WarSclerotic

Obama-Khamenei summit would cap long back-channel dialogue.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 21, 2012, 3:48 AM (GMT+02:00)

A pre-election summit?

US President Barack Obama has agreed to hold direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program with its leaders, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Is this a surprise? On April 16, 2012, debkafile disclosed that Washington and Tehran were conducting back-channel talks in Paris and Vienna, Sources close to Obama have now leaked word to the New York Times that the dialogue is to be elevated to direct talks at summit level.

This disclosure, despite its subsequent denial by the White House, has three clear objects:

1.  To slow down the Republican contender Mitt Romney’s momentum in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 6 election. Obama’s campaign advisers believe the president’s willingness to engage Iranian leaders directly on their nuclear program, in contrast to Romney’s tougher stance, will appeal to the American voter’s reluctance for US military action.
2.  To preempt Romney’s presumed plan to drop the disclosure of the back-channel dialogue as a bombshell in their last debate on foreign policy scheduled for Monday, Oct. 22 in Florida.

3.  To reassure Tehran that the Austere Challenge 12 joint US-Israeli war game starting Sunday Oct. 21 – albeit in reduced form – will not be the opening shot for an “October surprise” on Iran.
This kite was flown by David Rothkopf, who is close to the Democratic leadership, in Foreign Policy on October 9, although it was not picked up by anyone else in Washington or Jerusalem. Under the heading an “October surprise,” he cited a White House faction as recommending to Obama that the US join Israel in launching a surgical operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities before the US election.
Obama is now signaling Tehran that he has rejected this advice in favor of upgrading his dialogue with Iranian leaders.
However, beyond the calculus of campaign strategy, it is important to note that the clandestine dialogue in progress for the best part of a year has produced no breakthrough in the controversy on Iran’s nuclear aspirations. This is mainly because Obama’s emissaries have never stipulated plainly that Tehran must stop uranium enrichment as a quid pro quo for the dialogue to continue. Just the reverse: they let it be known that Washington does not object to Iran’s enrichment program per se so long as it is not used for building a nuclear weapon.
The differences between the two sides centered on the American demand for the International Atomic Energy Agency to be allowed  24/7 monitoring access to the enrichment projects to determine that parts of the stock did not suddenly disappear for use in manufacturing a bomb. Tehran has only agreed to inspectors paying visits once a fortnight.

Vice President Joe Biden was outspoken about this during his debate with Paul Ryan on Oct. 11. He actually said that the quantities of enriched uranium accumulated don’t matter – only what Iran does with it.  This admission aroused little notice although it implied that the Obama administration is willing to let Iran approach a very risky threshold.
It also indicated a very wide gulf still existing between the Obama administration’s indulgent attitude toward a nuclear Iran and Israel’s insistence on red lines for limiting the quantities and grades of enriched uranium Iran is permitted to accumulate.

At the same time, Israel keeps on backtracking on those red lines: When Iran moved its enrichment plant into an immune zone earlier this month, one red line disappeared. And Israel is no longer openly challenging Washington’s assurance that a decision by Khamenei to go forward and start building a weapon would reach US intelligence at the precise moment it is made.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have therefore been forced back step by step and have silently fallen in behind Obama.
For his part, the US president believes a summit with Iran’s rulers will enhance his chances of reelection. But he is leaving Netanyahu to face the Israeli voter in three months with nothing remaining of his pledge to prevent a nuclear Iran, and clutching at the outward concurrence between Israeli and US intelligence appraisals of Iran’s nuclear progress.
There is no real concurrence; the gap is as wide as ever. But by failing to deny Israeli affinity with the United States on this issue, Netanyahu and Barak are not only helping Barack Obama but also encouraging Tehran to keep going.

White House denies US, Iran agre… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

FROM THE ISRAELI PRESS: Nasrallah-Your Time is Up – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

An organization that calls itself “Arab Intellectuals United”, headed by a Palestinian Arab named Amar el Azam, has published a news release that calls for Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah to remove his forces from Syria immediately – and in particular, to get rid of the 1500 Hizbullah fighters that Azam claims are guarding President Bashar Assad.

The following is a translation of the release (brackets by the writer):

“We, who believed in you and supported you in the July 2006 war [against Israel, M.K.], are totally disgusted and repelled by you, now that you are entangled in the partnership to spill Syrian blood. Your shameful ethnic Shiite loyalty has overcome your counterfeit Arab character. In the past, we fantasized that the Lebanese Shiites are historically, culturally, nationally and religiously the closest to their Sunni Arab brothers, but the turban on your head was manufactured in Kom [the ayatollah’s city in Iran, M.K.] and explains why you are a pawn of the Iranians in spilling Syrian blood.

“Your part in eliminating many Lebanese politicians and intellectuals  [such as Rafiq Hariri, M.K.] and the part that you are playing in putting down the Syrian rebellion, are harbingers of the end of your leadership, and you should be brought to judgment as a person who committed war crimes against the Arab people and humanity.  We promise to open Shiite religious centers where thousands will mourn you after you have been eliminated along with your gang of mercenaries.

We call upon you to save the vestiges of profaned Arab honor, before your traitorous artillery [Hizbullah arms that were meant only for fighting Zionists, M.K.] will be thrown soundlessly into the nearest dump.”

Criticism of the Hizbullah is not limited to this intellectual organization, and includes most of the organizations and spokesman in the Arab world, including Shiites- and not just Shiites – in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shiites have always criticized the accord between the Arab Hizbullah and the Iranians, an agreement that was directed against Sunni Arabs and Christians, but their criticism was pushed aside in the aftermath of the so-called “victory” of 2006.

The Second Lebanon War in 2006 caused the death of 1300 Lebanese, most of them Hizbullah fighters, and the destruction of infrastructure and dwellings; a half million refugees fled Southern Lebanon. Despite all that, the Hizbullah propaganda machine succeeded in convincing the Lebanese that the defeat was a victory.   After all, Nasrallah survived, refused to return the two Israeli soldiers he had kidnapped, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser Hy”d, and refused stubbornly to agree to give up Hizbullah weapons, claiming that they were for fighting the Zionist enemy and freeing captured lands.

HIzbullah became the most admired organization in the Arab world, because it succeeded where all the Arab armies failed, and Nasrallah became a hero of the Arab peoples because he stuck unwaveringly to his goal. The Arab world ignored the fact that Hizbullah is a Shiite organization, while the overwhelming majority of Arabs are Sunni, and that the Hizbullah is actually an extension of Iran, a Moslem but non-Arab nation. Arab admiration for Nasrallah in 2006 was sky high.

Even though UNIFIL forces were strengthened, as was their field of operations, by UN Resolution 1701, the Syria-Lebanon border continued to be wide open to the passage of rockets, arms and weapons that flowed unhindered from Iran through Syria and on to Lebanon. HIzbullah was rehabilitated and strengthened in a coordinated Syrian-Iran operation and owes its existence to both of those countries. If not for Hafez and Bashar Assad and the Iranian Imams Khamenei and Khomeini, the Shiite’s in Lebanon, along with their aging militia Amal, would have remained neglected and insignificant.

Hizbullah spokesmen expressed total support for the Syrian regime from the start of the anti-Bashar demonstrations in 2011, for their hearts are with the Damascus regime and not with the mostly Sunni crowds trying to overturn it. The first reports that Hizbullah fighters, mostly sharpshooters, had reached Syria to help suppress the still non-violent protests were in June 2011.

All through 2012, there were constant reports of particularly cruel “Lebanese” fighters alongside Assad’s army, of secret burials of Lebanese dead near the Syrian border, and of the clampdown that Hizbullah maintained over their families to prevent any external signs of mourning – and of Lebanese prisoners in the hands of the Syrian rebels. HIzbullah generally ignored the rumors and when it did refer to them, it was to deny them.

The Arab media, however, did not remain silent and maintained continuous coverage of Hizbullah involvement in Syria, especially after it became known several weeks ago that the Free Syria army is negotiating the release of tens of Hizbullah fighters it had taken prisoner.

The Arab world discovered that the hero of 2006, Hizbullah, had become a murderer of Arabs, an eliminator of Muslims, an enemy of Sunnis. Hizbullah detractors, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, ridiculed the organization spokesmen’s claim that its weapons are for fighting Israel and that its only mission is against the Zionists. “How many Zionists are in Damascus? And in Homs?” they asked.

Nasrallah has no choice but to support Assad today because of the many years he received support from Assad and because his Iranian patron wholeheartedly supports the Assad regime.

In a discussion this week on BBC radio, the Hizbullah spokesman said that if there are Hizbullah fighters in Syria, they are only there to defend Lebanon’s borders from “terrorists” that threaten Lebanese citizens.

In response, the Free Syria Army representative threatened that after their forces eliminate Assad and his henchmen, 23 million Syrians will settle accounts with the Hizbullah gang and eliminate Hassan Nasrallah – even if he continues to hide like a mouse in his bunker in the southern suburb of Beirut, Dahyeh, a Shiite stronghold.

This threat and Assad’s precarious situation have made Nasrallah appear to be someone who bet on the wrong horse, because when Assad falls, Nasrallah will be persona non grata and  have to flee Lebanon to avoid assassination.

Without doubt, when the bloody regime of Assad falls, the status of Hizbullah will be severely shaken – and in one fell swoop the Syrian and Lebanese tentacle of the Iranian octopus will be cut off.

This may result in feuding within the Iranian regime over whose fault the decision to bet on Assad was, and why he was allowed to be defeated. This dispute might even affect the unity of the Ayatollah’s control and hasten its end.

An important question is how the Iranian will react to the approaching double defeat of Assad and Hizbullah. Will they accept it as heavenly ordained and inevitable or will they act decisively against Assad’s opponents? Iran could conceivably send large military forces – armored divisions, for example – to Syria via Iraq. Iran, may we inform those in the White House, is now in almost complete control of what happens in Iraq.

The passage of Iranian forces will be at the official and legal invitation of the Iraqi and Syrian governments and therefore pose no problem for Iran.

Will Turkey intervene by attacking the Iranian forces flowing into Syria via Iraq? Will the US or NATO act? What will Israel do to prevent the presence of Iranian forces opposite the Golan Heights? And how will the world react to Iranian forces entering Syria if Iran announces that it has a nuclear bomb?

Another dilemma that the world, and Israel in particular, must address is the situation in Jordan. Iraq, which borders Jordan on the east, has become, ever since NATO forces left the country a year ago, an ‘honorary member’ of the Iranian coalition. An Iranian army in Iraq with that government’s permission, could easily go on to Jordan, not only to Syria, and threaten Saudi Arabia as well as Israel.

The possibility – even the remote one – that this could occur, must make Israel resist any thought of giving up the Jordan Valley, as that is the only area where Israel could stop a foreign force, Iranian or Iraqi, that might attempt to attack Israel from the east. A significant fighting force that succeeds in crossing the Jordan Valley from east to west may bring the next war to the streets of Tel Aviv.

Translated from the Hebrew newspaper Makor Rishon, posted with the author’s permission.

Israel Hayom | The Jewish future is only in Israel.

Syria, Iran, Hizballah attack while US and Israel play computerized war games.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis October 20, 2012, 1:15 PM (GMT+02:00)

Bombing outrage in Beirut

The assassination of the anti-Syrian Head of the Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces intelligence branch, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan, Friday, Oct. 19, by a huge car bomb blast in East Beirut’s Ashrafiya district marked the brutal spillover of the Syrian bloodbath into a second Arab capital and the threat of its spread towards Israel.
Eighteen months ago, in May 2011, shortly after Syrians rose up against Bashar Assad, Rami Makhlouf, a leading architect of his tactics of suppression, warned, “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel.”
Israel should take careful note of the outrage in Beirut in which seven Lebanese were killed and 73 injured in order to liiquidate Assad’s foe in Beirut.

In August, Gen. Al-Hasan uncovered a Syrian plot to destabilize Lebanon by a bombing campaign and arrested the pro-Syrian politician and ex-information minister Michel Samaha for complicity in the plot. He also led the investigation that implicated Damascus in the 2005 bombing atrocity that killed former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Gen. Al-Hasan’s murder brought forth angry protesters.They blocked roads and highways in several towns including the Beirut-Syrian road link as the Lebanese government met in emergency session Saturday, Oct. 20, and announced a day of national mourning.
In the wider sense, the murder of the Lebanese anti-Syrian terror crusader demonstrated that hopes in the West and Israel of the Syrian conflict eventually sundering the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis were no better than pipedreams, just like the belief that liquidating Iran’s nuclear scientists or cyber warfare would turn Tehran back from its march towards a nuclear weapon.
After nearly two years, those illusions have been dissipated: The Syrian bloodbath is spreading more malignantly than ever with solid Iranian and Hizballah support and Tehran is closer than ever to realizing its nuclear aspirations.
This week, US President Barack Obama reined in Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his chief of staff Gen. Necdet Ozel from expanding Turkish cross-border clashes with Syria by sending Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Ankara. His restraining hand kept Turkey from going beyond artillery backing for Syrian rebels inside a10-kilometer limit inside Syria. He also cautioned the Turks against sending their warplanes across the border into Syrian airspace.
Because of these curbs, US Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone was able to state Tuesday “We don’t see a possibility of war between Syria and Turkey.” He spoke to reporters in Ankara with the top American soldier beside him.

If they were talking, Turkish Erdogan could compare notes with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has experienced similar Washington restraints against launching military action to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

Whether or not the United States should step into the two blazing conflicts with two feet – or limit itself to extending military support from the outside to the forces willing to take on Syria and Iran – is a tough question which the two US presidential contenders, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney may address in their third and final pre-election debate in Florida, Monday, Oct. 22.
The differences between the rivals on this point don’t appear substantial. However their contest in the run-up to the Nov.6 election has diverted attention from Ankara and Jerusalem and rescued the Turkish and Israeli leaders from even tougher questions about their reluctance to act without America – Turkey versus Syria and Israel versus Iran –  although the Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah menace is knocking on their doors.
They are not alone. The list of Middle East governments, shy of acting without America against encroaching threats from one or more of the three aggressors, includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the rest of the Gulf emirates.
The rulers of Russia, Iran and its Lebanese arm Hizballah, in contrast, were emboldened by the US ambassador’s comment in Ankara, its effect on Erdogan and Netanyahu’s non-response to the Iranian stealth drone’s invasion of Israeli air space. They concluded that both leaders would continue to sit on their hands.
And so Assad seized the moment for sending his air force to assault opposition forces with unprecedented fury. Cluster bombs were dropped without mercy on urban areas, causing an estimated 1,200 deaths and reducing entire villages and small towns to smoking rubble.
And his assassins struck across the border into the heart of Beirut for a devastating bombing attack that recalled the horrors of a former Assad bombing campaign against his Lebanese opponents, one of which dispatched the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.
Every few days, the Syria-Hizballah-Iran bloc ratchets up the violence with a new outrage in the certainty that there will be no comeback.
Sunday, Oct. 21, the US and Israel launch Austere Challenge 12, which they are calling their biggest joint war game ever, to practice defending Israel against a missile attack.
But in tune with the general air of denial hanging over Washington and Jerusalem, the exercise has been reduced in scale to just 1,000 soldiers on each side, with most of the action conducted through simulated computer games. As every soldier knows, this is a far cry from real operations on a battlefield.

Both American and Israeli war planners also realize that even these games are only applicable to defenses against an Iranian ballistic missile attack – not a triple Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah missile assault. This would call for US-Israeli air force intervention. But the air force is not taking part in the war game.

Iran points finger at Israel for… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: reuters

The Last Day – YouTube.

( What could be, but what WON’T be. –  JW )

–

Thanks to: gavinthornbury

Obama to Israel: Iran is piling up fissile material for 4-6 bombs – in Natanz too.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 19, 2012, 2:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

An extra 6,000 centrifuges for Natanz enrichment plant

President Barack Obama this week clued Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in on the latest US intelligence input confirming that Iran will have enough enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs by March 2013, debkafile reports from its Washington and intelligence sources. 

His update, which took place in the framework of quiet US-Israeli intelligence-sharing on the state of Iran’s nuclear program, was Obama’s first acknowledgment that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are not having any effect on that program.
It is now clear to his administration that Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will press on toward a nuclear weapon capacity at any price – even if faced with a military threat. No pause is to be expected in Iran’s drive to accumulate enough enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb arsenal, while advancing at the same time along a second track toward a plutonium bomb.
This updated US intelligence included three more data:
1.  Most of the enriched uranium for the 4-6 nuclear bombs is scattered in 20-percent grade form among different caches.  When vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan revealed Iran’s possession of enough fissile material for five nuclear bombs during his debate with VP Joe Biden on Oct. 10, Biden waved the revelation away with contempt.
It is now confirmed by his boss, the president.
2.  After completing the transfer of advanced centrifuges to the fortified underground site at Fordo, Iran is now ready to expand uranium enrichment at Natanz by doubling the number of centrifuges working there to 6,000. The new annex to house them, on which building began in March 2011, is almost finished.

3.  The technological infrastructure for the rapid conversion of 20-percent enriched uranium to the 90-percent weapons grade is now in place. It is estimated in Washington that no more than two to three weeks will elapse between a Khamenei order for the conversion to begin, to the production of enough weapons-grade material for Iran to build its first nuclear bombs.
The US intelligence experts keeping track of Iran’s program are sure they will know when that order is given.
Notwithstanding all the facts and figures from his own intelligence experts on the imminence of a nuclear Iran, President Obama is still leaning hard on Netanyahu to hold off a preemptive strike until after the Nov. 6 presidential election. He promises that, shortly after the vote, if he is reelected, he will put before Tehran the endgame document prepared by a White House team in the form of an ultimatum with a deadline for response.
But Obama is still not saying how he will respond to an Iranian rejection of the document’s main points, or whether he will again agree to return to the negotiating table while Iran is allowed to forge ahead on its bomb program. This had been the standard diplomatic format under his watch.

debkafile’s Washington sources disclose that a large group of former high-placed US diplomats, ex-officials and elder statesmen – Democrats and Republicans alike – has come forward to warn the Israeli prime minister to give up any expectation, ever, of Barack Obama’s cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue. These former top Washingtonians all harbor strong reservations about the president’s foreign policy, especially on Iran.
Some have called Netanyahu in person and warned him that the White House instituted an intelligence-sharing dialogue with Israel only as a device for delaying an Israeli attack on Iran. If reelected, they say, he will weasel out of his repeated pledges to prevent Iran attaining a nuclear weapon and certainly not countenance preventive military action by Israel.
This is no secret to Tehran. Counting on Obama maintaining this posture and Israel’s compliance, the Iranians are certain they can go full speed ahead toward their nuclear goal without fear of interference.
Our sources also disclose that three questions on Iran will be put to the president and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney in their third and last debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, Monday, Oct. 22.

IDF tank battalion practices racing to war – JPost – Defense.

Photo: IDF Spokesman

The ‘Third Track’: US Military Moves in Persian Gulf / ISN.

US aircraft carrier ‘Nimitz’