WarSclerotic

UN chief to Khamenei: Stop threatening Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews.

During Tehran meeting with supreme leader, Ban says verbal attacks on Jewish state offensive, inflammatory; urges Iran to ‘prove nuclear program is peaceful.’ Netanyahu: International participation at Iran summit a ‘stain on humanity’

Dudi Cohen, agencies

UN chief Ban Ki-moon met Iran’s president and supreme leader in Tehran on Wednesday to urge them to take concrete steps to prove the country’s nuclear program is peaceful and to use their influence to help end Syria’s 17-month conflict.

Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said that in Ban’s separate meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he further said their verbal attacks on Israel were offensive, inflammatory and unacceptable.

Ban arrived in Tehran on Wednesday for a three-day visit to attend a meeting of some 120 non-aligned nations. He defied calls from the United States and Israel to boycott the event.

“He said Iran needed to take concrete steps to address the concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency and prove to the world its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes,” Nesirky, speaking from Tehran, told reporters in New York.

Iran says its program is peaceful, but Western powers and their allies fear it is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Iran has been hit with four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program.

Khamenei said during the meeting that Iran was “working to allay the concerns regarding nuclear weapons.

“The Americans know Iran is not interested in (developing) nuclear weapons. They are just looking for an excuse,” he said.

The supreme leader said nuclear weapons in Israel’s hands poses a greater threat to the region. “I expect the UN to act on this issue,” he said. Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons but is widely believed to have a large arsenal.

Following an earlier meeting with parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, Ban told a press conference that “Iran can play an important role in solving the Syrian crisis peacefully,” adding that “the Syrian people have suffered a lot … with more than 20,000 dying in the past 18 months.”

‘Americans looking for an excuse.’ Ban (L) with Khamenei

Larijani, for his part, said “unfortunately, some big countries have acted adventurously in the region and have created disruption in the region like what we are witnessing in Syria.”

Iran, the chief ally of Syria’s regime, accuses the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of sustaining the armed revolt in Syria.

Ban with Ahmadinejad (Photo: EPA)

Addressing the Syrian crisis, Khamenei told Ban that the solution is to stop weapons shipments to the Syrian rebels, or as he put it, “irresponsible groups inside Syria,” according to his website.

A senior Iranian official gave details of the plan Iran is proposing at the summit.

“Iran’s proposal … is a cease-fire and the implementation of a three-month mechanism for national reconciliation talks in this country,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying Wednesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Iran a “disgrace” to humanity.

During a meeting Wednesday evening with the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Germany, David McAllister, the PM said “Seventy years ago, six million of our people were destroyed in an act of genocide. The world pledged ‘never again’ . . . It appears that many among the international community haven’t learned anything. I think this is a disgrace and a stain on humanity.”

Netanyahu said that the Iranian “regime denies the Holocaust and is working to destroy the Jewish state. This regime oppresses its people, takes part in the butchering of innocent Syrians, and calls for death to America, death to Israel.”

Reuters, AFP, AP contributed to the report

BBC News – War talks fails to dampen spirits in Tel Aviv.

By Hugh Sykes BBC News, Tel Aviv

This doesn’t feel like a country hunkering down for war.

The beaches of Tel Aviv are heaving with holidaymakers. Restaurants, clubs and bars in the city are packed with happy diners, drinkers and dancers.

In one cafe, couples were tapping their feet to Leonard Cohen’s “Dance me to the End of Love.”

They were not wearing flak jackets. Or carrying gas masks.

But some are taking precautions.

Israelis fearful that an attack on Iran might bring revenge rockets from Hezbollah have collected gas masks from distribution centres.

Deep beneath the Habima national theatre in Tel Aviv, part of an underground car park has been set aside as a shelter for 1,600 people.

During the 1990-91 Gulf War, 39 Scud missiles from Iraq landed in Tel Aviv and in Haifa. Three people died, and more than a thousand Israelis had to stay in hotels while Scud damage to their apartments was repaired.

But it was not the Blitz. During the six months from September 1944, nearly 3,000 German V1 ‘Doodlebug’ cruise missiles and V2 rockets fell on London. Nine thousand Londoners were killed, and more than 25,000 were injured.

And Iraq’s rocket assault on Teheran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s killed an estimated 2,000 people.

‘Limited threat’

Iran this month unveiled a new ballistic missile – the Fateh-110. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said it was designed to help Iran to defend itself.

Iranian missiles are not believed to be capable of inflicting serious damage here in Israel.

An expert on missile defence technology at MIT, Professor Theodore Postol, told the BBC earlier this year that the current threat from Iran’s ballistic missiles was limited.

“There is no realistic threat to troops, cities, oil refineries, and the like from Iranian ballistic missiles,” he said.

“They can simply not carry large enough conventional munitions to do extensive damage… and they lack the accuracy to hit prescribed targets with reliability.”

But the rhetoric from Tehran has become more threatening.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei described Israel as “a Zionist cancerous tumour”.

He looked forward to the day when “the Zionist regime will disappear from the landscape of geography”.

‘All talk?’

In a shopping centre in Tel Aviv, mother of two Khaia Lavi told me, “Iran does not love us. I believe they want to destroy us. I believe it in all my heart.”

I asked her if she believed Israel should attack Iran. “Yes, but not alone, not alone.”

I suggested to her that an attack by Israel on Iran might put Israel in danger.

“This is our fear,” she said. She has collected gas masks for her family. And, like most recently built Israeli homes, they have a blast-proof safe room inside their apartment, with a filtered air supply.

Numerous reports suggest that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, are planning a unilateral attack on Iran to halt the nuclear weapons programme, which Iran says does not exist.

But the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, argues that Israel should not attack Iran without the approval and support of the United States.

And the former chief of the army Shaul Mofaz, and the recent head of the Mossad external security agency, Meir Dagan, are also opposed to an attack on Iran now.

A Tel Aviv taxi driver – Itzig Schleiffer, who was born in Germany in 1946 and who came to Israel when he was two years old – says there’s so much talk about war that it’s unlikely to happen.

“If you talk too much, you don’t do anything,” he told me, “Don’t talk, do!”

And a businessman, who just wanted to be named as Ofer, said the admittedly poisonous rhetoric from Iran did not justify war.

“You can call me a cancerous growth if you like,” he laughed, “but this does not mean I have to kill you.”

Some commentators here argue that the Israeli prime minister’s talk of imminent war with Iran is just rhetoric, designed to put pressure on President Obama to impose stricter sanctions on Iran.

Others argue that Mr Netanyahu wants to keep Iran on the front pages in order to persuade voters to support Mitt Romney in the US presidential election in November. He is perceived as more supportive of Israel than Barack Obama.

‘Terrorist acts’

Front pages here have been dominated by a different threat – Jews attacking Arabs. There have been two chilling incidents.

In central Jerusalem one night last week, a group of male and female Jewish teenagers attacked three Arabs as they walked through Zion Square in the city centre.

One, Jamal Julani, was so seriously injured that he had to be resuscitated with a defibrillator and 10 minutes of CPR to keep his lungs oxygenated and his heart pumping. Five of the teenagers have been arrested.

Both of the leading English-language newspapers – the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz – at first reported this as a “lynching”. Then they dropped the quotation marks. A lynching.

A Ha’aretz columnist, Eyal Megged, described it as “a Jewish mob attack.”

In the other incident, near a West Bank settlement, a fire-bomb was thrown at a Palestinian taxi, wounding six passengers. Three 13-year-old youths from the settlement have been arrested.

The deputy prime minister Moshe Ya’alon described these two attacks as “terrorist acts.”

And – referring to existential fears about Iran – the columnist, Eyad Megged, wrote: “A Jewish mob attack on Arabs is far more dangerous than the Iranian menace… a Jewish mob is the real existential threat…. the eradication of the domestic racist blight should come before the eradication of the foreign nuclear one.”

But such racism is absolutely not universal here.

For the three-day Muslim festival of Eid-al-Fitr, which ends the fasting month of Ramadan, the ministry of defence approved permits for 130,000 West Bank Palestinians to enter Israel and visit those beaches in Tel Aviv.

Yes, 130,000. They cooked kebabs on barbeques on the sand, and they danced in the surf – the women fully clothed and wearing their headscarves.

For many of them, it was the first time in their lives that they had seen the sea.

Another Ha’aretz writer, Gideon Levy, commented: “Why can’t this happen twice a year? In fact, why not every day, damn it?”

Odds of War With Iran Increase to 40% – Dominic Tierney – The Atlantic.

The probability of conflict with Iran is now at 40 percent, according to The Atlantic‘s Iran War Dial.

We’ve assembled a high profile team of experts from the policy world, academia, and journalism to periodically predict the chances that Israel or the United States will strike Iran in the next year. For more on the Iran War Dial and the panelists, visit our FAQ page.

Peace remains more likely than war. But the chances of conflict have ticked upward for the second month in a row, from 36 percent in June, to 38 percent in July, and now 40 percent in August.

This month, three of the panelists offered comments explaining why there was a serious risk of war.

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, sees the rhetorical battle between Israel and Iran, and Israel’s desire to protect its reputation, as potentially powerful forces for war.

In my opinion, the chance of an Israeli attack has slightly increased since the last estimate. It is still uncertain whether or not the Israeli posture is a mere bluff or a function of a real desire to attack Iran under the right circumstances. But in a world where perception of power is sometimes almost as important as power itself, the rhetorical escalation between Iran and Israel, and the seeming rise in Iran’s influence in hosting the Non-Aligned Movement summit and gaining the important participation of Egypt’s new president, have created a new challenge for Israel. Israel’s deterrence posture is very a much a function of how strong Arabs and Muslims believe it is in comparison to its enemies.

For now, there are many who have come to believe a view expressed by one of the readers of Aljazeera.net: “For the second week in a row, Israelis are demonstrating in Tel Aviv in front of the minister of war, Ehud Barak, opposing his statements regarding the waging of war on Iran, as they are very scared of the consequences of an Iranian [counter-]attack. They chanted that Barak and Netanyahu would hide in fortified hideouts while the Israeli people will be totally destroyed by an Iranian attack….Shimon Peres and others oppose an Israeli strike against Iran because of the fear of the consequences of the Iranian counter-attack which will render Israel’s very existence in the future unknown.”

So add to all the other calculations that Israelis have to make, this one: If they don’t attack, people in the region will see their refrain to be a direct function of Iran’s growing power and Israel’s weakness–something that Israelis have always seen as undermining their deterrence. This is why I had expressed the view that rhetoric matters more than politicians sometimes know. The outcome in this case may be disastrous.

Dalia Dassa Kaye, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, also believes that Israel’s concerns over protecting its credibility may heighten the odds of war.

The main variable in weighing the likelihood of a military attack against Iran in the coming year is the cost-benefit assessment of such an option in Israel. Unfortunately, Israelis who believe the advantages of attacking Iran outweigh the dangers may have the upper hand at the moment, making the odds of an attack higher now than in previous months.

Yes, the majority of Israel’s military and security establishment oppose an attack (preferring the United States take the lead instead) and the Israeli public is divided and wary of a strike without U.S. support. There is also broad understanding among Israel’s security elites that a military strike can only slow but not stop Iran’s program and may only give Iran more incentive to reconstitute its program, much as Saddam Hussein did after Israel attacked Iraq’s nuclear reactor. For this reason, many speculate that the recent spike in Israeli war talk is more bluff designed mainly to elicit even tougher international and American actions against Iran. But it would be a mistake not to take Israeli threats seriously this time.

The leaders most associated with favoring a military option and the ones who could ultimately make the decision–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak–have staked their domestic and international reputations on these threats. They are not just talking about war but they are asking the Israeli population to prepare for it. And Israel is telling the United States and the international community that diplomacy and sanctions have run their course.

Despite the unprecedented levels of U.S. assistance and military cooperation with Israel in recent years, Netanyahu’s government does not appear convinced that the United States will deal with Iran down the road (i.e., launch a military attack) if Israel holds off now, when it believes it has the best operational ability to set back Iran’s program before the so-called ‘zone of immunity’ kicks in.  Israeli leaders may also believe they will be more immune from American censure if they act during a presidential election.

As a consequence, Israel may be conditioning its own society and the world for military action. Israeli leaders must understand how their threats at a certain point lose their credibility, both among their own population and abroad, if they never act on them. The effectiveness of such threats in ramping up international pressure against Iran in order to stave off an Israeli attack also begins to diminish at a certain point, and we may be reaching that point.

Some prominent Israeli analysts have recently suggested an exit strategy from Israel’s escalation of military threats–get the United States to more forcefully and explicitly commit to military action if Israel holds off attacking Iran now. But boxing the United States into commitments to take military action against Iran would be a dangerous way to avoid an Israeli attack. The risks and drawbacks of military action that have led many Israelis to oppose this option are just as pertinent to a U.S. strike. Let’s hope we can find other ways to convince the Israelis that a military strike against Iran is a bad idea. But assuming the Israelis aren’t serious is not an option.

Ken Timmerman, executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, sees a “dramatic uptick” in the odds of war in recent weeks.

It is warranted by a volume of recent statements from top Israeli leaders warning about an impending decision on whether to strike Iran. Israel has made clear that it views Oct. 1 as a “threshold” for Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, since that is when the IAEA estimates Iran will have enriched enough 20% uranium to make at least one 1st generation nuclear explosive device after further enrichment. Since the IAEA has also concluded that Iran has tested all the non-nuclear components for an implosion device, this clearly is a key capability. By most estimates, Iran will be able to carry out further enriching to weapons grade in somewhere between 6 to 8 weeks.

Israel has two parallel fears. The first is that the spinning centrifuges will produce an imminent Iranian nuclear capability. The second is that the failure to strike Iran–after all of Israel’s tough language–will destroy Israel’s credibility so that its promises and threats will no longer be believed. Would a country really fight a war to protect its reputation? The single biggest reason why the United States fought the Vietnam War for eight years, with 58,000 American deaths, was the hope of avoiding a humiliating defeat and defending American credibility.