WarSclerotic

Netanyahu: Strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities possible within months – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Prime minister says he prefers diplomatic pressure be used to stop the Iranian nuclear program and war be avoided.

By Jonathan Lis

An attack on Iran could take place within a matter of months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a series of television interviews on Thursday.

“We’re not standing with a stopwatch in hand,” he said. “It’s not a matter of days or weeks, but also not of years. The result must be removal of the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands.”

	Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu gave separate interviews to all three Israeli television stations, the first he has given since his return from Washington earlier this week. The full interviews will air on Saturday night, but excerpts were broadcast Thursday.

“I hope there won’t be a war at all, and that the pressure on Iran will succeed,” the prime minister stressed, noting that his preferred choice would be for Iran to halt its nuclear program and dismantle the uranium enrichment facility located in an underground site near Qom. “That would make me happiest,” he said. “I think every citizen of Israel would be happy.”

“Making decisions isn’t the problem; it’s making the right decision,” Netanyahu added. “If you don’t make the decision and don’t succeed in preventing this [an Iranian nuke], to whom will you explain this – to the historians? To the generations before you, and the generations that won’t come after you?”

He also spoke about the departure of his former bureau chief, Natan Eshel, who was forced to resign over allegations of harassing a subordinate. “I had a connection with Natan Eshel, a connection going back many years,” he said. “This is very painful for me personally, and you part ways humanely.

“On the other hand, what he did, or what he confessed to doing … is very serious. This is a serious, inappropriate thing, and I condemn it.”

Netanyahu insisted that he backs the three officials who informed the attorney general of the suspicions against Eshel: his military secretary, Maj. Gen. Yohanan Locker; Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser; and the former head of the National Information Directorate, Yoaz Hendel.

“Let there be no doubt: I also think the men who acted, acted rightly,” he said. “They had to go complain about this.”

Nevertheless, he added, his criticism of them for not informing him was justified: “In my opinion, I’m the head of the system, as prime minister, and they should have told me.”

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Romney campaign slams Obama for call to … JPost – International.

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JPOST CORRESPONDENT

03/09/2012 04:34

Debate on preventing Iranian nukes will continue, candidate’s spokeswoman tells ‘Post’; Jewish group cites Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei’s praise of US president as validation of Republican approach.

By REUTERS/Laura Segall

WASHINGTON – The Romney campaign lashed out at US President Barack Obama Thursday for trying to “squelch debate” on Iran by calling on GOP presidential candidates to tamp down their talk of war.

“President Obama is trying to insulate himself from criticism and declare the Iran issue off-limits because he knows his naïve policies have failed to dissuade Iran from its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told The Jerusalem Post.

“The American people will not tolerate his nakedly political attempt to squelch debate on the most pressing national security issue facing America,” she said.

Saul indicated that Romney had no intention of refraining from offering “strong and resolute” policies on Iran or from criticizing Obama on his approach.

In a press conference Tuesday, Obama warned against “beating the drums of war,” and during an address Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee called for less “loose talk of war.”

He specifically objected to the “bluster” and “casualness” with which some on the campaign trail are talking about Iran.

White House spokesman Jay Carney denied a report that appeared in Ma’ariv claiming that Obama offered Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bunkerbuster bombs and airplanes capable of midair refueling in return for a postponement of any Israeli plans to attack Iran.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered rare praise of an American president Thursday when he welcomed Obama’s words.

“We heard two days ago that the US president said that [they] are not thinking about war with Iran. These words are good words and an exit from delusion,” Khamenei said, according to the official press agency IRNA.

Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks said that Khamenei’s comments validate the Republicans’ approach and expose Obama’s comments as mistaken when it comes to trying to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“In the president, the Iranians see a lack of resolve and they see opportunities” for continuing nuclear activities, Brooks charged. “The Republicans in contrast are offering a much different vision that is much tougher and more aggressive.”

Iran expert Ilan Berman argued that it was harmful not to speak about the potential military consequences Iran faced by pursuing its nuclear program.

“We’re talking about the coercive part of coercive diplomacy. Iran has to know that worse things are in store if it doesn’t comply now,” he said.

Berman serves as an adviser to the Newt Gingrich campaign but stressed that he was speaking in his capacity as vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council.

He added that regardless of the rhetoric, at some point the US will need to decide what lengths it would go to to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Should the US choose to take military action, he argued that raising the possibility of that path now would help prepare the American public for taking that step.

There are more voices than just Obama’s, however, cautioning that the harsh talk on Iran could be harmful to the efforts to stop Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Efraim Halevy, former director of the Mossad, told The Huffington Post that a Monday Washington Post op-ed by Romney “causes serious issues here.”

Halevy said that he didn’t care who won the presidency but was worried about the ramifications of statements made on the campaign trail.

“This means to an Iranian, if you will wait until another few months and there is a change in the White House, then maybe there will be trouble, so the lesson is, let’s redouble our efforts to do it as quickly as we can,” Halevy was quoted as saying. “In the effort to demolish the president he is making the situation worse.”

In the op-ed, Romney pointed to steps he would take to sharpen America’s Iran policy.

He then added, “Most important, I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.”

He also wrote, “The United States cannot afford to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons. Yet under Barack Obama, that is the course we are on.”

On Thursday, John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the Washington Post himself to rebut Romney’s article.

“Idle talk of war only helps Iran by spooking the tight oil market and increasing the price of the Iranian crude that pays for its nuclear program,” he argued, defending Obama’s record of strong sanctions on Iran, assistance to Israel and stated commitment to denying Iran a nuclear weapon. “Creating false differences with President Obama to score political points does nothing to move Iran off a dangerous nuclear course,” Kerry said.

He concluded, “If we are to avoid a nuclear Iran then at some point we must all act like statesmen, not candidates. We need to be clear-eyed about what we have accomplished and what we have yet to do.”

DEBKA.

Barack Obama

Straight after his talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ended on March 5, US President Barack Obama conducted a post mortem on its outcome with his top advisers, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington report. He asked them pointedly how they now rated the chances of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites in the near future.
They placed the odds of an Israeli military offensive in April or May at 70 percent for, 30 percent against.
A paradoxical situation was unfolding, said those White House advisers:
On the one hand, the US president is clearly opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites taking place before he faces the American voter on November 6.
On the other, if Israel does go through with its military option – and succeeds in demolishing Iran’s nuclear capacity – the president will want to highlight his stake in that success and remind everyone that he made available to Israel the weapons systems which ensured that success.
In every speech on the Iranian issue, therefore, Obama has been stressing the high level of military and intelligence cooperation his administration maintains with Israel, unprecedented by any US president before him.
At the same time, he is pushing his policy of diplomatic engagement with Iran as hard as he can.

Israel enlisted to push Obama’s diplomacy

For this policy he is calling on Israel’s help, although its leaders have no illusions about it working.
(See separate article on the slim prospects of the Istanbul dialogue).
A member of Netanyahu’s party at the White House, National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror, commented in a radio interview: “I’m very happy that they are opening discussions. There will be no one happier than us, and the prime minister said this in his own voice, if it emerges that in these talks Iran gives up on its military nuclear capability.”
Continuing this momentum, Obama spoke again Wednesday, March 7, of a “window of opportunity” for diplomacy and sanctions to compel Iran to give up any effort to develop nuclear weapons. There are Israeli intelligence officials who support this approach and warn against any unilateral attack by Israel on Iran, he said.
In truth, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report, only Meir Dagan, who retired last year as Mossad intelligence chief, is known to share this view. Fellow veterans and the incumbent Mossad director Tamir Pardo and Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, all favor an Israeli initiative to attack Iran.
Another salient fact is that, away from the public eye, President Obama is not all that far apart from Israel in terms of military preparations for an American strike against Iran. He has put in charge of those preparations Adm. William McRaven, head of US Special Operations Command-SOCOM, who planned and led Operation Neptune Spear, the special ops raid which killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last year.

Obama’s most trusted military leader charts US Iran operation

Those preparations have gone beyond what the Pentagon calls a basic military assessment and moved on to developing detailed contingency plans which identify the military units for taking part in this action.
According to our military sources, the president recently gave Adm. McRaven the go-ahead to establish, alongside his ‘Iranian headquarters’ at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, a special intelligence organization to lay the groundwork for and manage the potential American attack on Iran. It has already gathered in all the units and agencies gathering Iran intelligence in recent years and embodied them in the new organization.
William Harry McRaven, 57, is a US Navy four-star admiral and ninth Commander of the Special Operations Command, after serving as Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from March 2008 to August 2011.
Prior to this post, he was Commander of the Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) from June 2006 to March 2008. As the first director of the NATO Special Operations Forces Coordination Centre (NSCC), his job was to enhance the capabilities and inter-operability of all NATO Special Operations Forces.
President Obama places great personal trust in Adm. McRaven, consults with him frequently on serious military issues and has now appointed him to lead the most sensitive military operation of his presidency.

Israel Air Force chief heads the new Iran Command

Opposite him at the head of Israel’s Iran Command is Air Force Commander Maj. Gen Ido Nehushtan. Due to retire from the Air Force in two months, he is committed to stay on as head of the Iran Command for as long as necessary.
Like Adm. McRaven, Nehushtan enjoys the full confidence of his boss. He is a close confidante of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on all military matters concerning Iran.
He came to the Air Force command from the job of head of the IDF Planning Directorate up until 2008.
Rising from the ranks, Nehushtan was an instructor at the Air Force Flying School , Deputy
Commander of the 253^rd Squadron (ranked major) and commander of the 140^th Squadron (ranked lieutenant colonel).
In 2000, he was promoted to brigadier general and given command of the Intelligence Squadron. From 2002, he commanded the Air Squadron and from 2004, headed the Air Force staff. In June, 2006, he took over the Planning Directorate at GHQ. In February 2008, he won the appointment of Air Force Commander.
Nehushtan is one of Israel’s top military experts on air combat, missile warfare and covert operations.

Timing is the key to separate or combined operations

Present circumstances point clearly to an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program this year, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources say but the timing is still unresolved.
This confronts the two officers with two major imponderables.
1. Are Admiral McRaven and Major General Ido Nehushtan destined to lead separate American and Israeli military campaigns against Iran – or jointly command a combined offensive?
2. Will the US and Israel opt for a synchronized operation against Iran, or attack separately in accordance with different timetables?
Given the state of play at the end of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting this week, the latter appears the most probable.
The two leaders agreed in principle that the military option would be unavoidable, but they ended their meeting still apart on timing. (See the first article in this issue.)

DEBKA.

Barack Obama

“We won’t let the Iranians drag out the negotiations, try to deceive us and continue pursuing their nuclear program under cover of the talks in Istanbul.”
This firm pledge was uttered by President Barack Obama in answer to concerns raised by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they met at the White House on March 5. He went on to outline the conditions the Iranians would be required to meet in the first two months of the talks with the six world powers due to begin in April – or else, he, the US President, would personally cut them short.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington itemize Obama’s seven provisos for keeping nuclear negotiations afloat:
1. A halt on uranium enrichment up to 20-percent grade, just short of weapons quality. The president rejected Netanyahu’s demand for Iran to stop enrichment in toto.
2. Shortly after the talks begin, Iran will be asked to sign supplementary protocols of the NPT-The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The signatory must part with substantially more information about its nuclear and nuclear-related activities than Iran has been required to hitherto, including R&D, production of uranium and thorium (regardless of whether it is traded), and nuclear-related imports and exports.

Spot checks by UN inspectors will cut down concealment

International Atomic Energy Agency monitors will have more rights of access to Iran’s nuclear facilities at short notice (two hours). They will be authorized to use environmental sampling and remote monitoring techniques for detecting illicit activities.
Bureaucratic procedures must be streamlined for the automatic renewal of IAEA inspectors’ visas and ease of communications between them and IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
Obama told Netanyahu that these conditions if met by Iran would make it possible for the international inspectors to carry out spot checks and so finally close the “Nuclear Window,” meaning the two-month time lag between visits of inspection, during which Iran has been free to conceal unexplained quantities of enriched uranium and other nuclear weapons development work by whisking them out of sight to secret locations ahead of visits.
3. If Tehran continues to play hide-and-seek with the UN monitors in breach of those protocols, Washington will immediately lay before the public the intelligence it possesses on Tehran’s illicit activities until they are discontinued.
Netanyahu was given a quick demonstration by Washington of the effectiveness of this mechanism.

US spy satellites give the game away at Parchin

On March 7, the day the prime minister arrived home from Washington, a story hitting top headlines quoted “diplomats” in Vienna as disclosing that spy satellite images from the last three days (Sunday-Tuesday, March 4-6) showed trucks and earth-moving vehicles cleaning out the military facility at Parchin of radioactive traces.
Two of the “diplomats” told The Associated Press that those traces could have come from the testing of a small neutron trigger used to set off a nuclear explosion. A third diplomat could not confirm that, but said any testing of a so-called “neutron initiator” at the site could only be in the context of trying to develop nuclear arms.
This disclosure was deeply embarrassing to Tehran coming as it did two days after Iran made the gesture of agreeing to open the site to the UN inspectors.
4. At the start of the talks in Istanbul, Iran will be required to open up to IAEA inspection the Sharif University of Technology-SUT, a high-prestige institution of learning often called “Iran’s MIT.”
The university is located in the Tarsht neighborhood of Tehran and has an international campus in Kish, an offshore island in the Persian Gulf.
US and Israeli intelligence both have amassed data indicating that the university labs in Tehran and Kish are the main centers of Iranian nuclear weapons development activity. Iran will also have to open up other suspect universities as well as industrial and medical research institutes.

No one seriously expects Tehran to toe any lines

5. In April or May at latest, IAEA inspectors must be permitted to interview Prof. Mohssein Fakhrizadeh, “the invisible nuclear physicist,” reputed to head Iran’s nuclear military program. They must also be given access to the 600 nuclear scientists and technicians working under him. This request has been twice denied.
6. Iran must forthwith stop developing a new generation of its IR4 and IR1 centrifuges for speeding up uranium enrichment.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated several times recently that these centrifuges are already working, but his boast was not confirmed by US intelligence.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington say President Obama shared with Netanyahu the finding of American intelligence that the first generation of centrifuges, the IP1 models, used in Iran are ageing and will soon reach the end of their operational lifespan. A ban on the use of the more advanced models would effectively bring uranium enrichment in Iran to a close.
7. Iran will be asked to halt the transfer of centrifuges from the enrichment facility at Natanz to the underground facility at Fordow near Qom.
The US president made it clear that Tehran’s default on any of those conditions would effectively halt the Istanbul dialogue.
Since no one believes the Iranians have changed their spots to the point of toeing all seven lines, the Istanbul dialogue is pretty well doomed to failure before it starts, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources.
That is when the military option will be back on the table with greater impetus than ever.

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama predictably failed to persuade his visitor Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to call off plans for a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – or hold off until early 2013. Although the prime minister warned repeatedly during his five days in Washington that Israel “won’t wait much longer,” their White House talks Monday, March 5 did finesse their separate timetables somewhat.
Tuesday, the US president was able to announce, “We have a window of opportunity where this can still be resolved diplomatically.” Later, he said he did not believe that a decision by Israel on whether to attack would have to be made in the next two months. “Increasingly tough sanctions should therefore have more time to work,” he said.
Translation by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources: The president obtained Netanyahu’s consent to suspend military plans against Iran until early May – both to give the president a chance to show sanctions are working and to make headway in the big power (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) talks with Iran due to start next month in Istanbul – even though he and most Israeli strategists are deeply skeptical of their getting anywhere.
This deal will not stand up if the security situation takes a sudden downturn – for instance, if Iran was proved to have assembled nuclear warheads or its allies, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah or the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami, were building up for war on Israel.

Obama and Netanyahu to meet again in July

A glance at the Jewish-Israeli calendar reveals that April is a holiday month: Israel celebrates its 64^th Day of Independence on April 6, followed in mid-month by the eight-day Passover festival. It therefore suits the prime minister to let the holiday month pass quietly and segue into May before going ahead with a strike on Iran.
Obama’s advisers and strategists argue August as the earliest date for Israel to make it. This still leaves a three-month gap between the two estimated timetables, for two reasons:
First: Obama and Netanyahu have agreed to meet again in July. They haven’t fixed a venue, which makes it possible that Obama will decide to pay his first visit to Israel as US President rather than again hosting Netanyahu in Washington.
This plan is still in the air. However, preparations for a presidential visit to Israel are already in train in Washington and Jerusalem.
It will also depend on what happens in the Middle East between now and July – especially in Syria and Lebanon. While in the Middle East, Obama will want to make calls on other regional capitals and reap rewards from his active contribution to the Arab Spring.
He might find it also expedient to call on the royal rulers of Saudi Arabia and at least one Gulf emirate.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources emphasize that this plan is not final, and may be dropped at any time.

Tighter US sanctions on Iran, weapons systems for Israel

Second: The two leaders also agreed on five steps to be taken before their summer meeting – none of them contingent on an Israeli decision to attack Iran.
1. In early July, Obama and Netanyahu will get together along with their military commanders and intelligence chiefs to update and reassess their respective intelligence pictures on the state of the Iranian nuclear program. They will then try and bring the two estimates in line.
2. Until then, the US administration will keep on tightening tough sanctions on Iran. Members of the US Congress already announced Tuesday, March 6, the drafting of legislation for sanctions on 20 Iranian banks, including the CBI in coordination with the administration. Our Washington sources do not doubt that Canada, Australia, Britain and Holland will join this initiative.
3. Although this was later denied by the White House, President Barack Obama authorized the early supply to Israel of weapons systems suitable for long-range military operations and strikes against fortified underground targets. They include four KC-35 aerial refueling aircraft – doubling the number already in the Israeli Air Force inventory, and GBU-31 Direct Attack Munition-JDAM bombs of the type used by the US Air Force especially by warplanes based on aircraft carriers.

Israeli Air Force successfully drills long-range missions

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and Washington sources report that the White House decision to provide Israel with these items followed upon the information that Iran’s leaders were really worried by the big long-range air exercise carried out together by the Israeli and NATO air forces, including the US, in the last week of October 2011 at the Decimomannu Air Base in Sardinia, southern Italy.
Tehran was finally convinced that Israeli bombers could reach its nuclear sites last week, when six Israeli Air Force squadrons were reported by aviation journals to have successfully duplicated the exercise from an air base in Italy.
Taking part were the components required for a long-range strike mission: combat squadrons with ranges of up to 2,400 kilometers (there and back to Iran), aerial refuel craft and air control.
Fourteen F-16 single and twin-seater F-16s – C and D (“Lightning”) aircraft came from three Wing-1 Squadrons taking off from their Ramat David air base in the Jezreel Valley of northern Israel. They were joined by three Boeing (“Ram) planes for in-flight-refueling, a Gulfstream 550 executive jet converted by Israel’s Aerospace Industries for air control and early warning functions, and Hercules transports which took off from the IAF’s southern Nevatim base in the Negev.
This was Israel’s first long-range air drill without partners.
Tehran was dismayed to hear that Washington was to strengthen its remote action capacity with four more refueling jets soon to be delivered.
4. Netanyahu procured Obama promise that if Syria and/or Hizballah attacked Israel – whether or not as part of a comprehensive Iranian preemptive strike – the US would back the Jewish state and, if it became necessary, participate in a military offensive against the aggressors.

Netanyahu sticks to his unilateral plan

5. The US president committed two aircraft carriers with strike groups to permanent deployment off the coast of Iran. Up until now, one of two aircraft carriers performed double duty between stations opposite Iran and the Pacific as part of the US Seventh Fleet. From now on, two carriers will stay put in the Persian Gulf.
Sources close to Obama disclose that the Israeli team also came away with a certain secret understanding reached on the sidelines of the main Obama-Netanyahu conversation, primarily by their national security advisers Tom Honilon and Maj. Gen. (res) Yaakov Amidror, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports.
It was this: If resumed negotiations with Iran fail and, notwithstanding sanctions and diplomatic pressure, Iran still refuses to abandon its nuclear weapon program, President Obama will then give orders for an American offensive against Iranian nuclear facilities and strategic targets, extensive enough to bring about the fall of the regime in Tehran.
It was explained to the Israelis attending the White House talks, say those sources, that the president is neither willing nor able to publicly disclose this intention – certainly not while campaigning for reelection in November. But this is his intention, they were assured.
Israel might just as well rethink any plans to attack Iran, they said, since in the end the US will take responsibility for terminating Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
Netanyahu and his team discussed this message exhaustively but in the end, decided it was not a binding pledge and Israel must therefore continue to keep all its options open for “defending itself, by itself,” as before.