WarSclerotic

Barak: Israel won’t outsource its security to … JPost – Defense.

(A pessimist in the Middle East is merely an optimist with experience.”  Ehud is giving Bibi a run for his money in the arena of good quotes ! – JW )

US warns Israel off pre-emptive strike on Iran | World news | The Guardian.

Julian Borger Diplomatic EditorThe Guardian, Wednesday 31 October 2012 18.44 GMT

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs, meets Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Ariel Hermoni/EPA

US military commanders have warned their Israeli counterparts that any action against Iran would severely limit the ability of American forces in the region to mount their own operations against the Iranian nuclear programme by cutting off vital logistical support from Gulf Arab allies.

US naval, air and ground forces are dependent for bases, refuelling and supplies on Gulf Arab rulers who are deeply concerned about the progress Iran has made in its nuclear programme, but also about the rising challenge to their regimes posed by the Arab spring and the galvanising impact on popular unrest of an Israeli attack on Iran.

The US Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain and the US air force has major bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Senior US officers believe the one case in which they could not rely fully on those bases for military operations against Iranian installations would be if Israel acted first.

“The Gulf states’ one great fear is Iran going nuclear. The other is a regional war that would destabilise them,” said a source in the region. “They might support a massive war against Iran, but they know they are not going to get that, and they know a limited strike is not worth it, as it will not destroy the programme and only make Iran angrier.”

Israeli leaders had hinted they might take military action to set back the Iranian programme, but that threat receded in September when the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the United Nations general assembly that Iran’s advances in uranium enrichment would only breach Israel’s “red line” in spring or summer next year.

Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said this week in London that it was the Iranian decision this year to convert a third of the country’s stock of 20%-enriched uranium into fuel (making it harder to convert to weapons-grade material if Iran decided to make a weapon) that had bought another “eight to 10 months”.

Barak’s comments appear to signal that Israel’s new red line is an Iranian stockpile of about 200kg of 20%-enriched uranium in convertible form, enough if enriched further to make one bomb. Western diplomats argue the benchmark is arbitrary, as it would take Iran another few months to enrich the stockpile to 90% (weapons-grade) purity, and then perhaps another year to develop a warhead small enough to put on a missile. Even then Tehran would have just one nuclear bomb, hardly enough to make it a nuclear weapons power.

France’s president, François Hollande, met Netanyahu in Paris on Wednesday but rejected the push for military action.

“It’s a threat that cannot be accepted by France,” Hollande said, arguing for further sanctions coupled with negotiations. A new round of international talks with Iran are due after the US presidential elections, in which Tehran is expected to be offered sanctions relief in return for an end to 20% enrichment.

Netanyahu argued sanctions had failed to stop Iran’s nuclear programme and claimed Arab nations would be “relieved” if Iran was stopped from building nuclear weaponsa bomb.

Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Bahrain, disagreed, saying: “I don’t believe the Gulf states are praying for an Israeli attack.

“An attack would create difficult problems for them on the political level. They will be called on to denounce Israel, and they will want to stay out of it. The risk of regional war to them is huge,” he said, but added that if Iran responded to an Israeli attack by lashing out at the US and its Arab allies, those restraints on the Gulf states’ own response would be lifted.

The UK government has told the US that it cannot rely on the use of British bases in Ascension Island, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia for an assault on Iran as pre-emptive action would be illegal. The Arab spring has also complicated US contingency planning for any new conflict in the Gulf.

US naval commanders have watched with unease as the newly elected Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has made overtures towards Iran. US ships make 200 transits a year through the Suez canal. Manama, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, is the capital of a country that is 70% Shia and currently in turmoil.

Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Israeli navy and the country’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, argues Israel too cannot ignore the new Arab realities.

“We live in a new Middle East where the street has become stronger and the leaders are weaker,” Ayalon told the Guardian. “In order for Israel to face Iran we will have to form a coalition of relatively pragmatic regimes in the region, and the only way to create that coalition is to show progress on the Israel-Palestinian track.”

Analysis: It’s all in t… JPost – 2012: The US Presidential race.

Has Ehud Barak Gone Soft on Iran? – Robert Coalson – The Atlantic.

Oct 31 2012, 3:46 PM ET

The Israeli defense minister, once thought of as a major proponent of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, appears to be changing his tune — at least for the moment.

In a world that’s used to hearing strong rhetoric from Israel regarding Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s interviews this week with British media seemed discordant. Speaking to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Barak said that Iran had used up to one-third of its enriched uranium to make fuel rods for a medical research reactor. And that by doing so, it had delayed “the moment of truth” when Iran will be able to develop nuclear weapons “by eight to 10 months.”

Barak could only speculate on Tehran’s motives for the move, saying that possibly the ruling ayatollahs wanted to reduce tensions over the issue until after the November 6 presidential election in the United States. Or perhaps, he said, Tehran was attempting to convince the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it’s cooperating with demands regarding the program. Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes and points out that it — unlike Israel — has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Barak’s statements come after months of tough talk from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. At the UN General Assembly in New York just last month, Netanyahu stood at the podium with a drawing of a bomb and pointed ominously to a “red line” that Tehran must not be allowed to cross. “Ladies and gentlemen, the relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb. The relevant question is at what stage can we no longer stop Iran from getting the bomb,” Netanyahu said. “The red line must be drawn on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program because these enrichment facilities are the only nuclear installations that we can definitely see and credibly target.”

In the latest interviews, however, Barak stressed that Israel’s position is essentially unchanged: it still believes Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons; Israel still believes that action must be taken to prevent that before Iran amasses sufficient enriched uranium to produce a weapon; Israel retains the right to take unilateral action; and Israel will never delegate responsibility for its security to even “the most trusted and trustworthy ally.”

Speaking to the BBC on October 30, Barak repeated that no options were off the table. “We are determined not to let [Iran] turn nuclear,” he said. “I believe leaders of the world when they say that no option is off the table. When they say it, I hope they mean it. We mean it.”

An Israeli ‘War Cabinet’ Coming?

Barak’s comments come as domestic politics in Israel seem to have taken a turn to the right in anticipation of an early general election to be held on January 22. Netanyahu’s Likud party this week announced it was forming a bloc with nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, an alliance that many analysts predict could be formidable in the next election.

But it means it’s impossible for Netanyahu to position himself — as he did in 2009 — as a center-right option. Israelis who were concerned by the bellicose nature of Netanyahu’s rhetoric in recent months may be downright alarmed by what they could hear from a joint Netanyahu-Lieberman ticket. Lieberman is an outspoken nationalist who openly admires Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In addition, there has been speculation that the hawkish Lieberman could be moved to the Defense Ministry. Centrist politician Tzipi Livni told the “Jerusalem Post” that “Lieberman is the one who threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam [in Egypt]. Is this the defense minister that Israel needs right now?” The editor in chief of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, wrote that the alliance would create a “war cabinet that will lead Israel into a confrontation with Iran.”

Hezbollah reportedly installs surveillance camera network along Israeli border | The Times of Israel.

Israeli expert says Shiite group’s hyperactivity in recent weeks, including its dispatch of a drone over Israel, suggests a preparation for conflict

A photo of Nasrallah on the fence of the Lebanese border, 2008 (photo credit: Hamad Almakt/Flash 90)

Hezbollah has installed a surveillance camera network along the entirety of the Lebanese border with Israel, a Lebanese daily reported on Wednesday.

According to Al-Mustaqbal, which is affiliated with the Lebanese opposition’s March 14 Alliance, the cameras are located at a distance ranging from “a few meters to 200 meters” from the Blue Line, the international border between Israel and Lebanon. Security sources told the daily that the cameras were installed on tree trunks and branches.

The sources said the cameras serve a dual purpose: to monitor the movement of Israeli army patrols along the border, and to follow the activities of southern Lebanese farmers on their property. The camera network is controlled from a distance by a Hezbollah operations room.

Hezbollah has also just completed maintenance work on its southern Lebanese telephone network, which is interlinked with the national telephone company, the sources said, adding that Hezbollah has recently laid new telephone infrastructure south of the Litani River.

Benedetta Berti, an expert on Lebanon at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that Hezbollah’s hyperactivity in recent weeks continued a trend of preparation for conflict with Israel which began after the war of 2006.

She said that maintenance of Hezbollah’s separate communication network has always been a top priority for the organization. In May 2008 Hezbollah almost staged a coup following the government’s intention to shut down its communications system.

On October 6, Hezbollah dispatched an intelligence drone over Israel to photograph sensitive security installations, for the first time since the war of 2006.

“They haven’t done anything like this in a while,” Berti told The Times of Israel. “It seems like they are either planning something or anticipating something will happen.”

No mention of the cameras could be found on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar website on Wednesday.

On October 7, 2000, shortly after Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers near the Shebaa Farms border region and took their bodies to Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, the movement kidnapped two Israeli reserve soldiers, Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, sparking the Second Lebanon War.

Hezbollah has been subject to increased domestic pressure following reports of its members’ involvement in fighting alongside the Assad regime in Syria and its assumed involvement in the assassination of Lebanese security official Wissam Hassan in Beirut October 19.

An IDF spokesman would not comment on the matter.

Why Was Security Stripped in Benghazi? | #1 News Site on the Threat of Radical Islam.

Winds in Tehran are starting to shift – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Reports in Iran of direct talks with the U.S. lend weight to the perception that a diplomatic breakthrough is approaching.

By Zvi Bar’el | Oct.31, 2012 | 6:36 AM | 3

Ali Akbar Velayati, left, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his deputy. Photo by AP

“What were Hossein Taeb and Ali Akbar Velayati doing in the United States?,” asked the Iranian website Kaleme. Indeed, what was this pair up to there?

Velayati, a former foreign minister who for years has been foreign policy adviser and special diplomatic envoy to Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Taeb, who heads the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence bureau, have denied visiting the United States or talking with U.S. officials about opening a direct channel for negotiation between the two countries.

Kaleme is associated with Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is under house arrest together with his wife, and could be suspected of having an interest in depicting the regime as betraying its principles. But when the Tabnak news site, which is associated with Mohsen Rezaee, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards who is considered a possible presidential candidate in the next election, publishes an opinion piece that does not rule out contacts with the United States, while naming countries, including Britain and Israel, that oppose such contacts, it can be taken as a sign of change within the Iranian leadership.

It is very notable that U.S. President Barack Obama, who was quick to deny a New York Times report that Iran has agreed to open a direct channel for negotiations, changed his tune during his debate with Mitt Romney last week. “I’m pleased that you now are endorsing our policy of applying diplomatic pressure and potentially having bilateral discussions with the Iranians to end their nuclear program,” Obama told Romney. Romney, by the way, did not even mention such talks, it was Obama who brought them up.

Despite sweeping denials from the White House, its spokesman does not dispute the fact of talks between U.S. and Iranian officials since 2009. Hints and rumors of an agreement over a direct dialogue predated the loudly received Times article. On October 4 the conservative WorldNetDaily website predicted in an article titled “October Surprise? Obama Secret Iran Deal Cut” that Iran would announce a temporary halt to its uranium enrichment ahead of the November 6 U.S. election.

The report went on to say that a three-person delegation from the Obama administration, headed by a woman, was negotiating with representatives of Khamenei to persuade Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program; one of the delegation’s means of persuasion was a reminder that the United States has prevented Israel from attacking Iran.

The article claimed that Velayati secretively traveled to Qatar to meet with the U.S. group and that the woman heading the delegation had met with him more than 10 times in 20 years. “October Surprise” was written by Reza Kahlili, the pseudonym of a self-proclaimed former CIA agent and spy in the Revolutionary Guards. Kahlili’s best-selling memoir “A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran,” in which he discusses Iran’s intention to strike Israeli and U.S. targets, was published in April. Kahlili does not conceal his conservative positions; WND was founded by Joseph Farah, an American of Syrian extraction, and has made proving the failings of the Obama administration its mission.

But the political outlook of the site and of the article’s author alone are not grounds for dismissing the report. Nor is the sweeping denial issued last Thursday by Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. (He said no U.S.-Iranianian meetings were held in Doha. ) Qatar maintains close ties with Iran and the American government. More important is that Qatar is an ambitious country eager to earn credit for mediating between the two states.

Tehran is not just denying the existence of such meetings or an intention to stage such talks: Last month Velayati himself declared that Iran’s policy toward the United States has not changed and is based on the legacy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Some newspapers even exploited the reports to denounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and to suggest that he initiated the talks with Washington in order to extricate himself from the crisis he has created for Iran.

Little time is left to determine whether the direct dialogue between Iran and the United States was a trial balloon, an election campaign trick or a genuine strategic decision that signals a historic turn by both countries. If Obama is reelected, European members of P5-plus-1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany ) are likely to propose another meeting with Iran, the first since the talks last June in Moscow. According to Western reports the group would propose a new negotiating formula that would significantly ease the sanctions against Iran. In return, Iran would stop enriching uranium and would deliver to a third country the uranium in its possession enriched to 20 percent.

Direct Iran-U.S. talks could have far-reaching regional implications that go beyond the issue of uranium enrichment. Iran would achieve equal status as a global power negotiating with another, as opposed to standing before a tribunal of UN Security Council members. The very existence of such a dialogue could serve as a stamp of approval for Iran, signaling Cairo, for example, that it can engage in diplomatic talks with Tehran. It would also hint to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s bitter rival, that Riyadh does not hold exclusive rights to a direct channel to the White House.

Some will see this as too high a price to pay for the small chance that Iran will indeed stop enriching uranium. But we believe it would be the necessary cost, if such a dialogue materializes, of eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat. And it would be a small price to pay, compared to that of a war.

Strike on Sudanese plant may be sign of escalating proxy war | The Times of Israel.

Israel thought to be responsible for hit that targeted Iranian-Sudanese-Gaza arms pipeline

Last week’s explosion at Sudan’s Yarmouk Complex, outside Khartoum. (photo credit: image capture from Channel 2)

CAIRO (AP) — A suspected Israeli airstrike against a weapons factory in Khartoum last week points to a possible escalation in a hidden front of the rivalry between Israel and Iran: The arms pipeline through Sudan to terrorists on Israel’s borders.

Mystery still surrounds the blast, which killed four people. But analysts say the incident could indicate Iran is trying to send more advanced weapons via Sudan to Hamas in the Gaza Strip or Hezbollah in Lebanon — and that Israel has become more determined to stop it at a time of increased tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Consensus has built among Israeli and Arab military analysts that the explosion just after midnight last Wednesday at the Yarmouk factory was indeed an Israeli airstrike as Sudan has claimed. Israel says it neither confirms nor denies being behind it. Sudan, in turn, denied on Monday that Iran had any connection to the factory’s production.

In a show of support for the two countries’ alliance, two Iranian warships — a helicopter carrier and destroyer that had been conducting anti-piracy patrols off East Africa’s coast — docked this week at Sudan’s main Red Sea port. The Iranian commanders were holding talks with Sudanese officers as part of the countries’ “exchange of amicable relations,” Sudan’s military spokesman said.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry dismissed allegations of an Iranian connection to the Yarmouk facility, saying “Iran does not need to manufacture weapons in Sudan, be it for itself or for its allies.”

Experts say that Sudan’s value to Iran is not in its modest weapons production capabilities, but in its vast desert expanses that provide cover for weapons convoys bound for Gaza through Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula. Israel has long contended that Iran uses the route to supply Hamas. It appears to have struck the supply line at least once before, when a convoy in a remote part of Sudan was blasted by explosions in 2009 — though Israel never admitted to the attack.

The question now is: What would prompt Israel to conduct a bolder strike hitting a Sudanese government facility in the heart of the capital Khartoum?

The target may have been 40 shipping containers that satellite images show were stacked in the factory compound days before the explosion. Post-explosion imagery released Saturday by the Satellite Sentinel Project, a US monitoring group, show six 52-foot-wide craters all centered at the spot where the containers had been, the blast’s epicenter.

The group said the craters were consistent with an airstrike and that whatever it hit was a “highly volatile cargo,” causing a powerful explosion that destroyed at least two structures in the compound and sent ordnance flying into nearby neighborhoods.

What was in the containers remains unknown — leaving observers to speculate.

Retired Israeli Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, a military expert, said there is a “strong possibility” that Israel had identified an “imminent threat” within the factory.

Brom, a research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the containers could have been part of Iran’s efforts to smuggle “a new category of weapons” to Gaza. The weapons could be “something with air defense capability … or could very well belong to the category of rockets and missiles, but just larger, stronger, and longer range,” he said.

Gen. Sameh Seif Elyazal, a former Egyptian army general, said his understanding was that a strike was carried out against short-range missiles being assembled in the factory “under Iranian supervision,” bound for the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups. He said that his analysis was based on “private conversations with Israeli officials” that had been conveyed to him through others. He did not elaborate.

Elyazal said Iranian-made weapons smuggled through Sudan reach Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

“Iran wants to put Israel under pressure from the north, through Hezbollah and from the east through Gaza,” he said.

Iran has long backed Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Iran’s relations with Hamas have been strained after the Palestinian militant group this year cut its ties with Syria — Tehran’s biggest Arab ally — over that country’s bloody civil war. Iran has since cut back some aid to the group, but a senior Hamas leader visited Tehran last month and Hamas officials say the group’s military wing in particular continues to receive funding from Iran.

Iran “has sought alternate routes” for its arms shipments to Hamas after Israel cracked down on maritime lanes direct to Gaza that Tehran previously used, said Michael Eisenstadt, Director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Sudan route “complicates matters for Israel,” he said.

Hezbollah is another possible destination. But despite the civil war, Syria is believed to remain the primary route for Tehran to supply its powerful Shiite guerrilla ally in Lebanon.

Iranian arms shipments gain added significance amid the dispute of Iran’s nuclear program, which Israel and the US contend is aimed at producing a bomb. Israel has held out the possibility of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran denies any intention to build a bomb and has warned it will retaliate for any Israeli attack — raising fears Hezbollah, Hamas or other Iranian-backed militant groups would carry out strikes on Israel.

Speaking to Israel Radio after the Wednesday explosion in Khartoum, Israeli Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon said “there’s no doubt that there is an axis of weapons from Iran via Sudan that reaches us, and not just us.”

The contentions surrounding last week’s explosion also point to the close ties between Iran and Sudan, dating back to the 1989 coup that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power, when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard helped supply him weapons.

Though wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged atrocities in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, al-Bashir visited Tehran most recently in August for a Nonaligned Movement summit. Iran has made significant investments in water and engineering projects in Sudan.

China is the main arms source for Sudan’s government. But Iran, which signed a military relations deal with Khartoum in 2008, is also a supplier.

Notably, Khartoum appears to receive Iranian drones to use in its multiple domestic wars against rebel groups, said Jonah Leff, who monitors Sudan for the Small Arms Survey. Rebels shot down two such drones, in 2008 and in March this year.

An Iranian role at the Yarmouk facility remains uncertain. The facility, which opened in 1996, was touted by Sudan as a source of pride, showing its weapons manufacturing capabilities. Still, the factory only produces ammunition. Leff said there is no evidence Iranian weapons are being assembled there, suggesting it was beyond the facility’s capabilities.

But, he said, workers from Yarmouk have traveled to Iran for training.

There have also been reports of Iranian experts residing at Yarmouk, said Hani Raslan, an expert on Sudan at the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. Raslan also said he suspects the strike was aimed at weakening the Iranian arms smuggling network.

Fawaz A. Gerges, who heads the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics, says the strike has its symbolic aspect as well, allowing Israel to “flex its muscle and capacity and will to strike.”

“Regardless of what particular weapons were destroyed, Israel sent a message to Sudan and to Iran,” Gerges said.

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Cairo, Lauren E. Bohn and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, and Brian Murphy in Dubai contributed to this report

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