WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | Report: Syria chemical arsenal within Hezbollah reach.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with U.S. delegation about developments in Syria, says the potential outcomes facing Israel are “bad, bad and worse” • Russian navy conducts large-scale training exercise off Syrian coast.

Hezbollah threat: Missile attacks on navy bases, gas rigs – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Israel fears Syrian chemical weapons may reach Hezbollah, but Shiite terror group has its eye on conventional weapons that can change balance of power, undermine IDF’s aerial superiority in Lebanon

Yoav Zitun

While Israel fears that Syrian WMDs may end up in Hezbollah‘s hands, Bashar Assad is continuing to acquire lethal conventional weapons despite the civil war raging in his country.

The Syrian president has paid $2-3 billion on military equipment in what the IDF defined as Syria’s largest arms deal since the Yom Kippur War.

Scud launched by Syrian army against rebels

Israel fears that the balance of power between Hezbollah and the Jewish state will change dramatically should Syria’s weapons reach the Lebanese Shiite group. Such a development may threaten Israel’s aerial superiority in Lebanon’s airspace, the IDF fears.

In this situation, the 60,000 missiles and rockets Hezbollah has already smuggled into Lebanon will be the least of Israel’s concerns should a third Lebanon war break out. The transfer of advanced Syrian military equipment, such as radars, to Hezbollah may ignite the region and lead to an Israeli strike.

Gas rig of Haifa coast (Photo: Reuters)

Syria has purchased from Russia advanced surface-to-air missile systems, such as the SA-15, SA-17 and SA-22. The S-17 missile is capable of hitting planes flying at low altitudes.

With North Korea’s assistance, Assad’s regime developed the Scud-D missile, an improved version of the Scud-C. Syria claims it developed the Scud-D in the 1990s. Syria purchased hundreds of Scud-B (the original version) surface-to-surface missiles in the 1970s. According to the Syrians, the Scud-D has a range of up to 750 kilometers (466 miles), meaning it can hit almost anywhere inside Israel. The missile can carry some 1,000 kilos (about 2,200 pounds) of explosives. Theoretically, it can be armed with chemical agents. It is estimated that Syria possesses between 300 and 500 of these missiles.

Damage caused by Scud that hit Ramat-Gan in 1991 (Photo: Shaul Golan)

About a year ago Syria purchased from Russia “Yakhont” anti-ship missiles, which have a 300-kilometer (186 miles) range, meaning they can strike ships docking at Haifa Port, the nearby Navy base, as well as Israeli gas rigs in the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah has used these missiles in the past.

Yiftah Shafir of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University told Ynet, “In 2006 we saw that Hezbollah was an army like any other, with strong and weak spots. It does not have tanks, for instance, and it is doubtful it will want Syrian tanks. I suppose it still wants Syria to supply it with rockets and anti-aircraft missiles. Downing an Israeli plane with the SA-17 anti-aircraft missile system would be a victory for Hezbollah’s propaganda, but this system is very difficult to operate. I assume they will prefer smaller anti-aircraft systems – such as the SA-8. These missiles can be loaded onto a truck and are fairly easy to operate.”

Israel fears that some of these weapons will end up not only in Hezbollah’s hands, but in the hands of Global Jihad elements linked to al-Qaeda.

Israel Defense Prize laureate Uzi Rubin told Ynet that Hezbollah is a “state-like organization that operates as an extension of Iran. As far as I know, Syria’s weapons-storage warehouses were open to Hezbollah even before the civil war. The Syrians have factories that manufacture rockets and missiles, and it will be very bad if al-Qaeda operatives will get their hands on them.

Meanwhile, the Institute for National Security Studies reported that the Russian navy has been holding training exercises in recent days off the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean. It remains unclear what the drill’s objectives are.

Egypt army chief warns: Political unrest c… JPost – Middle East.

Israel Shores Up Its Defenses, While Iran Remains Quiet.

Lee Smith

New details surface on Iran nuclear explosion.

Sixteen North Koreans, including 14 technicians and two top military officers, are among those trapped after a Jan. 21 explosion destroyed much of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, a source reveals.

The source who provided the initial information on the explosion at Fordow has now provided details of the explosion and the degree of the destruction at one of Iran’s most important nuclear sites.

The report, published exclusively on WND on Jan. 24, is being covered internationally by major media, with independent intelligence sources confirming the explosion for the Times of London and the German Die Welt.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday: “We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible.”

The short White House response, the source said, is an indication that the United States wants to steer away from the subject as any covert operation against the regime’s nuclear installations will have consequences, including retaliation.

The Islamic regime’s media, in a coordinated effort, reflected a similarly short response Sunday night in its denial, and Monday remained silent.

A senior researcher and director of the Centre for Arab & Iranian Studies in London, Dr. Ali Reza Nourizadeh, who has many contacts in Iran, confirmed that the explosion had trapped many inside.

According WND’s source, a member of the security forces protecting Fordow, 36 North Korean technicians and military officers arrived in Tehran on Jan. 15 and 17 and subsequently visited two Iranian nuclear sites under heavy security. One site, still unknown to the West with its vast installation of centrifuges, will be revealed soon on WND. At the other, the Fordow site, the North Koreans were to witness the startup of six cascades of 174 new-generation, speedier centrifuges.

Hamidreza Zakeri, a former member of the regime’s Intelligence Ministry, said 17 technicians and two military supervisors are stationed at the secret site and 14 technicians and two military officers were at Fordow.

The source said a log on closed-circuit cameras installed by the regime to monitor the site’s three centrifuge chambers and two highly enriched uranium reserves gave this account:

• On Jan 21, 14 members of the North Korean team and two military officers now stationed at Fordow along with Iranian scientists started the process of feeding uranium gas into the newly set-up cascades at 9:15 a.m. Tehran time
• At 10:43 a.m., due to a drop in power pressure, system warning signs went off, but everything went back to normal after two minutes.
• At 11:36 a.m., five explosions occurred concurrently in the centrifuge chambers, two explosions in the uranium reserve enclosures and a subsequent explosion in the main hallway close to the exit.
• At the time of the explosions, a very bright red and purple light distorted the image and an extremely loud noise could be heard. Before the explosions knocked out the cameras, interior walls could be seen coming down within the centrifuge chambers. All the explosions seemed to have been initiated from the ceilings.
• All cameras on the lowest floor (about 300 feet deep under a mountain) and the floor above it (about 250 feet deep) were knocked out, and only two cameras above the installation where security personnel are stationed were working.
• Security forces immediately informed their superiors, who ordered them to remain in the monitoring room and avoid further communication with the outside world until counterintelligence forces arrived. Twenty-one personnel were gathered in a conference room to await further instruction.
• Security forces were then told to close down all surrounding roads.
• Approximately two hours after the explosions, counterintelligence agents arrived and, after interviewing personnel and reviewing tapes, initially concluded that explosives may have been placed in ceiling lamps with some kind of trigger mechanism controlled by a power voltage frequency.
• The last images show eight personnel in anti-radiation clothing trying desperately to secure one of the rooms.

The regime believes the technology used with the explosives is unknown to their forces, the source said.

Iranian authorities fear that opening the site from the outside in a rescue mission could possibly release radiation and uranium gas or cause further explosions, which could contaminate thousands of people living nearby, the source said.

As of Monday, the regime had not come up with any concrete rescue plan, though more than 200 people remain trapped, including the North Koreans, he said. He added that an agreement reached last September between North Korea and Iran called for further collaboration on Iran’s nuclear bomb project and the arming of missiles with nuclear warheads.

Another source in the Intelligence Ministry said that in a meeting Monday among top officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was decided that the international community would be kept in the dark about the disaster because any validation would undermine their current negotiating power with the 5+1 world powers.

It would also undermine the regime from within should Iranians react to its illicit nuclear activity and the international sanctions it caused, which are being felt deeply.

The source added that the regime is contemplating showing old images of the interior of the site to buy time until it can accurately estimate the extent of damage and possible loss of lives. Ahmadinejad will hold a parliamentary meeting behind closed doors on this issue on Thursday.

Despite severe international pressure and sanctions, Iran had refused to halt the 20 percent uranium enrichment process at Fordow. It takes only weeks to further enrich the stock at the 20 percent level to weaponization grade for a nuclear bomb.

Fordow Nuclear Explosion Shows War With Iran Has Already Started.6

Fordow Nuclear Explosion Shows War With Iran Has Already Started

Tehran suspects Mossad in Fordo blast, says Iranian expat | The Times of Israel.

White House dismisses report of explosion in nuclear facility; cameras stationed at plant could reveal truth in the coming days

A satellite image of Iran’s Fordo nuclear enrichment facility (photo credit: AP/DigitalGlobe)

Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear plant was indeed hit by an explosion sometime last week, and Iranian officials suspect the Mossad or CIA as responsible actors, the former Iranian intelligence officer who initially broke the story said Monday.

In an interview with Channel 2 News, Hamidreza Zakeri surmised, however, that an Iranian “internal action” could also have been at play.

Some 240 people were working at the plant at a depth of 90 meters at the time of the incident, according to Zakeri. He said that the two elevators normally available for transfer to the surface are now out of order and it is unknown if workers were hurt or killed in the explosion.

Channel 2′s Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari said that the IAEA would know within days if a blast had actually occurred at the plant. According to Yaari, the UN nuclear watchdog has cameras placed at Fordo, which it inspects every seven to 10 days.

The explosion reportedly occurred last Monday, so if Iran doesn’t let the IAEA inspectors into the facility in the next two or three days “we’ll know something happened,” he said. 

The White House on Monday dismissed reports that there was a blast at the facility.

“We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible,” press secretary Jay Carney said. “We don’t believe those are credible reports.”

Israeli intelligence officials confirmed that a major explosion had rocked an Iranian nuclear facility, The Times of London reported. The British daily on Monday cited officials in Tel Aviv to the effect that the blast had occurred last week, as originally reported on the website wnd.com.

Iran is not believed to have evacuated the area surrounding the Fordo plant, according to the same Israeli sources, who said that an investigation into the blast was ongoing.

“We are still in the preliminary stages of understanding what happened and how significant it is,” one Israeli was quoted by the London Times as saying. He did not know if the explosion was “sabotage or accident” and refused to comment on rumors that Israeli aircraft were seen near Fordo at the time of the blast.

On Sunday, Israel’s Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter welcomed the report of the blast, saying, “Any explosion in Iran that doesn’t hurt people but hurts its assets is welcome.”

Yoel Goldman contributed to this report.

Israel: Iran slowing nuclear program, won’t have bomb before 2015 – 01/28/2013 | MiamiHerald.com.

(Need any more proof that Fordow is toast? –  JW )

By Sheera Frenkel
McClatchy Newspapers

Israeli intelligence officials now estimate that Iran won’t be able to build a nuclear weapon before 2015 or 2016, pushing back by several years previous assessments of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Intelligence briefings given to McClatchy over the last two months have confirmed that various officials across Israel’s military and political echelons now think it’s unrealistic that Iran could develop a nuclear weapons arsenal before 2015. Others pushed the date back even further, to the winter of 2016.”Previous assessments were built on a set of data that has since shifted,” said one Israeli intelligence officer, who spoke to McClatchy only on the condition that he not be identified. He said that in addition to a series of “mishaps” that interrupted work at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian officials appeared to have slowed the program on their own.”We can’t attribute the delays in Iran’s nuclear program to accidents and sabotage alone,” he said. “There has not been the run towards a nuclear bomb that some people feared. There is a deliberate slowing on their end.”

Reports that Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow had been damaged in a nuclear explosion were still being investigated Monday, Israeli officials said. Satellite imagery shared with McClatchy showed that new fortifications had been built around the perimeter of the facility.

“This is already Iran’s most heavily fortified facility,” said another intelligence officer, based in Israel’s central command. “The new construction we are seeing here is meant to prevent access to the facility through land routes.”

He speculated that Iran had taken special care to protect its facilities in Fordow because it was a “highly attractive target for an attack.”

“Despite repeated efforts by Iran to reinforce and protect their nuclear facilities, there have been accidents that some call sabotage that may have been carried out by a number of interested parties,” he said, listing Iranian dissident groups that he said would try to attack Iranian military and nuclear facilities. “One way or another, Iran has been forced to slow down.”

Writing in Israel’s Hebrew-language daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot, military correspondent Alex Fishman said, “Officials responsible for assessing the state of the Iranian nuclear program, both in the West and in the International Atomic Energy Agency, believe that while the Iranians have continued to pursue their nuclear program, they have been doing so cautiously and slowly, making sure not to cross the point of no return.”

Fishman wrote that Israel’s allies in the West, including Europe and the United States, had been notified of the new calculations that Iran couldn’t possess nuclear weapons before 2015.

That assessment, he said, has been unpopular in Israel’s highest political echelons. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has called 2013 a “decisive year” for Iran’s nuclear program. During his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Netanyahu displayed a rudimentary bomb diagram to illustrate Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

“By next spring, at most next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage,” Netanyahu said, laying out a timeline for the summer of 2013. “From there it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”

Netanyahu, who’s forming his country’s next government despite disappointing results in national elections, has continued to emphasize a sense of urgency on Iran’s nuclear program, citing it first among his new government’s priorities in his election victory speech.

Israeli officials, however, have said there’s a widening gulf between Netanyahu’s remarks and the intelligence reports he receives.

“There is a question we have to ask ourselves, of ‘Did we cry wolf too early?’ ” the intelligence officer said.

An official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry who spoke with McClatchy on the condition of anonymity said that international pressure and sanctions on Iran had made a tremendous difference.

“Iran is progressing carefully, and we think that is because of international pressure led by the U.S.,” the official said. He added that Israel was very pleased with the tightening of sanctions, especially the recent move to block money that Iran receives for exporting oil to Asian markets.

Last week, President Barack Obama signed the latest round of restrictions into law, imposing sanctions against international companies that do business with Iranian firms while blocking Iran from obtaining key materials necessary for its automobile industries.