WarSclerotic

Iron Dome Upgraded to Meet Iranian Missile Threat – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Iron Dome

IDF Spokesperson’s Office

The Ministry of Defense officially announced Sunday that a series of tests to the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system has been successfully completed, in an important step in the IDF’s plans to upgrade the system.

Following the tests, IDF forces will acquire an additional Iron Dome battery, this one with improved capabilities. The new battery, which will be the IDF’s fifth, will soon be transferred to the IAF.

The series of tests was designed to broaden the activities of the Iron Dome system and to improve its capabilities against an unprecedented variety of threats. The advancement of the system will enable it to handle the threats posed by Iran’s Fajr and Zelzal missiles.

The tests were carried out by the staff of the Defense Ministry’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure. They tested upgrades including improvements to the system’s radar, which should enable it to operate more quickly and smoothly and to cope with broader threats than in the past.

“This is another brilliant achievement of those involved in improving the capabilities of the system,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “The defense establishment invests large sums in the multi-layered anti-missile defense system, which within several years is expected to protect the entire territory of the State of Israel. The success of the tests is a significant step toward the completion of this defense system, and in the future it will require the allocation of additional resources for this matter

Israeli warplanes fly over Golan as Hizballah fighters pour into Syria.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 4, 2012, 9:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

Chinese Katyushas used by Hizballah against Syrian rebels

Israeli warplanes flew over the divided Golan Sunday, Nov. 4, in a show of strength and as a deterrent against the Syrian civil war seeping across the border, debkafile’s military and Western intelligence sources report.  

In Paris, President Francois Hollande vowed Sunday that “France would oppose with all its strength any bid to destabilize Lebanon. Lebanon must be protected.”

He spoke regardless of the 5,000 Lebanese Shiite Hizballah fighters who have poured into Syria from their Beqaa Valley stronghold of al-Harmel to fight Bashar Assad’s war. Our sources reveal that these Lebanese fighters have now advanced 50-60 kilometers deep into southwestern Syria, up to the outskirts of the embattled town of Homs.
On the Golan, further to the east, Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz visited the IDF contingent stationed there to reinforce the message broadcast by the IAF.
Hizballah is now openly flaunting the presence of its regular troops in Syria. They are armed with heavy artillery and Chinese WS-1 multiple-launch rocket systems made in Iran. These “Katyushas,” shoot 302mm rockets at targets up to 100 kilometers away and can operate in the rugged mountain terrain of Lebanon, Syria and Israel and in harsh weather conditions, including snow.
Hizballah fighters are reported by our sources to have already used this weapon with deadly effect in a battle with Syrian rebels over the town of Quseir opposite the Lebanese Beqaa Valley. It ended in Hizbalah’s capture of the town.
Coordination is tight: Hizballah forces on the ground get in touch with Iranian command headquarters in Beirut and Damascus to call up Syrian helicopters for air cover.
The Hizballah commander in Syria is Ibrahim Aqil, a veteran of the Hizballah militia and one of the most trusted by Hassan Nasrallah and Tehran.
Aqil took part in the 1983 assault on US Marines Beirut headquarters in which 241 American troops were killed, the highest death toll in a single event after World War II. In the year 2000, Aqil, then commander of the southern Lebanese front against Israel, orchestrated the kidnap from Israeli territory and murder of three Israeli soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawad.
Hizballah’s expeditionary force in Syria has been assigned three missions:

1. To seal off the routes used by the rebels to smuggle fighters and arms from Lebanon into Syria, most of which run through the Beqaa Valley. This mission is near completion.
2.  To defend the clusters of Syrian Alawite and Shiite villages in the area of Hizballah control.
3.  To provide a strategic reserve force for the Syrian units defending the main hubs of Syrian highways running west to east from the Mediterranean coast to the Syrian-Iraqi border and crisscrossed from north to south by the route running from the Turkish border up to Damascus. Control of these hubs makes it possible for the Syrian army to move military forces between the different warfronts at high speed.

U.S. media’s lack of focus on Hurricane Sandy’s fatalities highlight stark cultural divideIsrael News – Haaretz Israeli News source..

In Israel, front pages would be taken over by photos and bios of those who lost their lives.

By Chemi Shalev | Nov.02, 2012 | 8:02 PM | 17

It has been surprisingly difficult to find the pictures and the life stories of the close to 100 people who were killed by Hurricane Sandy. With an occasional exception here and there, most the front pages of the newspapers in the Tri-State area, as well as the television and radio news bulletins, have been devoted in recent days to the destruction, to the hardships, to the economic impact. The dead have been relegated to the inside pages, if at all.

If a calamity of similar proportions had hit Tel Aviv, the front pages of all the Israeli newspapers would be nearly identical. There might be a big headline at the top or bottom of the page about the event itself, but most of the page would be taken up by rows and rows of tiny, thumbnail photos of the people who had been killed in the disaster. And most of the newspaper itself would be devoted to their life stories – each and every last one of them.

There is a long-standing standard operating procedure in Israeli news organizations for such events. The first thing news editors do when they hear of any incident in which more than three people have been killed is to send out reporters to the victims’ homes to talk to their families, sometimes only minutes after the relatives have been notified of the tragedy, and in particularly unfortunate instances, a few minutes before. The most important task of the journalists who are unlucky enough to get chosen for this task is to obtain a passport photo that can be placed on the front page of the newspaper. Then, if time allows, they are ordered to record a short biography of the deceased victim that will be placed inside the newspaper, with a separate article for each and every one, along with photos from important milestones in his life. These will take up most of the coverage of the tragedy, overriding any other aspect of the story.

I am not judging here. Israel is a small, closed-knit country in which there is a good chance that a significant number of readers will either personally know some of the victims and if not, will know someone else who does. The US is 400 times bigger than Israel in area and has 50 times as many people. The sense of loss in the US is  personal, perhaps regional, but rarely national. In the US, grief is a private matter; in Israel, it is communal.

Of course, that’s only part of the story. Religion, culture and history play an obvious role in forging attitudes towards victims of attacks, catastrophes and disasters: Israel’s, in any case, has been steadily evolving in recent decades. I can still remember the front pages of Israeli newspapers in the War of Attrition following the Six Day War, in which the deaths of Israeli soldiers at the Suez Canal, one or even many, not only didn’t dominate the front pages, but in some cases, didn’t even merit the lead headline.

The change started after the Yom Kippur War, the first in which Israelis questioned whether the deaths of so many young Israelis were justified, but the real turning point came in the first Lebanon War. The sharp political disagreements over that engagement turned each IDF fatality into a cause celebre for opponents of the war. Each soldier who died, in battle or otherwise, was accorded a separate headline, a gut-wrenching report of a life ended before its prime, an editorial questioning why and whether it was worth it.

Since then, there has been a steady progression. From military fatalities the enhanced focus turned to victims of terror attacks, as more and more innocent Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers; from there the preoccupation with the dead, which some call an obsession, spread to those killed in natural and unnatural disasters, especially ones involving Israelis abroad, and finally to routine traffic accidents and victims of crime.

In the process, the natural order of things has been inverted. The deaths of soldiers, those whose duty it is to put their lives on the line in order to protect the country, has become so intolerable for Israeli public opinion that it has come to play a direct and dramatic role in shaping Israeli strategy and policies. The unilateral 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, the overwhelming firepower used by Israel in the 2009 Cast Lead operation in Gaza, the heavy price Israel has repeatedly paid for the release of Israeli soldiers held hostage – up to and including the 1027 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Gilad Shalit – all were a direct outgrowth of Israel’s ever-increasing inability to tolerate loss of life.

Indeed, the disparity between the two countries is most noticeable in the amount of attention, or lack thereof, that the US media devotes to individual American soldiers killed abroad, either in action or in arena-related accidents. This week, the Defense Department announced the deaths in Afghanistan of Alex Domion, 21, of Richfield Springs, NY, Staff Sergeant Kashif Memon, 31, of Houston, Texas and Clinton Ruiz, 22, of Murrieta, California.   If you look hard enough on Google News you may find their deaths mentioned by less than 20 news outlets, and not very prominently at that.

Some Israelis believe that the elevation of the “sanctity of life” to an overriding national value is a sign of strength that increases cohesiveness and solidarity and morale. Others view it as a manifestation of weakness, even decadence, an emotional vulnerability that corrodes Israel’s resolve and its ability to ruthlessly pursue its national interest. It is a factor, and not a negligible one at that, in any government decision-making, including the current deliberations on the pros and cons of an attack on Iran. And there are those who will point out, not completely unjustifiably, that Israel’s great concern for its own dead is more than matched by its complete indifference to the lives of others, especially its Palestinian neighbors.

It is, for better or worse, a national characteristic, an ingrained part of the Israeli psyche that can be dissected, explained or argued, but cannot be wished away. Israelis need to see the faces of victims, to read their life stories and to mumble words of sorrow and consolation, even to themselves. It is their way of coping with tragedy, man-made or natural. It is why their eyes first gravitate naturally to look for the small photos of the dead, even in a far-way calamity such as the one that has befallen New York, New Jersey and Connecticut this week.

Inside Israel’s nuclear wargames – Telegraph.

Israeli military leaders have conducted a war game simulating a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, five days after the US Presidential elections. They concluded such an operation could be pulled off without plunging the whole region into war. Iranian experts disagree. David Patrikarakos reports.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: AFP/Getty Images/Reuters

The war game was designed to explore the likely outcome of an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran; it didn’t examine the legal or moral arguments for or against any such strike but rather focused on how the Iranians might retaliate and what the wider fallout would be.

The game began when the players were told that just after midnight, in a surprise air raid, Israeli bombers had attacked nuclear installations deep inside Iran. First reports indicated that Israel had acted alone without consent or help from the Americans.

The Iranians responded quickly to the Israeli strike, launching a barrage of Shahab-3 ballistic missiles (based on the North Korean Nodong-1 missile) at Israeli targets, including the country’s largest city, Tel Aviv. Then they discussed their political goals.

The most immediate of these was the desire to rebuild the nuclear programme, preferably to a level “beyond what it was on the eve of the strike.” Given their newfound status as victims of an attack, another priority was to have the sanctions on Iran lifted; and to have sanctions placed on Israel for its “unprovoked act.”

They also decided to offer Jordan and Egypt extensive aid packages to cancel their peace treaties with Israel, before debating a key dilemma: whether or not to attack US targets. With Iran’s considerable influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention its huge presence in the Gulf, the Iranians could cause huge problems for Washington.

In the end, though, the decision was taken to refrain; Washington was one more complication they didn’t need. Russia (which has been building the Bushehr nuclear power plant) was also approached for immediate help to rebuild the devastated facilities, as well as delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missiles and a consignment of Sukhoi 24 aircraft.

Militarily, Iran tried to get its allies – namely, its proxy militia groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza – to enter the conflict on its behalf.

“All our help to you over the years,” the Israeli playing Ahmadinejad (a former colonel in military intelligence) declared in a meeting with Hezbollah, “has been for the purpose of this moment.”

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” his assistant added. The Lebanese declared they were only too happy to help – in any way that would not bring massive Israeli retaliation down on Lebanon. There was tension in the room.

The Israelis, meanwhile, had met with the “US President” (the Israelis deliberately made no comment on who had won the 7 November US Presidential election), who, despite being unhappy at the lack of a “timely announcement” about the “premature” strike, reiterated his support for Israel. Washington’s primary concern, it seemed, was to avoid an escalation of hostilities in what it considered to be the world’s most volatile region. It raised the status of alert for its forces across the Middle East.

The Israelis were clear on what they wanted from their US ally. Most important was for Washington to use its ‘good offices’ in Lebanon and Gaza to prevent Hezbollah and Hamas inflaming the situation. The Israelis also wanted US ships in the area, armed with Aegis anti-missile systems, to help intercept the Iranian missiles raining down on them.

Finally, they requested that the US maintain pressure on Iran in the UN Security Council, and to help ensure that Israel was not the victim of ‘one sided resolutions in the United Nations.”

^{Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks on as Iranian military hardware is displayed march during the National Army Day parade in Tehran, Iran}

On the ground, things were tense. As Iran continued shelling Israel, people began to leave Tel Aviv heading to the South. Fearing Israeli retaliation, Hezbollah limited themselves to firing only a few, sporadic Katyusha rockets into northern Israel in an attempt to placate their Iranian patron, and succeeded in pushing the inhabitants of the city of Kiryat Shmona into heading south as well. Israel, in turn, instructed its army not to respond to the firing from Lebanon without the Minister of Defense’s authorization; army reserves were called up.

But the Israelis were also planning – for a second wave of strikes against Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, which they undertook about 24 hours (in game time) after the first. This second strike seemed to encapsulate the war game for Israel. Its boldness rewarded and Iran simply unable to respond in kind: limited to firing missiles at Israel, many of which were intercepted – largely by itself.

By the game’s end, Iran’s nuclear facilities had been almost totally destroyed. Hezbollah and Hamas had done nothing more than launch a few token rocket salvos at Israel, while Iranian missiles had been of only limited effect. Iran had also failed in its attempts to have the sanctions on it removed and, thanks to US cover in the UN Security Council, it had also failed to have sanctions placed on Israel. It was the game’s clear loser.

Yehuda Ben-Meir, the former deputy foreign minister of Israel, who had played Netanyahu, summed the situation up. “The principal insight we gained was that following an Israeli attack the entire world was interested in calming the region down.

“Before the attack everyone had something to say on a possible attack but once it became a fait accompli the world wanted to know what would happen next, and everyone’s goal was to contain the situation and to prevent escalation.”

^{An Israeli missile launching from the Iron Dome missile-defence system}

I had seen Israel’s perspective on a possible attack and now wanted an Iranian view, so I caught a flight to Istanbul to put the game’s results to Hossein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team. He believed the game was deeply flawed.

Dismissing the limited nature of Iran’s response, Mousavian argued that in reality Iran would respond ‘by all means’, employing the total power of its armed forces to draw Israel into a long-term war. Perhaps, more importantly, Mousavian argued that Iran would see the US as complicit.

Iranians, he said, are convinced that Israel is too small to attack Iran unilaterally Iran. “They see Israeli as just a baby,” he said. “One that would never act without US assistance.”

The attack would also have huge regional consequences, he continued. Most obviously, Iran would use its status as the symbol of resistance against Israel in the Middle East to stoke the high levels of anti-Americanism that already exist there. Even groups like Al Qaeda, he argued, who are Iran’s enemies, would use “inflamed Muslim sentiment to launch attacks at American citizens across the world and on US soldiers on the many American bases in the region.”

At the end of our interview, he leaned forward, took my arm and looked me right in the eyes. He recalled the Israeli strikes on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor in 2007.

“This is the big mistake that people make,” he told me. “To think if Israel attacks Iran, like it attacked Iraq and Syria, the Iranians would not retaliate.

“The nation is one hundred percent different. The whole region would be engulfed.”

David Patrikarakos is the author of Nuclear Iran: the Birth of an Atomic State.

Israel successfully tests upgraded Iron Dome with longer interception range | The Times of Israel.

Defense minister praises project’s ‘illustrious achievement,’ says that within a few years, Israel’s missile defense will cover entire country

Iron Dome system in action as it intercepts rockets fired from Gaza, in 2012. (photo credit: Flash90)

Israel has completed testing an improved version of the Iron Dome missile defense system, which can intercept Hezbollah and Syria’s medium-range rockets that could reach the center of the country, the Defense Ministry announced on Sunday.

The army said it had carried out the tests with a new, fifth battery of the Iron Dome system, which will be added to the four already deployed in Israel’s south to intercept rockets fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

“This is another illustrious achievement on the part of all those involved in the upgrading of Iron Dome’s capabilities,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. “The defense establishment has been investing massive sums in [Israel’s] multi-layered missile defense array, which, within the next few years, is projected to cover all of Israel’s territory.

“The success of today’s tests marks a significant step toward completing a multi-layered defense system, and we’ll require a further allocation of funds to that end.”

Last week, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured an Iron Dome battery and praised the technological achievement of the anti-missile system, calling it “a great success.”

“It is a great honor to be here, at an Iron Dome battery that is protecting Israel, and to know that we are partners to a very successful initiative ” Dempsey said at the site, located in southern Israel. “We are definitely proud of that.”

In April, an Israeli official told Reuters that an increase in the range of the Iron Dome, which receives a large part of its funding from the US, to 150 kilometers, would reduce the number of interceptors Israel would need to deploy to defend the country from rocket attacks.

Sudan supports Hamas despite Israeli ‘aggr… JPost – Middle East.

Photo: REUTERS

Fars: Iran not suspending 20% nu… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS

Iran is not suspending 20 percent uranium enrichment in its nuclear program, the Fars news agency reported on Sunday.

The semi-official news agency cited an “informed source” as saying “20 percent uranium enrichment activities continue as before and no change has happened.”

The informed source added that “News about Iran’s nuclear issues is only announced by the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).”

On Saturday, the pan-Arab Al Arabiya news channel cited an Iranian parliamentarian as saying that Iran suspended 20 percent uranium enrichment in an effort to release itself from Western sanctions.

Foreign Policy and National Security Commission of Parliament Mohammad Hossein Asfari news agency also referred to an enrichment suspension, describing it as a “good will gesture,” according to an ISNA report the same day.

Hard-hit by sanctions, Iran suspends 20-percent uranium enrichment.

Sunday, 04 November 2012

Twenty percent uranium enrichment is thought to be only a short step toward nuclear-grade enrichment. (Reuters)

 nShare1

Iran suspends uranium enrichment. Gesture to boost Obama’s reelection.

DEBKAfile Special Report November 4, 2012, 9:25 AM (GMT+02:00)

Medium-enriched uranium

Sources in Tehran put out word Sunday, Nov, 4, that Iran had suddenly suspended 20-percent enrichment of uranium, stopping a short step from building a nuclear device. The sources were not official. However, an Iranian lawmaker on the majlis foreign affairs and national security committee, Mohammad Hossein Asfari, was quoted as saying that the move was a “goodwill” gesture, ahead of a new round of talks with the US scheduled to take place after the presidential elections in two days. He said if sanctions were not lifted in response for the “softening” in Iran’s position, enrichment would be resumed.
Other sources report that enrichment continued uninterrupted. Tehran is therefore poised to jump either way. debkafile sources note that on Oct. 20, US media reported that President Barak Obama and Iran had agreed on one-on-one talks to resolve the nuclear issue directly after the elections if Obama was returned for a second term as president. The White House then denied those reports. However, two days before the election, Tehran is transparently throwing its weight behind Obama’s campaign by suggesting to the American voter that he is the best candidate to solve the nuclear crisis without resorting to the war option.
Obama’s staff has been building up to this critical moment, step by step. In late September, debkafile’s intelligence sources report, they met secretly with Iranian emissaries and agreed that direct negotiations would be launched after the election. A team in the White House went to work on position papers for the talks. It is headed by Gary Samore, coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, and Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman who led the US delegation to the failed six-power negotiations with Iran.

This team was presented to Israel as the authors of an “endgame paper” that was to be put before Tehran as an ultimatum. But no such paper was ever shown to Jerusalem.
Last Tuesday, Oct. 30, Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak, told the Daily Telegraph on his way to London that in August, Iran quietly chose to convert 38 percent of its 20-percent stockpile of enriched uranium into fuel rods for civilian research purposes, “thereby delaying the moment when it could have built a nuclear bomb and delaying the moment of truth by eight to 10 months.”
These remarks painted Iran’s leaders as rational politicians, at odds with the hate-filled fanatical face shown to and by Israel.  Barak only “forgot” to mention that this “gesture” was also a cover-up: Tehran had just completed the clandestine transfer of the entire set of 3,000 advanced centrifuges to the underground enrichment plant in Fordo, thereby expanding its capacity to produce medium-enriched uranium and replenish its stock.
While acting in the Obama interest and appearing to vindicate his pro-diplomacy policy, Tehran gained both time for finalizing its nuclear aspirations and two big advantages:

1.  Iran overtly sacrificed just over one-third of its 20-percent enriched uranium stock, enough for one nuclear device, for the sake of clandestinely pressing forward on the production of fissile material for a whole arsenal of four to six bombs.

2.  Iran managed to get its top-performance centrifuges hidden away in an almost impregnable “immune zone.”

Last April, Barak himself declared that the transfer of Iran’s nuclear program into “immune zones” would be a red line for Israel. Having made it nonetheless, Tehran is again sitting pretty and already naming a price – lifting of sanctions – for an unofficial and unverifiable claim to have halted 20-percent enrichment. But with the US presidential election almost too close to call two days before the vote, it could tip the balance.