WarSclerotic

Barak: US has plans for ‘surgica… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

The United States has prepared plans for a “surgical” military operation to delay Iran’s nuclear program in the event that diplomatic efforts to thwart Tehran’s drive for nuclear weapons capability fail, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with The Daily Beast on Friday.

Speaking from Switzerland, where he is attending the Davos World Economic Forum, Barak challenged the notion that a military operation against Iran would develop into a “full fledged war the size of the Iraqi war or even the war in Afghanistan.”

“What we basically say is that if worse comes to worst, there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won’t work because the world is determined to block them,” Barak told The Daily Beast.

The defense minister stated that, while the US was once heavy-handed in its attempts to carry out pinpointed military actions, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, the United States has “prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels. So it is not an issue of a major war or a failure to block Iran. You could under a certain situation, if worse comes to worst, end up with a surgical operation.”

Barak said that even a small-scale series of surgical strikes was a last resort, and that Israel’s preference would be to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat diplomatically.

Barak called for harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic, but noted that he did not believe the diplomatic path was likely to succeed in halting Iran’s nuclear drive given Russia and China’s tendency to thwart harsher measures in the United Nations.

Iran accused of dragging feet on meeting again with 6 global powers for nuclear talks | Fox News.

European officials are accusing Iranians of dragging their feet on plans for nuclear talks with six top global powers. A diplomat told Reuters on Friday that although a meeting was once a possibility in January, talks likely will be delayed until February.

The European Union’s foreign policy head, Catherine Ashton, is coordinating between Iran and representatives from six nations — the U.S., Britain, China, Russia, France, and Germany — to try to sway the Iranians to scale back their nuclear activity.

Diplomacy between the countries has been stalled since last June, when talks ended with no clear directives.

The West has long suspected Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapon capability, and that possibility has raised concerns that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear installations, which could spark a major Middle East conflict.

Envoys from the six countries were hoping to meet with Iranian officials again after the U.S. presidential election, in December or January, but the talks never materialized.

EU diplomats and Iranian officials have met to try to organize a new sit-down. But the European representatives say Tehran has not committed to a location or date. A European diplomat — speaking on condition of anonymity — told Reuters there was still no firm agreement on a meeting.

“We showed flexibility when it came to date and venue. We want to present our refreshed offer (to Iran) but didn’t get the opportunity to do so,” the diplomat said.

Last May, discussions in Baghdad focused on a proposal to stop Iran’s production of higher-grade enriched uranium in exchange for supplying Iran with fuel for a reactor. No details were available on any new offer.

Tehran maintains its enrichment work is for energy and medical purposes and denies allegations it’s attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

For years, the six nations have encouraged diplomacy with Iran and imposed economic sanctions to force the country to comply with United Nations demands to suspend all activities related to producing enriched uranium.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has also been meeting with Iranian officials to allow the U.N. agency to complete its investigation into suspected nuclear bomb research in Iran.

Think again: One nomination worse t… JPost – Magazine – Opinion.

Photo by: REUTERS/Mian Kursheed

Barry Rubin of the Gloria Center, one of the Middle East’s shrewdest analysts, was in an unkind mood recently, as he himself admitted.

The common element joining President Barack Obama’s three appointments last week – Senator John Kerry for secretary of state, Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense and John Brennan as director of the CIA – is, in Rubin’s view, that “they are all stupid people” of the worst sort – “stupid, arrogant people, with terrible ideas.”

Unfortunately, there is little to contradict Rubin’s harsh judgment. Each holds views that make it impossible for them to understand Middle East reality, much less do anything about it. Hagel, for instance, is a “realist,” which is, as we shall see, a doctrine having little to do with reality. Among the central planks of realist doctrine is that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is at the center of all the Middle East’s problems, and that the United States’ interests are significantly damaged by the lack of resolution of that conflict.

Speaking at J Street’s first annual conference in 2009, Hagel said, “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central, not peripheral, to US vital security interests in combating terrorism, preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, stability in the Middle East and US and global energy security.”

Each one of these examples is patently absurd.

Though Iran might use a nuclear weapon to strike at Israel, that is not the primary purpose for which it seeks nuclear weapons. Ayotallah Khomeini defined the 1979 Iranian revolution from the start as an Islamic revolution. He and his successors identified nuclear weapons as a potentially important tool in spreading that revolution and immunizing Iran to countermeasures from the West.

And Israel has precious little to do with the instability of the Middle East, as the events of the past year have made abundantly clear. Israel has not kept Egypt from being able to grow enough grain so that it does not have to import from the rest of the world (though Israel would certainly be able to help Egypt in this regard).

Israel does not keep Saudi men from working, or looking down on those who do. Israel has nothing to do with the second-class status of women in almost every Muslim society, and the lost potential that follows.

Israel is not responsible for the high rates of illiteracy and paucity of academic production of the Arab world (though again it could help to alleviate them). The Sunni-Shi’ite divide that continues to roil Muslim countries pre-existed the State of Israel by more than a millennium.

Israel was not an issue in during Arab Spring, or in the Libyan civil war, or in the Syrian civil war. Israel did not cause Iraq to invade Kuwait or have anything to do with the Iraq-Iran war that claimed more than a million lives. Israel had nothing to do with the Algerian civil war, or with the slaughter of 400,000 black Muslims in Darfur by their co-religionists. The blood shed in all the Israel-Arab wars since 1948 is chicken feed in terms of Middle East bloodletting.

It is the perpetual backwardness of Arab and Muslim societies that causes such resentment and hatred of the West, of which the US is the principal representative – the Big Satan. Al-Qaida’s propaganda justifications for the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon centered on the US, and its defiling presence on holy Saudi soil. Israel was only added later as an afterthought because attacks on Israel have a special status for much of the Western Left. But again, Israel bears no responsibility for the near universal backwardness of Muslim societies.

In short, to refute one of “realism’s” central premises all one needs is half a brain cell and eyes in one’s head.

ONE OF the central corollaries of the realist emphasis on the centrality of the Arab-Israel conflict is that America should impose a settlement on the conflict.

In 2002, when Palestinian terrorism against Israelis was still in full swing – terrorism which Hagel justified as “desperate men do[ing] desperate things” – he opined that the time for negotiations had passed. “An endgame must be brought to the front, now,” he said.

In short, the US must impose a solution on the parties, even when the Palestinians have yet to show any willingness to accept Israel’s existence.

But if the Palestinians refuse to accept a two-state solution, such an imposed solution, however it was drawn, would be life-threatening for Israel, since it would certainly put Israel in a less defensible situation than today.

It is not just Israelis, but also impartial observers of the Middle East who have finally come to see that there is no Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s existence. As Walter Russell Mead wrote last week, “The real problem is what it has been for 60 years, deeply rooted Palestinian opposition to a two-state solution.”

Mead even argues that the Palestinian opposition is not wholly irrational, for the truth is that “the West Bank and Gaza together are not enough to support the existent Palestinian population. But rational or not, as long as no Palestinian leader could sell a twostate solution to his people, the Israelis cannot help but doubt that a peace agreement would be honored even if it were signed. They will not trust to the tender mercies of Hagel and President Obama.”

IN MANY respects, the nomination of Obama’s counter- terrorism chief John Brennan to head the CIA is an even worse disaster. How can someone whose vision has been blinded by the dictates of political correctness possibly give the president the quality of analysis he needs? Unfortunately, Brennan, like Hagel, has been deliberately picked by the president precisely because of his ardent political correctness.

Brennan oversaw the purging from all US government counter-terrorism and law enforcement manuals any reference to radical Islam, Islamism or jihad.

Jihad, he writes, is a “holy struggle to purify oneself or one’s community,” a line that could have been taken directly out of the propaganda of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated American Muslim organizations.

He deliberately ignores the fact that jihad in contemporary Islamic discourse almost always refers to military action to spread Islam.

He consistently defines the terrorist threat as al- Qaida and affiliated organizations, without ever mentioning or appearing to notice that al-Qaida is only one of a large constellation of Islamic terrorist organizations.

And in a discussion of the sources of terrorism, he writes of violent extremists as victims of “political, economic, and social” forces, but never of religious forces.

Religion, or the one particular religion whose adherents are behind almost every terrorist attack in the world, is never allowed to intrude into Brennan’s analyses. Thus he told Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate secular group, and has urged the greater inclusion of Hezbollah into the Lebanese political system. His confidence in the moderating impact of political participation is apparently unlimited, when it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, and we are today witnessing the fruits of what can only be described as a pro-Muslim Brotherhood policy in Egypt.

Brennan claimed as proof of Hezbollah’s path toward moderation the fact that it includes in its ranks doctors and lawyers. Well, Hezbollah’s arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, Osama bin Laden’s replacement Al-Zahrawi, the pioneer of air hijacking George Habash, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Josef Mengele were all doctors, and Yasser Arafat an engineer.

That is hardly proof of moderation.

Brennan’s analysis is on par with the 80-page government report on the Fort Hood massacre, which made no mention of the perpetrator’s religious beliefs, even though he shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he shot 13 people.

The report even managed to conclude that “religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor,” though it did not suggest what other risk factors might have led to Dr. Nidal Hassan’s murderous rampage.

After a while, such relentless political correctness and whitewashing of Islamic extremism cannot but cloud analysis. What cannot be mentioned is eventually not thought about. Thus the Christmas airplane bomber, who narrowly missed blowing up a commercial airliner carrying over 200 passengers above Detroit, was never placed on an American watchlist, despite warnings from British intelligence based on the terrorist’s father’s expressed concerns about his growing religious fanaticism.

BRENNAN’S ENTIRE career seems to consist of one faulty judgment and failure after another. On the eve of the Obama presidency, he recommended rapprochement with Iran based on a policy of advancing rather than trying to thwart Iranian interests. Since the expressed goal of the current Iranian regime is the spread of its own form of theocracy, it is hard to know what “Iranian interests” he had in mind. In any event, we know how well that turned out.

Brennan enthusiastically endorsed the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had halted work on its nuclear weapons program based on a ridiculously narrow definition of nuclear weapons program, which did not even include the 3,000 centrifuges openly enriching uranium at Iran’s Natanz site as the report was issued. The opening statement, which was belied by almost everything else in the report, was carefully crafted by the US intelligence community to forestall president Bush from seeking new sanctions against Iran and even more so from military action.

Even The New York Times now admits that US counter- terrorism policy overseen by Brennan in North Africa, starting with the decision to intervene in Libya, has been a “comprehensive failure.”

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Brennan is no friend of Israel. Besides his endorsements of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, he also recommended that the US engage Hamas. Again, the failure is the total inability to take seriously Hamas’s theological call for the extinction of Israel. He often refers to Jerusalem as Al-Quds, and when addressing a Muslim group at NYU complained, “It’s tough, but we are not going to separate ourselves from Israel.”

Could someone in the White House be sending Israel a message?

The writer is director of Jewish Media Resources, has written a regular column in The Jerusalem Post Magazine since 1997, and is the author of eight biographies of modern Jewish leaders.

‘Iran would definitely use nucle… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Iran in 2013: deal …or no deal.

Al Arabiya

By Naser al-Tamimi

Friday, 25 January 2013

Several developments indicate that Iran’s nuclear Program is at a critical juncture in 2013. This month, U.N. inspectors and Iran failed to reach an agreement on the methodology over inspections related to Iran’s nuclear Program. The U.N. agency (IAEA) said “important differences” between the two sides remained. Iran acknowledged that it still has differences with the IAEA. The two sides agreed to hold another round of negotiations on Feb. 12. Meanwhile, another round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers, (comprising the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and plus Germany) could resume soon.

Furthermore, the U.S. Institute for Science and International Security published an assessment that Iran would be able to produce material for at least one nuclear bomb by mid-2014. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury sanctions penalizing banks that facilitate financial transactions with Iran go into effect on Feb 6. The United States also late last year set next March deadline for Iran to start cooperating in substance with a U.N. nuclear agency investigation, warning Tehran the issue may otherwise be referred to the U.N. Security Council. Additionally, Washington’s six-monthly review of whether buyers of Iranian crude are continuing to reduce their shipments will come in May or June. Added to this, the internal situation with the 11th election of the president of Iran and the local council elections are scheduled to be held on June 14, 2013.

In this context, there are some factors that will play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the crises. However, in the light of Iran’s internal dynamics; and Obama administration’s own domestic and international reasons, it is difficult to imagine a comprehensive agreement, or what can be called “grand deal” could be struck between Tehran and the West, in the next few months. At the same time, there is no evidence to suggest that war is imminent.

Economy of ‘resistance’

 With the diplomatic impasse over the Iranian nuclear program remaining in place, there is little chance that the sanctions will be lifted in 2013.  

Naser AlTamimi

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently stated that Tehran needed to tailor the economy to subvert Western sanctions, saying the current approach would be a “losing strategy.” The next day, the White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Ahmadinejad’s latest warnings on the state of Iran’s economy were the latest sign that “the comprehensive international, multinational effort to sanction Iran has been effective in the sense that it has had a profound impact on the Iranian economy.”

Indeed, all indications are that sanctions against Iran are really starting to bite. The Iran’s economy enters 2013 significantly worse than a year ago, particularly with higher inflation and unemployment than at the beginning of last year. Sharp currency depreciation of Iran’s national currency rial (or toman) and inflation estimated around 30 percent. Shamseddin Hosseini, Iran’s economy and finance minister, acknowledged recently the impact of the sanctions, when he told state television that Iran was facing a 50 percent drop in oil revenue. Hosseini also said that the fall in oil revenue would lead to a reduction in government revenue in the current Iranian year (ending March 2013), from a projected $117 billion to $77 billion.

With the diplomatic impasse over Iran’s nuclear program remaining in place, there is little chance that the sanctions will be lifted in 2013. As oil sales provide around 80 percent of export earnings and 50-60 percent of government revenue, the coming year could be even tougher. The World Bank’s in its bi-yearly latest report “Global Economic Prospects 2013” indicates that Iran’s GDP contracted modestly by an estimated 1 percent in 2012. It is also expected that Iran’s economic growth will remain broadly flat in 2013, rising a modest 0.6 percent, “as international sanctions dampen crude oil production and economic activity”. Iran’s Real GDP growth was on an average of 4.6 percent during the period 2000-2009. Meanwhile, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) projects Iran’s fiscal position will be weak in the in 2013 and the Iranian central bank will struggle to maintain the value of the rial as its access to foreign exchange is crimped by sanctions.

It has become clear that Iran is facing major economic problems, which in turn may increase public pressure on the government, not to mention the problems in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran’s strained relations with the GCC countries. Nevertheless, with Iran still defiant and President Ahmadinejad warning about the economy could be indication that he expects a long period of sanctions. Or perhaps he is following the position of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei who recently warned that “the enemy” had targeted the economy, preventing its growth in an effort “to detach people from the Islamic system.” The solution, he said, was “the economy of resistance.” Or as Abolghasem Bayyenat an independent foreign policy analyst covering Iran’s foreign policy developments wrote in “Foreign Policy In Focus” that “the self-sustaining nature of Iran’s economy, Iran’s geographical location, and its political influence in the greater Middle East, all seem to give Iranian officials confidence that they will be able to weather the storm.” However, the EIU noted that “Iran’s weakening economy may reach a point where diplomatic posturing is no longer affordable and the leadership is forced into a compromise.” For now, though, Iran remains defiant.

“Crippling” Sanctions

Sanctions have been a key part of the U.S. strategy to force Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program. Indeed, the “Summary of Major U.S. Export Enforcement, Economic Espionage, Trade Secret, and Embargo-Related Criminal Cases” or “Enforcement Summary” published recently by the U.S Department of Justice, (cover the period between January 2007 to December 2012), and is a result from investigations by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and other law enforcement agencies, indicates that the export enforcement and embargo-related cases of 2012 addressed by the Enforcement Summary, more than half appear to involve exports to Iran or China (less than a third of cases did in 2011).

U.S. Treasury sanctions penalizing banks that facilitate financial transactions with Iran go into effect Feb. 6. This means Iran’s international oil customers, even those with U.S State Department waivers exempting them from U.S. Treasury penalties for purchasing Iranian oil, (China, India, Turkey, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Taiwan) will officially be at risk of being cut off from the U.S. banking system if they allow transfers of Iran’s oil revenues back to the Iranian Central Bank. So, states funds being used to pay for oil must remain in a bank account in the purchasing country and can be used only oil earnings to purchase “permissible” services and goods, such as food, medicine, and basic medical equipment, from those oil customers as imports back into Iran. Consequently, many experts expect that trend to continue in 2013, with aggressive enforcement the norm.

China’s precarious position

 The nominations of Charles Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Kerry for Secretary of State hint that the new team favours diplomacy.  

Naser AlTamimi

Almost all of Iran’s oil exports now go to China, South Korea, Japan and India. The additional cuts Asian importers will make in 2013 would translate into a fall in sales of about 135,000 barrels per day (bpd), resulting in a loss of about $ 5 billion in 2013, according to Reuters calculations. Iran has a particular dependence on China, which now takes around one-half of its oil exports. Economic ties between China and Iran grew stronger over the past three decades. Bilateral trade, which was a mere $1.6 billion in the 1980s, reached a significant $45 billion in 2011, according to latest IMF data. The most important component in China-Iran bilateral trade is oil.

As the EIU puts it, “this is a precarious position, as Chinese purchases of Iranian crude are in the hands of two state-run operators, Unipec and Zhuhai Zhenrong.” Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal reported that China Nonferrous Metal Group has signed a $712m contract to help fund the development of a steel plant in Iran, “signalling that Beijing isn’t ready to join Western nations in increasing pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.” Indeed, China has stood firm in the U.N. Security Council against further sanctions against Iran, but it is also well aware of the importance of its economic and political relations with the U.S. and the GCC countries, Saudi Arabia in particular.

However, a new test of China’s resolve to maintain its economic and political ties with Iran, and Washington’s readiness to confront Beijing, will come in May or June, 2013 with the next six-monthly review, (On Dec. 7, 2012 Clinton announced the renewal of Iran sanctions exceptions for 9 countries including China, which will be able to continue buying reduced quantities of Iranian crude oil for the next 180 days without incurring U.S. penalties), of whether buyers of Iranian crude are continuing to reduce their shipments.

So, What Next?

Within this context, where the crises is heading? Many indicators demonstrate that the current U.S. administration wants to give diplomacy a chance to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. The first, by drawing a red line of preventing weaponization, not the nuclear program itself, Obama’s administration signalling that as far as the Iranians do not cross that “red line” the military action is not imminent. Above all, the nominations of Charles Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Kerry for Secretary of State hint that the new team favours diplomacy. However, Israel could complicate the whole picture as it refused to rule out a military action, although most analysts doubt it has the military capability to carry out an effective strike alone.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. strategist and national security adviser to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, reflected that sentiment when he recently wrote in the Washington Post that America should look for “some alternative U.S. strategic commitment, provide a more enduring and less reckless arrangement for neutralizing the potential Iranian nuclear threat than a unilateral initiation of war.” Interestingly, most of U.S. top military officers agree with that assessment. Speaking at the “American Security Project Institute” event in mid-January, 2013, Admiral William Fallon the former head of U.S. Central Command went step further than similar remarks by other U.S. officials, to say even only delaying the progress of Iran by several years would be difficult, potentially taking several weeks of sustained fighting. He added the “bottom line is it’s not going to be a one-time shot,” hinting at the Israeli threat to strike Iran.

On the hand, George Friedman, the founder and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor, summarized Tehran’s strategy as Iran does not race towards the threshold where it can rapidly assemble a nuclear bomb, but “the process of developing nuclear weapons itself inflated Iran’s importance, while inducing the United States to offer incentives (…) and avoiding more dangerous military action.”

Indeed both sides appear keen to avoid an escalation, however progress towards settlement of the nuclear issue is unlikely unless the P5+1 powers offer Iran significant sanctions relief and/or recognition of the right to enrich uranium. Iran’s first vice-president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi told the Financial Times that he expected Iran’s political scene to “move from radicalism to rationality” in 2013 and said that this would help “foil” the impact of sanctions. But he warned Western policy makers not to expect any change in the country’s nuclear policies. Overall, as EIU puts it “we expect an oscillating pattern of a ratcheting-up of tensions followed by negotiations to continue on the coming years.”

As long as Iran does not overtly cross the U.S. “red line” of weaponization, the U.S. policy will likely remain perusing undeclared form of “containment” policy. Jamsheed Choksy, professor of Iranian, Central Eurasian, and International studies at Indiana University, sums up the situation in a very interesting words: “The status quo is likely to prevail and Tehran will keep getting closer to the bomb even though doing so is taking an awful toll on the daily lives of Iranians and testing the nerves of Americans, Europeans, and Israelis.”

Germany: Hurtful comments damage Mideast p… JPost – Middle East.

IAEA to Israel: Iran nuclear row… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Barak in Davos: Syria serves as warning – Israel News, Ynetnews.

At World Economic Forum, defense minister says Israel cannot trust world to come to Israel’s aid ‘if worst comes to worst’

Associated Press

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Thursday that global inaction on the bloodbath in Syria is a warning to many countries that they cannot count on outsiders’ help – no matter how dire the circumstances.

He suggested that this applied to Israel itself, discouraging its people from backing risks for peace, such as the return of strategic Palestinian territories in exchange for various assurances.

“Many of our best friends are telling us … ‘Don’t worry, if worst comes to worst the world will inevitably (help),'” Barak said at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. “It cannot be taken for granted.”

Devastation in Aleppo, Syria (Photo: EPA)

The Syrian civil war was a major topic at Davos this year. This was evidenced by the startling vehemence displayed by even Barak and President Shimon Peres – whose country is technically in a state of war with Syria – as they lamented the killing of Syrian innocents.

“It’s on the screens all around the world,” Barak said, tens of thousands of people “slaughtered by their own leader and the world doesn’t move.”

His conclusion: Even “unspeakable atrocities … taking place in front of the eyes of the whole world” cannot guarantee “that there will be enough sense of purpose, sense of direction, unity of political will, readiness to translate it into action … in a way that will put an end to it.”

He said Israel should nonetheless overcome its concerns and find a way to withdraw from the West Bank in order to avoid becoming inseparable from it in a single state that will ultimately have an Arab majority.

On the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, Barak said that Israel believed there “should be a readiness and capability to launch a surgical operation” if diplomacy and sanctions fail.

He said it was in US interests to be able to project credibility among future allies in Asia by ensuring that it makes good on promises to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.

John Kerry: Iran policy is ‘not containment’ – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

( Not “we will prevent,” rather “we will do what we can…”  –  JW )

During his confirmation hearing as Secretary of State in Washington D.C., Kerry said: We will do what we can to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo by Reuters

By Reuters | Jan.24,2013 | 6:31 PM | 5

Netanyahu lauds Kerry appointment as U.S. Secretary of State

By Reuters | Jan.24,2013 | 6:31 PM | 7

Senator John Kerry the United States’ next Secretary of State at a Senate hearing held in Washington D.C. on Thursday.

John Kerry delivered a message to Iran during his confirmation hearing. “The President has made it definitive – we will do what we can to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. I repeat here today: our policy is not containment,” he said.

“I will work to give diplomacy every effort to succeed. But no one should mistake our resolve to reduce the nuclear threat,” continued Kerry.

During the hearing, Kerry was asked about his position regarding negotiations with Iran, regarding its nuclear program. He said that the United States wants the Iran to honor its international obligations.

“The president said he is ready to enter a bilateral dialogue…we all hope to make progress on the diplomatic front. I am saying this to the Iranians and I hope they are listening. It is not hard to prove that a nuclear program is for peaceful purposes – other countries have done this. It takes strict inspections and clear standards. The Iranians need to understand that there is no other agenda – if their program is for peaceful purposes they can prove it and this is what we are seeking.”

President Obama nominated Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in December, calling the veteran U.S. senator the “perfect choice” for America’s top diplomat as he began reshaping his national security team for a second term.

Obama settled on Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, after the front-runner, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, withdrew from consideration last week.

Kerry, 69, will take over from Clinton, who has been consistently rated as the most popular member of the president’s Cabinet.

Pillar of Defense: Objectives and Implicatio​ns – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog served as chief of staff and military secretary to four Israeli defense ministers over the last decade, before which he served as head of the IDF Strategic Planning Division. He is currently an International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute

► More from this writer

The objectives and implications of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza during November 14-21, 2012, can only be assessed in the wider context of the new Middle East that has emerged from the earthquake known as the Arab Spring.

Israel’s Announced Objectives

The objectives defined by Israel’s top political leadership were rather modest. As articulated by Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the outset of the operation, they were to enhance Israel’s deterrence vis-à-vis Hamas and other factions in Gaza; to deny Hamas and these other factions certain strategic capabilities, especially longer-range rockets; and to restore normalcy to the life of Israeli citizens, hundreds of thousands of whom had been driven into shelters by the daily barrage of rockets. Some claim these objectives were too modest; in actuality, they were well calibrated.

An asymmetric war against an organization such as Hamas, that is at one and the same time a terror organization, a political party, and a paramilitary group both nesting in civilian-populated areas and targeting civilians, constitutes a difficult challenge. Two different kinds of objectives may be set for such an operation. On the one hand, one can focus the objective on enhancing deterrence, namely, hit the terrorists hard enough to give them an interest in a ceasefire for as long as possible, deny them certain capabilities, and weaken their motivation to employ violence against you. On the other hand, one can set a more ambitious, maximalist objective of dismantling their terror capabilities. In this case, that would have entailed a ground operation in Gaza comparable to Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank at the height of the Second Intifada, which would have required very large-scale forces operating in Gaza for a long period.

Both in the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead and in the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s government opted for the first objective, not the more ambitious one of dismantling Gaza’s terror infrastructure or even toppling the Hamas government. In 2008, the Israeli government debated the same issue. Although some officials pushed for a broader operation in Gaza, ultimately the government decided not to go too far, even though it did order a ground operation. The IDF had told the government that a Defensive Shield-type operation to eliminate Gaza’s terror infrastructure would take many months – some even said a year; and subsequently a difficult problem would arise: to whom would Gaza be handed over, and what would be Israel’s exit strategy?

The 2012 operation, carried out against the background of a dramatically transformed Middle East, posed even more complex challenges, including the possible undermining of the fragile peace with Egypt. Israel also faces uncertainties along its northern borders with Syria and Lebanon, and an ongoing critical situation regarding Iran’s nuclear program which may come to a head in a matter of months. Given all these considerations, the government was right to determine more limited objectives. It appears that the basic objective was achieved: Hamas was hit hard militarily, resulting for the time being in nearly absolute quiet along Israel’s border with Gaza.

Facing a Complex Aftermath

The realities, however, are still more nuanced and complex. What happened in Gaza is a microcosm of current developments in the Middle East, where new forces have arisen. The most prominent is political Islam, first and foremost the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt that must be taken into account when dealing with Gaza. When Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the Hosni Mubarak-led Egyptian government quietly encouraged Israel to destroy Hamas, and expressed disappointment when this was not accomplished.

The situation now, of course, is different; Hamas is essentially the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and in a sense heralded the rise of political Islam by winning the 2006 Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections and then taking over Gaza in a bloody coup in June 2007. Whereas Mubarak’s government regarded Hamas as a threat to Egypt’s national security, the government of President Muhammad Morsi provides the Hamas regime with a political umbrella, and Israel was well aware that it had to maneuver in a different environment for Operation Pillar of Defense.

Moreover, an alignment of major Sunni powers in the region, including Qatar and Turkey, now joins Egypt and provides Hamas with an even wider umbrella. Already before Pillar of Defense, all these actors were helping Hamas break out of its political isolation and economic hardship. In October, the emir of Qatar made the first-ever state visit to Hamas in Gaza, pledging $450 million in financial support. Turkey, too, has given Hamas both political and financial support.

Major Sunni powers have been cooperating with the United States and the West on important issues and particularly against Iran and global jihadi elements; at the same time, these Sunni powers support Islamist actors in the region, including Islamist forces in Syria and Hamas in Gaza. In Egypt’s parliamentary elections, Qatar extended financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis funneled aid to the Salafists. Thus the West faces a serious challenge: major regional forces, that are considered allies in advancing and safeguarding important Western interests, support inherently anti-democracy and anti-West Islamists at the expense of more liberal national forces.

In the case of Hamas, there is a security advantage to this situation, alongside its very basic disadvantages. As evident during the recent crisis, Egypt would like to provide Hamas with political achievements. Yet, at the same time, as long as Cairo – sponsor to the ceasefire – wants to maintain a quiet border between Israel, Gaza, and Egypt and curb jihadi forces threatening the status quo there, and with Hamas having an affinity with the Morsi government contrary to its relations with Mubarak, the chances of Hamas upholding a ceasefire are greater, at least for the time being. In other words, a kind of trade-off emerges: Hamas offers quiet, and receives political and economic assistance from its supporters.

In the broader regional context, increased tensions along the Sunni-Shiite fault line constitute a major phenomenon in this new Middle East. It is evident almost everywhere – in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, and even in Saudi Arabia where there is a significant Shiite minority in the oil-rich Eastern Province. It is all the more evident in the relations between the major Sunni powers and Iran. In this regard, however, Gaza is a very unique case. Hamas in Gaza, even though a Sunni movement, was part of the radical, mostly-Shiite axis led by Iran along with Syria and Hizbullah. But since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, with Hamas unable to support Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime in Syria, tensions have arisen between Hamas and Iran, with Hamas declining in favor and losing financial support. When it comes to fighting Israel, however, Iran continues to back Hamas.

Hence, even though Hamas has replaced its Iranian political and economic umbrella with a Sunni one provided by Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, it still receives weapons from Iran. And even though the Sunni and Shiite camps are fighting each other, both, in different ways, provide assistance to Hamas in standing against Israel.

Interestingly, whereas in the past the Iranians would never admit supplying weapons to Hamas in Gaza, following the recent crisis they have publicly and proudly taken credit for it, and Hamas leaders have openly acknowledged it as well. The Iranians’ new candor can be explained by their concern about the Sunni umbrella. They want the credit for what is perceived across the Arab world as a successful show of resistance by Hamas during Israel’s operation in Gaza, including the targeting of Tel Aviv. They want it to be known that they give Hamas a more important kind of aid; whereas the Sunni states may have extended some financial support to Hamas, what Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah mockingly called “a penny and a half,” Iran provides the real thing – weapons, enabling Hamas to carry out the resistance against Israel. In other words, it is Iran that does more for Hamas’ anti-Israel struggle.

Extremist Islamists on the Rise

The events in Gaza highlight another aspect of the Arab Spring: the unleashing of the energies not only of so-called mainstream Islamic political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, but also of more extreme Salafist and jihadi streams. Such groups are resurgent across the Middle East; in North Africa (including the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya), in Egypt (whose parliament now includes Salafists for the first time), in Jordan (which recently thwarted major jihadi terror attacks on its soil), in Iraq (experiencing a significant spike in the level of terrorism) and in Syria (where Jabhat Al-Nusra, an off-shoot of Iraqi al-Qaeda, is the most potent anti-Assad fighting force).

Over the past few years jihadi groups have also mushroomed in Gaza and Sinai, cooperating with each other in planning and perpetrating attacks against Israeli targets from both areas. Indeed, these jihadi groups’ provocations were the main cause of the escalation between Israel and Gaza. Hamas was drawn in so as to maintain its credentials as a resistance movement, until finally Israel was compelled to launch Operation Pillar of Defense.

At present the challenge, first and foremost for the Hamas government in Gaza, is to enforce a ceasefire on all these groups. That was one of the Israeli conditions when negotiating the ceasefire, and the Egyptian document announcing and sponsoring the ceasefire made it binding on all factions in Gaza, with Hamas bearing ultimate responsibility. If it has the requisite political will, Hamas is capable of guaranteeing the ceasefire. It is such political will that has been lacking so far, with Hamas trying to maneuver between its responsibilities as a government and its wish to sustain its standing as a resistance movement. Operation Pillar of Defense, however, compelled Hamas to make a choice, and so far the organization has been enforcing the ceasefire on all the other groups.

The Palestinian Authority in Decline?

Another aspect of the changes underway in the Middle East is the tension between Islamists and nationalists, and it is well evident in the Palestinian context. Although Hamas was decisively beaten militarily, in the political sphere it scored points, mainly because of the above-mentioned Sunni political and economic umbrella it receives. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority was totally marginalized during the Gaza crisis. While Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal was in Cairo meeting with Morsi to work out the ceasefire terms, PA President Mahmoud Abbas tried to call Morsi – who would not take his call for five days. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Israel and Egypt to help craft the ceasefire, she visited Abbas in Ramallah for all of thirty minutes. It was also to extricate itself from this complete marginalization, exacerbated by the events in Gaza, that the Palestinian Authority went to the United Nations.

It remains to be seen how things will play out in the Palestinian context. Over the past few years, the West’s and Israel’s approach has been to highlight the differences between the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, on the one hand, and Gaza, on the other. It was to show that the nonviolent and potential partner for negotiations – the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank–could become a thriving entity under the stewardship of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad with his institution building, while violent Gaza under Hamas, openly calling for the destruction of Israel, was isolated and declining. The regional transformation, however, has produced almost a reverse picture. While the entity in Gaza is still far from economic prosperity, it now enjoys Sunni investments and has emerged from isolation, whereas the West Bank entity is on the verge of economic collapse. It is as yet unclear whether these two entities can reconcile with each other.

Iron Dome and Imminent Threats

From a military standpoint, Operation Pillar of Defense was different from Operation Cast Lead in several significant ways. Since 2008, Hamas and other Gaza factions have expanded their rocket arsenals to include longer-range rockets. In 2008, Israeli intelligence estimated that all factions in Gaza possessed around five thousand rockets; by the outbreak of Pillar of Defense they were estimated to have ten to twelve thousand, including, for the first time, rockets that could reach Tel Aviv. Indeed, those rockets were used during the recent conflict, albeit in a symbolic fashion.

Israel, however, did not sit idly by between these two operations, and the cardinal development of this conflict was the amazingly successful performance of the Israeli-manufactured Iron Dome rocket-defense system. The deterrence achieved by Operation Cast Lead afforded Israel some time, and Israel used this time to develop Iron Dome with its remarkable 85-percent success rate achieved during Operation Pillar of Defense, providing both security and a sense of security to the Israeli population. That, moreover, was one of the major reasons Israel did not ultimately feel it had to launch a ground operation into Gaza. In the absence of Iron Dome, the pressure in Israel – in response to casualties and damage – may well have pushed the government into such an operation, as occurred during Cast Lead.

Israel also applied lessons about conducting an asymmetric war against a terror organization and a paramilitary force firing at civilians from civilian areas. Israel selected its targets very carefully, using precision-guided munitions. The amount of civilian casualties and collateral damage on the Palestinian side was notably lower than in previous rounds. Israel also invested a good deal in preparing the nonmilitary elements of such asymmetric warfare, including legal, humanitarian, and media aspects. Such wars involve perceptions, not only military hostilities. In this latest round, Israel did better in that regard as well; for example, during the fighting itself, Israel allowed eighty truckloads of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The Challenge from Iran’s Proxy: Hizbullah

What are the implications of this latest round of hostilities on the Iranian challenge? Assuming there is a strike on Iran, be it Israeli or American, and the Iranians respond with missiles and rockets, directly and through proxies such as Hizbullah, have lessons been learned that could be applied to such a confrontation? If there is a showdown with Iran and it entails confronting Hizbullah, the situation will be totally different because Hizbullah now possesses some seventy thousand rockets, including many more longer-range and heavier rockets than Hamas; as Nasrallah has bragged, hundreds of them could be launched at Tel Aviv. Iron Dome can only intercept rockets with a certain range, and Israel still lacks a system that can intercept longer-range rockets. Such a system, David’s Sling, is under development, but will only be operational in another two years at the earliest.

If, then, Israel comes to face such a challenge along its northern border, it will have to behave differently. It cannot allow itself to be dragged into a war of attrition where thousands of rockets target Israeli cities incessantly without an interception system to stop them. In that case, and also applying lessons from the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Israel may well have to attack the national Lebanese infrastructure that supports Hizbullah, and may feel compelled to launch a ground operation at an early stage.

Maintaining the Ceasefire: Egypt’s Key Role

There is now a ceasefire in place, and the parties are talking continuously via Egypt about a supportive envelope of arrangements. This phase is critical. The most important element is to stop the smuggling of weapons through Egypt into Gaza. Those longer-range rockets did not fall from heaven; they came from somewhere and made their way through Egyptian soil. After Operation Cast Lead, Israel worked out understandings with the United States and Egypt about stopping the smuggling, but not much was done. The present government in Cairo must be persuaded that its own interest entails preventing this smuggling; the alternative is ongoing, intermittent warfare along its border. Such clashes also energize jihadi and other groups that Egypt does not want to be empowered. Thus, a key challenge is to get Egypt to do a better job in stopping the arms smuggling.

For example, the Fajr-5 rockets, some of which were launched at Tel Aviv, are each 6.5 meters long. Although these rockets are disassembled on their way to Gaza, then reassembled there, they are heavy rockets with heavy launchers; why, then, did no one observe them on their way to the border? The routes used for such smuggling (mostly coming from Libya and Sudan) are not that many and there must be a way to stop it.

Although Hamas, for its part, would like to see the lifting of what it calls the siege, it is not to be expected that the crossings between Israel and Gaza will turn from normally closed to normally open. After all, Gaza is a hostile entity. Even before Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel was allowing an average of over two hundred truckloads of goods and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.

Moreover, the Rafah crossing is open to people, and goods can pass through the Israeli crossing at Kerem Shalom. Indeed, both parties have agreed to allow the entry of construction materials to Gaza through the Rafah crossing on an ad hoc basis. At the same time, huge quantities of merchandise regularly pass through the tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, providing Hamas with a massive source of income. Tunnel owners have to register with Hamas authorities and pay taxes on anything that goes through. The issue, then, is not really one of lifting a siege. It is about being able to claim that Hamas has been victorious in resisting Israel and has gained something from the conflict. What should concern Israel first and foremost, however, is the arms smuggling, and that entails getting Egypt to do more.

In sum, Operation Pillar of Defense exemplifies how Israel has to cope with old, new, and emerging challenges to its national security in a much more complex environment than in the past, one characterized by dramatic changes and rising new negative forces