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Secret war against… JPost – Iranian Threat – Opinion & Analysis.

Israeli forces on high alert after Syrian gunfire hit Israeli military jeep on Golan.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 5, 2012, 10:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli Air Force F-16 planes on patrol over Golan

Tension shot up on the Israeli-Syrian Golan border Monday night, Nov. 5, after Syrian small-arms fire from 1 kilometer over the Golan border hit the jeep of the Golani Brigade’s Patrol Battalion commander on a routine border patrol. There were no injuries. The jeep was badly damaged. debkafile’s military sources: The incident occurred after a gunfight between Syrian troops and rebels over the Golan town of Quneitra ended in the town falling to the rebels.
Israeli air force planes are patrolling the Golan and Galilee skies of northern Israel after the Syrians were observed preparing aircraft and helicopters to fly to the aid of their defeated ground forces in Quneitra.
After the Syrian army’s 90th Brigade was forced to retreat, Damascus is reported by Western sources about to send reinforcements over to the Golan to recover Quneitra. IDF contingents on the Golan and the Israeli-Lebanese border are high alert in case the Syrian combat spills over the border.

debkafile reported Sunday: 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.

ISN Blog » Time to Test Iran.

Satellite imagery of suspected Fordo underground uranium enrichment facility in Iran. Photo: Podknox/flickr.

NEW YORK – Most of the debate about how to address Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear-weapons capacity focuses on two options. The first is to rely on deterrence and live with an Iran that has a small nuclear arsenal or the ability to assemble one with little advance notice. The second is to launch a preventive military strike aimed at destroying critical parts of the Iranian program and setting back its progress by an estimated two or more years.

But now a third option has emerged: negotiating a ceiling on the nuclear program that would not be too low for Iran’s government and not too high for the United States, Israel, and the rest of the world.

In fact, such an option has been around for years – and in several rounds of negotiations. What has changed, however, is the context. And changes in context can be critical; indeed, what happens away from the negotiating table almost always determines the outcome of face-to-face talks.

The single most important change in context is the rapidly deteriorating state of Iran’s economy. The many financial and oil-related sanctions that have been implemented in recent months and years are starting to bite. They were designed not to impede Iran’s nuclear program directly, but rather to increase the price that Iran’s leaders must pay for pursuing their nuclear ambitions. The thinking (or, more accurately, the hope) was that Iran’s leadership, if forced to choose between regime survival and nuclear weapons, would choose the former.

This hypothesis may soon get a real-world test. Iran’s currency, the rial, has fallen roughly 40% in recent weeks, sharply increasing Iran’s inflation rate and what Iranians must pay for imports and many staples. The result is the first signs of serious public discontent with the regime since the violent repression of the Green Movement in 2009. Iran’s merchant class, one of the pillars of the clerical establishment that has ruled the country since the 1979 revolution, is grumbling as well.

Other factors also could give negotiations a real chance. Upheavals in the Arab world suggest that no regime in the Middle East is entrenched; Iran’s leaders would have to be blind not to have taken note. In his speech at the United Nations in late September, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu signaled a willingness to give sanctions more time, until at least the summer of 2013. And there are signs that, regardless of who wins November’s presidential election, the US might well undertake an armed strike, with potential destruction much greater than if Israel were to act alone. Again, the Iranians might see compromise as the lesser of the threats that it faces.

Until now, negotiations have been desultory at best. The compromise that Iranian officials are suggesting is nowhere near what they would have to accept to avert military action and gain an easing of sanctions. But now is the time to present to Iran a comprehensive package – what it must do and what the reward would be if it agreed. It would also be essential to set a deadline for Iran to accept such an accord, lest it use further negotiations to buy time to improve its nuclear capabilities.

The precise terms would have to be determined, but Iran would have to give up all of the uranium that it has enriched to 20% and stop enriching to that level. It would also have to accept a ceiling on how much uranium it could possess or enrich at lower levels. Limits on the number of centrifuges and where they could be housed might also be necessary. Inspections would need to be frequent and intrusive to reassure the outside world of what Iran is doing – or, perhaps more to the point, what it is not doing. In return, Iran would receive substantial relief from the removal of those sanctions imposed in response to its nuclear program.

Moreover, the offer’s essential elements should be made public. That way, if the regime balked, it would have to explain to its own people why it was not prepared to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, despite a reasonable US proposal that was not designed to humiliate Iran, and that, if accepted, promised a major improvement in Iranian living standards.

It is possible that the new economic and political context will lead Iran’s rulers to accept what they have rebuffed until now. If, on the other hand, the regime remains determined to pursue its nuclear goals, regardless of cost, then we will know that there is no alternative to the first two options: attacking Iranian facilities or living with a nuclear-armed Iran. Both outcomes are potentially risky and costly, but the US public, in particular, should be made aware that it was Iran that rejected a reasonable alternative to war before one began.

And, if push came to shove, it would be good for other governments to know that the US and/or Israel decided to attack only after offering Iran a face-saving way out. That would make it less difficult to keep economic pressure on Iran in the aftermath of any strike.

Going public makes sense for another reason: Iran’s people ought to know that any attack on the country was one that it had largely brought on itself. This realization might mute any “rally around the flag” reaction and thus not rule out regime change down the road.

We tend to think of diplomacy as something carried out in secret; sometimes, however, it is better to hide in plain sight. This is such a moment. But time is of the essence; diplomacy needs to move faster if it is not to be overtaken by Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon – and, with it, the march to conflict.

Explosion on Gaza-Israel border injures 3 IDF … JPost – Defense.

Photo: Ronen Zvulun / Reuters