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Archive for March 23, 2012

Hizbullah Proxies Pose Greatest Threat to the U.S.

March 23, 2012

Hizbullah Proxies Pose Greatest Threat to the U.S. – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

Peter King: If Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. could “find itself implicated or involved” in crisis.

By Rachel Hirshfeld

First Publish: 3/22/2012, 5:43 PM

Arab terrorists

Arab terrorists

Flash 90

There may be hundreds, if not thousands, of Hizbullah agents inside the United States capable of launching a terror attack if U.S.-Iran tensions continue to escalate, said House Homeland Security Committee chief Peter King at a hearing on Wednesday.

King explained that the Lebanese Shi’ites may pose the greatest threat to U.S. national security and that the administration has “a duty to prepare for the worst.”

“Pinning down a reliable estimate of the number of Hezbollah operatives who now reside inside the U.S. is difficult because of their operational security expertise. But some officials estimate that, based on cases uncovered since 9/11, there are likely several thousand sympathetic donors, while operatives probably number in the hundreds,” King said.

He continued to note, “Many defendants were known or suspected of having military training or direct combat experience against Israeli forces. Some were quietly convicted of fraud and deported as criminal aliens without their Hezbollah background being publicly disclosed by prosecutors, the Majority’s Investigative Staff has learned.”

The hearing, which featured former government officials and the director of intelligence analysis for the New York Police Department, follows a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., and testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in late January that Iran’s leaders are “more willing to conduct an attack inside the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” the Huffington Post reported.

King asserted that if Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. could “find itself implicated or involved” in the crisis.

“Having said that, I don’t think we can rule out an Israeli attack,” he said. “I think we have to keep all the pressure out there. … The fact that there can be complications is not a reason why Israel shouldn’t do it or we shouldn’t do it. We have to make sure whatever we do that it is going to work … and realize that Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.”

Commentary Magazine’s Alan Goodman explains that, “King’s hearing will no doubt be used as fodder by Iran’s sympathizers in America, who want to discourage Israel from striking the Iranian nuclear program. But there are greater domestic threats than a radical anti-American regime with ties to terror operatives in the U.S. For example: a radical anti-American regime with ties to terror operatives in the U.S. that also has nuclear weapons.”

Goodman asks, “If there’s broad concern about the threat of Hezbollah operatives in the U.S. now, why would we expect them to be less of a threat if they were backed by mullahs with nukes? Or are we just supposed to pray that Israel and our other allies don’t do anything that might offend the regime once it obtains nuclear weapons, lest its Hezbollah allies retaliate against us domestically?”

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Robert Gates: Attacking Iran Would Be A ‘Catastrophe’

March 23, 2012

Robert Gates: Attacking Iran Would Be A ‘Catastrophe’ | ThinkProgress.

By Eli Clifton on Mar 22, 2012 at 11:50 am

Iran hawks and the GOP presidential candidates like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been slow to acknowledge the inherent dangers of U.S. and/or Israeli military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities while members of President Obama’s cabinet have made the case that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are the best strategy for deterring Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon.

But in remarks delivered last week at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — himself a Republican — delivered a stern warning to those who push for the “military option” against Iran.

“If you think the war in Iraq was hard, an attack on Iran would, in my opinion, be a catastrophe,” said Gates, as reported by the Jewish Exponent. Gates, who served as Defense Secretary in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be difficult to destroy and an attack would lead Iranians to “rally behind their mullahs.”

Gates’ comments concurred with U.S., Israeli and IAEA intelligence findings on Iran’s nuclear program. “I have long been convinced that Iran is determined to develop a nuclear-weapons capability,” said the former Defense Secretary. Indeed, the intelligence reports agree that Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capability but that Tehran has not yet made a decision about whether to acquire nuclear weapons.

Yesterday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) warned that Iran may have “hundreds” of Hezbollah agents in the U.S. but Gates, in his remarks last week, largely disregarded the possibility of an Iranian retaliation within the U.S. if the U.S. or Israel launch a military strike on nuclear sites in Iran. “[T]he Iranian ability to attack us militarily here at home is virtually non-existent for now,” said Gates.

But retaliatory escalation from such a strike would still have a devastating impact on the U.S. and its regional allies. “[Iranian] capacity to wage a series of terror attacks across the Middle East aimed at us and our friends, and dramatically worsen the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere is hard to overestimate,” Gates said.

The Obama administration has ruled out a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran but, in views concurrent with those expressed by Gates, has emphasized that a diplomatic solution is “the best and most permanent way” to relieve mounting tensions over Iran’s nuclear program

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Another Tack: Learning to love the bomb

March 23, 2012

Another Tack: Learning to love th… JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

03/22/2012 21:08

Those in our midst who have learned to stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb are acclaimed as prudence personified.

IAEA cameras in Iran uranium plant [file]

By REUTERS

The upside to an Iranian missile onslaught on Israel is that it would facilitate new real estate projects on the crammed Coastal Plain and render obstructed sea vistas visible again. Increasingly, such morbid predictions of Tehran-initiated mega-scale land clearances in central Israel crop up in casual conversation.

Pent-up angst is vented via macabre gallows humor which presupposes that our dreadful end is inevitable, that by summertime we’d be flattened by Iranian rockets. We paint ourselves as pitiable pawns in the hands of trigger-happy leaders, as wretched victims of the unrestrained hubris and folly of demented higher-ups.

To hear some of what’s proffered by left-wing gurus and commentators, we’re now living though a terrifying real-life reenactment of Dr.Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrik’s 1964 black comedy spotlighted a loony general who ignites a nuclear apocalypse that a coterie of bungling politicians and frantic generals fail to stop.

Cast as the gung-ho paranoids who push for a first-strike to break the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) stalemate are of course PM Binyamin Netanyahu and anyone else who dares insist that Israel must help itself if no other choice is left.

Those who fear Iranian nukes are deemed deranged. In contrast, those in our midst who have learned to stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb are acclaimed as prudence personified.

Indeed, there’s a plethora of political benefits to be accrued from pooh-poohing the Iranian threat. To begin with, Netanyahu’s unremitting adversaries have homed in on yet another pretext to wallop him – his alleged unhinged obsession about an insignificant explosive device that we could easily be reeducated to live with.

Beyond that beckon greater opportunities to deepen defeatist dispositions. Our truly doctrinaire leftists – as distinct from Israel’s pragmatist and activist founding fathers – have never approved of successful Jewish nationalism.

Israel’s deterrent capabilities were always anathema to those who have made it their mission to take us down a few pegs and shrink us back to what they regard as more befitting proportions.

Hence it almost gladdens certain hearts to see doomsday weapons in the hands of an implacable enemy. There can be no better antidote to what’s perceived in certain quarters as Israeli arrogance.

There’s sneering pleasure to be derived from witnessing cocky Zionists dwarfed and put in their place. Besides, postmodern moral-relativists discern no differences among assorted possessors of The Bomb. Our democracy, they aver, is no better than the ayatollahs’ theocracy.

Their resolve to wipe us off the map is no worse than our resolve to survive.

Seen thus, it might not be so awful if Ahmadinejad adds a few atomic warheads to his arsenal.

It’s much like the unstinting tolerance evinced by yesteryear’s leftists toward Soviet nuclear stockpiles. Their motto back then was “better red than dead.” In other words, accept defeat without struggle. Moreover, further down the line it might be rationalized that not only is it better to be defeated than to die, but that it’s better to be defeated than to be victorious.

In this vein, novelist David Grossman – appointed by his promoters as guardian of our collective conscience – warned against a preemptive Israeli strike in a recent front-page Haaretz op-ed. He argued that “it is better for Israel to reconcile itself, even with gnashing of teeth, to a nuclear Iran.”

“It is forbidden for Israel to attack Iran,” Grossman reasons omnisciently, because “there’s no way to determine with certainty that Iran will attack Israel if it possessed nuclear weapons.”

The subtext: Israeli self-defense is illegitimate before a nuclear mushroom rises over the incinerated Dan Region. Of course, by then it would be way too late, but why quibble.

THE GIST of the Grossmanian logic is that Netanyahu is cynically hyping the Iranian danger – particularly by resorting to Holocaust allusions – and that he might in the end unleash a horrific Iranian vendetta upon us. “Does any man,” Grossman rhetorically asks, “have the right to sentence so many to death only in the name of fear of an eventuality which might never occur?” Grossman, of course will never admit to preying on our fears, but he will unhesitatingly accuse Netanyahu of unconscionably scaremongering.

All the while, the powers-that-be in Tehran recommend vociferously that Israel be wiped off the map. It’s left up to us to decide whether to take them at their word and believe their genocidal bluster, or dismiss it as inconsequential ranting for domestic consumption.

Grossman would balk at historical comparisons, at our observations that we had seen it all before, been there and paid in oceans of blood for dismissing the blunt tirades of other tyrants.

But the incontestable fact is that human nature doesn’t change over the generations, only specific circumstances take on different forms. At heart, we chronically prefer the serenity of today over security tomorrow.

It’s not a cliché. It’s the truth. Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace for our time” was genuinely applauded on his return from Munich in 1938 – first by grateful crowds, then by the House of Commons and subsequently by every British newspaper.

Winston Churchill, who dared swim against the tidal wave of public opinion, growled: “I believe we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat.”

That didn’t win him adherents. Churchill was heftily booed down. Why? Were the masses stupid? No, they were just like us, concerned about the here and now.

The seeds of World War II germinated on the ostensibly sane and safe middle-ground. Caution facilitated the global cataclysm. Quintessentially judicious and practical Neville Chamberlain was the then-iconic high-priest of responsibility. In his gentlemanly manner, he was the consummate champion of cop-out. It wasn’t a personal failing or an idiosyncrasy. He wasn’t pursuing a private agenda that eventually collapsed catastrophically.

Chamberlain popularly reflected his nation’s zeitgeist. Most Britons wanted to disengage.

That’s why middle-Britons en masse supported the 1934-35 Peace Ballot.

It was promoted by Lord Robert Cecil who won the 1937 Nobel Peace Prize for this inanity.

Some 500,000 canvassers went door-todoor to poll ordinary folk on whether they’re for peace and against war – as manipulative as asking who’s for healing and against pain (or who’s for Grossman’s moderation and against extremism).

With no terms or conditions stipulated, “peace” won by a whopping 10,500,000 votes to a mere 750,000. This gauge of the public’s mood was anything but harmless. The Peace Ballot made London’s deterrence ring hollow, because despite its inherent bias, it encouraged appeasement. It made Europe’s ensuing bloodbath inevitable, having assured Hitler that – much as the Brits abhorred him – the last thing they wanted was to fight.

There’s every chance that word of Grossman’s perceptions, and similar prattles by plenty of others, has reached Ahmadinejad and emboldened him. But let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, that this isn’t the case, that analogies to pre-WWII appeasement are spurious and that we wouldn’t be nuked if we take Grossman’s advice and learn to put up with the Iranian bomb.

What then? Nothing to worry about? Hardly. At the very least Iranian nukes would turn all Israelis into hostages of the very ayatollahs who keep preaching for our extermination.

Although unparalleled on the horrific-hazardscale, even undetonated Iranian nukes are somewhat akin to Gaza’s and South Lebanon’s missile caches. In both cases millions of Israelis are held to ransom via the amassed firepower of Islamic zealots who try to call the shots and stymie our self-defense on pain of punishment.

While the world’s opinion-molders bewailed the blockade on Gaza, they turned a blind eye to its engorged rocket hoards. With equal perfidy, the international community ignored its own obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and allowed Hezbollah to rearm monstrously.

A nuclear threat of course is way more sinister.

For one thing, it’ll trigger a regional nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia is already showing interest, a fact which should send shivers down all spines everywhere, considering the oil-glutted kingdom’s instability and the fact that al- Qaida’s villains, including the 9/11 perpetrators, mostly emerged from the Saudi hatchery.

Secondary nuclear proliferation to a whole host of terror outfits is an unavoidable complication to boot. Assorted “dirty bombs” in the hands of Allah’s warriors will leave nobody invulnerable.

Extortion opportunities would become limitless.

We could be blackmailed with varying degrees of nuclear hell if we don’t set loose every last convicted terrorist; if we don’t surrender Jerusalem; if we don’t allow Israel to be inundated with millions of hostile Arabs calling themselves descendants of refugees; if we don’t retreat into suicidal borders as delineated by would-be annihilators; if we don’t all dive into the deep blue sea and dutifully disappear beneath its waves.

Food for thought for a nation that released over 1,000 terrorists for one kidnapped solider.

And more tidbits to chew over – what would have happened if back in 1981 Menachem Begin suddenly saw a Grossmanesque light, got cold feet and decided to desist from the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor? How would we have fared a decade later, in the First Gulf War, if the Iraqi tyrant had the bomb? How would the rest of the world have coped? In all, the “balance of terror” to which the Left readily acquiesces is no great shakes. There are too many shady characters and shoddy ideologies in our neighborhood to instill even a modicum of confidence in any rational stewardship next door of weapons of mass destruction.

That said, ignoring bad bombs in bad hands while hoping for the best might not be the best modus operandi for preserving life and limb – to say nothing of preserving that familiar old roof over our head.

It’s easy to ridicule and it’s easy to resort to smears in the Dr. Strangelove idiom, but fearing Iran’s bomb and seeking to preempt it may be way saner than learning to love it. Needless to stress, the sanest thing of all is just to babble a whole lot less.

http://www.sarahhonig.com

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Security and Defense: Gaining standing

March 23, 2012

Security and Defense: Gainin… JPost – Features – Week in review.

03/22/2012 22:08

In the past, when an officer was appointed head of the Home Front Command, it usually meant that he was on his way out of the IDF. But with 200,000 missiles pointed at Israel, that is no longer the case.

HOME FRONT troops take part missile defense drill

By HOME FRONT troops take part in a missile defense d

Shortly before the end of the First Gulf War in 1991 and after Saddam Hussein had fired nearly 40 Scud missiles into Israel, the IDF General Staff convened. The discussion was focused on what to do in wake of the development of this new threat to Israel: the threat of one of missiles and rockets.A decision would later be made to establish the Home Front Command (HFC) but at that specific meeting, director-general of the Defense Ministry David Ivry issued a warning that continues to resonate in the Kirya Military Headquarters until today.

“What we are currently seeing with 40-something Scuds is nothing compared to what we will see in the future,” Ivry, who had commanded the Israel Air Force when it bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor a decade earlier, warned IDF generals.

For Ehud Barak, who was sitting in the room and was just weeks away from taking up his appointment as IDF chief of staff, Ivry’s warning continues to strike a chord today – particularly in light of the increasing threat Israel faces from the rocket and missile arsenals that surround it.

“Ivry was right and the threat today is greater than what we ever would have thought it would be back in 1991,” Barak said recently, referring to Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of nearly 50,000 rockets and missiles.

The problem is that the threat to Israel is not just the quantity of missiles but also has to do with the change in the quality of the missiles.

Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, current head of Military Intelligence, calls this process “fire-by-6,” a reference to the six changes that have occurred to the various missile arsenals in Iranian, Syrian, Hamas and Hezbollah hands in recent years. According to Kochavi, there are 200,000 missiles and rockets pointed at Israel on any given day.

In comparison to six years ago – before the Second Lebanon War – today’s arsenals have 1) longer ranges 2) larger warheads 3) larger quantities 4) greater accuracy 5) the tendency to be launched from deeper inside enemy territory and not just along the border and 6) are in some cases even buried underground in heavily fortified launchers and silos.

To counter this threat, the IDF’s strategy consists of three primary elements: a counter-offensive aimed at impairing the enemy’s ability to fire missiles into Israel, defensive systems like Arrow, Iron Dome and David’s Sling and passive defense such as bomb shelters, protected rooms and air raid sirens.

The missile threat has in recent years turned the HFC into one of the IDF’s most important branches. This, however, was not always the case and, until the Second Lebanon War in 2006, if an officer was appointed head of the HFC, it usually meant that he was on his way out of the IDF.

That is no longer true and since the war, the IDF has appointed top officers, perceived as having the potential to one day become chief of staff, as head of the HFC. After the war, Maj.-Gen.

Yair Golan was appointed head the HFC. He is now head of the Northern Command. The current HFC chief, Maj.-Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, previously served as commander of the Gaza Division, one of the most complicated postings in the IDF.

As Israel moves closer to the point of having to decide whether it should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, the HFC is now more important than ever, particularly in light of assessments that in the first days of an Iranian-Hezbollah- Hamas-Islamic Jihad retaliation, Israel could see close to 1,000 rockets a day fired into its cities.

Putting damage to infrastructure aside, there are various predictions regarding how many people would be killed in such a scenario.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak famously said a few months ago that the number would be somewhere around 500 and while the Israeli public has a hard time imagining such large casualties, the estimate is based on comprehensive studies and analyses conducted by the HFC.

For that reason, the HFC is undergoing one of the most extensive changes in its short history. On Monday, the command held its largest draft ever, recruiting hundreds of youth to fill the ranks of its two standing search-and-rescue battalions as well as the third that it is now establishing.

It plans to establish a fourth battalion by the end of next year.

In addition to establishing new battalions, the soldiers are also receiving new skills, such as becoming certified firefighters as well as learning new search-and-rescue and combat techniques.

A similar process is taking place in the command’s reserve units where reservists are being provided with with upgraded combat qualifications and equipment.

The HFC speaks of three different roles in a future war: 1) assisting the IDF in maneuvering through enemy territory 2) saving lives with searchand- rescue teams 3) and supporting local councils and municipalities so they will be capable of continuing to provide services for their constituents.

“We are better today than we were a few years ago but this is a work in progress,” deputy HFC commander Brig.- Gen. Zviki Tessler explained this week.

Tessler is an example of the change. A helicopter pilot, he left the air force a few years ago to take up one of the command’s senior positions. A few years ago, it would have been unheard of for a pilot to switch from the IAF to the HFC.

Another change, demonstrated during the recent round of fighting between Islamic Jihad and Israel, was the HFC’s ability to sound sirens only in the precise city – sometimes even the precise neighborhood – where the rocket fired from Gaza was going to land.

This is the result of two developments. The first was the establishment in mid- 2011 of a joint command center at the Hatzor Air Force Base near Gedera where IAF and HFC officers sit together to track missile launches into Israel and to sound sirens based on the radar’s projections of where they are going to land.

The second development was the HFC’s decision to divide the country up into hundreds of different sections that can independently be warned of incoming missile attacks without needing to scare the rest of the neighboring towns.

In the coming year, once the IDF receives approval to begin sending warnings to individual cellular phones, people will only be required to enter a bomb shelter if they receive two warnings: hear a siren and get a text message to their phones.

These changes are critical in these uncertain times. While the performance of the Iron Dome counter-rocket defense system in the recent conflict in Gaza amazed even its operators, it is not something that Israelis can rely on as being there to protect them in the next, bigger war.

This is because there are currently only four batteries and there is a good chance that these will need to be used to protect strategic national assets or even IAF bases to preserve operational continuity.

That is why the HFC stresses that the best equation is a combination of the active defense (Iron Dome) with passive defense (bomb shelters).

With Iran not changing its course, this equation might be put to the test again sooner rather than later.

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To Stop Iran, the G.O.P. Should Back Obama – NYTimes.com

March 23, 2012

To Stop Iran, the G.O.P. Should Back Obama – NYTimes.com.

By MARK DUBOWITZ

These days, Republicans are seizing every opportunity to hammer President Obama for both high gas prices and his Iran policy.

Mitt Romney recently criticized him, arguing that, when it came to Iran, Obama “not only dawdled in imposing crippling sanctions, he’s opposed them.”

Rick Santorum called Obama’s Iran policy a “colossal failure,” and blamed high gas prices on a “radical environmental movement in this country” that has failed to make America “energy independent” from the Middle East.

While it’s reasonable to disagree with his administration’s domestic energy policies, Republican candidates should acknowledge the obvious trade-off on Iran: Such sanctions would drive gas prices up by reducing the global oil supply. (Even Saudi Arabia’s spare production capacity is not enough to replace all of Iran’s daily sales of 2.2 million barrels without causing a major price spike.)

Republican candidates have boxed Obama in. Their dual line of attack might be smart politics, but it’s not smart policy. Either gas prices go down or Obama imposes suffocating sanctions on Iranian oil exports. They can’t have it both ways.

The only way to avoid that trap is to extend the carefully crafted oil sanctions policy that Congress passed in December with overwhelming bipartisan support — a policy which the administration is now enthusiastically implementing after initially rejecting it.

If the Republican candidates want to exert their influence to stop Iran’s drive toward a nuclear weapon, and keep oil-market anxiety to a minimum, they’ll need to do the unthinkable in an election season: support Obama by quietly doubling down on the administration’s current oil-market sanctions while continuing to ask tough questions about his broader Iran policy.

Oil-market sanctions against Iran are risky. World oil prices are up by 15 percent in 2012 due to tight supplies and growing demand, and $5 gas on Election Day is a real possibility that could threaten the nascent economic recovery.

But oil markets are also skittish that Obama might grow too aggressive in enforcing oil sanctions, or that Israel will lose patience with sanctions and attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Either scenario could send oil prices skyrocketing.

In response, the Obama administration has tried to perform a delicate balancing act: to dramatically reduce Iran’s oil revenues while trying to reassure anxious markets that it will still let some Iranian crude flow.

On Tuesday, the administration took an important step toward implementing that idea. It granted Japan an exception to American sanctions based on evidence that Tokyo had reduced its Iranian crude purchases by about 20 percent since 2011. (It also exempted 10 European countries, which will soon be subject to an oil embargo imposed by the European Union.) At the same time, the administration has made clear that it will only let other countries buy Iranian oil if they “significantly reduce” their overall purchases.

For the first time since Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Iranian oil revenues are seriously threatened. According to the Department of Energy, Iran’s crude oil sales account for 80 percent of its hard-currency export earnings and 50 percent of its overall government budget. Existing sanctions on Iran have already caused the black-market value of the Iranian rial to plummet by more than 50 percent in a matter of months.

The International Energy Agency projects that, when the European embargo on Iranian oil goes into effect in July, Iran’s oil sales could drop by 50 percent, to levels not seen since the Iran-Iraq war. That would certainly get the attention of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And Republicans can push President Obama further. They should call on him to take a bold step and declare the entire Iranian energy sector a “zone of primary proliferation concern,” with which no legitimate international firm should do business.

There is a precedent: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, passed in 2010 with the support of Russia and China, explicitly notes a “potential connection” between Iranian oil and gas revenues and “the funding of its proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities.”

In 2011, the Obama administration declared Iran’s entire financial sector a money-laundering threat, laying the groundwork for sanctions against Iran’s central bank.

Blacklisting Iran’s entire energy sector would reduce the number of companies willing to trade in Iranian oil and natural gas, thus forcing Iran to reduce its prices for whatever it can still sell.

Republicans may not like it, but President Obama should also grant China a formal exception to the sanctions, allowing it to buy as much Iranian oil as it wants so long as it continues to extract major price discounts, which reportedly are now around $20 per barrel. Chinese oil traders could be counted on to push ruthlessly for these discounts. That’s about as responsible a stakeholder as Beijing will ever be when it comes to sanctioning Iran.

This approach would calm markets by permitting some Iranian oil to flow, while turning the rest into a distressed asset. It’s a win-win scenario; it doesn’t reduce the amount of oil available on world markets but it denies Iran’s leaders the revenue they badly need.

To calm nervous allies, America should also grant an exemption from sanctions to refineries, shippers and traders from countries that the administration has permitted to keep buying Iranian oil. (That exemption is currently only granted to those countries’ financial institutions.)

If aggressively enforced, these sanctions would discourage most foreign companies from investing in Iran’s energy sector, or having any other dealings with Iranian energy companies, further shrinking Iranian oil and natural gas production and providing the remaining foreign companies with greater leverage to extract major price concessions from Tehran.

This policy should attract significant bipartisan support in the House and Senate. And if Obama pursues it, Congress will likely be forced to have his back since they have already demanded tougher sanctions.

We are fast approaching a point when sanctions will no longer be able to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As tempting as it may be, Republican candidates should set aside the opportunity to score quick political points and support the president in taking a bold step on sanctions that could destroy Iran’s oil wealth. And if Ayatollah Khamenei still refuses to compromise, Republicans and Democrats may find themselves more united in moving beyond sanctions and pursuing a military option.

Mark Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and head of its Iran Energy Project.

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‘Iran may activate US Hezbollah cells after strike’

March 23, 2012

‘Iran may activate US Hezbollah cells af… JPost – International.

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JPOST CORRESPONDENT

03/23/2012 05:21

US congressional report estimates there are several thousand sympathetic Hezbollah donors in US, with operatives probably in the hundreds.

US Capitol building in Washington D.C.

By REUTERS/Jim Bourg

WASHINGTON – A congressional report finds that Hezbollah fundraising cells are rampant across the United States and that the Lebanese organization could activate these cells to carry out lethal terrorist attacks.

The report, compiled under the aegis of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, estimates that there are several thousand sympathetic Hezbollah donors in the country, with operatives probably in the hundreds.

Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, and should Iran want to carry out terrorism in the US, it could then do so through these operatives. Though many in the US intelligence community assumed after September 11 that Tehran would only use Hezbollah for attacks inside America should the US or Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites, that thinking changed following the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington.

“It is no longer clear that Iran sees carrying out an attack in the United States as crossing some sort of red line,” according to Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He testified before the committee Wednesday at a hearing on the threat that Iran and Hezbollah pose to America.

“Hezbollah has long had a substantial base of supporters in North America,” he noted in his prepared testimony. “This includes some operatives with military and operational training and a much larger pool of sympathizers and supporters who provide funding and some logistical support to the group but could be called upon to support operational activity should the group decide to carry out an attack here.”

Levitt calculated that such a decision became more likely if the organization perceived that the US was directly targeting or seeking to undermine the group.

And he concluded that “the odds are very strong that in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, Hezbollah would retaliate.”

In addition to the possibility that it would launch rockets at Israel, he assessed “its worldwide networks would almost certainly be called upon to execute the kind of asymmetric terror attacks that can be carried out with reasonable deniability and therefore make a targeted response more difficult.”

Committee chairman Peter King (R-New York), however, said that the heightened threat of retaliation on the American homeland even from an Israeli attack doesn’t mean the military option should be taken off the table.

“I don’t think we can rule out an Israeli attack,” King told CNN ahead of the hearing. “I think we have to keep all the pressure out there.”

He continued, “The fact that there can be complications is not a reason why Israel shouldn’t do it or we shouldn’t do it. We have to make sure whatever we do that it is going to work… and realize that Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.”

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Iran’s $40 billion Transfers to Chinese Banks Sidestep Financial Isolation

March 23, 2012

Iran has burrowed under the regular global financial system to create a huge clandestine money-transfer, commercial and currency exchange machine for getting around the US-led Western sanctions hobbling its international trade.
The vice was tightened painfully when the Belgian-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), which facilitates most of the world’s bank transfers, Saturday, March 17, cut 30 Iranian banks off from its services
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s West European financial sources report that Iran is being helped to clamber over the sanctions stile by China, Pakistan, India and Russia. They are assisting in the construction of this underground network as a pipeline through which Iran can continue to conduct its commercial business with the outside world and evade the financial isolation to which sanctions seek to condemn the Islamic Republic for its nuclear weapons program.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman found Chinese hosts unresponsive on this matter during his visit to Beijing this week. While calling their talks “open and productive,” he failed to persuade Chinese officials to suspend their backdoor business pipeline – at least through to the end of 2012, in order to give US-European financial sanctions and oil embargo a chance to take off.
Chinese officials declined to discuss any issue outside bilateral relations with Israel.

China profits from Iran’s sanctions-busting measures

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report that international financial circles were not surprised by Iran’s maneuvers and tricks for evading financial sanctions. Two years ago, anticipating the blockage of its regular trade avenues, Tehran began transferring billions of dollars to Chinese banks, which as a rule do not enter into foreign currency transactions with foreign banks.
However, the sums were so vast and the profits so tempting that Beijing was persuaded to make an exception to this rule.
International financial circles estimate that Iran transferred sums in the $ 25-50 billion range to Chinese banks.
China undertook to make available the amounts need to buy essential goods which the embargo prevents Iran from acquiring directly.
Beijing does the shopping and draws on the Iranian deposits to pay for the purchases. The goods are delivered to China and transferred to Iran via Pakistan.
China is making a very tidy profit from its shopping service for Iran. Beijing is charging Tehran an extra four-percent to cover insurance dues and another four percent surcharge as a “risk fee,” over and above the expensive roundabout delivery route.
Already, China may be clearing as much as a billion dollars a year from this service alone.
When Washington found out about these arrangements about a month ago, US officials turned to Beijing to get them stopped. They ran into a blank wall; the Chinese refused to give up their hugely profitable service for Iran.

Pakistan lets Iran use its halwa system

Pakistan has also proved willing to help Iran break out of the tightening sanctions noose, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources report.
Tehran turned to Islamabad in mid-2011, when the Arab Gulf emirates, spearheaded by Saudi rulers, cut Iran out of their sprawling international halwa system which moves vast sums of money around among Muslim communities.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum called together all the halwa branch heads in the region, many of them family relatives, and threatened to withdraw his protection if they continued to work with Iran.
Deprived of this channel, Tehran asked Islamabad for the use of the Pakistani halwa network, an independent system unconnected to Persian Gulf entities which operates largely under Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (SIS) supervision.
Pakistan then faced heat from the Obama administration. Washington demanded that Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha be replaced as director of the ISI service, accusing him of opening the network to Iran.
It was in apparent compliance with this demand, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report, that on March 9, the Pakistani government announced Gen. Pasha would be replaced on the 18^th of the month by Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam.
But the Americans had little reason to celebrate. The Pakistani government had cynically replaced Gen. Pasha with an officer even more deeply involved in Iran’s financial shenanigans.
Gen. ul Islam is commander of the Karachi Corps, based in the southern Pakistani town which houses national headquarters. In this capacity, he could not have missed the thousands of halwa companies employed exclusively by Iran for its underworld money-laundering and money transfers springing up in the city during his watch.

Russia, India and Turkey help Iran too

This provocative appointment laid bare Pakistan’s long and constant clandestine links with Iran in support of its nuclear program. They go back 23 years to 1989, when Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of the Pakistan bomb, who also ran a nuclear black market, visited Tehran and persuaded Iranian leaders to start enriching uranium independently with Pakistani P1-model centrifuges. They are still in use today.
Western financial sources say Iran is shielded from financial isolation by three more countries – Russia, India and Turkey.
Precise information about their assistance is still sketchy.
Russia, like China, does not recognize the legitimacy of the oil embargo or the financial sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe.
Western financial sources suspect a number of local Russian banks which have no business dealings with the American banking system may be handling transactions between Iranian and Far Eastern banking institutions.
While the Indian government states publicly that it has cut down on its oil imports from, and financial deals with, Iran, this is not borne out by facts.
New Delhi appears to be rendering Tehran valuable assistance for beating sanctions. Their bilateral business is being funneled through the Indian UCO Bank based in Calcutta, whose board is divided between Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India representatives.
This bank has very little to do with American and European financial entities. Its trade with Iran is conducted almost exclusively in Indian rupees and gold.
Turkey too has its hands deep in sanctions-busting transactions with Iran: Its seventh largest bank, the state-owned Halkbank, is a conduit for Iran’s oil-related earnings.

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No Practical Results from Secret Diplomacy with Washington Expected in Tehran

March 23, 2012

Qaboos bin Said Al Said

Iranian leaders agree with the Obama administration that the back-channel talks between them are on the fast track. Still, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is highly skeptical about their yielding practical results. This thinking marked his resigned-sounding comment in a speech Tuesday, March 20: “We do not have atomic weapons and we will not build one. But in our defense against an attack – either by the US or the Zionist regime – we will strike back on the same scale as their attack.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources report that circles close to Khamenei disavow any of the Iranian-US channels of dialogue said to be current (see a separate item in this issue about four), other than an indirect one brokered by Qaboos bin Said Al Said, the Sultan of Oman.
The first informal US-Iranian contacts took place in Nicosia with an exchange of messages between Washington and Tehran.
In early March, the Sultan launched a new initiative and moved the two delegations from Nicosia to the US and Iranian diplomatic missions in Muscat, where he could keep an eye on them.
Our intelligence and Iranian sources obtained a list of the demands and conditions exchanged in the negotiations so far.

Iran will attain a full nuclear cycle on condition of transparency

Iran has made important concessions on its nuclear program – less than claimed by sources within the Obama administration, but betokening an improvement in bilateral relations.
For instance, Tehran may agree in principle to forego the military dimension of its nuclear program but insists on its right to carry on with that activity in full transparency and openness to international inspections.
The Americans – and even more so, the Israelis – strongly suspect that Iran is borrowing the North Korean subterfuge for completing “the nuclear cycle.” Reaching a bomb from that point would take between six months and under a year from the moment the order was given.
The list of the conditions Iran has raised in its most recent exchanges with the US through the Sultan of Oman is published here for the first time:
1. The US will publicly acknowledge Iran’s right to complete its nuclear project and “the nuclear cycle” provided full transparency and free access to international inspectors are granted.
Khamenei offered a fatwa signed by leading ayatollahs affirming Islam’s prohibition on developing weapons of mass destruction.

The US will start lifting sanctions, starting with oil

2. The US will phase out sanctions in time with Tehran’s provision of nuclear transparency and confidence-building gestures. The sequence would start with lifting the cutoff of Iran’s access to SWIFT money-transferring services and the ending of the embargo on Iranian oil.
3. A US will timetable with dates for the lifting of sanctions will be enshrined in a new UN Security Council resolution, as Russia has proposed.
4. US national networks and influential media will present the accord as an Iranian victory achieved by Tehran’s steadfast struggle for its nuclear rights. Washington must accept that Iranian domestic media will continue to disseminate harsh anti-American propaganda up until the moment a final accord is struck – in the interests of the negotiations’ total secrecy.
5. The Voice of America will discontinue interviews with Iranian opposition figures.
6. The US will pledge to keep its hands off the Assad regime in Syria and refrain from cooperating with Saudi and Qatari efforts to undermine it.
7. The US will bend every effort to abolishing the UN Special Tribunal investigation of the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
8. The US will refrain from backing Kurdish independence in any part of the region, including Iran, Iraq and Syria.
9. The US must stop its allies’ subversive activities among Iran’s ethnic minorities.

Iran must desist from violence in Afghanistan and Iraq

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources outline the demands the American side put to Iran in Muscat:
1. Iran must halt subversive operations in Afghanistan, withdraw its support from Taliban and al Qaeda and help Afghan President Hamid Karzai institute reforms.
1. Iran must go into negotiations with the five Security Council permanent members + Germany wholly committed to maximum transparency, a pledge to abstain from foot-dragging and other wiles, and the offer of evidence to prove its innocence of plans to build a nuclear bomb.
2. Iran must stop engineering violence and sabotage in Iraq, refrain from any activity for delaying or disrupting the departure of the last US troops from the country and sowing the kind of mayhem that would jeopardize Barack Obama’s reelection as president.
3. Iran must endorse the NPT protocol authorizing nuclear watchdog spot inspections at any Iranian facility.
4. All these commitments must be implemented before November 6, 2012, to give President Obama a chance show his policy of engagement has been vindicated.
Iran is not confronted with demands regarding its respect of human rights.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report that US and Iranian negotiators meet again in Muscat on March 26.

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Obama Holds Saudis Back from Striking Iran – and Syria Too

March 23, 2012

DEBKA-Net-Weekly #534 March 22, 2012

Hardly a day goes by without the Obama administration pointing out in some US media outlet the futility, wrongheadedness, hazards, superfluity etc. of Israel military action for pre-empting a nuclear Iran. The public has been informed, for instance, that it would only set Iran’s program back by a year, and that the ayatollahs have put their nuclear bomb program on hold. So what’s the hurry?
But about the equally strenuous White House effort to hold Saudi Arabia back from attacking Syria as well as Iran – hardly a word sees the light of day.
The fuss and pother about Israel’s intentions distract attention from the very real fears in Washington about the Saudi royal family’s plans for military action against Iran and its allies, Syria and Hizballah, and Riyadh’s efforts to draw the heads of the Gulf oil emirates into the action.
Riyadh puts no trust in the sanctions and embargo Washington and its Western allies have put in place to curb Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Instead, they see sanctions becoming a boon for Tehran
Tuesday, March 20, oil fell by only 1 percent after the Saudis announced their most detailed steps yet to make good on any shortfalls generated by the embargo on Iranian oil and the cutoff from March 17 of Iran’s banks from transactions through the Belgian-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), which facilitates most of the world’s bank transfers.

Money in Iran’s pocket from sanctions-boosting oil prices

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi announced the kingdom was pumping 9.9 million barrels per day – the highest level in decades – and was willing to turn the taps up to a maximum capacity of 12.5 million bpd to meet its customers’ every request.
Iraq, too, added 30,000 barrels per day to its production of 2.1 million bpd.
But these steps failed to reverse the upward price trend.
And the sanctions’ deleterious impact on Tehran was offset by profits from skyrocketing oil prices: Not only were the extra costs of circuitous trade routes covered, but the declining value of the Iranian rial flattened.
“We are ready and willing to put more oil on the market, but you need a buyer,” Al-Naimi said bitterly, aware that no matter how much more oil Saudi Arabia may pump, Tehran is still ahead of the sanctions game. Only if China, Japan and India can be persuaded to line up behind the Obama administration and make genuine cutbacks in their oil purchases from Iran, would the topped-up Saudi oil production come into play.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in the Gulf report that the Saudis suspect the Obama administration of publicly talking up the latest round of sanctions (Barack Obama: “We’ve applied the toughest sanctions ever on Iran”), while assuring Tehran in quiet talks (See the item in this issue about secret US-Iranian talks), that, so long as they keep the dialogue going, sanctions will put Iran in the black.

US stalls British-Saudi arms sales

This week, US acted to stymie Saudi operations in two key arenas:
1. Iran was the first: They suspect the White House of ordering US International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) to stall the sale of British precision-guided Paveway IV bombs developed by Raytheon UK, a weapon that would enable Saudi Arabia to attack key Iranian Persian Gulf sites, such as its naval bases on the Sirri, Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb islands around the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and strategic locations on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.
The Saudis believe the US administration is deliberately keeping those assault weapons out of their hands to frustrate a potential attack on Iran.
They had pinned their hopes on British Prime Minister David Cameron interceding on their behalf with President Barack Obama during his visit to Washington in mid-March and getting the weapons released to Riyadh.
But the bonhomie and shared jokes aside, Cameron made no headway in budging the US president from his opposition to the sale, although British interests are also at stake. The sale to Saudi Arabia of 72 Eurofighter Typhoons delivered by BAE Systems (the combination of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems), is still up in the air because without the precision-guided bombs, those bomber jets are not much use to the Saudis.

Washington stops Jordan allowing Saudi troops transit to Syria

2. The Obama administration is firing every stratagem in its quiver to hold Saudi Arabia back from military intervention in the Syria crisis.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in the Persian Gulf disclose exclusively that, two weeks ago, Saudi King Abdullah secretly asked Jordan’s King Abdullah for permission to send Saudi military forces into Syria by way of the Hashemite Kingdom.
Senior Saudi princes, including Saudi Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, had already been in touch with their Jordanian counterparts to discuss detailed plans which designated the routes Saudi forces would take, the Jordanian bases they would use and the Saudi Air Force’s tactics for covering the advancing Saudi troops and shielding the Kingdom of Jordan against potential Syrian air force action.
The Saudis plan to send troops in to the Syrian Druze Mountains and Horan regions for setting up safe havens to protect the beleaguered civilian population from Syrian military and security forces.
On March 15, Prince Salman attended a military parade on the grounds of the Eighth King Fahd Brigade in Tabuk in northern Saudia near the Jordanian border.
It was attended by a high-powered lineup: Chief of Staff Gen. Hussein Al-Qubail, Gen. Abdul Rahman Al-Binyan, Director General of the Prime Minister’s office, Gen. Prince Khaled bin Bandar, commander of Land Forces, and Maj. Gen. Eid Al-Shalawi, Commander of the Northern Region.
The parade of military prowess and resolve was mean to impress on Jordan that the Saudis were serious about getting a force into Syria through its territory.

The two Abdullahs in deep discord

This Saudi plan was soon nipped in the bud.
Riyadh was informed that US officials had warned the Jordanian monarch against acceding to the Saudi request. Stuck in an impasse, the Hashemite king stopped answering insistent Saudi calls for clarifications.
Seeing their plans for intervention in Syria in ruins, the Saudis decided to get their own back.
In an unprecedented move against a fellow Arab ruler, they arranged for an Arab diplomat, who remained anonymous, to inform the Omani Gulf News agency that Saudi arms were being pumped to the anti-Assad Syrian rebels and the first shipment was on its way to destination through Jordan.
By spilling the beans about Jordan’s clandestine role in this traffic, Riyadh exposed the kingdom to Syrian punitive action.
This maneuver brought the Jordanian king hurrying over to Riyadh for a secret visit.
Our sources report that when he tried explaining to the Saudi king that if Assad was toppled his successors would be worse, he was brusquely brushed aside. Saudi King Abdullah, who is twice the age of the Hashemite royal, reproved him sharply and told him it was time to make up his mind on which side he was in the Middle East.
The two kings Abdullah parted in deep discord.

Saudis are gunning for the US and Turkey

As for Syria, Bashar Assad will have understood by now that Riyadh is rolling up its sleeves for military action against him as soon as a way can be found. Four complications are unfolding:
First: The disclosure that weapon shipments to anti-Assad rebels were passing through Jordan has revived the Saudi pledge of a military and air shield for the Hashemite Kingdom against Syrian aggression. This may lead to military and aerial clashes between Syria and Saudi Arabia on Jordanian soil very near the sensitive junction of Jordanian, Lebanese and Israeli borders.
With this eventuality in mind, Riyadh is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources to have selected the Druze Mountains and Horan region as potential safe havens for persecuted Syrians.
Second: Saudi-US relations are in sharp decline: Riyadh’s Syrian initiative is an act of protest against Washington’s decision to refrain from military intervention to stop Assad’s brutal suppression of the revolt in Syria – even after at least 8,000 Syrian civilian deaths.
The encounter three weeks ago in Tunis between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, ended with Faisal angrily stalking out with words to the effect of: if you don’t take action against Bashar Assad, we will.
The Saudis fully intend now to make good on that threat.
Third: The Saudis are gunning for Turkey. They intend to show up Ankara’s toothlessness in the fight against Assad in contrast to its leaders’ high rhetoric about their prowess as a Middle East Muslim superpower.
Most of all, they can’t abide Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s pretensions as go-between for the back-channel dialogue the Obama administration is conducting with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (See a separate item in this issue.)
Fourth: Riyadh finds it essential to counteract Iran’s airlift of arms and equipment into Syria through Iraqi airspace. The Saudis refuse to stand by idly while Iran enhances its position in Syria and Iraq.

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Washington Winds down Sanctions in Tune with Strides in Dialogue with Tehran

March 23, 2012

DEBKA-Net-Weekly #534 March 22, 2012

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

The informal secret talks taking place for months between the representatives of US President Barack Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appear to have made strides forward. Some sources say they may reach an accord even before the resumption of nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers some time next month in Istanbul.
Where the secret talks are taking place varies according to the source: Some sources say Vienna; others a French village on the banks of Lake Geneva between Evian and Thonon-les-Bains.
The US and Iranian negotiators are described as high-ranking intelligence officials. Whereas the Americans report directly to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Iranians, who belong to the Revolution Guards outfit, send their reports to IRGC commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani. He passes it on to Khamenei, who sends it back with instructions on how the delegation should next proceed.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources provide the following updates and insights on progress.
1. The secret channels of dialogue are proliferating: Believed to number three – the corridors of International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna, Ankara and Moscow – they appear to have earlier this month sprouted a fourth, a super-secret conduit known only to tight groups in Washington and Tehran.
2. About a week ago, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan found out that Ankara was not the only high road for US-Iranian interaction but that secret conduits had opened up without his knowledge.

New Turkish plan blends Iranian and Syrian issues

Erdogan had hoped his meeting with President Obama in Seoul later this month would end with him flying directly from South Korea to Iran to present Khamenei with Obama’s decisions.
This is unlikely to happen.
All the same, the Turkish prime minister is ready to present the US president a new plan which weaves the Iranian nuclear issue in with a formula for resolving the Syrian crisis. It consists of a package whereby Tehran would agree to stop enriching uranium to 20-percent purity in the first stage and then gradually open up its nuclear sites to IAEA inspection.
In parallel, Iranian leaders would try and persuade Bashar Assad to end the violence in Syria and enter into talks with the opposition on power-sharing reforms.
According to our intelligence sources, Hakan Fidan, director of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, is handling Ankara’s dealings with Iran.
On a trip to Tehran last week, he informed Khamenei’s aides that refusal to combine the nuclear controversy with the Syrian issue in the same package as Ankara proposed would make Turkey abandon its neutral stance between the US and Iran.
Ankara would then join Western sanctions and embark on military action against the Assad regime with a view to establishing protected buffer zones in Syria.
Asked why Erdogan did not seem troubled by the Syrian ruler’s threat, conveyed to UN envoy Kofi Annan in Damascus on March 10, to send missiles against Turkish bases and military targets if their troops crossed the border, Fidan replied his government was ready to withstand the threat with US and European military backing.

Back-channel talks confirmed

3. Back to Iran, on March 12, the Washington-based Al Monitor (self-styled “Pulse of the Middle East”) ran a revealing interview with former US senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel, a close Obama associate and co-chairman of his intelligence advisory board.
After speaking at length about scenarios that could prod Israel into action against Iran, he was asked by the interviewer: So is it now bomb Iran or live with Iran with a bomb?
Exactly, Hagel replied: “We may eventually wind up with those choices. But I don’t think we’re there now. We’ve got some time, keep ratcheting up the sanctions, keep the world community with you.
“…You cannot push the Iranians into a corner where they can’t get out…You’ve got to find some quiet ways…”
The former senator hinted broadly at back-channel talks between the United States and Iran:
“I hope. I don’t see any other way around this,” he said. “Because you can’t deal with something… as explosive as this is out in public.”
Hagel must be presumed to have cleared his remarks with the White House.

Starting to wind sanctions down

4. Tuesday night, March 20, six days after President Obama’s ringing announcement ,“We’ve applied our toughest sanctions ever on Iran,” Secretary of State Clinton suddenly announced the administration had decided to extend exemptions from those sanctions to Japan and 10 European countries, Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Spain, Holland and Poland.
This decision was made, said Clinton, because those countries had already significantly reduced their oil purchases from Iran. Clinton did not say whether they had undertaken to maintain the reduced level of their Iranian oil purchases, or if the exemption permitted them to buy more.
It was assumed that the exempted countries’ banks would also be allowed to deal with Iranian banks in order to pay for the oil.
They were let off the hook of financial sanctions as well by the same exemptions.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources comment that this move appears to be part of a gradual ratcheting down by the Obama administration of sanctions against Iran, a strong indicator of substantial progress made on the secret US-Iranian talking track. The US president appears to have decided to reward Tehran by a major concession, albeit without admitting this in public

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