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Fighting rages as Panetta says Aleppo assault is a ‘nail in Assad’s coffin’.

Monday, 30 July 2012

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Aleppo was another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Syrian regime has committed against its own people. (Reuters)

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U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad late on Sunday that the assault on his own population in Aleppo would be a nail in his coffin.

Syrian troops said they had recaptured a district of Syria’s largest city Aleppo, after heavy fighting against rebels who remain in control of swathes of the commercial hub despite being pushed out of the capital Damascus.

The past two weeks have seen forces of President Bashar al-Assad struggle as never before to maintain their grip on the country after a major rebel advance into the two main cities and a July 18 explosion that killed four top security officials.

 And in many ways, if they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think ultimately it will be a nail in Assad’s coffin 

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta

“It’s pretty clear that Aleppo is another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Assad regime has committed against its own people,” Panetta told reporters on a military plane en route to Tunisia.

“And in many ways, if they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think ultimately it will be a nail in Assad’s coffin,” he said, according to AFP.

“He’s just assuring that the Assad regime will come to an end by virtue of the kind of violence they’re committing against their own people.”

According to Panetta, Assad has “lost all legitimacy, and the more violence he engages in, the more he makes the case that the regime is coming to an end.”

It’s no longer a question of whether the regime will fall, “it’s when,” he added.

More than 20,000 people have been killed, including 14,000 civilians, since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The United States and the international community have made very clear that this is intolerable, and have brought diplomatic and economic pressure on Syria to stop this kind of violence, to have Assad step down and to transition to a democratic form of government,” Panetta said.

Obama, waging a tough domestic battle ahead of the Nov. 6 election, has demanded that Assad stand down and offered logistical support to the opposition, but his administration has ruled out using force.

International efforts to squeeze Assad by isolating his regime and seeking sanctions against his inner circle have been frustrated by Russian and Chinese opposition at the U.N. Security Council.

Panetta said the United States was paying particular attention to securing Syria’s chemical and biological weapon sites, especially by maintaining “close cooperation with countries in the region.”

His trip to Tunisia is the first stop of an international tour that will also take him to Egypt, Israel and Jordan.

His Middle East trip has a security agenda, including new concerns about Syrian chemical weapons, along with election-season political stakes.

Death toll mounts as fighting rages

Meanwhile, fighting raged on the second day of a fierce government offensive, as the United Nations said 200,000 civilians had fled and many were trapped after Assad deployed tanks and attack helicopters to try to dislodge the rebels.

The Syrian opposition said government forces were preparing to carry out “massacres” and pleaded the international community to provide heavy weapons to enable rebels to meet the regime onslaught.

Elsewhere in Syria, as many as 163 people have been killed by the fire of Syrian forces across the country on Sunday, Syrian activists said. At least 30 people were killed by Syrian troops in a new massacre in al-Sheikh Meskeen in Deraa, according to activists.

Government forces have succeeded in imposing their grip on Damascus but rebel fighters gained control of parts of Aleppo, a city of 2.5 million people, where Reuters journalists have toured neighborhoods dotted with Free Syrian Army checkpoints flying black and white Islamist banners.

Fighting for the past several days has focused on the Salaheddine district in the southwest of Aleppo, where government troops have been backed by helicopter gunships.

Rebel fighters, patrolling opposition districts in flat-bed trucks flying green-white-and-black “independence” flags, said they were holding off Assad’s forces in Salaheddine. However, the government said it had pushed them out.

“Complete control of Salaheddine has been (won back) from those mercenary gunmen,” an unidentified military officer told Syrian state television late on Sunday. “In a few days safety and security will return to the city of Aleppo.”

Reuters journalists in the city were not able to approach the district after nightfall on Sunday to verify whether rebels had been pushed out. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human rights said fighting was continuing there.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem. (Reuters)

The government also declared victory on Sunday in the battle for the capital, which the rebels assaulted in force two weeks ago but have been repulsed in unprecedented fighting.

“Today I tell you, Syria is stronger … In less than a week they were defeated (in Damascus) and the battle failed,” Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on a visit to Iran, Assad’s main ally in the region.

“So they moved on to Aleppo and I assure you, their plots will fail.”

Assad’s ruling structure draws strongly on his Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, while his opposition is drawn largely from the Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Sunni leaders who rule nearly all other Arab states.

That has raised fears the 16-month conflict could spread across the Middle East, where a sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites has been at the root of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere.

Shiite Iran demonstrated its firm support for Assad by hosting his foreign minister. At a joint news conference with Moualem, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi rebuked the West and Arab states for holding the “illusion” that Assad could be easily be replaced in a managed transition.

The battle for Aleppo is a decisive test of the government’s ability to put down the revolt after the July 18 explosion killed four of its top security officials and wrecked the Assad family’s image of untouchable might.

It has committed huge military resources to Aleppo after losing control of outlying rural areas and some border crossings with Turkey and Iraq.

AFP: Aleppo to be Syria army’s ‘graveyard’: rebel chief.

( Many believe that the rebels in Aleppo will be wiped out by Assad’s far superior weaponry, logistics and experience.  What they fail to factor in is MORALE   This article makes the question clear, “Just what is the Syrian army fighting FOR?”  This may in fact be the decisive factor in Aleppo and in Syria in general. – JW )

By Iskander Kat (AFP) – 4 hours ago

NEAR ALEPPO, Syria — Aleppo, the latest battleground in Syria’s 16-month uprising, will be the Syrian army’s “graveyard,” said Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, the head of the rebels in the city.

It is pitch black as he arrives at an isolated farmhouse surrounded by olive groves in northern Syria for an interview with an AFP correspondent.

Despite the heat and fierce fighting a few hours earlier, the former colonel in President Bashar al-Assad’s army appears relaxed and confident that his men will win the battle and bring down the regime.

“Aleppo will be the graveyard of the tanks” of the Syrian army, Oqaidi declares after a day in which the rebels claimed to have destroyed “eight tanks and some armoured vehicles and killed more than 100 soldiers.”

As he speaks, the owner of the farmhouse, an influential Sunni notably in charge of “logistics” for the rebellion, disposes ashtrays and offers beverages, while several prominent men of Aleppo listen in silence.

The interview takes place in the dark as the electricity is out, a routine for several hours each day in the country’s commercial hub, and the rebel chief is illuminated only by camera light.

“We ask the West for a no-fly zone,” he says in order to prevent aerial raids carried out by Assad’s forces.

After massing for two days, Syrian troops backed by tanks and helicopters on Saturday launched a ground assault on Aleppo’s Salaheddin district, where rebels concentrated their forces when they seized much of Aleppo on July 20.

The dawn attack brought a firestorm over the city of 2.5 million residents and sent thousands of people fleeing.

The rebels have so far managed to fend off the assault although the shelling by regime forces continued on Sunday.

“We are ready to bring down this regime,” Oqaidi says, interrupted constantly by the ringing of his mobile phone.

He assures that the rebel Free Syrian Army will not withdraw, as it did in Damascus earlier this month, but that it will face the attack.

“There is no strategic withdrawal of the Free Syrian Army. We await the attack,” he says, refusing to reveal how many rebels are fighting in Aleppo as these were “military secrets.”

He said his men were positioned across Aleppo, adding that regime troops faced obstacles when it comes to entering the city.

“The army can only use its aircraft or heavy artillery at a distance, shelling cities, destroying houses. It cannot enter the city,” he says.

“We are positioned throughout the city and we have arms to defend ourselves against helicopters,” he adds, accusing the regime of trying to “commit a massacre.”

“They want to do what they did in Homs,” Oqaidi said, referring to the central Syrian city which was subjected to incessant bombardment throughout winter and became a symbol of violence and repression of the regime.

“We expect them to commit a very great slaughter, and we urge the international community to intervene to prevent these crimes,” the colonel says.

He also said that the Syrian army had no real cause to fight.

“The Syrian army wavers, it is collapsing. It stands for no specific cause,” he says.

After the interview, Oqaidi continues meetings into the night with longstanding opponents.

And just hours before dawn, he bids farewell to his audience in English, before disappearing into the night, followed by his aide who is armed with a Kalashnikov and the colonel’s laptop.

BBC News – No let-up in Aleppo battle as Syria vows to crush rebels.

Rebels say they repelled a government offensive on Saturday but this claim cannot be verified

Shelling and gunfire have again shaken Aleppo as Syrian government forces battle rebels for control of the country’s largest city.

A BBC correspondent who is just outside Aleppo says heavy fighting is reported in the city centre near the old fort but this cannot be verified.

Syria’s foreign minister said on Sunday that the rebels would be defeated.

The head of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) has called for foreign states to arm rebel fighters.

“We want weapons that would stop tanks and jet fighters. That is what we want,” Abdulbaset Sayda was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying at a news conference in Abu Dhabi.

He urged Arab “brothers and friends to support the Free [Syrian] Army”.

Wealthy Gulf states pledged in April to pay the salaries of rebel fighters, while the US state department has acknowledged sending non-lethal aid (such as communications equipment) to the opposition.

Food shortages

Shelling has again been reported in the Salah al-Din neighbourhood, in the south west of Aleppo.

The BBC’s Ian Pannell, who was inside Aleppo on Saturday, says government troops are trying to push into rebel-held neighbourhoods.

Vehicles carrying civilians have been steadily streaming out of the city.

Civilians who remain in Aleppo face power cuts and food shortages.

Our correspondent saw a bakery open for the first time in 24 hours which was quickly surrounded by people clamouring for bread and saying they had nothing else to eat.

The rebels claim to have repelled the government offensive which began in earnest on Saturday, but our correspondent says this cannot be verified.

Syria would defeat the rebels in Aleppo and the conspiracy against it, Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said.

He was speaking on a visit to Iran, Syria’s closest ally in the region.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 29 people were killed in Aleppo on Saturday – among 168 to die across the country throughout the day. The figures cannot be verified.

The total number of people killed since the Syrian anti-government uprising began in March 2011 now stands at more than 20,000, the Observatory says.

Refugees

Meanwhile, Jordan is opening its first official refugee camp for Syrians fleeing the fighting.

The camp at Zaatari, about 11km (seven miles) from the border with Syria, will have room for 10,000 refugees to start with but could grow to 100,000 if needed.

Jordan says 2,000 refugees are crossing the border from Syria each day – the UN says the total figure now stands at 150,000.

The BBC’s Lyse Doucet, at Zaatari, says the new camp will ease pressure on existing transit camps where overcrowding has been causing tension between refugees and with local communities.

Netanyahu: US national security adviser did not share Iran attack plans with us | The Times of Israel.

(One crazy story after another citing “US Sources.”  Is this the WH trying to make Israel look bad while shoring up Obama’s credibility?  Is it pure disinfo, and if so whose, US or Israel?  All this while Romney’s here and the Aleppo battle rages.  Oh, almost forgot about the huge Russian fleet which arrived.  Is there any way these circumstances can be wound down without a regional war?  I’d like to hear what people think. – JW )

For second time since presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s arrival, PMO denies report about US-Israeli relations

President Barack Obama meets with senior advisors in the Oval Office on July 18. Pictured, from left, are: Chris Mizelle, Director for Russia and Central Asia, NSS; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Jack Lew; and Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor. (Photo credit: White House/Pete Souza)

The Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday denied a report that a senior US official recently showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Obama administration’s plans for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Nothing in the article is correct,” a senior PMO official told The Times of Israel on Sunday, moments after Netanyahu met with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Jerusalem.

Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid on Sunday quoted a “senior American official” saying that Netanyahu hosted US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon for a “a three-hour dinner” during which Donilon shared Washington’s contingency plans for a potential strike on Iran. Ravid wrote that Donilon’s visit in Jerusalem two weeks ago was “the most significant so far between American and Israeli officials here in recent weeks.”

The PMO official flatly denied Ravid’s article: “Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran,” the senior official said.

The Haaretz story was the second article coinciding with Romney’s visit to Israel that the PMO has denied. Netanyahu’s office denied an Associated Press report on Saturday in which US intelligence officials alleged that Israel had spied on CIA staff stationed in Israel and which called Jerusalem’s alleged spy activity frustrating and a “genuine counter-intelligence threat.”

AFP: Iran unmoved by sanctions: Israel’s Netanyahu.

(AFP) – 2 hours ago

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that international sanctions have so far made no impact on Iran’s nuclear programme and that a “strong and credible” military threat was needed.

“We have to be honest and say that all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian programme by one iota,” he said on meeting White House hopeful Mitt Romney.

“I believe that we need a strong and credible military threat, coupled with the sanctions, to have a chance to change that situation.”

His remarks came as the Haaretz newspaper ran a story saying that US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon had recently briefed Netanyahu on Washington’s contingency plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Citing a “senior American official,” Haaretz said Donilon had held a three-hour dinner meeting with the Israeli premier a fortnight ago, during which he had shared details about US military capabilities for attacking underground Iranian bunkers.

It said Donilon’s Israeli counterpart, Yaakov Amidror, was present “for part of the time.”

But an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied the report.

“We don’t comment on what is discussed in closed diplomatic meetings,” the official told AFP. “But the story is full of factual errors.

“Nothing in the article is correct.

“Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did Donilon present operational plans to attack Iran.”

Haaretz wrote: “Donilon sought to make clear that the United States is seriously preparing for the possibility that negotiations will reach a dead end and military action will become necessary.”

In recent weeks, several senior US officials have held talks in Jerusalem, among them US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan and Clinton’s deputy William Burns.

And US defence chief Leon Panetta is due in Israel next week for top-level talks, with Iran likely to play a central role in his discussions.

Netanyahu told Romney he shared the Republican challenger’s position that a nuclear Iran was “the greatest danger facing the world.”

Panetta Heads to Middle East as Iran Dominates Israel Talks – Bloomberg.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta heads today to the Middle East where tensions are rising over the democratic transition in Egypt, turmoil in Syria and Iran’s suspected advances toward nuclear weapons.

His trip to Tunisia, Egypt, Israel and Jordan has a security agenda, including new concerns about Syrian chemical weapons, along with election-season political stakes. Panetta is scheduled to arrive in Israel on the heels of a visit by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has appealed to Jewish voters by attacking President Barack Obama as lacking sufficient commitment to Israel’s security.

One public source of tension between the Obama administration and Israeli leaders involves the urgency of military strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. While the U.S. and Israel both say they suspect Iran is covertly seeking nuclear-weapons capabilities through uranium enrichment and other activities, the two allies have disagreed openly about how much time to give economic sanctions and negotiations to persuade Iran to give up much its nuclear program.

With a lack of progress in the negotiations, “the clocks in Washington and Tel Aviv are out of sync” on the timing for military action, said David Makovsky, a Middle East specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Obama administration’s strategy is to see if Iran backs down as international sanctions increasingly hurt its economy, saying there is time for military action as a last alternative.

Limited Time

In February, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that the Jewish state would need to act militarily within months, before Iran reaches a “zone of immunity” where its underground enrichment facilities would be invulnerable to Israeli air strikes. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, for generating electricity and medical purposes.

One of Panetta’s goals in Israel may be seeking to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t mount a military strike before the U.S. presidential election, Makovsky said. Israelis believe “if they don’t hit before November they would lose the window” for their capabilities, leaving any decision about military action after that point entirely in U.S. hands, he said in an interview.

Panetta, 74, may have to “reassure Israel that the U.S. will take care of the Iran situation, especially if Obama is elected to a second term,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, a principal research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Clinton Visit

Panetta’s visit to Israel follows trips there this month by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns. Panetta will meet with his Israeli defense counterpart, Barak, for the ninth time in a year, a U.S. defense official said. He will meet Netanyahu for the third time since becoming defense secretary in July 2011, according to the official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The meetings are “all part of keeping Israel on our side” and ensuring that its leaders don’t “come to a different conclusion about the Iranian nuclear program,” said Richard Armitage, a U.S. deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush and currently president of Armitage International, an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting firm.

In advance of Romney’s arrival in Israel, Obama sought to counter Republican criticism as he signed legislation July 27 to bolster U.S. military cooperation. Obama highlighted the release of $70 million for the Iron Dome missile-defense system, which protects Israeli from short-range rockets.

Obama’s ’Priority’

“I have made it a top priority for my administration to deepen cooperation with Israel across the whole spectrum of security issues, intelligence, military, technology,” he said at the White House.

Panetta will discuss further U.S. efforts to bolster Israel’s military capabilities, the U.S. defense official said, withholding details in advance of the defense secretary’s visit.

Israel’s preoccupation with stopping Iran’s nuclear program is now rivaled by a second security peril — that the chaos in Syria may enable Islamic militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah or other groups to obtain Syrian chemical weapons for use against the Jewish state.

The U.S., Israel and Jordan have been coordinating efforts to monitor those stockpiles of sarin and VX nerve gas and to plan actions if there is a security breach. Netanyahu said July 22 that he doesn’t rule out Israeli action to prevent such weapons from being acquired by militants amid a collapse of the Assad regime.

Chemical Weapons

The U.S. and Israel “have a joint interest in making sure that the Syrian stock of chemical weapons is not unleashed,” Meir said in an interview.

Still, the U.S. lacks a coherent policy on handling the revolt in Syria, said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. Since fighting began in March 2011 at least 19,000 people have died, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“It would be nice if Panetta went to the Middle East with a Syria policy but we don’t have one,” Hamid said in a phone interview from Qatar. The Obama administration should offer more assistance to the rebel groups, including increasing U.S. influence by supplying arms, if it is reluctant to take direct military action, Hamid said.

Radios, Supplies

The U.S. is providing non-lethal assistance, such as radios and medical supplies, while Arab nations are supplying weapons. The U.S. says providing weapons would only further fuel the violence, even as U.S. efforts to find a diplomatic solution have shown no results in forcing Assad to quit.

Panetta’s travels will give him the opportunity to assess the effects of the so-called Arab Spring. His first stop is Tunisia, where a December 2010 uprising ignited the popular revolutions in the region. Tunisians toppled the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after more than two decades in power, electing an Islamist-led government.

The defense secretary will sketch out a future for U.S.- Tunisia military ties, the U.S. defense official said. The two countries meet annually through the U.S.-Tunisian Joint Military Commission to discuss cooperation, Tunisia’s defense modernization and training, according to the State Department. More than 3,000 Tunisian military officers and technicians have received training in U.S. military schools in the past two decades, according to the Defense Department.

Egypt Meetings

In Egypt, Panetta will meet with Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country’s military chief, and newly elected President Mohamed Mursi, the U.S. defense official said.

During the revolt that led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak last year, Panetta was in regular contact with Tantawi as the U.S. pressured the military not to crush the pro-democracy protests. Panetta will encourage the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which Tantawi leads, to support transition to civilian rule, the official said.

Tensions between Egypt’s new president, who comes from the Muslim Brotherhood, and its senior generals, who took interim power after Mubarak’s departure, have mounted since Tantawi’s council stripped Mursi of some of his powers and granted itself legislative authority after the court-ordered disbanding of the parliament.

The U.S. provides $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, which reached a peace accord with neighboring Israel in 1978. The Obama administration lost some of its leverage over Egypt’s military leaders when it considered and backed away from withholding military assistance after Egypt in February brought criminal charges against 19 Americans and others for accepting foreign support for their nonprofit pro-democracy groups.

“That sent a message to Egyptians that if they stood up to the U.S., the U.S. would back down,” Hamid said.

For Netanyahu and Barak, a Romney presidency might come too late | The Times of Israel.

It is this week’s other prominent US visitor, Defense Secretary Panetta, whose message on Iran holds the key to Israeli decison-making on Iran

By David Horovitz July 29, 2012, 2:58 pm

In his private meetings on Sunday, Mitt Romney was hearing Israel’s assessment of Iran’s steady progress toward the bomb, and elaborating upon his declared commitment “to use any means possible to prevent Iran from going nuclear.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak may well be inclined to take the Republican presidential candidate at his word. Romney has repeatedly slammed President Barack Obama for mishandling the Iranian threat, and went so far as to assert, in a Washington Post oped in March, that with Obama in the White House, Iran was on course to acquiring nuclear weapons.

The trouble is that Romney doesn’t run America. At least not yet. And by the time he does, if he does, Iran may have entered what Barak terms the “zone of immunity” — the advanced stage of its nuclear drive in which Israeli military intervention may not be capable of halting its progress.

Which is why this week’s most significant American visitor may not be the man who would be president but the man who is defense secretary, Leon Panetta, due here hard on Romney’s heels. Panetta will be meeting Barak for the ninth time in a year, according to one count — an extraordinary statistic that underlines both the unprecedented coordination between the two security establishments, and the acute American concern that Netanyahu and Barak will consider a resort to force in the very near future if they are not convinced of this US administration’s readiness to intervene militarily before it’s too late.

The Obama-Panetta rhetoric on Iran has featured phraseology similar to Romney’s. Obama told the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in March that he “would use all elements of American power to pressure Iran and prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” Panetta, at the same conference, said that “military action is the last alternative when all else fails… But make no mistake, we will act if we have to.”

But can the Israel of purportedly trigger-happy Netanyahu and Barak, and the America of ostensibly diplomacy-obsessed Obama and Panetta, agree on when it is that “all else” will be deemed to have failed, and when military action can no longer be avoided?

US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s visit here two weeks ago was plainly another part of the Administration’s ongoing effort to convince the Israeli leadership that it is genuinely ready, capable and willing to resort to force if necessary — whether or not Donilon went into the specifics of a potential US strike, as Haaretz reported Sunday and the PMO denied.

Quietly, behind-the-scenes, too, the US is being careful to keep Israel fully in the loop regarding the progress — or lack thereof — on the diplomatic front, with Wendy Sherman, the US representative to the P5+1 talks, constantly updating and consulting with Israeli officials including National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror.

Yet the different emphases between Washington and Jerusalem are out there for all to hear. The president and his senior officials publicly reiterate their belief that time has not run out on diplomacy, and that sanctions are having an ever-greater impact. The prime minister and his key ministers declare repeatedly that diplomacy just gives Iran “a freebie” to expand its stocks of enriched uranium and work on its delivery systems, that sanctions are not sufficiently crippling and that, as Barak restated only last Thursday, dealing with a would-be nuclear Iran today will be a lot less complex and costly than tackling a nuclear Iran tomorrow.

American officials are prone to say, of Israel’s heated rhetoric, that it has been extremely effective in alerting the international community to the gravity of the threat posed by Iran. By signaling that it may be poised to strike, they say, Israel has alarmed much of the international community into imposing greater economic pressure, more quickly, on Iran.

But to listen to the likes of Meir Dagan, the veteran former Mossad chief, or to Shaul Mofaz, who until less than two weeks ago was Netanyahu’s deputy, the rhetoric may be heated but it is not empty. Dagan has been warning for the past year against an unwarranted Israeli readiness to use force against Iran. Mofaz, since leading Kadima back out of the coalition after a mere 70 days at the prime minister’s side, has dropped a series of heavy hints about Netanyahu’s ostensible inclination to “set out on operational adventures that will endanger the future of our young women and young men and the future of the citizens of Israel in the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu told AIPAC in March, that “I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation.” Romney would have him believe that he won’t have to. Obama says the same thing.

But for all the frequent flying of Administration officials, intelligence heads and military chiefs, Netanyahu and Barak may simply not believe Obama. After all, the president does keep stressing the commitment to diplomacy and economic pressure. And Panetta has publicly made far more compelling a case for holding fire than for unleashing it.

Several months ago, the defense secretary set out an impassioned, comprehensive argument against a military strike by Israel, or the US, for that matter — and he did so in the unscripted, question and answer phase of a lecture, speaking spontaneously and thus, presumably, from the heart rather than the script.

Such an attack would “at best” delay Iran’s nuclear program by “one, possibly two years… Frankly, some of those targets are very difficult to get at,” he told the Brookings Institution in December. A strike would “ultimately not destroy their ability to produce an atomic weapon,” he said, and would have “unintended consequences… A regime that is isolated would suddenly be able to reestablish itself, suddenly be able to get support in the region….”

The US, Panetta went on, warming to his theme, “would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases.”

Then there were the “severe economic consequences,” he said, “that could impact a very fragile economy in Europe and a fragile economy here in the United States.”

And finally, military intervention could cause “an escalation” that would “not only involve many lives, but I think could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.”

Granted, Panetta added a few moments later, “You always have… the last resort of military action, but it must be the last resort, not the first.”

After that presentation, it’s unlikely the Iranians would be bracing for American military action. And those remarks must have been pored over, too, in Jerusalem.

It is hard to imagine a president Romney, or his defense secretary, speaking in similar vein — though nothing is impossible, of course. But for Netanyahu and Barak, a Romney presidency, if it comes at all, might come too late.

Israel’s stance proves anti-Syrian plot, Iranian FM says | The Times of Israel.

Syrian rebel leaders call for international aid in obtaining arms

Iranian Foreign Minister Akbar Ali Salehi (photo credit: CC-BY Parmida76, Flickr)

Israel’s stance on Syria is proof of an international plot against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday afternoon at a press conference with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem.

Muallem accused Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of conspiring against Syrians. He and Salehi confirmed that their governments take a similar stance on the ongoing military conflict in Syria.

Muallem added that his country can defend itself from the “terrorists” attacking it, and that the latest round of foreign pressure in Aleppo will be deflected.

According to Salehi, evidence of an anti-Syria plot can be seen can be seen in “the stance Israel has adopted.” Iran’s foreign minister said he was surprised that certain regional countries are walking the same path as the Israelis, and said those countries should rethink their stance and actions.

The thought that a foreign government could step into the vacuum created by a theoretical collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime was described by Salehi as a “delusion.”

Salehi noted that the Syrian regime needed more time to implement Assad’s reform. He also said the citizens of Syria were entitled to civil rights, such as free elections and a constitution.

Earlier on Sunday, a Syrian opposition leader called on the international community to arm rebels on Sunday as the battle between President Bashar Assad and opposition forces raged in Aleppo.

Syrian National Council President Abdul Basit Sida told reporters in Abu Dhabi that the world needs to supply the Syrian opposition with weaponry, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets, in order to fight Assad’s army.

Assad forces have pounded Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city, with tanks, planes, helicopters, and artillery in the week-long battle with rebel forces. At least 160 people were killed in Syria on Saturday, 33 of whom died in Aleppo, the Local Coordination Committees in Syria reported.

According to various human rights groups, to date some 20,000 people have been killed in the violent uprisings against the regime of Bashar Assad, which started in March 2011.