WarSclerotic

Jordan: Assad sent assassins to kill foes – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Jordanian officials charge that Syria’s president sent agents to Hashemite kingdom, say arrests prevented attacks against refugees, assassinations of former Assad soldiers

Smadar Peri

Jordanian officials are charging that Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s regime sent would-be-assassins into the Hashemite kingdom in order to kill dissidents, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

The agents reportedly entered Jordan under the guise of refugees and Syrian opposition activists seeking asylum.

Jordan says that local intelligence officials detained Assad’s agents, thereby preventing terror attacks against Syrian refugees and assassinations of soldiers and officers that defected from Assad’s army.

The Jordanians accused Syria of also planning to assassinate local officials in an effort to destabilize the Hashemite kingdom as punishment for hosting Assad’s foes.

‘Armed agents nabbed’

The arrests of Assad’s agents at refugee tents along the border with Syria and elsewhere prompted Jordanian officials to introduce stricter rules for taking in Syrian refugees.

Thus far, more than 125,000 Syrian refugees were reportedly taken in by Jordan. According to the new regulations issued by security officials, would-be-refugees must report to Jordan’s embassy in Damascus and present relevant documents before coming in.

Meanwhile, Saudi newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Thursday that dozens of Assad supporters and Syrian intelligence agents were nabbed in Jordan in possession of smuggled arms and were returned to Damascus.

Russia denies allegations

Elsewhere, Russia, which has come under increasing criticism from the West for arms deliveries to Syria, responded to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s allegations that attack helicopters were on the way from Russia to Syria.

In a statement on the Foreign Ministry website, Russia said it had made no new deliveries of military helicopters to Syria but under old contracts it had repaired helicopters sent to Syria “many years ago.”

“There are no new deliveries of Russian military helicopters to Syria. All arms industry cooperation with Syria is limited to a transfer of defensive arms,” the ministry said on its website.

West and Russia not discussing Assad’s departure: Lavrov.

Friday, 15 June 2012

Russia is not holding discussions with other nations on a political solution to the crisis in Syria that would see President Bashar al-Assad leaving power, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

Lavrov also stressed that Russia would insist on Iran joining any future international talks on the crisis.

The escalating bloodshed in Syria is hampering a hard-won U.N. observer force’s ability to carry out its mission, its chief Major General Robert Mood said on Friday.

“The escalating violence is limiting our ability to observe, verify reports as well as assist in local dialogue and stability,” the veteran Norwegian peacekeeper told reporters in Damascus.

“Violence, over the past 10 days, has been intensifying, again willingly by both the parties, with losses on both sides and significant risks to our observers.”

A U.N. convoy trying to reach the town of Al-Haffa under siege by regime troops, came under fire on Tuesday and was forced to turn back by a stone-throwing crowd of pro-regime residents of a nearby village.

The observer team was finally able to visit the town on Thursday, finding it all but deserted with a strong stench of dead bodies and most state buildings burned to the ground.

Mood said it was the Syrian people who were suffering the consequences of the increased violence. “In some locations, civilians have been trapped by ongoing operations,” the general said.

“The six-point plan does not belong to Kofi Annan, it does not belong to UNSMIS (United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria). It belongs to the Syrian parties that have accepted it and the international community that endorsed it.

“There is no other plan on the table, yet it is not being implemented.”

Mood expressed concern that neither side was willing to bring about a “peaceful transition”.

“Instead there is a push towards advancing military positions,” he said.

“This is not a static mission,” he stressed, adding that the observer mission’s mandate would soon come under review by the Security Council.

“It is important that the parties give this mission a chance.”

From their side, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday it was working around the clock to provide food and medical assistance to thousands of civilians who have fled the escalating violence in Syria.

ICRC water engineers were also trying to upgrade supplies or deliver clean drinking water to the displaced staying in the flashpoint areas of Homs and Houla, it said.

“The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are carrying on with their efforts to help the tens of thousands of people in fighting-stricken areas in the shortest possible time,” it said in a statement issued in Geneva.

The ICRC, the only international agency to deploy aid workers in Syria, said its teams have visited Aleppo, Idlib city and surrounding rural areas, and al-Nabak, some 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Damascus, in the past week.

“More and more people are in need of help,” said Alexandre Equey, deputy head of the ICRC delegation in Syria. “In some areas, people are unable to get out, and help cannot get in.”

In a strategy aimed at ensuring supplies are on hand if fighting breaks out, it has delivered food, mattresses, blankets and medical items to branches of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent all over the country.

TheP5 +1, Iran and the Perils of Nuclear Brinkmanship – International Crisis Group.

Washington/Vienna/Brussels  |   15 Jun 2012

Read the media release in Persian

The nuclear negotiations with Iran that resume in Moscow on Monday are likely to hit a wall and, without a change in approach, risk break-down with dire consequences.

The P5+1, Iran and the Perils of Nuclear Brinkmanship, the latest International Crisis Group briefing, examines the diplomatic rollercoaster, from the rush of optimism that followed the April session in Istanbul to the pessimism resulting from last month’s Baghdad talks and proposes a pragmatic way forward. Washington and Brussels seem to count on sanctions to force Iran to compromise. Tehran appears to bank on a re-elected President Obama displaying more flexibility and an economically-incapacitated Europe fearing the adverse consequences of tougher sanctions. None of this is likely. If prospects for a deal fade, mutual escalation is more probable – and pressure by Israel for a military strike.

“If negotiations collapse now, it is hard to know what comes next”, says Ali Vaez, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Iran. “The optimism that greeted the Istanbul talks was largely illusory. Success was measured against a negative starting point – the absence of talks for the preceding fifteen months and a series of escalatory steps by all sides in the interim”.

Istanbul was largely devoid of polemics but also of substance. All were on their best behaviour, because they shared a tactical goal: to gain time and avoid a crisis that could lead to an Israeli military strike.  Iran saw benefit in delaying pending sanctions; the P5+1 (the Security Council permanent members plus Germany) feared further regional instability could send oil prices soaring, complicating Europe’s recovery and Obama’s re-election. But, that commonality aside, the parties had widely differing expectations. European and U.S. officials believed Tehran came to the table due to the devastating impact of sanctions and fear of an attack. Iran felt it was in the driver’s seat, having increased its low-enriched uranium stockpile, enriched at higher levels and completed the underground Fordow facility. Both felt confident; neither was in a mood to give in. In Baghdad, it showed.

Should progress not soon be forthcoming, the diplomatic process could grind to a halt. Even if it eventually resumes, precedent teaches that reciprocal escalatory steps are likely and that the hiatus could last longer than anticipated. Meanwhile, Israel will look warily at Iran’s growing stockpile of enriched uranium, and even though the Islamic Republic is years away from acquiring a bomb, might believe the time has come to take military action.

This argues for new thinking, beginning at Moscow. The sides should agree to ongoing, technical-level negotiations for a limited agreement on Iran’s 20 per cent enrichment and drop some demands: there will not be significant sanctions relief at this stage, and it is equally unlikely Iran will close Fordow, its only installation that could resist an Israeli strike. In exchange for Iran’s suspension of 20 per cent enrichment and conversion of its stockpile, the West should offer its own serious concessions, related to easing the sanctions and recognition in principle of its right to enrich.

“The talks could well fail. Then, the goal will be to avert all kinds of destructive steps, including military confrontation, the most destructive of all”, says Robert Malley, Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director. “But, before reaching that phase, there is much work to do to see if a deal can be reached and if what little optimism is left over from Istanbul can still be salvaged”.

Israeli experts predict that after US elections, attack on Iran nuclear facilities imminent | Alaska Dispatch.

JERUSALEM — The countdown to a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations appears to be inching closer to the zero hour. Some experts in Israel are predicting an attack soon after the US election in November.

“The United States has been very clear about their red line being the acquisition of weapons,” said an Israeli expert on Iran, speaking on background. “If Iran takes steps toward the acquisition of weapons in the next few months, I don’t doubt that the American president would take military action.”

Analysts here say that the possibility of a strike, either by the US or by Israel, seems more and more likely as diplomatic negotiations sputter, European companies lose patience with economic sanctions, and Iranian leaders and Western powers engage in a new round of verbal sparring.

Non-European based subsidiaries of European companies, for example, have already begun to claim exemptions from participating in the sanctions on Iran, which would undermine the US effort to pressure the country into giving up what the US believes is a militarized nuclear program.

Iran’s chief negotiator, meanwhile, has threatened to withdraw from the third round of talks, now scheduled for June 18 in Moscow. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton countered that Iran must be prepared to “take concrete steps” if it wishes to continue talks.

The United States is particularly concerned about the International Atomic Energy Agency’s announcement on May 25 that it believed Iran was enriching uranium to 20 percent, for which there is no known civilian use. Iran, meanwhile, deflected questions about the announcement, and continues to maintain that its nuclear enrichment program exists solely for non-military use.

“As things are, I think the chance is 100 percent,” an Israeli intelligence officer told GlobalPost, referring to a possible strike. “But we don’t know who will attack, or when.”

“Quite honestly, things are not at a healthy place,” said Ilan Berman, the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council and an expert on Iran. “We are talking about the reactivation of a negotiations track that so far has not led to tangible benefits for the US and its allies but has, on the other hand, led to many tangible benefits for Iran.”

Berman, like the Israeli government, thinks that in the absence of verifiable evidence that Iran’s not seeking to militarize its nuclear program, the continuing international discussions serve as no more than a fig leaf for Iran.

Severe sanctions against the country’s central bank and against importing Iranian oil are set to begin over the next few weeks. But Berman points out that European companies are already chafing at the limitations being imposed on them, and are requesting exemptions in the face of the added cost of non-Iranian oil.

“Diplomacy inherently works to Iran’s advantage,” Berman said. “It allows the regime greater time to work on its nuclear effort. It is hard to envision that in the midst of these negotiations, there’s going to be a dramatic tightening of sanctions. It will make a deal more difficult to achieve.”

Speaking to the German newspaper Bild on July 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed this sentiment.

“The demands that accompany the sanctions are inadequate,” he told the paper. “You apply this whole set of pressures — for what? For practically nothing! Iran could stop the 20 percent enrichment at any moment now and not in any way retard their advancement in their [civilian] nuclear program.”

Netanyahu listed three demands Iran should meet to avoid an attack: The halt of all uranium enrichment, the removal from Iran of all enriched uranium and the dismantling of the underground nuclear bunker in Qum, which is a point of noteworthy concern in Jerusalem.

Many observers are troubled by the possibility that Iran’s recent acquiescence to full international inspections is, in fact, not much more than a ruse.

This concern was heightened last week with the publication of images that appear to show major installations being destroyed at the Parchin nuclear refinement facility. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which released the images, said Iran might be attempting to hide the tracks of its nuclear enrichment before the arrival of international inspectors.

“Buildings are being torn down, and it looks like they could be cleansing the site, not wanting someone to inspect it,” said David Albright, ISIS’s president.

If so, it is a tactic Iran has used before. In 2004, six industrial-sized buildings at a nuclear research center were razed. The IAEA was then allowed to sample the rubble. The site is now a soccer complex.

Both the United States and Israel have always refused to rule out a military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Nevertheless, amid radio silence and conflicting signals, it is unclear whether the United States and Israel fundamentally agree or disagree on the basic facts of an Iranian threat.

Albright said the differences between the two nations can be measured in terms of each one’s ability to respond to a potential Iranian move to weaponize its nuclear stores.

“Their military capabilities lead them to look at things differently. The United States has no trouble destroying the Fordow enrichment plant,” Albright said, referring to the underground facility outside the city of Qum. “The US can make sure it is not operational. Israel may not be able to do that. That means the US can be a little more relaxed about Iranian nuclear capabilities developing. If Iran moves to make nuclear weapons, they can be struck militarily.”

The situation remains ever more volatile and murky, with many Israelis convinced their government is planning an attack. Public fighting among senior intelligence officers has not lessened these concerns. Speaking at the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Israeli Chief of Staff General Benny Gantz derided former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who has argued against the usefulness of an attack on Iran in recent months.

“People boast about things they don’t know,” Gantz said. “If they once knew something about Iran, it doesn’t mean they know anything now.”

Others see a calmer outlook — for now. Meir Javedanfar, a professor at the InterDisciplinary Center in Herzliya, views talk of an attack with skepticism, at least until US elections.

“The fact that the chances of an attack have receded will place more focus on other powerful methods of isolating the Iranian government. I think the Iranian government should really worry about the possibility of a military attack after the US election, especially if all is quiet in Israel.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Dong-Feng 21 ballistic missiles

King Abdullah restored National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan to favor for a very special mission. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources reveal that the talented former ambassador to the US was recently brought back from exile to conduct secret negotiations with China for the oil kingdom’s acquisition of single-nuclear warhead, medium-range MRBM ballistic missiles – the Dong-Feng 21 (DF-21) model (NATO code name CSS-5).
After acting as the king’s confidential coordinator of Saudi intelligence in the Arab revolt, Bandar removed himself (or was removed) some months ago from Riyadh to escape the royal infighting plaguing the court.
Facing him across the negotiating table in Beijing was Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie who reported directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The first Saudi approach for these missiles was made when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called on the Saudi monarch on January 15. In their official communiqué, the two leaders announced they had “agreed to make concerted efforts to enhance bilateral relations under a strategic framework.”
The phrase “under a strategic framework” referred to the Saudi request for Chinese nuclear missiles.

The Saudis keep one-third of their missiles ready for instant launch

Saudi Arabia’s present arsenal, our military sources report, contains three Chinese CSS-2 ballistic missile batteries from the 1970s (IRBM, with conventional warheads and a range of 2,600 kilometers), the oldest type of liquid propellant ballistic missiles in the Chinese inventory.
Responsible for their maintenance is a Chinese missile corps battalion composed mostly of missile technicians who are employed at three military facilities – Sulail, 500 kilometers south of Riyadh near the Khamis Mushait military complex, which is Headquarters of the Saudi Southern Area Command and home to the Field Artillery and Infantry Schools and to the King Khalid Air Base; Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, 77 kilometers south of Riyadh; and Al-Dilam, also south of Riyadh and bordering on the Sultan Air Base.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources note that the Saudis keep their ballistic missiles in three stages of readiness – those at Sulail sit on pads prepared for instantaneous launch; those at Al Kharj are also on launching pads with their tanks half full; and the third group is still in storage at Al-Dilam.
The newest updated variants of the DF-21s are capable of delivering either nuclear warheads or conventional weapons. They have a maximum range of 1,700 kilometers and a payload of 600 kg. Submunitions with high explosives and chemical warheads are believed to be available.

A colossal price payable in 23 years’ worth of oil supplies

Confident that Washington was unaware of the secret negotiations going on in Beijing, our intelligence sources report the Saudis offered the Chinese two major incentives for the deal:
1. The fabulous sum of $60 billion in payment for the purchase of the missiles. Part of the package would be the construction of new bases to house them in Saudi desert regions most inaccessible for Iranian attack.
2. Since solid investment outlets are hard to find in the global economy’s present state and Beijing suffers from a surfeit of cash, Bandar also put on the table as part of the price a long-term Saudi commitment to cover all of China’s oil needs until the year 2035, no matter what happens in the interim and irrespective even of an oil crisis besetting the desert kingdom.
Never before has any oil-producing country offered such terms – least of all the world’s largest oil exporter. In effect, Gulf sources point out, Riyadh agreed to open its oil fields to partial Chinese control for the sake of gaining nuclear missiles.
Not surprisingly, Chinese President Hu informed the Saudi King of his assent to the transaction once all the particulars are ironed out.
One of the weightiest would be the criteria to be fixed for calculating the price of oil on sale to China and the number of barrels; whether the baseline would be the 2020 or 2030 market prices.

Back-up talks for Pakistan’s Gauri nuclear missiles

Also to be decided is how China will get around its signature on the Missile Technology Control Regime, the MTCR, an informal and voluntary association of countries dedicated to the non-proliferation of unmanned systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction.
Another snag is presented by the commitments Riyadh undertook in signing nuclear conventions at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report further that Saudi Arabia has launched back-up negotiations with Pakistan for the purchase of its Ghauri nuclear ballistic missiles in case the transaction with China falls through.

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.