WarSclerotic

Arab League: Heavy fighting edging Syria i… JPost – Middle East.

U.S. Embassy In Syria Closed: Reports.

CNN is reporting that the United States has closed its embassy in Syria and withdrawn its staff.

ABC News confirmed that U.S. embassy officials have left the country.

“We have serious concerns about the deteriorating security situation in Damascus,” the State Department said in a written statement last month, according to Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford left Syria in October following threats to his safety, however he returned to the country in December.

This is a breaking news update. Please check back for more information. Reuters’ earlier story appears below.
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to apply sanctions and step up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to leave power but said the Syrian crisis could be resolved without outside military intervention.

“I think it is very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention. And I think that’s possible,” Obama told NBC’s “Today” show in an interview broadcast on Monday. (Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Bill Trott)

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report February 6, 2012, 3:35 PM (GMT+02:00)

Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama, by asserting Sunday, Feb. 5, he doesn’t think Israel has made a decision on whether to attack Iran, indicated he preferred to keep Israel back from military action and set aside as a strategic reserve, while at the same time using the broad presumption of Jerusalem’s assault plans to intimidate Iran into opting for diplomatic talks on its nuclear program.

To this end, the president directly contradicted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement six days earlier that he expected Israel to strike Iran in April, May or June.

In Israel, no knowledgeable source any longer doubts that the Netanyahu government has already reached a decision. It was instantly assumed that Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, whose appointment as the next Israeli Air Force commander was announced Sunday, would lead the coming operation against Iran.

Obama also said, “We are going to be sure we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this – hopefully diplomatically.” debkafile‘s analysts report that by “lockstep” he meant the role to which he had assigned Israel in the massive disinformation contest underway between the West and Iran.

Tehran responded to this verbal assault with one of its own, publishing a paper which suggested for the first time that Iran would not wait to be attacked but was preparing pre-emptive action of its own against Israel. The paper spoke of a surprise missile offensive targeting Israel’s military installations, which were said to be concentrated between Kiryat Gat and the South, and the central Lod-Modiin district in the center, which Iran considers to be the soft urban-military belly of Israel.
Two features stood out from the verbiage of the last 24 hours:
1. Iran has no intention whatsoever of abandoning its drive for a nuclear bomb. According to the information in Israeli hands, its program has passed the point of no return and capable of producing a weapon whenever its rulers so decide. This situation, American and Israeli leaders year after year had vowed to avert.
Iran underscored its negative on diplomacy by contemptuously refusing the IAEA inspectors visiting the country this week access to any of its nuclear facilities.

2. The US-led confrontation against Iran by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar has made Syria a major hub of the conflict, especially since the Russian-Chinese blockage Saturday of their UN Security Council motion to remove President Bashar Assad and end his brutal crackdown.

Israel has no role in this clash of wills, and President Obama is doing his best to keep Israel on the sidelines of the Iran controversy too, while he continues to angle for nuclear dialogue.
He was supported in this course by the veteran ex-diplomat Thomas R. Pickering who wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 2 that US relations with Iran remind him of the old Afghan adage: “If you deal in camels, make sure the doors are high” – meaning that to strike a deal, both President Obama and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have to make concessions. Obama’s latest words indicate he is willing; Khamenei shows the opposite tendency.
Israel could if it so decided upset this unequal diplomatic applecart before it started rolling by a surprise attack on Iran without prior notice to Washington.

For the Obama administration the Security Council defeat was a major policy setback on top of reversals in Cairo.
Tehran in contrast was buoyed up by what it saw as the lifebelt Moscow and Beijing cast to rescue the Assad regime, for now at least, from the onslaught of its enemies and the stabilization of their Mediterranean flank to the west and direct front against Israel.

The Syrian ruler’s fall would rob Tehran of its most powerful military ally for taking on Israel without direct Iranian involvement. It would also cause the Lebanese Hizballah’s disempowerment as a military force.  Severance of its geographic link to Tehran via Syria would expose the Shiite militia to Western and Arab diplomatic pressure and an Israeli attack.

Sunday, Feb. 5, Tehran followed up with a large-scale, three-week long military exercise in southern Iran opposite the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Ocean. The Iranians were showing Washington that after stabilizing their Syrian front, they were braced for any military surprises the US or Israeli might spring on their most vulnerable region.
Monday, Feb. 6, opposition sources reported that the Syrian army had redoubled its deadly artillery and mortar offensive against Homs and, for the first time, bombarded the national financial and business capital of Aleppo. French sources reported Syrian armored cars were attacking Zabadani between Damascus and the Lebanese border.

If all these reports are confirmed, it would mean that Bashar Assad is taking ruthless advantage of the respite granted him by the Russian and Chinese Security Council veto to stamp out the uprising against him once and for all.

On the diplomatic front Monday, the US-led Western and Arab camp was reported to be pushing hard for the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Internal Security chief Mikhail Fradkov to use their visit to Damascus Tuesday and compel Assad to abandon his brutal attacks, pull his troops out of Syrian towns and step down.
To this end, the Western-Arab bloc is trying to set up another Council session before the end of the week – hopefully to reverse its contretemps of Saturday.

The Six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers meet in Riyadh this week for another round of consultations on the Syrian crisis after the Security Council fiasco and failed attempt to deploy monitors in the war-stricken country.
The West is also threatening to supply the rebels with heavy weaponry, at the risk of an escalation to full-scale civil war. This is an indirect admission that only light arms were given the anti-Assad forces until now. By boosting rebel strength, the West would tell Moscow that tolerance for the Assad regime to continue to rule Syria had dropped to zero.

The Russians are being called upon to back away from their support for Assad and reverse the policy which actuated their veto vote at the Security Council. Whether or not this is realistic will become known as the week unfolds.

Not If, But When.

– Alan Caruba  Monday, February 6, 2012

The Jewish sage, Hillel, said, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” This has been interpreted to mean that it is an obligation to stand against evil, even if other’s courage desert them.

One doesn’t have to be a historian, a military strategist, a biblical scholar or any other credentialed expert to know that the question of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities is not one of if, but when?

On previous occasions, the Israelis, sensing a direct threat, attacked nuclear facilities, first in Iraq on June 7, 1981 when it destroyed the Osiris reactor under construction and again on September 6, 2007 when it destroyed an undeclared nuclear facility in the Deir ez-Zor region in Syria. It’s worth noting that neither action sparked a war.

Earlier, in 1967, the Israelis, acting on intelligence that Egypt was about to attack, launched its air force and ground troops in what came to be known as the Six Day War. In time, Egypt came to the peace table, signing a historic agreement with Israel.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq now essentially clears the air lanes directly into Iran for an attack, shortening the route that otherwise might have been over the air space of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Israel with Saudi permission could use both routes because the Saudis are just as much opposed to a nuclear Iran. As it is, the U.S. Air Force has recently re-assigned key units formerly based in Iraq to Kuwait. The Middle East chess board is being reset.

The Israelis have already undertaken long range practice runs flyiing their bombers as far as Gibraltar and back.

The chatteratti are all saying that Israel faces an “existential” threat. They’re wrong. Israel faces an actual threat of destruction and Iran’s Supreme Leader has never made a secret of his intentions.

A February 1st Wall Street Journal editorial noted that James Clapper, President Obama’s top intelligence advisor, recently told a Senate committee that Iran’s leadership, including Ali Khamenei “have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States as a response to real or perceived actions that threat the regime.”

A story last year that made brief headlines involved a disrupted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington, D.C. restaurant. The editorial noted that the press “went out of its way to cast doubt on the story. The Iranians can’t be that crazy?” Well, yes they are. What else should one expect from a regime that shouts death to America and Israel every day?

The editorial concluded, asking “If the regime is prepared to stage terrorist strikes in America when they don’t have a bomb, what will they be capable of when they do have one?”

Another suggestion that a mission is likely to occur was the unusual statement by the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, that he thought Israel would attack Iran. As the former Director of the CIA, he would be in a good position to know about such things, but it unusual for a DOD Secretary to make such predictions.

The political calculus for President Obama in an election year depends on whether the U.S. supports Israel (a popular option) or lays back and does little (as in Libya), thus losing any chance of securing the powerful evangelical Christian vote; not to mention Jewish support.

Israel will do what the United States, the Saudis, and everyone else in the region will not. It will save itself and the world from the crazed Iranian ayatollahs. The “collateral damage” will be people in Iran who will die as a result and the sad irony will be that the majority of Iranians want an end to the regime as much as the rest of the world.

Thus far, in addition to sanctions against Iran, several of its top nuclear scientists having been assassinated, and an explosion at an Iranian missile launch site killed some of its top military personnel. It also and temporarily eliminated its potential for launching a missile with a six thousand mile range, capable of hitting—you guessed it—the United States.

Presumably, members of Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA should take a bow for these actions, but they can’t for obvious reasons.

After re-inviting members of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to visit recently, the Iranians refused to permit them to visit their nuclear facilities, many of which are buried in bunkers for protection. Meanwhile, the U.S. has let it be known it is working on even bigger “bunker buster” bombs.

Israel is doing its best to signal the Iranian regime that they need to change three decades of an incessant drive to acquire nuclear arms. On February 2nd, its Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, called a nuclear Iran “a nightmare to the free world”, noting that “the West has the ability to strike, but as long as Iran isn’t convinced that there’s a determination to follow through with it, they’ll continue with their manipulations.”

Throughout modern history, even in the face of an imminent threat, the West as vacillated, cut deals with Hitler’s Nazi regime, tried to alter North Korea’s nuclear program with bribes, and dismissed other threats.

Reading the U.S.’s true intent must be a fulltime job in some office of the Israeli government. For three years, the message has been less than encouraging and even hostile. A U.S. President who declared Israel should return to its 1967 borders is out of touch with reality. One can only hope this is all an elaborate hoax to put Iran off its guard. If so, it hasn’t worked.

As Ya’alon has said, “The Iranian threat is not a case of Iran versus Israel. Israel has never declared war on Iran, but the Khomeinistic regime has declared total war on the State of Israel’s very existence.”

The Israelis will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. It has no choice. It should be joined by the forces of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others who would benefit, but as in 1967, 1981, and 2007, Israel will be left to do what others lack the courage to do.

The American Spectator : Pushing Israel to War.

By Jed Babbin on 2.6.12 @ 6:09AM

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes that Israel will attack Iran in April, May, or June. This is according to a 2 February Washington Post column by David Ignatius, apparently relying on a conversation with Panetta. Ignatius’s column came out at the same time as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s speech in which Barak declared that Iran would soon enter a stage where its nuclear program would be immune from attack.

In his speech, according to a report in the Financial Times, Barak said, “The world today has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program is slowly but surely reaching the final stages, and will enter the immunity stage from which point the Iranian regime will be able to complete the program without any effective intervention and at its convenience.” He added, “Dealing with a nuclearized Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today. In other words, those who say ‘later’ may find that later is too late.”

Had statements like these come during the Cold War from, for example, America and Britain, it would be suspected as a ruse. Such ploys were a commonplace then, each side trying to maneuver against the other to draw wavering nations to their side in the dispute du jour.

This is different. Since Obama took office, Israel has learned to suspect America, not trust it. Obama’s Islam-centric foreign policy has broken the link between Israel and the United States. There is no common policy on Iran that could have resulted in coordinated statements by Barak and Panetta.

The personal hostility between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the public face of deep disagreements. Their enmity became open after Obama had demanded Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on the pre-1967 war borders. Last May, Netanyahu schooled Obama before the television cameras after a rocky private White House meeting. A visibly angry Obama shifted uncomfortably in his chair during Netanyahu’s compelling lecture. Netanyahu’s subsequent speech before a joint session of Congress amplified the clear break between the two men.

Since then, Obama, Panetta, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have attempted to dissuade Israel from any military action against Iran. But the only result has been that Israel’s distrust of the Obama administration has grown to the point that Israel will not tell Obama what it plans. Panetta himself has worked to heighten that distrust. Last December, he blamed Israel for the lack of talks with the Palestinians, admonishing Israel to “Just get to the damn table.”

In effect, by its feckless actions and pressure on Israel but not Israel’s enemies, Obama has deprived Israel of options other than war. Continued sanctions against Iran have been met with defiance from Iran and dissembling from its allies. Iraq is apparently planning to help Iran avoid a pending embargo on Iranian oil by shipping Iranian oil from its ports, hiding its origin. (That plan may be only symbolic, because the construction of planned pipelines delivering oil and gas from Iran to Iraq’s export center are not scheduled to be finished until 2014.) The European embargo of Iranian oil is months away, and may never happen.

Obama’s actions have made the Middle East and Southwest Asia vastly more unstable. Our actions to encourage rebellion in Egypt and military action in support of the Libyan rebellion have only propelled the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood movement to power in both nations. Panetta’s announcement that we may withdraw from Afghanistan a year early relieves pressure on Iran and encourages both Iran and Pakistan to continue their strong support for the Taliban. Obama’s plan to release five top Taliban commanders from Gitmo is a major boost to the Taliban. According to a leaked NATO classified report, the Taliban are confident that they will return to power quickly after our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist action inside the United States. Iran was greatly emboldened when, in 2009, Obama’s “hands off Iran” policy failed to support the nascent rebellion against the mullahs. Last December, a New York court held that Iran had helped al Qaeda mount the 9/11 attacks. The sad fact is that, since 1979, Iran has paid no price for its central role in terrorism against the United States.

Obama’s preference for passive sanctions — rather than overt or covert measures that can deprive Iran from its ability to produce nuclear weapons — has granted Iran more time to reach what Ehud Barak called the “immunity stage.” What is that?

Immunity for Iran means that its nuclear weapons program would be so deeply buried and dispersed that only a nuclear attack on it could delay or destroy it. Israel can’t afford to wait for Iran’s nuclear weapons program to become immune. Israel would certainly use nuclear weapons in response to such an attack against it, but it isn’t about to wait until a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran is its only option.

The Israeli calculus is complex. Attacking Iran will certainly provoke Iranian attacks, using missiles and terrorist proxies, which could result in massive Israeli casualties. Hizballah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, will launch its thousands of missiles into Israel. The Hamas terrorists in Gaza will do the same and other Iran-connected terrorists — including al Qaeda — will probably attack U.S. and other western targets. If Israel suffers massive casualties, it’s entirely possible that its Arab neighbors would try to mount another 1967-like attack.

But in 1967 and again in 1973, Israel had clear American support. When Israel appeared to be losing the 1973 war, U.S. Air Force aircraft were being armed and fueled to fly into the fight. That possibility still exists, but the Israelis’ distrust of Obama is so great that they aren’t including that in their war planning. Israel believes it is alone, and in that it’s probably right.

As I wrote about eighteen months ago in a quasi-fictional forecast, Israel’s military will be stretched to the limit in attacking Iranian targets that are a long flying distance from Israel, and are both dispersed and — in many cases — deep underground. If it chooses to attack, it should also judge that suppression missions against Hizballah in Lebanon and against Syrian missile forces are an essential part of the plan. Such an attack will ignite a theater-wide war that Israel may not survive.

Obama isn’t serious about preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. In the three decades since the Iranian regime came to power, no diplomatic effort has ever changed its behavior. The only option for us, for Israel, and for the shopkeepers of Europe is to strike at Iran’s nuclear program to dismantle it. But that option, despite what Obama and Panetta say, isn’t one we are seriously considering. Left with no other choice, Israel will have to do what we lack the resolve to do.

If Secretary Panetta’s belief is as the Washington Post reported, and if we are to take Ehud Barak’s statements at face value, Obama’s inaction would mean that Israel has concluded that it cannot rely on American action in its defense. By continuing inaction against Iran, going beyond ineffectual sanctions, Obama is pushing Israel toward war.

Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the U.S. for a major speech to the AIPAC group next month. It may be the last opportunity for him and Obama to come to an understanding on decisive action against Iran. Soon after Netanyahu returns home, the Israelis will have to risk their nation’s existence in a war that is as much ours as theirs.

About the Author

Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies.

Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a New Six-Day War – The Daily Beast.

There are plenty of arguments against an Israeli attack on Iran. And all of them are bad.

by Niall Ferguson  | February 6, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Blog: Israel strengthens nuclear deterrent against Iran with fleet of German subs.

Leo Rennert

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/02/israel_strengthens_nuclear_deterrent_against_iran_with_fleet_of_german_subs.html#ixzz1lazLrOis

American Jews, Seize the Day! – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

Panetta Predicts an Israeli Strike on Iran » Publications » Family Security Matters.

2012: Iran’s Plan to Take Human Life and Israel’s Plan to Preserve It » Publications » Family Security Matters.