WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 31, 2012, 9:30 AM (GMT+02:00)

Hillary Clinton chats with Saudi King Abdullah

Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan’s talks with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Thursday, March 29 were closed to the press, but a statement published on Khamenei’s official website said he told Erdoğan that Iran strongly opposes any foreign intervention in Syria’s conflict and will defend Damascus so that it can continue to be a center of “resistance” against Israel.
Twelve hours later, Iran’s Lebanese stooge, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah, interrupted his Friday night sermon to declare triumphantly: “The die in Syria is cast. Talk of military intervention is over. There is no more talk about arming the opposition or about toppling the regime!”
Saturday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi announced, “The battle to topple the state is over, and the battle to solidify stability and move towards a renewed Syria has begun.”

Bashar Assad’s victory over the 12-month uprising to unseat him is unquestioned. With massive Iranian and Russian intelligence and military support, the Syrian army was able to push the rebels out of the cities – barring isolated pockets in Homs and Idlib – and drive them to the rural periphery, where they can’t hold up for long.
One observer, describing their situation as “undergunned and overwhelmed,” reported that Syria’s rebels have to negotiate for hours for every box of bullets they haul across the border for their war against Assad. “And their frustration is starting to show.”
Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah are crowing over their success in derailing the Obama administration’s two-pronged policy for halting a nuclear Iran. It hinged on Tehran’s isolation by unraveling its alliance with Damascus and Hizballah and economic pressure through tough financial sanctions and an oil embargo.
Iran has come out of the woods firmly in position at the head of its bloc, now cemented by Assad’s defeat of his foes. Tehran’s hand is much strengthened for the coming nuclear talks between Iran and the Six Powers due to start in two weeks. Washington will have to pay for any Iranian concessions by starting the process of unwinding sanctions.
Responding to this situation during his visit to Tehran, March 28-29, Erdogan played both ends against the middle: He made the gesture to Obama whom he had just met in Seoul of cutting down Turkey’s purchases of Iranian oil by one fifth. At the same time, he signed lucrative deals with Iran for expanding the volume of their trade to $35 billion over the coming years.
Certain that sooner or later, Washington would slot Turkey onto the list of nations exempted from implementing the oil embargo against Iran, the Turkish prime minister could afford to defy US financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
And Tehran could afford to ignore as harmless the White House announcement Friday that the US would “go forward with sanctions on foreign banks continue to buy oil from Iran and further isolate Iran’s central bank.”
Khamenei listened carefully to the message Erdogan presented him from the US president. But he did not send back an answer. He evidently meant to leave Obama on tenterhooks until the nuclear talks begin next month.
The failure of Obama’s linked strategies for Iran and Syria resounded in the background of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Persian Gulf mission Friday and Saturday, described officially as aiming to bring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states aboard a US-led front against Iran and Syria.

In Riyadh, Friday, she heard King Abdullah place responsibility for the Syrian debacle squarely at the door of the Obama administration for spurning the Saudi intervention plan to establis opposition sanctuaries in Syria under air force and ground forces’ protection.
On Saturday, more recriminations echoed between the lines of the announcement of Clinton’s meeting with the foreign ministers of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). G

GCC Secretary Ahmed Al-Kaabi said: The meeting at the GCC secretariat will focus on the Gulf’s position on Syria and the role of the US and other allies. He added, “In fact, Saudi Arabia, along with fellow Gulf nation Qatar, has called for a timely approach, including arming the rebels and carving out a safe haven inside Syria from where the opposition can operate.”

Iran’s supreme leader gave the United States, Saudi Arabia and the GCC them his answer Thursday, when he pledged on his website strong opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s conflict and the defense of Damascus, so that it can continue to be the center of “resistance” against Israel.
It is clearly too late to reverse the tide in Damascus: Should the US have a sudden change of heart and accept the Saudi plan to intervene in Syria and arm the anti-Assad rebellion, that route would be cut off by Tehran calling off the nuclear talks and so robbing Obama’s Iran policy of its ultimate goal.
The second Friends of Syria Clinton will be leading in Istanbul Sunday, April 1 has likewise been overtaken by events. Iran, Damascus and Hizballah have left the Syrian opposition and their adversaries’ tactics behind them in the dust.

This ought to be a resounding lesson for the Israeli circles who argue that it is up to America to deal with a nuclear Iran, a much-quoted minority chorus led by the ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, the moderate ministers Benny Begin and Dan Meridor and the newly-elected head of the opposition Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz. They would all like to shrug off Israel’s responsibility for preempting a nuclear Iran and pass the buck to the United States.
Washington’s management of the Syrian crisis and its non-military approach to a nuclear Iran has left Assad in the saddle and enhanced Iran’s prospects of hanging onto its nuclear weapons capacity, while escalating anti-Israel “resistance” from Damascus.
Assad and Khamenei felt no urgency to go through with the large-scale pro-Palestinian spectacle they had planned for the Israeli-Arab Earth Day Friday. They now have bigger fish to fry.

The convoy of buses standing by in Damascus to carry an international legion of pro-Palestinian sympathizers flown in from Tehran to the Golan border with Israel was therefore sent away, and the HIzballah-led rally scheduled to storm the Israeli border was relocated to central Lebanon.

Administration Iran Leakfest Means Obama’s Tough Stance is Just Talk « Commentary Magazine.

Nothing annoys foreign policy establishment types more than the need for presidents to pander to the opinions of the voters. That’s even more true this year than most as President Obama’s desire to pose as Israel’s best friend ever to sit in the White House has caused him to take stands that not only bother veteran Foggy Bottom “realists” but also his core supporters and staffers who apparently take a dim view of the desire of the overwhelming majority of the American people to support Israel and to vigorously oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But though Obama’s Jewish charm offensive may still be in full swing, government insiders are apparently working overtime to send Israel and the rest of the world the signal that the president’s political commitments ought not to be taken all that seriously.

That’s the upshot of a week of heavy duty leaking on the part of administration officials who are less than thrilled about the fact that the president has publicly enlisted them in an effort to stop Iran. Yesterday, there was the attempt by Washington to expose Israel’s secret alliance with Azerbaijan and thereby ensure that it would be broken off so as to render an attack on Iran more difficult. Today, the New York Times has another leaked story in which anonymous government figures state their concern the president’s public rhetoric on Iran has boxed them into a spot that neither he nor they want to be in.

The leaking demonstrates just how unhappy the Washington foreign and defense policy establishment is about the way the president’s re-election campaign has led him to commit himself to action on Iran. Lest there be any doubt about the purpose of these disclosures, the officials tell the Times their hope is these stories as well as the recent leak about a Pentagon war simulation that was specifically crafted to feed speculation about possible U.S. casualties in the event of a conflict with Iran are designed to “provide the president with some political cover.”

The “cover” will presumably be necessary because the administration has no intention of ever actually going to the mat with Iran in spite of all the tough talk that comes out of the president’s mouth when addressing pro-Israel audiences. Some of the anonymous sources for the Times story are worried about the tough talk taking on a life of its own and overwhelming their proposed diplomatic plans on Iran. But the underlying assumption of these leaks is that the real truth about the president’s plans was revealed in his “hot mic” moment with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when he spoke of having more “flexibility” after his “last election,” not his speech to AIPAC.

But for all the duplicity involved in the formulation of current U.S. policy toward Iran, the leakers have brought attention to a genuine dilemma. The president has condemned “loose talk” about war with Iran and has stuck to his belief that diplomacy can find a way to beguile the Iranians to abandon their nuclear plans. But the talkative administration officials understand all too well that the president’s “window of diplomacy” never really existed. No matter how much they boast of their success in creating an international coalition to back sanctions against Iran, they know this is mere talk. The Iranians don’t believe the Europeans will, when push comes to shove, enforce crippling sanctions against them. And they have no intention of backing down.

That means sooner or later, President Obama will have to choose between actually taking action on Iran and breaking his promise to ensure that Iran never goes nuclear. His staffers just hope that moment comes after November when, they presume, he can safely break his word. After all these leaks, if the Iranians didn’t already know this to be true, they know it now.

Why Israel Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | Foreign Affairs.

(Gives a whole new meaning to the expression, “full of sh-t.” – JW )

The Case for a New Nuclear Strategy

Dima Adamsky

DMITRY (DIMA) ADAMSKY is assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and the author of The Culture of Military Innovation.

The debate over Iran’s nuclear program has made clear that when it comes to nuclear deterrence, Israeli strategic thinking is flawed. In the 1960s, Israel developed a nuclear capability as the ultimate security guarantee, a last resort to be used if the country’s very existence was threatened. This capability became popularly known as the “Samson Option,” after the Jewish biblical hero who, rather than face death alone, brought down the roof of a Philistine temple, killing both himself and his enemies. At the same time, Israeli strategy has been guided by a belief that any adversary developing weapons of mass destruction is an existential threat that must be stopped. This belief came to be known as the Begin Doctrine, after Prime Minister Menachem Begin used force to stop the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981.

This leads to a paradox: the basic potential advantage of the “Samson Option” is that it could deter a nuclear-armed foe. But the Begin Doctrine prevents Israel from benefiting from the “Samson Option,” as it seeks to ensure that the situation in which a nuclear capability would be most useful will never come to pass.

Today, the majority of Israel’s strategists promote some kind of a preventive attack on Iran, as they do not believe a nuclear-armed Iran could be deterred and reject the notion of stability based on mutual assured destruction (MAD). Some suggest that Iranian leaders, driven by messianic religious ideology, would use their weapons to destroy Israel, regardless of the costs. Others argue that even if Iranian decision-makers were rational, Iran’s conspiratorial worldview and lack of direct communications with Jerusalem could lead Tehran to misread Israeli signals and to miscalculate, triggering unintended nuclear escalation. Another common argument against MAD is that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would result in a dangerous proliferation cascade across the Middle East.

But these attitudes obscure the real reason that Israel refuses to live with an Iranian bomb. Israel’s intolerance of MAD is not limited to any particular adversary or set of circumstances, but, rather, derives from its paradoxical nuclear strategy. The “Samson Option” is by nature an asymmetrical deterrence model: Israel seeks to deter without being deterred.

Maintaining asymmetrical deterrence would be impossible if Iran did ultimately develop a nuclear weapon. But Israel need not see that outcome as the end of the world. If anything, deterring a nuclear-armed adversary is exactly what Israel’s nuclear capability is good for. But in order to make the best use of its “Samson Option,” Israel needs to start thinking about and publicly debating how it would position itself against a nuclear-armed Iran. In short, Israel needs a new nuclear strategy.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

For most countries, the primary goal of nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others. But Israel’s “Samson Option” has nothing to do with the nuclear balance of terror. The balance of terror, known to most strategists as an unavoidable evil of the atomic age, is seen in Israel not as a strategic challenge but as a materialized, existential, and unacceptable threat. Although the “Samson Option” hypothetically enables MAD, Israeli leaders will have nothing of it. The development of nuclear capabilities by an adversary is a casus belli and demands immediate diplomatic, clandestine, or military preemption. This explains why Israel launched airstrikes on Iraq in 1981 and, reportedly, on Syria in 2007 in order to secure its nuclear monopoly.

Instead, Israel’s nuclear program was allegedly devised to serve as an ultimate guarantor against a doomsday scenario in which an all-out conventional attack by a coalition of enemies threatened the total annihilation of the state. But it is not clear that Israel’s nuclear deterrent has had any bearing on the strategic calculus of its foes during past wars. It did not deter the Egyptians and Syrians from invading Israel in 1973, Iraq from launching missiles on Israel in 1991, the Palestinians from turning to violence during two intifadas, or Hezbollah and Hamas from raining rockets on Israel during the last decade. None of these attacks were kept at bay by a balance of military force that overwhelmingly favored Israel.

To be sure, a nuclear capability would be hypothetically useful if Israel’s conventional qualitative military edge were completely eroded, leaving only a nuclear last resort. But such a scenario is unlikely; the raison d’être of Israel’s national security policy is to retain conventional superiority, and the country is constantly building up its forces toward this goal. Furthermore, at least for the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to guarantee Israel’s military edge.

So if MAD is not an option, and Israel can deter conventional threats with conventional forces, then what is the “Samson Option” good for? It seems that Israel derives no concrete benefits from its nuclear capability. To understand, then, why Israel produced a nuclear capability and crafted a deterrence strategy for a scenario that it cannot tolerate, one has to look at Israel’s unique strategic culture.

Unlike other countries, Israel did not undertake its nuclear project because of geostrategic aspirations, a desire for prestige, or to defend against nuclear adversaries. Even in the late 1950s, when the project was conceived as a so-called great equalizer against larger Arab militaries, Israel’s conventional might was already seen as the main countermeasure against its neighbors. When Israel reportedly crossed the nuclear threshold in 1967, the conventional power of the Israeli army was at its peak, leaving no doubt to Israelis that it could effectively deter its opponents in the future.

For Israelis, security practices and military innovations are usually not driven by strategic theory but by ad-hoc solutions to burning problems and by creative improvisations. As the historian Avner Cohen showed in The Worst-Kept Secret, Israel’s nuclear project was initiated without a careful analysis of the long-term strategic objectives, applications, and implications of this new capability. With little political guidance, the Israelis at first focused only on building infrastructure and capabilities, and avoided articulating complex issues of nuclear doctrine.

More than for any perceived security benefits, Israel’s nuclear project was conceived for psychological comfort in face of the unthinkable quintessence of all Jewish and Israeli fears: a second Holocaust. For millennia, life in the diaspora was an uninterrupted struggle for survival. Enslavement, persecution, and systematic annihilation have had a profound impact on the Israeli approach to national security. This fundamental sense of insecurity, a siege mentality that results in the assumption that the country is under a constant existential threat, predisposes Jerusalem to seek absolute security. At the core of Israeli strategy rests the notion that the country can survive and politically engage its neighbors only from a position of military superiority; symmetry in conventional and nuclear affairs is unthinkable.

GETTING MAD

A number of thinkers, including former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, argue that because the “Samson Option” offers it few tangible benefits, Israel should give up its nuclear project in exchange for Iran doing the same. But this argument overlooks Israel’s strategic mentality. Without understanding Israeli strategic culture, foreign observers cannot fully grasp just how profound the psychological barriers are that Israel must surmount in order to think systematically about how to live with and deter a nuclear-armed Iran.

Given that Israel’s nuclear capability exists to calm the dread of perceived existential threats, Jerusalem would accept nuclear disarmament only as a consequence of a regional peace agreement and normalization, not as a prelude to them. Any other solution would be seen as premature and counterproductive. This approach to disarmament, coupled with an aversion to consider MAD, has put Israel in a strategic bind with regard to Iran.

Whether Israel can stop Iran from getting the bomb is the question of the day. But if, for whatever reason, the Begin Doctrine fails, the far more important question looming on the horizon is how to live with a nuclear Iran. Israel’s security elite is inclined to believe that the end of the country’s regional nuclear monopoly — brought on by an Iranian nuclear weapon — would leave it defenseless and vulnerable to total annihilation. But Iran’s developing a nuclear bomb would discredit only the Begin Doctrine, not the “Samson Option.” And in that case, Israel would need to embrace its “Samson Option” and adjust its strategy to derive the most tangible benefits from it.

To begin with, Israel should consider outlining its nuclear posture to enhance strategic stability and assure Israelis that their government could successfully deter a nuclear Iran. This would entail communicating its redlines and how it would respond if Iran crossed them. Israel may be uninterested in full disclosure so as to avoid international pressure to disarm. But Jerusalem can find a way to outline a general doctrine without revealing specific capabilities. An ambiguous posture alone might not be enough to ensure stable deterrence, but a full disclosure could be provocative.

Israeli strategists would also have to explore the relationship between conventional and nuclear deterrence and examine whether the Israel Defense Forces could deter a nuclear-armed Iran more credibly with its conventional might. The optimal balance between deterrence by denial (using defensive measures to limit the effectiveness of an enemy strike) and deterrence by punishment (threatening a heavy offensive retaliation to any attack) should be found and communicated to Iran. Both Israel and Iran would need to introduce a vocabulary of MAD so that each side understood the rules of the game. And to avoid any nuclear miscalculation, each side would need to carefully study the other’s strategic culture.

Today, Israel’s deterrence strategy, like its other strategies, is not a written doctrine but a vague, tacit concept. Any causality between Israel’s actions and its adversaries’ behavior is more assumed than proven. Israel lacks an institution charged with verifying the effectiveness of its deterrence. Jerusalem cannot afford this in the nuclear age — significant intellectual and organizational energy should be invested in formulating, managing, and evaluating deterrence policy on the national level.

Finally, if Iran gets the bomb, Israel will have to overcome several deeply ingrained beliefs before it can make the necessary adjustments to its deterrence strategy. Israel would need to accept the irony of its security stemming from the constant threat of annihilation. This would entail a fundamental departure from Israel’s habit of seeing absolute military superiority as the key to its stability. Israel’s government would also have to learn to see Iran in a different light. Viewing Iran as a reasonable, if radical, actor would be a jarring departure from earlier beliefs, but it would be a necessary precondition to any kind of interaction between the two countries. Seeing Iran’s leaders as religiously motivated fanatics could lead to a nuclear war.

Israel has sworn to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state, but has not prepared for what happens if it does. So far, Israel’s policymakers have avoided publicly exploring strategies for coping with a nuclear-armed Iran out of fear that talking about the issue would compromise Israel’s nuclear opacity and communicate Israel’s acceptance of an Iranian nuclear weapon. But public debate could generate insights on how to establish stable deterrence and avoid dangerous escalation. It could help Israel overcome the cognitive dissonances of its nuclear strategy, and, in making Tehran familiar with the Israeli mind-set, minimize the chances of miscalculation. This debate should start now, because the cost of waiting until the morning after Iran has a nuclear weapon, if it does in fact acquire one, is too great.

Copyright © 2002-2012 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

US denies leaking info on Israeli access to Azeri airbases – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( “Who, me?” – JW )

White House source tells Ynet DC had nothing to do with leaking information alleging Baku granted IAF access to its airbases in case of strike on Iran

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – A top White House official denied Saturday that the US Administration was responsible for leaking information, alleging that Israel has secured access to airfields in Azerbaijan ahead of a possible strike on Iran‘s nuclear facilities, to the press.

On Thursday, Foreign Policy magazine reported that Baku had granted Jerusalem permission to use four abandoned, Soviet-era airbases, where IAF fighter jets could refuel in case of a strike against the Islamic Republic.

The sources said that the White House had “no interest” in leaks of this kind, adding that the administration would “gladly prosecute” the people behind it – if they knew who they were.

Israel, as well as pro-Israel elements in the United States, blamed the White House for the leak, but according to the official, the US is “crawling with thousands of intelligence and former intelligence officials,” and the White House has no way of stopping them from offering information to the media as anonymous sources.

The official stressed that it was wrong to claim that there was a concentrated media effort within the administration against Israel.

Jerusalem and Washington, he added, are making “tremendous efforts” on Iran and are working more closely than ever. “Leaks on strategic matters are never good,” he said.

The white house stressed that US President Barack Obama’s stance on Iran has been made clear in his interview with Atlantic Magazine and his AIPAC address, in which he made clear that as far as the US was concerned, a “nuclear Iran is not an option.”

Meanwhile, the US tightened oil sanctions on Iran: The Obama Administration believes that the world’s oil markets can be “adequately supplied” even if a significant portion of Iran’s daily exports of 2.2 million barrels would become unavailable.

“There is a sufficient supply of petroleum and petroleum products from countries other than Iran to permit a significant reduction in the volume of petroleum and petroleum products purchased from Iran by or through foreign financial institutions,” Obama said in a statement.

Ex-Argentina leader to face terror cover… JPost – International.

By GIL SHEFLER

03/31/2012 12:33

Carlos Menem to be tried for allegedly protecting Hezbollah, Iran accomplices thought to be behind 1994 Jewish center bombing.

By REUTERS

The former president of Argentina will stand trial for obstruction of justice in the investigation of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people and left hundreds wounded.

Judge Ariel Lijo on Friday ruled that Carlos Menem, who was president of the South American country between 1989 and 1999, and several other former officials will be tried for allegedly protecting accomplices of Hezbollah and its backer Iran, who are believed to have been behind the attack.

According to state prosecution, the former president conspired with former state intelligence head Hugo Anzorreguy, former police chief Jorge Palacios, and others, to hide the involvement Syrian-Argentine businessman Alberto Kanoore Edul in the attack.

To date nobody has been convicted of the 1994 bombing although Argentina has issued arrest warrants for several Iranians including Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and former prime minister Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The 1994 bombing of the AMIA building came two years after a similar attack on the Israeli embassy Buenos Aires that killed 29 people and wounded 242.

The Israeli embassy marked the 20th anniversary of the event earlier this month in several ceremonies.

“Perhaps the failure to find those who planned the attack on the embassy is what led to the second attack on the AMIA building,” Lea Kovensky, who was wounded at the embassy, told The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 30, 2012, 12:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

IDF marksman on the Gaza border

The most violent event of Palestinian-backed Earth Day Friday, March 30, was a battle around the Gaza-Israeli Erez crossing between Israeli forces and marksmen of the Iran-backed Palestinian Jihad Islami, debkafile’s military sources report. The shooters were laying down fire to cover a mass Palestinian rush on the Israeli border and the crossing so as to force Israeli soldiers to shoot into the crowd. Multiple Palestinian casualties would have given Jihad the pretext for reviving its missile offensive against Israeli towns and villages which partly died down two weeks ago.
Our sources report that IDF fire was not aimed at the demonstrators but the marksmen. All the same, in the subsequent melee, one Palestinian man was killed – Mahmoud Zachout, member of a prominent Gazan family, and 14 were injured. At an early stage, members of the Hamas internal security battalion intervened. They split up – one section to stop the Jihad fire, the other, to block the procession’s march on the Israeli border.  Zachout may have been killed by bullets from either side. Their source is under investigation.

debkafile has not established whether the rare collaboration between Israeli forces and Hamas was planned or that both sides happened at same point to appreciate their shared goal, which was to stop Jihad Islami violence and de-escalate the tension. The result was to save a demonstration from descending into a bloodbath.

Israeli commanders commented at the end of the day that, although all the country’s borders remained intact and Palestinian mobs were prevented from breaking through to Israeli areas, as they had planned in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the turmoil may not be over.  Only thousands turned up for pro-Palestinian street demonstrators in Israel and its Arab neighbors, a mere fraction of the March of a Million that was planned jointly by Iran, Hizballah, Syria and Jihad Islami, Tehran’s tool in Gaza.

The beefed up IDF military concentrations will therefore remain in place on guard against fresh outbreaks around Israel’s borders with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian areas up to and during the eight-day Passover festival beginning Friday, April 6. The Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz has cancelled Passover leaves for key combat units and ordered them to stay on operational readiness.