WarSclerotic

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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 1, 2012, 7:31 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israel’s Golani Brigade in war maneuver

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak offered the view this week that the next round of Six-Power talks with Iran taking place on May 23 in Baghdad would lead nowhere, throwing cold water on the current optimism. As for US media reports of a lessening in war tensions over Iran because of the internal debate in Israel over an independent attack,  they were soon overtaken by significant military steps embarked on Tuesday, May 1, by the US, Israel and Iran.
The large-scale Israel Defense Forces war game on the borders of Syria (Golan) and Lebanon was quickly followed by naval drills along Iran’s southern Persian Gulf coast by its border guards. Tehran was making good on the policy agreed with Syrian and Hizballah allies in early 2011 to counter any Western or Israel military movement in the region with a comparable response.

Israeli army spokesmen were cagey about the scale and nature of the exercise beyond preparing people living in the north for heavy military traffic on regional highways and the sounds of gunshots and explosions.
debkafile’s military sources disclose that the IDF drilled a strengthened, proactive presence in the North to meet al Qaeda’s looming presence and expanding operations next door, especially in Syria, and the threat of the Syrian civil war spilling over into Lebanon.

Monday, Israel started building a defensive wall 10-meter high, 2 kilometer-long along its border with Lebanon to protect the Israeli population and highways in northern Galilee from sniper fire coming from the Lebanese village of Kfar Kila in the Hizballah-dominated south. According to intelligence received, the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah plans to lash out against Israel in the hope of recovering its waning popular support as a result of its tight bonds with the hated Bashar Assad. Snipers are to pick off Israelis in cross-border fire and so provoke a major firestorm that will take the world’s attention away from the savagery in Syria.
Just as Israel estimates that the Galilee Panhandle and Golan could become flashpoints for exchanges of cross-border fire, so too Iran is taking into account that an operation to destroy its nuclear facilities may also entail landings on its southern coast by American and Israel special forces, and maybe others too.

Gen. Hossein Zolfaqari, Commander of the Iranian Border Guards, was more forthcoming about the exercise he is leading than Israel’s army spokesmen. He announced that the naval maneuver codenamed “Fajr” would exercise the latest tactics in border protection with the participation of the border guard units of the provinces of Bushehr (site of Iran’s only nuclear reactor and parts of its uranium enrichment facilities), the Persian Gulf Kish Island (where big Revolutionary Guards bases at situated),  Hormozgan (near the Revolutionary Guards main headquarters at Bandar Abbas) as well as Khuzestan and  Sistan and Balochestan, Iran’s biggest oil regions.

Very much on the offensive, Tehran Monday claimed to have developed the technological expertise for “redirecting enemy missiles to a target which we will determine,” in the words of Brig. Farzad Ismaili, commander of the Khatam-ol-Anbiya (Last of the Prophets) Air Base. “This is the capability of electronic warfare in which it is we who program the enemy missile,” he boasted.
There was also an outpouring of comment from Tehran about last week’s deployment of US F-22 Raptors in the UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base opposite Iran’s southern shores. One spokesman said they posed no danger to Iran and had been moved in for “psychological warfare;” another that they “threatened regional security” and Gulf nations should not allow foreign armies to take up position on their shores.

A week after the F-22 squadron was deployed in the Gulf, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, special assistant to President Obama and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council, disclosed Monday that the completion of the initial phase of the US-backed missile network in Europe would be announced at the NATO summit meeting in Chicago on May 20.
She added that additional work is underway in the next phase of the network, designed for protecting Europe and the Middle East from Iranian ballistic missile attack.

The chronology is significant: The announcement that the US-led missile shield has gone operational will be made three days before the Six Powers and Iran resume nuclear negotiations in Baghdad.
Far from reducing war tensions over Iran, America has tossed the military ball into the Iranian court.

Could domestic flak shoot down Netanyahu over Iran?.

Monday, 30 April 2012

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described a future Iranian nuclear bomb as a second Holocaust-in-the-making that should be stopped at all costs. (Reuters)

inShare

Egypt foiled ‘Iranian’ plot to kill Saudi ambassador in Cairo: embassy advisor.

Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it had recalled its ambassador from Egypt “for consultations” and closed its embassy and consulates in the country. (Reuters)

inShare

U.S.: Israeli Dissent May Create More Space for Iran Nuclear Deal – IPS ipsnews.net.

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2012 (IPS) – The threat of a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this year appears to have substantially subsided over the past several weeks as a result of several developments, including the biting criticisms voiced recently by former top national security figures of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak.

That a war seems significantly more remote than during the winter months, when tensions reached an all-time high, was confirmed to some extent Monday when the U.S. “newspaper of record”, the New York Times, ran a front-page article entitled ‘Experts Believe Iran Conflict is Less Likely’ .

But, judging by actual bets placed on the on-line trading exchange, Intrade, the chances that the U.S. or Israel will indeed conduct air strikes against Iran before the end of the year have fallen by more than half since the high reached in mid-February – from just over 60 percent to about 28 percent as of Monday.

That’s still a substantial percentage – about twice what it was before the latest round of Israeli sabre-rattling was launched in November.

And it’s difficult to find any close observer of U.S.-Israeli-Iran relations who believes that war clouds could not suddenly reappear, particularly if the next meeting of the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France – plus Germany) with Iran scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad should break down or be delayed.

For its part, the administration of President Barack Obama shown little inclination to reduce pressure – and the threat of military action – on Tehran.

Not only has it moved more minesweepers and F-15 fighter jets into the Gulf region, but the Air Force announced Friday that it has deployed an undisclosed number of advanced F-22 stealth fighter- bombers to the area, specifically to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to the industry publication Aviation Week.

Despite those moves, fears of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran this year have clearly receded, especially since all sides left the last P5+1 meeting in Istanbul Apr. 14 seemingly satisfied with the seriousness of the exchanges and guardedly optimistic that a diplomatic solution could yet be achieved.

The meeting’s success was made possible by signalling on both sides of their readiness to make concessions on key issues: on Tehran’s part, by stating explicitly that it could halt its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, transfer its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country, and accept greater scrutiny by international weapons inspectors under the right circumstances; on Washington’s, by stating more clearly than ever that it could accept Iran’s continued uranium enrichment of up to five percent under the right circumstances.

Whether the “right circumstances” can be accommodated by all sides, of course, will determine the ultimate success or failure of the negotiations.

Meanwhile, however, those voices, both here and in Israel, that have been most disdainful of the diplomatic route and most insistent that only military action can dispose of the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme have found themselves increasingly on the defensive since tensions reached a peak in early March.

It was then that Obama declared to the annual convention of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that “the loose talk of war” by the main Republican presidential candidates was dangerous and counterproductive.

At the time, AIPAC was pressing Congress for quick passage of both a new round of unilateral sanctions against Iran and a Senate resolution that would define the U.S. “red line” for taking military action as Tehran’s development of a “nuclear-weapons capability” rather than the administration’s “red line” of developing an actual nuclear weapon.

“Once the president put the argument about the ‘loose talk of war’, the momentum shifted quite dramatically,” according to Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). He noted that Democrats who had previously bowed to AIPAC’s hawkish line have since become more deferential to the White House.

One token of the change was an anti-war ad run last week by former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a cheerleader for the Iraq invasion 10 years ago and who is now running to reclaim his old seat. In it, he warned that a war against Iran would make “Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cakewalk”.

“It’s a much different debate now,” Abdi told IPS. “It’s now ‘diplomacy versus war’, not ‘war now or later’.” While sanctions legislation is still pending, he said, “There doesn’t seem to be much of a push to get it done, at least before the Baghdad meeting anyway. Congress is in a kind of ‘wait-and-see’ mode.”

Ironically, the hawks have also been set back by the intensifying appeals by neo-conservatives, in particular, for Washington to intervene militarily in Syria.

Not only has that debate diverted time and energy that many of the fiercest hawks would otherwise devote to Iran. It has also exposed divides, similar to those that surfaced last year over the intervention in Libya, between interventionists on one hand and realists and libertarians on the other within the Republican Party.

“Talking about war with Iran at the same time that you want us to get involved in a civil war in Syria is not a popular message this year,” according to one Congressional staffer who cited recent public opinion polls suggesting that Republicans have become almost as war- weary as Democrats. “Given Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, it’s a bit much.”

Similarly, the unprecedented public criticism by former senior Israeli national security officials of Netanyahu and Barak has given new ammunition to those who favour diplomacy.

In recent weeks, the former head of the Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Meir Dagan, reiterated his long-held views that an Israeli attack on Iran would be “stupid” on the most-watched U.S. public affairs television programme, “60 Minutes”.

His successor and current Mossad head, Tamir Pardo, subsequently publicly questioned whether an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose an “existential” threat to Israel, as repeatedly alleged by Netanyahu.

Last week, the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, offered that Iranian leaders, contrary to Netanyahu’s views, were “very rational” and were likely to stop short of developing a nuclear weapon.

But perhaps the most damaging attack to date came on Friday when Yuval Diskin, the immediate past chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, denounced both Netanyahu and Barak as acting out of “messianic feelings” and predicted that an Israeli attack would likely accelerate Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“I saw them up close, they are not messiahs,” he said. “… My main problem on this issue is that I don’t have confidence in the current leadership of the State of Israel – that (they) could lead Israel into something of the order of magnitude of a war with Iran or a regional war.”

Diskin’s remarks, which were defended by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Gantz’s predecessor, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi (ret.) at a rancorous conference in New York this weekend, will almost certainly give pause to Netanyahu who, despite his messianism, is also famously risk-averse as a politician, according to Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator.

“He knows that if anything goes wrong (in an attack on Iran), there are very well-respected non-political Israeli figures who will be there to ferociously attack him,” he said, adding that Netanyahu in the coming weeks will likely call an election for September or October.

“That makes the relative unlikelihood of a strike in 2012 even less likely,” he told IPS.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Winds of War: Will Israel Strike Iran Soon? – Inside Israel – CBN News – Christian News 24-7 – CBN.com.

(Love the HEADLINE 🙂 – JW )

TEL AVIV, Israel — Around the world, one of the most pressing questions remains: Will Israel strike Iran and if so, when?

One Israeli journalist who gained tremendous insight recently talked to CBN News about what he learned.

Alon Ben-David, military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10, broke a groundbreaking story revealing how the Israeli Air Force and its pilots are preparing to strike Iran’s nuclear program.

“I was surprised by the level of openness that I found among the Air Force pilots who are usually not that candid,” Ben-David told CBN News.

“Maybe it’s the sense that something is going down soon. Or maybe it’s the sense that they want to prepare the public to have more reasonable expectations for what’s about to happen vis-à-vis Iran,” he reasoned.

Ben-David said while the pilots couldn’t specifically mention Iran, their meeting was clear. They also know it will be far more difficult than past missions destroying nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria.

“It’s something else much more complicated, combined with the risk of an all-out war, especially in the north with Hezbollah,” he explained. “So I think they wanted to give the public an understanding that it’s not going to be easy for the Air Force.”

Ben-David believes an Israeli attack could lead to all-out war.

“I think we need to be prepared for all options. It is most likely that Hezbollah will join in and will strike Israel. Then Syria could be part of it, Gaza could be part of it. We need to be prepared for a multi-front conflict if we go to Iran,” he said.

A multi-front conflict could affect all of Israel.

“Hezbollah is prepared to shower about 1,000 missiles and rockets on Israel per day of fighting,” Ben-David said. “Among them, about 100 missiles on Tel Aviv, so this city (would be) completely different than it is today.”

“And this is something we haven’t experienced in the 64 years of Israel’s independence,” he said.

“The Home Front Command assesses there will be 1 to 1-1/2 million Israelis on the road when war starts because they will feel unprotected where they live,” Ben-David predicted.

“And who knows where they will go because the whole of the country will be covered by Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles,” he said. “So these will be tough times for the Israeli public. It’s going to be a challenge.”

So far, negotiations with Iran and six nations, including the U.S., have produced nothing. Ben-David said the next round on May 23 is crucial.

“I think it’s a make or break meeting … and if we won’t see a determined international front against the Iranians or some sort of international effort to persuade the Iranians to step down, I don’t want to be in the shoes of the Israeli prime minister, but he might have to take a tough decision,” Ben-Zion continued.

That decision will take into account the possible outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election.

“So I think that Netanyahu fears that after Nov. 12, Obama is not going to be a partner he can count on,” he said. “And you can see the rough exchange between those two gentlemen is very little trust between those two leaders unfortunately.”

“This is one of the reasons Israel feels that time is running out, that something needs to be decided before November,” he said.

“We are getting very close to the moment of truth. There is a school of thought in most of the Israeli leadership that these are the last moments that anyone can do anything about the Iranian nuclear program,” Ben-Zion said.

He emphasized that Iran is not just a danger to Israel.

“Just imagine the kind of organizations that exist in this region and then imagine them with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That’s not a safe world to live in,” Ben-Zion concluded. “So I think there’s an international interest in preventing Iran from getting that capability.”

Articles: Iran Says New Cyber Warfare Is Attack on Economy.

By Reza Kahlili

Barak Says All Israeli Options Remain Open on Iran – NYTimes.com.

Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Israel cannot afford to be duped,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday while discussing international tensions involving Iran’s nuclear program.

By JODI RUDOREN

JERUSALEM — The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Monday night that the international talks on the Iranian nuclear program do “not fill me with confidence,” reiterating his hard-line position about all options — including an independent Israeli attack — remaining on the table, despite mounting criticism from the security establishment here and a growing sense abroad that a diplomatic solution may be possible.

“They say in the Middle East a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience,” Mr. Barak said in a speech to about 100 members of the Foreign Press Association at the King David Hotel. Acknowledging that a military strike was “not simple” and would be “complicated by certain risks,” he said that a “radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the whole world.”

“Israel cannot afford to be duped,” he added. “The No. 1 responsibility is to ensure that our fate will remain firmly in our own hands.”

Mr. Barak spoke days after his former internal security chief issued a blistering attack of him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, part of a growing chorus of criticism of their hawkish stance that the defense minister dismissed as “politically motivated” and coming from people who “prefer to bury their heads in the sand.” Though many here, as in Washington, are increasingly confident that Israel will not strike Iran this year, Mr. Barak and Mr. Netanyahu seem reluctant to abandon their hawkish narrative.

And one reason is they believe their tough words are working.

“In a way, it is paying off: they achieved the awakening of the international community and the involvement of the United States,” explained Yossi Melman, whose history of the Israeli intelligence community, “Spies Against Armageddon,” is scheduled for publication in two months. “It’s difficult to sense whether it’s manipulation, or part of it is psychological warfare,” Mr. Melman added. “I think he really genuinely believes in what he says.”

The tough talk makes Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak seem increasingly isolated in the international arena, where predictions of war in the near future have all but disappeared amid a focus on the negotiations scheduled to continue in Baghdad this month. American officials believe the looming threat of tighter sanctions July 1 has made the Iranians take the talks more seriously, and that the government has begun to prepare the people for a deal.

In Israel, the dissent that burst into public view in recent days has been simmering here for some time, so it may actually have less of an effect.

A poll conducted last week by Smith Research for The Jerusalem Post showed that fewer than half of Israelis back an independent strike on Iran. But about half disagreed with the harsh critique of Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak by Yuval Diskin, who retired last May as head of Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the F.B.I.,  according to a poll conducted by Dahaf Institute.

Other recent surveys show that about three-quarters consider a nuclear Iran an existential threat, and almost as many support a strike with American backing. Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity is strong, with polls showing his Likud Party would pick up seats in the next election, which is now expected in late summer or early fall.

“Israelis like the hawkish rhetoric,” said Mina Zemach, director of the Dahaf Polling Institute. “Netanyahu is very strong now. What the public hopes is that Netanyahu prepares us just in case, if no one will stop Iran, then we have to attack.”

Several political and security experts said that they did not expect to see a change in policy or tone from Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Barak, but that the move to elections indicates that they do not believe a strike is imminent. And campaign season is likely to push the issue aside in favor of domestic concerns.

“The minute we have a date set for elections, you have to assume that Bibi and Barak are not going to risk their electoral chances by taking some dramatic military initiative which could go wrong,” said Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst who is an editor of BitterLemons.net, a Web site about the Middle East. “The Palestinian issue and Iran are not the first issues. This is not what preoccupies the public.”

Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but Israel says that Tehran must be prevented from developing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

Despite the move toward early elections, and what many here believe is a commitment Mr. Netanyahu made to President Obama in March not to attack before the American elections, a senior intelligence official said the military option remains very much a live possibility. “It is affecting the regime,” he said of the international pressure. “We don’t think it will bring the regime to change the strategy.”

In his speech, Mr. Barak said that sanctions had “forced the Iranians to take note, sit down and talk,” but that “actions speak louder than words.” He repeated his view that Iran is “approaching what I have termed the immunity zone,” in which the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade could not easily be stopped.

“Just imagine the most unstable elements in the hands of the most unstable regime in one of the most unstable regions of the world,” he warned. “It is well understood in Washington, D.C., as well as in Jerusalem that as long as there is a future existential threat to our people, that all options to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons should stay on the table, and they will.”

Yehuda Ben Meir, one of the directors of the national security and public opinion project at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that there was some discomfort among Israelis with Mr. Netanyahu’s comparing the Iranian threat to the Holocaust, but that “there’s a consensus about the severity of the threat and there’s a consensus that Israel should do whatever it can.”

David Horovitz, a veteran journalist here who runs the new Web site The Times of Israel, said many Israelis view the strident tone as a “successful effort to create the sense in the international community that there needs to be more dramatic action in a nonmilitary sense.”

“I don’t think what’s unfolding is deemed by Netanyahu and Barak to justify, ‘O.K., we can tone down the process,’ ” Mr. Horovitz said of the international pressure. “Quite the reverse.”

Israel Hayom | Double crossing Israeli policy.

Israel Hayom | Iran, The New York Times and Yuval Diskin.

Barak: Nuclear Iran More Dangerous than Strike – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Ehud Barak meets foreign journalists

Reuters

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Monday that as long as Iran poses a threat to Israel with its nuclear program, all options are on the table.

Speaking with journalists from the Foreign Press Association and quoted by The Associated Press, Barak said, “I believe it is well understood in Washington, D.C., as well as in Jerusalem that as long as there is an existential threat to our people, all options to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons should remain on the table.”

“I have enough experience to know that a military option is not a simple one,” Barak added. “It would be complicated with certain associated risks. But a radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the world.”

Barak dismissed the remarks by critics of a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying, “Parts of the world, including some politically motivated Israeli figures, prefer to bury their heads in the sand.”

By “politically motivated Israeli figures” he was likely referring to former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, who attacked Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at an open forum.

Diskin said that Netanyahu and Barak are “messianic” and “unfit to hold the reins of power. They give the public a false picture on the Iran question. They create the feeling that if Israel does not act, Iran will have a nuclear bomb, even though experts think that an attack on Iran will cause it to speed up the process of arming with nuclear weapons.”

Diskin was later supported by former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also implied that, like Diskin, he did not trust the current leaders of Israel to make the right decisions.

“You have to have full trust in the judgment of those who have to take decisions,” Olmert told CNN on Monday.  “And you could understand from what I said that maybe something in my trust is lacking.”

Barak told the foreign journalists that time is running out for a strike, as “Iran’s military nuclear program will be sufficiently developed and suitably concealed, rendering the facilities immune to surgical attacks.”

He also addressed the past year of upheavals in the Middle East that have overthrown several leaders and caused Islamist political parties to gain prominence.

“Israel has found itself sitting as an island of stability in a stormy sea, a sea in which the waves of radicalism are growing in strength,” Barak said.

“We urge Egypt to contain lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula,” he said, referring to the unstable security situation in the Sinai Peninsula since the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak last year. Terror groups have taken advantage of the situation to carry out terror attacks against Israelis and fire rockets at the city of Eilat.

“This is imperative in order to keep our two nations firmly on the path of peace, a peace that has contributed so much to so many for so long now,” he added.

Barak also addressed Syria, where a bloody 14-month uprising against President Bashar Assad is in progress.

“Whatever follows Assad’s bloodstained regime will be greeted with Israel’s extended hand of peace,” he said.