WarSclerotic

‘Israel hit target on Syria-Lebanon border’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( The reason “Foreign Media” are quoted is because there is clearly a censorship order against covering this story.  However, the rule is once something is reported abroad it is fair game for Israeli journalists. The same is true regarding the Fordow story. – JW )

Foreign media claim IAF fighter jets conducted three separate aerial incursions into Lebanon’s airspace overnight. US website says target was weapons convoy; IDF remains mum

Roi Kais

“Israeli forces have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight,” foreign and Arab media sources alleged Wednesday, saying that 12 IAF jets breached Lebanon’s airspace on Tuesday.

The US-based Al-Monitor website quoted Lebanese sources as saying the target was a weapons convoy traveling near Syria’s border with Lebanon. The report has not been corroborated by any Israeli source and the IDF refused to comment on the matter.

Earlier, Beirut’s news agency alleged that the Israeli fighter jets conducted three separate aerial incursions into Lebanon‘s airspace overnight.

According to the report, the jets flew over the En Nakura area for several hours, leaving Lebanese airspace at around 2 am. The report, citing military sources, said that the first incursion took place at around 4:30 pm, when two jets flew over the village of Ramish, leaving at 9:05 pm.

As the duo was leaving – according to the Lebanese report – two other IAF jets entered Lebanon’s airspace, towards En Nakura, leaving at 2 am.

A Lebanese Army statement said that “Four Israeli planes entered Lebanese air space at 4:30 pm on Tuesday. They were replaced four hours later by another group of planes which overflew southern Lebanon until 2 am and a third mission took over, finally leaving at 7:55 am on Wednesday morning.”

The statement made no mention of planes entering Syrian airspace.

A western diplomat and a security source said Wednesday that “Israeli forces have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight.”

Despite the ambiguity of Lebanon’s reports, the diplomat – who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue – insisted that “There was definitely a hit in the border area.”

Lebanon’s State-run news agency NNA, however, denied the reports.

The Israel-Syria border (Photo: AFP)

Syrian media ignored the reports and chose instead to highlight a report claiming that the Syrian army, with the help of Aleppo residents, seized Israel-made food supplies that had reached Syria via Turkey.

The US-based Al-Monitor website reported Tuesday that IDF Intelligence Chief Maj-Gen. Aviv Kochavi traveled to Washington for consultations with American officials. Israeli officials would not comment on the matter.

Among those Kochavi met with at the Pentagon was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, the report said.

According to Al-Monitor, the IDF declined to comment on the MI chief’s visit, saying that “Israel does not comment on the working visits of IDF officers.”

However, the website qouted an anonymous Israeli official as saying that “Some people say (the) IDF wouldn’t object to (the) opportunity to set the record straight vis-à-vis Hezbollah… Also, there’s the idea of putting them out of play, as done with Hamas recently.”

Israel has been following the volatile situation in Syria and neighboring Lebanon closely, as concerns grow over the possibility that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah may get hold of Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s advanced weaponry.

Assad is believed to have the largest arsenal of nonconventional warfare in the world. Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said Sunday that any sign that Syria’s grip on its chemical weapons is slipping could trigger Israeli military strikes.

Foreign media source quoted unnamed Israeli officials Tuesday as saying that “Syria’s advanced conventional weapons would represent as much of a threat to Israel as its chemical arms, should they fall into the hands of Islamist rebels or Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon.”

Also on Tuesday, IAF Chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel warned that Israel cannot remain complacent vis-à-vis the growing chaos is Syria and its possible effects on the balance of power in the region.

Earlier in the week, Israel deployed two Iron Dome batteries near the northern border.

The defense establishment’s concerns about the potential threat of chemical weapons from Syria and Hezbollah has not gone unnoticed by the Israeli public.

The Israel Postal Service reported Wednesday that more Israelis are renewing their gas masks and ABC kits and that the number of Israelis changing their nonconventional warfare protection kits has nearly tripled over the past month.

Lebanon claims that Israel violates its airspace on a regular basis. In 2009, Beirut filed a complaint with the UN Security Council on the matter.

Reuters contributed to this report

Israeli jets reportedly attack site on Lebanon-Syria border | The Times of Israel.

Lebanese army reports several sorties of IAF fighters over the last 24 hours

Illustrative photo of IAF F15s flying in formation (photo credit: Moshe Shai/Flash90)

Lebanese officials said a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace on Tuesday and overnight into Wednesday, flying close to the ground in several sorties over southern Lebanon.

According to foreign media reports, the planes attacked a target near the Lebanon-Syria border.

The Israeli military had no comment.

A Lebanese army statement says the last of the sorties was at 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. It says four warplanes, which flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura, flew for several hours over villages in south Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.

It says similar flights by eight other warplanes were conducted Tuesday.

Israel has been deeply concerned that chemical or advanced weaponry from Syria could make its way into the hands of the south-Lebanon based Hezbollah terror group due to the chaos of the Syrian civil war, and has said on several occasions that the transfer of chemical weapons to non-state actors, especially Hezbollah, would be a casus belli.

Reuters cited an unnamed Western diplomat and anonymous security source saying the planes had attacked a target near the border.

“There was definitely a hit in the border area,” the source told the news agency.

Among Israeli security officials’ chief fears is that Hezbollah could get its hands on Syrian chemical arms and SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. If that were to happen, it would change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel’s ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

Israel believes that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Sunday that such transfer of arms “would be crossing a line that would demand a different approach.”

The Lebanese army report does not mention if the planes entered Syrian territory, although the area of Lebanon where the flights took place borders southern Syria. The flights were not corroborated by an Israeli source.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon but Beirut officials say they have increased in the past few days.

On Tuesday, Air Force chief Amir Eshel said Israel needed to be wary of both conventional and non conventional weapons finding their way out of Syria.

“There is in Syria an enormous arsenal of weapons, some state of the art and some non conventional. All of it could find its way to our borders and not just to our backyards,” he said.

Mitch Ginsburg contributed to this report.

Lebanon reports Israeli fighter planes breach … JPost – Defense.

Netanyahu hints Israel can’t knock out Iran nuke program | The Times of Israel.

( Following up on Barak’s interview.  “Little Israel can’t handle Iran, the US can and will do it.”  This is only after we took out Fordow.  – JW )

Israel can inflict ‘significant damage’ to Iranian facilities, but the US military is ‘perfectly’ capable of destroying them, PM says

Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to the AJC Board of Governors in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on January 28, 2013. (photo credit: Moshe Milner/GPO/Flash90)

Israel could do “significant damage” to Iran’s nuclear program in a military strike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week, seemingly admitting that Jerusalem would need help from the US or another country if it wanted to fully demolish Tehran’s nuclear drive.

Speaking before the board of the American Jewish Committee, Netanyahu said the United States was “perfectly” capable of knocking out Iran’s enrichment program, widely believed to be for military purposes, Maariv reported.

Netanyahu’s statement seems to falls in line with past assessments by US officials and other experts that a unilateral Israeli strike would fall short of its goals. Official Jerusalem has maintained that it could proceed on its own should the world not act before the Iranian program crosses the “red line” beyond which it can build a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu told the AJC delegation, in Israel for a three-day visit, that Western economic sanctions against Iran, which were “a result of Israeli pressure on the international community,” would only be effective if the Iranians have a “credible threat” over their heads.

“To be a credible threat, you have to mean it,” Netanyahu said. “That is, if the sanctions are not effective, and they are not so far, you will use it.”

“This is a specific task that the US is able to do perfectly, and we are able to cause significant damage,” the prime minister said, adding that 2013 was the “year of decision” because of Iran’s continuing efforts to acquire enough highly-enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb, despite sanctions.

Last week, a massive explosion was reported at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility and reportedly confirmed by unnamed Israeli sources, although Iran denied that the incident took place, as did the US and the IAEA.

Iran is enriching uranium at Fordo to a level that is just a technical step away from nuclear warhead material, although Tehran says it is enriching only for reactor fuel and for scientific purposes and denies accusations it wants nuclear arms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iran and Hezbollah learning from terror mistakes | The Times of Israel.

A new report indicates that ‘amateurish’ Hezbollah or Quds Force attacks around the world are giving way to more polished operations

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on parade (photo credit: YouTube image capture)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran’s elite Quds Force and Hezbollah terrorists are learning from a series of botched terror attacks over the past two years and pose a growing threat to the US and other Western targets as well as Israel, a prominent counterterrorism expert says.

Operating both independently and together, the groups are escalating their activities around the world, fueling worries in the US that they increasingly have the ability and the willingness to attack the US, according to a report by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. His report points to two attacks last year — one successful and one foiled by US authorities — as indications that the terror groups are adapting and are determined to take revenge on the West, including for its efforts to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program.

The report’s conclusions expand on comments late last year from US terrorism officials who told Congress that the Quds Force and Hezbollah, which often coordinate efforts, have become “a significant source of concern” for the US. The Quds Force is an elite wing of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, the defenders of Iran’s ruling clerics and their hold on power.

The report comes amid ongoing tensions between Iran and the West, including a persistent stalemate over scheduling six-party talks on Tehran’s nuclear program and anger over reports that the US and Israel were behind the Stuxnet computer attack that forced the temporary shutdown of thousands of centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.

More than 20 terror attacks by Hezbollah or Quds Force operatives were thwarted around the world between May 2011 and July 2012, with nine coming in the first nine months of 2012, Levitt said in the report.

“What is particularly striking is how amateurish the actions of both organizations have been: Targets were poorly chosen and assaults carried out with gross incompetence,” Levitt said in the report. “But as the groups brush off the cobwebs and professionalize their operations, this sloppy tradecraft could quickly be replaced by operational success.”

Levitt is a senior fellow and director of the Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. From 2005 to early 2007, he served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department.

The two key attacks, the report said, include the plot by a Texas man to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. Manssor Arbabsiar, a US citizen with an Iranian passport, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and murder-for-hire last October and told the court that Iranian military officials were involved in the planning. Iran has denied that link.

His effort was foiled when he tried to hire what he thought was a drug dealer to carry out the attack in a Washington restaurant, but the man was actually a US Drug Enforcement Administration confidential source.

While that plot highlighted a growing willingness to wage attacks in the US, a second, more successful plot in Bulgaria suggests that they may be learning from their missteps.

Last July, a bomb killed a bus driver and five Israelis, and wounded 30 others, when it struck a tour bus in a caravan. Officials have blamed the attack on Hezbollah.

Other attacks over the past two years have also identified repeated links between Hezbollah and the Quds force — a long alliance that historically involved the Iranians arming, funding or training the Lebanon-based Islamists and using them as proxies.

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last September, Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that “the Quds force, as well as the group that it coordinates with, Lebanese Hezbollah” posed a significant source of concern.

FBI associate deputy director Kevin Perkins added, “We look at it as a serious threat, and that we are focusing intelligence analysts and other resources on that on a daily basis to monitor that threat and to make determinations is it increasing, is it dropping off and the like.”

According to Levitt, the efforts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program have only made Tehran more eager to see a successful attack carried out. He said that both Hezbollah and the Quds Force have been hampered by the increased security triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

More Info On Fordow Nuke Facility Explosion – And Of A Possible Hezbollah Attack On Israel | Opinion – Conservative.

Iranian defector and ex-Revolutionary Guards commander Reza Khaliliwent into more detail in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, calling it the biggest act of sabotage in decades:

Speaking to the Post on Monday, Khalili expressed confidence that the alleged blast will receive “further coverage in the US,” and that “more information” will become available to verify the incident.
“This is the center of the Iranian nuclear program. It’s essential for the regime, its activities, and its nuclear program. If such a blow was given to Fordow, it definitely harms [Iran] drastically. They were reaching for 20 percent uranium enrichment, and were increasing output,” he added.

Kahlili said a second mysterious blast occurred in Tehran last week, at an IRGC base called “21 Hamza.” “There are injuries, and there have been arrests of IRGC members who are being questioned. The Intelligence Ministry suspects sabotage,” he added.

Even more to the point, without admitting any Israeli participation, Israeli intel sources have confirmed that the blast at Fordow occurred according to the London Times:

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

The Iranians actually went to the trouble of issuing a formal denial, which doesn’t explain the cordon around Fordos, the shaking of buildings as far away as three miles or the road closures between Qom and Tehran, which I was able to confirm independently.

And there appears to be a connection between the Fordow blast, Hezbollah and a possible strike against Israel.

Kahlili’s interview with the Jerusalem Post (fourth paragraph) mentions that the Iranian regime blames Israel for the Fordow blast and has made a decision to order its proxy Hezbollah launch a missile strike against Israel.

More conformation of Kahili’s information is the redeploying of two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries on the Israel/Lebanon border.

Hezbollah has constructed camps near sites in Syria known to contain chemical weapons, obviously with an eye towards adding them to its arsenal as the Assad regime totters. Both the Obama Administration and Israel have stated that Hezbollah obtaining these WMD’s would be a red line.

At the same time, Iran recently sent large amounts of troops and armor into Syria, publicly stating that an attack on its ally Assad was an attack on Iran.

It’s quite possible that if Iran plans to strike at Israel, part of the conditions of increased Iranian help for Assad would be the release to Hezbollah of some of his WMD arsenal.

Is Hezbollah’s Sheik Nasrallah really prepared to start another war with Israel? A missile strike, whether it involved WMDs or not would do that, and as I reported here before, this time, since Hezbollah essentially controls Lebanon’s government, Israel would treat it as a war between Israel and Lebanon, not just Israel and Hezbollah.

It’s hard to say. Hezbollah has still not totally recovered from the 2006 War with Israel, especially in terms of its political capital within Lebanon. And it is still pre-occupied with events in Syria, where its fighters are still engaged in combat with the Sunni insurgents. A war with Israel might be ill-advised, especially with Hamas still licking its wounds over the damage to its missile arsenal during Defensive Cloud last year.

But if Hezbollah’s Iranian masters are playing the hand organ, the monkey’s probably going to dance.

Stay tuned…

U.N. nuclear watchdog backs Iran’s denial of Fordow blast | Reuters.

( Not in UN’s interest to force Iran to retaliate either. – JW )

(Reuters) – The U.N. atomic watchdog made clear on Tuesday it had seen no sign of any explosion at one of Iran’s most sensitive nuclear plants, backing up Tehran’s denial of media reports that such an incident had taken place last week.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an unusual move, made a brief statement after some Israeli and Western media at the weekend reported there had been significant damage at the underground Fordow uranium enrichment facility.

The site is at the centre of Israeli and Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear program as the Islamic state refines uranium there to a fissile concentration that takes it closer to potential atom bomb material. Iran denies any such aim.

IAEA inspectors regularly visit Iranian nuclear sites, including the one at Fordow, and the U.N. agency suggested in its comment thatthey had been at the facility after the reports of an explosion there.

“We understand that Iran has denied that there has been an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with our observations,” IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in an emailed statement in response to a question.

The United States said on Monday it did not believe the reports of an explosion at Fordow, which is buried deep underground to protect it against any enemy attacks.

Iran described the news stories as Western propaganda designed to influence upcoming nuclear negotiations.

Wrangling over dates and location have delayed resumption of talks between global powers and Iran aimed at reaching a diplomatic settlement to the decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program and avert the threat of a Middle East war.

SABOTAGE ALLEGATIONS

In late 2011, the plant at Fordow began producing uranium enriched to 20 percent fissile purity, compared with the 3.5 percent level needed for nuclear energy plants.

This higher level of enrichment represents a significant step towards the fissile concentration that would be needed in any attempt to build atomic bombs.

Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and aimed at producing electricity. It says it needs 20 percent uranium to fuel a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Several U.N. Security Council resolutions have ordered Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment. The Islamic Republic says it is its “right” under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to refine uranium to produce reactor fuel.

Iran has accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage its nuclear program through cyber attacks and the assassination of its nuclear scientists. Washington has denied any role in the killings, while Israel has declined to comment.

No government has taken responsibility for the Stuxnet computer virus that destroyed centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2010, but it has been widely reported to have been a U.S.-Israeli project.

Israel, believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, has hinted at possible military action against Iran if sanctions and diplomacy fail to resolve the nuclear stand-off.

(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Andrew Heavens)