-old uprising looked increasingly like a nascent civil war.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attempt by regime forces to storm Rastan in the restive central province of Homs left at least three soldiers dead. Rastan has been held by the rebels since late January.

The town was taken by defectors twice in the past only to be retaken by Syrian troops. It is the hometown of former Defense Minister Mustapha Tlass, who held the post for more than three decades, mostly under Assad’s father and predecessor, the late Hafez Assad.

Calls to town’s residents could not get through on Monday and the telephone lines appeared to be cut, as they usually are during military operations.

“Troops maneuvered by moving on the northern edge of town then other forces attacked form the south,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory. He added that hundreds of army defectors are in Rastan.

The Observatory also said that troops bombed the rebel-held Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr that has been under siege for more than a week. It reported clashes in the village of Busra al-Harir in the southern province of Daraa between troops and army defectors.

In the central city of Hama, a sniper shot dead a civilian, the group said.

The Syrian uprising began as mostly peaceful protests against Assad’s authoritarian regime, but it has turned increasingly militarized over the past few months in the face of a brutal military crackdown that has killed thousands of people.

Recently the conflict has taken on the dimensions of a civil war, with army defectors clashing almost daily with soldiers. The rebels have taken control of small swathes of territory in Homs and the northwestern province of Idlib that borders Turkey.

The Observatory, which has activists around Syria, said 45 vehicles, including tanks, arrived in the town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib region.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister there must be a cease-fire in Syria before any peacekeeping mission could be sent to the country, rejecting calls for a joint Arab-U.N. force as premature.

Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that his country will study an Arab League proposal for a joint peacekeeping mission in Syria with the United Nations.

“We should first have peace, which would be supported,” Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow with United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Russia, along with China, have given support to Assad’s regime at a time when Syria is facing broad international isolation over a crackdown that has killed more than 5,400 people. The two powerful nations upset the U.S., Europe and many Arab countries earlier this month when they delivered a double veto to block a U.N. resolution calling on Assad to leave power.

Moscow’s stance is motivated in part by its strategic and defense ties, including weapons sales, with Syria. Russia also rejects what it sees as a world order dominated by the U.S. Last month, Russia reportedly signed a $550 million deal to sell combat jets to Syria.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin refused to directly answer repeated questions on whether Beijing would support the league’s call. He said China backs the Arab League’s “political mediation efforts.”

He reiterated China’s stance that it wanted to see Syrian authorities and opposition forces “properly solve their disputes through dialogue.”

On Sunday, the 22-member Arab League called for the Security Council to create a joint Arab-U.N. peacekeeping force for Syria and urged Arab states to sever all diplomatic contact with Damascus in the League’s latest effort to bring an end to the violence.

The League also said it wanted to provide Syrian opposition groups with political and material support. It called for a halt to all diplomatic contacts with Syria and for referring officials responsible for crimes against the Syrian people to international criminal tribunals. It urged a tightening of trade sanctions previously adopted by the League that have not been fully implemented.

It urged Syrian opposition groups to unite ahead of a Feb. 24 meeting in Tunisia of the “Friends of Syria” group, which includes the United States, its European allies and Arab nations working to end the uprising against Assad’s authoritarian rule.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said Monday that Britain would discuss the possibility of a joint-African Union and United Nations peacekeeping force for Syria ahead of the Tunisia talks.

“We will discuss urgently with the Arab League and our international partners the proposals for a joint Arab League and U.N. peacekeeping force,” he said. “Such a mission could have an important role to play in saving lives.”

Syria rejected the calls with state-run news agency SANA quoting an unnamed official as saying that the Arab League’s decisions are “a flagrant interference in the internal affairs and an infringement upon national sovereignty.”

The official said the Arab League decision “wound not dissuade Syria from continuing its responsibilities in protecting civilians and maintaining security and stability for its people.”

Assad’s regime has long blamed terrorists for the revolt that began with peaceful calls for democratic change but is morphing into a bloody, armed insurgency.

On Saturday, al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri threw the terror network’s support behind Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad, raising fears that Islamic extremists are exploiting the uprising.

Haniyeh: No compromise, only armed resista… JPost – Middle East.