WarSclerotic

Israel develops new weapons for next war – UPI.com.

Published: April 17, 2012 at 2:41 PM

© 2012 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Iranian ‘Stuxnet’ attack was inside job – WTOP.com.

Tuesday – 4/17/2012, 6:47am  ET

J.J. Green, wtop.com

WASHINGTON – In March 2010, Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant was infected by the “Stuxnet” virus. Originally it was heralded as a “cyberattack,” but recent developments suggest the attack was launched on-site by a person who plugged a 32MB memory stick into a computer at the facility. The resulting infection and activity temporarily crippled Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons.

It was no accident. A Western intelligence source says an Iranian double agent working at the facility did it.

That would explain the October 2010 statement from Iran Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi, who said “an unspecified number of nuclear spies were arrested in connection with Stuxnet.”

But in keeping with the zipped-up world of intelligence, Moslehi gave few details.

Intelligence experts now believe that mole was assisted by a sophisticated support network that was based on real-time, human intelligence from inside the facility.

“(It) was probably several state actors, because the sophistication and the time that was required to build the thing means they had a budget,” says Yael Shahar, director of the Intelligence Project at the Israeli Institute of Counter-terrorism.

Press reports suggest the spy who detonated the virtual bomb that corrupted more than one-fifth of Iran’s centrifuges is a member the Iraqi terrorist organization Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK).

Intelligence sources say there are a number of factors that might point to a coalition between the U.S. and Israel, including relationships with the MEK. The CIA declined to comment, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington told WTOP, “We don’t know about it. We do not comment about it.”

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker magazine reported April 6 that U.S. Special Forces trained elements of the MEK inside the U.S. at a remote site north of Nevada in 2005.

U.S. military and intelligence officials will not confirm the report and there is little evidence that the training ever happened. In fact, the MEK has been on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations for more than a decade.

The New Yorker article also suggests the MEK has very close ties to Israel’s Mossad, which if true would explain the group’s involvement in the Stuxnet operation.

However, former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden is not so sure.

“Reports that anyone would be using the MEK against the Iranian government — from my point of view that’s strange credulity,” he says.

Part of Hayden’s thinking is based on U.S. law. The MEK is No. 29 (alphabetically) on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

According to U.S. law, “It is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide ‘material support or resources’ to a designated FTO. That definition includes training, expert advice or assistance, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”

There have been efforts in recent years to get the FTO designation lifted from MEK because of claims the group is no longer involved in terrorist activities.

The identity of the actual perpetrator of the cyberattack may never be known, but regardless of who the tip of the spear was in the Stuxnet operation, Israel is suspected of involvement.

“I think it’s a good bet, (they were involved). I don’t know for sure. But, even if Israel had no part in it, it would be in Israel’s interest to make people think they had some involvement in it,” Shahar says.

Iran has regenerated some of the capability that the virus took away, but Shahar says Iran’s challenges go much further and wider than that malware attack.

“Stuxnet, in a sense, was the latest in the whole process of sabotaging the Iranian nuclear machine. The whole idea here is to sell them components that aren’t what they are intended to be, to sabotage components that are going to them through third countries,” she says.

Shahar says forcing Iran to go through black market channels makes them just as vulnerable as a common black market criminal.

“It doesn’t help them that they have to buy all their things on the sly through rather shady characters and I think they’ve been jilted by criminals more than they’ve been jilted by actual saboteurs,” he says.

Iran’s Best Defense | FrontPage Magazine.

As US officials again ask Iran to stop its atom bomb program, President Barack Obama seems to be working hard to shield Iran and to prevent Israel from striking at Iran’s nuclear weapons potential. US officials are believed to be behind stories about Israel readying basing and refueling options in countries near Iran, like Azerbaijan.

The Azeris quickly denied they allowed Israel to use their land., and this is a sign the Azeris are feeling pressure not to help Israel, even as Obama reportedly used the Islamist and strongly anti-Israel leader of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, to send a message to Iran that the US would be willing to accept “an Iranian civilian nuclear program.”

For Israel—and for Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians—Iran’s  bomb is not a matter that can be indefinitely delayed in a diplomatic ping-pong match.

President Obama has been rotating his top officials on and off the diplomatic playing field to deter an attack on Iran. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey, and many others have been sent to Jerusalem to tell Israel NOT to attack Iran.

“It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” said General Dempsey, in  an interview with CNN. Meanwhile, Secretary Panetta openly discussed some of Israel’s options and possible time tables in ways that make them less surprising and effective for possible use against Iran.

At the same time, Obama has been seen using the playbook of his favorite pundit,  CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, whose book is often under Obama’s  arm, and  Zakaria  says “Within the context of Iranian politics, Ahmadinejad is the pragmatist.” For more than three years, President Obama has agreed, trying to “engage” such “pragmatists.”

“Pragmatist” has a special meaning for Zakaria/Obama or maybe they have not heard Ahmadinajad brag about how he felt a halo appear around him when he told the UN that everyone should pray for the Mahdi,  an Islamic messiah Ahmadinajad believes has to be born out of a fire that will cleanse the world.

Ahmadinajad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, want such a mighty Mahdi. Their ideas are so extreme that Ayatollah Khomeini—hardly a moderate—outlawed them when he was alive. He felt the Mahdi cult would cause Iran’s destruction.

Zakaria thinks attacking Iran is dumb because Iran is run by “rational” men like those who led the Soviet Union.  Zakaria has said this for a long time, and he has been wrong for a long time.

The Soviets were led by conservative old men who said Communism would beat the West as part of an “inevitable dialectic.”  They could afford to wait. They did not run around handing out weapons of mass destruction to terrorists or client states. Iran is different. It helped Syria build a nuclear program and sends missiles to Venezuela.

Iran’s leaders are not careful old atheists who are deterred or avoid confrontation. They feel God is on their side. They think God wants them to move things along quickly to His paradise on Earth. They sent thousands of children to certain death, to clear minefields with their bare hands, with only “keys to paradise” dangling from their necks. Blood clearly does not deter Iran’s leaders, not even the blood of children.

Obama feels Iran can be swayed by non-military means before it gets a bomb. Recently, Obama has urged “tough” sanctions on Iran, but it took him three years to move away from engaging Iran to trying to strangle it.

However, this is not a real option. Russia and the China will not allow real sanctions, vetoing it at the UN. Obama’s earlier model of talking nicely to the Iranians was really just a huge waste of time, but for Iran, it was time used  building a bomb

For a decade, Iran has played the world for fools, processing yellow cake uranium to uranium hexafluoride  gas and then to weapons grade uranium. Iran claimed it was  working for “civilian purposes.” There is method to Iran’s madness, but it is not playing by the Western playbook or US-Soviet doctrines of deterrence.

Some suggest President Obama wants to reserve for himself the option to face Iran himself in a way that can achieve a dramatic victory a few days before the November elections. More likely, Obama just does not like to use force and also has trouble admitting his various game plans of “engaging Iran” and now “sanctions” have failed.

Still, President Obama needs to recall that this is no game for the Israelis and Iran’s Arab neighbors who realize that Iran is not just playing games.

Israel and many Arab countries—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—are not going to wait forever for President Obama to get his game plan together.

Dr. Michael Widlanski is an expert on Arab politics and communications. He is the author of  of the new book, Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat.

Syrian Forces Widen Attacks as Cease-Fire Unravels | Middle East | English.

Photo: AFP

Image taken from YouTube on April 17, 2012, shows smoke rising from reported shelling by Syrian government forces on the district of Khalidiya in the flashpoint central city of Homs

Activists say Syrian government forces widened their attacks on opposition strongholds Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding dozens more as a U.N.-brokered cease-fire continued to unravel despite the presence of foreign observers.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the casualties occurred when army tanks shelled the town of Busra al-Harir, a stronghold of the rebel Free Syrian Army in southern Daraa province.

voa

The activist group said troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also continued to shell the Khaldiyeh neighborhood in the central city of Homs, a center of the anti-government revolt. Homs has been under continuous attack, with only a short break on the first day of the cease-fire.

The casualties could not be independently verified.

In Damascus, the head of an advance team of six unarmed United Nations observers said it would take time for monitors to reach the hardest hit areas. Col. Ahmed Himmiche said Tuesday the group’s mission “is a difficult process [that] requires coordination and planning…we should move step by step.”

An additional 25 monitors are expected to arrive within days.

The shaky cease-fire is part of international envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan to launch talks between Assad’s government and opposition forces attempting to oust him.

Annan travels to Doha, Qatar Tuesday to brief the Arab League on the situation in Syria. Diplomats and finance ministry officials from the Arab world, the West and elsewhere also are meeting Tuesday in Paris to coordinate sanctions against Damascus.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused unspecified external forces of seeking to undermine Annan’s efforts to end more than a year of bloodshed in Syria, saying support for government foes is threatening the fragile cease-fire.

In televised remarks Tuesday, Lavrov said such actors “are doing this by delivering arms to the Syrian opposition and stimulating the activity of rebels who continue to attack both government and civilian facilities.”

Russia has provided Syria with weapons and – along with China – shielded Assad by blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning his government for a crackdown in which the U.N. says its forces have killed more than 9,000 people since March 2011.

Moscow has pledged its full support for Annan’s peace plan and last week called on the Syrian government to step up implementation, but Russia has also put much of the blame for the bloodshed on opposition forces.

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Damascus has a “responsibility” to ensure that observers on the ground in Syria can move freely to monitor the truce, which took effect last Thursday. Ban also urged Syrian security forces to exercise restraint and called on rebels to fully cooperate with the cease-fire, which he acknowledged is “very fragile.”

Annan has called for the monitoring team to be expanded to 250 personnel, but a second Council resolution is required for such a step.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said Monday that if Syria’s violence persists despite the cease-fire, “it will call into question the wisdom … of sending in the full monitoring presence.”

U.N. human rights investigators said Monday they have gathered evidence of Syrian government attacks on civilian areas since the truce began. The panel also said it continued to receive reports of human rights abuses committed by anti-government groups.

Barak says Israel never ruled out attacking Iran | Fox News.

Published April 17, 2012

| Associated Press

JERUSALEM –  Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday his country has never promised the United States it would hold off from attacking Iran while nuclear talks were taking place.

The comments, in which Barak said that a diplomatic push to reach a compromise with Iran was a waste of “precious time,” further exposed a rift between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with Iran and its nuclear program.

“We are not committing to anything,” Barak told Israel’s Army Radio. “The dialogue with the Americans is both direct and open.”

Israel, arguing that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat, has said it will not allow Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon. It cites Iranian calls for Israel’s destruction, Iran’s support for Arab militant groups and its development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state.

Fearing that Iran is moving quickly toward nuclear capability, Israel has repeatedly hinted at an attack if Iran’s uranium enrichment program continues to advance. Enrichment is a key process in developing weapons, and Israel says Iran is closely approaching a point where it can no longer be stopped.

The U.S. favors diplomacy and economic sanctions and has said military action on Iran’s nuclear facilities should only be a last resort if all else fails.

Officials from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany met with Iran in Istanbul last weekend to discuss the country’s nuclear program. The talks were described as positive, and they agreed to meet again on May 23 in Baghdad.

Barak told Israel’s Army Radio he did not believe the talks would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. “We regret the time being lost. This is precious time,” he said.

Barak said the talks needed to yield quick results.

“It requires a few direct meetings where all the demands are put on the table. There you can see if the other side is playing for time, drawing it out through the year, or if indeed the other side is genuinely striving to find a solution,” he said. “In this light, any ‘time-outs,’ especially when they are this long, do not serve our interests,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we maintain the view that this will probably not have an impact or bring the Iranians to cease their nuclear program. Of course we will be happy to be proven wrong,” he added.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran got a “freebie” from the international community, saying the May meeting gave the Iranians an additional five weeks to continue uranium enrichment without any restrictions. He said Iran should be forced to stop this immediately.

Netanyahu was publicly rebuked by President Barack Obama, who said the U.S. had not “given anything away” in the talks.

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and says it does not seek a bomb. The U.S. and its allies doubt the sincerity of that.

The Obama administration has urgently sought to hold off Israeli military action, which would likely result in the U.S. being pulled into a conflict.

Obama’s Tough Talk Masks Iran Freebie « Commentary Magazine.

President Obama responded sharply yesterday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim the P5+1 talks with Iran constituted a Western “freebie” to the Islamist regime because it gave it five more weeks to continue to enrich uranium.

Speaking during his visit to Colombia, the president let loose with another barrage of tough talk about his intentions to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Warning “the clock is ticking” for Iran, he directly addressed criticism of the talks by saying he wouldn’t allow it to turn into a “stalling process” and that far more draconian sanctions would be put into place against the regime if it didn’t take advantage of the diplomatic process.

That’s reassuring rhetoric, but the problem with America’s policy on the Iranian nuclear issue remains the same as it has always been: the disconnect between President Obama’s public rhetoric and the process by which U.S. diplomatic efforts has allowed Tehran to do the stalling that he claims he opposes. With reports of Saturday’s meeting showing that nothing other than a commitment to future meetings in Baghdad (the venue has been changed from Turkey to suit Iran’s latest whim), it’s not clear why Israel or anyone who cares should have much confidence that the negotiators are doing anything but allowing both the ayatollahs and a president who wishes to avoid a confrontation during an election year to run out the clock in contravention to what Obama has pledged.

The president’s continued discussion of his desire to press Iran and refusal to let them off the hook ought to have encouraged the Israelis. But given the clear desire of America’s P5+1 negotiating partners — a group that includes Iran’s friends Russia and China — to treat the talks as merely a method for preventing an Israeli attack on Iran, it is difficult to fault Netanyahu for his skepticism about a process that, despite Obama’s comments, seems to have no clear agenda or deadline for success. Indeed, accounts of the meeting seem to have confirmed his fears that the whole point is about defusing tension over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and creating a process that will continue until well past November.

What is perhaps most discouraging about the accounts of the talks and the preparations for the next meeting is that they do not at all seem informed by the fact that the West has been down the garden path with Iran before. This is not the first diplomatic contact with Iran. Several years of talks dating back to the Bush administration and including President Obama’s ludicrous effort at engagement with Tehran all sought to get the Iranians to export their stockpile of enriched uranium as well as to prevent it from creating more. Each time, the Iranians agreed to the discussions and then even gave the impression that a deal was in place before reneging.

The president has indicated he is aware of this, but by buying into the current process and allowing the Russians and the Chinese an equal say in the negotiations, he has set himself up for a repeat performance. Unless he is prepared to get as tough with his own side in the talks as he claims to want to be with Iran, it is difficult to see how he can prevent a “stalling process” from taking up the entire summer and fall with talks that are not likely to achieve anything. The idea that he will be able to persuade the leaky international coalition he has assembled on behalf of sanctions on Iran to go ahead and embargo oil from the rogue state while he is simultaneously engaged in negotiations with it defies common sense. But if all the president is interested in doing is mollifying American public opinion while putting off an Israeli strike, his strategy makes perfect sense.

While Netanyahu is being criticized for going public with his concerns about the talks, his comments about a “freebie” merely indicate that this diplomatic process fools no one in Jerusalem. Both the Iranians and the president share a desire to kick the can down the road until after the November election. All the tough talk from the White House doesn’t change the fact that there is little reason to believe there will be genuine progress toward eliminating the Iranian threat.

The Iran War Estimate: Odds of Conflict Fall to 42% – Dominic Tierney – International – The Atlantic.

By Dominic Tierney

The probability that the United States or Israel will strike Iran in the next year is 42 percent–down from a figure of 48 percent in March.

We’ve assembled a high-profile panel of experts from the policy world, academia, and journalism to periodically predict the odds of conflict. They include: Daniel Byman, Shahram Chubin, Golnaz Esfandiari, Azar Gat, Jeffrey Goldberg, Amos Harel, Ephraim Kam, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Matthew Kroenig, John Limbert, Valerie Lincy, James Lindsay, Marc Lynch, Gary Milhollin, Trita Parsi, Paul Pillar, Barry Rubin, Karim Sadjadpour, Kenneth Timmerman, Shibley Telhami, Stephen Walt, and Robin Wright.

It’s a diverse group ranging from a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran, to a military correspondent at Haaretz. Each panelist makes an individual prediction about the percentage chance of war and we report the average score. For more on The Atlantic‘s Iran War Estimate and the panelists, here’s our FAQ page.

During the last month, the tide of war seems to have receded. Most importantly, talks have restarted with Iran, after being suspended over a year ago. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that, “it is not in anyone’s interest for [Israel] to take unilateral action. It is in everyone’s interest for us to seriously pursue at this time the diplomatic path.”

In a modest potential concession, Iran offered to stop enriching 20 percent uranium, which is one step below weapons-grade uranium, but only after it has stockpiled enough uranium for “medical research.” Meanwhile, the United States and its allies demanded that Iran shut down a key nuclear facility at Fordow. Few analysts expect a rapid breakthrough.

Other recent developments may also have moved the dial in a dovish direction. Shaul Mofaz became head of the main opposition party in Israel, the Kadima Party, and offered a cautious view of the Persian danger. “The greatest threat to the state of Israel is not nuclear Iran,” but the growing number of Palestinians living in Israeli controlled territory. “So it is in Israel’s interest that a Palestinian state be created.”

Sanctions against Iran are also having a significant impact on Tehran’s financial transactions and its ability to sell crude oil–although the effect of this tightening vice on peace talks is not clear.

Our prediction of a 42 percent chance of war is consistent with the betting market Intrade.com, which found that in recent weeks the odds of conflict have fallen from 40 percent to 30 percent. The Atlantic‘s figure may be higher because our question covers a longer time period–until April 2013, rather than December 2012 as with Intrade.com.

This month, we also forecast the odds of Iranian retaliation following an Israeli or U.S. strike.

A classified American war game predicted that a unilateral Israeli attack would entrap the United States in a wider regional war. The simulation forecast that Tehran would retaliate against U.S. warships in the region, potentially killing 200 American sailors, and in turn provoking the United States to strike Iran. Following the war game, General James Mattis, commander of American forces in the region, “told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.”

By contrast, Israeli officials have tried to downplay the likely consequences of an Israeli air strike. Last November, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “There will not be 100,000 dead or 10,000 dead or 1,000 dead. The state of Israel will not be destroyed.”

According to the panel, if Israel strikes Iran in the next twelve months, there is a 64 percent chance that Iran will launch rockets against Israel. There is a 66 percent chance that Hezbollah in Lebanon will fire rockets against Israel.

Meanwhile, if the United States strikes Iran in the next twelve months, there is a 36 percent chance that Iran will make a serious attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. And there is a 44 percent chance that Iran will directly attack U.S. forces in the region (this scenario only covers an assault by Iranian forces, and not indirect attacks such as enhanced aid to insurgents in Afghanistan, which many analysts believe is even more likely).

Perhaps with an eye to these dangers, in recent weeks, the United States, Israel, and Iran have taken a small step back from the Rubicon.

‘Moment of truth is near:’ Israeli Air Force set to attack Iran — RT.

Israeli Air Force fighter F-16C taking off from the Uvda Air Force base in the southern Israel (AFP Photo / Menahem Kahana)

Israel has once again demonstrated its readiness to launch a massive assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Israeli Air Force is geared up and ready to strike as soon as the order is given, a major Israeli TV station reported.

­A reporter from Israel’s Channel 10 TV station has spent several weeks interviewing pilots and other military personnel at an Israeli air base. Dozens of pilots are inspired with the prospect of Israel’s first full-scale air campaign in 30 years. Most of the interviewees spoke openly about the “year’s preparations” that are now almost over, as the country heads towards a hot and tense summer.

“Dozens if not more planes” are being prepared to carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, the reporter Alon Ben-David said. This includes F-15 fighter jets, escort planes and air tankers to refuel the squadron en route to its target.

Unmanned drones are also expected to play a role in the operation. The all-weather fully-automatic UAV Eitan was designed for strategic reconnaissance but reportedly has assault capabilities as well. “This plane can do all that is required of it when the order is given,” one of the pilots said as cited in the report.

When the order is given, the assault will be “short and professional,” pilots say.

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned earlier that, although IAF has the capability to deliver a crushing blow to Iran’s nuclear facilities and wipe out years of research, such an attack would have serious repercussions. He said that such an operation would trigger a war in Gaza – and that in retaliation, Iran would launch hundreds of missiles at Israel.

One of major problem the IAF will be facing is the Russian-made advanced anti-aircraft systems deployed in many countries across the region, including Iran and Syria. Israel’s military personnel are aware that by no means will all of them get home safe from the mission.

Moreover, the pilots had already been told where their families would be moved when the assault begins – proof that attack day is drawing close, as the report mentions.

Israel believes that a nuclear-equipped Iran would pose an existential threat to it. As a result, Israel has repeatedly reiterated its threats to deal with the issue militarily. Defense Minister Ehud Barak even spoke of a three-month deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, which ends in mid-summer.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is fully civilian, and any enriched uranium it produces is for medical and research purposes. The Islamic Republic has even said it is ready to make concessions on its nuclear program if the West takes “confidence-building measures” and lifts the crippling sanctions. “We are ready to resolve all issues very quickly and simply,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview with the Iranian news agency ISNA.

“It can speed up the process of negotiations, reaching results,” Salehi said, “if there is goodwill.” Iran is currently under four sets of UN sanctions over its nuclear program. The US and EU have also slapped Tehran with their own sets of sanctions, targeting the country’s financial markets and oil industry.

The nuclear talks between Iran and six major world powers resumed on April 14. The latest meeting in Turkey was described as generally successful by the majority of participants, and the next round is scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad. Many consider these talks to be the last chance for a peaceful solution.

Obama’s all-hat-no-cattle diplomacy.

The three practical effects of the Obama Doctrine: emboldening our enemies, undermining our friends and diminishing our country.

The multinational negotiations held over the weekend in Turkey with the ostensible purpose of halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program will be followed by – drum roll – yet another round of talks in late May.  Not surprisingly, the Iranian regime is calling this diplomatic exercise “a success.”

Indeed, it is from their perspective.  The Persians are, after all, the people who invented chess.  They have millennia-old experience haggling about carpets and other merchandise in the bazaar.  And they have the Obama administration and the rest of the so-called “international community” right where such strategically minded folks with a gift for besting their interlocutors want them:  Talking, seemingly endlessly.

The Iranians know that as long as the United States and the other members of the Perm 5-plus-1 – diplo-speak for the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council (the U.S., Britain, France and the mullahs’ patron/protectors, Russia and China) and Germany – are engaged in a diplomatic dance, they will insist that Israel not take matters into its own hands and strike Iran.

The predictable effect will be to give Tehran the time it needs to complete its longstanding bid to get the Bomb, even as President Obama’s campaign flaks and foreign policy acolytes congratulate him on skillfully managing the vexing Iran portfolio.

Such a posture reminds me of the old cowboy put-down of someone who is “all hat and no cattle.”  If ever there were a case of someone who is good at the hat bit – talking big, gesticulating forcefully – but abysmal at the business of delivering, it is Barack Obama.

Sadly, the Iranian debacle is not the only example of Team Obama’s all-hat-no-cattle foreign policy.  A small sample of the most important of such behavior would include:

• A reset with Russia that has amounted to nothing more than a serial give-away to the Kremlin on missile defense, on nuclear deterrence and the political cover the Russians’ persist in providing rogue states like North Korea, Iran and Syria.  One can only imagine how much worse this will get if the President gets reelected and can be even more “flexible” on such matters than he has been to date.
• Coddling of China, even as it arms to the teeth with weapons designed to attack American forces and infrastructure – a number of which have emerged to the complete surprise of U.S. intelligence.  In the face of such developments, to say nothing of what amount to acts of war as sustained PRC government-linked hacker attacks on public and private sector computer networks, the Obama administration has maintained what can only be described as a cordially accommodating, business-as-usual approach to Beijing.
• Ignoring the strategic implications of the impending demise of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  The President’s participation at the Summit of the Americas over the weekend could have been an opportunity to forge a hemispheric commitment to democracy in Venezuela.  At the very least, the United States could have put a strong marker down in opposition to the prospective hijacking of that long-suffering country by the narco-generals Chavez has put into power as his cancer metastasizes.  In this case, even the President’s big hat was obscured by the scandal involving his womanizing Secret Service detail.
• Perhaps most worrying of all is Team Obama’s recent and intensifying engagement with the virulently anti-American and anti-infidel Muslim Brotherhood.  Far from contributing to democracy in Egypt and regional peace with Israel, the prospect for either, let alone both, have become substantially worse, thanks to the administration’s appalling conduct.  The latter includes: opening formal relations with a group whose declared purpose is “destroying Western civilization from within”; feting a Brotherhood delegation in Washington; turning over to the Brotherhood-led Egyptian government in one lump-sum payment $1.5 billion in military assistance; and doling out a further $180-plus million to the Brothers’ franchise in “Palestine,” Hamas, which is now partnered with the Palestinian Authority in a unity government there.

The all-hat-no-cattle policy is advancing the three practical effects of the Obama Doctrine: emboldening our enemies, undermining our friends and diminishing our country.

Speaking of friends, press reports are circulating in the wake of the weekend’s negotiations with Iran, that Israel is reportedly about to strike that Islamic republic. If true, it’s deeply regrettable that such early warning is being given to the Iranians.

But the prospect that the Obama administration has every intention of allowing the Iranians to run the clock out leaves the Israelis with no choice but to attack if they are to stave off an existential threat to their people. We should be helping them do that, not helping the mullahs – and not encouraging still other enemies of this country, actual and prospective, to believe that the costs of taking us on are minimal thanks to our all-hat-no-cattle administration.

US, Israel’s Netanyahu already are at odds over progress at Iran nuclear talks | The Australian Eye.

By Erik West

April 16, 2012

JERUSALEM _ Just two days after representatives of the United States and other key world powers met in Istanbul with Iran to discuss its nuclear program, Israel is throwing cold water on the effort, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charging that Iran was being given a “freebie.”

Both U.S. and Iranian leaders expressed satisfaction with the initial meeting Saturday of talks between Iran and the P5+1 _ the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. Both sides saw the agreement to meet again May 23 in Baghdad as a step forward after more than a year of no talks.

But Netanyahu was unimpressed. “My initial impression is that Iran has been given a freebie,” Netanyahu said. “It has got five weeks to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition.”

President Barack Obama had defended the talks in comments to reporters Sunday in Cartagena, Colombia, where he was meeting with heads of state from Latin America. He called the talks “an opportunity for us to negotiate and see if Iran comes to the table in good faith.”

“The notion that somehow we’ve given something away … would indicate that Iran has gotten something,” Obama said. “In fact, they’ve got some of the toughest sanctions that they’re going to be facing coming up in just a few months if they don’t take advantage of these talks. I hope they do.”

Officials in Jerusalem, however, remained pessimistic over the talks, saying that the U.S. and world leaders were giving Iran the one thing they needed to develop a nuclear weapon _ time.

“History teaches us that so far, Iran has always used ‘talks’ to buy time, and in that time they have moved their nuclear weapons program forward,” said Eitan Livne, director of Iran Research for the Israel Project advocacy group. “The Iranians have proven to be experts in this maneuver.”

Livne said that Israeli officials feel vindicated by a report released in November by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, that found that Iran had a program to develop nuclear weapons until 2003 and that some parts of that program might still survive. The report, however, said the IAEA had been unable to determine if Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons now.

“Israel feels that it is clear in the eyes of the world, especially after the U.N. report, that Iran’s intentions are dangerous and that this is a military nuclear program. Iran has already postponed, in a very effective way, all past attempt to negotiate with them. That is why Israel currently feels so pessimistic,” Livne said.

A senior Israeli official, interviewed by the Hebrew-language daily Maariv, was quoted as saying that Israel’s government had held different expectations for the talks in Istanbul.

“In contrast with the understanding we reached, we were surprised that the Iranians were given five more weeks to continue enriching uranium without interruption. This was not at all our expectation from the talks,” the paper reported the official as saying. The official was not named.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that the Israeli premier found the results of the talks unacceptable _ arguing that Iran must immediately stop all uranium enrichment, remove enriched material from the country, and dismantle the nuclear facility in Qom.

Israel’s expectations were unrealistic, said professor David Menashri, director of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

“I can understand that Israel is not happy with the talks so far, but that is because their expectation was that Iran would be given a simple choice to say yes or no,” Menashri said. “Israel would have preferred a harsher policy towards Iran _ but that is always their position.”

Israeli officials, Menashri said, were making a mistake in openly criticizing the talks so quickly.

“I had hoped that our politicians would shut their mouths on the issue of Iran and let the international community handle it for a change,” he said. “Israel should not clash with the U.S., and they should give the talks some time before declaring them a failure.”

He criticized the saber-rattling that he said was all too common in the Israeli press.

Over the weekend, Israel’s Channel Ten news program featured a lengthy report on Israel’s air force gearing up for an attack on Iran this summer.

The report, which featured senior military reporter Alon Ben-David, was arranged and approved by the Israeli military’s press office. It was also given clearance by Israel’s military censor.

“Dozens if not more planes” will take part in the mission: attack and escort jets, tankers for mid-air refueling, electronic warfare planes and rescue helicopters, the report said.

While no strike is likely to occur before the P5+1 talks with Iran resume in May, Ben-David said that the “coming summer will not only be hot but tense.”

“Years of preparations are likely to come to realization,” he said, adding that “the moment of truth is near.”

___

(c)2012 the McClatchy Washington Bureau

Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau at http://www.mcclatchydc.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services