WarSclerotic

Israel jets keep up flights over southern Lebanon after air strike in neighboring Syria – CBS News.

BEIRUT Israeli warplanes flew over southern Lebanon Friday, two days after an air strike near Damascus, as Syria’s army chief of staff warned against testing his country’s capabilities.

Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub made his comments Thursday during a visit to some military units in the country. The Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of President Bashar Assad’s ruling party, quoted Ayoub as saying Syria will never change its stance “no matter how much the enemy carries out provocative and hostile acts.”

The latest overflights came after officials said Israel launched a rare air strike Wednesday inside Syria, targeting a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.

The general’s comments reflected increased tensions between Syria and Israel, which up to now has refrained from actions that could be interpreted as intervention in Syria’s civil war.

Israel had no comment on Lebanon’s description of its air force flights over the border region Friday. There were no reports of air strikes. Israeli planes frequently overfly south Lebanon, and Lebanon often files complaints with the U.N. over the incursions into its airspace.

According to a U.S. official, the Israeli air strikes Wednesday targeted trucks containing SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. The trucks were next to the research center the Syrians identified, and the strikes hit both the trucks and the facility.

The Syrian military denied that the target of the attack was a weapons convoy. It said low-flying Israeli jets crossed into the country over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and bombed a scientific research center.

The facility is in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus, about 10 miles from the Lebanese.

The air raid raised tension in the already boiling region as a result of Syria’s 22-month civil war that has left more than 60,000 people dead, according to the U.N. Many fear Syria’s civil war could spill to neighboring countries.

/ CBS

Syria and its close ally Iran threatened retaliation, and Arab nations along with Russia condemned the raid.

In Israel, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on Israeli media reports that its embassies were instructed to be alert of threats after Syria’s warnings. Syrian-allied Hezbollah has been accused of staging deadly attacks against Israelis abroad in past years.

At home, Israel positioned an additional “Iron Dome” rocket defense system in northern Israel on Thursday, security officials said, after moving another to the northern city of Haifa earlier this week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the battery’s placement with reporters.

Capt. Eytan Buchman, an Israeli military spokesman, said the military’s home front command has not raised its alert level.

Ayoub, the Syrian military commander, said the “battle with the Zionist enemy continues and did not stop.” He said rebel gunmen fighting against his troops are “tools of the Zionist entity.” Israel and Syria have been bitter enemies for six decades.

The uprising against Assad began in March 2011 with pro-reform protests and developed into a civil war. The Syrian government says there is no uprising in Syria but a conspiracy against the country because of its support of anti-Israeli groups.

“We know our capabilities and readiness to use all these capabilities at the suitable time,” Ayoub said. “Those who think they can test our armed forces are mistaken.”

In Lebanon, the security official said the Israeli fighter planes were seen heading from southern Lebanon toward the eastern Bekaa Valley that borders Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Butros Wanna, a resident in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun, near the border with Israel, said Israeli flights have been intense for the past four days.

“There is something not normal going on. Warplanes are always in the air,” said Wanna.

© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ex-general says targeted Syrian site produced non-conventional weapons | The Times of Israel.

A second defected Syrian general says Iranian, Russian experts ‘habitually present’ at facility reportedly struck by Israel

Former Syrian major general Adnan Sillu (photo credit: YouTube screen capture)

A former Syrian general said Friday that the facility reportedly struck by Israel on Wednesday, near Damascus, produced non-conventional weapons, in addition to conventional arms.

Maj. Gen. Adnan Sillu was previously in charge of the country’s chemical weapons training program.

Sillu’s comments, reported by Israel Radio, seemed inconsistent with those of another ex-general, who claimed on Thursday that there were no chemical weapons at the facility northwest of the Syrian capital.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal also said Thursday that Iranian and Russian experts were “habitually present” at the facility.

Both Sillu and al-Shallal defected to the ranks of the Syrian rebels last year.

On Wednesday, Syrian officials said Israeli planes struck a “research facility” northwest of the capital. The accusation came after reports from foreign news sources earlier in the day that said Israel had hit a weapons convoy near the Syria-Lebanon border that was transferring arms to the terror group Hezbollah.

Syrian Army Chief of Staff General Ali Abdullah Ayoub told troops on Thursday that the war with Israel is ongoing and will never end, according to state news agency SANA.

Ayoub also charged that Israel was backing rebel groups who were conducting “organized terrorism against the Syrian people.”

The two countries are formally in a state of war, but a tenuous ceasefire has held since 1974 despite multiple cross-border incidents in recent months.

On Thursday, Iran threatened Israel over the reported strike.

“The Israeli regime’s strike on Syria will have serious consequences for Tel Aviv,” one of Tehran’s deputy foreign ministers was quoted by the semi-official PressTV network as saying.

Iran is a major backer of both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Lebanon-based Hezbollah.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi condemned the airstrike on state television, calling it a clear violation of Syria’s sovereignty. His statement echoed similar condemnations from Russia, the Arab League and Hezbollah.

Ilan Ben Zion and Aaron Kalman contributed to this report.

Israel Hayom | Hagel’s Iranian ‘slip’.

Israel Hayom | From Tel Aviv to Tehran.

Dan Margalit

Israel Hayom | Syria, Hezbollah and Israel: Episode 1, Season 1.

‘Panicked’ Iran makes power move after nuke-site loss.

Bomb program stepped up at another facility to maintain posture with West

Published: 13 hours ago

by Reza Kahlili

Two days after WND’s exclusive report on the devastating explosions at Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, Tehran informed the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog it was going to install thousands of modern centrifuges at another of its nuclear facilities in an apparent move to restore its bargaining position.

In a Jan. 23 letter to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, Iran said it plans to install thousands of its upgraded centrifuges at the Natanz facility.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow today that Iran has every legal right under its obligations to the IAEA to enrich uranium, even with the more modern centrifuges.

Iranian media viewed Lavrov’s remarks as supportive of the decision. But the Russian minister also urged the Islamic regime to “freeze enrichment operations” during the negotiations with the 5-plus-1 countries, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

The White House this afternoon called Iran’s decision “provocative.”

As a former spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Reza Kahlili has the riveting, inside story, and you can read it in “A Time To Betray,” available at WND’s Superstore

Iran, whose economy has been battered by the international sanctions brought by its illicit nuclear program, apparently has lost much of its negotiating position since the incident at Fordow.

The facility, deep under a mountain and immune to conventional airstrikes and most bunker-busting bombs, already had the more modern centrifuges, which could enrich uranium two to three times faster to the 20-percent level, a critical step to weaponization grade.

As reported by WND Jan. 24 with updates on Jan. 27, 29 and 30, explosions rocked the Fordow site Jan. 21, trapping scores of workers, including 16 North Korean technicians and military attaches. The source for the information, a member of the security forces, said rescue efforts were delayed several days because of the fear of radiation.

The source said today some workers have been rescued and there have been casualties. He said a secret, underground tunnel with a stone-covered entrance door about two and a half miles away from the main entrances at Fordow is being used for the rescue efforts.

The source added that regime intelligence agents, since the explosion, have arrested dozens of security force members in charge of protecting Fordow.

The tunnel was built after the secret facility was revealed in 2009. The source said he would provide more information in the coming days to verify the explosions. The U.S. and Iran have denied the incident took place.

Iran’s unusual notification to the IAEA two days after the Fordow incident likely is an indication of panic by the regime. The incident at Fordow must have badly damaged its ability to enrich uranium to the 20-percent level. Accompanying the loss would be a weakening of Iran’s negotiating position with the world powers. Installing the same type of centrifuges at Natanz to keep the output of its highly enriched uranium at same level in its pursuit of a nuclear bomb would mitigate the loss.

European Council members discussed Fordow this morning, but the source said the world intelligence community does not have a full grasp of what really happened at the facility.

As WND previously reported, Iran received intelligence of planned covert operations on its nuclear facilities by Israel and other countries in the West in a last-ditch effort to avoid all-out war. Regime officials adopted a strategy to respond to Israel, with Quds Force members traveling to southern Lebanon to evacuate villages for a likely aggression against Israel.

The Quds Force is an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that reports directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Yesterday, Israeli Air Force jets, attacking inside Syria’s border with Lebanon, bombed a truck convoy that was apparently carrying missile parts and other equipment destined for Hezbollah. Quds Force members reportedly were in the convoy.

Ali Akbar Velayati, the senior adviser on international matters to the Islamic regime’s supreme leader, previously warned Israel that any attack on Syria would be construed as an attack on Iran. Today Iran, Syria and Hezbollah warned that there will be consequences for the attack.

Israeli fighter jets fly over the Damascus city Syria 30.01.2013 – YouTube.

Egypt on alert after opposition calls for … JPost – Middle East.

Egypt unraveling as demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood continue – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

( Too bad, so sad… _ JW )

President Morsi is facing a new round of riots, his government is teetering and the army has fired its own warning shot. Will he be able to quell the current unrest?

Demonstrations in Cairo. The country is transitioning from a revolution to an intifada. 

By The Associated Press | Feb.01,2013 | 8:32 AM

Facebook pages belonging to opposition movements in Egypt showed the routes to be taken by demonstrators. Plus, the demonstrations scheduled for today received a fitting name: “A Friday of Departure and Conclusion” − the reference being to the “departure” of the Muslim Brotherhood regime. This, incidentally, was the description given to demonstrations staged on February 4, 2011, a week before the collapse of the Mubarak regime.

Thousands indicated their intention to take part in Friday’s demonstrations, and the messages on the banners that will be unfurled will likely resemble those which became symbols of the revolution: “The people want the regime out,” “Morsi, go home,” and “Enough of the Muslim Brotherhood regime.”

Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi cut a day off a two-day visit to Germany this week. Before his trip, he found himself wallowing in the blood of the dozens of dead and the hundreds more who were injured in clashes held on the second anniversary of the revolution, and dealing with riots that erupted after a verdict was announced in a case involving a different tragedy. The court delivered death sentences to 21 out of 70 defendants accused of involvement in demonstrations that flared last year in the town of Port Said, following a turbulent soccer match; those riots resulted in 74 fatalities.

Responsibility this time rests with Morsi. Neither Mubarak nor the police are to blame, nor is the army, which until the beginning of the week was curbing its powers.

The tawdry political cloth stitched so arduously by Morsi has quickly begun to unravel. The Egyptian constitution, which was authorized hastily and coercively, is once again being scrutinized, and Morsi has already announced that he is prepared to incorporate revisions in the document. The new government he appointed, headed by Hesham Qandil, is liable to resign or be dismissed. And the army has now fired its own warning shot.

“Disagreement on running the affairs of the country may lead to the collapse of the state,” Defense Minister Abdul Fattah el-Sissi, another Morsi appointee, warned on Tuesday. Al-Sisi’s forces were deployed this week around important facilities lining the Suez Canal and also were used to beef up security at the Aswan Dam. The army deployments came after demonstrators in Ismailia and in the south of the country burned down police stations and Muslim Brotherhood branches, and also threatened to wrest control of strategic sites. This week, Egypt transitioned from a revolution to an intifada, and some commentators speculated that the army was poised to re-capture control of the government.

But that didn’t happen. Despite the killings, the violent clashes, the demonstrations and sit-down strikes, the current unrest is apt to be resolved via political means. President Morsi, the army, the opposition movements and the Muslim Brotherhood are united by the understanding and the fear that an immediate collapse of the governing regime could leave Egypt in a tailspin, heading toward civil war.

Striding backward

As in previous crises, in which he rescinded presidential decisions − such as those in December that sparked a huge uproar − Morsi has this time also begun to stride backward. He has announced that hours of the curfew imposed in major cities are to be reduced, while bestowing responsibility for implementing this easing of the curfew upon district governors. In any case, the curfew has not really been enforced; policemen have not opened fire against city residents who violated it.

Morsi has also agreed to change controversial clauses in the constitution that he pushed through, though this really is nothing new. A joint committee established after the December riots, and comprised of some opposition representatives and Morsi’s advisers, has worked out a series of amendments to the document which the new parliament, to be elected in April, is expected to ratify.

Yet the large opposition bloc, called the National Salvation Front − headed by Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi ‏(both of whom vied for the presidency‏), and also Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei − is no longer placated by promises. As they see it, the primary struggle right now will be over the parliamentary elections; in the last round of voting, in early 2012, liberal-secular elements in Egypt failed to gain the upper hand. In those elections, a coalition comprised of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party and other movements, some of them secular, took 47 percent of the vote.

The fact that results of those elections were revoked by the country’s constitutional court due to electoral infractions gives the secular parties a new opportunity: Their chances look better than ever now that the Muslim Brotherhood has blatantly failed to manage state affairs during the seven months Morsi has so far been in power.

“President Morsi is not really here; he doesn’t have a clue as to what’s happening. He delivered a speech before us in idiom divorced from reality, as though he were living on another planet … He is responsible for all of the blood that is spilled each day on Egyptian soil,” accusingly stated the well-known writer Sonallah Ibrahim.

Opposition figures claim that instead of acting as a genuine president of Egypt, Morsi mechanically follows directives that come down from Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie.

Morsi, for his part, tried this week to reprise a well-worn practice of initiating a “national dialogue” with the opposition movements. As in the last crisis, some of them indeed showed up for the discussions, but the Salvation Front, which follows a militant line, abstained. At first, the Front’s leaders said that they were prepared to take part in a national dialogue, so long as the defense minister, as well as Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, also become involved. This demand was a hint that these opposition leaders view the army, not the president, as the force that can guarantee that decisions reached in such a dialogue will be carried out.

Settling scores

However, on Wednesday, the leaders of the Salvation Front, in a surprise move, held an urgent discussion with heads of the Salafi Muslims’ Al-Nour Party, which is considered the Front’s ideological enemy. During a press conference, delegates from the Salvation Front and Al-Nour announced that the movements are agreed that a national unity government should be established, and that attorney general Talaat Ibrahim should be dismissed. A national dialogue can be initiated only after these demands are realized, they said.

“Despite the fact that we belong to the Islamic stream, we staged this meeting in the name of national interest and unity,” explained Al-Nour leader Dr. Younis Makhyoun.

National interest is certainly important, but the Salafi movement also has an incentive to settle scores with the Muslim Brotherhood, which refused to forge a coalition with it after the parliamentary elections. More importantly, in the event that the Brotherhood loses traction in the coming parliamentary elections, and the secular parties claim victory − it would be to Al-Nour’s advantage to have preexisting relations with the Salvation Front, and thus serve as a vital swing element in the formation of a new coalition.

Such calculations sound familiar to Israeli ears, and they are also the source of the prediction that various practical considerations will culminate in a resolution to the current political crisis. Apart from establishment of a national unity government and dismissal of the attorney general, the opposition demands that the constitution that was ratified by a December 22 referendum be suspended; and it also calls for the prosecution of persons responsible for the deaths of civilians in recent demonstrations; and, more than anything, it demands that the country’s election law be revised.

The new law, which was authorized by the Shura council ‏(this body functions as a parliament‏), holds that lists of parties vying in the parliamentary elections do not need to have female candidates in their top spots. But this contravenes an agreement reached by the country’s constituent assembly. The law essentially allows parties to maintain the appearance of complying with the constitutional requirement of submitting women candidates while keeping women out of the parliament by relegating them to low places on their lists.

Still more worrisome to the secular parties is the clause in the law that details the way Egypt is divided into districts; this zoning arrangement is liable to give an advantage to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The election law has another clause that allows a parliamentary candidate to run as an independent, or on a particular party’s list, and then join still another party after the election votes are tallied. This is a controversial stipulation that might be exploited by the Muslim Brotherhood after the elections.

In the meantime, it appears that the Brotherhood has grasped that the law, which is currently under review by the country’s constitutional court, is liable to stir the opposition to mount the barricades. The Brotherhood now seems inclined to revise the law’s problematic clauses. Such revision is likely to constitute yet another political retreat for Morsi: Such a tactical retreat might extricate him from the current crisis, and preempt demands for early presidential elections.

A symbol of the rebellion against the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood, as one Egyptian commentator put it this week, “swallowed deeply, and thought that it could gain power over every governmental sector. Now its members are choking on what they swallowed.” This commentator recalled that Morsi won 51.7 percent of votes in a second round of election balloting, garnering a total that was just 3 percent more than his rival, Ahmed Shafik; furthermore, many secular Egyptians withheld their votes from Shafik, regarding him as being too closely allied with the previous regime.

Whether the Muslim Brotherhood chokes or not will be determined in the days to come. Morsi may lack experience in running a country, but he is an expert in negotiation management, deriving from his activities in the period when Mubarak persecuted him. He knows how to drone long-winded, sometimes rhetorically aggressive, speeches, but has also shown that he knows how to beat an effective tactical retreat when he needs to.

As she leaves, Clinton sounds warning over Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

On eve of her last day in office, secretary of state accuses Iran of playing prominent role in Syria violence, warns of larger regional conflict but refrains from commenting on reports of Israeli airstrike

Associated Press

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a parting warning Thursday about Syria‘s civil war, accusing Iran of playing an increasingly prominent role in directing the violence, which she said heightened the danger of a larger regional conflict that draws in Israel or other neighbors.

“I’ve done what was possible to do,” Clinton told reporters on the eve of her last day as secretary of state.

But she painted a harrowing picture of a war that could still get worse.

“The worst kind of predictions about what could happen internally and spilling over the borders of Syria are certainly within the realm of the possible now,” she said.

The conflict “is distressing on all fronts,” Clinton told a roundtable of journalists Thursday, a day before John Kerry is sworn in as her successor. She pointed the finger primarily at Iran, accusing it of dispatching more personnel and better military materiel to President Bashar Assad’s regime to help him defeat rebel forces. Its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, is also playing a bigger role in the conflict.

“The Iranians are all in for Assad, and there is very little room for any kind of dialogue with them,” Clinton said.

She spoke after Syria threatened Thursday to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike, and its ally Iran warned ominously that the Jewish state would regret the attack.

In a letter to the UN secretary-general, Assad’s regime stressed its “right to defend itself, its territory and sovereignty” and holding Israel and its supporters accountable. And Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, Assad’s ambassador in Lebanon, said his government maintained “the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation.”

Clinton declined to talk specifically about Israel’s strike, which US officials described as targeting trucks containing sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. The trucks were next to a military research facility, and the strike hit both the trucks and the facility, US officials said.

If the SA-17s were to have reached Hezbollah, they would have greatly inhibited the Israeli air force’s ability to operate in Lebanon, where Israel has flown frequent sorties in recent years. The attack has inflamed regional tensions already running high over Syria’s 22-month-old civil war, and which has already led to deaths in neighboring Turkey and Lebanon.

In her strikingly candid assessment, Clinton spread the criticism to Russia, which has stymied US-led efforts to set global sanctions against the Syrian regime at the UN Security Council. Washington and Moscow have remained in a three-way dialogue with the UN special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, since late last year, but Clinton said the Russians were simultaneously providing financial assistance and military equipment to Assad.

“The Russians are not passive bystanders in their support for Assad. They have been much more active,” she told reporters. “But maybe they will change. And maybe they will be more open to an international solution because they can’t look at what’s happening and not believe it could be incredibly dangerous to everyone’s interests, including theirs.”

Despite the dismal outlook of the war, Clinton stressed she in no way has softened her opposition to the United States providing weapons to Syrian rebels or intervening militarily to halt the conflict. Asked about America’s Gulf allies who have sent arms to the Syrian opposition, Clinton said the Obama administration continues to urge caution on the types of materiel being supplied and vetting recipients.

The US fears that if extremist groups get dangerous weapons, they could then use them against American interests or Israel.

‘We haven’t been entirely successful’

“Sitting here today, I can’t tell you that we’ve been entirely successful in that,” Clinton said. “There are those who are supplying weapons and money for weapons, who really don’t care who gets it as long as they are against Assad – and who have the view that once Assad is gone, then we’ll deal with the consequences of these other groups who are now armed and funded. That’s not our view.”

She stressed that a political solution was necessary, and defended Syria’s top opposition leader for suggesting earlier this week that he’d be willing to negotiate with members of Assad’s regime. The call provoked an outcry from rebels who insist that Assad must step down first.

And she urged Kerry to press on with efforts at the United Nations and elsewhere to “create more credibility for the opposition” and create the possibility for more forceful international action to end the war.

“I think I’ve done what was possible to do over the last two years in trying to create or help stand up an opposition that was credible and could be an interlocutor in any kind of political negotiation,” Clinton said.

“We’ve engaged in a steady drumbeat of activities and trying to put together a coalition and trying to find a way to get something through the Security Council that would serve as the international legal basis for further action to be taken by many countries.”