WarSclerotic

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.

Iran forming pro-Assad militia in Syria: Panetta.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, right, called on Iran to stay out of the conflict. (AFP)

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Neither US nor Israel can destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, only cause delay.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 15, 2012, 8:48 AM (GMT+02:00)

Top US officials lay out Israel’s limitations.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Tuesday night that he doesn’t believe Israel has made a decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. “As a sovereign country, they will ultimately make decisions based on what they think is in their national security interest,” he said, but he believed there was “still room to continue to negotiate” and “additional sanctions were beginning to have an additional impact.”  The Secretary added that the Israeli prime minister agrees that military action should be the last resort.
At their joint press briefing in Washington, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “I am not privy to [Israel’s] planning. So what I’m telling you is based on what I know of their capabilities. And I may not know about all of their capabilities. But I think it’s fair… to say they could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources say that neither official said anything new.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have reiterated firmly that the government had not reached a decision on whether to attack Iran. They have fully agreed it must be the last, not the first, option.
The fly in the ointment of US-Israeli interchanges on the subject is to be found in Gen. Dempsey’s rather than Panetta’s phrasing. For instance:
1. Dempsey: “I may not know all of their [Israel’s] capabilities.”

debkafile: The US army chief may know all there is to know about those capabilities but may not be fully apprised of how they are to be used, or when. That doesn’t mean he has no notion of Israel’s plans of operations, but the tight compartmentalization of top-level and IDF operational decision-making on the Iranian topic necessarily results in him not being privy, as he said himself, to every last detail of Israeli planning for action against a nuclear Iran.
This does not rule out Israel, at the critical moment, forewarning Panetta and Dempsey – and through them President Barack Obama – about the event to come.
2. Dempsey:   “But I think it’s fair… to say they [Israel] could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”
debkafile:  This premise is accurate: Neither Netanyahu and Barak or the IDF generals and security chiefs, past and present, who urge Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear capabilities (They are numerous although antagonists are featured on front pages.) presume that Iran’s nuclear program can be leveled to the ground at one stroke. Israel hopes to hold it up for a couple of years.
But this raises another question: Isn’t it too late for even the United States with its superior capabilities to aspire to total Iran’s nuclear capabilities?
Neither Panetta nor Dempsey discussed this US capacity but, according to our sources, while the Americans can certainly achieve more and longer-lasting destruction than Israel, they too can no longer destroy the program in its entirety. But they could delay it for four to five years, double the grace period Israel could achieve.
It must be stressed that the longer the world waits for diplomacy or sanctions to take effect and holds back from direction action, the faster the options for even slowing down Iran’s nuclearization shrink – not just for Israel but for the United States too.
The last moment for the United States and Israel, separately or together, to have destroyed Iran’s program went by without action four years ago in 2007. Today, the best they can achieve is to temporarily hold Iran back from building a bomb.

Does Israel Face a December Deadline to Attack Iran? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Israeli and American flags are seen during a joint news conference by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as they visit the Iron Dome defense system launch site in Ashkelon Aug. 1, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Mark Wilson) By: Alex Fishman posted on Tuesday, Aug 14, 2012

This December, the Iranians will present us with an impressive chesslike challenge. From that point onward, the route to checkmate will be a matter of just a few moves. Iran will complete its program to protect its nuclear project, with all its scientific, industrial and military components. Israel considers this stage to mark Iran’s entry into an “immunity space” [term used by Defense Minister Barak to designate the point at which the Iranians will become immune to an Israeli strike]. From this point onward, Iran will be able to continue developing its nuclear program without fear of an effective Israeli strike.

This won’t mean that Israel’s ability to act covertly against an Iranian nuclear program will be neutralized. But it will mean a significant – almost total – reduction in its ability to efficiently execute a massive attack, entailing tons of explosives, to destroy the nuclear facilities. In the race between Israel’s development of offensive weapons, and Iran’s establishment of a defense system, the Iranian’s will register a significant achievement: they had a defense plan, it took them a bit more time to complete it, but the Iranian engineers will deliver the goods at the end of the year.

The Iranian defense program includes a few basic components: moving the nuclear facilities deep underground, scattering them around several sites, and reinforcing the facilities’ physical security. Security for Iranian scientists is also increasing. Alongside those measures, the Iranians have progressed faster than expected in the development of launchers and warheads.

Not only Israel has pointed out the December “deadline” – Western intelligence officials around the world have as well. Most importantly, it also appears in an updated intelligence assessment by US espionage figures, which was recently submitted to the president, and will soon be presented to Congress and publicized.

Not for nothing were the Americans angry at the leaks that came out of Israel from this document. While the administration is trying its hardest to delay the Israeli attack at least until after the US elections, a document ends up on the president’s desk that strengthens the Israeli position on the matter of the “immunity space.” Not only does the document reveal the fact that the Iranians are finishing up the nuclear program’s defense system, it also reveals, so it seems, that the Iranians have more nuclear facilities than they did in the past. They scattered the development and production facilities, such that additional protected facilities were “born.”

So in December it seems that from Israel’s perspective, the military window of opportunity for an attack will close. That doesn’t mean that such a window won’t open again in the future, in a year or two, if Israel acquires military capabilities that it doesn’t have today. The probably is that Iran’s nuclear program will also be in a different place then.

The strategic significance is that from December onward, Israel will find itself in a situation in which it is totally dependent on an external, American actor to remove what it terms an “existential threat” hanging above it. Israeli governments have always done everything they could to avoid being pushed into this corner.

The Americans continue to try and calm things down: the Iranian immunity space in comparison with our own capabilities, they say, is different. Trust us, when the time comes, we’ll do the job. The problem is that there is no guarantee that they’ll fulfill that promise. Israel also doesn’t have the moral authority to demand that they act, if it doesn’t suit their national interests.

This and more: Israel believes that US opposition to an attack on Iran will lessen after the presidential elections, starting Nov. 7. Any Israeli attack on Iran at this point would be seen as Israeli interference in domestic U.S. politics. The current government also nicely succeeded in turning Israeli public opinion against the strike. But they forgot to mention that they’ll be less interested on the day after the election. Though that doesn’t mean that they’ll give Israel the green light after the vote.

The picture that emerges from openly known pre-December military and political timetables is as follows: from a military perspective, it would be more comfortable to strike before November. From a political perspective it would be better after November. Under that type of timetable, and the public bedlam surrounding the issue, the state of Israel is meant to take a fateful decision about its future. This is a situation with the power to paralyze any government. The easiest thing to do in this situation is to decide not to decide.

Obama set to assure Israel that, if all else fails, US will attack Iran by June 2013 — TV report | The Times of Israel.

( “Could” not “will.” – JW )

Channel 10 says explicit US commitment, designed to ensure Israel holds its fire, could be issued at Obama-Netanyahu meet this fall

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US president Barack Obama in the White House in March (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/FLASH90)

American and Israeli officials are working to arrange a meeting between US President Barack Obama and  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at which the White House will assure Israel that the US will use force to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons drive by next June at the latest if the Islamic Republic has not halted its program by then, Israel’s Channel 10 news reported on Tuesday night.

The meeting will take place in New York or Washington at the end of September or the very beginning of October, the report said. David Axelrod, senior strategist in Obama’s re-election campaign, is coordinating arrangements for the meeting, the report said.

The key formulation being discussed for Obama to assure Netanyahu is that the US “will attack Iran by June 2013″ if the Iranian nuclear weapons drive has not halted by then, the report said.

Despite incessant reports from Israel asserting that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are strongly inclined toward ordering an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in September or October, the US administration tends not to believe that Israel would go ahead and attack Iran alone and in defiance of the US, the report said. Nonetheless, Washington is not certain of what Israel may do.

The White House is thus looking to reassure Israel and reduce the prime minister’s concern that, if Israel does not intervene militarily, nobody else will and the Iranians will get the bomb — a situation Netanyahu has made clear he considers untenable, since it would place the Jewish state under existential threat.

It would be unthinkable for Israel to strike at Iran before any such Obama-Netanyahu meeting, the report said, and similarly unthinkable afterwards — since Obama would provide the necessary reassurance for Israel to hold its fire.

Netanyahu is already tentatively scheduled to fly to the US at the end of September to address the UN General Assembly.

On Monday, Israeli TV reports had quoted unnamed US sources saying the US would not necessarily join in were Israel to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program, but that the US feels a profound commitment to the defense of Israel, and so could be relied upon to protect Israel defensively from the consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Also Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US was committed to giving talks with Tehran a chance to bear fruit. ”We continue to believe there is time and space for diplomacy, the opportunity remains for Iran to take advantage of this process,” Carney told reporters, AFP reported

North American Jews move to Israel despite risks | ksl.com.

Associated Press

BEN-GURION AIRPORT, Israel (AP) – Despite regional tensions, about 350 Jews from North America landed in Israel on Tuesday, planning to make the Jewish state their new home.

Their arrival coincides with an escalating internal debate over whether Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel and the West believe Iran may be aiming to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies that.

Either and Israeli attack that could set off a regional conflagration, or an Iran with a nuclear bomb to back up its frequent calls for the destruction of Israel, would seem to be good enough reason to postpone moving to the Jewish state – but the newcomers dismissed that.

“I’m not nervous about Iran,” said 18-year-old Becca Richman, who left her family in Philadelphia to serve in the Israeli military. “Honestly I’m more nervous about fitting into Israeli society than I am being in the army. This is my dream. This is what I came to do.”

Nearly 130 other army recruits were on Tuesday’s chartered flight. The immigrants were met by throngs of family members, flags, banners, a stage and live music.

Among the dignitaries greeting them was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He commended them for deciding to “link their personal future with the future of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”

Netanyahu singled out the prospective soldiers.

“As the Jewish state progresses and rises, so does anti-Semitism,” Netanyahu warned, adding “we need to defend ourselves against that and those who give it intellectual support.”

More than 4,000 immigrants have arrived in Israel from the U.S., Canada and United Kingdom this year.

Sidney and Naomi Schulman left their Massachusetts dental practice to retire in Jerusalem. Their three children and 12 grandchildren, who already live in Israel, all greeted them at the airport, wearing shirts listing their extensive family tree.

“It feels right here,” said Naomi Schulman. “We feel very privileged that we’ve reached this stage in our lives, that we’ve had the opportunity to reunite on a permanent basis with our children and our grandchildren.”

Most North American Jewish immigrants give up their jobs back home when they move, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group that helps potential immigrants make the move and sponsored the flights that arrived Tuesday.

“We wanted to move, and nothing can change our minds,” said 33-year-old Shalom Schwartz, a lawyer from New York who plans to continue his practice remotely from his new home outside Jerusalem.

Analysis: Another political wake-… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Israel steps up war rhetoric against Iran – ISRAEL – FRANCE 24.

Silence rules as Israel readies to strike | The Australian.

ISRAEL’S Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are threatening to attack Iran, and the world does not seem concerned.