WarSclerotic

Will America Forsake Israel? | FrontPage Magazine.

Posted By Giulio Meotti On August 17, 2012 @ 12:15 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments

The Israel-Iran countdown has begun and with respect to Tehran’s nuclear race we are witnessing the greatest crisis in the US-Israel relations. Will America help the tiny Jewish State? Can Israel trust the word of a US administration that has treated Jerusalem like a banana republic?

A few days ago, Israeli officials told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that “the US’ stance is pushing the Iranians to become a country at the brink of nuclear capability.” Very few people in Israel believe that the US will ever launch another preemptive war against the ayatollahs. The US, especially if Barack Obama gets the re-election, will be tempted to reach a compromise with the Iranians.

Israel is dependent on the US for economic, military and diplomatic support. American taxpayers fund 20-25% of Israel’s defense budget, with the Jewish State being the largest recipient by far of American aid since World War II. Israel is required to use a portion of US aid to buy from the US defense establishment, but no other country — certainly not any European one — provides the weapons needed to protect Israeli lives. Moreover, the United States has cast 40 vetoes to protect Israel in the UN Security Council.

There is a quid pro quo for such support, but also a limit to what even that degree of dependence can buy. The current Iranian nuclear race made it very clear. And it made clear that the US can forsake, again, the Israelis.

Washington doesn’t support Israel because of the Jewish State’s democracy, the Holocaust or its respect for human rights. Israel’s strategic value has always been the primary motivation for US support. But it can change tomorrow, especially if Israel’s survival becomes a burden for Washington (France has been Israel’s most important ally after the war, but Paris suddenly abandoned the Jews for the Arab world). Israel must remember that she is America’s ally and client, not “friend.”

The first US presidents after Israel was established — Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson — gave nothing to the Jewish State. And we were in a time when the ashes of Auschwitz were still warm, while today the memory of the Holocaust is fading. Truman maintained a US embargo against arms sales to the Israeli and Arabs, which was effective only against Israel. In 1948, it was US pressure which forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai where Israeli forces were pursuing the defeated Egyptians.

In 1960 the Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann was apprehended by Israeli agents in Argentina and flown to Jerusalem for trial. Argentina turned to the UN Security Council, asking it to condemn Israel and order Eichmann’s return. Washington intended to support the Argentinean complaint and only the furious reaction of Israel’s foreign minister, Golda Meir, dissuaded Washington to do that.

Prior to the Six Day War, Abba Eban approached Lyndon Johnson and all he got was an arms embargo on the Middle East. In 1970, at the height of the “War of Attrition,” the US turned down an urgent Israeli request for security assistance.

In 1992 the Bush-Baker Administration humiliated the Israelis by an ultimatum: “Settlements or loan guarantees” (the latter Israeli general and minister Rehavam Ze’evi dismissed Bush senior as being “anti-Semitic”). The US post-Gulf War’s settlement included American efforts to dislodge Israel from the territories by endangering Israel’s security and claim to the land. The former editor of The New York Times, A.M. Rosenthal, wrote that “the Bush administration has a spiritual affinity for Arab rulers and oilmen, but bares its teeth when Jerusalem shows independence.”

Bill Clinton’s appeasement has been a tragedy for the Jewish people, since he pushed the Oslo process along and encouraged its implementation, bearing a historic responsibility for the Intifada’s bloodshed, in which 2000 Israelis paid with their lives.

In 1981 the Jewish State bombed the Iraqi reactor of Osirak. Recent files released by the UK National Archives show that Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Nicholas Henderson, was with US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger as the news came in. “Weinberger says that he thinks Begin must have taken leave of his senses. He is much disturbed by the Israeli reaction and possible consequences,” Nicholas cabled London. Alexander Haig was secretary of state then. “I argued,” he recalled, “that while some action must be taken to show American disapproval, our strategic interests would not be served by policies that humiliated and weakened Israel.”

Those who remember Ronald Reagan as friendly to Israel may be startled to recall the vehemence of his reaction against Israel. The Reagan administration’s immediate response was to impose sanctions on the Jewish State and Reagan suspended the delivery of F-16 fighters doing something even Jimmy Carter refused to do: use arms supplies as leverage against Israel. Washington has also armed Israel’s western neighbor to the teeth. The Egyptian army is now infinitely more modern then when the Egyptians carried out their successful initial attack against Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Can we forget the US treatment of Jonathan Pollard, the only American to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally? Despite the fact that nobody has given one specific example of how Pollard hurt the US, the Israeli is still being held in solitary confinement in an underground cell. Pollard has been in prison longer than anyone ever sentenced in the US for passing classified materials to a friendly foreign power (the median sentence for someone spying for a non-Soviet power has been less than three years). For his contribution to Israel’s security and for his long suffering in prison, Pollard is an Israeli hero. He is the source of the Israeli preparedness for the Iraqi missile attacks during the Gulf War, when Saddam’s rockets began to rain down on Tel Aviv, and Israelis wore gas masks. Pollard warned Israel of Iraq’s bellicose intentions, and that Syria’s Assad was amassing quantities of chemical weapons. By its own agreement with Israel, the US should have given this information to Jerusalem. But it was deliberately blocked by Weinberger.

Today Israel can stand tall in the face of its important ally because it never asked American soldiers to spill their blood for its defense. It’s Washington that must beg for Israel’s alliance and protect the Jews, as it cannot afford disengagement from the only democracy in a region dominated by Islam. Will the US eventually be compelled to sacrifice Israel on the altar of “realism” and oil price, when Iran’s knife will descend on the Jews? And will the Jewish State’s leadership dutifully bind Israel on the altar?

As Charles Krauthammer spelled it out, “for Israel the stakes are somewhat higher: the very existence of a vibrant nation and its 6 million Jews.” If Israel won’t be able to change the US’s red line on Iran and Jerusalem capitulates to Washington’s appeasement, the Iranians’ ghoulish utopia will be soon armed with atomic bombs. And the Jews? They will be psychologically weaker and totally dependant on others’ help. Like it was before and during the Holocaust.

Articles: Iran’s Khamenei and Israel’s Casus Belli.

By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

Israel preparing to attack Iran: Report – The Times of India.

Syria’s neighbors braced for chemical threat. Assad warns Turkey on Stingers.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 17, 2012, 10:14 AM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian CBW ordnance

The US and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require up to 60,000 ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of the Assad government, an unnamed American source said Thursday night, Aug.16.
This scenario postulates the disintegration of his security forces, he said, leaving chemical and biological weapons sites vulnerable to pillaging. It assumes the sites could not be destroyed by aerial bombings in view of health and environmental hazards.
“There is no imminent plan to deploy ground forces,” the source insisted. This is just a worst-case scenario.
debkafile’s military sources find in this disclosure a bid to psychologically prepare the world for the prospect of chemical warfare, as the dialogue between Bashar Assad and his neighbors gains in violence.
The American special forces deployed on the Jordanian-Syrian border and in bases in Israel and Turkey clearly perceive a chemical-biological weapon threat. Military and medical preparations are being quietly put in place. Reconnaissance teams from potentially targeted countries have infiltrated Syria. They are on the lookout for any chemical missiles being moved into firing positions, although it is taken into account that Assad may be shifting decoys and that not all the real launchings can be stopped.
The Syrian ruler may also decide to transfer chemical explosives to Hizballah in Lebanon. Israel is on record as warning it would prevent this.
Medical preparations are also in place. The US and France are flying special military hospital facilities trained in the treatment of chemical weapon injuries to Turkey and Jordan.
Israeli hospitals are on war alert and have begun opening fortified emergency wards and making them ready for patients.
Tuesday, Aug. 14, IDF Home Front Command units embarked on a series of chemical attack drills in the towns of the northern district down to Afula, which is 52 kilometers east of Haifa and 110 kilometers north of Tel Aviv.
The soldiers taking part those drills wore new anti-contamination suits.
In Tel Aviv, city hall announced underground parking spaces would be available in an emergency as bomb shelters for up to 850,000 people.

Wednesday, August 15, Bashar Assad’s violence again broke new ground:
Syrian air force bombers struck Azaz not far from the Turkish border – for the first time with the aim of razing a complete Syrian town. More than 80 people were killed and 150 wounded. He was telling the Free Syrian Army rebels who had been using Azaz as their command post and logistical hub for the Aleppo battle that the gloves were off and the same punishment would be meted out to any urban areas hosting them.
The Syrian ruler also warned Ankara through back channels that if any more Turkish FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles were supplied to the FSA, he would arm the 2,500 Turkish rebel PKK Kurdish fighters allowed to deploy on the Syrian-Turkish border with Russian SA-8 anti-air missiles for use against Turkey.

Ankara shot back: That will be war.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report that Assad is resolved more than ever to stand fast after the shot in the arm he received last week from Tehran.
Iran’s National Security Adviser Saeed Jalili visited Damascus Aug. 6-7 to ascertain that Syria would strike Israel and US military targets in the region with all its might if they attacked Iran.
Assad was ready to offer this pledge, but demanded in return that Tehran guarantee to exercise all its military capabilities to save him from any military or covert attempts to end his rule – whenever it was requested.
Jalili promised him that guarantee. He also held a similar conversation with HIzballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

U.S. officials: Securing Syria’s chemical weapons could take thousands of troops – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Washington, allies discuss possibility Assad regime loses control of WMDs; American official: United States still has no plans to put boots on the ground in Syria.

The United States and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require tens of thousands of ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.

These secret discussions assume that all of Assad’s security forces disintegrate, leaving chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria vulnerable to pillaging. The scenario also assumes these sites could not be secured or destroyed solely through aerial bombings, given health and environmental risks.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to explain the sensitive discussions, said the United States still had no plans to put boots on the ground in Syria. President Barack Obama’s administration has, in fact, so far refused to provide lethal support to the rebels fighting to oust Assad’s regime and the Pentagon has played down the possibility of implementing a no-fly zone anytime soon.

“There is not a imminent plan to deploy ground forces. This is, in fact, a worst-case scenario,” the official said, adding U.S. forces would likely play a role in such a mission.

Two diplomatic sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said as many as 50,000 or 60,000 ground forces may be needed if officials’ worst fears are realized, plus additional support forces.

Even a force of 60,000 troops, however, would not be large enough for peacekeeping and would only be the amount required to secure the weapons sites – despite some of the appearances of a Iraq-style occupation force, the diplomatic sources cautioned.

It is unclear at this stage how such a military mission would be organized and which nations might participate. But some European allies have indicated they are unlikely to join, the sources said.

The White House declined comment on specific contingency plans. Spokesman Tommy Vietor said that while the U.S. government believes the chemical weapons are under the Syrian government’s control, “Given the escalation of violence in Syria, and the regime’s increasing attacks on the Syrian people, we remain very concerned about these weapons.

“In addition to monitoring their stockpiles, we are actively consulting with Syria’s neighbors – and our friends in the international community – to underscore our common concern about the security of these weapons, and the Syrian government’s obligation to secure them,” Vietor said.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

Potentially dozens of sites

While there is no complete accounting of Syria’s unconventional weapons, it is widely believed to have stockpiles of nerve agents such as VX, sarin and tabun.

The U.S. official said there were potentially dozens of chemical and biological weapons sites scattered around the country.

Securing them could not be left to an aerial bombing, which could lead to the dispersion of those agents, the official said.

“There could be second-order effects that could be extremely problematic,” the official said of aerial bombing.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that it was important that Syrian security forces be held together when Assad is forced from power, citing, in particular, their ability to secure chemical weapons sites.

“They do a pretty good job of securing those sites,” Panetta said in an interview with CNN in July. “If they suddenly walked away from that, it would be a disaster to have those chemical weapons fall into the wrong hands, hands of Hezbollah or other extremists in that area.”

The United States, Israel and Western powers have been discussing the nightmarish possibility that some of Assad’s chemical weapons could make their way to militant groups – al-Qaeda style Sunni Jihadi insurgents or pro-Iranian Shi’ite Lebanese fighters from Hezbollah.

Some Western intelligence sources suggested that Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, both close allies of Syria, might try to get hold of the chemical weapons in the case of a total collapse of government authority.

Syria began to acquire the ability to develop and produce chemical weapons agents in 1973, including mustard gas and sarin, and possibly also VX nerve agent.

Precise quantities and configurations of chemical weapons in the Syrian stockpile are not known. However, the CIA has estimated that Syria possesses several hundred liters of chemical weapons and produces hundreds of tonnes of agents annually.

The Global Security website, which collects published intelligence reports and other data, says there are several suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria.

Analysts have also identified the town of Cerin, on the coast, as a possible production site for biological weapons.

Obama’s Last Chance Before Israel Bombs Iran – The Daily Beast.

by Benny Morris Aug 16, 2012 12:00 PM EDT

There is only one thing that can prevent an Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear installations before the US presidential elections—and that, short of an attack by America itself, which is seen as extremely unlikely, is an iron-clad guarantee by President Obama that he will destroy the Iranian installations soon after his prospective re-election if the Iranian do not desist under the impact of the ongoing economic sanctions

Of course, no guarantee is iron-clad; promises can be and often are broken. Still, were Obama to promise Israel, publicly or in writing, that, should he be re-elected, he will unleash the American Air Force and Navy say by March 1, 2013 to destroy the installations and would continue the military campaign, whatever and for as long as it takes, until Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program, then it is likely that Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak would call off the prospective Israeli assault.

In the absence of such a guarantee, Israel is likely to strike before the American elections  for two reasons: Netanyahu believes that Obama will find it more difficult to condemn or punish Israel for doing something which Washington has pressured Israel to refrain from, despite the fact that it is a publicly stated American policy goal (to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons); and time is running short, both in terms of Iran’s attainment of its nuclear goals—observers say Iran is 12-18 months away from a bomb—and in terms of the completion of the Fardow nuclear enrichment site, which is under construction deep under a mountain near Qom. Observers believe that that is where Iran intends to mount its final dash towards bomb-making capabilities – meaning the enrichment of its stocks of Uranium from 20 per cent, the current level at which the material is being enriched in the existing major site at Natanz, to 90 per cent-plus, which is what is required for nuclear weaponry.

The debate over the prospective Israeli strike has been raging across Israel’s news media for the past month or so. Given the distances, the dispersal of the Iranian installations over a dozen sites, the fact that many are deep underground, and the existence of Iranian air defenses, most observers believe that Israel can mount a one-time strike that will put back Iran’s program by one to two years, no more. This is one of the reasons that senior Israeli military and intelligence officials—including, according to reports, the heads of military intelligence and the Mossad, and the IDF chief of staff—oppose the strike at the moment, saying that diplomacy, sanctions and Washington must be given more time.

Supporters of the strike argue that there is no time. A similar argument was used by critics of the prospective Israeli strike against Iraq’s nuclear reactor back in 1981 (the critics included then Labor Party head Shimon Peres, now Israel’s president, who reportedly is a major critic of the prospective attack on Iran). But that successful strike actually put paid to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, which was never resurrected. The same appears to have happened in Syria, where in 2007 Israeli warplanes destroyed a North Korean-assisted nuclear plant at Deir Zor, apparently designed to produce Plutonium. Israel never officially acknowledged the attack and Syria’s President Assad didn’t respond militarily and desisted from renewing his nuclear program.

Of course, Iran is not Iraq or Syria. The Iranian ayatollahs, to judge by their indifference to the painful sanctions already imposed on their country, appear hell bent on attaining nuclear weaponry, in part, no doubt, in order to deter Western or Israeli attack. (The Israelis, of course, fear that Iran, which has vowed to destroy Israel, will ultimately use the bombs against Tel Aviv and Haifa.)  In that sense, they no doubt look to the North Korean experience as a model; despite strong American language, Washington did not dare to take out the North Korean nuclear facilities after it got the bomb.

In the wake of an Israeli assault, the Iranians are likely to strike back—directly, with their own rocket arsenal, and indirectly, using proxies such as Hizbullah, using rockets and terrorist squads to hit Israeli and Jewish targets abroad. The Iranians may also retaliate, using proxies, against American targets in the Middle East or worldwide, arguing that Washington was secretly behind the Israeli strike though publicly calling on Israel to desist. The Iranians can also be expected to rebuild whatever Israel manages to destroy, and as quickly as possible—and they will be driven by a powerful urge to avenge the Israeli strike, making a nuclear war between the two countries all the more likely, should Iran in the end attain nuclear weapons.

But the Israeli calculation is that a an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities will buy time—mainly time in which the international community, led by the US, can mobilize its economic and political resources, and if necessary, its military power to prevent a resurrection of the Iranian nuclear program.  Perhaps the spectacle of an Israeli-Iranian conventional exchange, with the prospect of a nuclear war down the road, will galvanize Russia, China and the other countries currently shying away from imposing sanctions against Iran, to join the rest of the international community. Perhaps the Iranian response to the Israeli strike will suck in the United States, which will then unleash a second-round strike that will definitively put an end to the Iranian nuclear program.

But all this is down the road. Meanwhile, the Israeli military seem to be putting the finishing touches to their plans for the Iranian nuclear facilities while perfecting Israel’s own anti-rocket shield, primarily the Arrow and Iron-Dome batteries, and its civil defense organization. Whether President Obama will step in, at this last moment, and persuasively assure Israel that America will do the job, a job it can do far better than Israel, given its military capabilities, and do it in time, before the Iranians cross the nuclear threshold, remains to be seen.

The tragedy in all this is that the international community failed to impose severe sanctions against Iran back in 2000 or 2005. Then, the cumulative effect of several years of such sanctions might have persuaded the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Now it is too late; sanctions will not do the job in time and, indeed, will only energize the Iranians to reach the nuclear finish line as quickly as possible. Which leaves the world only with the military option, Israeli or American—or the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.