HUESSY: Faulty assumptions on Iran – Washington Times.

Hearkening to regime’s apologists will only put us in greater danger

Has the endgame on the Iranian nuclear program finally arrived? Is a deal in the cards? A broad swath of the foreign-policy cognoscenti, including Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, the National Interest’s Paul Pillar, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, Esquire’s Richard Barnett and a host of others, seems to think so. They are optimistic about the current round of negotiations between Iran and the West and confident that – even if negotiations should somehow break down – Iran will not, indeed cannot, pose a real threat to the United States.

The conventional wisdom underpinning this new consensus, being played out on the editorial pages of the nation’s leading newspapers and journals, is based on seven very shaky pillars.

One, that Iran would never use a nuclear weapon, even if it possessed one. Two, that Iran is simply trying to defend itself from American bullying and attempts at regime change. Third, that the use of a nuclear device by any foreign nation (including Iran) would be detected easily. Fourth, that Iran’s ballistic missiles similarly are simply a deterrent needed in a bad neighborhood, and their use would be readily attributed to Tehran. Fifth, should Iran decide to build a nuclear warhead, U.S. intelligence will readily detect such a move. Sixth, there are no real options open for the United States and its allies other than “diplomacy.” And seventh, a U.S. policy of prudent deterrence combined with enforcement of the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are all that are needed to keep Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy a peaceful endeavor.

Are these points true? Is talk of an Iranian nuclear threat simply hype by those who allegedly are seeking to “fight another war,” as one newly published assessment claims? To understand why the new conventional wisdom is so profoundly wrong, it’s useful to take these arguments one by one.

First, Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon would be anything but peaceful. Regime officials have called repeatedly for the annihilation of Israel and for a “world without” the United States. Its leaders have actively advocated a new world order and sought to harness terrorist proxies to remake the Middle East in its radical image. A nuclear capability would greatly expand the ability of Iran’s regime to do so.

Second, Iran isn’t simply pursuing a defensive strategy. As its meddling in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere makes all too clear, Iran is actively attempting to tilt regional politics in its favor and away from the United States. A nuclear-armed Iran surely would expand those efforts, to our great detriment.

Third, a nuclear attack wouldn’t necessarily be readily attributable to Iran. While we have made significant progress in the science of “nuclear forensics” in recent years, we still do not have the ability to accurately detect the origin of a nuclear explosion. Other modes of attack – such as an electromagnetic pulse blast triggered by Iran – would be even harder to detect because it would not leave any debris for analysis.

Fourth, history tells us that Iran’s ballistic missiles are a tool of hegemony rather than defense. They are instruments of terror and blackmail, tens of thousands of which have been transferred to proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. They also are a growing threat to the United States and its allies.

Fifth, U.S. intelligence suffers from serious – and systemic – gaps. Here, the history bears repeating. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. intelligence community has failed to detect and predict a string of key strategic developments, from North Korea’s ballistic missile tests in the late 1990s to Syria’s covert development of a nuclear program late last decade. Iran promises to be no different; Western nations still possess an incomplete picture of Iran’s nuclear development. In fact, major elements of the Iranian nuclear program were discovered not by Western intelligence sources but by Iranian dissidents who then shared the information with the West.

Sixth, diplomacy, despite its obvious appeal, lacks a logical endgame. What would such a deal look like? How would it contain Iran’s menace? The Iranian regime has proved itself at war with the West, and negotiations are likely to delay rather than solve difficult questions about how Iran can and should be stopped. Indeed, the current negotiations under way with the Iranian regime are nothing if not a nuclear kabuki dance, buying Iran’s ayatollahs much-needed time to achieve their aim of nuclearization.

Finally, yes, deterrence often works. But it often does not. We had a mutual-assured-destruction (MAD) relationship with the Soviets. But the Cold War ended because President Reagan adopted a policy of collapsing the Soviet regime, not because he passively accepted perpetual Soviet nuclear blackmail. The same holds true with regard to Iran. Despite international pressure, the Iranian regime is not deterred from attacking Americans in Afghanistan. It was not deterred from attacking us in Iraq over the past decade or in Beirut in the 1980s. These incidents and many others occurred when Iran was still far from the nuclear threshold. How, then, is an Iranian regime emboldened by nuclear acquisition likely to behave?

Without question, the choices confronting the United States and its allies in dealing with Iran are difficult. But blithely relying on conventional wisdom about containment, deterrence and diplomacy in dealing with the Iranian regime doesn’t make us any safer. In fact, it may very well do the opposite.

Peter Huessy is senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Why we all should worry about Iran – Chicago Sun-Times.

Last weekend, Iranian negotiators met with the key international powers regarding the Iranian nuclear program.

The Iranians made no concessions. Their chief negotiator said suspension of the nuclear program was “impossible.”

The Iranians also said that they expected sanctions to be lifted. Both sides agreed to meet in five weeks in Baghdad to discuss further.

Israel is concerned. We all should be as well.

Let’s review:

The Iranian regime has sponsored acts of terrorism around the globe including many targeting U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Iranian regime has killed thousands of its own Baha’i citizens and recently registered the names and whereabouts of every Baha’i family while expelling them from universities, prohibiting them from obtaining business licenses and jailing many of their community leaders.

The Iranian regime responded to protesters who had the temerity to protest a stolen election in 2009 by unleashing security forces that in the words of a U.S. State Department report “committed acts of politically motivated violence and repression, including torture, beatings, and rape.”

The Iranian regime gave its support of an attack on the British embassy in Tehran forcing its evacuation and closure.

The Iranian regime has threatened to block the Straits of Hormuz, which in 2011 accounted for an estimated 35 percent of oil worldwide transported by tankers.

The Iranian regime has a defense minister that is wanted by Argentine authorities and is the subject of an Interpol “red notice,” for his complicity in a 1994 terrorist attack in Buenos Aires that killed 115 people and injured hundreds.

The Iranian regime has had elements within it indicted for a plot to blow up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in order to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and, by the way, no doubt dozens of American citizens.

The list goes on. But just take those points and notice the two themes that emerge.

First, as horrific as each one of those points might be, imagine how much more complicated they become with a nuclear-armed Iran. As little as the world has been able to do to curb Iran’s many abuses, what could be done with an Iran with nuclear weaponry?

Second, not one of those points mentions Israel.

As talking heads and newspaper columnists continue to ask themselves what Israel might or might not do, perhaps the better question should be what other steps can everyone else take to stop it from happening.

There is no one who hopes more than Israel that diplomatic pressure, biting sanctions and keeping all options on the table will neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat.

Yet as Iran gets closer to nuclear weaponization, the question should not be what Israel will do.

The question should be what will the world do?

‘Lebanon won’t attack Israel in case of strike on Iran’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

In Australia, Michel Suleiman says Lebanon believes Khamenei when he says Islamic Republic not seeking nukes

Roi Kais

“Should Israel strike Iran, it will not be attacked with missiles from Lebanon,” Lebanese President Michel Suleiman was quoted by Al-Safir as saying during a visit to Australia.”The Iranians always tell us during meetings that they are not interested in producing nuclear weapons.”

According a report published by the London-based Arabic newspaper on Saturday, Suleiman said, “No one has the right to act without the Lebanese government’s authorization.” He was apparently referring to the complicated relationship between the Lebanese government and the Hezbollah terror organization.

Suleiman said Lebanon would attack Israel only if the Jewish state initiates the aggression.

Responding to a question from Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott regarding Lebanon’s position on the Iranian nuclear program, the president said “Lebanon opposes the development of nuclear weapons by Iran, just as we are against the development of nuclear weapons anywhere else in the Middle East.”

However, Suleiman mentioned the erroneous US intelligence assessments regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and clarified that “the supreme religious authority in Iran has repeatedly said that (Iran) is religiously, morally and politically against the production of nuclear arms.

“Our relations with Iran lead us to believe (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei’s statements, but the West’s allegations raise question marks regarding (Iran’s nuclear program),” the Lebanese president said.

Homs residents press UN observers for military intervention | The Times of Israel.

Fighting stops and troops hide tanks ahead of observer team’s tour of the city

April 21, 2012, 3:07 pm

This image, taken from an amateur video Friday, purports to show an explosion amid heavy shelling in the Khaldiyeh area of Homs, Syria. (photo credit: Shaam News Network via AP video; AP cannot independently verify the location or authenticity of this material)

Syrian opposition leader, in unprecedented interview with Israel Radio, says Syrians want peace with Israel | The Times of Israel.

peaking from Paris, Nofal Al-Dalawibi, son of a former Syrian PM, calls Assad a ‘mafia bacteria’ and says opposition will not negotiate with him

The interview comes against a background of decades of overt Syrian hostility to Israel, and shatters a taboo of Syrian representatives in any forum talking openly with Israelis. At international events, Syrian leaders have always sought to ensure that Israeli journalists are kept out of their press conferences, and ignored questions from Israeli reporters on the rare occasions when Israelis did manage to address them directly. Israeli journalists are never granted visas to enter Syria.

Formally, Bashar Assad’s regime is at war with the Jewish state, as it was under his father Hafez’s rule. Syria has waged a series of wars against Israel, and steadfastly resisted international pressure for a diplomatic accommodation — although there were contacts, partly mediated by the United States, that appeared set to generate a possible breakthrough during the Clinton Administration in and around the year 2000.

Dalawibi’s interview marked the potential beginning of a change from that mindset, should the Syrian opposition struggle prevail. When asked about the “fear that many Israelis have” that Islamic forces may occupy the political vacuum in Syria if Assad falls — and what effect that would have on Syria’s relationship with Israel — Dalawibi replied that the Syrian people do not want any more fighting. Syrian civilians have been left out of the political process for over 40 years and they only want peace, he added.

Dalawibi was speaking by telephone from Paris to Israel Radio’s Arab Affairs Correspondent Eran Zinger. Portions of the recorded interview, conducted in Arabic and translated into Hebrew for listeners, were released Friday and Saturday. Dalwaibi is seen as a consensus builder between the Syrian opposition and the West, Israeli Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara told Israel Radio.

Dalawibi also commented on the “long struggle” of the Syrian opposition. “We are not interested in negotiating with Assad,” Dalawibi told Zinger, and referred to the Syrian president as “mafia bacteria.”

He added that the United Nations’ observer mission should include thousands — not hundreds — of observers, and that the team needs to reach cities where Assad’s forces are fighting.

The UN Security Council reached a tentative agreement Friday evening for the deployment of up to a total of 300 observers — up from the expected 30 — to monitor the tenuous ceasefire between regime troops and opposition in Syria. It was set to vote on the measure Saturday evening.

Meanwhile, some 75 individuals were killed during fighting between pro-regime and opposition forces Friday, according to the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat. Syrian authorities also released some 30 Syrian members of opposition who “did not have blood on their hands,” according to SANA, the state-news agency.

Special Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan called for an “immediate” end to the violence.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report April 21, 2012, 1:53 PM (GMT+02:00)

Obama trusts an elusive Khamenei fatwa

Praise for the Iranian negotiating team’s “achievements” at Istanbul along with a demand to end sanctions highlighted the sermon delivered on April 20 by the powerful provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who is also Chairman of the Guardian Council and Imam of Tehran.

Since the western side had officially accepted “Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear enrichment,” he said, the talks with the six world powers were a success for Iran. However, “if Western hostility continues by the stretch of sanctions and pressures, Iran will leave the negotiating table,” Ayatollah Jannati warned.

debkafile’s Iranian sources say that Tehran is making no secret of its substantial gains on the diplomatic front or its tactics. The US framework proposals submitted in secret, direct talks with Iran, although not yet finalized, are being treated in Tehran as a done deal. Iran is therefore hailing US offers to acknowledge its right to enrich uranium and relieve Iran’s nuclear program of international inspection as concessions already in the bag. Sensing they are on a winning streak against the West, Tehran is now pushing for the lifting of Western sanctions, “to gain the trust of the Iranian people.”

European sources calculate that the Obama administration will soon decide to lift sanctions in stages.
The unfinished, unsigned US-Iranian deal is gaining traction as a done deal in America too.

Friday, April 20, the military historian Prof. Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, published an article under the heading “P5 plus 1 Ceding Red Lines in Iran Nuclear Talks.”
He said the United States had flouted UN Security Council resolutions and IAEA demands of Iran (to make its military installations transparent) in exchange for an Iranian commitment to stop its nuclear development on the threshold of “breakout capability.”

debkafile’s military sources report that Prof. Kagan did not seem to share the Obama administration’s confidence that Tehran would stand by any commitment to refrain from building a nuclear weapon, particulaly since it stands on shaky ground.

On April 3, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced after long conversations with Iranian and religious experts that she had been impressed by a seven-year old fatwa issued by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on May 10, 2005, which ruled the construction and possession of nuclear weapons a sin. The edict was forwarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna at the time.
This is what Secretary Clinton had to say, “And if it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized, which means that it serves as the entryway into a negotiation as to how you demonstrate that it is indeed a sincere, authentic statement of conviction. So we will test that as well.”

No one asked her if Washington and the IAEA had found out whether the fatwa had been upheld in the seven years since it was issued, or why President Barack Obama had suddenly dredged the old edict up now as sufficient warranty for Tehran to stand by its commtments in return for the sweeping concessions it has won from Washington for its nuclear program.

Three Israeli researchers, Y. Carmon of MEMRI, Ayelet Savyon and former UN ambassador Dore Gold, reported Friday, April 20, that they had found no evidence of Khamenei ever issuing a fatwa banning the building and possession of a nuclear weapon under Islamic law.
Israel’s drive to stop a nuclear Iran as an existential threat is becoming a personal campaign against President Obama for letting go on agreed principles for the sake of what its leaders regard as a dangerous deal with Tehran.
In his public address on the eve of the Day of the Holocaust and Remembrance, Wednesday, April 18, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said bluntly: “I will not hold back from telling the truth [about the Iranian nuclear threat] at the UN, in Washington and in Jerusalem.”

But his words fell on deaf ears in Israel, where people have become inured to his highflown talk and by now wonder if it will ever lead to action.

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Republicans eye $680 m. for Iron Dome – JPost – Defense.

Protests sweep Syria amid shaky truce as U.N. negotiates wider access for aid agencies.

Friday, 20 April 2012

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

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Thousands of Syrians took part in protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Friday, testing a shaky U.N. ceasefire, as state media said 18 security personnel were killed in attacks.

As many as 57 people have been killed by Security forces across the country on Friday, Al Arabiya reported citing activists at the Syrian Local Coordination Committees (LCC).

The latest violence came as peace envoy Kofi Annan acknowledged the situation was “not good” and as rights monitors reported intense shelling of protest hubs.

“It’s a very fragile ceasefire,” Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters of the tenuous truce which went into effect on April 12.

A deadly blast took place in the southern region of Quneitra, near the demarcation line with Israel on the Golan Heights, killing 10 members of the security forces, state television said, blaming an “armed terrorist group.”

Official news agency SANA said the bomb was detonated by remote control and targeted a bus transporting troops.

A similar bomb attack in Karak, in southern Deraa province, killed five soldiers, state media said, adding that three soldiers and three civilians were killed in separate incidents elsewhere.

Thousands took to the streets across the country after Muslim weekly prayers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, according to AFP.

Protests took place in Deraa, the Damascus region, in Homs and Hama in central Syria, Idlib in the northwest, Aleppo in the north, Deir al-Zor, northeast Syria, and in Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, it said.

“Protesters called for a collapse of the regime and the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in spite of heavy security deployment and continued shelling, gunfire and arrests by government forces,” the Britain-based watchdog said.
Heavy bombardment

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the rebel Khaldiyeh district of Homs – Syria’s third-largest city — was under heavy bombardment for another day.

Activists in the town of Qusayr, further north, also reported heavy bombardment. “Mortar and rocket fire did not stop all night and is continuing today,” said Hadi Abdullah.

In Deraa, the LCC posted a video online showing the government forces deploying and carrying out a campaign of crackdown and arrests.

Meanwhile, an advance team of U.N. military observers resumed work bolstered by the signing on Thursday of a protocol governing their mission to monitor a six-point plan brokered by Annan.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged the Security Council to take “early action” to bolster the mission, while acknowledging that boosting its numbers to 300 was “not a decision without risk.”

Opposition activists had called for a show of defiance against Assad’s regime for the main weekly protests.

“We will win and Assad will be defeated,” was the slogan on the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook Page, which has been a major engine of the 13-month uprising that monitors say has left more than 11,000 people dead.

Across the country, activists reported a massive security force presence, particularly outside mosques, the traditional starting point for marches and protests.

The head of the small observer advance team, Morocco’s Colonel Ahmed Himmiche, said it would not be attending demonstrations on Friday for fear that “our presence is used for an escalation.”

“Today, we have other tasks. We are going to meet civilians and representatives of organizations,” Himmiche told AFP as his team prepared to leave their Damascus hotel.

The advance party has visited the Deraa region but has not so far been able to visit Homs, where rebel neighborhoods have come under repeated deadly bombardment, Ban said.

Damascus ally Moscow insisted that the ceasefire was generally holding despite violations and should be viewed as an achievement that was saving Syria from a broader civil war.
Humanitarian front

On the humanitarian front, a $180 million (140 million euros) draft plan for delivering aid for Syria’s one million needy has been drawn up and is awaiting the green light from Damascus, the United Nations said on Friday.

A successful assessment mission has been carried out and donors are ready with their cash to provide food, medical and other supplies, said John Ging, director of operations for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“We are now in intense negotiations with our Syrian counterparts on that and we hope that from this forum today the sense of urgency will also result in success from those negotiations,” Ging said.

“Now it’s a question of implementing those plans. This is where we are needing to mobilize more effective engagement with the Syrians to get that plan fully up and running,” Ging said, according to Reuters.

Ging was speaking to reporters after the Syrian Humanitarian Forum was held in Geneva to discuss the $180 million assistance plan for six months. The plan was drawn up after a joint assessment mission conducted with Syrian officials last month.

Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, attended the closed-door talks along with representatives of donor countries and of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

U.N. agencies have been largely shut out of Syria, where the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the only international body to deploy aid workers.

U.N. agencies have made some relief supplies available for distribution by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

Ging also said the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) aimed to double the number of people it was assisting in Syria this month to 200,000 from 100,000 in March.

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