WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Quite unintentially, US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin find themselves landed with competing areas of influence in Syria, the outcome of their increasingly polarized policies. Not only is Syria heading for balkanization for lack of coherent international strategy for halting the bloodshed, but, to their dismay, both rival powers are being sucked ever deeper into the bottomless mire of Syrian civil strife.
As Moscow veered closer to Tehran, Washington marshaled its European and Arab allies.
This week, the temperature of US-Russian exchanges dropped to freezing.
From Tehran, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Wednesday, June 13, accused the US of supplying weapons to Syria’s rebels and so worsening the conflict. He was snapping back at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who a day earlier charged Moscow with sending attack helicopters to Syria for the Assad army to attack civilians. She said Moscow’s claim that its arms shipments to Syria were not connected with internal events was “simply not true.”
Russia, Lavrov retorted, was supplying conventional “anti-air defense systems” to Damascus in a deal that “in no way violates international laws. That contrasts with what the United States is doing,” he said, “which is providing arms to the Syrian opposition which are being used against the Syrian government.”
Rhetoric cooled as the powers split up Syria between them

Both were later reined in by their own governments. (See separate item on the British-German mediation bid.)
Before the two officials began flying off the handle, influential circles in Washington and Moscow quietly confirmed that Syria was becoming partitioned as a result of cautious and measured Middle East policy moves conducted by presidents Obama and Putin.
Each member of this precarious partnership recognized the limits of his strength, they said, and took care not to tread on his opposite number’s weak points so as to avoid exacerbating already tense relations.
Obama still firmly trusted he could rope in the Russian president on the Iranian nuclear issue by giving ground on Syria, whereas Putin’s interest was to avoid standing alone with Chinese President Hu Jintao once again, although the two had further deepened their understanding on Syria and Iran during the Russian president’s three-day (June 5-7) visit to Beijing.
This was confirmed in the official communiqué, “China and Russia have reinforced their opposition to foreign intervention in Syria” – while a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said, “Both countries remain opposed to any forced regime change.”

Russia’s contact group overwrites US-sponsored Friends of Syria

But then, the fragile partnership began falling apart.
Thursday, June 7, before Putin’s return home from Beijing, US Department of State Syria coordinator Fred Hoff arrived in Moscow and, along with US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, went straight into conference on Syria with the Kremlin’s Middle East envoy Mikhail Bogdanov and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov. Nothing was achieved.
In Istanbul, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a tough statement telling Iran to come to the next round of nuclear negotiations in Moscow on June 13 armed with “concrete steps” for curbing uranium enrichment up to 20 percent purity. Her words were addressed to Moscow to underscore Washington’s red lines for Iran – notwithstanding its willingness to work with Russia on Syria. Tehran responded by threatening not to come to the Moscow talks with the six powers.
By then, Obama administration strategists began to realize that the partnership arrangements with Moscow were going off the rails. This was further confirmed, by subsequent events. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington, Moscow had meanwhile forged ahead with its own diplomatic initiative.
The Kremlin demanded the dismantling of the US-sponsored “Friends of Syria,” which brought 70 nations together for two meetings, including Arab and Muslim powers, and its replacement with a UN Security Council-sponsored contact group, which must not exceed 10 nations: the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Rebels threaten lines between Russia’s Tartus and Latakia bases

This contact group was designed to eclipse US and allied West European and Arab dominance over international diplomacy for Syria and its transfer to the triumvirate of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran, who would also henceforth take the lead on Middle East issues at large.
Lavrov’s mission to Tehran this week was to present the new Syria “contact group’s” terms of reference as articulated in a special statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry June 11.
“We proceed from the fact that Iran should be among its participants, along with countries neighboring with Syria and other states that have influence on Syrian sides. Without Iran’s participation, the possibilities of constructive international influence on Syria will not be used in full.”
Moscow’s message for Washington was that full and equal Iranian participation in international steps for Syria was its sine qua non for continued understanding with the Obama administration.
Our sources in Moscow report that it’s hard to know exactly what caused this hardening of the Russian position on Assad.
At one level, Putin is seething over US support for the demonstrations against his presidency at home. However, in the Syrian arena, it may be attributed to the way the conflict had begun careening out of control. In particular, government forces had to be rushed to the coastal town of Latakia and the Alawite mountain-top town of al-Haffeh overlooking the coast to curb a rebel offensive. The rebels were threatening to cut the lines between Russia’s Mediterranean naval and marine bases in Tartus and Latakia and moved perilously close to the Syrian ruler’s mountain retreat under construction in the Alawite Mountains.

Moscow suspects US hand in the rebels’ Damascus attacks

Furthermore, last weekend (8-9 June), some 600 Free Syrian Army-FSA rebels struck three Damascus districts near the city center – one hitting a bus transporting Russian experts.
Assad sent in tanks to fight off the assault before it spread through the capital.
Tacticians in Moscow and Damascus calculated that since the FSA lacked the logistical and command ability to mount this sort of operation, Western or Arab intelligence – or both – must have set it up and taken part in its execution.
Russian intelligence suspected America was involved in the Damascus offensive with a view to its expansion until the violence forced Bashar Assad and his regime to flee the city for safer locations, such as the retreat he is finishing building in the Alawite Mountains. It is to be a fortress-city with many buildings and protected underground quarters to house government and military command centers.
While talk in the West focuses increasingly on Assad’s possible exile from Syria, Moscow appears to be coming around to accepting his eventual removal from Damascus – but only a far as his mountain retreat – not abroad.
This line of thinking is gaining impetus in Kremlin circles, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence and military sources report – both from the declining situation in Damascus and the realization in top Russian military and intelligence quarters that Assad is coming to the end of his line. At some point, he will have to gather in his family, regime heads and loyal military units and officers – still a majority of the Syrian army – and quit Damascus.

Leaving Assad to rule an Alawite coastal enclave linked to Lebanon

In so doing, he would abandon the restive south and the central region of northern Syria and move his army to the Mediterranean coastal strip. There he would consolidate his control while his army would also secure the Russian military facilities entrenched there.
According to those sources, this move would herald the establishment of an Alawite Syrian statelet or enclave along its Mediterranean coastal regions (see attached map).
This enclave would eventually link up with another Iranian ally, the Shiite Hizballah, which controls large tracts of Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast, to form a new Alawite-Shiite entity under joint Russian-Iranian protection encompassing the eastern Mediterranean coastal regions of both countries.
To promote this master plan, Assad’s army is now concentrating on the purging of rebel forces in the opposition-led towns of Hafa and Latakia which control those coastal and mountain areas.
This eventuality, which appears to be evolving into a Russian strategic goal, would drive the Syrian rebels and their US, Turkish, Saudi and Qatari sponsors into the thick of the sectarian violence spiraling in the northern, eastern and southern areas of Syria.
In the short term, the rebels are expected to redouble their assaults on the Alawite enclave in order to drive government forces into the sea. Assad’s Alawite adherents, helped by the Russians, will try to expand their enclave, provide it with strategic depth and cut the rebels off from access to the sea.
The sum total of these moves would be the balkanization of Syria, an objective which neither of the world powers contemplated when first setting out their policies.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Hillary Clinton

Washington and Moscow both stepped on the brakes late Wednesday and early Thursday, June 13-14, to shut down the fusillade of accusations shooting back and forth between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over weapons supplies to opposing sides of the Syrian conflict.
US intelligence circles coolly corrected Clinton’s allegation that Russia was supplying helicopters for the Assad regime to kill civilians, stating that Moscow was only returning damaged choppers from the Syrian arsenal after they underwent repairs in Russia, as per their sales contracts.
The Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov had been mistranslated: He had not accused the US of supplying arms to Syrian rebels – only to the region.
The sources in Washington went on to contradict Clinton’s denial of US arms supplies to Syrian rebels by confirming that, while US supplies were not direct, they were going through via third parties in the Gulf. The weapons in question were mostly anti-tank missiles channeled through Qatar and the United Arab Emirate.
Obama acted expeditiously to squelch the “Cold War” rhetoric of his secretary of state so as not to derail the current British-German effort to broker an understanding between Washington and Moscow for ending the civil war crisis in Syria.

Moscow and Washington agree that Assad must go, don’t they?

While the British are working through overt lines, the German channel is confidential, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report.
Thursday, June 14, Foreign Secretary William Hague met Lavrov in Kabul where both attended a conference of 29 governments on the future of Afghanistan.
Berlin, in contrast, is working through the secret channel used by the German Central Intelligence Agency, the BND, to communicate with its opposite numbers in Moscow, and the link between German and Russian defense ministries. These arms of Russian government execute Vladimir Putin’s Syrian policy.
The two mediators carried six messages to Russian officials:
1. At this juncture, neither the Obama administration nor European Union governments has any intention of using military force in Syria.
2. Neither is any “light military intervention” planned.
3. Since Washington and Moscow both, at least in their public statements, accept the possibility of Bashar Assad stepping down, there is no reason why they should not agree to Alawite political leaders and Syrian army chiefs, most of whom belong to this sect, escorting Assad and his family to an airplane flying them to exile in Moscow.

Moscow must agree to heavy weapons for the rebels

This would take place after agreement is reached on the makeup of the transitional military government and a general is chosen as its head.
The British and German brokers were to assure the Russians that this arrangement would serve their interests.
4. This message sought to straighten the record. Kremlin policy errs in relying on Russian intelligence figures to gauge the proportion of Assad’s Alawite sect in relation to the general population of Syria, because those figures come from a 30-year old population census. The European go-betweens were asked to point out to Russian officials that contemporary Alawite numbers are 20-30 percent below the official figure of 2.2 million, and therefore far below 10 percent of the total population of 22 million souls.
The Russians are therefore doing themselves a disservice by putting all their Syrian eggs in the Alawite basket.
5. Alawite civilians or members of the military will never defy the Syrian president until they are sure the rebels are armed with weapons capable of vanquishing the Syrian army.
Therefore, the two intermediaries must persuade the Russians to countenance US, Arab and European arms supplies to the Syrian rebels according to lists approved jointly by Washington and Moscow. Disaffected Alawites would then step forward to get rid of the president and replace him.

Russians more amenable to reassessing Assad’s fate

DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources explain that the issue of who supplied the two sides of the Syrian conflict with what was the crux of the scrap between Clinton and Lavrov.
6. In the view of British and Germany policy-makers, the Obama and Putin administrates share a pressing interest in bringing the vicious bloodshed in Syria to an end, because the longer it goes on, the more likely it is that radical Islamist Salafi elements will use it to seize control of the Syrian uprising as a parachute to power in Damascus.
German officials handling the contacts with Moscow have told our sources they have noticed a shift in Russia’s solid backing for Assad and his regime. Officials in Moscow were disappointed to see the Syrian ruler resorting in the past two weeks to massive artillery and tank bombardments for winning the war.
After this tactic failed, they appeared to be rather more amenable to a fresh assessment of what is to become of Bashar Assad.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Catherine Ashton and Saeed Jalili

In a rapid succession of phone conversations, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton EU Foreign Policy Coordinator Catherine Ashton settled on a strategy for pinning Iran down to attending the third round of nuclear talks with the six powers (US, Russia, France, UK, China and Germany) taking place in Moscow on June 18-19.
Following the guidelines they agreed, Ashton, who heads the six-power negotiating team, had a long conversation with senior Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili.
The two versions published after that conversation both exposed the major concessions that were made to meet Iran’s demands.
Tehran presented its version as, “We are ready to hold talks in Moscow on Iran’s 5-item proposals (presented) in Baghdad, which included nuclear and non-nuclear issues.”
Ashton’s version: “The Iranians agreed on the need for Iran to engage on the (six powers’) proposals, which address its concerns on the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program.”
One communiqué embodies six-power consent to award Iran major power status in non-nuclear issues such as Syria and Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal in the framework of the region’s nuclear disarmament.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 544 of June 8: Radical Nuclear Negotiator Jalili in Line as Iran’s President)
Ashton’s statement endorsed “the exclusively peaceful nature” of its program. This would seem to make the entire international nuclear diplomacy set-up superfluous.
Neither touched on the uranium enrichment issue at the core of the nuclear controversy with Iran

Tehran forces world power recognition of its equal status

In a single phone conversation, therefore, Tehran achieved three of its primary goals:
1. International recognition of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program;
2. With the nuclear issue out of the way, Iran can redirect the Moscow talks into global avenues and force the six powers to heed its voice on such matters as Afghanistan, Syria and the Palestinians;
3. Iran will face the six world powers as an equal and make up a seventh.
Given the achievements Tehran chalked up in a single conversation with the EU’s foreign executive, the Moscow session’s outcome is easily predicted.
The day before that phone call, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report two American exercises designed for muscle-flexing opposite Iran:
— The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln-CVN 72, accompanied by the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS New York-LPD 21 and the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Porter-DDG 78, crossed the Strait of Hormuz.
On board the New York is the 24^th Marine Expeditionary Unit-24^th MEU – the same 2,200 US Marines who for three weeks in May took part in the big Eager Lion 2012 military exercise on Jordan’s southern shore alongside Saudi and Jordanian special forces.

Iran is not impressed by US muscle-flexing

That terrain resembles the Iranian coast which those marines now face opposite the three islands which control the entry to the Strait of Hormuz – Abu Musa, Greater Tanb and Lesser Tanb.
In that exercise the marines drilled raids on beaches and the rapid seizure of fortified bases and command centers located in mountains overlooking the beaches, which closely simulated Iranian Revolutionary Guard special marine forces command centers.
— The USS Enterprise aircraft carrier and its strike force moved over to the Arabian Sea off the southern coast of Iran, not far from the Iran-Afghanistan border and opposite Chabahar, the most modern Iranian naval and air base and its best access point to the Indian Ocean.
Neither American military move appeared to impress Tehran into moderating its diplomatic tactics or easing its hard-line demands. Iran is clearly acting on the assumption that the United and Israel have given up on plans to attack its nuclear sites.

‘Olmert bombed Syria despite US d… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Photo: Courtesy ISIS Former prime minister Ehud Olmert decided in September 2007 to bomb the al-Kabir nuclear facility in Syria after then-president George W. Bush told him the US had opted for the diplomatic route and would try to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to close the site, Elliott Abrams told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Asked about Wednesday’s Israeli State Comptroller’s Report chastising the government for a haphazard decision-making process, Abrams said Bush was provided with impeccable options, policy papers and intelligence.

“We took it all to the president – covert options, military options, diplomatic options – and he chose the wrong option,” said Abrams, who at the time was the deputy national security advisor in the White House. “It is a mistake to believe that the process itself will provide you with the right answer.”

The State Comptroller’s Report was highly critical of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for not fully empowering his National Security Council, as mandated by law, and for a sloppy, informal decision-making process leading up to the Mavi Marmara raid in May 2010.

Abrams, however, used the Syrian nuclear facility issue to illustrate that what is more important than thorough preparation and a good process is the right people making the right decisions. He also said that some of the best White House meetings were informal ones where no notes were taken.

He said that his preferred option in the summer of 2007, when intelligence information emerged that the Syrians were building a nuclear facility, was for Israel to take it out in order for Jerusalem to rebuild its deterrence capability following the Second Lebanon War a year earlier. He added that then-vice president Dick Cheney argued for the US to bomb the facility itself to rebuild America’s deterrence capability.

Cheney, in his memoirs In My Time, wrote that not only would a US strike demonstrate America’s seriousness concerning nonproliferation, “it would enhance our credibility in that part of the world, taking us back to where we were in 2003, after we had taken down the Taliban, taken down Saddam’s regime, and gotten Gaddafi to turn over his nuclear program.”

But the option Bush chose, some six weeks before Israel acted, was the one preferred by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice: Make the existence of the facility public and then go to the IAEA and UN and build an international consensus to get the Syrians to close it.

Abrams said he thought the idea was “absurd” and that Syrian President Bashar Assad would defy the IAEA and do nothing.

When Bush informed Olmert of the US decision in July 2007, Abrams recalled, Olmert said the strategy was unacceptable to Israel. It was clear to everyone that from this point on there would be no sharing of plans and that “Israel would let us know afterward,” he said.

Indeed, according to Abrams, Israel informed Washington immediately after the September 7, 2007, strike. A decision was then made not to “rub the Syrians’ nose in the matter” by making it public, thinking that if everyone remained quiet Assad would not be compelled to hit back. Indeed, news of the attack began trickling out in the Turkish media a couple of weeks afterward when jettisoned parts of Israeli fighter jets were found in Turkish territory.

Relating to the comptroller’s report, which he had only read about, Abrams – here for a conference on US-Israel relations that begins on Monday at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan – said that in the US the National Security Council serves as a powerful counterweight to the military on national security policy. In Israel, though, where the IDF is a dominant institution, there is no equivalent counterbalance.

He said both “no” and “yes” when asked whether he thought the IDF wielded too much policy-making power in Israel.

“No, in that given the security situation here it would be hard to define what is ‘too much,’” he said. “[The IDF] should be a critical factor in most decisions.”

The “yes,” he added, was because it takes a lot of determination and political strength to disagree with the military, “because they may be right, and [the prime minister] may be wrong.”

If the prime minister were to go against the military, Abrams said, he would inevitably be met with leaks by officers asking what he truly knows about security matters and whether military issues should not be within the purview of the military.

This, in turn, could lead to public relations and political problems, with the prime minister asking himself at the end of the day why he needs the headache and whether it would not just be wiser to go along with the military’s position.

In that type of scenario, Abrams said, the prime minister must be extremely determined to want to go up against the defense establishment

International – Jeffrey Goldberg – Shimon Peres: ‘Only America Can Manage the Iran Situation’ – The Atlantic.

Jun 14 2012, 12:19 PM ET 105

(Part One of a Two-Part Interview)

Each time I see Shimon Peres, the 9th President of Israel, I’m filled with a sort of wistfulness: Imagine if it were this man who was leading his country’s Foreign Ministry today, and not the current minister, who is so vulgar and embarrassing that his own government forces him to sneak in and out of Washington. Not so with Peres, who last night was awarded, in the presence of a former President, Bill Clinton, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by the current president, Barack Obama. Peres, who turns 89 this year, and is the last living connection in the Israeli government to Israel’s founding father, his mentor David Ben-Gurion, seems, at least for him, somewhat awed by the honor. He is America-centric, a man who can articulate the idea of American exceptionalism better than most Americans. He is also partial to the two presidents he sat with last night at the White House. Of Obama, he says, “My God is he smart.” And of Obama’s commitment to Israel, he said he has no doubt.

The ceremony last night was a tribute to Peres, and his efforts – many flawed, but all sincere – to bring peace to Israel, and to bring about the birth of a Palestinian state. It was also a bit of a display of passive-aggressiveness by the White House, which venerates Peres, Israel’s titular leader, while not appreciating very much at all Israel’s actual governing leader, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The show of affection was designed, it seems, to send a message to Netanyahu: Try a bit harder to bring about peace, and you, too, will be welcomed to the White House the way we welcomed Peres.

A couple of weeks ago, David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic, and I sat down with Peres in his garden in Jerusalem to talk about Israel’s relationship with the U.S., about Iran and the Palestinians, about the future of brain research (Peres can go on long riffs about science), and about the person who may be his favorite Jew in the world, Mark Zuckerberg. Two years ago, Peres, in a meeting in Jerusalem, asked me, “What is the name of the Jewish boy with the Facebook? Zuckerberger?” I said, “Zuckerberg.” He answered: “I met him. A very nice boy. Also the Jewish boy from Google, a nice boy.” (That would be Sergey Brin.)

In the two years since, Peres has gotten his own Facebook page, and has developed an elaborate theory of Zuckerberg, that he is a symbol of both Jewish ingenuity and the soaring spirit of American individual achievement. What he’s looking for in Israel, in its energetic hi-tech sector, is the next Zuckerberg, he suggests. Science, creativity, and intellect are what will save Israel, he believes — as opposed to holding on to specific pieces of territory.

In a meandering and charming conversation, Peres talked about the presidents he has known at some length. Ronald Reagan seems to be a personal favorite, along with George H.W. Bush and Clinton. The first president he met was Harry S. Truman, the man who helped make Israel a reality by recognizing it moments after it declared itself born. “With Truman I was surprised. I took him as a simple man, but he had a great sense of history, in part because of his Bible background. He had the strength of his convictions. He was elemental.”

The first president he worked with closely was John F. Kennedy, and he told us a startling story about the day Kennedy forced Peres to create, on the fly, Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity – not fully admitting that it possesses nuclear weapons.

“I was then the deputy defense minister, and the president invited me to the White House, but through the back rooms. I went with our ambassador in Washington, and I came in and Kennedy started to ask me questions like a machine gun, about our intelligence chief, about other issues. One after another, the questions. All of a sudden he said, ‘Do you have a nuclear bomb?’ I said, ‘Mr. President, I assure you, Israel will not be the first country to introduce a nuclear weapon into the Middle East.’ I didn’t have a better answer.”

He went on, “When I left the room our ambassador said, ‘How dare you say that. You can’t make government policy.’ And I said, ‘What would you like me to do, tell him, ‘ Mr. President, just a moment,  I will ask our government for an answer.’ Then I got a cable from the prime minister, saying, ‘How dare you?’ And then of course, it became official policy. This has been the official policy answer of Israel for half a century.”

Peres makes it clear that on the most pressing matter of the day, Iran, and its nuclear intentions, he is, in some ways, the leader of the opposition: He argues, in the manner of Meir Dagan, the former Mossad chief, that there is little feasible way for Israel to carry out a successful strike against Iran. The actual strike could work, but it’s the day after that worries him. What also worries him are the consequences of extreme Israeli unilateralism: “One of the things the United States does well is building coalitions. What the U.S. knows is that if you don’t have a coalition with you, you will have a coalition against you. I don’t want to see China and Russia on the side of Iran more strongly than they are.”

Peres, of course, is the father of the Israeli nuclear program, and, that day in the garden, we put a question to him that he’s usually uncomfortable answering: As someone with direct experience in creating a nuclear program, would armed intervention be effective in stopping the Iranians?

“You can answer it in two ways,” he said. “I think of the case of Iraq (the 1981 Israeli strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor) and of Syria (the 2007 Israeli strike on Syria’s nascent nuclear program a strike not acknowledged by Israeli leaders publicly, but apparently acknowledged publicly by Peres).  Those were single shots. But you must think of this in a comprehensive way. You have to ask what is the next step. Suppose someone will destroy the installations in Iran. Iran is not Syria or Iraq, it is a different story, a larger land. This is a situation in which we would need the United States. Only the United States could manage the Iran situation. You would need someone to handle the verification, because otherwise you postpone for two years or three years or who knows? You would have to think about coalitions. You would you have to focus on second steps and third steps, who will be with you, who will be against you, what will the Iranian people do. There are so many questions. You can’t just think about the thinkable.”

He suggested that some of Israel’s leaders underplay the potential impact of a strike on the Iranian people. “Every time Ben-Gurion had a French visitor he would ask him, ‘ Why did you lose the war?’ I felt uncomfortable when he did this. I told him one day that I had investigated why the French lost the war. He asked for the reason. I said the French lost the war because the enemy didn’t cooperate.”

Peres does not seem to harbor illusions about Iran: “We don’t threaten Iran. It is they who deny the Shoah while threatening a Shoah.” But he thinks the U.S. is the only country with the capability to handle the Iranian threat. We cannot do what America can do, with all due respect to ourselves. If you are attacked, you must defend yourself. But if you take the initiative you have to take into account the consequences.”

I’ll have more of our conversation with Peres in part two of this post.

U.S. Military Announces Syria War Plans Are Ready.

 Posted by Alexander Higgins – June 14, 2012 at 4:11 pm – Permalink – Source via Alexander Higgins Blog

The U.S. military has completed plans to conduct operations against Syria which all involve large numbers of U.S. troops and extended operation.

Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells CNN that the U.S. military has completed planning to conduct a variety of military operations against Syria in the event orders are issued.

The plans outline a variety of operations which Pentagon officials tell CNN all involve a large number of U.S. troops and involve a long-term deployment into the region.

The Pentagon’s war plans seem to focus on three areas of importance – direct military actions Syria, securing alleged weapons of mass destruction depots, and providing military support to neighboring nations to keep the war contained within Syria.

Officials warn the civil war inside Syria will lead to a situation on the ground with a level of violence committed by insurgent forces far greater than what the US faced in Iraq.

The article screams of propaganda, specifically stating the United States has already started Jordan troops to conduct operations against Syria, revelations that will undoubtedly lead to a rift between Syria and Jordan.

In fact much of the article focuses on the them of military operations being conducted against Syria from within Jordan.

The article details plans to put U.S. troops on the ground in Jordan and to provide Jordan troops air support to assist them in crossing over the border into Syria.

According the the Pentagon Jordan’s special forces would need to be inserted into Syria within hours of the start of military operations to secure the chemical and biological weapons sites within Syria to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of terrorists.

CNN reports:

U.S. military completes planning for Syria

The U.S. military has completed its own planning for how American troops would conduct a variety of operations against Syria, or to assist neighboring countries in the event action was ordered, officials tell CNN.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has finalized its assessment of what types of units would be needed, how many troops, and even the cost of certain potential operations, officials tell CNN.

[…]

A senior U.S. official said the [recent] developments [of sectarian violence] have been a matter of discussion in the Obama administration.”There is a sense that if the sectarian violence in Syria grows, it could be worse than what we saw in Iraq,” the official said.

The military planning includes a scenario for a no-fly zone as well as protecting chemical and biological sites. Officials say all the scenarios would be difficult to enact and involve large numbers of U.S. troops and extended operations.

[…]

The U.S. Navy is maintaining a presence of three surface combatants and a submarine in the eastern Mediterranean to conduct electronic surveillance and reconnaissance on the Syrian regime, a senior Pentagon official said. The official emphasized that the U.S. routinely maintains this type of naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, but acknowledged the current focus is on Syria.

The United States, Britain and France have all been discussing contingency scenarios, potential training and sharing of intelligence about what is happening in Syria with neighboring countries including Jordan, Turkey and Israel. But it is Jordan, so far, that is most seeking the help because of its relatively small military and potential need for outside help if unrest in southern Syria were to impact Jordan’s security.

U.S. special forces are training and advising Jordanian troops on a range of specific military tasks they might need to undertake if unrest in Syria spills over into Jordan or poses a threat to that country, three Defense Department officials told CNN. The officials declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the training. Jordanian officials also are refusing to publicly confirm details, but a senior Middle Eastern government official also confirmed details to CNN.

The U.S. has been training in Jordan using mainly special operations forces under a program called Joint Combined Exchange Training, which sends troops overseas to train foreign soldiers and units in specific missions. Jordan’s major security concern is that if the Syrian regime were to suddenly collapse, then it would face unrest on its northern border, as well as the possibility of large refugee flows, weapons smuggling into Jordan, and potential disarray in Syria’s chemical and biological weapons complex. Jordan also is considering how and where to potentially set up humanitarian assistance bases inside its borders, another matter the U.S. is advising it on.

The Jordanians do not believe regime of Bashir al-Assad would attack them. But they have made it clear to the United States they want the training so they are ready to move quickly if any scenario develops that could destabilize their country, which is already reeling politically from a collapsing economy. While there’s no formal agreement, one of the U.S. officials said the U.S. would come to the defense and support of Jordan in the event any of the Syria scenarios pose a challenge.

While there is no current scenario for putting U.S. troops on the ground in Jordan or Syria, the U.S. could wind up providing air support to move Jordanian troops to the border. In addition, American forces could provide a wide range of intelligence and surveillance capabilities to Jordan so they would have up-to-date information on what is happening on the Syrian side of their border region. In one of the most extreme scenarios, a small unit of Jordanian troops could move into Syria to protect a chemical or biological weapons site.

U.S. satellites are monitoring the chemical and biological weapons sites around the clock, and so far “there is no reason to believe they are not secure,” one of the U.S. officials said.

The U.S. believes the facilities are guarded by some of the most elite Alawite troops loyal to al-Assad. But the official noted that the opposition forces appear to be gaining strength in some areas, and that the United States, Jordan and the allies are concerned that as the amount of al-Assad controlled territory shrinks, some of those critical facilities could be open to attacks, pilfering or efforts by terrorist groups to buy material.

“This is getting a fair amount of attention,” another U.S. official told CNN. Also discussed with Jordanian forces was the possible need for U.S. chemical and biological weapons detecting equipment, the official said.

The overall assessment by the U.S. is that in the event some action had to be taken to secure Syrian chemical, biological or weapons facilities, troops from some country would have to enter Syria in a matter of hours.

This latest training is said to be separate from the recent multinational “Eager Lion 2012″ training exercise that took place in Jordan.

During that exercise, U.S. and Jordanian troops also practiced many of the same scenarios, but the JCET training is much more focused, according to the officials.

Source:CNN