WarSclerotic

The messages to Iran coming from Washington not Khartoum!.

By George Semaan

Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Iran is not Sudan, and raiding Khartoum to destroy a weapons factory in it is not like raiding Tehran and hitting one of its nuclear reactors. The Israeli air force did not need the last raid against the Yarmouk factory near the Sudanese capital to confirm its capabilities and efficiency in striking facilities in the Islamic Republic, although the distance it crossed was close to 2000 kilometers. Indeed, the issue is not just about the Israeli air force’s ability to carry out such raids — no matter how far they are — but rather about the military and retaliatory reactions which will follow this strike. At this level, no one argued about the incapacity of the Taliban regime and later on the Saddam Hussein regime to face the United States’ war machine. But what followed and is still ongoing is the biggest proof for Washington’s failure to exploit its military victory in both countries.

Had it not been for these calculations related to the post-war on Iran stage, Tel Aviv would not have hesitated to implement its threats years ago. In 2007, its air force raided what was described as being a Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzor, while at the beginning of 2009, it raided an arms convoy that was heading to the Gaza Strip through Sinai on the Port Sudan road, thus destroying the convoy and claiming the lives of more than 100 people. Israel then raided another Sudanese target, one who was said to be the man in charge of the weapons smuggling to the Hamas movement, and its intelligence services assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai at the beginning of 2010 after he was also considered to be the coordinator of the delivery of weapons to the movement.

The raid thus constituted a clear message to Khartoum before Tehran. And far from being a rehearsal for an expected Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities — as one round in a long confrontation with the Islamic Republic and its weapons that are distributed to its allies — it is one of many international steps to besiege the Iranian hands spread throughout the Middle East and reaching the Horn of Africa. More importantly, it is a step aiming at tightening the siege around the Gaza Strip and at preventing the delivery of weapons to it, thus falling in the context of the previous raids carried out against Khartoum during the last four years. Hence, it might not be a rehearsal to attack Iran any time soon.

And because the raid is part of international efforts to besiege the Islamic Republic and its branches in the region, it is definitely not an attempt to strike the Arab spring as Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir likes to repeat. Had this been the case, the squares of Khartoum and the streets of the other cities would have been swarmed with the youth of various parties and forces that are threatening the regime with a Sudanese spring aiming at toppling it. It is a message addressed to Al-Bashir’s regime, one which exposed its isolation among its neighbors and confirmed its alienation vis-à-vis the Sudanese domestic arena which was not mobilized, even if under the headline of confronting Israel. The street thus remained idle, unlike what followed the strike launched by President Bill Clinton’s administration against the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998. Hence, no popular rallying was seen. True, Israel did not state it was behind the attack, but what is also true is that none of Sudan’s neighbors and brothers reacted, except for Syria which was the only one to condemn the raid.

This reveals the fact that the Sudanese, along with many of their Arab brothers and neighbors, do not want Khartoum to be part of the rejectionist axis led by Tehran, considering that any relationship with Tehran is harmful rather than beneficial. The regime might be using the Yarmouk factory to produce some of its military needs in its internal wars in Darfur among others and with the newborn state in the South. Still, the Sudanese are aware of the fact that the relationship with Iran did not result in any economic benefits or investments, unlike the case with the investments introduced by China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi businessmen. In other words, the interests of Al-Bashir’s regime reside in the establishment of the best relations with its Arab brothers and African neighbors, ones that were used by Washington to impose a tight siege around it, and including Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya following the attack staged against its embassy in 1998.

The regime might boast its reassurance about the presence of an Islamic regime in Cairo, but it knows very well that this regime which might have disregarded the delivery of weapons to the Gaza Muslim Brotherhood through Sinai, is not oblivious to the fact that many of them fell in the hands of the extremists who attacked an Egyptian military post on the border with Israel in August. Moreover, the internal repercussions of the revolution have not yet allowed this regime to review Egypt’s policies and strategies towards the regional issues, no matter how urgent they are, and at the head of which comes the file of the Camp David Accords.

The raid carried out by the Israeli air force confirms its readiness and ability to hit distant targets. However, the goal of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was and still is the tightening of the siege around Hamas. And although it expressed its disgruntlement, Tel Aviv is not opposed to the financial support offered to the Gaza Strip by the state of Qatar, as well as the tutelage over Hamas after the latter withdrew from under Tehran’s and Damascus’ cover following its public stand in favor of the Syrian opposition. One should mention at this level that this tutelage has been seen for some time, ever since Hamas’s leaders left Amman and headed to Doha. Hence, it would be right to place the raid in the context of the response to the missiles that are still being launched from the Strip against the settlements, as it is likely that the leader of the Likud does not wish to launch war with the Palestinians while preparing for the parliamentary elections.

In any case, Israel still remains silent, at a time when no one can acquit it from its new crime in Sudan. At this level, it would be useless to say that Iran will reconsider its calculations and positions in light of this strike, and might even use the open road to ensure further coordination with the Sudanese regime that has no military ability to respond and retaliate. On the other hand, there is an Israeli exaggeration in regard to the capabilities of the air force, considering that if it had been easy to stage an attack against the Islamic Republic, Tel Aviv would not have hesitated to proceed with it and Netanyahu would not have raised all this commotion with President Barack Obama while urging him to hit the Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Obama overcame this storm. Indeed, despite his commitment to prevent Tehran from producing nuclear weapons during his second term if he were to win the elections, he is still relying on the sanctions to push it to reconsider its position at the level of the nuclear file, and the other files resulting from it and which are linked to the Gulf and the region in general. Even Britain is opposed to war on Iran, seeing how the spokeswoman for Prime Minister David Cameron announced that her country was against any strike for the time being because it was not the right approach, reiterating London’s insistence on giving a chance to the sanctions whose effects had just started to emerge, and stressing its insistence on dialogue with Tehran. For its part, The Guardian revealed that the United Kingdom believed that any strike against Iran could constitute a violation of international law, as indicated by the British General Prosecutor’s office. Hence, the leader of the Conservative Party does not wish to follow in Washington’s footsteps in any unilateral act, as was done by his predecessor Tony Blair during the war on Iraq.

The raid on the Yarmouk factory is a message to Sudan and Hamas, before it being a message of intimidation to Iran. This is due to the fact that such messages are not delivered through Khartoum, and that many have gone and are still going through Washington, London and the Security Council, which reached a consensus over six resolutions featuring sanctions so far. On the other hand, the raid further increased the isolation suffered by al-Bashir’s regime, in parallel to the deepening of its alienation on the regional and domestic levels and the plans and actins with which its opponents are threatening in order to topple it. Therefore, it is useless for it to boast the fact that it was the first between the Islamic regimes to rise to power in Tunisia and Egypt among others, as these new regimes know that democracy and popular revolutions were the ones that brought them to power, not coups, even if they are dubbed the “salvation revolution.”

Hence, it should avoid expecting support from its neighbors, just like those who are flaunting the capabilities of the Israeli air force should avoid over-complimenting it, expressing self-confidence and bragging about the ability to reach Tehran, considering that the missiles of the latter are just a stone’s throw away from the Hebrew state!

(The writer is a columnist at the London-based al-Hayat, where this article was published on Oct. 29, 2012)

IDF officer warns of repeat Lebanon war – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Israel would use less cluster bombs but would charge into Lebanon earlier, harder if war breaks out, army official says

Reuters

Israel would use a lot fewer cluster munitions in any future war with Hezbollah than it did in their 2006 conflict, even though it would go into southern Lebanon earlier and harder, a senior Israeli military officer said on Monday.

The disclosure confirms Israel already has detailed planning for an offensive aiming to avoid some controversial tactics used in the 34-day push against the Iranian-backed terrorist group.

Israel has not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, whose adoption in 2008 was spurred partly by Lebanese casualties of the bomblets, some of which lay scattered and unexploded until they were accidentally detonated by civilian passersby.

“Due to a whole range of considerations – legitimacy, our non-indifference to the treaty, effectiveness and other factors – cluster use is expected to be reduced in combat in the rural areas,” the officer told foreign journalists.

Hezbollah spying device (Photo: AP)

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said “rural areas” meant “most of southern Lebanon”. The scattering of cluster bombs, whether by artillery or the air force, would be “much reduced, significantly reduced”, he said.

Hezbollah is outgunned by the technologically superior Israeli forces, but in 2006 it proved adept at fighting covertly and hitting Israeli towns with rockets. Some 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the war.

According to the top IDF official, international sanctions are forcing Iran to cut back aid to its Hezbollah, but the group remains potent force.

He said Hezbollah has an arsenal far larger and more sophisticated than it possessed in 2006.

Iran is a central factor in arming and training Hezbollah inside Lebanon and in camps in Iran, but the flow of aid has diminished compared to four or five years back, the military official said.

“Sanctions have hurt the amount of aid Hezbollah receives from Iran,” he said, without providing evidence to back up his claims. He said aid remains a “significant amount,” estimating it at hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Future war to be settled fast

If Israel carries out its veiled threats to attack Iran’s nuclear program, it could mean another war with Hezbollah.

Israel sees the Shiite terror group as the long arm of its enemy Iran. Israeli television has reported that 10,000 Lebanese sites are now listed as potential targets – far more than Israel had on its list in 2006.

Suggesting the depth of Israeli intelligence penetration, the officer said there was “more than one Hezbollah cell” in each of some 240 Shiite villages in southern Lebanon. Some have guerrilla bunkers, launch pads and arms caches.

Israel hopes Lebanon can rein in Hezbollah, which acts like a state within a state. If not, the officer predicted a future war would be settled more quickly by Israel, whose forces were fought to a standstill in 2006.

Israel had relied initially on aerial bombing, shifting to a ground offensive only after days of withering guerrilla rocket attacks on its northern towns. Next time, the tanks and troops would go in “very early on,” the officer said.

Israel must also brace for attacks on Israelis abroad, he said. Iran and its Lebanese ally have been accused of several plots. Many may have been foiled, but on July 18 a bomb in Bulgaria killed 5 Israeli tourists. Iran denied any role.

Hezbollah has not responded to the charges of involvement.

If a bomb attack killed many Israelis, would Israel see it as justification for launching a new Lebanon war?

“My personal opinion? Absolutely,” the officer said.

Target in Sudan: Arms shipment – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Analysis: Iran missiles destroyed in attack on Khartoum ‘factory’ could have threatened Israeli ships, oil and gas drilling

All signs indicate that it was not an “arms factory” that was bombed in Sudan recently, but a huge shipment of advanced weapons and ammunition that was on its way from Iran to terror elements in Gaza. A reliable Western source says that even if a small number of these weapons systems would have reached the Hamas-ruled territory, they could have posed a major threat to Israel and the IDF. However, it appears that the shipment did not include chemical weapons or drones, as published by several media outlets around the world.

It is safe to assume that at least some of the weapons were manufactured in Iran and were designated for the Palestinian Global Jihad in Gaza and other terror organizations in the Strip that are funded by Iran. The weapons were probably shipped as “civilian cargo” from the Persian Gulf, through the Indian Ocean and from there to one of the Sudanese ports along the Red Sea. The cargo was unloaded and delivered to Khartoum on trucks.

There, deep in Africa, the Iranian weapons were unloaded at the “Yarmouk” military site. According to reports, the site serves as a central distribution station along Iran’s arms smuggling routes to clients in the eastern Mediterranean Basin – in accordance with an agreement between Iran and Sudan. These routes are operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, and the clients are terror groups in Gaza, Hezbollahin Lebanon and Syrian forces loyal to Assad.

Apart from weapons that arrive at “Yarmouk” directly from Iran, weapons stolen from the warehouses of the Gaddafi regime’s army and later purchased by the Iranians or the Palestinians most likely also make their way to the military site just outside of Khartoum. The weapons are transported from Khartoum by land to the Egyptian border. Smugglers then transfer the arms to the Nile Delta region, and the Bedouins in north Sinai are in charge of smuggling the cargo through underground tunnels into Gaza.

This long, circuitous route was chosen over the more direct route (from Port Sudan, along Sudan and Egypt’s Red Sea coastline to the Suez Canal, and from there to Sinai), which was abandoned by the Iranians because they apparently realized that Israel was gathering intelligence in the area and carrying out successful operations to curb the arms smuggling.

According to reliable sources, Israel has attacked a number of arms convoys over the past few years. The new route was supposed to evade the eyes and ears of Israeli intelligence. The Quds force apparently believed that the Israelis would not reach the Sudanese capital.

It appears that the protection provided by the Sudanese government to these arms convoys along a significant portion of the smuggling route (until they reached the Egyptian border) and the ability to conceal the weapons inside trucks encouraged the Iranians and the smugglers: Instead of the small vans that were used to carry the weapons along the Red Sea coast, the recent convoys that departed from Khartoum included trailer trucks loaded with containers filled with hundreds of tons of light weapons, rockets, missiles and explosives.

Massive fire at Sudan ‘arms factory’ (Photo: Reuters)

The weapons most likely included Iranian “Fajr” rockets, which have a range of more than 70 kilometers, anti-aircraft missiles and maybe even Iranian-made land-to-sea missiles that could possibly endanger Israel’s offshore oil and natural gas drilling. Such missiles would certainly pose a threat to Israeli ships patrolling off Gaza’s coastline. Just recently terrorists in Gaza tried to intercept an Israeli aircraft using a shoulder-launched Russian “Strela” missile, which is apparently manufactured in Iran.

In summation, the convoys that arrived from Khartoum carried everything the Iranians did not dare transport via the Red Sea coastline or aboard ships en route to Gaza, Hezbollah and Syria.

The Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt is concerned by this phenomenon no less than Israel is. Cairo is aware of the possibility that some of the smuggled weapons will end up in the hands of terror elements that threaten the new government. Therefore, Egyptian intelligence services have increased their efforts, and since the beginning of the year they have succeeded in intercepting two or three massive weapons convoys that originated in Sudan. However, it is clear to all that this is just a drop in the bucket.

Images taken by the Satellite Sentinel Project three weeks prior to the explosion at “Yarmouk” clearly show a large number of shipping containers. Satellite images of the aftermath of the explosion showed six 52-foot wide craters near the epicenter of the blast at the compound, suggesting the site was hit in an airstrike.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, which was founded last year with support from actor George Clooney to monitor the destruction of villages by Sudanese troops in the country’s multiple war zones, said: “The explosions were centered on a site that, as recently as October 12, consisted of a 60-meter-long, shed-type building and approximately 40 shipping containers, each 6.5 meters long, stacked nearby. The October 25 image reveals evidence of massive explosions at this site and no evidence remains of the 60-meter-long building or the shipping containers. While SSP cannot confirm that the shipping containers

seen on October 12 remained at the site on October 24, analysis of the imagery is consistent with the presence of highly volatile cargo in the epicenter of the explosions.”

The evidence clearly suggests that it was not a legitimate army factory that was bombed, as claimed by Sudan, but containers of weapons and ammunition that were meant to be delivered to terror organizations and Syria. These containers were ready to be loaded onto trailer trucks parked between an oil storage facility and hangars, which were not damaged in the strike.

So why did Sudan claim that it was an arms factory? First of all, to hide the embarrassing fact that it is cooperating with Iran and sending arms convoys that pass through its neighbor, Egypt. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted on genocide charges by the International Criminal Court, is not interested in a crisis with his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Morsi.

The claim that Israel bombed a weapons factory is aimed at diverting global attention from Sudan’s involvement in Iran’s arms smuggling operation. It also serves as an excuse for the Sudanese army’s failure to prevent four fighter jets from flying over Khartoum. Apparently, Israel’s technological and military advantage is a legitimate excuse in Sudan, but the Sudanese have yet to explain how they knew that exactly four Israeli planes took part in the attack. It is doubtful that the Sudanese can prove the strike was carried out by Israeli jets, oitherwise they would have already presented the evidence.

Why Iran Wants to Attack the United States – By Matthew Levitt | Foreign Policy.

The Islamic Republic’s terror plots may look bumbling today, but what about tomorrow?

BY MATTHEW LEVITT | OCTOBER 29, 2012

An Iranian-American used car salesman pleaded guilty this month to conspiring with Iranian agents to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Mansour Arbabsiar’s guilty plea would appear to be the end of this story, but in truth it raises more questions than it answers.

The facts were never really in dispute. U.S. officials learned of the plot early on and built an airtight case. The assassin Arbabsiar tried to hire was in fact a DEA informant. Once arrested, Arbabsiar confessed. At the direction of law enforcement, he then called his cousin and Quds Force handler, Gholam Shakuri. With agents listening, Shakuri insisted Arbabsiar go ahead with the plot. “Just do it quickly. It’s late.”

But why was the Quds Force, which had earned a reputation for operational prowess even among its enemies, so eager to move forward with an obviously flawed operation? Arbabsiar appears to have been a weak character who “wants to be important,” as a government-retained psychiatrist determined. He was drawn into the plot by his cousin, a general in the Quds Force, the arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for external operations. So the real question is: What was the Quds Force thinking?

According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

This new calculus, intelligence officials believe, dates back to January 2010, when the Quds Force decided that it and Hezbollah, its primary terrorist proxy, would embark on a new campaign of violence targeting not only Israel but U.S. and other Western targets as well.

In the wake of last July’s attack on Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian city of Burgas, a barrage of journalists called asking me to explain the logic of the attack.  I was finishing a book on Hezbollah — Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, due out next year — but still could not easily place the attack within Hezbollah’s established modus operandi. The more I thought about it, the more perplexed I became. So, much to my editor’s dismay, I stepped away from my keyboard long enough to meet with diplomats and intelligence and military officials from several countries to try and make sense of the new trend of Shia extremist attacks tied to Iran and its proxies.  Here is what I have come to understand.

To understand the decision Iran made in January 2010 to engage in a new campaign of violence, one must hark back to the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who was allegedly responsible for the 1984 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, and numerous other attacks. Following Mughniyeh’s death in Damascus, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for an “open war” on Israel. “The blood of Imad Mughniyeh will make them [Israel] withdraw from existence,” Nasrallah vowed.

Within weeks, Hezbollah would attempt the first of several failed and foiled plots — a series of simultaneous car bombings around the Israeli and U.S. embassies, the kidnapping of the Israeli ambassador, and blowing up a radar tower in Baku, Azerbaijan — intended to make good on Nasrallah’s threat. Several additional plots were foiled, leading the Quds Force to partner with Hezbollah and provide extensive logistical support for a large-scale bombing in Turkey in fall 2009. Turkish authorities disrupted a plot in which Hezbollah and Iranian agents posing as tourists intended to attack Israeli and possibly American and local Jewish targets. According to one account, a cell led by Abbas Hossein Zakr was looking to strike Israeli tourists, Israeli ships or airplanes, or synagogues in Turkey. Turkish police arrested Hezbollah operatives who reportedly smuggled a car bomb into the country from Syria while Quds Force agents left the country posing as tourists.

The foiled attack in Turkey was a watershed event for Hezbollah operational planners and their Iranian sponsors. According to Israeli intelligence officials, a blame game ensued between Hezbollah and the Quds Force over the past two years, as the two sides pointed fingers at each other for the failed operations. Meanwhile, by late 2009, Iran was increasingly interested in using Hezbollah to combat threats to its nascent nuclear program. The Islamic Republic was in need of an enforcer: Malfunctioning components had ruined Iranian centrifuges, IRGC officers had defected, and in January 2010 a bomb killed Iranian physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi outside his Tehran home.

Iranian officials were furious at Mohammadi’s death, and reached two conclusions in its aftermath: First, Hezbollah had to revitalize its operational capabilities. And second, the IRGC would no longer act solely as logisticians supporting Hezbollah hit men — it would now deploy Quds Force operatives to carry out terrorist attack abroad.

And Iran was in the position to tell Hezbollah where it would fall within Iran’s plans. In February, Clapper characterized the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran as “a partnership arrangement, with the Iranians as the senior partner.” This “strategic partnership,” as National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olson put it, is the product of a long evolution from the 1980s, when Hezbollah was just a proxy of Iran.

Under Iran’s instructions, Hezbollah’s international terrorist wing, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), underwent a massive operational reorganization. New operatives were recruited from the elite of Hezbollah’s military wing for intelligence and operational training, while existing IJO operatives were moved into new positions. At the same time, the IJO invested in the development of capabilities and tradecraft that had withered on the vine after the group decided to rein in most foreign operations in an effort to keep out of the crosshairs of the post-9/11 war on terrorism.

As part of its IJO shakeup, Hezbollah engaged in detailed talks with Iranian officials to lay out Hezbollah’s role in Iran’s larger plan for a coordinated shadow war targeting Israeli, American, British, and Arab Gulf state interests. The plan they settled on would include operations intended to achieve several different goals, including taking revenge for Mughniyeh’s assassination, retaliating for attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, and convincing Western powers that an attack on Iran would lead to asymmetric terrorist attacks worldwide.

To this end, Iranian decision makers settled on a campaign of violence based on three broad targets: Israeli tourists, formal government targets (diplomats, retired officials), and targets broadly representative of Israel or the Jewish community (community leaders, prominent Israeli companies). It assigned the task of targeting Israeli tourists — a soft target — to Hezbollah, and gave the Quds Force responsibility for operations targeting Israeli, American, British, or Gulf states’ interests. The latter would be carried out by Unit 400, the Quds Force’s new special external operations branch.

The operational blitz that followed is now well known. Hezbollah operations included plots in Bulgaria, Thailand, South Africa, and Cyprus. Meanwhile, Quds Force operatives were at work in India, Georgia, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Kenya, and — through Mansour Arbabsiar — the United States. Tehran was desperate to implement its new strategy and exact revenge for covert attacks against its nuclear program, so the Quds Force traded speed for tradecraft — and reaped what it sowed. In some cases, Iranian agents employed laughable operational security; in others, the agents, like Arbabsiar, were kooky.

But the threats were real enough. Last June, Jonathan Evans, the director-general of the British intelligence agency MI5, noted that the plot to assassinate the Saudi envoy in Washington “leads straight back to the Iranian leadership.”

The Quds Force is sure to recover from its operational sloppiness, and Iranian leaders appear committed to a policy of targeting Western interests. Arbabsiar’s guilty plea ends one chapter in Iran’s shadow war against the West, but authorities must remain vigilant for the plots yet to come.

Niall Ferguson on Obama’s Possible Mideast Surprise – Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

by Niall Ferguson Oct 29, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

Will the president wag the dog in Tehran?

Everyone knows there could be a surprise before Nov. 6—a news story that finally makes up the minds of those undecided voters in the swing states and settles the presidential election.

Right now, Barack Obama certainly needs one.

Well, it is not going to come from the economy (unless you want to factor in the risk of a 1987-style stock-market plunge, which would hardly help the president). And it is not going to come from Donald Trump. And even if the Democrats dig up two more barking-mad Republican candidates for the Senate, both of whom believe that rapes are part of God’s plan to make babies, no one is going to be very surprised.

No, the only kind of surprise I can envisage is a foreign-policy surprise. And if the polls get any scarier for the incumbent, we might just have one.

Recently The New York Times—increasingly the official organ of the Obama administration—offered a tease. “U.S. Officials Say Iran Has Agreed to Nuclear Talks” ran the headline. In the story, the Times quoted unnamed officials as saying that one-on-one talks with Iran had been agreed to in “a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.”

For slower readers, the paper spelled out how an announcement would affect the race for the White House: “The prospect of one-on-one negotiations could put Mr. Romney in an awkward spot … The danger of opposing such a diplomatic initiative is that it could make him look as if he is willing to risk another American war in the Middle East without exhausting alternatives.”

Not only that. If the White House could announce a historic deal with Iran—lifting increasingly painful economic sanctions in return for an Iranian pledge to stop enriching uranium—Mitt Romney would vanish as if by magic from the front pages and TV news shows. The oxygen of publicity—those coveted minutes of airtime that campaigns don’t have to pay for—would be sucked out of his lungs.

Call it the “Nixon in China” play—though Obama wouldn’t actually have time to get to Tehran before the nation votes, whereas Nixon timed his trip to Beijing to perfection, just nine months before he obliterated George McGovern.

The president denied that there was any truth to the story when put on the spot in the final presidential debate. But that was not all he said. “There is a deal to be had,” he declared, in words that almost no commentator noticed. But “the clock is ticking.”

That, of course, hinted at an alternative surprise—the one I have long expected the president to pull if he finds himself slipping behind in the polls. With a single phone call to Jerusalem, he can end all talk of his being Jimmy Carter to Mitt Romney’s Reagan: by supporting an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Risky, to be sure. But an even bigger game changer than a peace deal. Because nothing would shut Romney up more completely than a military showdown with Iran. I have a feeling it would work wonders for the president in Florida, too.

The scene is being set even as I write. First came the reports last Thursday that the Iranians have “virtually completed” an underground uranium-enrichment plant at a site called Fordo, near the holy city of Qum. Equipped with 3,000 centrifuges and so deep beneath the earth’s surface that only a U.S. “massive ordnance penetrator” could reach it, this is precisely the kind of facility the Israelis fear.

Now look at what is happening in Israel itself, where the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just formed a “war cabinet” by merging his Likud Party with the hardline Yisrael Beytenu party of Avigdor Lieberman.

Events are moving fast all over the region. The assassination of a security chief in Beirut; yet another massacre in a suburb of Damascus, Syria; an inflammatory visit by the emir of Qatar to the powder keg that is Gaza—it all serves to underscore Romney’s argument that, by giving the impression of weakness, the president has unleashed turmoil and emboldened extremists around the world.

Of course, it may now be too late to wag the dog. It may, after all, come down to the dirty old ground game I wrote about in last week’s column—the bare-knuckle fight to win the vital votes in the vital states. But never underestimate the ruthlessness of the Chicago machine that has been the key to Barack Obama’s rise. With his fall suddenly a real possibility, the only thing that would really surprise me would be no October—or November—surprise.

Romney Reveals New Thinking on Iranian Nukes – Bloomberg.

Last week, shortly after the third and final presidential debate, the one ostensibly devoted to foreign policy, I got a call from a major Romney supporter (not a Sheldon Adelson-sized donor, but still someone with throw- weight) who sounded worried about his candidate’s position on the Iranian nuclear threat.

You will recall that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, seemed to be auditioning for the role of President Barack Obama’s national-security adviser during the debate, more or less agreeing with the president on everything from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria, and emphasizing his desire for a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Iranian crisis.

“It is also essential for us to understand what our mission is in Iran, and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means,” Romney said.

The Republican nominee has spent his entire campaign hammering Obama as a squish on Iran. The arguments are familiar by now: Obama is naive; Obama writes mash notes to the supreme leader; Obama is ambivalent about sanctions; and most of all, when the moment of decision arrives, Obama will accede to Iran’s nuclear capability rather than launch a military strike. Romney, by contrast, has positioned himself as the candidate who won’t flinch if the time comes to order the bombers into the air.

New Tone

Was Romney going soft? my caller asked. Was his candidate Etch-A-Sketching away from his commitment to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? This donor wasn’t the only one flummoxed by the apparent shift. I have been told that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Romney supporter and possibly the hardest among the hard-liners on Iran (he said recently the “time for talking is over”), expressed frustration with senior campaign officials over Romney’s new tone.

I, too, was perplexed. Not about debate tactics — it doesn’t take a genius to understand that most Americans aren’t eager to open a new front in the seemingly endless war against Muslim militancy — but about whether Romney had been head- faking us the whole time. After all, it isn’t always easy to identify his fixed positions on a range of subjects.

So I e-mailed Romney some questions. The first couple were simple: Has your stance softened? Has your thinking shifted on the question of whether negotiations with Iran could bear fruit?

He e-mailed back a lengthy response. Here are the crucial bits: “I have always talked about the diplomatic process,” he wrote. “I will not rule out diplomatic options, so long as we would not be rewarding bad behavior and so long as the Iranian leadership was truly cornered and ready to change its behavior. A crumbling economy is not enough. Because even with a crumbling economy, the Iranian leadership is still racing towards a bomb right now.”

Romney went out of his way to suggest that the Obama administration plans to spring some sort of late-November surprise on America’s Middle East allies, citing a recent New York Times report that Iran and the White House had agreed to face-to-face negotiations after the election (a report denied by the White House). “Our closest allies, like Israel, will not learn about our plans from the New York Times,” Romney wrote. “And I’ll be clear with the American people about where I’m heading. I won’t be secretly asking the Ayatollahs for more flexibility following some future election.”

Biggest Mistake

He also denied that his new emphasis on negotiations means that he would accept less than a complete halt to Iran’s nuclear work: “To be clear, the objective of any strategy will be to get Iran to stop spinning centrifuges, stop enriching uranium, shut down its facilities. Full stop. Existing fissile material will have to be shipped out of the country.”

I asked Romney to name the biggest mistake he thinks Obama has made on Iran. “President Obama has sent the Ayatollahs mixed messages throughout the past four years,” he wrote. “That’s why he has lost credibility on the negotiating track. Round after round after round of talks and nothing to show for them. Iran continues to race to a nuclear weapons capability and continues to become more brazen in its support of terrorism around the world, including a terror plot in Washington, D.C.,” a reference to a thwarted plot, hatched in Tehran, to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S.

Romney went on: “What do I mean by mixed messages? In the first year of his administration, the President said he would sit down with Ahmadinejad without pre-conditions, and President Obama deliberately remained silent during the Green Revolution, signaling to the Ayatollahs that Iran’s dissident movement would not have America’s support. President Obama also pursued a policy of creating ‘daylight’ — his word — between the U.S. and Israel. And through the end of the third year of his administration, the president fought congressional efforts — bi-partisan congressional efforts — to pass crippling sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank. This all happened against the backdrop of the president’s top advisors and cabinet secretaries broadcasting the risks of the military option, therefore conveying to Iran’s leadership that the threat is simply not real. Add all of this together, one can understand why Iran’s leaders are not taking the United States very seriously these days.”

A Caricature

Some of this is campaign bluster. Decision making inside the Iranian regime is too opaque for us to know exactly what the supreme leader thinks of Obama. And the Romney campaign’s portrayal of Obama’s policy is a caricature; Obama has never been as naive about Iran as Republicans have alleged.

Romney’s more potent criticism of Obama has more to do with statements made by Obama’s underlings. It is true, as Romney wrote, that administration officials have discussed publicly the risks of an American (or Israeli) attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. There are risks, of course — potentially catastrophic ones — of attacking. But it doesn’t help the American negotiating position to publicly telegraph to the Iranians these sorts of doubts.

Which brings me to a central contradiction in this looming crisis: Obama, the putative appeaser, is more likely than Romney to use military force against the regime’s nuclear sites. As a liberal Democrat, he will face less opposition, and find more international acquiescence, for such an attack, and a study of his record on the subject of non-proliferation shows him to be preoccupied by the threat posed by Iran.

Romney, on the other hand, isn’t the warmonger the Obama camp makes him out to be. He has never closed the door on the idea of negotiations, and his answers in the debate, and in our e-mail exchange, are consistent with earlier statements. In Jerusalem in July, he said, “We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is our fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so.”

Moreover, as a Republican governing in the shadow of President George W. Bush, Romney will also have a more difficult time mustering support for an eventual strike. But if he calibrates his approach well — if the Iranians are led to believe that he might just be crazy enough to strike — he would find it easier to force the regime to the negotiating table. In other words, if he becomes president, it may be in the American interest for Romney to be privately reasonable and publicly unreasonable.

As we saw in last week’s debate, that’s a very hard line to walk.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Jeffrey Goldberg at goldberg.atlantic@gmail.com

LIVE Hurricane Sandy Coverage – The Weather Channel – YouTube.

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Just How Committed Is Obama to Stopping Iran? – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.

Oct 29 2012, 10:33 AM ET 4

Here is an interesting (to me, at least) exchange (originally published in The New York Jewish Week)  I had with my friend and sparring partner Yossi Klein Halevi, of the Shalom Hartman Institute, on the subject of President Obama’s Iran policy. Yossi is one of those Israelis who is, to my mind, irrationally fearful of Obama, and Yossi wanted to test my sangfroid.

Dear Jeff,

Like many Israelis, I don’t trust President Obama’s resolve on Iran. When he says that all options are on the table, I remain deeply skeptical about this President’s willingness to order a military strike if all other options fail.

More than any journalist I know, you’ve been at once clear-eyed on the Islamist threat and also a strong advocate of trusting Obama on Iran. So, as someone who takes the Iranian nuclear threat as seriously as we do here, tell me what we Israelis are missing about Obama.
Yossi

Dear Yossi,

I think Obama takes the threat very seriously. I think he takes it just as seriously as Netanyahu takes it. More, maybe. It seems to me sometimes that Netanyahu, if he truly believed his rhetoric, would have acted already against the Iranian bomb threat. I know there are people in Washington who think he’s not actually serious about striking Iran, should all else fail. And these are people who six months ago thought he would do it.

What you and other Israeli skeptics don’t get about Obama is this: He is deadly serious about stopping nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. It is a core belief of his. He has enunciated on many occasions compelling reasons why he believes it to be unacceptable for Iran to cross the nuclear threshold. He also knows that the reputation of his presidency is riding on this question. If Iran goes nuclear against his wishes, he looks like Jimmy Carter. He doesn’t want to go down in history looking like Jimmy Carter.

He also knows that he has time before having to act, because of America’s greater capabilities. He doesn’t show Israel much love, it is true. He doesn’t show any nation much love. That’s not who he is. But if you read the interview I did with him on this subject, you’ll see a clear path, a clear set of parameters and a clear intent to keep a bomb away from Iran. The flipside of this, of course, is that I believe Mitt Romney would be less likely to act, especially in 2013, which may be the year of decision. He’d be a new president, one with an inexperienced national security team. And he won’t want to begin his presidency by plunging the U.S. into another Middle Eastern war. It is so much harder for a Republican to confront Iran than it would be for a Democrat, for so many reasons. Obama’s drone war is a good example; he gets away with things George W. Bush couldn’t even imagine doing. Such is the nature of politics in America. Here, by the way, is a compendium of Obama’s statements on the subject. Identify for me, please, the wiggle room in these statements. I haven’t found any.
Jeff

Dear Jeff,

You make an important point about the advantage of a Democratic president over a Republican president in waging war. A similar dynamic has been at work in Israel. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fought two wars – against Hezbollah in 2006 and then against Hamas in 2009 – and yet is still widely considered a dove, while Netanyahu, who has never led a military campaign in either of his two terms in office, is widely regarded as belligerent. Only the Likud, the old adage goes, can make peace, because it can deliver the moderate right for an agreement. By the same measure, perhaps only the Israeli left (or a national unity government) can effectively wage war and for the same reason: It can bring consensus.

But the question regarding Obama and Iran, of course, is whether this Democratic president is capable – temperamentally, ideologically – of ordering a military strike against Iran. At issue isn’t whether Obama wants to stop Iran but whether he has the determination to match his rhetoric.

Do you believe that the current level of sanctions, however economically painful, are enough to deter Iran? Do you believe the Iranians will agree to a negotiated solution? From reading you carefully over the last few years, I don’t think you do. And so, Jeff: If Obama won’t bring the sanctions to the point where they can truly stop Iran, then how can we trust him to use military force?

You write that failure to stop Iran will mean that Obama goes down in history as another Jimmy Carter. In fact he already looks like Jimmy Carter. As you recently wrote (don’t you hate it when you get quoted against yourself?), Obama has failed to show resolve in Syria. Bringing down Assad – the Arab regime that is Iran’s closest ally – should be one of the administration’s top foreign policy goals. In hesitating on Syria, Obama is repeating his failure to support the anti-regime demonstrators in Teheran in 2009.

To forfeit two historic opportunities to undermine the Iranian regime hardly instills confidence that Obama can be trusted to act decisively against a nuclearizing Iran.

Obama’s mishandling of Egypt likewise reveals poor judgment in dealing with extremist threats. One can argue whether he jettisoned his former ally, Mubarak, too abruptly. One can argue too whether he could have helped slow the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
What seems to me inarguable is that he has failed to effectively set limits to the Brotherhood, failed to challenge its growing domestic repression. Instead, he wants to increase foreign aid to Egypt. If this were not an election year, he would have likely met with Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, during the latter’s recent visit to the UN. The result of that policy of accomodationism is that it is Morsi who is setting conditions on America for the relationship between Washington and Cairo (as he recently did in a New York Times interview).
Finally Obama showed misjudgment in repeatedly condemning the ludicrous YouTube anti-Muslim film. By taking out ads on Pakistani TV to condemn the film, the administration encouraged the perception that extremists had a legitimate grievance.

There’s a pattern here of weakness against enemies, of appeasing extremists, of missing opportunities
.
All this is hardly surprising to you: You’ve written as much in recent weeks. “Obama’s record in the Middle East,” you wrote, “suggests that missed opportunities are becoming a White House specialty.” True, you also wrote the following: “On the most important and urgent issue, the Iranian nuclear program, Obama is an activist president.” But can you really fault Israelis for wondering whether, at the moment of truth, Obama will avoid the ultimate missed opportunity?
It’s not only Israelis who don’t trust Obama on Iran. Arab leaders, as you well know, are skeptical too. Worst of all, the Iranian regime doesn’t believe him. That’s why it responds to Obama’s sanctions and threats by accelerating its nuclear program.

You may be right, and I am underestimating this President’s resolve on an issue to which he has repeatedly committed himself.

If so, there’s a deeper question here for Israelis: Can we trust anyone, even the most well-intentioned friend, with an issue of existential importance to us? As someone who knows us as well as any American Jew, this Israeli anxiety will come as no surprise to you.

For many of us the frame of reference is May 1967. At that time, Lyndon Johnson, as good a friend as Israel ever had in the White House, refused to honor President Eisenhower’s commitment in 1957 to challenge an Egyptian blockade of Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran. Johnson, preoccupied with Vietnam, had good reason for wanting to avoid American involvement in another war. But the fact remains that, at the crucial moment, America violated its commitment to Israel.

Aside perhaps from May 1967, I can’t think of a more excruciating time for Israel than now. Obama has repeatedly assured us that he understands our angst, that he supports our right to defend ourselves. And still we stubborn Israelis persist in our skepticism.

Maybe what I’m asking from you is unfair, Jeff. Because in the end, no amount of reassurance of Obama’s resolve can convince us that the Johnson precedent won’t return, and that we won’t find ourselves alone again against existential threat.
Yossi

Dear Yossi,

There are two questions here (well, actually there are about 30) but let me grapple with the two most important ones: The first is this: Is President Obama actually prepared to use military force to stop Iran? The second question is, Is Romney prepared to use military force to stop Iran?

When I argue for the idea that Obama may eventually resort to force to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, I’m not judging him against some sort of impossible standard of interventionist muscularity. I’m judging him against the only other man who could be elected president next month. You’re familiar with my argument that Romney is less likely (particularly early in his term) than Obama to use force, so I won’t rehearse it here.

I would add this, however, and I haven’t mentioned this before: If Romney wins, the anti-war movement will become extraordinarily energized in the U.S. Democrats who might have felt compelled to back Obama, or at least acquiesce to military action against Iran, will be on the barricades protesting the possibility of such a strike if it is Romney’s doing. Fierce opposition certainly won’t strengthen Romney’s hand to act, and the consequences of the opposition that is sure to materialize could have profoundly negative effects on Israel’s reputation in America. Israel is already in danger of becoming a partisan issue; the long-term consequences of this could be devastating. If Romney wins, and if Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power in Israel, I can almost guarantee you that you will see a melting away of whatever Democratic support there is for tough action against Iran, and a melting away of whatever liberal support there still remains for a strong America-Israel relationship. American support is a pillar of Israeli national security policy. Israel cannot thrive – and maybe it can’t survive – in a Middle East dominated by a nuclear Iran. But it will also have difficulty surviving without American support, and I’m telling you, medium- to long-term, Israel could be in trouble in the U.S.
.
To answer some of your other questions, do I believe sanctions will work to bring Iran to a compromise? No, probably not. Do I believe that sanctions could work to destabilize, and possible bring an end to, the regime? Possibly yes. I’m not sure why you believe Obama is weak on sanctions; he’s certainly stronger than his Republican predecessor was. And I think Netanyahu’s people are being sincere when they say that there is at least the small possibility that sanctions will work.

On a related subject, I’m not sure why you conflate Obama’s passivity on Syria with his tough actions, and tough words, on Iran. He was never going to go into the regime-change business. He didn’t get elected to go into the regime business. He ran for office in order to get America out of the regime-change business. He is, in this sense, a foreign policy realist. But he did run for office on the promise of stopping nuclear proliferation. He is deeply and sincerely committed, I believe, to a rather too grand vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But the unreality of the ultimate goal serves the needs of those who want Iran permanently denuclearized. He knows, I assume, that he can’t achieve global Nuclear Zero. But he also knows that stopping a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is within his power. I always try to explain to Israelis that Obama isn’t committed to this issue merely because he promised Jewish voters that he would not allow Israel to be endangered. Non-proliferation is a cornerstone of his worldview, and Iran represents the single-biggest challenge to that worldview.

But maybe you’re right – maybe this is going to be Johnson redux. But you have to consider something else: By extracting himself from Iraq, by drawing down in Afghanistan, by staying out of the Syrian civil war, maybe what Obama is doing is preparing for the day when he has to go to the American people and say that he is taking military action against Iran. He’s clearing the decks, in other words. From the Israeli standpoint, maybe you should be glad that he’s taking a pause in the Middle East intervention business. This way, when the Iran issue reaches a boiling point, he won’t be in Johnson’s position – overextended, and unpopular, and therefore not willing to, among other things, come to Israel’s aid.
Jeff

Dear Jeff,

That’s a crucial insight you raise about the anti-war movement and a President Romney. A reenergized anti-war movement could dangerously erode the already-shaky nature of bipartisan support for Israel, which is the only long-term guarantee for maintaining the special relationship. Missiles on Tel Aviv, a multi-front war with Hezbollah, Hamas, what’s left of Syria and of course Iran, the unleashing of global terror against Jewish communities, rising oil prices and eonomic dislocation – Israelis take a deep breath and prepare themselves for those disasters. Risking our relationship with blue-state America is almost one blow too many.

And yet if Israeli skepticism about Obama is right, then I’m ready to take that risk, too. I see a nuclear Iran as a literal apocalyptic threat, and I sense that you do too. The difference between us remains: Can we trust this guy at the moment of truth?

You sat with the President, looked him in the eye and was convinced of his determination. In your place I may well have reached the same conclusion.

But from where I’m sitting, it seems to me unthinkable that Obama, for all his commitment to non-proliferation, will order the bombing of Iran. This is after all the man who thought he was atoning for the abuse of American power by abandoning anti-regime demonstrators in Tehran in 2009.

As for Obama and sanctions: Yes, he’s imposed far stronger measures than his predecessor, but that is, unfortunately, a meaningless comparison. Four years ago, Obama’s sanctions would have been significant. Now, the only question that matters is whether those sanctions are enough to stop Tehran. I don’t believe they are.

I fear that Obama still believes he’s dealing with essentially rational people in the Iranian regime. And now there are reports of secret negotiations between Tehran and Washington. In the end my deepest fear is that Obama will be outmaneuvered by the Iranians, that his longing for a diplomatic solution will be played by the Iranian regime to reach the point of breakout.
But Jeff: If Obama is reelected, all I can do is pray for that moment when you will say to me, I told you so.

Yossi