WarSclerotic

Palestinians fire 3 Grads, 2 Kassams int… JPost – National News.

Obama offered to reestablish ties with Iran, paper reports | The Times of Israel.

Diplomatic incentives package, including embassies in Tehran and Washington, rebuffed by Iran, according to Maariv

A mural outside the former US Embassy in Tehran. (photo credit: CC-BY-SA davehighbury, Flickr)

The US reportedly offered to reestablish full diplomatic ties with Iran as part of a bid to hold direct talks with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, an Israeli daily reported Sunday.

Iran rebuffed the “diplomatic hand” offered by the White House shortly after President Barack Obama took office in 2008, Maariv reported, citing “Western sources very close to the administration.”

The information comes on the heels of reports earlier this month that the US and Iran held back channel contacts toward establishing direct talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. Both the White House and Iran denied the reports.

According to Maariv, however, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili for an hour in 2009, and one other meeting between officials from both sides took place as well.

Included in the diplomatic incentives package offered by Washington would be the opening of interest sections in Washington and Tehran, with the possibility of expanding to full diplomatic ties, with US and Iranian embassies in each other’s capitals. Washington also reportedly offered security cooperation between the countries, direct flights between the US and Iran and the granting of visas to Iranian wishing to visit the US.

If true, the report would mark a sea change in American policy toward Iran, which was officially cut in 1980 when the Shah was overthrown and workers in the American Embassy held hostage for over a year. The US currently maintains a trade embargo with Iran and any diplomatic contacts are officially handled through third parties

According to Maariv, Iran rejected the attempt to reestablish ties out of fear that the regime in Tehran would become weakened by normalization with Washington.

The meeting between Burns and Jalili was reportedly held on the sidelines of talks between Tehran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, also known as the P5+1.

Those talks, which Jerusalem has characterized as a stalling tactic by Tehran to buy time to develop its nuclear program to weapons capabilities, have mostly failed, despite several attempts to hash over curbs to Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.

Last week, the New York Times and NBC reported that Washington had held secret contacts with Iran with the goal of holding one-on-one negotiations over their nuclear program. According to the report in the New York Times, Iran was open to the possibility, but asked to wait until after the American elections on November 6 so they would know who they were negotiating with.

The White House denied the report, but said it has always had an offer on the table for Iran to engage in direct negotiations.

In Jerusalem, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said he knew about the contacts and welcomed them while Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said he hoped the Obama administration’s denial was true.

Iran’s nuclear program is widely believed to be for military purposes, a claim Iran denies.

Israel considers an Iranian bomb to be an existential threat and has reportedly lobbied for military action against the program, while the US and much of the West maintain that time remains for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to pull back.

Satellite images suggest airstrike on Sudan site – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Craters caused by blast at Khartoum weapons factory consistent with impact created by air-delivered munitions, US experts say; ‘highly volatile cargo’ at center of explosion

Associated Press

Satellite images of the aftermath of an explosion at a Sudanese weapons factory this past week suggest the site was hit in an airstrike, a US monitoring group said Saturday.

The Sudanese government has accused Israel of bombing its Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum, killing two people and leaving the factory in ruins.

The images released by the Satellite Sentinel Project to The Associated Press on Saturday showed six 52-foot (16-meter) wide craters near the epicenter of Wednesday’s explosion at the compound.

Military experts consulted by the project found the craters to be “consistent with large impact craters created by air-delivered munitions, Satellite Sentinel Project spokesman Jonathan Hutson told the AP.

The target may have been around 40 shipping containers seen at the site in earlier images. The group said the craters center on the area where the containers had been stacked.

Top image: Before strike. Bottom image: After strike

Jonah Leff, who monitors Sudan for the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey and was not connected to the project, reviewed the images on Saturday and agreed with the group’s assessment.

The Satellite Sentinel Project further quoted witnesses as saying that they saw three jets “flying fast around southern Khartoum, to the northwest and northeast,” while a fourth, larger plane flew to the northeast at a much higher altitude. The witnesses also said that the sky was “red from fireballs.”

Israeli officials have neither confirmed nor denied striking the site. Instead, they accused Sudan of playing a role in an Iranian-backed network of arms shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel believes Sudan is a key transit point in the circuitous route that weapons take to the Islamic militant groups in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Sudan was a major hub for al-Qaeda militants and remains a transit for weapon smugglers and African migrant traffickers. Israeli officials believe arms that originate in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas go through Sudan before crossing Egypt’s lawless Sinai desert and into Gaza through underground tunnels.

The Satellite Sentinel Project is a partnership between the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide advocacy group and DigitalGlobe, which operates three commercial satellites and provides geospatial analysis. The project was founded last year with support from actor George Clooney, and in the past has used satellite images to monitor the destruction of villages by Sudanese troops in the country’s multiple war zones.

2 buildings destroyed in blast

Opened in 1996, Yarmouk is one of two known state-owned weapons manufacturing plants in the Sudanese capital. Sudan prided itself in having a way to produce its own ammunition and weapons despite United Nations and US sanctions.

The satellite images indicate that the Yarmouk facility includes an oil storage facility, a military depot and an ammunition plant.

The monitoring group said the images indicate that the blast “destroyed two buildings and heavily damaged at least 21 others,” adding that there was no indication of fire damage at the fuel depot inside the military complex.

The group said it could not be certain the containers, seen in images taken Oct. 12, were still there when explosion took place. But the effects of the blast suggested a “highly volatile cargo” was at the epicenter of the explosion.

“If the explosions resulted from a rocket or missile attack against material stored in the shipping containers, then it was an effective surgical strike that totally destroyed any container” that was at the location, the project said.

Yarmouk is located in a densely populated residential area of the city approximately 11 kilometers (seven miles) southwest of the Khartoum International Airport.

Wednesday’s explosion sent exploding ammunition flying into homes in the neighborhood adjacent to the factory, causing panic among residents. Sudanese officials said some people suffered from smoke inhalation.

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir (Photo: AFP)

A man who lives near the factory said that from inside their house, he and his brother heard a load roar of what they believed was a plane just before the boom of the explosion sounded from the factory.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s explosion, Sudanese officials said the government has the right to respond to what the information minister said was a “flagrant attack” by Israel on Sudan’s sovereignty and right to strengthen its military capabilities.

In a Friday speech marking Eid al Adha, Islam’s biggest holiday, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir called Israel “short-sighted,” according to comments published by the Egyptian state-owned paper Al Ahram. The president likened the incident to the 1998 bombing by American cruise missiles of a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

Some Israeli commentators suggested that if Israel did indeed carry out an airstrike causing Wednesday’s blast, it might have been a trial run of sorts for an operation in Iran. Both countries are roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away from Israel, and an air operation would require careful planning and in-flight refueling.

Khartoum threatens Israel after Iranian generals examine missile factory rubble.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 27, 2012, 5:34 PM (GMT+02:00)

Sudan claims Israeli ordnance found at bomb site

Sudanese President Omar Bashir pledged decisive steps against “Israeli interests which are now legitimate targets.”  He spoke Saturday, Oct. 27 after a team of Iranian generals completed a secret examination of the rubble left of the Khartoum Shehab ballistic missile factory after an air attack on Oct. 24.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on the attack. However, Sudanese Information Minister Ahmed Belal Othman said “military experts” who surveyed what was left of the Yarmouk Industrial Complex had determined that it was destroyed by Israel-made missiles.
The minister added that no country in the region besides Israel owns the sophisticated weapons used in the attack.
He also confirmed that Khartoum international airport’s radar system was disabled during the raid, confirming the claim made by Iranian sources the next day.
Othman did not identity the “military experts” who examined the residue at the bomb site or explain how they were able to identify the weapons used. However, debkafile’s military sources disclose that those experts were Iranian military chiefs of the highest ranks:  Iranian Air Force Chief Brig. Gen. Hassan Shah-Safi; Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh; Deputy Air Force Commander Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh; and Commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base Brig. Gen. Farzad Esmaili.
The exalted ranks of these officers, sent secretly and post haste to Khartoum after the incident, attested to the extreme consternation caused in Tehran by the missile factory’s destruction and its importance to Iran’s regional military organization for a potential US or Israeli attack.
The generals were instructed to conduct a professional and detailed analysis to determine the capabilities of the air force which sent the four bombers to level the Shehab factory and how those capabilities were applicable to a potential long-distance Israeli aerial strike against Iran.
The team of investigators, which arrived in Khartoum by an Iranian military plane hours after the attack, was collected and escorted by the Sudanese chief of staff, Gen. Ismat Abdel Rahman in a tightly-secured convoy of armored vehicles with helicopter cover straight to the wrecked factory for their inquiry.
They also examined Sudan’s radar system to find out how it was jammed.
Our military sources add: This was the second time in three weeks that Iranian air force, air defense and cyber war experts have had the chance to study Israel’s air force and electronic capabilities – while also exposing many facets of their own. Just three weeks ago, on Oct. 6, an Iranian stealth drone penetrated Israeli air space. Iranian cyber exports, operating from Hizballah’s security service bunkers in South Beirut, conducted cyber duel with Israeli experts before the IAF downed the interloper.
In Sudan, the Iranian generals tried to learn what they could about the methods and equipment Israel used to jam Sudan’s radar systems which, like those in Iranian use, are made in Russia.

We are all Tyrone Woods… – YouTube.

The father of a former Navy SEAL killed in the Libya terror attack last month said Friday that U.S. officials who denied a request for help while the diplomatic compound in Benghazi was under attack “are murderers of my son.”

Charles Woods was reacting to accounts by Fox News sources that a request from the CIA annex for backup was denied by U.S. officials. His son, Tyrone Woods, was killed in the Sept. 11 assault.

“They refused to pull the trigger,” Woods said. “Those people who made the decision and who knew about the decision and lied about it are murderers of my son.”

Woods said he forgives whoever denied the apparent request, but he urged them to “stand up.”

Sources also said Tyrone Woods and others, who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate, ignored orders by their superiors to stand down and not go to the consulate to help. Woods went to the consulate, and hours later he was killed back at the annex.

Charles Woods said his son’s action “does not surprise me.”

“I wish that the leadership in the White House had the same level of moral courage and heroism that my son displayed,” he said.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood on Friday denied the claims that requests for help on Sept. 11 were denied.

“We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi,” she said. “Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”

Woods, in interviews earlier this week, also described a series of conversations he had with administration officials at the memorial service held Sept. 14. He said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — despite signs early on that militants were behind the attack — pledged to him at that event that she would pursue the maker of an anti-Islam film that had been linked to other protests.

“Her countenance was not good and she made this statement to me … she said we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted,” he said on radio host Glenn Beck’s online show, adding that she also apologized.

Woods said he “could tell that she was not telling me the truth.”

The account shows an apparent disconnect between evidence that extremists were involved in the attack — including a newly released State Department email on the day of the attack saying the militant Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility — and the desire by some to focus strictly on the film as the cause.

The State Department on Friday reiterated that the administration is committed to seeking justice for those responsible.

“Since the moment they were first given the terrible news of their loss, through that very difficult day when they witnessed the return of the remains of their loved ones, and every day since, the families of those killed have been a top priority of the department,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday. “And everything is being done to bring to justice those responsible for their deaths.”

Clinton and the rest of the administration made repeated reference to the video in their public comments in the days after the attack. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said on Sept 16 the attack was a “spontaneous” reaction to demonstrations over the video. The administration even funded an ad in Pakistan condemning the video.

Intelligence officials have since given a mixture picture, saying the strike was a coordinated terror attack — but also leaving open the door to the possibility that militants reacted opportunistically to the protests in Egypt at the time over the film.

Sens. McCain, Graham and Ayotte wrote a letter requesting the immediate declassification of all surveillance video in and around the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi for the two days that it was under attack.

“It is vitally important that the American people know all of the facts surrounding the attack in Benghazi last month, and this surveillance video can shed important light on the nature of the attack and what kind of response could have been effective while it was ongoing,” the letter said.

Woods also described encounters on Sept. 14 with Vice President Biden and President Obama.

He claimed that at one point, Biden came over to him and said, “in an extremely loud and boisterous voice, ‘did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?'”

The limits of US power – JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

Photo: REUTERS

Ahmadinijad, guess who’s coming to dinner (Eye of the Tiger with lyrics) – YouTube.

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Israel Hayom | Is there a secret US-Iran agreement?.

Dore Gold

The banality of evil – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: US, EU leaders have grown accustomed to certain degree of barbarity by Iran regime

Riccardo Dugulin

This coming month of November will certainly win the interest of a great amount of media coverage as the world will focus on the result of the American elections. Yet before the 6th another date in the calendar should be considered worth the attention.

November 4th will mark the 33rd anniversary of the unilateral attack by hundreds of Iranian students on the US embassy in Tehran and the subsequent 444-days long hostage crisis. In its uniqueness this event marked the clear rupture by the Islamic Republic with the previously established Iranian relations with the White House. Along with that, it also introduced the new modus operandi for Iran to deal with its adversaries, namely the use of force and terror against non-military targets aimed at inflating the power of the Islamic revolution in international relations.

In a year of presidential elections in the United States and as elections are closing in for the Tehran political establishment, any move by current president Ahmadinejad should be scrutinized as he may attempt to tilt the balance in his favor and try to go down in history as the Iranian president who attacked Western interests on numerous occasions.

The question is then why so little attention is given to this anniversary? The current international focus on Iran is almost solely centered on its nuclear program. If this is a major strategic necessity for Israel, it does not justify the European or American stance over the nature of the threat. The development of nuclear capabilities for military use is in itself an outstanding threat for the security of the whole region yet it is so especially due to the specific ideology present in the political and religious establishment of the Islamic Republic.

Analysts and decision makers must not differentiate Tehran’s objectives and its means. Since 1979, Iran has been effectively waging a campaign of mass repression within its own borders and using its socio-military capabilities to export terror as a structured mean of foreign policy. The objective behind these actions remains linked to an expansionist agenda based on a revolutionary ideology deeply linked to the core values of the Islamic revolution.  

Ahmadinejad at nuclear reactor (Photo: AP)

By not harshly denouncing and merely continuously arguing against this state-lead machine, the United States and the European countries are in part tacitly approving a certain number of actions which can in their opinion be tolerated.

Today, few world leaders would really act against the continuous repression and persecution of religious minorities in Iran. An extremely limited number of persons would actually take extensive action to credibly denounce and rebuke Iranian anti-Semitic and genocidal discourse while the response to Iranian support of international terrorism remains conditional to the gravity of single attacks.

Massive internal repressions

What are the reasons behind this reality? An explanation may be found in the fact that American and European decision makers have grown accustomed to a certain degree of barbarity by the Iranian regime, that certain degree of ‘evil’ which is now expected to appear in speeches, actions and policies from the Islamic Republic.

There is a comfort zone in which deciders have now fallen into. The mass arrests and executions of Baha’is since the 1990s, as well as the implementation of plans to resolve the “Baha’i question” do not generate widespread condemnation.

The execution of Iranian citizens due to their sexual tendencies no longer makes the front page of major media outlets. Legal cases against the tremendous political repressions that have left more than 30,000 dead in the 1980s and 1990s do not hold a first place in international news outlets and few are surprised by political and religious leaders’ calls for the annihilation of Israel.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz or subversive interventions in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon and some African countries have become to a certain extent the norms to which decision makers contemplate the Iranian threat.

This absurd situation is possible simply because over the last 33 years the United States and European countries have grown accustomed to a certain trend of evil and now do find it banal in the sense that it is no longer an exceptional matter. Since the 1980s Iran has sponsored terrorism that has cost the lives of Israelis, Europeans and Americans while not being directly held accountable for it.

This situation creates a very high risk: the Tehran establishment quickly understands that it can act freely as long as it does not trespass certain tacit barriers. Neither the United States nor the European Union will risk an international conflict to respond to a growing terrorist threat or to stop devastating internal repressions.

Such a reality brings back memories of the European decade preceding the Second World War. European liberal democracies, suffering from internal instability and protracted economic crises attempted to contain Nazi Germany.

Providing Hitler with a breathing space which led him to fully militarize his state, crush opponents, annex Austria, occupy Czechoslovakia and lay the foundation for the systematic massacre of 6 million Jews and another 6 million innocent souls. Liberal democracies attempted to follow reason to deter Hitler and in some way accepted a certain degree of ‘evil’ with which they then thought Europe could live with.

In our decade, the threat is similar. Iran has in the last 33 years been laying the foundations for a terror state based on massive internal repressions and increased external aggressions. By providing it with the same breathing space Nazi Germany received from European liberal democracies, Iran has rapidly been shaping a policy based on the maximum amount of damage it can cause within the acceptable degree of evil set by its adversaries.

President Obama did state in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly that a nuclear armed Iran cannot be contained, yet little, apart from sanctions, is effectively being done to roll it back.

Borrowing Hannah Arendt’s phrase of the ‘banality of evil’ in regard to the Iranian power structure does not mean it is comparable to the Nazi state, yet by accepting the evil within the Iranian establishment, the normalization of its calls for genocide and the relative passiveness vis-à-vis the expansion of its military means, does recall the situation which enabled the Nazi state to enact the worst policies ever experienced in human history.

It took the attack on Poland for European democracies to slowly attempt to curb Hitler’s ambitions by force. The United States and the EU must make sure that the threshold to act against Iran is lower than a full aggression on a sovereign state. Forceful action should not only be seen as a full spectrum military campaign but as an ensemble of military, economic and political means aimed at rolling back and not only containing the Iranian terror state.

Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master degree from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International Security. He is currently working in Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance company. He has worked for a number of leading think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut. Personal website: www.riccardodugulin.com

Report: UK says won’t aid US strike on Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( Another Obama foreign policy catastrophe. – JW )

The Guardian says London apprehensive about possible preemptive strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities as ‘Iran not yet a clear and present threat’

Ynet

Britain does not consider Iran as a “clear and present threat” and will not aid the United States should it mount a preemptive strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, The Guardian reported Friday.

According to the report, the London has so fat denied a request by US diplomats to use British bases – such as in the Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean – to support the build-up of western forces in the Persian Gulf.

A US state department official told the Guardian that, “The US and the UK co-ordinate on all kinds of subjects all the time, on a huge range of issues. We never speak on the record about these types of conversations.”

London argued that any preemptive strike “could be in breach of international law.”

According to the report, the UK Foreign Office’s intelligence assessments do not deem the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program as “a clear and present threat.”

“The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran,” a senior Whitehall source was quoted by The Guardian as saying.

“It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans.”

British Destroyer (Photo: EPA)

The newspaper quoted another source as saying, “I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance.”

The Royal Navyhas several warships in the Persian Gulf, including a nuclear-powered submarine.

The Guardian further reported that a Britishmilitary delegation met with US military officials in Florida over the summer “to run through a range of contingency plans.”

“It is quite likely that if the Israelis decided to attack Iran, or the Americans felt they had to do it for the Israelis or in support of them, the UK would not be told beforehand,” a top London source told the newspaper. “In some respects, the UK government would prefer it that way.”

A UK Foreign Office spokesman said: “As we continue to make clear, the government does not believe military action against Iran is the right course of action at this time, although no option is off the table.

“We believe that the twin-track approach of pressure through sanctions, which are having an impact and engagement with Iran, is the best way to resolve the nuclear issue. We are not going to speculate about scenarios in which military action would be legal. That would depend on the circumstances at the time.”