WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(Netanyahu has wanted a national unity government to confront Iran for the last two years.  Now he finally got his wish.  Hold on to your hats… – JW )

DEBKAfile Special Report May 8, 2012, 4:43 AM (GMT+02:00)

Binyamin Netanyahu with new Dep. PM Shaul Mofaz

In a startling about turn, Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu let the bill for dissolving parliament (the Knesset) for an election on Sept. 4 go through first reading Monday night. The proceedings were interrupted by his announcement that he was co-opting the leading opposition party Kadima to a national unity government naming its leader Shaul Mofaz, who recently displaced Tzipi Livni, deputy prime minister. The government now commands a huge majority of 92 members of the 120-strong Knesset.
From the start, Netanyahu’s bow to pressure for a general election a year before it was due puzzled political watchers, including debkafile.  His government coalition was exceptionally stable for an Israeli government which has rarely survived more than half a term and he topped opinion polls as the most popular politician in the country.  Labor leader Shelley Yacimovitch was the only opposition leader pushing hard for an early election which no other party seemed to want.

The new lineup awarding Kadima ministerial posts has already been confirmed by Likud’s fellow coalition partners, Israel Beitenu and the ultra-Orthodox Shas. They obtained the prime minister’s commitment to table two controversial bills: the Law for Equality in Sharing the National Burden (universal mobilization for military or community service for all sectors including ultra-Orthodox and Arab citizens) by the end July, and the Reform of Government by the end of December, 2012.
The Kadima leader pledged not to quit the government before end of term in September 2012.

Netanyahu must have pretended to go along with steps for an early election almost up to the end to disarm and mislead his political enemies who had been pushing hard through the media to arrest his rising popularity and bring his government down. In back rooms meanwhile a new, stronger government was in the making in dead secrecy.

Labor remains on the opposition benches after the prime minister turned the tables on its leader’s fairly amateurish campaign to unseat him. Yacimovitch’s obvious next step might be to reignite the “Social Justice” protest movement which took the streets last summer. However efforts to rally large numbers in the last few days, with the help of financial contributions from foreign sources, have fallen flat.
The new face on Israel’s political block Yair Lapid will be left in limbo after the fanfare of launching his new party (There is a Future), the main article of whose charter is the long-term guarantee of his unelected position as party chief.

Israel Hayom | ‘Standing idly by’ in Syria.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 7, 2012, 12:11 AM (GMT+02:00)

Francois Hollande, new President of France

Two stalwarts of the Western confrontation against a nuclear-armed Iran suffered election defeats this week: Nicolas Sarkozy was swept out of the Elysee by the Socialist leader Francois Hollande Sunday, May 6. Three days earlier, the two parties forming UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s government coalition were trounced in local elections across Britain. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in four months, never imagined he would be left so quickly on shifting sands against the Iranian nuclear threat.
In Washington, Dennis Ross, Barack Obama’s former adviser on Iran and frequent visitor to Jerusalem with messages from the White House said Sunday, May 6, that oddly enough Israel had attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and destroyed Syria’s nuclear facility 2007 without talk. So why were Israelis talking so much now?

Ross answered his own question by suggesting that Israeli leaders aimed at giving the world a strong motive for raising the heat on Iran and tightening sanctions so as to stop Israel going to war; then, if sanctions and diplomacy failed, no one could complain if Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear program.

Ross appears to have forgotten the rows between the US and Israel in 1981 over attacking the Iraqi reactor and how hard Ronald Reagan leaned on Menahem Begin to stop him going through with it.
But most of all, Ross was reflecting the Obama administration’s impatience with the Iran debate going back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington for two years and is determined to wash its hands of the problem for now and get on with winning the president a second term in November.
The outgoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke more forcefully and frankly than any other Western leader about the real danger of a nuclear-armed Iran and accepted that it would have to be tackled by military action. He was also stood out as one of the few French leaders of recent times prepared to fight for French and Western Middle East interests.
The role of French special forces, navy and air forces, alongside US and British forces, was pivotal in the campaign to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. In recent weeks, he placed French units on standby in case President Obama decided to intervene in Syria. In the event, the US president pulled back from an operation that was planned to have involved Saudi and GCC armies as well.
France’s successful military showing in the Libyan war brought no political or economic rewards. Indeed, Paris shelled out a million dollars it could ill afford to pay for it. Sarkozy’s opponent Francois Hollande did not make this an issue in his campaign, but it was certainly not lost on the French voter. The French Muslim voter no doubt settled scores with Sarkozy for his ban on the veil and pro-Israeli policies and may even have cost him the presidency, although this issue too did not come to the fore in electioneering.
David Cameron, who probably spent even more on the Libyan war than Sakrozy and could afford it even less, is paying a heavy political price for the unpopular austerity measures he is clamping down on the British people to haul the country out of a deepening recession.
Iran has therefore won a handy breather on several fronts:  Barack Obama is carefully avoiding any war involvement in the course of his election campaign – he even asked world leaders to give him “space”; French President Hollande needs time to find his feet, attack the declining French economy and rescue the euro. He will have no time or attention to spare in the months to come for Iran’s nuclear threat or the Syrian bloodbath.
When ten days ago, Netanyahu sent his security adviser Yaacov Amidror on a round trip to European capitals to pitch Israel’s case against Iran, he never imagined how quickly the Iranian issue would recede into irrelevance as key Western government go swept up in more pressing business and upsets.
Netanyahu announced Sunday that he would call an early election in four months, a year before it is due.
Prime minister since 2009, he is assured by every opinion poll that he is miles ahead in popularity of any Israeli politician. He told a meeting of his party Sunday, May 6, that he didn’t want “a year and a half of political instability accompanied by blackmail and populism”.

Currently in his element, he may feel that it is up to him now to take the initiative for preempting a nuclear Iran. And the sooner the better.

Syria ‘Moving Scuds to Israel, Turkey Borders’ – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

Bashar Assad

Reuters

Jordanian news site Ahbar Baladna reports that western spy satellites have recently spotted movements of Syrian heavy missile launchers northward and southward, toward Syria’s borders with Turkey and Israel.

The site says hundreds of high-caliber launchers are being moved, and that these could only be long range Scud missile launchers.

Syria has threatened in the past that in the event of foreign military intervention on its soil, it will not hesitate to fire missiles at Israel and Turkey in order to ignite a large scale regional war.

Turkish and French officials said ten days ago they were mulling a potential military intervention in Syria, where civil war has been raging for 14 months.

“In the face of developments in Syria, we are taking into consideration any kind of possibility in line with our national security and interests,” Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu told parliament during a briefing to lawmakers.

TV report: Netanyahu holding elections so he is free to deal with Iran in September-October | The Times of Israel.

Channel 2 commentator says PM is going to polls early so he can handle Iran threat when safely re-elected and with Obama paralyzed in presidential campaign

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) meets with US President Barack Obama at the United Nations headquarters in New York on September 21, 2011. (Photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO/FLASH90

Netanyahu is set on Sunday to announce that he is dissolving parliament and calling elections for September 4 — a year ahead of schedule. In the weeks immediately after that vote, said well-connected commentator Amnon Abramovich on the top-rated Channel 2 news, Netanyahu will head a transition government at home and have no need to worry about voter sentiment, and he knows that President Barack Obama will be paralyzed by the US presidential campaign.

Netanyahu has shocked the nation in the past few days by indicating that he will be calling elections a year ahead of their scheduled date in October 2013, leaving analysts baffled as to his reasoning. Speculation has focused on differences among the various coalition parties over legislation on national service for ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and over elements of the national budget.

But Abramovich said that the dramatic decision to bring the elections forward relates to Iran. After the September elections, which all polls show Netanyahu winning easily, he will head a transition government for several weeks while a new coalition is formed. During that period, Netanyahu “will not be beholden to the voters,” and will be free to take decisions on Iran that many Israelis might not support, Abramovich said.

Furthermore, he will still have his trusted Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, at his side. Barak is seen as unlikely to fare well in the elections, and may not even retain his Knesset seat, but would retain the defense portfolio until a new coalition is formed.

And finally, said Abramovich, the September-October period would see Obama, who has publicly urged more patience in allowing diplomacy and sanctions to have their impact on Iran, in the final stages of the presidential election campaign, with a consequent reduced capacity to try to pressure Israel into holding off military intervention.

Obama, “on the eve of elections, won’t dare criticize Israel,” said Abramovich. From Netanyahu’s point of view, “the conditions would be fantastic.”

He noted that a transition government is prevented by law from taking dramatic policy decisions — except in critical circumstances, and drew attention to comments from Barak in a newspaper interview Friday in this regard.

“The political-security system will make decisions as needed, even under challenging circumstances,” said Barak about the impact of elections. “We must separate the issue of Iran from the subject of elections.”

Barak also said of the Iranian nuclear drive: “The moment of truth is approaching.”

Netanyahu has been repeatedly drawing parallels in recent weeks between the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and the Holocaust, has said sanctions are not working, and warned that he will not allow Israel to have to live in the shadow of “annihilation.”

He has also indicated that a decision on military intervention in Iran will have to be taken within months.

Barak, for his part, has stated repeatedly that confronting Iran before it achieves a nuclear weapons capability, however complex, will be far less challenging a prospect than confronting a nuclear Iran.

In the interview Friday with the Israel Hayom daily, Barak recalled a speech given in 2003 by the then-Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, said Barak, spoke of Israel as being “so small and vulnerable that it is a ‘one-bomb’ nation.

“If one bomb were dropped on it, this nation would not return to its former glory,” Barak quoted Rafsanjani as saying. “After the exchange of blows, Rafsanjani said, Islam would remain and Israel would not remain as it was. He also noted that there need not be any clear markers on the bomb as to where it came from. It could be transported in a shipping container that arrives at some port and simply explodes.”

Added Barak: “I do not delude myself. The moment of truth is approaching. We have to decide what to do about this if the sanctions and diplomacy fail…

“Some say let’s trust the world… I say that in the end we can deal with Iran now or deal with a nuclear Iran that poses a far greater danger… If it obtains a nuclear weapon, it will be very hard to bring it down. Now they are trying to seek immunity for their nuclear program. If they achieve military nuclear capability, for arms, or a threshold in which they can assemble a bomb within 60 days, they will acquire another form of immunity – for the regime.”

Barak recalled Israel being caught off guard in 1973, when it was attacked in the Yom Kippur War and sustained heavy losses. “What happened in 1973? The entire cabinet was blinded and we were forced to pay the price on the battlefield.”

The defense minister also used the interview to castigate several ex-intelligence chiefs and former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who have criticized what they argue is the government’s misguided handling of the Iranian threat, and who have warned that the Netanyahu-Barak duo may be leading Israel into a regional war with dire potential consequences.

Said Barak: “You can trust me when I say this: In the history of the state, there has never been such as orderly decision-making process.”

Bibi prepares to strike Iran? – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Early elections will produce more convenient conditions for Israeli strike on Iran’s nuke sites

Bringing the Israeli elections forward to September 4th of this year not only won’t avert an Iran strike, but rather, in some ways may in fact advance the fight against Tehran’s nuclear program. Those who think that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to these elections due to weakness are wrong. The PM has a stable coalition, yet its makeup won’t allow it to cope with the challenges it would have faced in the near future.

Hence, Israel would have at least two months of freedom to act, before winter clouds hinder the Air Force and while assuming that the US, with clenched teeth, would help Israel defend against missile retaliation by Iran and its clients (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) and help us on the diplomatic front. Some observers argue that this is the main consideration that prompted Netanyahu to bring the elections forward.

The PM is in fact going to the polls in order to reinforce his political survival at a time when he needs to make tough decisions in all areas. A skilled politician, Netanyahu identified the peaking support he enjoys at this time and is quick to ride this wave before losing momentum. At this time he enjoys a backwind not only within Israel’s domestic theater – conditions in the regional and global arena are also convenient.

Early elections will assist the West in its diplomatic negotiations with Iran. Netanyahu does not hide his intention to strike Tehran’s nuclear sites before they become immune to attack. Hence, his decision to call early elections when his position on this issue is so clear and consistent shows confidence that Israel’s public is behind him, thereby granting more credibility to the Israeli threat.

This threat is one of the most powerful ways to press Washington and Europe not to “go easy” on the Iranians during the talks; it appears that even Iran is starting to fear it. Thus far, Iranian officials tended to show contempt for the Israeli threat. Yet now they realize that an Israeli operation, regardless of its success or failure, would force them and their clients to respond. This would entangle Iran in an unwanted confrontation with the US, as Washington, especially during a presidential election campaign, would not be able to remain idle when its soldiers and regional allies are being attacked.

Diplomatic immunity

Early elections have another important effect: They produce “diplomatic immunity” for Netanyahu and the Israeli government from negative US reaction should Israel decide to strike Iran.

By early September, the elections will be behind Netanyahu, and as a prime minister he won’t have trouble to form a stable coalition and government that would endorse his position on an Iran strike. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama would still be in the midst of his own election campaign. During this period, until November of this year at least, he would have trouble taking punitive measures against Israel or endorsing such steps at the UN should such proposals be made in the wake of an Israeli strike.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 5, 2012, 1:16 PM (GMT+02:00)

North Korean nuclear-capable BM-25 missiles sold to Iran

When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days.
In this regard, debkafile’s military sources disclose that Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert) – all linked together by huge tunnels.

Nevertheless, Tehran keeps on putting off nuclear watchdog inspections at Parchin for three reasons:

1. To carry on squeezing concessions from the US in private talks between the Obama administration and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as from the Six Powers at their formal negotiations. Iran has won permission to enriching uranium up to 5 percent purity and is after approval for the 20 percent which is close to weapon grade.
2.  The Iranians can’t be sure they have scrubbed out every last trace of the nuclear explosives and detonators tested at the Parchin military base – even after clearing away the evidence and relocating the facility in the salt desert wastelands.

Asked to define the activities he wanted inspected in Parchin, Amano said: “We do not have people there so we cannot tell what these activities are.”  According to debkafile’s intelligence sources, while the IAEA may want hard physical evidence collected by its inspectors, US and Israeli intelligence have long possessed solid information on the illicit activities in Parchin collected by the nuclear-sensitive instruments carried by their military satellites.
3.  To guarantee that the IAEA inspection at Parchin will be the last and there will no further demands for visits to any more suspect sites.
Tehran cannot tell exactly what data on additional facilities has reached US or Israeli intelligence and at what moment they may pull their discoveries out of their sleeves with fresh demands. Iran is therefore bargaining for a line to be drawn at Parchin to close any future road for good so that it can carry on nuclear work at the new Great Salt Desert locations safe from discovery.
debkafile’s Iranian sources report that American negotiators in their private exchanges have thrown out hints about limiting IAEA inspections. But Tehran is holding out for a more solid commitment from the US and Europe to halt all demands for IAEA visits and for the Six Powers to veto inspections at any new nuclear locations Israel may expose.

This was what Ali Asqar Soltaniyeh, Iranian ambassador to the IAEA Vienna headquarters, was driving at when he stipulated Friday that that  talks with the six powers must be limited to negotiations on “a modality and framework to resolve outstanding issues and remove ambiguities.”
To arrest the perilous slide toward letting Iran off the hook, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent his National Security Advisers Yaacov Amidror to the capitals of four of the six powers, Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris last week. His mission was to persuade their governments not to allow international inspections to stop at Parchin but to keep Iran’s nuclear activities under tight supervision.
Netanyahu has used his own contacts in Washington for warnings of what was afoot.

This week, the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces passed a resolution requiring the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency to have an operational plan ready by 2015 for posting a missile shield on America’s east coast to protect New York, Washington and Boston against Iranian missile attack. $100 million was earmarked for this purpose.
Our Washington sources note that this step opened the way for a drive by the Obama administration to have any deal the Six Powers may reach with Iran cover Iran’s clandestine underground Salt Desert nuclear locations.
One of the biggest, our sources disclose, is managed by the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, manufacturers of the ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. US intelligence discovered in November 2010 that North Korea had transferred to Iran 19 nuclear-capable BM-25 ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers.
On April 13, a dozen Shahid Hemmat missile experts attended the test fire of the North Korean long-range, three-stage Unha-2 missile. That test failed but the North Koreans and Iranians are pressing on together with work to extend the range of those missiles to America.
However, like the Netanyahu government, Washington is under constant assault by vocal lobbies opposed to a preemptive attack on Iran. They open fire on any suggestion that such an attack is on the cards, and pounced on the congressional resolution as a scheme for torpedoing US-Iranian diplomacy.

Israeli leaders battling Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon therefore find themselves fighting to keep their military option from being snatched off the table by antagonists at home.
Tehran is cannily exploiting the diplomatic track to get rid of international inspections after Parchin and so gain the freedom to proceed with building a nuclear arsenal in the Salt Desert far from the world’s sight.

The Israeli ex-security chiefs and former politicians are focusing on preventing an Israeli attack to pre-empt a nuclear Iran. They know exactly what is at stake but are so eager to topple Netanyahu and Barak that they are more than ready to pay the price of letting Iran get away with acquiring a nuclear bomb.

UN nuke chief: Access to Iran ar… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS

ST GALLEN, Switzerland – Gaining access to a key Iranian military facility will be the priority for the UN nuclear watchdog when it resumes talks with the Islamic state in mid-May, agency head Yukiya Amano said on Friday.

Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the Vienna-based UN body did not yet have a “positive response” from Iran regarding the request for nuclear inspectors to be allowed to visit the Parchin site.

But he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in the Swiss town of St Gallen, “we would like to pursue this” issue of Parchin, where the IAEA believes nuclear-related military research may have taken place. Iran denies this.

“We need to look at all the outstanding issues, but Parchin is the priority and we should start with that,” Amano said.

Western diplomats say Iran appears to be stonewalling the IAEA’s request to go to Parchin and they suspect it may be “sanitizing” the site southeast of Tehran of any incriminating evidence before any visit, a suspicion Tehran dismisses.

Amano has said the agency has noticed some “activities” at Parchin – a choice of words that Western diplomats interpret as suggesting the IAEA also harbors suspicions of possible clean-up work, on the basis of satellite images at its disposal.

Asked what he meant by “activities”, Amano said on Friday: “We do not have people there so we cannot tell what these activities are.”

Iran and the IAEA will meet for two days of talks in Vienna on May 14-15, just over a week before the Islamic Republic and world powers are to hold a second round of broader political negotiations in Baghdad on May 23.

“In my reading the desire to resolve this Iranian issue through dialogue is stronger now than before,” Amano told the conference, referring to the resumption of diplomacy between Iran and the powers in Istanbul last month after a gap of more than a year of escalating tension.

“Recently we have witnessed a positive atmosphere but we need to have concrete results,” he later told reporters.

DEBKA.

Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi

Even the most evasive Iranian diplomats found it hard not to betray gratification over the results thus far of their clandestine nuclear negotiations with the Obama administration.
When Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast was asked at a Tehran press conference on Tuesday, May 1, what Iran would put before the Six Powers at their next meeting on May 23 in Baghdad, he declined to answer, referring questions to Said Jalili, senior negotiator and head of the National Security Council.
But before clamming up, he quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi as conceding last week that Iran is taking a positive look at the Russian compromise “step by step” plan, which proposes that Iran match its nuclear concessions to the tempo at which the West revokes sanctions.
In Tehran as in Washington, there is high expectation that the Baghdad meeting may even occasion a breakthrough toward resolving the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s qui pro quo: Help in resolving Afghan and Iraq crises

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian sources, Tehran feels it has drawn ahead of the game thanks to the Obama administration coming around to their step-by-step formula suggested by Moscow, which is simply this: The more Washington eases up on its demands for Iran to forego its nuclear aspirations, the more help Tehran will render the Obama administration for solving its military, security and political predicaments in Iraq and Afghanistan and stemming terrorist threats from those countries.
More specifically, Tehran would help bring about quiet understandings between Washington and the Taliban -and even al Qaeda elements – as well as guaranteeing to oversee their implementation.
Our sources in Tehran find further confirmation for the exclusive reports appearing in debkafile on April 18, and DEBKA-Net-Weekly 537 April 20 (Iran Plays the American Game to Win, Obama’s Proposals Are Primed to Pre-empt War – Not a Nuclear-Armed Iran).
We reported then: President Obama has decided to quietly give up on his demand that Iran “come clean” on its nuclear activities and open up to international inspection. As one Washington source put it, this is a gesture Tehran can hardly resist. It would … make it worth Iran’s while to accept the US framework package in toto. Without International Atomic Energy Agency or any other oversight, Iran’s nuclear weaponization would no longer be hampered from achieving its end within 36 months.

Tehran is satisfied, but wants more

Tehran concludes, our Iranian sources report, that for the sake of a helping hand in clearing away the obstacles to settling the Iraq and Afghan predicaments, the Obama administration will come to terms with Iran continuing 5-percent uranium enrichment and allowing IAEA inspectors “free” access only to “declared” nuclear sites.
Washington can be counted on buying this formula, the Iranians believe, because President Obama’s strategic advisers consider it a double win: It offers him a chance to tout his achievements to the American voter in resolving the intractable crises in Afghanistan and Iraq; and, moreover, oil prices would start falling once the West and Iran were seen closing in on a deal with Iran and ending oil sanctions.
But the Iranians, satisfied with their gains to date, are confident they can get more out of Washington, including approval for 20 percent enrichment of uranium, confining IAEA inspections to “official” nuclear sites, and the lifting of sanctions in three phases over a maximum of six months.
According to our Iranian sources, the talks Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki held in Tehran last week addressed two issues closely related to the evolving Iranian-US give-and-take:

Iran prepares to pull Al Qods terrorist networks out of Iraq

1. The Iraqi government must ease the exit of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) gangs from the country by removing all obstacles, in particular, the military and security checkpoints impeding their passage into Syria.
The Shiite Maliki had no objections to this request: He is in fact glad to be rid of the Al Qaeda elements terrorizing Baghdad and Shiite centers with multiple suicide bombings and attacks. Their departure furthermore removes a key domestic Sunni weapon for undermining his rule.
2. The Iraqi prime minister’s Iranian interlocutors trod carefully on the second issue: As part of their quid pro quo for the American side, Tehran must disband the terrorist networks it is running in the Shiite regions of Iraq.
At the same time, the paranoid Maliki must not be given cause to suspect Iran was ditching him, which he would if Al Qods began pulling its agents out of Iraq without prior warning or coordination with Baghdad.
The Iranians explained to their Iraqi visitor that the removal of their clandestine networks from his country would not weaken his regime but strengthen it, because it would herald Iranian-American cooperation for propping him up.
Since this article deals with Tehran’s perception of its back-door nuclear deal with Washington, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s counterterrorism sources have no Iranian quotes on their readiness to sacrifice their senior Middle East ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, by placing his regime at the mercy of al Qaeda fighters exported from Iraq. However, this deal shows how far Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ready to go to procure US recognition of Iran’s nuclear program. That program apparently comes out on top when weighed against the fate of the Syrian ruler.

The Baghdad meeting – a formality

For two weeks, Iran’s leaders have been deep in conferences on tactics for the Baghdad talks, including three private meetings between Khamenei and nuclear negotiator Jalili.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not invited to any policy-making sessions.
After two years of boycotting the Expediency Discernment Council, headed by his bitter foe Hashemi Rafsanjani, he suddenly turned up for a discussion on Iran’s nuclear policy. Not only did he take part in the discussion, he smilingly shook Rafsanjani’s hand.
Jalili was instructed by Khamenei to follow a simple strategy in Baghdad: give very little away while projecting an air of flexibility, goodwill and optimism. Major decisions must continue to be avoided – as they were in the first round of talks with the six world powers in Istanbul. The session must be directed to focus on procedural matters, modalities and a timetable for the next meeting.
The delegations participating in the talks will most likely go along with this since they are perfectly aware that the real decisions and bargaining are taking place directly between Washington and Tehran.
Tehran is keen on spinning the formal dialogue out – if possible, for more than a year – during which Iran will lend all its might to getting rid of sanctions in phased steps.
Khameini and Jalili considered exploring the option of “suspending” 20 percent enrichment in return for a pledge to lift all sanctions, the most painful of which disrupt Iran’s banking industry and insurance cover for its oil exports. The ayatollah finally vetoed this option.

Another forbidden facility moved to a secret site

Tehran was considerably bucked up to find Obama’s emissaries in sympathy with the Islamic regime’s reluctance to bow low under international pressure and give up their nuclear program, a source of national revolutionary pride on which tens of billions of dollars have been lavished.
Iran’s negotiators explained that by surrendering, their regime would lose face to the point of risking its survival. They would however be amenable to showing the world that they accepted close supervision and were not taking the path of North Korea.
The American demand that Iran sign the additional protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty granting nuclear watchdog inspectors the right to spot inspections without prior notice is not taken too seriously.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s US and Israeli military and intelligence sources see it as no more than a fig leaf to cover substantial concessions. In addition to the underground enrichment facility at Fordow near Qom, Iran is known to be running several more clandestine nuclear development sites to which international monitors can only dream of access, even if they discover their existence.
Iranian crews are frantically scrubbing the Parchin military base and suspected site of experiments on explosives in a Tehran suburb, after removing its contents to a secret site. All traces of forbidden weapons testing are being erased ready for international inspection.
Our sources report exclusively that the new site is secretly located in the vast wastes of the Dasht e-Kavir or the Great Salt Desert south of Tehran, which is 800 kilometers long, 320 kilometers broad and 77,600 square kilometers in area, covering one-third of Iranian territory.

DEBKA.

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin will be re-anointed President of Russia at a ceremonial handover of office in the Kremlin Monday, May 7, He will take over from Dmitry Medvedev who moves down to the post of prime minister.
As president, Medvedev enjoyed a measure of freedom from the restraints of the powerful Putin and during his tenure there was an easing in the climate of Russian relations with the United States. This contrasted sharply with the frictions with Washington and enhanced Russo-Iranian dialogue in 2007-2008 which marked Putin’s two stints as president.
Still, although Prime Minister Putin insisted that foreign policy was the province of the president, there was always the sense that the former and future president lurked powerfully behind the Medvedev presidency.
Another view on the arcane power structure in the Kremlin holds that neither Putin nor Medvedev are omnipotent, certainly not on loaded issues like Iran’s nuclear program and the turbulence in Syria, for which decision-making is attended by a team of diplomats and intelligence figures.
Prominent in this team are the influential presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Intelligence Chief Mikhail Fradkov, and others.
But while the West is trying to second guess Russia’s future policy for Iran and Syria, Moscow and the Russian military appear to be collecting themselves for a clash of arms in the Persian Gulf in aniticipation of the US and Israel launching an offensive on Iran with GCC ground, naval and air forces and air forces taking part.

Russia upgrades military alerts for US-Israel strike on Iran

Moscow fears this eruption of hostilities will have a knock-on effect on Russia’s national security. And so its military units in the Caucasus have been upgraded and the Caspian Sea fleet of missile cruisers anchored off the coast of Dagestan placed on the ready. The Russian base in Armenia, its only facility in the South Caucasus, is also on alert.
In a commentary published in April, Gen. Leonid Ivashov, President of the Academy of Geopolitical Science, wrote, “A war against Iran would be a war against Russia.” He called for a “political-diplomatic alliance” to be forged with China and India. Operations were underway throughout the Middle East to destabilize the region and “proceed against China, Russia and Europe.”
The war against Iran, Ivashov wrote, would “end up at our borders, destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus and weaken our position in the Caspian region.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that, opposite US military concentrations on the Yemeni island of Socotra and Masirah Island off Oman, the Russians are engaged in their own military buildup for war at their 102^nd Military Base in Gyumri, Armenia, where two divisions of the Russian Special Forces-Spetsnaz are stationed. This base is a component of the Russian Transcaucasian Group of Forces.

Russian forces geared for intervention

Gyumri is the capital and largest city of the Shirak Province in northwest Armenia. It is located about 120 km from Yerevan. Of critical concern for Moscow is the effect on the South Caucasus of a war against Iran. Armenia, the Kremlin’s only ally in this region, has close economic links with Iran, whereas neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan maintain military and economic ties with the United States and Israel.
Most of all, Moscow fears Azerbaijan, which shares borders with Iran, Russia, Armenia and the Caspian Sea, may line up with Israel and the United States for the war against Iran. Since the mid-1990s, this republic has been an important American military and economic ally in the South Caucasus, hosting several US military bases.
Putin is therefore assuming the presidency with a Russian military already geared up for possible military intervention in the Caspian Sea, Black Sea and Caucasus regions – just in case he decides that a US-Israeli attack on Iran imperils Moscow’s interests in the area.