WarSclerotic

Will US rescue Israeli pilots? – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Ron Ben-Yishai presents issues likely raised by Netanyahu in his meeting with Obama

Ron Ben-Yishai

Monday’s meeting between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was prepared well. However, it was easy to notice, in the photo opportunity at the start of the meeting, that Obama is very tense, as is the guest from Israel. Some attributed it to the lack of affinity, and maybe even chronic hostility, between the two figures. However, it appears that this time the tension was related to substantive issues and stems from the great gaps regarding strategy and tactics on the Iranian nuke issue.

It was quite clear that Netanyahu has decided, on Defense Minister Ehud Barak‘s advice and with his assistance, to do everything in his power in order to reach understandings and agreements with Obama on concrete and practical steps and timetables. Netanyahu, as a former commando and Barak’s subordinate, knows that success and failure hinge on the details. Hence, he aspired to reach detailed coordination with the US president and his associates on the strategic aims, midway objectives, and the way Israel and the US would act in case the steps adopted on the Iranian issue fail to elicit the desired results.

Netanyahu knows that Obama needs him on a presidential election year and apparently attempted to leverage this fact to the maximum.

The US agrees with Israel that the sanctions gravely harm Iran but are not achieving their objective. Given the sanctions’ gravity and pace, by the time they elicit results Iran would already possess the ability to produce a first nuclear device if not more, Israeli officials claim. Hence, Israel wants the sanctions to be tightened immediately and implemented quickly, much before July of this year.

However, the Americans are saying: “Wait a little. Note that the Iranians have already told the Europeans they are willing to sit at the negotiating table in order to come up with a solution to the problem.” Netanyahu’s position is different, especially in terms of the pre-conditions he suggested for entering talks with the Iranians. He demands that world powers present three demands to Iran right away:

One demand is immediate suspension of uranium enrichment in Iran’s territory. The second demand is the transfer of some 5,600 kilograms (roughly 12,500 pounds) of low-grade enriched uranium out of Iran’s territory. The third demand is a halt to the installation of centrifuges and the dismantlement of existing ones at the Fordo facility, located deep underground near Qom. Running this site in full capacity of 3,000 centrifuges is considered by Israel as a situation where it would be unable to effectively hinder Iran’s nuclear program via an aerial strike.

Until now, the Americans claimed that this triple demand is impractical, and that the Iranians must not be pressed by being presented with the desired ultimate result of the talks as a precondition for starting negotiations. Obama believes the talks should be held while showing maximal consideration and goodwill in the aims of producing a positive atmosphere. This is apparently one of the first points of disagreement raised Monday in the talk between the two leaders at the Oval Office.

What’ the red line?

Another issue raised in the meeting was the American reaction in case talks with the Iranians fail. In such case, the Americans would impose another set of paralyzing sanctions they would try to pass at the Security Council. Israel demands a full embargo on oil and oil products to Iran and from Iran, paralysis of trade and money transfers vis-à-vis Iranian banks, and heavy penalties on those who violate these boycotts.

The most difficult issue to resolve is what the media refers to as America’s “red line.” That is, the point where Israel and the US would agree that Iran’s progress requires an Israeli or American military strike of any kind or a combination of the two. President Obama told AIPAC that the US won’t tolerate a situation where Iran possesses nuclear weapons. However, Israel says defining the red line this way would in fact enable the Iranians to become a nuclear power. While Tehran won’t possess a nuclear warhead or atomic bomb, it would be able to produce a nuclear device at any given moment.

Under such state of affairs, Iran’s leadership would merely have to make a decision and then produce within six months at most a nuclear weapon. As opposed to uranium enrichment, the development of the actual weapon can be hidden relatively easily, and hence the Americans would not even know about it, just like they didn’t know when Pakistan, India and North Korea turned into military powers in practice.

Hence, Israel demands that the American “red line” would be defined as “nuclear capability,” that is, Iran’s shift to producing 90% enriched uranium, or a large quantity of 20% enriched uranium. Netanyahu also made it clear to Obama that Israel’s red line is a situation whereby the new, underground enrichment facility at Fordo will approach full capacity.

A no less complex issue is what would happen should Israel realize its sovereign right – recognized by Obama – to defend its citizens, by launching a strike in Iran. Hence, we can assume that on this front Netanyahu asked Obama and Defense Secretary Panetta several blunt questions, such as: Will the Israeli Air Force be allowed to use US electronic codes, which identify friendly jets in an airspace where the US exercises control or maintains a presence? Will the US take part in search and rescue operations for Israeli pilots forced to bail out?

In this context, Israel may also have some requests: For example, that the US sell or loan aircraft used for refueling jets in the air, or offer financial assistance that would allow Israel to accelerate the deployment of more Iron Dome anti-rocket defense systems or new armaments.

The US has much to give Israel in the framework of strategic coordination and understandings. Netanyahu also did not arrive at the meeting with empty hands. The Iranian issue is significant and vital to world peace, to regional stability and to Israel’s ability to maintain normal life more or less. What remains now is to see what was achieved in the summit in practice. If the meeting failed, we shall know about it quite soon. Yet should it produce results acceptable to both sides, we’ll only know once things start taking shape on the ground.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 6, 2012, 8:28 AM (GMT+02:00)

A grim Binyamin Netanyahu on Iranian threat.

Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu brought 14,000 pro-Israel lobby cheering delegates to their feet repeatedly – especially when he pledged Monday night, March 5, “Never again will our people have to live in the shadow of annihilation.”

Earlier, he and US President Barack Obama took a break from rhetoric and used a brief private interlude during their three-hour long meeting attended by advisers to get down to brass tacks in their argument over how and when to arrest Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon.

debkafile’s Washington sources disclose a couple of their comments.

While publicly reiterating that there is still a window that allows for a diplomatic resolution of the issue, Obama admitted privately to Netanyahu that the Fordow underground uranium enrichment plant can no longer be destroyed by bombs and missiles; American commanders say all that can be done is to block the vents of this underground facility and slowly stifle the personnel inside. Time and several strikes would be needed to accomplish this.
Netanyahu: Iran is building not one Fordow but ten. We can’t wait much longer.
In other words, the talk of open windows and more time is moot.

Obama: There is no intelligence that Iran has made a final decision to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu: Time is growing short.

debkafile’s Washington source denied media reports that the prime minister had assured the president that Israel has not yet decided to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, meaning he had offered the president the time he wanted for diplomacy and sanctions to work.
Our sources report, to the contrary, that he insisted Israel is operating on a shorter timeline than the United States.
Then, in his speech to AIPAC, he set the record straight by declaring Israel can’t afford to wait much longer” and lauded the president for affirming Israel was entitled to “defend itself, by itself.”
How much is “much longer” is the subject of debate, but one thing is clear:  Israel won’t wait beyond 2012 or until after the US presidential election in November.
“Israel has waited six years for sanctions to stop Iran,” he told the AIPAC audience, but they have failed.
He produced two documents dated 1944 in reply to the widely-reported view that Israel is short of the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and an attack would cause disastrous consequences for the region and the world.
One document was a World Jewish Congress plea to the US State Department for the Americans to bomb the Auschwitz death camp. The second was a rejection of the WJC’s appeal, explaining that diverting large-scale air power from America’s primary front would bring forth “even more vindictive action from the Germans.”
Netanyahu drew loud cheers when he declared, “As Israeli Prime Minister I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation!  Never again!”

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington did not resolve Israel’s differences with the Obama administration on if, when and by whom military force should be applied to shutting down a nuclear Iran.
Therefore, no joint communiqué or statement followed their White House meeting, which was also attended by White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and the prime minister’s security adviser Yaakov Amidror.
But he made a powerful address to American Jews to rally them behind his conviction that a nuclear weapon in Iran’s hands imperils not just Israel’s survival but, if it is not preempted, would allow Tehran to use it in one form or another to as a weapon of terror against every nation in the world.  An Israeli attack on Iran is therefore to be expected at some time in the coming months.
Before winding up his five days in the US and Canada, Netanyahu is meeting House Speaker John Boehner and other Congressional leaders in a bid for support for his strategy for a nuclear Iran.

Will Iran Heed Netanyahu’s Warning? « Commentary Magazine.

Much of the attention devoted to U.S.-Israel diplomacy in recent months has been on whether the United States will seek to prevent the Jewish state from acting on its own to forestall an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The differences between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu over the utility of sanctions or diplomacy and how much more time these measures should be allowed before force can be used have not been resolved. Nevertheless it is more likely than not that the Israelis are going to give the president a bit more time before launching their own strike.

But despite the near obsessive focus on the fractious Obama-Netanyahu relationship, the most important messages being sent from the speeches at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington were not those exchanged between those two leaders. Instead, it was the clear warning to Iran by Netanyahu that the Jewish people will not live under the shadow of annihilation. For all of the justified concern about what Obama will or will not do to try to impede the Israelis as he hangs on to the forlorn hope of a diplomatic solution to the problem, the fate of the Middle East hangs on whether Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei comprehended Netanyahu’s clarion call to action during his Monday night speech to the conference. Tehran must either stand down on its nuclear ambition or face an Israeli attack at some point in the not too distant future.

By stating unequivocally that Israel will always be master of its own fate when it comes to its security, Netanyahu was making it crystal clear that Obama’s misgivings about force will not preclude an Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities before the program is rendered invulnerable. However much time, Netanyahu may give Obama, it is also easily understood that this is not an open-ended commitment since he is rightly convinced that neither renewed diplomatic activity nor even the stepped-up sanctions Obama now contemplates will work to convince the Iranians that they must give in.

As Netanyahu said, Israel has waited patiently for years as Western diplomatic initiatives intended to cajole or buy off the Iranians have flopped. It has also looked on as the half-hearted sanctions against Iran were tried and has seen that they will not answer the problem. And the Israeli leader is well aware that even the oil embargo mooted by some Western European nations and reluctantly seconded by Obama will also certainly fail due to lack of cooperation from China and Russia.

All of this renders much of the speculation about Obama’s intentions moot. He may argue that Israel must to give diplomacy another chance to work but few even in the administration believe it any such initiative will succeed since it has already been amply demonstrated that the Iranians interpret any opening for talks as an invitation for delaying tactics that only serve to get them closer to their nuclear goal. Since it is unlikely that the president will let go of his illusions about diplomacy or engagement with Iran working until it is too late to do anything about their nuclear program, that puts the ball squarely in Israel’s court.

That is why the most important message delivered this week was not the exchange between Obama and Netanyahu so much as it was the one delivered to Iran. The Iranians may be laboring under their own set of delusions in which they cling to the notion that the United States can exercise a veto over Israeli self-defense. But Netanyahu’s speech which drew a direct parallel between the current impasse over Iran and the refusal by the Allies to attack the rail lines to Auschwitz in 1944 is a signal that Obama is ultimately powerless to prevent the Jewish state from acting to prevent another Holocaust.

Iran has conducted itself in the last several years as if it believed it had impunity from retribution should it acquire a genocidal weapon to be used against the Jewish state it has sworn to destroy. It has also acted as if it believed, not unreasonably, that President Obama wasn’t serious about stopping them. But if Iran wishes to avoid having its nuclear facilities attacked, it needs to understand that Netanyahu was speaking in deadly earnest when he warned them of the consequences of their actions.

When Israel Acts, Will the U.S. Have Israel’s Back? | The Weekly Standard.

Monday night, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said simply and clearly, “When it comes to Israel’s survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate.”

Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But not according to President Obama. His timetable for acting against Iran would precisely undermine Israel’s ability to determine her fate. President Obama wants to wait to act until Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. And by that point Iran will have entered what Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak calls a “zone of immunity”—when Israel, with lesser capabilities than the U.S., might well no longer be able to act to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. If Israel is to act, it must be before Iran enters that zone. Otherwise, Israel will be in the position of depending on the U.S. to act later to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This dependence on another nation is what an Israeli prime minister cannot accept.

The issue is not whether Israel can trust President Obama to do what he says—or whether Israel could trust any American president on a matter of such gravity. The issue is not whether the president is right to be confident that the U.S. would see an Iranian breakout and could act in time. The issue is not even how an Iranian nuclear capability, pre-breakout, would transform the region for the worse. These are all secondary issues.

The Israeli prime minister insists that Israel remain the master of her fate. The American president is willing to let the Iranian nuclear program go to a point where Israel would no longer be master of her fate. This is the fundamental disconnect. And this disconnect can result in only one outcome: Israel will have to act.

Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu at AIPAC 2012 – YouTube.

Israel’s prime minister on Monday vigorously asserted his country’s right to defend itself against the nuclear threat emanating from Iran, warning that time was growing short and declaring he wouldn’t “gamble with the security of the state of Israel.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough talk in a speech to thousands of American Jewish supporters was his strongest suggestion yet that he wouldn’t hesitate to launch a unilateral pre-emptive attack on Iran. It differed starkly in tone from President Barack Obama’s appeal earlier in the day to give diplomacy and sanctions more time to work before resorting to force.

Israel has “patiently waited” for diplomacy and sanctions to work but time is working against that approach, Netanyahu told a record gathering of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

“None of us can afford to wait much longer. As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation,” he said to a roaring standing ovation.

Israel, like the U.S. and much of the West, rejects Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is designed to produce energy and medical isotopes. The head of the U.N. nuclear agency fed concerns further Monday by saying his organization had “serious concerns” that Iran may be hiding secret atomic weapons work.

But Israel and the U.S. disagree over when a strike might be appropriate and how effective a unilateral Israeli attack might be against scattered and heavily fortified Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Israeli leader dismissed arguments that an attack on Iran would exact too heavy a toll by provoking Iranian retaliation. He held up a copy of a 1944 letter from the U.S. War Department rejecting world Jewish leaders’ entreaties to bomb the Auschwitz death camp because it would be “ineffective” and “might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.”

“My friends, 2012 is not 1944,” Netanyahu said. “Today, we have a state of our own. And the purpose of the Jewish state is to defend Jewish lives and to secure the Jewish future.”

Netanyahu’s speech drew tumultuous applause and numerous standing ovations from the crowd of more than 13,000 people, reflecting the immense support Israel enjoys in the U.S.

It also drew attention to the gap between the U.S. and Israel over how to handle Iran.

As he entered his meeting with Netanyahu at the White House earlier Monday, Obama declared, “The United States will always have Israel’s back,” but quickly added, that “both the prime minister and I prefer to solve this diplomatically.”

Netanyahu responded that Israel must remain “the master of its fate” but made no reference to letting diplomacy and sanctions percolate.

Israel assesses that Iran is close to being able to build a bomb and wants to stop it before it reaches that point. Some Israeli defense officials have said Israel must strike by summer because Iran is moving key operations out of the reach of Israeli air power.

The Obama administration sees this course as dangerously premature, arguing that Tehran has not yet decided whether to actually produce atomic weapons and might still respond to non-military pressure. Because of its superior firepower, the U.S. reasons it would be able to act many months after Israel could.

McCain calls for airstrike on Syria – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Statement is as much a critique of President Barack Obama as a rallying call for an international military campaign, accusing the president of being too soft on Assad.

By The Associated Press

A leading Republican senator on Monday urged the United States to launch airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime to force him out of power – a call for dramatic military intervention against the growing violence that was not supported by the Obama administration or its European or Arab partners.

The statement of Sen. John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election, on the Senate floor came as the U.S. and European governments pleaded for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to rethink his anti-interventionist stance on Syria, in what appeared to be an increasingly desperate effort for consensus among world powers to stop a crackdown that has killed more than 7,500 people. Hundreds fled to neighboring Lebanon on Monday fearing they’d be massacred in their homes.

	U.S. Senator John McCain gives a speech at the World Economic Forum annual meeting on the Middle East at the Dead Sea, October 23, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

But the trans-Atlantic calls for Russia to abandon its opposition to strong UN action were delivered at a curious time: a day after Putin showed his strength by resoundingly winning re-election to the position he held from 2000 to 2008. Even the modest aim of gaining Russian support for a humanitarian strategy in Syria faced renewed resistance Monday – showing just how limited the diplomatic options were despite the continuing violence.

McCain’s strategy would be far more direct, though it is unclear how popular it would be. His statement was as much a critique of President Barack Obama as a rallying call for an international military campaign, accusing the president of being too soft on Assad.

McCain and his party’s senior member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. should change policy by arming Syria’s rebels and spearheading a military effort to support them.

“The only realistic way to do so is with foreign airpower,” McCain concluded. “The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces.”

McCain’s proposal will likely divide American lawmakers, many of whom opposed a similar operation in Libya last year. Even if it were championed by the Obama administration and its NATO allies, the plan would divide other countries hostile to the Assad regime but unwilling to support another Western military intervention in the Muslim world. And it would be anathema to Russia, which sees Syria as its primary ally in the Middle East.

Unlike the international Libya campaign that ousted Moammar Gadhafi in Libya last year, military action against Syria would not have the backing of the UN
Security Council and would be difficult to justify under international law. In many ways, it would also be a rejection of Obama’s doctrine stressing international collaboration on applying military force.

Obama’s strategy has been to use sanctions and international diplomatic isolation to pressure Assad into handing over power as part of a political transition. At the minimum, Western countries want aid guaranteed for civilians caught between Assad’s forces and the increasingly militarized opposition, but are struggling even to convince Damascus and its Russian and Iranian backers of that.

Russia, alongside fellow veto-wielding Security Council member China, has stood by Assad even while his forces have killed thousands over the past year, rejecting two UN resolutions critical of the Syrian government. Negotiations on a narrower, third resolution are ongoing in New York, and the Kremlin again seems to be standing in the way.

“I hope that Russia now, after the elections and with a clear view, will see that it stands on the wrong side of history,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. “The people in Syria who are standing up for democracy and their freedom need solidarity from the international community.”

Speaking in Prague, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said an Arab League meeting this weekend would offer Putin a chance to work with the rest of the world on getting humanitarian assistance into besieged cities such as Homs, and recognizing “that there needs to be a new leadership in Syria.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington planned to immediately take up the Syrian issue with Moscow. She said the U.S. is open to compromise on UN action as long as Russia stopped trying to equate the Assad regime’s violent repression of protesters with rebels trying only to defend their communities.

“We hope that their sense of humanity and compassion will encourage them to join us in pressing the Assad regime to silence its guns,” she said.

The entreaties failed to make an immediate impression on Moscow. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instead drew attention to a months-old Russian resolution demanding that Syria’s government and the opposition hold talks on reforms. The Russian approach would keep the levers of power in Assad’s hands, while requiring his opponents to end their rebellion.

“I don’t think there is a need for any new initiatives,” Lavrov said Monday. He said other countries “shouldn’t expect one another to take any action, but sit down together and decide what steps need to be taken so that the Syrians stop shooting at each other.”

Syria is Russia’s primary ally in the Middle East, having maintained close ties with Damascus since the Cold War, when the Arab country was led by the current leader’s father, Hafez Assad. Putin, Russia’s prime minister for the past four years, called last week for government and opposition forces to pull out of besieged cities, accusing the West of encouraging the rebels to fight by refusing to make that demand.

Blog: Fisking Obama’s AIPAC Speech.

Ed Lasky

Obama was not there for Israel ‘every single time’ – Right Turn – The Washington Post.

By Jennifer Rubin  |  08:30 AM ET, 03/05/2012

WPR Article | The New Rules: Assad’s Ouster Best Chance to Stave off Israel-Iran Conflict.

The debate among U.S. foreign policy analysts over the wisdom of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — and whether or not America should allow itself to be drawn into an ensuing conflict with Iran should Israel strike — has largely taken place parallel to the debate over whether to pursue an R2P, or responsibility to protect, intervention in Syria. It bears noting, however, that forcing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s departure may be the best near-term policy for the U.S. to avoid being sucked into an Israeli-Iranian war.

Clearly the Assad ruling clan deserves our best efforts short of an all-out invasion to bring about its forcible removal. Now that Assad is perpetrating the same mass violence against innocent civilians on a town-by-town basis to which his father, Hafez, once resorted, there should be no pretense of suggesting that this is none of the world’s moral business.

That argument can’t be applied universally, of course. If the Assad regime was powerful enough, the West would naturally have to let it get away with its vicious assault against its own people. But it is not, which means we now possess both the motive and opportunity to do the right thing.

The opportunity cost here is acceptably low. Outside of leaving Russia fuming and China indignant, America’s relations with the rest of the world will suffer little damage. Instead, we’ll further strengthen our ties with Israel, Turkey and the GCC countries, which have already decided, in the form of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, to arm the Syrian rebels. For a Washington contemplating a strategic “pivot” to East Asia, buttressing all those key relations is a worthwhile goal.

And while President Barack Obama’s unstated doctrine of “leading from behind” by letting the local critical mass for intervention build before supporting it is laudable, the decision by the GCC countries to arm the Syrian rebels is firm proof that the time has now come for the president to move beyond his decidedly cautious approach. Politically, it will cost him little with his voting base, and it will further insulate him from Republican charges of “appeasement” and other such nonsense. And when Assad does fall before the U.S. presidential election in November, it will represent another brilliant notch in Obama’s ever-lengthening belt of foreign policy successes.

In short, the time has arrived for this administration to move beyond righteously castigating Moscow and Beijing for their intransigence in the United Nations. When more than 60 nations beg the U.N. to send in civilian peacekeeping troops, they’re really asking Washington to pull the military trigger — pure and simple.

Assuming our covert presence is already deep at work inside Syria concerning its large cache of chemical weapons, we ought to be able at least to match the GCC’s willingness to offer material support to the rebel forces. And when that proves not to be enough, then we ought to encourage Turkey’s invocation of its NATO membership to request alliance military operations designed to enable a Syrian rebel victory. The pattern here should mirror that of the Libyan operation, but with Turkish military forces playing the lead role wherever possible in securing sanctuary for civilians and rebel forces.

That doesn’t mean putting U.S. or NATO boots on the ground, beyond the prudent application of covert elements and special forces to target the regime’s chemical weapons and al-Qaida operatives as opportunities arise.

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Israel is making similar moves, and Iran already has personnel in country doing dirty work on behalf of the Assad regime. With Hamas already abandoning Assad, there is some hope that Hezbollah can be eventually convinced to accept the inevitability of that regime’s demise.

The larger opportunity here is maintaining the Arab Spring’s momentum, while directing it decidedly in the direction of Iran. The golden chance to knock off Iran’s prime ally in the region’s “Shiite crescent” is clear, as is the tremendous geostrategic value in doing so. What might be less clear is how making this effort will also favorably alter the dynamics surrounding Iran’s persistent reach for the Bomb.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the crisis represented by Syria’s expanding civil war doesn’t encourage Israel to contemplate provoking a second crisis in the form of an attack on Iran. Instead, history shows time and again that regional balance-of-power players focus on the game at hand, preferring to exploit its opportunities and wait out its immediate implications on the correlation of forces. Thus, the more we ratchet up the Syrian dynamic, the more we freeze both Iran and Israel on the subject of their inevitable showdown.

Plus, quite frankly, it behooves America to continue processing the Arab Spring’s “one damn thing after another” dynamic. That’s how past administrations deftly handled the sequential collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and Yugoslavia’s similar dissolution across the 1990s. We can always argue on the speed of our responses, which are invariably too slow, but the underlying principle of accepting the sequencing — that is, as it comes — is sound. Simply put, we pull out our long knives on the Assad regime right now because we can and because it’s the next thing up.

Once Assad falls, whatever the outcome, we have isolated Iran further, lessening its bravado and increasing its desperation. If you want to stave off an Israeli attack, this is the route to go. Moreover, removing Assad will create an exit scenario for Syria short of true chaos — meaning civil war, with all the locals driving the process to deeply conflicting ends — which could easily become the trigger for direct Israeli-Iranian kinetics, first inside Syria and then beyond. Syria is simply too important an outcome for both of them, as well as for Turkey and the GCC countries, for any of them to eschew the dangers associated with interventions of some level.

With all that ambition at stake, it’s better for the West, along with Turkey, to impose an overarching and overwhelming dynamic upon the situation to steer it toward the preferred outcome of Assad’s fall. Again, Moscow and Bejing will shriek in response, but we’ll get what we want in the end — namely, Iran’s top lieutenant dethroned and the Arab Spring’s momentum extended to Iran’s doorstep. That outcome will do more to stay Israel’s hand on Iran’s nuclear program than anything else we might manage to come up with. Indeed, compared to the Western embargo of Iranian oil, which will eventually push Tehran into forcing the issue of war with Israel, Assad’s fall is far more likely to force some Iranian compromise with the West’s resolute opposition to its nuclear ambitions.

There is nothing new or fantastic about the logic tendered here. We are simply killing the chicken to scare the monkey.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is chief analyst at Wikistrat and a contributing editor for Esquire magazine. His eBook serial is “The Emily Updates: One Year in the Life of the Girl Who Lived” (September-December 2011). His weekly WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at thomaspmbarnett.com.

IAEA ‘Concerned’ as Iran Boosts Enrichment – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

Iran’s IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh smiles at IAEA meeting

Reuters

The United Nations IAEA nuclear agency, years after Israel warned not to trust Iran’s “peaceful ambitions,” now is “concerned” at a sharp increase in uranium enrichment and the possibility its scientists are hiding work for an atom bomb.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, speaking to the IAEA board, said that a tripling on the enrichment of uranium at Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site, along with Iran’s rejection of IAEA attempts to inspect nuclear facilities, point to concern that the Islamic Republic might be developing nuclear capability for other than peaceful purposes.

The timing of his remarks could not be more appropriate for Israel, with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visiting President Barack Obama.

The uranium is 20 percent enriched, far below the 90 percent needed for a nuclear weapon, but the amount of low-grade uranium being produced can be processed further for upgrading.

“The agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” he told the meeting. “As Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation … the agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to concluded that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

China and Russia have been stumbling blocks to Western efforts to pass a resolution in the United Nations Security Council criticizing Iran and also have balked at placing sanctions meant to harm Iran, where both countries have invested heavily in building its nuclear facilities.

The higher production of uranium at the Fordo plant is of great concern because the plant is built underground and protected by mountains and concrete bunkers, making it difficult if not impossible for Israel to attack.

Iran last month welcomed IAEA visitors but refused to allow them to visit its facilities.

The Islamic Republic maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful ambitions, and assuming that a nuclear warhead is on its agenda, it is locked in a race against Israel and the United States of what will come first – a nuclear weapon or economic and/or military damage that can stop its development.