WarSclerotic

The Holy Grail of US-Israel Cyber war on Iran | Joe Tuzara | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel.

Although the United States and Israel has not publicly acknowledged the covert war against Iran’s disputed nuclear program, in a sense, we are already at war with Iran.

On the other hand, it is understandable why Israel’s patience is wearing thin in the midst of security leaks and complicated loopholes on Iran sanctions regime.

For several years in a row, the mainstream media are rife with rumors, innuendos and speculation of an Israeli attack on Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment facilities, industrial-military complex sabotage and assassinations of nuclear scientists.

The hits have been widely attributed to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an organization the US designates as “terrorist.”

Recent reports indicated however, that the cyber war on Iran has only just begun is simply untrue. Historically, the cyber war had been brewing up since the Olympic Games were initiated by the Bush administration.

As a matter of strategic security policy, Israel neither denies nor confirmed any offensive covert acts against Iran which repeatedly threaten the total annihilation of the Jewish state, . Henceforth, Israel’s plausible deniability and ambiguity as the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is significantly important and crucial to its survival as a nation.

While the world speculates as to the origin of the Flame virus found in Iranian computers, The New York Times confirmed that the US ordered a previous virus, Stuxnet, deployed against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities in 2008.

Until quite recently, it is even foolhardy to admit the security leaks emanating from the Obama White House in an election year is both tragic and potentially damaging to the security of both the US and Israel.

‘Operation Olympic Games’

Prior to his departure from the Oval Office, President G.W. Bush had urged President-elect Obama to preserve two highly classified intelligence programs code-named Operation Olympic Games and the drone program in Pakistan – of course, with the help of Israel to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.

The computer worm project started during the Bush years and expanded under Obama was meant to cause Iranian centrifuges to self-destruct, pushing the US into a new era of cyber warfare.

The complex worm previously reported as Stuxnet is credited with “achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.”

Michael Hayden, the former chief of the CIA, stated that “this is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyber attack was used to effect physical destruction rather than just slow another computer, or hack into it to steal data.” “Somebody crossed the Rubicon,” he said.

Indeed, the US and Israel’s cyber warriors had reached the point of no return, when they created the most lethal cyber weapons of the future. For the record, the two allies partnering on cyber programs like Stuxnet, was an Israeli innovation, not an American one as recently reported.

It was the brainchild of Israel’s military intelligence agency Aman and Unit 8-200 — Israel’s equivalent of the eavesdropping, code-breaking National Security Agency — and endorsed by the White House at Israel’s suggestion.

Another cyber weapon called Flame that was recently discovered to have attacked the computers of Iranian officials, sweeping up information from those machines was not part of Olympic Games which is an entirely different type and sophistication.

The US is also suspected of being behind the Flame virus, spyware able to record keystrokes, eavesdrop on conversations near an infected computer, and tap into screen images. Besides Iran, Flame has been found in computers in the Palestinian West Bank, Lebanon, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. Because “malware” seeks out undefended computers no matter where they are, it has a habit of spreading beyond its initial target.

With regards to Natanz enrichment plant, the US and Israel have to rely on engineers, maintenance workers and others — both spies and unwitting accomplices — with physical access to the plant. “That was our holy grail,” one of the architects of the plan said. “It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand.”

In fact, thumb drives turned out to be critical in spreading the first variants of the computer worm; later, more sophisticated methods were developed to deliver the malicious code that left Iranians confused partly because no two attacks were exactly alike.

Repercussions of cyber attacks are alarming

Researchers from the Department of Homeland Security who launched an experimental cyber attack dubbed “Aurora,” and conducted in March 2007 at the Department of Energy’s Idaho lab caused a generator to self-destruct, alarming the federal government and electrical industry about what might happen if such an attack were carried out on a larger scale, CNN has learned.

Watch the previously classified video of the test CNN obtained:Staged cyber attack reveals vulnerability in power grid.

Government sources said changes are being made to both computer software and physical hardware to protect power generating equipment. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it is conducting inspections to ensure all nuclear plants have made the fix.

In general, a major disruption in the US, Britain or Israel, due to some form of worm, malware or malicious code could quickly incapacitate and destroy the electric power grid or compromise air traffic control system resulting in catastrophic deaths and destruction far more lethal than the September 11 attacks.

In lieu of conventional military attacks, cyber warfare at this stage of development and implementation of Olympic Games directed at Iran’s nuclear program is both a blessing and a curse – a necessary evil that spell disaster to the aggressor and the defender, so to speak.

Moreover, the prospect of similar Iranian cyber attacks against the US, Israel and West is a foreboding thought- the success or failure depends entirely to whomever can marshal great resources and technological superiority.

Iran more likely would deploy thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Syrian missile attacks on Israel, Iranian naval and missile attacks on the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, the Gulf States oil shipments, platforms and eventually mining the Strait of Hormuz – a red line which is tantamount to acts of war against the US and the West.

Not to be outdone, asymmetric warfare conducted through proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, Venezuela and Mexican drug cartels inside the US and surrounding Israel cannot be ignored or underestimated. Iran knows for sure, that their inferior military capabilities are no match to US and Israel technological superiority. Hence, Iran’s bluster of electronic warfare and missile technology is a dangerous fantasy that will haunt them forever unless they regain their commonsensical reality.

Besides, the deployment of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or electronic warfare over Iran and the targeted destruction of its nuclear facilities including the inner sanctum of the mullah-led regime would certainly bring a lasting peace and security to the entire Middle East.

Likewise in the past, Israel had successfully managed the bombings of Osirak reactor in Iraq and the Iranian/North Korean supported nuclear reactor in Syria without a glitch.

What we do not know yet is the secret back-door diplomacy spear-headed by the Muslim Brotherhood-led Team Obama and Iran’s clerical regime to break down the Islamic republic’s isolation by re-thinking their strategy and enabling a deceptive diplomatic sideshow of ending Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons till Obama’s re-election comes to bear fruit.

While ineffective sanctions and flawed diplomacy failed, there is no doubt that the only viable option left short of war, is a messy preemptive digital strikes!

If carpet-bombing Iran’s economy, diplomacy, negotiations and cyber attacks don’t work, make no mistake there is always and will be a military solution if Iran does not back down.

Well it was an amazing waste of time, endlessly blaming negotiations after negotiations-albeit, there will be an all-out war.

Russia vows to back Annan’s plan as fighting rages in Damascus.

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Kofi Annan, left, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, hoping to avert a new Moscow veto of a Security Council resolution threatening sanctions against Syria. (Reuters)

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Kadima MKs vote to leave coalition after rejecting universal draft bill | The Times of Israel.

(Just what Israel needs as Assad falls and the Iran war looms.  Ah, democracy…  Ah, Jews… – JW )

‘There’s no escape from the need to break away,” party head Shaul Mofaz tells faction

Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz leaves a Kadima party meeting last Wednesday (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday his Kadima party had no choice but to leave the coalition, after being unable to come to terms over new universal draft legislation.

Kadima convened a meeting at 5 p.m. to vote on whether to return to the opposition, nine weeks after its 28 MKs swelled the coalition to 94.

The MKs voted by a wide margin to leave the coalition.

“With great distress, I say there’s no escape but to take the decision to leave the coalition,” Mofaz said at the start of the meeting. “It was not easy to enter the government — I paid a public price for it — but Former Kadima MK Tzachi Hanegbi reportedly called for the Kadima faction to continue negotiations with Likud over the draft issue, opening up a discussion of the possibility of staying in the government and temporarily delaying a vote on the matter of splitting off.

Kadima’s defection would spell the end of a barely two-month national unity government, which saw Mofaz join forces with Netanyahu in May in return for an agreement in principle to legislate a new universal draft, among other things.

Efforts between coalition parties to draft a new universal enlistment law, which would see the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Arabs serve in the military or national service, have faltered over several issues. The Kadima-led Plesner committee was disbanded by Netanyahu late last month, though, he said, most of its recommendations would be accepted.

Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu had adopted a proposal put forward by Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud), which called for ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs to join the army or perform national service, such as serving in police or fire units, by ages 23 to 26. The motion also included incentives for those who enlist at a younger age.

Mofaz blasted the proposal as “disproportionate and contrary to the High Court ruling,” which stated that the burden of serving should be shared by all citizens. He also said it did not meet the principle of equality laid out by the Plesner Committee.

Currently, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students are given draft deferments under the Tal Law, which expires on August 1. Netanyahu said Monday that should no new law be in place by then, the army would apply the draft according to a law that puts yeshiva students on equal footing with the rest of the country’s 18-year-olds.

Opposition leader Shelly Yachimovich called on Mofaz to quit the coalition and hold new elections. She said the current government reeks of “deals and schemes” and that the Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition “should do what it should have done two months ago: Hold elections and give the public the right to make an unbiased decision on the important issues concerning the fate of the State of Israel.”

Should Kadima leave the coalition, the government would still stand, though only by a slim majority. Before Kadima joined the government in early May, the country had seemed headed for early elections.

Gabe Fisher contributed to this report.

Prepare for Syria chaos – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Day after Assad may see civil war between sects, as Alawites fight for their lives

Alex Fishman

The Assad regime is like a dilapidated shack being attacked by swarms of termites. The wood is already hollow and eaten up, yet still standing. When will it collapse and disintegrate? Nobody dares to guess. Even the Americans cautiously speak of a graduate, lengthy process. This includes the secretary of state, who is in Israelthese days.

The intelligence discourse no longer deals with the question of whether Assad will go, but rather, with what will happen the day after. The assessment is that the war in Syria won’t end even after Assad’s departure. The Alawites won’t surrender. They will continue to fight for their lives.

Meanwhile, as time passes, the struggle between Syria’s Alawites and Sunnis becomes clearer. The great defection from the army is mostly by Sunni officers and soldiers. The rhetoric of the defecting officers is becoming increasingly Islamist, and this is no coincidence.

The officers, who are not religious, are talking about eliminating the Alawite hegemony. This shows us that even after Assad, the two sects will continue to spill each other’s blood.

Another testament to this can be seen now already if we map the main combat theaters. It is no coincidence that Homs and its environs have become a brutal focal point of fighting. Alawites and Sunnis live right next to each other in the area. Homs is the gateway to Syria’s Alawite region – the coastal area where the Alawites are fighting without compromise, in order to safeguard their homes.

The Alawites have reached the point of forming independent militias that operate in the Alawite area in order to suppress any hint of rebellion. They don’t trust the army to stand by them forever. For them, this is a war of survival.

Russia prepares for evacuation

Assad can take comfort in the fact that the other minorities – the Druze, the Kurds, the Christians – have not yet joined the ranks of the rebels. The Druze, who thus far lost some 150 soldiers in fighting against the rebels, fear the radical Sunnis. Indeed, young and educated Druze support the uprising, yet the great mass fears the message brought by the Salafites among the rebels who are supported by radical Islamic elements.

The Syrian Kurds as well, and most certainly the Christians, still view Assad’s regime as a protector.

The erosion in the regime’s pillars is already shifting from the periphery to the large cities like Aleppo and Damascus. Indeed, once in a while we see the outbreak of fighting in the more central neighborhoods, yet most combat is still confined to the poor, more remote suburbs. The Sunni bourgeoisies in Aleppo are locked up at home or head overseas, but they don’t come out against the regime.

In Damascus we see a new phenomenon of fighting in middle class neighborhoods, which are closer to the center. In recent days, there has been fierce fighting in a more remote and poorer neighborhood, Tadmun, many of whose residents are Golan Heights refugees. These are people treated by the regime as second class citizens for many years, and now they are rising up against it.

The Russians are preparing for evacuating their people from Syria in the coming weeks. They may know something that President Assad is still unaware of. He still enjoys enough military power and enough militia forces in order to keep spilling blood.

However, this is a temporary situation. The forecast for the day after Assad refers to the possibility of chaos and a civil war among sects. The Alawites are already starting to talk about the option of withdrawing into their own autonomous area.

New cyber espionage virus found targetin… JPost – International.

By REUTERS

07/17/2012 17:20

Dubbed the “Mahdi campaign” by security experts, the software is the first to be written in Farsi, stole info from around the Mideast.

Photo: Ho New / Reuters

BOSTON – Security experts have uncovered an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting Iran and other Middle Eastern countries that they say stands out because it is the first such operation using communications tools written in Persian.

Israeli security company Seculert and Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, said on Tuesday that they identified more than 800 victims of the operation. The targets include critical infrastructure companies, engineering students, financial services firms and government embassies located in five Middle Eastern countries, with the majority of the infections in Iran.

Seculert and Kaspersky declined to identify specific targets of the campaign, which they believe began at least eight months ago. They said they did not know who was behind the attacks or if was a nation state.

“It’s for sure somebody who is fluent in Persian, but we don’t know the origin of those guys,” said Seculert Chief Technology Officer Aviv Raff.

The Mahdi Trojan lets remote attackers steal files from infected PCs and monitor emails and instant messages, Seculert and Kaspersky said. It can also record audio, log keystrokes and take screen shots of activity on those computers.

The firms said they believed multiple gigabytes of data have been uploaded from targeted machines.

“Somebody is trying to build a dossier of a larger scale on something,” Raff said. “We don’t know what they are going to do at the end.”

Researchers have previously said that nation states were almost certainly behind the Flame virus, which was discovered earlier this year, and Duqu, which was uncovered in 2011.

Seculert and Kaspersky dubbed the campaign Mahdi, a term referring to the prophesied redeemer of Islam, because evidence suggests the attackers used a folder with that name as they developed the software to run the project.

They also included a text file named mahdi.txt in the malicious software that infected target computers.

Americans Favor Diplomacy Over Military Action on Iran by Almost 4 to 1 – Stewart M. Patrick – The Atlantic.

The Obama administration hoped the specter of an oil embargo and increasingly stringent banking sanctions would finally force Iran to come clean on its clandestine nuclear program and end its enrichment activities. No such luck. After the third round of P5+1 negotiations in Moscow ended last month in a stalemate, the White House and Congress are competing to isolate the intransigent Iranian government.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department moved to close holes in the Iran sanctions regime, blacklisting more than a dozen front companies and four individuals that are helping Tehran evade U.S. and European Union (EU) restrictions on its oil exports, and placing twenty Iranian financial institutions on a watch list.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Congress is pushing for tougher measures aimed at crippling the Iranian economy, arguing that current U.S. efforts are falling short. Taking matters into their own hands, a bipartisan group of legislators began crafting legislation to impede Iranian companies from buying insurance, exporting goods, and securing foreign financial assistance. “What we’ve done so far has been good, but it is clearly not enough,” concludes Howard Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The pressure has to intensify.”

At the same time, outside groups such as the hawkish Foreign Policy Initiative are ratcheting up calls for preemptive military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. In a recent piece, Jamie Fly and William Kristol advocate for Congress to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran to lend credibility to the U.S. threat of direct action.

Amidst the heightened cacophony of policymakers and pundits, there remains strong public support in the United States–and in many countries abroad–for sanctions, but widespread opposition to the use of military force. A new analysis of U.S. and global opinion on nuclear proliferation, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), reveals some insights on the most imminent threat to international peace and security.

• Americans are deeply concerned about Iranian acquisition of the bomb. An overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and poses a serious threat to U.S. national security. They doubt that a nuclear-armed Iran could be deterred from attacking Israel by the prospect of nuclear retaliation–in other words, they do not believe that Tehran can be expected to behave rationally. Such anxieties are also shared among European publics, albeit by smaller majorities. Surprisingly, levels of concern about an Iranian nuclear weapon vary across the Muslim world. In Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, 45 percent of respondents consider the prospect of an Iranian bomb to be a negative development, compared to 70 percent in Jordan.

• Americans favor sanctions over military force by wide margins. When presented with a menu of five policy options to deal with Iran’s nuclear program in 2011, one third of U.S. respondents favored imposing sanctions to stop Iran from producing nuclear fuel, whereas only 13 percent endorsed military action. A slim 8 percent of respondents were willing to accept a nuclear Iran.

• American support for military force rises if depicted as a last resort. In 2011, the German Marshall Fund (GMF) presented U.S. and European citizens with two options: take “military action against Iran” or “simply accept that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons.” Faced with this scenario, 49 percent of Americans and 42 percent of Europeans favored the use of military force. (This question assumed, somewhat problematically, that military force would necessarily achieve the goal of dismantling the Iranian nuclear program.)

• A majority of Americans support engagement with Iran. By a wide margin, U.S. citizens in a November 2011 poll agreed that “Iran is a threat that can be handled with diplomacy now” (55 percent), rather than with immediate military action (15 percent). That’s a ratio of about 3.7 to one. Reluctance to contemplate military options may reflect public pessimism about its likely consequences. A 2010 survey by Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey found that four-fifths of Americans believed that military strikes alone would fail to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Huge majorities also thought  attacks would increase support for the Iranian regime and potentially lead to retaliatory strikes against U.S. regional allies and the U.S. homeland.

• Most Americans do not favor an Israeli strike. If support is low for U.S. military action, should the Israelis take care of the problem instead? In a poll released in March 2012, 24 percent of Americans advocated an Israeli strike, while 69 percent favored the continued pursuit of negotiations with Iran by the United States and other major powers. Only 14 percent believed the U.S. government should encourage an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; instead, 80 percent believed the United States should either remain neutral (46 percent) or actively discourage (34 percent) such a unilateral attack. (To be sure, the desire to remain “neutral” could encompass a range of motivations–including a desire to have Israel do the dirty work, without embroiling the United States).

• Three quarters of Americans prefer that the United States deal with the Iranian nuclear issue through the UN Security Council. In a March 2012 poll by the Sadat Chair/PIPA, 74 percent of U.S. respondents preferred the UN Security Council to lead the charge against Iran, whereas only 20 percent thought the United States should act primarily by itself.

• Americans can envision a nuclear deal with Iran. Under Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, all countries possess the right to peaceful nuclear energy. Given the proliferation risks and Iran’s of reneging on international agreements, many U.S. officials and experts argue that Iran should only be allowed to import fuel from abroad, rather than produce domestically. American citizens, however, support the idea of allowing Iran to produce nuclear fuel on the condition that the regime accepts intrusive UN inspections.

West of Eden-Israel News – Haaretz Israeli News source..

( This long, involved article is made relevant to this site only by the last line.  This point has been rarely mentioned and has been part of my thinking for a while. – JW )

Why the Israeli “killer principle” for political success is applicable in America as well.

The English word “killer” – pronounced “keelerr”, with a guttural r – has long been integrated into the Israeli language. It can be used literally, to describe someone who actually does away with other people, or figuratively, to denote a person who is efficient and ruthless. The Hebrew version does not contain the English slang meaning of excellence, but it nonetheless includes an element of grudging admiration.

About a decade ago, if you will excuse my self-citation, I wrote an article about the “killer principle” of Israeli politics, which states that all things being equal, the winner in Israeli elections will inevitably be the candidate who has killed more enemies in combat, or is at least perceived as being capable of doing so. As I will show in just a few paragraphs, the principle held true in each and ever election since 1977, when the Likud first came to power.

But even though this penchant for a leader who is also a “keelerr” derives from Israel’s unique history and psychology, it may also be applicable, under another name perhaps, in American politics as well. In fact, although I have read several articles about Barack Obama’s advantage over Mitt Romney in “likeability”, I suspect that in recent days he has been trying to go the other way and to bolster his image of “lethality.”

By unabashedly leading the in-your-face, no-apologies-whatsoever assault on Romney over his missing years at Bain Capital and his AWOL tax returns, Obama is trying to intimidate his Republican rival, to spook him and to rattle him and to humiliate him. When Rahm Emmanuel and other Obama supporters tell Romney to “stop whining” they are clearly trying to juxtapose a rough and tough Obama with a spoiled and crybaby Romney. After initially falling straight into Obama’s trap, Romney and his campaign managers appear to have caught on to Obama’s game and are now belatedly trying to get in some punches of their own.

Now ask yourself this: in recent presidential lineups, which candidate seemed to be the tougher and more resolute of the two candidates, or in other words – which was the potential “killer” – a concept that is often bolstered by age and background – and which was the “wimp”: Nixon or McGovern? Carter or Ford? Carter or Reagan? Reagan or Mondale? Bush or Dukakis? Clinton or Bush Sr? Clinton or Bob Dole? Bush or Al Gore? Bush or John Kerry?
In fact, the only matchup that seems be an uneasy fit to our theory is the one that pitted Obama against former US Navy pilot and POW John McCain and his moose-murdering sidekick, Sarah Palin. But 2008 may have been the exception that proves the rule: after ight years of Bush and Cheney, Americans may have overdosed on diplomatic testosterone – never mind the collapsing economy – and chosen the supposedly more benign and peaceful candidate.

In Israel, the predictive ability of the what we might call the “killer quotient” is unequivocal: Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both commanders of pre-state underground movements who personally gave orders that brought about the deaths of hundreds, defeated Labor leader Shimon Peres, who was immensely qualified but had no combat experience whatsoever, 4 times in a row – in 1977, 1981, 1984 and 1988. But when Yitzhak Rabin came along in 1992, the former IDF chief, hero of the Six Day War and coiner of the callous order to “break the legs and hands” of Palestinian demonstrators in the first intifada, defeated Shamir and brought Labor back to power. In 1996, it was the elite Sayeret Matkal graduate Netanyahu – who not only walked the walk but talked the talk of eating Yasser Arafat for breakfast – who once again trumped Peres the peacenik, despite what Peres’ critics claim was his artificial last-minute attempt to buy “keelerr” credentials in Operation Grapes of Wrath.

In 1999, Bibi was blown away in turn by his former Sayeret commander Ehud Barak, another IDF chief of staff whose exploits in pushing Arab terrorists to meet their maker was the stuff of legend and folklore. But Barak was no match in 2001 for Ariel Sharon, the all time Israeli record holder in no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners form of combat, never mind the incongruently demure and soft-spoken former IDF general Amram Mitzna, about whom I originally wrote the “killer principle” article after his defeat in 2003.

Sharon’s coattails were so resilient that they carried Ehud Olmert, another noncombatant, to victory in the 2006 elections, but in 2009 Netanyahu was back, facing a candidate who, among other things, had no claim to fame in the “keelerr” department, even though her spin doctors unashamedly tried to market Tzipi Livni’s years in the Mossad as an indication of potential lethality.

One can safely assume that if Obama had ordered the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2012 instead of May 2011, he wouldn’t need to be slinging mud mano a mano with Romney now in order to prove his hard-hearted manliness. But people have notoriously short memories and that burst of momentary elation when Americans looked up to Obama as the ruthless cowboy who will get the job done at any cost is long gone and forgotten and needs to be revived, one way or another.

Although, come to think of it, there’s always Iran…

If Damascus falls, Israel and its gas fields feared threatened.

*

Syrian military forces were gathered in Tuesday, July 17, to save Damascus.
Tanks and armored vehicles were positioned in strength in the capital’s center and around government buildings. However, the noise and fury of battle in the Syrian capital Tuesday, July 17, were produced, debkafile’s military sources report, by six battalions of Bashar Assad’s loyal Allawite militia in clashes with the rebels who captured the two southern suburbs of Meidan and Tadmon Monday. They are trying to pound the enemy into extinction before its forces reach central Damascus.
The two beleaguered districts are home to a quarter of the capital’s 1.8 million inhabitants.
The Syrian general staff has withdrawn its command headquarters to a well-fortified complex on Shuhada Street in the capital’s center.
If Damascus falls and Assad is cornered, the entire region stands in peril of wider repercussions, because neither he nor Tehran will take defeat lying down.
debkafile’s military sources report their campaign will be paced and scaled according to the momentum of the Syrian rebels’ advance on Bashar Assad’s door-step, which could be drawn out and bloody.
On the Iranian-Hizballah list are Middle East oil installations as well as Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi and Jordanian strategic targets.

Saturday, the Cypriot police captured a Hizballah terrorist before he could blow up an Israeli El Al flight and tourist buses in Limassol.

Tehran is feared to be focusing on the Mediterranean island as part of a plot to set Israel’s Mediterranean gas field Tamar on fire. The field is 80 kilometers west of Haifa

It would be a spectacular curtain-raiser for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for strikes against Gulf oil installations.

Navy Commander, Maj. Gen. Ram Rothberg called last week for an extra five warships and submarines to safeguard Israel’s burgeoning gas fields at the cost of a billion dollars.

The Syrian ruler has stoked up the menace by moving out of storage missiles and shells armed with mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and cyanide stockpiled for years.

They are on operational readiness at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo and, according to Nawaf Fares,

Syrian ex-ambassador to Iraq who defected to the opposition, may already have been used against rebel concentrations.

The longer the battle for Damascus goes on, the greater the danger that the Syrian ruler will release his poison-tipped missiles against Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

Tehran wants resumption of nuclear negotiations with West | The Times of Israel.

Islamic Republic hopes July 24 meeting between Iranian and EU officials will pave the way for another round of high-level talks

Iranian technicians work at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2010. (photo credit:AP /IIPA,Ebrahim Norouzi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran says it hopes upcoming talks with an EU official could pave the way for the resumption of high-level negotiations with world powers over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says the July 24 meeting between Iran’s No. 2 negotiator Ali Bagheri and Helga Schmid, deputy of the EU foreign policy chief, will be key to a possible resumption of the stalled negotiations.

Talks last month in Moscow failed to bridge differences between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany but the sides agreed to continue lower-level technical talks to see if there was a way to break the deadlock.

The US and its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Israel Hayom | US sends second aircraft carrier to Gulf for possible Iran showdown.

( Even with Obama in charge, I find it hard to believe that these military preparations are for show or bluff. – JW )

Move is several months early to make sure at least two carriers are constantly present in troubled region • Pentagon recently doubled number of minesweepers in area, giving greater flexibility to counter any Iranian effort to mine the Strait of Hormuz.