Drill simulating chemical missile explosion held in Petah Tikva – Israel News, Ynetnews.
Police forces, Magen David Adom and fire and rescue services are currently holding a drill simulating the explosion of a chemical rocket in at the Moshava stadium in Petah Tikva. Heavy emergency services traffic will be felt in the region during the drill. (Ra’anan Ben-Zur)
Netanyahu, Clinton vow cooperatio… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Monday night and vowed cooperation on a broad range of issues, with Iran standing out, in particular, among them.
“We have our common goals to make sure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said prior to the meeting.
Clinton said: “We will continue to consult closely as we have on an almost daily basis between our two governments to chart the best way forward for peace and stability for Israel, the United States and the world.”
Egypt, Syria and the peace process were also expected to be on the agenda.
Clinton also met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Monday, but the Palestinian Authority said Clinton did not carry new ideas that could pave the way for the resumption of the peace talks with Israel.
Following the meeting, a PA official in Ramallah said that the talks focused on the PA’s demand for additional weapons to its security forces in the West Bank and the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
The PA is demanding the release of Palestinians who were imprisoned before the signing of the Oslo Accords and permission to import weapons before its leaders agree to return to the negotiating table.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Clinton in Paris last week, presented his demands to the US Administration and requested that Washington exert pressure on Israel to respond favorably.
The official did not say whether Clinton relayed to Fayyad a reply from the Israeli government to the PA demands.
However, the official pointed out that Clinton did not carry new ideas that could facilitate the resumption of the peace process.
“We don’t expect a breakthrough as the Americans are too busy with their presidential election,” the PA official told The Jerusalem Post.
US sending aircraft carrier to Mideast early – Israel News, Ynetnews.
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The US is sending an aircraft carrier to the Middle East several months early to make sure two will constantly be present in the troubled region.
There are two aircraft carriers in the area currently, but one was scheduled to leave before its replacement arrived. (AP)
Iran: Israel will be destroyed if the West attacks Syria | The Daily Caller.
A former Iranian intelligence officer in the Revolutionary Guard Corps is warning the West that any attack on Syria will spark a coordinated counterattack on Israel that will obliterate the Jewish state.
“The West is quite familiar with the doctrine of ‘The Sword of Damocles.’ This is the sword that constantly is kept on the neck of the enemy, and at any time the enemy makes a mistake, then its precious one is killed,” said Hassan Abbasi during a conference held Thursday in Iran titled “Syria, the First Line of Resistance.”
“The Islamic resistance has its sword on the neck of the Zionist regime,” Abbasi said, “and with such a hostage, if NATO, which has plans to attack Syria, commits to its plan, we will then reveal our strategy.”
Abbasi heads the Center for Doctrinal Strategic Studies, one of the most radical elements in the Islamic regime. He helped develop the strategy of engaging American forces both in Iraq and Afghanistan, believing such action on this proxy level would not only force the U.S. out of those countries but also keep it too busy to even think about an attack on Iran, giving Iran free time to pursue its illicit nuclear program.
Abbasi rattled Iran’s sabers at Europe in 2005, saying that his country had “a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo Saxon civilization. We must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front by means of our suicide operations or by means of missiles.”
Abbasi and other officers also plotted the expansion of terror networks around the world, including on U.S. soil. Iran has stated on the record that it has identified more than 800 sensitive sites in the U.S. for attacks, believing that the threat is an incentive for the West to steer clear of any confrontation with Iran.
According to Mashregh news, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, Abbasi said that since the beginning of the Arab Spring — which Iran calls the “Islamic Awakening” — four American-backed governments have already collapsed.
“Under the current condition where operations are in place for revolutions in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries … the terrorist activities in the heart of Syria are of utmost importance to us,” Abbasi said.
“The oppressors — having $16 trillion in debt, and where 27 countries within the European Union are consumed with economic problems — are trying to change the environment of the current Islamic Awakening,” he added.
“The first wave of awakening was the Islamic revolution in Iran, the second wave of awakening in Lebanon and Palestine, and the third wave of the Islamic movements was in 12 Arabian countries, which the West is trying to stop.”
Abbasi said the next phase of the “awakening,” as Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated in 2011, is action by “oppressed Muslims” in Europe. The fifth is the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S.
The United States, he said, is deceiving itself in thinking the Arab Spring is a movement against the region’s dictators, and not a revolt against America and the Israel.
The “unraveling in Syria” is part of an American-Israeli plot, he alleged, considering the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the new threat on the southwest. Israel and the U.S., he continued, aim to secure the Jewish state’s borders from the Golan Heights to southern Turkey, a NATO member.
“The main reason for the unraveling in Syria, caused by this Western plot, is to show that the regional movements are not anti-America and anti-Zionist,” he said. “And of course with the elimination of Syria, they want to destroy the resistance in Lebanon.”
Clinton to ease Israel fears on Iran – FT.com.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, attempted to assuage Israeli concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme, while providing reassurance about the political upheaval in Egypt and escalating bloodshed in Syria, in a series of talks with Israeli leaders on Monday.
Mrs Clinton is one of a few senior US officials who have recently visited Israel or are about to in the coming weeks, in what officials admit is a broader effort to discuss the Iranian nuclear programme amid renewed concerns in Washington about an Israeli attack on Iran.
It was the secretary of state’s first trip to Israel in almost two years, and the first since the start of the uprisings that have occurred around the Arab world. Over the past 18 months, Israeli leaders have watched the escalating regional turmoil with growing concern, and have come to fear in particular for the country’s crucial relationship with Egypt, where the ousting of Hosni Mubarak last year paved the way for a new Islamist-led government.
Arriving fresh from her first meeting with Mohamed Morsi, the new Egyptian president, Mrs Clinton sought to give a message of encouragement to Israel. “It is a time of uncertainty but also of opportunity,” she said. “It is a chance to advance our shared goals of security, stability, peace and democracy.”
The international campaign to halt Iran’s nuclear programme and the conflict in Syria were also likely to be high on the agenda, said one Israeli official. Mr Netanyahu – who was due to meet Mrs Clinton later on Monday – was expected to highlight Israel’s longstanding concern over the proliferation of advanced Syrian weaponry. Israel fears in particular that part of Syria’s arsenal, including chemical weapons, could end up in the hands of militant groups such as Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement.
The discussion on Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to bring to the fore once again the critical gaps between the US and the Israeli approach towards Tehran. Israeli officials have questioned whether diplomacy and the current regime of sanctions alone can stop Tehran, and have called on the US and others to sharply raise the pressure on Iran.
“The Obama administration is very anxious for Israel not to act, and to respond patiently to the current diplomatic effort [aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions],” said Itamar Rabinovitch, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Tom Donilon, the US national security adviser, and deputy secretary of state Bill Burns have just completed a trip to Israel, while defence secretary Leon Panetta is due there in the coming weeks. Mrs Clinton was accompanied on Monday by Wendy Sherman, the state department official who is leading the US team in the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Given the apparent stalemate in the talks with Iran, the flurry of American visits to Israel has been interpreted in some quarters as a sign of concern that the Israelis might decide to launch their own attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Speaking before Mrs Clinton’s meetings on Monday, a senior administration official said the US would brief the Israelis on the state of play with the talks with Iran and with the new sanctions that have recently been introduced. “The intense pace of engagement we have had with the Israelis only matches the intensity and urgency of the issue,” the official said.
Mrs Clinton’s visit to Israel comes two weeks ahead of a scheduled trip to the country by Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger for the US presidency. His stay will include a fundraising event as well as meetings with Mr Netanyahu and other senior leaders. Much to the disappointment of many Israelis, Mr Obama did not visit the country during his term as president – despite making trips to nearby countries such as Egypt.
Official: US Ship Fires on Boat off Dubai, 1 Dead – ABC News.
An American vessel fired on a boat Monday off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, killing one person and injuring three, according to a U.S. consular official in Dubai.
The official gave no other details, but it appeared the boat could have been mistaken as a threat in Gulf waters not far from Iran’s maritime boundaries.
Dozens of police and other Emirati officials crowded around the white-hulled boat, which sat docked after the incident in a small Dubai port used by fishermen and sailors.
The boat appeared to be a civilian vessel about 30 feet (9 meters) long and powered by three outboard motors. Similar boats are used for fishing in the region, though Iran’s Revolutionary Guard also employs relatively small, fast-moving craft in the Gulf.
Rescue workers were seen carrying one person in a body bag off the boat and placing it in an ambulance as fishermen looked on. Officials moved the boat from the harbor shortly afterward.
An Emirati rescue official at the scene confirmed the casualty toll. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the incident between the two allies.
U.S. military vessels routinely cross paths with Iranian ships in international waters in the Gulf without incident, but speed boats from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have passed close to U.S. ships in incidents that have raised alarm in Washington.
In early 2008, then President Bush accused Iran of a “provocative act” after five small Iranian craft buzzed around the destroyer USS Hopper.
Tensions are elevated in the Gulf after Iran last week renewed threats to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz — the route for one-fifth of the world’s oil — in retaliation for tighter sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program. The U.S. recently boosted its naval presence in the Gulf with additional minesweepers and other warships.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was investigating the Monday shooting. The U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi had no immediate comment, referring all questions to the Navy.
Emirati officials could not be reached for comment.
Clinton confers with Israeli leaders about Syria, Iran – The Washington Post.
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A day after concluding a visit to Egypt, where her motorcade was pelted with fruit and shoes at her last stop in the port city of Alexandria, Clinton met Monday morning with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and President Shimon Peres for talks on a range of issues, the most pressing of which was probably Iran’s nuclear program. But the visit to Israel, Clinton’s first since 2010, also touched on the rapidly changing dynamics in the region ushered in by last year’s Arab Spring uprisings.
In a statement after the meeting, Peres stressed the importance of maintaining a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and denounced the violence in Syria.
In prepared remarks after meeting Peres, Clinton alluded to a “moment of great change and transformation for the region.” It was a moment perhaps best symbolized by her raucous send-off in Egypt, where she met for the first time with that country’s newly elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.
At her last stop in Alexandria for the reopening of the U.S. Consulate there, several hundred protesters waving shoes and shouting “Monica! Monica!” pelted Clinton’s departing motorcade with fruit and footwear. The taunts referred to the scandal that Clinton endured as first lady in the mid-1990s when her husband, President Bill Clinton, had an affair with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky. Throwing shoes is a demeaning insult in the Arab world; in 2008 then-President George W. Bush famously dodged shoes hurled at him by an Iraqi journalist in a Baghdad news conference.
It was unclear exactly who the demonstrators were. But Clinton’s arrival at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo on Saturday had been greeted by several thousand shouting protesters, including many supporters of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
At a time when rumors and fears are filling the vacuum of political uncertainty across Egypt, many of the protesters believe that the United States, which backed Mubarak for decades, is now somehow orchestrating the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The election of Morsi, a former Brotherhood member whom Mubarak’s regime once jailed, has also stirred anxiety among Israeli leaders about whether security arrangements between Israel and Egypt will hold amid the unsettled political landscape.
In her meetings Monday, Clinton intended to convey Morsi’s pledge to uphold the 1979 Camp David accords. Talks were also expected to dwell on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which has stalled despite being a high priority of the Obama administration. Clinton later met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Monday afternoon.
But many Israeli analysts predict that the most pressing matter on the agenda is an international effort to curb the Iranian nuclear program.
Clinton is also scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel’s loudest and most hawkish voices on the Iran issue. Both leaders have said they believe that sanctions and diplomacy are only giving Iran more time to build a bomb, and they have expressed little confidence in Obama’s promise to keep that from happening.
Netanyahu and Barak have said Israel reserves all options to thwart a nuclear Iran, including a possible independent Israeli attack on that country’s nuclear sites. Though the hard-line Israeli narrative has cooled in recent months, stumbling international talks with Iran have revived speculation about a preemptive Israeli strike — a prospect that, if it occurred in the coming months, could pull Obama into a new Middle East conflict as he campaigns for reelection.
In her remarks describing the new regional dynamics Monday morning, Clinton said that “it is in these moments that friends like the United States and Israel have to think together and act together.”
“We are called to be smart, creative and courageous,” she said.
Clinton’s stop in Jerusalem is the last in one of her longest trips as secretary of state, a journey that began July 5 and has focused mostly on the Obama administration’s so-called policy “pivot” to Asia, with stops in Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The Obama administration has had a fraught relationship with some Israeli leaders, and Clinton’s trip to Jerusalem comes two weeks before Republican contender Mitt Romney is scheduled to visit.
Correspondent Karin Brulliard contributed to this report.
The Secret at the Heart of the Israel-U.S. Alliance on Iran – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.
David Horovitz makes an excellent point in his Times of Israel column: From the American standpoint, an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will always be premature. The Obama Administration has argued — and is arguing in earnest this month — that it has the Iran matter in hand. The President has stated it as clearly as he can state it that he intends to stop Iran from going nuclear by force, if it comes to that. So from Obama’s perspective, any Israeli strike runs the huge risk of being premature, rash, ineffective and counterproductive; many of the same arguments, in other words, made very publicly by the former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan. Here’s Horovitz:
…(T)here is one great unspoken secret at the complicated heart of this highly sensitive relationship between two true allies facing what, for one of them — the weaker and more immediately threatened one — is a potentially existential danger: There is no circumstance, absolutely no circumstance whatsoever, in which the United States will empathize with an Israeli decision to strike alone at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
No American official will come out and say this. No Israeli official will acknowledge it. But that is the case, notwithstanding Obama’s declared support for “Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”
Why is this so fraught and complicated? A) Because Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t fully trust President Obama to carry out such a preemptive attack; and B) Both Netanyahu, deep in his Revisionist Zionist bones, and the defense minister, Ehud Barak, deep in his Labor Zionist bones, believe that it is a great moral wrong for Israel to subcontract out its defense to another country, even to its most stalwart ally. The Obama Administration understands the internal pressure these two men are facing, which is why it is dispatching half the cabinet this summer to Jersualem, to try to calm them down.
By the way, The Times of Israel, which Horovitz edits, is rapidly becoming an indispensable source for news and analysis out of Jerusalem. Its knee doesn’t jerk in the fashion of The Jerusalem Post, and it is not prone to hysterics, as is sometimes the case with Haaretz.
Israel Hayom | ‘Obama should clearly say he will not allow a nuclear Iran’.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy under former U.S. President George W. Bush, and as Washington’s resident Middle East adviser, is very concerned.
Not only is he worried about the latest developments in the region, but also about the current U.S. president, Barack Obama. Currently, Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. This week, Abrams came to Israel to take part in the 2012 Presidential Conference in Jerusalem and in a conference at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies — headed by Professor Efraim Inbar — and agreed to share his views on regional developments.
During the Bush administration, Abrams was sent to Egypt to promote democracy. “We urged [recently deposed Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak to begin the reforms. Not in one day, but to start having free elections,” Abrams says. “I think that this trouble is really the result of his failure over a period of 30 years to move at all in the direction of democracy. Thirty years is a long time, if you start very small steps of reform, over 30 years you get pretty far. He did nothing, so the whole system collapsed.”
“In September 2010 [when Obama hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordanian King Abdullah II and Mubarak at a peace summit], nobody said anything to Mubarak about democracy and reform. It was as though it had all been forgotten. I think that was a mistake.”
“I think that if one or two weeks before the end, Mubarak had gone on TV and said ‘I am 82 years old. I’m not running for president again. My time is coming to an end,’ and ‘this is not Syria: my sons are not going to take over. We’ll have an election.’ I don’t think any of this would have happened. I think this was a reaction to the sense that he was not giving an inch, and Egypt was facing another 30 years of the same thing with [Mubarak’s son] Gamal. That, I think, people were not prepared to accept. I think we made a mistake during the Bush administration in not pushing the reform agenda harder, and I think that Obama made a mistake in essentially abandoning it.”
The results starting to come out of Egypt as the second round of presidential elections draws to a close, is actually encouraging, Abrams argues. “First of all, as I understand the results, [Egyptian presidential candidate on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed] Morsi, is winning by a couple of percents. What that will show the Muslim Brotherhood is that this is essentially a fifty-fifty vote. Half of the people of Egypt didn’t want them. I think that strengthens the army. It gives a boost to their morale.”
“We know that the army wants to keep this treaty [with Israel]. The brotherhood has signaled that it will keep the peace treaty. I worry a lot about Sinai, I think the security situation in Sinai is very dangerous, but I don’t think they will abrogate the treaty.”
“The treaty will remain. But, they have a terrible problem in Sinai. You have Bedouins, you have jihadis, you have criminals, you have Hamas, it’s going to be a mess, and Israel is going to have to be dealing with this for a long time.”
In Syria, where a 15-month uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has already taken thousands of lives, Abrams urges immediate American intervention. He reverts to Cold War terms in describing the battle Russia is waging against the U.S. via Syria’s “axis of evil” — Iran and Hezbollah.
“I agree with the view that this is essentially a proxy war, in the sense that you have Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Assad regime. This is a real axis of evil. We cannot allow them to win. One country is arming this regime, and not just over the past decade, but now, now, [Russia is] continuing to sell arms. So in my view, here the strategic and the humanitarian go together.”
“We (the U.S.) should have more sanctions — for example: No planes can go to or from Damascus International Airport and land in Europe. Cut them off. And I think we should be arming the Syrian rebels. I think we have to do it secretly, for only one reason: You have to get the arms to them through neighboring countries, and the neighboring countries are likely to either not cooperate, or only cooperate if it is done in secret.”
“I don’t accept the objection that we don’t know the opposition well enough — this is how you can get to know them. When you work with them, when you give them money and arms you’ll find out who is a thief, who is competent and who is not competent. We do need to find that out, but you can’t find it out by making speeches in Washington.”
“I’m told that there is a presence of al-Qaida and other jihadis [in Syria]. It should not surprise us. In this situation you have Sunnis being slaughtered by people they consider to be Shiites, essentially. So of course these jihadis will be attracted to go to Syria. Many of them have already been to Syria, because they went through Syria to get to Iraq in the first place. They want to fight this fight [for Assad]. The more this becomes an Alawi-Sunni fight, the harder it will be in the end to have any kind of reconciliation, so we should try to get this over, soon.”
Abrams was serving in the U.S. National Security Council when Israel reportedly bombed the nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007. “Any Israeli prime minister would have reached the same conclusion: That reactor has to go. The question was whether the U.S. should do it, or Israel should do it. I thought Israel should do it. This was 2007, a year after the [Second] Lebanon War — which many people in the region thought came out very badly for Israel [undercutting Israel’s deterrence]. This was an opportunity for Israel to show it was still in the game, still strong.”
Perhaps hinting at current Western diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations, Abrams recalls that “I thought that the idea of a diplomatic outcome [in Syria] was absurd. The reactor was a secret, and the fact that we knew about it, and that Israel knew about it, was also a secret. Assad did not know [that we knew]. If we had gone to the IAEA in Vienna and announced that we know about this and that it had to end, what would he [Assad] have done? He would put a kindergarten next to it and eliminated the military option. I think it would have been very foolish.”
What about an Israeli attack on Iran?
“I do not advocate an Israeli strike on Iran, because I think that is a decision only Israelis can make. It is much too easy for me to sit in Washington, 5,000 miles away and say, yeah, attack Iran. Iranian missiles are not going to fall on my house and my family is not going to be at risk. I don’t think Americans should be for it or against it.” Abrams says Americans should either support whatever decision Israel makes, or say “we think the United States should do it … we should not leave this to Israel.”
“But I don’t want to be perceived as saying Israel needs to do this tomorrow. Only Israelis will pay the price, therefore the Israelis need to make the decision.”
Obama has already said that all the options are on the table.
“I think it’s not enough. We all want the negotiations [between the West and Iran] to succeed, but there is only one chance: If Iran’s Supreme Leader, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei] is persuaded that the United States is willing to attack, that he will never get a nuclear weapon. The president needs to make that clear. The president has said things that are ambiguous: he said to Israel ‘I have your back,’ he said ‘I don’t bluff,’ he said ‘all options are on the table.’ What’s missing? A statement that says very clearly ‘I will not permit Iran to get a nuclear weapon, if I have to use military force to prevent it, I will.’ The ayatollah needs to understand that he will never get a nuclear weapon while Obama is the president of the United States. And Obama hasn’t done that.”
Abrams gives his analysis of the U.S. political arena, saying that “clearly the White House would like the Iran issue to disappear until after the election. They’ve come to the conclusion that anything having to do with Iran hurts the president. [Obama] is saying ‘I’m getting us out of Afghanistan, I got us out of Iraq, war is receding’ and if there is some kind of attack on Iran, it makes it harder to assert that — I think that is wrong politically. I think that this would actually help the president. I think even an Israeli attack would help the president. I assume that like any president he would back Israel, as he said he would. If the president seems strong, and says to the Iranians ‘you’re not going to get a nuclear weapon; you’re not going to close the Strait of Hormuz; you’re not going to attack Israel, and the Saudis and the Emirates, and American bases in the Gulf,’ he would look strong and I think that the American people would support him. But apparently that is not the view of the White House.”
“I think that they would be having a better negotiation [with Iran] today if Obama had said things clearly to the Iranians. But it’s not too late. He has become tougher. It was only recently that he said ‘my policy is not containment, my policy is prevention.’ That was a good step forward, now take the next step and say ‘my policy is prevention, and I will prevent it.’ I hope he will do that.”
Abrams further speculates that there will not be any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, at least not until after the upcoming U.S. presidential election this coming November. “I don’t think anything is going to happen soon. I don’t see any serious negotiations, at least this year, because you have the U.S. elections and everyone wants to see who the president will be and what the American policy will be. This is an issue for 2013 or for 2014.”
“I don’t think that Abbas today wants a serious negotiation. He’s waiting for the elections, and he’s waiting to see what happens with Iran, like everybody. I don’t see how he can make very big compromises, because Hamas will say ‘you’re a traitor’. Remember that [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert made a big proposal in 2008. Why didn’t Abbas accept it? One of the main reasons was that he knew that Hamas would say ‘Arafat never gave anything away; you gave it away, you’re a traitor to the Palestinian people; you’ve abandoned the refugees.’ I don’t think he’s going to do that.”
Is Iran now seeking a war? Tehran is undoubtedly under pressure, with its principle ally Assad on the rocks and international economic pressure mounting.
Based on what has been reported to date about the Lebanese national arrested in Cyprus on suspicion of planning to attack Israeli targets, his plans don’t seem to have been very advanced: He was found only with photographs of sites frequented by Israeli tourists and schedules of Israeli flights. But if Hezbollah really was planning to blow up an Israeli plane or cruise ship, this was an unusually ambitious plot.
Protecting Israel’s air traffic is high priority for the Shin Bet security service, right up there with protecting Israeli embassies abroad. Thus, had Hezbollah actually attacked a plane successfully, this would have been tantamount to declaring war.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly accused Iran of being behind the plot. Netanyahu doesn’t distinguish between Iran and its agents, and the Western world concurs that Iranian terror attacks worldwide are often co-produced by Hezbollah. Over the last year, the Lebanese group is thought to have been involved in thwarted Iranian plots against Israeli targets in Thailand, India, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kenya.
Do the reports from Cyprus indicate that Hezbollah − and, more importantly, Iran − is now seeking war? Tehran is undoubtedly under pressure. Its principal ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, is on the rocks. Iran’s hopes of leveraging the Arab Spring to foment revolution in Bahrain, which has a Shi’ite majority, have so far been dashed. And international economic pressure on Iran is steadily growing: A European oil embargo took effect on July 1. All this pressure creates a desire to divert attention elsewhere, and Iran is apparently letting off steam via provocations like the recent plots uncovered in Cyprus, Azerbaijan and Kenya. But the more international pressure increases, the more likely it is that Iran will not confine itself to attempting to attack Israeli targets overseas, but will also try to heat up Israel’s home front via attacks from Lebanon or Gaza. Iran is playing a very dangerous game here, whose flip side is its frequent threats to disrupt oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the United States is quietly amassing a naval force near the gulf.
Interestingly, Israeli leaders have significantly lowered the volume of their own threats against Iran recently. But at a time when Israel’s dilemma on Iran has been boiled down to a four-word slogan, “bomb or be bombed,” a third scenario must also be considered: A poorly-thought-out Iranian move, in the Persian Gulf or elsewhere, could ignite a conflict even before anyone decides to attack its nuclear facilities.
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