WarSclerotic

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

By REUTERS/Jim Bourg

DEBKA.

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.

DEBKA.

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.

DEBKA.

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.

DEBKA.

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

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama

Iran is as resolved now as ever to acquire a nuclear bomb, but is held back from taking the last, decisive step towards this goal by the fear of a military attack by the US “or someone else”, said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a radio interview Thursday, March 22.
His interview aimed to rebut arguments by unnamed Obama administration officials appearing in recent US media against the wisdom – or indeed the point – of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. One source maintained that American and Israeli intelligence experts agreed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not yet given the order to start building a nuclear weapon; another, that an Israeli attack would set back the program by no more than a year.
Israeli political, military and intelligence leaders are uncomfortable with the intensified wrangling between Washington and Jerusalem over the nuclear issue. They frown especially on the way the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, was dragged into the argument this week, and the way the minority view of one of its retired chiefs, Meir Dagan – that Israel should leave the military option against Iran solely to the United States – was thrown in as though it represented the consensus of Israel’s intelligence chiefs. This was a gross distortion of the truth.
Stepping into the argument, Barak defined the differences between Washington and Jerusalem as boiling down to timetables for when to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
As a major world power, the United States commands enough resources to wait longer before an attack becomes necessary, he explained. Time for Israel is shorter due to its more limited capabilities.
That is the nature of the gap between US and Israeli “perspectives,” according to Barak.

A majority of key ministers support an attack

The disparity in their respective military capabilities lies at the heart of this gap: America possesses the resources to hit nuclear installations after they are buried in fortified underground sites. However, once Iran starts using those bunkers for building a bomb, Israel forfeits the military option for attacking them.
The Israeli Defense Minister insisted that American and Israeli intelligence evaluations of the state of Iran’s program are in accord – contrary to the impression gained from Obama administration officials.
Both are of one mind on the imperative to paralyze that program even by force if Iran refuses to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington and Jerusalem sources say that, while making much of the broad areas of agreement on Iran between the Israeli government and the Obama administration, the defense minister was saying clearly that if Israel is resolved to attack Iran, it will have to move quite soon.
He was referring to a three-month timeline for Iran to halt its nuclear projects – after which, starting from the end of May 2012, Israel can wait no longer.
It was possible to lay this position out clearly thanks to three new developments:
1. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been able to round up a solid Security and Diplomatic Cabinet majority of six ministers versus two, who are convinced of the need to strike Iran.
He is now backed by the two deputy prime ministers, the defense, foreign affairs, interior and finance ministers, while Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor and Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin are unconvinced.
Netanyahu can therefore go ahead and safely put the military option to the vote in the cabinet for the first time.

Gen. Gantz: Three months left to stop a nuclear Iran before Israel acts

2. With this endorsement in the bag, Netanyahu and Barak felt able to send the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to Washington to meet Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin E. Dempsey with a clear message:
Israel will be happy if the US halts Iran’s nuclear program in its tracks, no matter whether this is done by economic sanctions, an oil embargo, negotiations between Tehran and the world powers, or secret US-Iranian diplomacy.
But time is not unlimited. In Israel’s view, if within the next three months Iran doesn’t begin dismantling its nuclear program, stop enriching uranium and discontinue the transfer of its facilities to fortified underground sites, Israel will have to go on the offensive or miss its last chance – with or without America.
3. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington add that this week, high Israeli officials met discreetly with leading Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, and updated them on Israel’s timetable for an attack on Iran and its rationale.
4. In the Israeli circles with influence on political and economic decision-making, the awareness is growing that Israel may have to part ways with the United States on the Iranian issue the first time in its short history, because the Netanyahu government has no choice but to embark on a military operation to cripple Iran’s nuclear capacity before it is too late.
Israeli public opinion polls showing a majority as being opposed to an attack on Iran are being staged and played up by various US bodies.
The reality is different. Most people are alive to the menace Tehran consistently beams against the “Zionist identity” per se and find the notion of a nuclear Iran insupportable and pretty scary.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 22, 2012, 1:57 PM (GMT+02:00)

Al Qaeda killer Mohammed Merah

The French-born al Qaeda killer, Mohammed Merah – who shocked the world by murdering three Jewish schoolchildren and their teacher in Toulouse by shots to the head, after killing three French paratroopers – was found dead after jumping out of a window still shooting Thursday, March 22. First, he injured three police officers searching his apartment, bursting out of the bathroom firing madly.

This 23-year old Muslim extremist made history by the callousness of his murders and by forcing French police and security forces to conduct the biggest and longest siege in their history against a lone armed terrorist

Many mysteries surround the episode -both concerning the gunman and the methods used by French security to apprehend him. One applies to the official reporting of the incident and the many conflicting accounts, some of them coming from the French minister of interior Claude Guiant.

Another relates to the unnamed man who entered the killer’s apartment on a quiet Toulouse street some time Wednesday.  Was he sent for some face-to-face bargaining with Merah on terms for ending the siege?
There were powerful explosions around the apartment over midnight Wednesday and sustained gunfire from various weapons just before the terrorist was officially reported to be dead. None were explained.
One reason for the dragging out the police assault on the apartment may have been that the occupant had not only barricaded himself with basic supplies of food, water, medicines and ammo, but also booby-trapped the entrance ready to strike down a large number of raiders while he remained unharmed.
The apartment may have been rigged as a fortified chamber for a long haul.
In that and other respects, he may fit the model of an Iron Man, a terrorist prototype and Salafi extremist who drives fast cars and motorbikes, enjoys the good life, is at ease with electronic gadgets and used a high tech video camera from a Formula One car to record his murderous rampage in high resolution for propaganda and posterity.

Youthful copycat admirers in jihadist circles will no doubt emulate the Merah style.
Another unanswered riddle is who bankrolled this high-end style and his operations?

One of the big questions facing the French president and security authorities is what took them so long – a day and a half – to raid the apartment? If their plan was to capture him alive to grill him for intelligence on al Qaeda networks, they failed.
Why did they not use stun grenades or a special gas to paralyze him in the initial stage or after the doors were breached? French counterterrorism units are adept in the use of a special gas designed over 40 years ago and were the first to use it.
debkafile’s counter-terror sources recall that in November. 1979, when the Saudi royal family was unable to put down a revolt against the throne, they asked urgently for a French counterterrorism unit to break the siege the rebels had laid on the Kaaba mosque in Mecca, Islam’s most sacred shrine. The unit poured gas into the ancient underground passages and forced the rebels to surrender.
debkafile reported Wednesday, March 21:

Questions are already being asked about how French intelligence and counter-terror agencies, which had held  him and family members under surveillance for some time, failed to discover the deadly plans they were hatching against Jewish and Moslem targets.
Mohammed Merah said he had trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which countries he visited in 2010 and 2011. A Kandahar prison official identified him as an al Qaeda bomber who was imprisoned for three years and escaped in a mass Taliban jailbreak in 2008, only to be rearrested and sent back to France
Toulouse police hunted him down to an address 2 kilometers from the Ozar Hatorah school where he committed his murders after identifying him as the motorcyclist in black who also killed two French paratroopers and wounded a third in neighboring Montauban last Thursday.
Merah fell under police suspicion after that attack but was not arrested. He was active in the extremist Islamic organization called Forsane Alizze which was only outlawed in February although it was long identified with al Qaeda.
The terrorist called French TV stations after the attacks and said he had avenged French participation in the Afghan war, the suffering of Gaza Palestinians and the Sarkozy government’s ban on the veil in public places for Muslim women. He had videotaped his murders to further propagate their impact.
The Jewish teacher, Yonathan Sandler, 30, his sons Arieh, 3 and Gavriel, 6 and the Ozar Hatorah principal’s daughter, Miriam Monstango, aged 8, whom he shot dead Monday at the Jewish school, were laid to rest at the Har Menuhot cemetery in Jerusalem Wednesday attended by masses of people and notables.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe flew to Israel with the victims and attended the funerals as a mark of French-Israeli solidarity in the face of he terrible murders. “Never doubt our determination to fight anti-Semitism in France which violates all our values and will not be tolerated,” he declared.

The dawn raid in Toulouse was accompanied by security police swoops on extremist Muslim hideouts across France.

Israel Hayom | Diversionary war games.

Iron Dome bill presented at US Congress – Israel News, Ynetnews.

(The one thing Congress seems to be able to agree about is standing by Israel.  In the world,  Israel has no greater friend than the American public.  Thank you, thank you, thank you… –  JW )

Ambassador Oren’s article on need to invest in 10 new batteries quickly translated into bipartisan bill. Congressman Berman: ‘US will continue to stand by our strong ally’

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – The US Congress’ response to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren‘s article was instantaneous. After Oren published an opinion piece discussing the growing need to invest in 10 more Iron Domebatteries, two House Representatives introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow the Obama administration to give more missile defense systems to Israel.

The proposed bill does not include specific figures, but it recognizes the operational success of Iron Dome, and its strategic significance in anti-missile defense. It also secures the budgeting of 10 more Iron Dome batteries, regardless of expected cut in security funding. The cost of one Iron Dome battery is $50 millions, not including the costs of the missiles and infrastructure.

“Israel must have the ability to defend itself from rocket and missile attacks, and the United States will continue to stand by our strong ally if called upon in times of need,” Rep. Berman (D) said.

Berman, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has pushed a number of pro-Israeli measures, including previous legislation in 2010 that supported Obama’s plan to allocate $205 million in additional aid to develop the Iron Dome system.

In the article published in “Politico”, Ambassador Oren wrote: “an additional 10 batteries, at least, will be necessary to protect the entire country.”

Oren added, “For America, as well as for Israel, an investment in the Iron Dome system is an investment in diplomacy — helping to create the conditions conducive to peace.”

Toulouse gunman confirmed dead after firefight with police | The Times of Israel.

(ימח שמו וזכרו  May his name and memory be obliterated. –  JW )

Three officers injured after Mohammed Merah opens fire; raid ends 32-hour standoff

By AP and Joshua Davidovich

Merah was killed after resisting arrest when police entered his first-floor apartment. Three police officers were injured in the raid, one seriously, according to police reports.

Police used a camera to survey the apartment and when the camera entered the bathroom, the gunman came out, “guns blazing,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters. A firefight ensued and Merah jumped out the first-floor window and was “found dead,” he said.

Heavy gunfire was heard outside the apartment for several minutes after police entered the apartment. Some 300 bullets were shot in the firefight.

Merah, who confessed to killing three children and a rabbi outside a Jewish school in Toulouse Monday, reportedly said he wanted “to die weapons in hand,” according to Gueant earlier Thursday.

Merah is also believed to have killed three French paratroopers

According to Europe 1, Merah opened fire on one of the members of the special forces, known in France as RAID, from his balcony.

French media reported that police found a suitcase on Merah’s body, which was believed to hold explosive material.

Three loud explosions were heard outside the apartment earlier, and three stretchers were taken out of an ambulance.

Gueant earlier said police had not been in contact with Merah since Wednesday evening.

He added that Merah said he had no interest in negotiations.

Merah was under siege for some 32 hours beginning at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, when police originally tried to raid his home.

Elite police squads set off sporadic blasts throughout the night and into the morning — some that blew off the apartment’s shutters — in what officials described as a tactic aimed to pressure Merah to give up.

Holed up alone in an otherwise evacuated apartment building, Merah appeared to toy with police negotiators — first saying he would surrender in the afternoon, then under the cover of darkness, then reneging on those pledges altogether, officials said.

Authorities said the shooter, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al-Qaida.

They said he told negotiators he carried out the terror attacks to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army’s involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils.

“He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees,” Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, and two of his children, Arieh and Gavriel, 5 and 3, were killed in the Monday attack. Also killed was Myriam Monsenego, 8. The four were buried in Israel on Wednesday.

The standoff began when a police attempt at around 3 a.m. to detain Merah erupted into a firefight. Two police were wounded, triggering on-and-off negotiations with the suspect that lasted into the night.

As darkness fell, police cut electricity and gas to the building, then quietly closed in to wait out the suspect.

French authorities — like others in Europe — have long been concerned about “lone-wolf” attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who self-radicalize online since they are harder to find and track. Still, it was the first time a radical Islamic motive has been ascribed to killings in France in years.

Merah espoused a radical brand of Islam and had been to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region twice and to the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan for training, Molins said.

He said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier, prompting the police raid.