WarSclerotic

Bibi’s Secret War Plan Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם.

( The source for the BBC article.  Tikun Olam is a leftist Jewish outfit. Listen to Richard Silverstein’s interview on the BBC HERE to judge his credibility. – JW )

by Richard Silverstein on August 15, 2012 · 8 comments

in Mideast Peace

Gog and Magog: No to Iran War!

UPDATE: Here’s the link for my portion of the BBC Newshour segment in which I was interviewed about the Israeli government document.

Israelis are posting a claim that the document I published is identical to a post published by Fresh in 2002.  This is false.  To put this in context, the IDF produces briefing memos regularly and uses material from past documents which it updates with new material as circumstances warrant.  There are elements of the document I published contained in the Fresh posting.  There are elements in what I published that are not in the Fresh posting.  In other words, the document I received contains some material that has been used before by the IDF in previous materials it has used to brief individuals.  But it contains new material as well.  This is no way devalues the document published here.

*  *

In the past few days, I received an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel’s war plans against Iran. The document was passed to me by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer.  My source, in fact, wrote to me that normally he would not leak this sort of document, but:

“These are not normal times. I’m afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious.”

The reason they leaked it is to expose the arguments and plans advanced by the Bibi-Barak two-headed warrior. Neither the IDF leaker, my source, nor virtually any senior military or intelligence officer wants this war. While whoever wrote this briefing paper had use of IDF and intelligence data, I don’t believe the IDF wrote it. It feels more likely it came from the shop of national security advisor Yaakov Amridor, a former general, settler true believer and Bibi confidant.  It could also have been produced by Defense Minister Barak, another pro-war booster.

I’ve translated the document from Hebrew with the help of Dena Shunra.

Before laying out the document, I wanted to place it in context. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that after Bibi’s IDF service he became the marketing director for a furniture company. Recent revelations have suggested that he may have also served in some capacity either formally or informally in the Mossad during that period.

This document is a more sophisticated version of selling bedroom sets and three-piece sectionals. The only difference is that this marketing effort could lead to the death of thousands.

This is Bibi’s sales pitch for war. Its purpose is to be used in meetings with members of the Shminiya , the eight-member security cabinet which currently finds a 4-3 majority opposed to an Iran strike. Bibi uses this sales pitch to persuade the recalcitrant ministers of the cool, clean, refreshing taste of war. My source informs me that it has also been shared in confidence with selected journalists who are in the trusted inner media circle (who, oh who, might they be?).

This is Shock and Awe, Israel-style. It is Bibi’s effort to persuade high-level Israeli officials that Israel can prosecute a pure technology war that involves relatively few human beings (Israeli, that is) who may be put in harm’s way, and will certainly cost few lives of IDF personnel.

Bibi’s sleight of hand here involves no mention whatsoever of an Iranian counter-attack against Israel. The presumption must be that the bells and whistles of all those marvelous new weapons systems will decapitate Iran’s war-making ability and render it paralyzed. The likelihood of this actually happening is nearly nil.

There will be those who will dispute the authenticity of this document. I’m convinced it is what my source claims, based on his prior track record and the level of specificity offered in the document. It references cities by name and the facilities they contain. It names new weapons systems including one Israel supposedly hasn’t even shared with the U.S.

No, it’s real. Or I should say that while it’s real, it is the product of the Israeli dream factory which manufactures threats and then creates fabulist military strategies to address them. The dream factory always breaks the hearts of the families of those whose members fall victim to it. It never produces the result it promises, nor will it do so here.

Remember Bush-era Shock and Awe? Remember those promises of precision-guided cruise missiles raining death upon Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Remember Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” ceremony on the deck of the USS Lincoln, only six or seven years premature? Remember the promises of decisive victory? Remember 4,000 U.S. dead, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?

Now, think of what an Israeli war against Iran could turn into. Think about how this sanitized version of 21st century war could turn into a protracted, bloody conflict closer to the nine-year Iran-Iraq War:

The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders.  The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action.  The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal.  This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal.

A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran.  300km ballistic missiles [R.S.-this might be a reference to the Popeye Turbo] would be launched from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf.  The missiles would not be armed with unconventional warheads [WMD], but rather with high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets.

The missiles will strike their targets—some exploding above ground like those striking the nuclear reactor at Arak–which is intended to produce plutonium and tritium—and the nearby heavy water production facility; the nuclear fuel production facilities at Isfahan and facilities for enriching uranium-hexaflouride.  Others would explode under-ground, as at the Fordo facility.

A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus.  Intelligence gathered over years will be utilized to completely decapitate Iran’s professional and command ranks in these fields.

After the first wave of attacks, which will be timed to the second, the “Blue and White” radar satellite, whose systems enable us to perform an evaluation of the level of damage done to the various targets, will pass over Iran.  Only after rapidly decrypting the satellite’s data, will the information be transferred directly to war planes making their way covertly toward Iran.  These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally.  This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible.  Those Israeli war planes which participate in the attack will damage a short-list of targets which require further assault.

Among the targets approved for attack—Shihab 3 and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.

While the level of specificity in this document is, in some senses, impressive, in one critical aspect it is deficient.  Muhammad Sahimi points out that the current chief of the Revolutionary Guards, when he assumed his position in 2007, deliberately addressed the issue of over-centralization of command and control by dividing the nation into 31 districts.  Each of these has its own independent command and control facilities and mechanisms.  So Israel wouldn’t be able to knock out a single facility and paralyze the IRG.  They’d need to knock out 31 separate sets of facilities–a much harder task.

There seems also to be an assumption that Iran’s leaders and nuclear specialists live nice domestic lives and that Israeli intelligence knows where they all live and can easily target them.  In truth, the most senior Iranian military and scientific figures live clandestine lives and it’s hard for me to believe even the Mossad knows where they are and how to target them.

So it appears that Netanyahu believes he’s fighting Saddam circa 2003.  During that war, the Iraqi Revolutionary Guards were centralized and knocking out one C&C center could decapitate the entire military apparatus.  But Iran has learned from Saddam’s mistakes.  It isn’t fighting the last war as Bibi appears to be.  It is preparing for the next one.  While Israel may have new tricks up its sleeve that no one in the world has yet seen, if it doesn’t understand the nature of the enemy, its defenses, its structure, etc. then it can’t win.

News Alert: I’ve just been interviewed by BBC Newshour’s Julian Marshall and anticipate they will air a segment about this story at 1:30PM UK time and at 9:30AM east coast time (6:30AM west coast).  I’m not sure which time it will air in Israel, but I believe it would be 3:30PM.  If your NPR station airs BBC World Service you should hear it.  I don’t know if it will be repeated any other times during the day.  You can tell me that if you hear it.

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Tagged as: bibi netanyahu, ehud-barak, iran-attack

William Burns August 15, 2012 at 3:29 AM

This is certainly well beyond “a few bombs on the nuke sites.”

Reply

Nimrod August 15, 2012 at 5:28 AM

Fascinating!
Do you plan to publish the original document, in Hebrew, or just this translated summary?

Reply

lifelong August 15, 2012 at 5:30 AM

Glad to see they’re completely delusional. The crazier they are, the more dissenting voices we’ll see coming out of the woodworks. But, the ‘invisible planes’ take the cake though… Maybe they can hide Tel-Aviv and Haifa too when the missiles start raining down.

Reply

vova August 15, 2012 at 7:49 AM

loooool!
here’s the “original top secret” document:
http://www.fresh.co.il/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=567269#post4282787

for those who cannot read hebrew, this is an imaginary post in an israeli forum posted in 2002(!!) describing word by word what richard wrote. once again, richard “high level” source made him look like a fool. lol!

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Richard Silverstein August 15, 2012 at 10:05 AM

That’s actually a false statement which indicates how sloppy you are. Portions of the document I published are contained in the Fresh posting of 2002. Of course the IDF uses portions of its briefing memos for presentations and updates them as they develop new weapons systems. That’s what all militaries do. In 2002, they produced a document which was leaked to Fresh. The document I published contains other information that is not in the Fresh posting and the Fresh posting contains highly fictionalized scenarios which are not in the document I posted.

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vova August 15, 2012 at 7:53 AM

sorry, posted a few days ago.

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Eyal August 15, 2012 at 8:21 AM

“Bibi’s sleight of hand here involves no mention whatsoever of an Iranian counter-attack against Israel. The presumption must be that the bells and whistles of all those marvelous new weapons systems will decapitate Iran’s war-making ability and render it paralyzed. The likelihood of this actually happening is nearly nil.”

– Unless they expect or know that the US will stand with them.

Reply

Dena Bugel-Shunra August 15, 2012 at 9:02 AM

If this is their war planning, they’ve got problems: it offers no speculation on what resistance they might meet, what resources are available to their opponents. All it is is a list of self-glorifying threats, much like the ones heard in kindergarten and the very first years of school.

It’s basically a movie script. Or as they say in Israel – הם חיים בסרט – they’re living in their own personal movie.

Why would they want to posture in this way? Are they trying to draw an attack to themselves, and then cry for mercy/assistance? Preschool tactics there, sibling rivalry playing for a large parent. I hope that’s not the plan.

Underground parking lots to serve as Tel Aviv bomb shelters | The Times of Israel.

60 garages provide room for 800,000 people in the event of missile attack

An underground parking lot at the Habima national theater in Tel Aviv that can be used as a bomb shelter for 1600 people. (photo credit: AP)

The Tel Aviv municipality has approved a list of underground parking garages to be used by citizens as bomb shelters in the event of a missile attack on the home front.

All the garages meet Home Front Command standards and were certified by a private engineering company,Maariv reported Wednesday.The city has designated 60 private garages with a total space of 850,000 square meters for use by up to 800,000 citizens.

Garages to be used in the event of missile attack include those of the New Central Bus Station, Dizengoff Center Mall, Azrieli Mall, Gan HaIr, Ramat Aviv Mall, and others. The parking lots add to 241 shelters already available to the public.

BBC News – Leaked Israel memo: propaganda or Iran war plan?.

( Real or disinfo, you must READ THIS ! – JW )

By Jonathan Marcus BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

German-built Dolphin submarines are capable of firing cruise missiles

Richard Silverstein – the American blogger who says he has been given the text of a memo outlining Israel’s plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities – is clear about what he thinks it is.

He says it came from a senior Israeli politician – a former minister – and he describes it as a “sales pitch”, used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak to try to win round sceptical members of Israel’s divided inner security cabinet.

The text supplied to the BBC is just that – text.

There is no document as such and thus it is impossible to verify if it is indeed an Israeli cabinet paper of some kind. But its purpose for Mr Silverstein is clear.

He believes it was passed by a serving officer to the politician and then leaked by him precisely to alert the outside world to the scale of Israel’s military plan to strike at Iran and thus to reduce its chances of ever happening.

An unprecedented public debate is underway in Israel on the wisdom of launching an attack against Iran. And this leaked document, whatever its source, and whatever its original purpose, has become an element in that debate.

‘Paralyse the regime’

The document itself is striking in both the scale and scope of the military operation that it proposes.

It also employs a range of technologies, many of which we have known that the Israelis are developing, but this document suggests that they are battle-ready and fully operational.

The leaked text suggests that an Israeli operation would begin with a massive cyber attack against Iran’s infrastructure, to “paralyse the regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders”.

Ballistic missiles would be fired at Iranian nuclear targets, albeit with conventional non-nuclear warheads. Cruise missiles would be fired from Israeli submarines in the Gulf.

It has long been assumed that Israel’s small force of German-built Dolphin-class submarines has been adapted to fire cruise missiles, though it is not clear if these are a version of the US-made Harpoon or a derivative of the much longer range Israeli-built Popeye.

It is not clear if Israel’s submarine-launched cruise missiles are a version of the US-made Harpoon

According to the text, it will not be just the main Iranian nuclear facilities that are struck, but command-and-control systems; research-and-development facilities and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus.

‘Futuristic battle plan’

After the first wave of attacks the Israeli memo suggests there will be a rapid assessment of the damage done by satellite, after which manned aircraft will go in to attack “a short-list of those targets which require further assault”.

At almost every stage Israel will be using key technologies and weapons systems that it has developed itself, including what the memo describes as equipment that “will render Israeli aircraft invisible”; technology that it has not even shared with its US ally.

At one level it all reads like a futuristic battle plan out of a Tom Clancy novel.

There is nothing in the leaked text about how Iran might respond, nor anything about the potential for a regional war, which could embroil Israel on its northern border should Iran’s ally Hezbollah rain down missiles on Israeli cities.

The proposed mission is huge and with potentially far-reaching consequences. We know that most of the Israeli top military command and intelligence chiefs are sceptical about bombing Iran now.

They don’t so much question Israel’s ability to conduct such a mission – though the scale and scope of what is proposed in the leaked text sounds as though it would test Israel’s military machine to its limit.

They fear of wider ramifications in a febrile and unstable region.

They wonder at what exactly the gains would be?

Continue reading the main story

Iran nuclear sites

Natanz – Uranium enrichment plant

Fordo, near Qom – Uranium enrichment plant

Arak (pictured) – Heavy water plant

Isfahan – Uranium conversion plant

Parchin – Military site

A delay in Iran’s nuclear development programme, yes, but for how long?

And above all, they fear the damage that a unilateral Israeli decision to attack Iran might have on the Israel-US relationship, especially if such an attack went ahead so close to a US presidential election in November.

The debate is in full swing. Some analysts suggest that Israeli leaders are preparing Israeli public opinion and indeed the outside world for a strike.

The two key players, Mr Barak and Mr Netanyahu, insist that if the fateful decision has to be made, they will not flinch.

Israel’s security cabinet is well qualified in military matters, though at this stage it is said to be almost evenly divided on the merits of a strike.

Of course, the differences of opinion and the airing of the arguments itself sends a signal to Tehran, to Washington and anywhere else that may be listening.

The leaked text may or may not be a precis of Israel’s battle plans.

But it is now an integral part of the increasingly feverish national debate and a debate that resonates well beyond Israel’s own borders.

US punched Bibi, Barak in the face – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Analysis: Dempsey’s remark regarding IDF’s inability to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability meant to show Israel who’s boss

Attila Somfalvi

Once every few years Israel needs a slap in the face to remember where it stands in the world. On Tuesday it was US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey who assumed the role of the responsible adult and slapped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the duo orchestrating the national hysteria surrounding the possibility of an attack in Iran.

Israel can “delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” he said while sitting next to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who visited Israel a few weeks ago to allay the concerns of the leadership in Jerusalem.

Dempsey’s comments should be taken seriously, as should the stern message conveyed by Panetta, the White House and the American security establishment: If we can’t reason with you, the Israelis, we will have to get tough.

The general’s remark was not a slip-of-the-tongue. It was a calculated statement from a general of Irish descent and character. His words constituted a slap in Israel’s face, a punch in the face, and a kick to the most sensitive part of the body. To be more precise, the US slammed Israel’s head against the wall and said: “Shut up. Stop babbling about Iran. Without us there is not much you can do, and don’t assume for a second that we are dancing to your tune. You shouldn’t do anything stupid, and stop driving the entire world crazy.”

This was the message behind Dempsey’s comment. You don’t believe it? Just imagine what would have happened had an American general, after decades of ambiguity, would have held a press conference and announced that Israel does not have nuclear weapons, or that it does.

Now think again about the meaning of Dempsey’s statement, which was made after months and even years in which Israel was building up its image as an omnipotent power in the Middle East. Dempsey’s comments can even be considered earth-shattering: The US, Israel’s closest ally and confidante, has decided to bring the Jewish state’s leadership to its knees and hurt our exaggerated self-confidence and undermine our deterrence. No less.

Dempsey was painfully clear. He basically said that Israel should not disregard the opinions of its top security officials, stop the constant chatter on Iran and refrain from any acts that may have an adverse effect on the global economy. The general also meant to tell Israel that it mustn’t believe that Netanyahu has any control over the US because he has friends in the Republican Party. Dempsey laid down the facts: Israel is not America, it does not possess the same capabilities, and if Netanyahu and Barak continue wreaking havoc – Israel won’t have America either.

It will take a while before we will be able to gauge the depth of the current crisis between Israel and the US (and between Netanyahu and Obama). Washington made a strategic decision to show Israel who is the mentor and who is the protégé. The US hit Israel’s most sensitive nerve: The pride in its military power. But it appears that the US had no other choice. After weeks of belligerent headlines, President Obama had enough of Netanyahu’s inclination to play with fire. We should start getting used to it.

Iran threatens to counter cyber warfare with legal action – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

In effort to defend the country’s infrastructure against future cyber-attacks, cabinet announces plan to cutoff government websites from global networks.

Iran plans to take legal action against anyone proved to be linked to cyber-attacks against its public computer networks or national infrastructure systems, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Wednesday.

Head of the Iranian Presidential Center for International Legal Affairs Majid Jafarzadeh told Fars that Iran has been consulting legal experts with the intention of suing those responsible for the cyber-attacks it came under in recent years.

“We’ll take this issue as high as we can in the Justice system,” said Jafarzadeh. Currently, he said, they are waiting for crucial information that will allow Iran to identify those responsible for the cyber-attacks.

Iran’s threat of taking legal actions is considered as part of efforts to defend the country against cyber-attacks described by Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the largest antivirus company in Europe, as the “most dangerous innovation of the 21st century.”

The Iranian cabinet announced over the weekend that all government websites would be moved to domestic servers by September, in an effort to reduce the risk of hacking and in order to reduce Iran’s dependence on a network which is controlled “by one or two countries.”

The only other country to own such internal computer network, not linked to any global networks, is North Korea.

A new virus had attacked nuclear facilities in Natanz and Fordo, a scientist at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran claimed three weeks ago. The computer virus, he said, was able to shut down command and control equipment based on the Scada system manufactured by Siemens. The attack was similar to that of the Stuxnet virus, which was successful in compromising the same system in 2010.

Using a remote access point, the scientist explained, the hackers were able to access a virtual private network (VPN) and paralyze the Siemens hardware and other automated systems at the facilities. The scientist added that from time to time, the workstations played heavy metal music at deafening levels. “I believe they were playing ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC,” the scientist wrote.

Last June Iran said it had been under a massive cyber-attack. Iran accused Israel, the United States and Britain as being behind the attack, which they said took place “only days after the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West began.”

Iran’s Communications, Information and Technology Minister Reza Taqipour reported in July that his country had “successfully contended with sophisticated spyware and foiled a cyber-attack against state facilities.”

Taqipour said that two types of viruses were used in the attack – one targeting the public network, while the other was used for surveillance. The spyware was described by the minister as “developed by governments and also sent by governments,” with the objective of spying on strategic state facilities and infrastructure.

“All of the attacks were foiled and our preparedness to confront such threats is growing every day,” he said, adding that at times Iran is subject to some 2 million simultaneous attacks.

Cyber-warfare against Iran first made headlines in 2010 after the Stuxnet computer virus was detected. The virus was designed to damage command and control systems in Scada-based facilities. It took months until the Iranians were able to patch the system’s security breaches and to repair the damages done to the uranium-enrichment centrifuges at Natanz.

Subsequently, Iran reported it was attacked by two other spyware programs which were also attributed by many to Israel and the United States. One of the spywares, named Duqu, was primarily used for surveillance; Flame, the second, used cyber-attack tools and was able to erase data from hosting computers.

Oren: Iran Planned to Attack Israeli Embassy in US – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

Michael B. Oren

צילום: פלאש 90

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said that Iran was planning to attack the Israeli embassy in the U.S.

Last year, Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, was arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and charged with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in Washington.

However, there was another high-profile component to the plot, which escaped public attention.

According to an FBI special agent, Arbabsiar also “discussed the possibility of attacks on a number of targets. These targets included government facilities associated with Saudi Arabia and with ‘another’ country and these targets were located within the United States.”

The “other” country, Oren said, was Israel.

“They also planned to blow up the Israeli Embassy, my embassy in this town,” Oren confirmed in an exclusive interview with WTOP.

Oren said there was also a plan “to blow up a restaurant not far from where we’re being interviewed in Washington.”

The envoy also asserted that Israel is considering a massive, crippling attack on Iran before it can move its nuclear facilities to safety deep underground. He added, however, that Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei can choose to shut down the regime’s nuclear weapons program and “remain in power.”

U.S. officials confirm captured Iranians in Syria are ‘active’ military: report.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Syrian rebels claimed earlier this month to have “captured 48 of the Shabiha (militiamen) of Iran who were on a reconnaissance mission in Damascus.” (Al Arabiya)

  nShare

FSA claims bombing of Assad’s ‘military command’ office in Damascus.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

The Free Syrian Army targeted a military command office with explosives to go off at a morning meeting of high-ranking army officers. (Al Arabiya)

inShare

Talk of Attack May Be Cover for Cyber War on Iran – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

Internet Blackout

Journalists are scratching their heads to figure out why Israeli and American leaders are leading a daily chatter of a military attack on Iran, but the flow of words may be a ruse to give Iran a double jolt as its deep fear that a cyber war can knock out its nuclear program prompts Tehran to try to setup a domestic Internet network.

“The regime no longer fears a physical attack from the West,” Mahmoud Enayat, director of the Iran Media Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications, told The Wall Street Journal recently. “It still thinks the West wants to take over Iran, but through the Internet.”

Computer geniuses can literally take over Iran by taking control of its nuclear sites through technology, Minyanville financial website’s staffer Justin Rohrlich wrote Wednesday.

A spate of cyber attacks, such as the Stuxnet and Flame virus and Malware, may have scared Iran more than the nearly daily threats from Israel that it will strike its underground nuclear installations.

Iranian cleric  Hamid Shahriari said in March, “We have identified and confronted 650 websites that have been set up to battle our regime – 39 of them are by opposition groups and our enemies, and the rest promote Western culture and worshiping Satan, and stoke sectarian divides. We are worried about a portion of cyberspace that is used for exchanging information and conducting espionage.”

Iran’s Ministry of Communications recently announced it would launch its own Internet and shut out uncontrolled web services, blocking Iranian from access to the rest of  the world.

Rohrlich quoted Craig Labovitz, the co-founder and president of Ann Arbor, Mich.’s DeepField Networks and a former scientist at Microsoft, as saying, “The Internet really is not that hard to take down. I personally broke the U.S. Internet on a couple of occasions” by accidentally making a mistake in a code. He said the error caused him to “knock off most of the colleges and universities in America.”

Iran’s solution of creating its own “Halal”  Internet may hasten its demise because such a move could cripple its economy.

Eva Galperin, international freedom of expression coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Rohrlich, “Complete disengagement from the greater Internet is not politically or practically feasible.”

“It is doable, as the Iranian government controls all the ISPs in the country, but the potential costs are enormous,” she said. “By keeping them within the country, they maintain control… They’ve been working on a clone of Google Earth, a clone of Twitter, a clone of Facebook, which lets them surveil all the users. But if Iran would like to continue doing any form of international banking, for example, they need the Internet.”

Mahmoud Enayat of the Iran Media Program told the Minyanville writer, “The last time Iran blocked access to encrypted websites, there was a big debate in Parliament. One MP said, ‘We can’t access our Gmail while you’re doing this.’ And Khameini himself is on Instagram and Twitter.”

Global Times reporter Shu Meng wrote, “I’m sure a country like Iran can talk about replacing Gmail with its own mail service, but how many users inside the country will still tunnel out to Gmail? The question countries need to ask themselves is, if they want to get the US out of their back pocket, how much will it cost them to do it, and is it even technically feasible?”

Iranian general: Israel must be destroyed – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Iranian officials toughen anti-Israel rhetoric ahead of Shiites’ al-Quds Day. Meanwhile, families of slain scientists sue Israel

Dudi Cohen, AP

An Iranian defense official said Wednesday that there is no other way but to destroy Israel, ahead of this week’s al-Quds Day, Iran‘s ISNA news agency reported.

Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, said that al-Quds Day, which will be marked by Shiites around the world on Friday, “is an expression of the fact that there is no other way but to stand firm and resist until Israel is destroyed.”

It should be noted that Iranian senior officials tend to employ even tougher rhetoric against Israel ahead of the last Friday of the Ramadan which falls on the global al-Quds day this year. Millions of Shiites in Iran, Pakistan, south Lebanon and Bahrain take to the streets that day to voice their outrage over Israeli “injustices” perpetrated against Palestinians.

The scientists families at the press conference

“The world’s Muslims must help and support the Palestinian people until Palestine is liberated,” General Jalali said in a statement. He added that the Islamic nation is more steadfast than ever in the face of “Zionist threats” noting that Syria‘s Islamic front has become even stronger.

Meanwhile, families of Iran’s slain nuclear scientists filed a lawsuit against Israel, the US and Britain accusing them of involvement in the assassination of their loved ones.

Rahim Ahmadi Roshan, the father of one of the scientists, told a press conference in Tehran Wednesday that the families have demanded Iran’s judiciary to pursue their complaint through international bodies and bring those behind the murders to justice.

Iran’s state television broadcast purported confessions earlier this month by 14 suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010.