WarSclerotic

US admiral says forces prepared to confront Iran – World – MiamiHerald.com.

By ADAM SCHRECK

Associated Press

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/12/2637851/us-admiral-says-forces-prepared.html#storylink=cpy

Divided We Stand: On Iran, Obama and Israel are Worlds Apart.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: Wiki Commons

Nowadays, when President Obama can’t seem to find his way around a condom and a few bishops, it is rather hilarious to entertain a serious discussion about his plans to prevent Iran from going nuclear. On the other hand, was it ever serious?

I know, I know. The President has told us in no uncertain terms that he has not removed “any option from consideration” with regard to Iran – that, before dedicating the rest of this part of his pre-Superbowl interview to trying to alarm the pro-Israeli American public with imagined consequences of any use of force against the ayatollahs. A few days later, an “Obama administration official” was busy reporting to the New York Times that Obama has managed to convince the Israeli Prime Minister to give more time for economic sanctions to work. On the way, this official dismissed the whole Israeli perception of the Iranian threat as “too narrow”, since all that Israelis apparently care about is whether or not the Iranian nuclear facilities are vulnerable to attack from above, and they don’t give much attention to reports about the impact of the international sanctions on the Iranian economy.

The reason for this frustration in the White House is simple. Despite the highfalutin statements to the contrary (which are going to increase in volume as elections approach) since its very inception the Obama administration operates on an assumption that Israeli and American security interests are NOT the same. This is why, while acknowledging the tremendous difference between the threats that a nuclear Iran will pose for Israel and the US, American officials keep insisting that Israel adopts the American view and confirm itself to it. This is logical – after all, if the President himself approaches the Israeli issue without any love or ideological commitment (as even the Democrats freely acknowledge) then Israel is just another client state that must bow before the will of the sponsor, and that’s all there is to it.

Until the American public soundly rebuked the President and his party for this attitude towards Israel at the midterm elections and beyond, this spirit of “you-do-what-I-say-or-else” permeated the whole fabric of Obama’s policy towards the Jewish state. Today, when the Middle East is burning with Obama-induced Islamic fever, and the prospective partner for peace is busy signing unity agreements with Hamas, the administration prefers to dump this recent history into a memory hole. Nevertheless, on Iran, this attitude is still showing.

What else can prompt “two senior US officials” to confirm to NBC News claims that Israel is cooperating with People’s Mujahedin of Iran to kill Iranian scientists – claims made by a senior aide to the Iranian Inquisitor-In-Chief? Besides the cowardly attempt to distance the American superpower from the unfortunate events that befell Iranian bomb-builders and to buy immunity from possible retribution at Israel’s expense, the purpose of the leak was more nefarious – to besmirch Israel in the eyes of the American public by linking the Jewish state to the group that has been accused of killing Americans.

In fact, a dispassionate look at the statements made by both the anonymous “officials” and the party-line commentators leads to a conclusion that the real question for Washington right now isn’t how to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power but how to prevent Israel from acting in its self-defense and to convince the Americans that the Jewish state is being lead towards an unnecessary confrontation by a bunch of irresponsible, borderline psychotic scoundrels who are completely oblivious to reality. If this is glaringly similar to the picture that the opinion page of “Haaretz” regularly presents to its readers, it’s because on both sides of the ocean those voices come from the same background. They are a product of a fervent belief that the removal of the Jewish presence from Judea and Samaria is an instant cure for Israel’s security problems and that Netanyahu’s “obsession” with Iran is nothing but a clever distraction from the real issue – freedom for Palestine.

For a good example, look no further than this article by president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Leslie Gelb, written as if he addresses a not particularly intelligent student, not the elected leader of the sovereign state who (it so happens) was right on Iran all along. In one not particularly long piece Gelb, a former NYT columnist (that explains a lot) has managed to portray Israeli leaders as liars, to lecture the Israeli Defense Minister – a decorated veteran of many battles – about the possible casualties from an attack on Iran, and to demand from Israel – here it is – to surrender its military strategy and threat assessment to the American judgment. While the Iranian leaders were busy producing new and interesting quotes about their unwavering commitment to the cause of eradication of Israel, talking heads and writing hands representing the “Obama base” deplored… “the Israeli saber-rattling”.

Despite the presidential assurances about being “in a lockstep” with Israel on Iran, right now the only conclusion the rational observer in Jerusalem (and in Tehran) can arrive at is of extreme discord between the Israeli and American perception of the Iran threat, desirable ways to confront it and the time-frame for a military action. Such is the gap between Jerusalem and Washington, that while ordinary Israelis upload videos like this to YouTube, graphically explaining what lies in Israel’s future if Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein calls on Obama to prove to Iran that “we are serious about a deal”. Instead of keeping up the pressure on Iran, American foreign policy mandarins recommend that “covert operations and public pressure be demonstrably reduced” to create a right atmosphere for a fruitful dialog. Meanwhile, in Iran centrifuges are spinning, fast.

WND » U.S., Israel face unconventional weapons threat » Print.

Fear Iran, al-Qaida, Pakistani intelligence elements coordinating attack

Published: 4 hours ago

TEL AVIV – If the U.S. or Israel strikes Iran, fringe elements of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus that allegedly work with al-Qaida may attempt to coordinate terrorist attacks internationally, including using unconventional weapons, according to Arab diplomats in Pakistan.

The Arab diplomats, speaking to WND, said they did not have specifics on the nature of the attack, such as whether it would employ chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The diplomats also said they did not have specifics about the exact location of any possible terrorist threat.

The Arab diplomats said there is little fear that Pakistan itself would get directly involved in any conflict involving Iran.

Elements of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies long have been accused of working with al-Qaida, a charge parroted worldwide after Osama bin Laden was discovered living in Pakistan near a military facility less than two hours from the country’s capital.

It is unknown whether al-Qaida itself possesses unconventional weapons. In 2009, there were unsubstantiated reports that an al-Qaida affiliate in Algeria closed a base after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.

Many terrorism analysts have reported on al-Qaida attempts to purchase or obtain unconventional weapons over the years, or to steal material from nuclear sites. Just last year, Reuters reported that radioactive material was stolen from the site of a nuclear power plant in Egypt during protests outside the site.

Some fear the future possibility that al-Qaida, working with a state actor such as Iran, could carry out an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack off America’s coastline, if the terrorist group could obtain both a nuclear device and a missile.

The information from the Arab diplomats in Pakistan comes after ABC News reported last week that Jewish and Israeli institutions in the U.S. are on high alert over Iranian-supported terrorist threats.

Precautions were put into place by the institutions, ABC reported Feb. 3, citing a letter from the head of security for the Israeli consul general for the Mid-Atlantic Region.

The letter reportedly related a higher security threat to “guarded sites” such as Israeli embassies and consulates, and “soft sites” such as synagogues, as well as Jewish schools, restaurants and Jewish community centers.

ABC reported that local and regional law enforcement and intelligence officials in U.S. and Canadian cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Toronto have increased security at Israeli and Jewish institutions.

Also last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned in written congressional testimony that “some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States.”

Iran, meanwhile, has long faced accusations of working with al-Qaida.

Last week, U.S. officials expressed concern that Iran may have freed a group of al-Qaida members held for almost a decade under house arrest in the Islamic Republic.

As early as 2009, WND quoted an Egyptian security official warning that Iranian agents and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia were working with cells of al-Qaida to carry out attacks in Egypt.

In November, WND reported that in response to any future Israeli military strike on its nuclear sites, Iran has been training al-Qaeda elements in the Egyptian Sinai desert on how to coordinate retaliatory attacks, according to a senior Egyptian security official.

The al-Qaida attacks are meant to target both Israeli and Egyptian installations, the security official said, as part of an Iranian plot to widen any Israeli-Iranian conflict to involve other countries.

The Egyptian official said there is also information Iran has been working with Islamic Salafist groups in Jordan that are allied with al-Qaida.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards helped to train al-Qaida elements in the Sinai and Gaza Strip to carry out large-scale attacks, including missile attacks, cross-border incursions, suicide bombings and explosions targeting infrastructure, such as oil and gas pipelines, the official said.

Alan Dershowitz: Warning Iran Against Hitting ‘Soft’ American Targets – WSJ.com.

The Obama administration should deem an attack on a synagogue or embassy as tantamount to a military attack on the U.S.

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

The Iranian government has now made crystal clear that it is at war not only with Israel and Zionism but with Jewish communities throughout the world. As Iran’s Rafah news website—identified with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—threatened last month, Iran plans to “take the war beyond the borders of Iran, and beyond the borders of the region.” And last week an Iranian News Agency headline declared that “Israeli people must be annihilated.”

These and other recent threats have, according to news reports, led Israeli and American authorities to believe that Iran is preparing attacks against Israeli embassies and consulates world-wide, as well as against Jewish houses of prayer, schools, community centers, restaurants and other soft targets.

If this were to happen, it would not be the first time that Iranian agents have bombed or attacked Israeli and Jewish targets in distant countries. Back in 1992, Iranian agents blew up the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, many of whom were children. The Argentine government conducted a thorough criminal investigation and indicted several Iranian officials, but those officials were well beyond the reach of Argentine legal authorities and remain at liberty.

The U.S. government should deem any Iranian attack against Israeli or Jewish soft targets in America to be an armed military attack on the U.S.—to which the U.S. will retaliate militarily at a time and place of its choosing. Washington should not treat such an attack as the Argentine authorities did, merely as a criminal act.

Under international law, an attack on an embassy is an attack both on the embassy’s country and on the country in which the embassy is located. And under the charter of the United Nations, an attack against a nation’s citizens on its territory is an act of armed aggression that justifies retaliatory military action.

An attack on an American synagogue is no different than an attack on the World Trade Center or on American aviation. We correctly regarded those attacks as acts of war committed by al Qaeda and facilitated by the government of Afghanistan, and we responded militarily. All American citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation, are equally entitled to the protection of the American military.

U.S. retaliation could take the form of military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Though such action might be pre-emptive in its intention, it would be reactive as a matter of international law, since it would be in response to an armed attack by Iran. It wouldn’t require Security Council approval, since Article 51 of the U.N. Charter explicitly preserves the right of member nations to respond to any armed attack.

This is not to argue against such an attack if Iran decides not to go after soft American targets. It may become necessary for our military to target Iranian nuclear facilities if economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts do not succeed and if the Iranian government decides to cross red lines by militarizing its nuclear program and placing it in deep underground bunkers. But the legal justification for such an attack would be somewhat different. It would be predominantly pre-emptive or preventive, though it would have reactive elements as well, since Iran has armed our enemies in Iraq and caused the death of many American soldiers.

If Israel were compelled to act alone against Iran’s nuclear program, it too would be reacting as well as pre-empting, since Iran has effectively declared war against the Jewish state and its people. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently confirmed Iran’s role as Hezbollah’s active partner in its war against Israel, claiming that it “could not have been victorious” in its 2006 war without the military support of Tehran. Iran’s ongoing support for Hezbollah and Hamas, coupled with its direct participation in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, constitute sufficient casus belli to justify a reactive Israeli military strike against the Iranian nuclear program.

The best outcome, of course, would be to deter Iran from both foreign aggression and domestic nuclearization by making the costs too high, even for the most zealous or adventurous Iranian leaders. But for deterrence to succeed, where sanctions and other tactics appear to be failing, the threat of military action must be credible. Right now it is not, because Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other administration officials are sending mixed signals, not only with regard to the U.S. but also with regard to Israel.

The administration must speak with an unambiguous and credible voice that leaves no doubt in the minds of Iranian leaders that America won’t tolerate attacks on our citizens or a nuclear-armed Iran. As George Washington wisely counseled in his second inaugural address, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is “Trials of Zion” (Grand Central Publishing, 2010).

Obama’s Dangerous Game With Iran – The Daily Beast.

Feb 13, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Can the president keep nukes out of the mullahs’ hands, prevent the global economy from imploding, manage the wild card that is Israel—and get reelected?

It’s hardly surprising, then, that the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency was recently in Washington for top-level meetings on Iran. According to an American official who was involved, Tamir Pardo wanted to take the pulse of the Obama administration and determine what the consequences would be if Israel bombed Iranian nuclear sites over American objections. Pardo raised many questions, according to this source: “What is our posture on Iran? Are we ready to bomb? Would we [do so later]? What does it mean if [Israel] does it anyway?” As it is, Israel has stopped sharing a significant amount of information with Washington regarding its own military preparations.

Brinksmanship may be one formula to force Iran’s leaders to negotiate in earnest. But it can cut both ways. In January, just as sanctions pressure intensified, Iran allowed nuclear inspectors into the country for the first time in many months. Yet it also began producing 20 percent enriched uranium—one step short of the 90 percent stuff used in weapons—at its underground facility near the holy city of Qum. If cornered, Iran may become more unpredictable. And if Israel attacks, the United States may get drawn into a war that could set the Middle East further aflame and send global markets into a terrified frenzy. So which will it be? How much influence does Obama have over Israel, and how committed is the United States to preventing a nuclear Iran at any cost? To answer that question, it helps to understand the game as Obama sees it—and to appreciate how we got to this dangerous brink in the first place.

Until recently, when it came to Iran, Obama followed the Teddy Roosevelt maxim: speak softly and carry a big stick. Even before he came to office, Obama sought a new era in American-Iranian relations. Hillary Clinton and others called him “naive” during the 2008 campaign for suggesting unconditional talks with Tehran. That didn’t deter him: in one of his first acts as president, Obama wrote a conciliatory letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and appeared in a YouTube video on the occasion of the Persian New Year offering to repair relations. Obama understood the need “to develop a kind of concrete test of their intentions,” says a senior White House official.

At the same time, Obama made clear that if reconciliation didn’t work, Iran would suffer painful consequences. Iranian leaders were suspicious: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded to Obama’s overtures by saying that “change should be fundamental, not tactical.” He and other Iranians shrugged off threats, and with good reason. The White House and Congress had imposed round after round of sanctions for many years without significant effect—largely because American leaders couldn’t get much international support and were wary of launching a trade war. In Obama’s thinking, this was yet another reason to offer an “extended hand” to Tehran: he had to make a sincere effort at engagement in order to convince other countries that tougher measures were necessary if engagement failed.

The American intelligence and security establishment had worries of its own about Iran—and about Obama. The generals and spies fretted that the new president might put an end to an elaborate shadow war they had been waging. The Bush administration, together with Israeli counterparts, had engaged in a supersecret campaign to set back Iran’s nuclear development. The program involved what are known in the spy world as “delaying actions” or “foiling operations.” Agents posing as black-market vendors would sell to Iranian buyers nuclear-use items designed to fail under high stress, or items with tracking devices to reveal the locations of secret labs. Software engineers worked to develop sophisticated cyber-warfare programs that could penetrate the computers in Iran’s nuclear plants and cause harm to vital equipment like centrifuges. The spies didn’t want any of that put on hold, and the CIA was particularly worried that Iranian assets they’d worked so hard to cultivate would fade away.

In the first days of the administration, deputy CIA Director Steve Kappes and Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, went to see Tom Donilon, one of Obama’s most trusted aides. They knew the National Security Council was reviewing all presidential covert findings in light of Obama’s promises on the campaign trail, and wanted to know what the president’s intentions were. They asked Donilon not to stop the covert program. Donilon responded that he was not yet fully “read into” the covert files, so Cartwright took his request up the chain—directly to the new president.

Obama listened intently. He understood Cartwright’s concern, and yet his diplomatic strategy hinged on the Iranians believing that American outreach was genuine. The president mulled the question of whether covert activities might compromise his nascent effort to engage with Iran’s leaders. “He was trying to weigh the slowing down of our covert activities—when that meant Iran would be able to reprocess [uranium] faster—against the risk to the outstretched-hand policy,” recalls one adviser. “That was the tricky balance.”

In the end, Obama concluded that he could pursue both—the covert and diplomatic tracks—simultaneously. He told his advisers that a successful campaign to disrupt Iran’s nuclear plans, in fact, would buy more time for diplomacy.

There was a separate complication in the shadow war, however: while the U.S. relationship with Israel is generally strong on security and intelligence matters, there is disagreement on both methods and strategy. Israel has no qualms about assassinating Iranians involved in nuclear research, for instance; U.S. law forbids it. (Drone strikes against jihadist leaders are considered acts of war.) “The Israelis handled everything that was kinetic, and we did the nonkinetic activities, sometimes along with the Israelis,” says a Pentagon source who was involved. A senior U.S. intelligence official says that both sides performed a kind of “Kabuki dance” on the assassinations and industrial “accidents” that have increased in Iran during the past year: “The Israelis don’t want to say and we don’t want to know.”

The United States, moreover, has conducted regular reviews of cooperation with Israel to make sure that American intelligence does not leak into operations that violate U.S. law. “We were always careful about what we said to the Israelis in meetings, and they knew why,” says the Pentagon source. “They knew that if we gave them certain kinds of information we’d run the risk of breaking the law. We often held things back from them—satellite imagery and other kinds of intelligence that could have helped them with their activities.”

From the get-go, Obama had a frosty relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. “There’s no question that tension grew between the two, because we felt like … they had a different estimation [of the timeline for Iran to get nuclear-weapons capability],” says the Pentagon source, “and we felt like some of their [kinetic] activities undermined what we were trying to do. Obama’s view was, why would you remove the opportunity for a diplomatic solution for something that was so incrementally significant [as killing a scientist]?”

That trust deficit was exacerbated in May of last year when Obama delivered a landmark speech outlining his wider Middle East policy. Netanyahu was preparing to fly to Washington at the time and was surprised when he heard the president state that the 1967 borders should be a basis for negotiating the final frontiers of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu believed he had an understanding with Obama that some Jewish settlements built in areas occupied by Israel in the 1967 war would remain inside Israel, a position detailed in a 2004 letter from President Bush to then–prime minister Ariel Sharon. When Netanyahu finally arrived at the Oval Office, he was furious. At a photo op with the two leaders, Netanyahu began to lecture the president on Israel’s security needs before the gathered journalists.

That incident was treated as a small blip in U.S.-Israel relations at the time. Obama soon clarified his position at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, stating that negotiated borders should be based on the 1967 lines “with mutually agreed swaps.” But resentment persisted. In June Israeli intelligence and military officers stopped discussing any details of their planning, analysis, and training cycles for a possible attack on Iran. Until then cooperation had been close: a regular video teleconference between U.S. and Israeli national-security advisers to discuss Iran was established during the first Netanyahu visit to Washington, in 2009. As one senior Israeli official puts it, “We … both wanted no surprises.”

For about four months, however, the Israelis went mum. Meetings continued, but they weren’t substantive. “I knew they were upset; when they stopped talking, we said, ‘We got a problem,’?” a senior U.S. intelligence official tells Newsweek. (This was confirmed by a military officer working on the Iran file.) The blackout was mostly lifted by Israel in October. But by that time the Obama administration had already been spooked, and with good reason: it’s possible that Israel could start a war with Iran that the United States would be compelled to finish. (As it is, Israel continues to withhold a “top layer of information” regarding Iran, says the U.S. intelligence official.)

Israeli officials now insist that Obama has undergone what they regard as a positive evolution in his views on Iran. “The rhetoric from the United States today is different from what it was a year ago,” says an Israeli in Netanyahu’s inner circle. “Today, when you listen to Obama … you get the feeling the Americans are ready to attack if worse comes to worst.” Another official privy to discussions on Iran at the highest levels in Israel says, “It becomes clearer and clearer that America is on the course of a growing conflict, growing friction, growing risk of a big conflict with Iran.”

American and Israeli officials attribute Obama’s toughening stance to several factors, among them the Iranian regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in June 2009. The discovery the same year of a secretly constructed underground nuclear facility near Qum “was the real turning point,” says former assistant secretary of state P.J. Crowley, who was in office at the time. “Whereas prior to 2009 there was hope that there could be dialogue, after Qum significant action shifted toward the pressure track. We’ve never closed the door to engagement, but clearly after September 2009 there was acceleration of other activities.” Then came the news in January of this year that the facility near Qum was being used to process 20 percent enriched uranium. That announcement, combined with intelligence about weapons development detailed in a November 2011 report by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, led many to see the danger as increasingly clear and present.

Obama is also thinking more broadly—about a possible nuclear-arms race in the region and the reputation of the United States. One of the senior Israeli officials interviewed for this article says he has heard U.S. counterparts express concern that a failure to stop Iran could lead to an eclipse of American power in the Middle East. “You stand to lose a very wide area of influence that was yours for 60 years,” says the official. “If Iran did [develop nukes] in spite of America, how would Obama look? How would America look?”

Obama’s calculus, however, has to take in other factors as well—from the fate of Amir Mirza Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine sentenced to death in Iran last month for alleged spying, to the fate of every American and Iranian who would be involved in waging an overt war. Iran is a country of 80 million people, compared with about 30 million in Afghanistan or Iraq. Its territory of 1.65 million square kilometers, including deserts and rugged mountains, gives it impressive strategic depth. (Israel, by contrast, exists on 20,000 square kilometers.) Iran is a major oil producer and looms in perilous proximity to the most critical petroleum and gas supply lines in the world, from the Strait of Hormuz in the south to the Caspian Sea in the north. The United States would certainly aim to avoid a land war, but once bombs and missiles start flying, the endgame is hard to predict. What happens if Iran manages to sink an American warship? Or, more likely, what happens if an air assault only consolidates support for the regime while the nuclear program, only partly hidden today, becomes entirely secret? Is there a war of attrition? An all-out invasion? Yet another long, wasting war for America in the Middle East? Already many commentators are pointing out apocalyptic risks. Mike Lofgren, for decades a Republican staffer on the Hill, recently warned of a toxic mix of international tensions and American domestic politics analogous to Europe in 1914, when a relatively small and unexpected event triggered the first war to engulf the world.

Even the prospect of severe Iran sanctions is enough to cause tremors in some quarters. Sanctions could force a spike in petroleum prices or prompt Iran to disrupt shipping in the Persian Gulf, where tankers carry roughly a third of the world’s oil. When Congress was preparing a bill last year to punish any financial institution doing business with Iran’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote a letter to Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, arguing against the measure: “Rather than motivating these countries to join us in increasing pressure on Iran, [such countries] are more likely to resent our actions and resist following our lead—a consequence that would serve the Iranians more than it harms them.”

The White House was concerned that Obama, in the end, might have to issue a presidential waiver on sanctions to protect the American economy, making the United States look like a paper tiger in the eyes of the mullahs. In a November meeting on Capitol Hill—in a special office fortified to withstand electronic surveillance—deputy national-security adviser Denis McDonough and other White House aides pleaded with key legislators. They were worried that the bill did not allow enough time to find alternative sources of oil and keep global markets stable. “If you force us to issue national-security waivers on these sanctions, this will undercut everything we’re trying to do,” McDonough said, according to one of the participants.

The Saudis and other Gulf states, meanwhile, gave assurances that they could make up for any Iranian oil taken off the market and keep prices stable. (This is one of those rare cases where Gulf Arab and Israeli leaders are largely in agreement.) In the end, the amendment mandating sanctions against institutions dealing with Iran’s central bank passed by a 100–0 vote. Still, the White House won some wiggle room, including a softening of the language that provides an option for placing severe restrictions on banks instead of banning them outright from the U.S. financial system.

The key question now is how much time is left to achieve a negotiated solution. Israeli officials say that the United States thinks it can afford to wait until Iran is on the very verge of weaponizing, because U.S. forces have the capacity to carry out multiple bombing sorties and cripple the Iranian program at that point. Israel, however, would not be able to carry out such a sustained attack and would need to hit much sooner to be effective—before Iran could shelter much of its program deep underground. One former Israeli official tells Newsweek he heard this explanation directly from Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “If Israel will miss its last opportunity [to attack], then we will have to lean only on the United States, and if the United States decides not to attack, then we will face an Iran with a bomb,” says the former Israeli official. This source says that Israel has asked Obama for assurances that if sanctions fail, he will use force against Iran. Obama’s refusal to provide that assurance has helped shape Israel’s posture: a refusal to promise restraint, or even to give the United States advance notice.

Critics might say this is an example of Obama “leading from behind.” What his record shows more clearly, however, is that he is willing to come at the Iran problem from every possible angle: from behind, from the sides, overtly, covertly, diplomatically, and economically. That record also suggests that if a war is in the offing—perhaps ignited by an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations, with or without American approval—Obama will continue to pursue policies that are multifaceted, restrained, and, if possible, short of full-scale conflagration.

With Christopher Dickey in Paris and R.M. Schneiderman in New York

Iran blocks access to Facebook, Gmail ahead of Islamic Revolution anniversary – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Online reports suggest sites censored in order to suppress any attempt by opposition to renew its protests during the upcoming month-long anniversary celebration to honor the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

By Oded Yaron

The Iranian government tightened its hold on internet access this past week, ensuring that its citizens would not be able to access their email accounts on major websites such as Google.

According to an Iranian news agency, 30 million Iranians discovered this week that they could not access their accounts on Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail among other websites.

	Iranian journalism students use the Internet in a cafe in central Tehran, Iran, January 18, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

According to a report from the website Hacker News, Iran had blocked access to the sites on Thursday, in contravention with its official communications protocol.

The reports also suggest that the sites were censored due to the upcoming month-long anniversary celebration in honor of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in order to suppress any attempt by the opposition to renew its protests against the regime during the celebrations.

Until now, Iranians had been using programs such as TOR to bypass government censors. However, many are now reporting that even those programs no longer allow access to websites such as Facebook.

The news comes in the wake of a report stating that Iran was seeking to disconnect from the World Wide Web, and is seeking to establish its own national network.

Furthermore, Iranian authorities have begun enforcing a new law which forces internet café owners to collect information regarding their clients. Should the owners refuse, they could face the possibility having their business shut down.

The Internet, and specifically social network sites, played a major role during the 2009 anti-regime protests that rocked the country after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Talking through the gas mask | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

My gas mask arrived today, hand delivered, courtesy of the State of Israel. It’s an exciting little package, sitting there where I left it, a neat brown box with all sorts of warnings not to open it — presumably until absolutely necessary.

I hope that necessity never arrives and those warnings retain their dignity. But the truth is it might. We all know by now from where the rockets and missiles may come though I still have trouble understanding the why.

But it doesn’t matter. The little brown box packed with a grotesque objected inside, which is there to protect against a grotesque threat, is the heart of the matter: that Israel will protect itself and its citizens.

The nations of the world, America included, may not like this fact. The US worries that if Israel decides it has to disarm an apocalyptic-minded Iranian theocracy the price of oil might jump. The election might be in jeopardy. The economy could falter.

There are some in the Jewish community who share these concerns. They don’t like that Israel is rocking the boat, making decisions that are not necessarily in line with that of its benefactor. Jewish American voices, particularly in the media, warn that the outcome could be a further distancing of American Jews from Israel.

Would that not be a price worth paying? To choose between Jewish American patronage and an Iranian nuke, the choice is not hard. But more than this, what if Israel distances itself from American Jews?

Already this is happening. In Israel, my friends and I discuss, as a daily matter, the gas mask, the bunker, the loom of 200,000 rockets — and the resolve that springs from these conditions.

It’s not that we don’t care about what our brethren in America say or feel about the situation: we barely even know what it is they’re saying or what they feel. They’re speaking in terms we don’t understand.

As we worry about gas masks they’re worrying about gas prices. We’re thinking of 200,000 rockets and they of the effects those rockets might have on jobs numbers. It’s a human concern they’re expressing for their wellbeing and that of their country. But it’s one that for us is blotted out by the shadows of missiles.

American Jews want Israelis to relate to them: think about the position they’re in, having to defend us as we continue to splash and thrash around in the bark. I look at my brown gas mask box sitting up-ended on a stool and think that maybe they should relate to us, defending a lone Jewish state while our allies sternly caution us against anything that may affect their standard of living.

The American Jewish commentators are right — a chasm is opening up between the two communities, Israeli and Diasporic. It’s sad, actually tragic, but far less so than the prospect of Israel falling into that chasm in an attempt to stay close to a receding Diaspora. I hope the Diaspora sees this, and understands the best thing it can do for Israel is try, as well, to remain close to us.

Impersonating Anonymous: Is it state sponsored terrorism? | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

The US and Assad – JPost – Opinion – Editorials.

By JPOST EDITORIAL 02/11/2012 21:51

Ambassador Ford was dispatched to Damascus just as mayhem erupted throughout the Arab world, Syria included.

By REUTERS/Sana Sana

The US last week closed its embassy in Damascus and whisked Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford, his staff and the diplomats’ families to safety. On the face of it, this should have underscored the deepest American displeasure with Bashar Assad’s slaughter of his own people.

It indeed would have, had an American ambassador been resident in Damascus without interruption all along and had the Syrian regime for most of that time given no cause for umbrage.

Under such circumstances, the recall of the ambassador (and entrusting the Polish diplomatic delegation in Damascus with responsibility for emergency consular services for Americans) would have reverberated as a powerful American rebuke, just short of severing all diplomatic contacts.

But that’s not how it was. Assad’s dark side was long evident, while his country remained on America’s “state sponsor of terrorism” list. The Bush administration recalled its ambassador to Syria following the 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik Hariri.

A series of chargés d’affaires represented US interests until, in January 2011, President Barack Obama could no longer abide the downgraded relations with the Assad regime and appointed Ford to the vacated post. This dubious policy of rapprochement was embraced despite substantially deepened suspicions of Syrian complicity in Hariri’s assassination.

Syria continued to flout UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and rearm Hezbollah to the teeth. It continued to function as rogue Iran’s prime regional confederate. Most of all, Syria hadn’t demonstrated obvious inclinations toward democracy which might have justified rewarding it with upgraded diplomatic ties.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration chose to conciliate an autocrat who had demonstratively done nothing to deserve so much as the benefit of Washington’s doubt. But the Obama goodwill gesture floundered right off. Ford was dispatched to Damascus just as mayhem erupted throughout the Arab world, Syria included.

Soon after Ford took up his appointment, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to fend off criticism by drawing a distinction between Assad and Libya’s then still-embattled Muammar Gaddafi. Assad, she insisted, is perceived by congressmen from both parties as “a reformer.”

“What’s been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning,” she admitted, “but there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities,” as she noted Gaddafi had done, and the Assad regime’s moves to quash resistance, which, according to Clinton, amounted to “police actions that, frankly, have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.”

Thus, despite his brutality, Assad was let off easy for nearly a year by the world’s sole superpower, which had no business trusting him, much less hyping his bogus moderation.

This was exacerbated by subsequent flip-flops. Security anxieties led to withdrawing Ford from Damascus last October but then sending him back already in December.

Yet had fears for the American diplomat’s well-being miraculously evaporated so quickly? Wasn’t it better to entirely avoid the remotest impression of improvement in relations? Shouldn’t the message have remained that Damascus’s dictator deserves diplomatic ostracism? Now, two short months after its most recent policy reversal, Washington again recalls the ambassador who shouldn’t have been assigned to Damascus in the first place. This entire series of directionless zigzags proved an intense embarrassment, which devalues the latest ambassadorial recall. It’s even less than much too little, way too late.

Once Washington had no ambassadorial-level representation in Damascus – and for exceedingly good reasons that hadn’t changed – it shouldn’t have restored full relations without compelling rationale. To have done so was to send Assad all the wrong signals and embolden him to shed blood with impunity.

Moreover, it’s to this uninhibited tyrant that Israel was pressured to cede strategic assets vital to its survival. Damascus’s totalitarian ruler, whom America and the international community as a whole misrepresented as an honorable interlocutor and peace partner, was nothing of the sort. Yet this hadn’t prevented fellow democracies from demanding that Israel risk its most existential interests to indulge Assad.

At the very least, the gross mishandling of this episode should inspire profound second thoughts in the White House.

The Region: Saved by our enemies – JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

By BARRY RUBIN 02/12/2012 21:07

It’s not Western policy but Middle Eastern radicals’ extremism that, ironically, saves the day

By REUTERS

President Barack Obama is campaigning on the claim that he is a great friend of Israel despite the fact that this is clearly not true. After all, the announcement of a coalition government between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, a genocidally oriented terrorist group that is openly anti- Semitic and rejects all of the agreements with Israel on which the PA is based prompts no US (or European) policy response.

In fact, it is only the extremism of the region’s radical regimes and movements, their refusal to accept the deals he offers them, that has prevented Obama from being a disaster for Israel. Meanwhile, great damage is done to US and Western interests.

Nobody wants to say this, and no one in any Israeli government should do so, but they know Israel cannot depend on the Obama administration for real support.

Still, a strategy in which Israeli leaders say nice things about Obama, try to be as cooperative as possible, and are patient – while doing what needs to be done directly – has worked out precisely because the Obama administration’s policies were wrong.

For example, the US effort to engage with Iran failed due to Iranian behavior which forced an end to that policy. The same applies to the White House’s pro-Syrian policy. And the administration’s hamhanded effort to push forward the Israel-Palestinian peace process also became a mess that Obama had to abandon.

Eventually the same thing will happen with the Muslim Brotherhood when sufficient evidence of its radicalism and anti-Americanism accumulates that even the White House can no longer ignore it.

Consider this example of how the process works, doing damage but eventually being fixed.

In 2010 the Palestinian Authority (PA) made it clear that it would go to the UN and demand unilateral independence. The Obama administration should have leapt into action and made it clear that the PA would pay in financial and strategic terms unless it refrained from taking an action that violated every agreement it ever signed and would permanently destroy any remaining shreds of the peace process. (As if its three-year- long unpunished refusal to negotiate with Israel wasn’t sufficient.)

Instead, the administration did nothing. Month after month the pressure built, tensions rose, the diplomatic pressures rose. Finally, at the last moment the rejection of the idea by the key European states stopped the UN recognition process and saved Obama from having to cast a veto. But even if the US government act was necessary in the autumn of 2011 there were major costs from its having failed to act earlier.

This is now supposed to be counted as a great achievement for Obama in supporting Israel.

There is still, however, a parallel issue that also began to be manifested in more than a year ago: the PA (Fatah)- Hamas alliance. Again, month after month the Obama administration did nothing as another peace-killing, commitment- breaking PA strategy unfolded.

Almost a year ago, we were assured that PA funding would be cut off if this continued. Yet the moves toward a coalition went on with no Western action. Now we have entered a new phase with an agreement for an interim unity government being made in Qatar. Hamas, of course, rejects Israel’s existence and both favors and continues to practice (if only through smaller groups it allows to do so in the Gaza Strip) terrorism.

What was the reaction of the Obama administration to this deal? The State Department called it an “internal matter for the Palestinians.” The fact is that it is US aid and political clout that keeps the PA an international factor just as covert Israeli protection largely saves it from being overthrown by Hamas.

The State Department statement continues: “Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to non-violence. It must recognize the state of Israel and it must accept the previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the road map.”

European governments took a similar position. But Hamas hasn’t done this and won’t do it, despite the nonsense dredged up by various writers about Hamas or its leaders being or becoming moderate.

Indeed, even the current PA government doesn’t accept “previous agreements and obligations” because it has sought unilateral independence without negotiations, repeatedly rejected talks, continued to spread official incitement to violence against Israelis, and made a government coalition with Hamas. Indeed, Fatah’s brand-new official Facebook page shows all of Israel as Palestine and glorifies terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians.

Despite all of its shortcomings, Israel must work with the PA on avoiding war and minimizing conflict. But a peace agreement and a resolution of the conflict? Forget it. That was true in 2000 and a dozen years later it should be–though for many, isn’t – incredibly obvious.

All of this, then, will be ignored. Will this stance lead to disaster? Probably not. Ironically, we are repeatedly saved by the “honesty” of our enemies, or more accurately their passion to articulate their ideology; the extremism of their views; their over-confidence; their strategic shortsightedness; their internal quarrels; and their need to tell their own people precisely what they think in order to mobilize support.

In this case, the truth is that Hamas and Fatah are fundamentally incompatible if only because each wants total power for itself. The agreement will probably fall apart and no new elections will be held. And once again we will be told that the policy succeeded. And in a sense it will be true, albeit only if one can depend on one’s enemies to mess up the opportunities they have been given.

But at what cost?

Why does the PA want a deal with Hamas so badly? The PA (and its Fatah rulers) prefers unity with the Islamists to peace with Israel and needs a single government to continue pursuing unilateral independence. In addition, however, it recognizes that the Islamists are the rising force in the region. If the US government is appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood, the PA needs to be on the side of its own local Brotherhood branch.

Of course, all this means that peace is further away; that the Islamists and radical forces become more powerful; anti-Americanism, ironically funded by the Americans, soars; tens of million of people – often due to their own choice – are ruled by even worse tyrannies; US and Western interests in the Middle East are weakened; while violence and instability are more likely.

Obama’s pyrrhic “victories” are welcomed by all the pyromaniacs in the Middle East. Here’s how one of the greatest books ever written about politics and international affairs explains the situation: “On every side the wicked roam when vileness is exalted.” (Psalm 12).

The writer is director of global research in the International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. He is a featured columnist at PJM and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.