WarSclerotic

IAEA says no progress in nuclear… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Paul Simon at Ground Zero- Sounds of Silence – Hebrew Subtitles – YouTube.

Grief and agony know no borders…

Syria atrocities to go on – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Condemnations of Assad meaningless as long as China, Russia and Iran think he’s legitimate

Alex Fishman

The Russians have no problem telling the truth: They have no idea of the direction the Syrian crisis is heading to. In ongoing diplomatic contacts among Israel and senior Russian officials, the Russians admit that their policy is determined from one week to the next.

In fact, they’re not alone. The Russian policy, which the Chinese share, is no different in essence than Europe’s and America’s policy towards Syria. In Mideastern terms we can say that both sides are making their decisions from one massacre to the next.

A few weeks ago, the head of Israel’s National Security Agency, Major-General Yaakov Amidror, visited Moscow in a bid to convince the Russians to end their support for Assad and stop pouring weapons to his regime. The Russians made it clear that they have no intention of doing so, and never had such intention.

It’s not as though they are clinging to Assad the man; they would have no trouble endorsing someone else, as long as he will be able to preserve Russia’s regional interests the way Assad can. They also have no trouble, alongside the arms shipments, to prepare the immediate evacuation of their people should Assad fall.

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz heard the same mantra, more or less, when he visited China recently and the Syria issue came up.

The Foreign Ministry’s political research center, which is an intelligence agency in every way, has been drafting detailed lists of the civilians killed in Syria since the crisis erupted: The total stands at 12,500 people. The killing rate at this time stands at 50-60 dead civilians per day, on average.

See you in next massacre

Yet despite this, the conclusion of Foreign Ministry researchers is that the state of Assad’s regime today is essentially no different than it was six months ago. There is indeed gradual erosion, yet one cannot yet see the great crisis that will prompt its collapse.

Indeed, all the talk about Assad’s de-legitimacy is meaningless as long as the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and the Lebanese think he’s legitimate. He also maintains his legitimacy for now in large sectors of Syrian society.

So the US State Department publicizes yet another plan referring to the need to invoke the UN’s Chapter 7 and accuse Assad of undermining the global order. Big deal. The Americans are talking about 3,000 monitors – instead of the current 300 – who would also engage in enforcement. They are again talking about buffer zones along the Syrian border and about humanitarian corridors deep in Syria to be protected by gunships. For the time being, it’s all talk.

So what did we have in Syria this week? Two brutal massacres, more horrific pictures, and a meeting of world leaders in Turkey that produced numerous declarations on the Syrian question and zero actions.

We’ll see you in the next massacre. Under this state of affairs, President Assad can survive for a long time.

UN watchdog to press Iran for Pa… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS

VIENNA – The UN nuclear watchdog will press Iran on Friday for a deal that would enable its inspectors to visit a military complex where they suspect atom bomb research has taken place, but Western diplomats are skeptical a breakthrough will be reached.

World powers will be watching the IAEA-Iran meeting in Vienna closely to judge whether the Islamic Republic is ready to make concessions before its broader talks with them later this month in Moscow on their decade-old nuclear dispute.

Both Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear body, say significant progress has been made on a framework agreement to resume a long-stalled IAEA investigation into Tehran’s atomic activities.

But differences remain on how the IAEA should conduct its probe, and the United States said this week it doubted whether Iran would give the UN agency the kind of access to sites, documents and officials it needs.

“I’m not optimistic,” Robert Wood, the acting US envoy to the IAEA, told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the UN agency’s governing board. “I certainly hope that an agreement will be reached but I’m not certain Iran is ready.”

His skepticism was reinforced by defiant remarks by Tehran’s envoy to the IAEA, who accused the UN body on Wednesday of acting like a Western-manipulated spy service and said that Iran’s military activities were none of its business.

Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Iran would work with the IAEA to prove that Western allegations that Iran wanted a nuclear weapons capability were “forged and fabricated”. Iran says its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity.

But he also said Iran would “not permit our national security to be jeopardized,” suggesting it might limit the scope of the UN inspectors’ investigation.

A European diplomat said Soltanieh’s remarks signaled that Iran would be in no mood to compromise in Friday’s Vienna talks.

Western officials, who suspect Iran is dragging out the two sets of talks to buy time for its nuclear program, say the value of any deal will depend on how it is implemented.

The IAEA wants Iran to address concerns over intelligence information pointing to research and tests in Iran – some of which may still be in progress – relevant for developing a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran may give IAEA increased access ahead of P5 + 1 talks

The European Union stressed that the IAEA should be free to conduct its probe in an open way and not be forced to close areas of inquiry prematurely, suggesting this may still be a bone of contention.

“The Agency must be able to revisit areas as their work progresses and as new information becomes available,” the 27-nation EU said in a statement to the IAEA’s 35-nation board.

The IAEA’s immediate priority is gaining access to the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, where it believes Iran built a steel vessel in 2000 for high explosives tests and may now be cleaning the site of any incriminating evidence.

Iran says Parchin is a conventional military facility and has dismissed such allegations as “ridiculous.”

Diplomats and analysts say Iran may offer the IAEA increased cooperation as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with world powers, which resumed in April after a 15-month hiatus and are to continue in the Russian capital on June 18-19.

Those talks are aimed at defusing tension over Iran’s nuclear program that has led to increasingly tough Western sanctions on Iran, including an EU oil embargo from July 1, and created fears of a war in the region.

If Iran does not agree to give the IAEA immediate access to Parchin before the Moscow talks, it would be a sign that Tehran “continues to believe it is in a relative position of strength,” said Bruno Tertrais of the Strategic Research Foundation.

Full transparency and cooperation with the IAEA is one of the elements the world powers – the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany – are seeking from Iran.

But they also want Iran to halt its higher-grade uranium enrichment, which Tehran says it needs for a research reactor but which also takes it closer to potential bomb material.

For its part, Iran wants sanctions relief and international recognition of what it says is its right to refine uranium.

“Parchin access is not among the key concessions that the six powers are seeking from Iran in Moscow,” said nuclear proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London.

“They are focused on confidence building measures that would limit Iran’s ability to make a sprint for a nuclear weapon.

Iran thwarts Syrian “contact group” plan over US conditions for nuclear talks.

DEBKAfile Special Report June 7, 2012, 11:31 PM (GMT+02:00)

More atrocities at Mazraat al-Qubeir, Hama

Iran stalled the US Secretary and UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s plan to present the world body’s special session Thursday, June 7, with a plan for a contract group based on five permanent Security Council members and Iran to handle the Syrian impasse. Tehran refused to join the group as long as it faces nuclear conditions, after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Istanbul that Iran must come to the nuclear talks in Moscow “ready to take concrete steps” to curb its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity.

Discussion of the plan was therefore abandoned in the hall and confined to UN corridors. By forcing the pace at the special general assembly crisis session, Tehran once again demonstrated its refusal to play ball with the international community until its major power status in the Middle East is recognized.
Iranian sources have insisted in recent days that the six power talks with Iran were not just about its nuclear program but affected a wider spectrum, because the nuclear issue could be settled at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Tehran has made it clear that the continuation of nuclear diplomacy is contingent on the general recognition of Iran’s major power status.
The situation in Syria meanwhile continues to deteriorate disastrously amid conflicting claims about another massacre at the Hama village of Mazraat al-Qubeir: Opposition activists have disseminated video footage illustrating the slaughter of up to 70 people, including women and children, by Assad’s security forces and militiamen less than two weeks after the Houla massacre. This is denied by official sources in Damascus who say no more than nine people died at the hands of “terrorists.”

No independent testimony was available on the episode from the UN monitors, who set out for the Hama village. The UN Secretary said they turned back after they were fired on by small arms and would set out again Friday.
Kofi Annan warned that if nothing changes in Syria, the future holds all-out civil war. His words attested to the helplessness of the world body to put a stop of the bloodshed in Syria, combined with the Obama administration’s refusal to intervene in the crisis in the expectation that Russia and Iran would step up. That expectation has faded.

debkafile reported Wednesday, June 6: Israel remains dormant despite the serious consequences to its strategic and security situation threatened by the new proposal the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan is to present to the UN Thursday, June 7, for saving his peace plan. The nub of his proposal, debkafile’s sources disclose, is the creation of a “contact group” for handling the hot Syrian potato. It is to be composed of the five permanent Security Council members (US, UK, France, Russia and China) plus Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The proposal has won the blessing of the Obama administration, meaning its consent to letting the two powers that will dominate the contact group, Russia and Iran, determine the course and outcome of the Syrian crisis.
Washington believes that only they have the clout in the Syrian army for bringing about Bashar Assad’s removal and his replacement in Damascus by a provisional military regime.
Washington also hopes, according to our sources, that this gesture will give Moscow a strong incentive to lean hard on Tehran for concessions at the next round of its talk with the six world powers on June 13.
Neither Iran nor Moscow have promised the US anything of the sort, but the administration hopes Iran will start being forthcoming on its nuclear program after being permitted to assume a central role in Damascus.

There is less optimism outside administration circles and in Israel. They expect from Tehran nothing more at the next round of talks than token nuclear concessions, and none at all toward curtailing its work on a nuclear weapon.
However the Obama administration appears to have opted for this course, even though it is the first time since the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in December 2010 that the United States is willing to let go of a major Middle East crisis and allow its foremost Middle East rivals, Moscow and Tehran, to take charge.
debkafile reported exclusively on May 31, that President Barack Obama had proposed to President Vladimir Putin the creation of a large force of 5,000 international monitors for Syria, most of them Russians, to safeguard Assad’s stock of biological and chemical weapons against falling into the hands of al Qaeda or Syrian rebels. This team consisting of thousands of Russian troops would be the operational arm of the future “contact group.”

As far as Israel is concerned, the plan has disastrous connotations. Instead of containing the spread of hostile Iranian influence in the region, as Obama promised Israel, he is opening for the door for Iran to extend its nfluence squarely in the countries neighboring on – and still at war with – Israel, while at the same time moving back from a focused effort to draw the sting of Iran’s nuclear bomb program.
Israel’s political and security tacticians never took into account that a consequence of the Syrian revolt would be the establishment of full-blown Iranian sway over Damascus in partnership with Russia. Indeed, for 15 months, they insisted that the Syrian uprising was proof of America’s success in breaking up the dangerous Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis.