WarSclerotic

No need for us to retaliate for airstrike, says Syria | The Times of Israel.

Assad’s defense minister says last week’s reported raid was Israel’s response to the regime’s successes against ‘Israel-backed’ rebel forces

An image, released by the Syrian government, of what appears to be a chemical and biological weapons research facility, which US officials say may have been damaged in an alleged Israeli airstrike last week (photo credit: YouTube)

Syria’s defense minister said Sunday his country had no need to respond militarily to last Wednesday’s reported Israeli airstrike on his country, since the Israeli attack was itself a retaliation. Israel, he claimed, was hitting back against the regime for its successes in the ongoing battle against what he said were Israel-backed Syrian rebels.

“It was the Israeli enemy that was retaliating” by carrying out the strike, said Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij in an interview on Syrian state TV. “It was retaliating for our military operations against the armed gangs.”

The rebels, fighting to oust Syria’s President Bashar Assad, were acting on Israel’s behalf, he said. Assad and his officials have frequently asserted that Israel and other foreign powers are to blame for the two-year-old civil war in Syria, in which some 60,000 people are estimated to have been killed, mostly by Assad regime forces.

Israel has been bracing for a possible Syrian response to the strike, but has not formally taken responsibility for it. On Sunday morning, Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted that Israel was involved, however, and Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser, said at the weekend that Israel was responsible. In 2007, Israel reportedly blew up a Syrian nuclear reactor, but never acknowledged responsibility, and Syria did not respond.

The former head of IDF Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin, for his part, said Monday that the apparent lack of a response so far from the Syrians and their proxy Hezbollah was no indication that there would be no retaliation in the future. Rather, they will choose to take action in a limited, symbolic way, he posited, “in nations across the sea, or by firing rockets with no one taking responsibility.”

Yadlin asserted that the United States supported Israel in the reported attack, and that even Russia understood the need for the mission.

Fahd Jassem al-Freij, with Bashar Assad, on his appointment as defense minister, in July 2012. (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)

Freij’s comments came a day after Assad, in a relatively mild response to the reported airstrike, said Syria’s military was capable of confronting any “aggression.” In the aftermath of the alleged attack, Syria said the target was a scientific research center, while US officials indicated that the strike had destroyed a convoy of Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons bound for the Lebanese Islamist militia Hezbollah.

Syrian state television said Assad spoke during a meeting with visiting top Iranian official Saeed Jalili. For his part, Jalili, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, offered “to assist you in any way you choose to respond to the Zionist aggression,” according to a report in the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials have repeatedly warned of the dangers of Syrian weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah and other hostile elements in the region.

Purported images of the targeted site, aired by Syrian state television on Saturday, showed destroyed cars, trucks and military vehicles. One building had broken widows and damaged interiors, but no major structural damage.

Iran reportedly refuses Assad request to hit back at Israel | The Times of

( An attack on Syria is an attack on Iran, ehhh….? – JW )

Tehran tells Syrian president to ‘take care of your business’ after alleged Israeli air strike; Damascus seen as unable to respond, despite ‘worrying’ seething on Syrian street

Saeed Jalili, left, meeting with Bashar Assad in Damascus on Sunday. (photo credit: AP/SANA)

Syria’s President Bashar Assad asked Iran to hit back at Israel on its behalf for a reported air strike, an Israeli TV report said Monday night, but the Iranians told him, “You need to take care of your business.”

The unsourced report, on Israel’s Channel 10, said that Iranian officials, who have castigated Israel over the strike and said Israel will come to regret it, were approached by Assad to turn the words of criticism into deeds, but responded that “we’re engaged in a media campaign.”

The TV report came hours after Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, said on a visit to Damascus that Israel would “regret the aggression it launched against Syria.” Syria says the raid last Wednesday hit a scientific research center and the US says it hit a convoy of SA-17 surface-to-air missiles headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Just as it regretted its aggressions after the 33-day, 22-day and eight-day wars, today the Zionist entity will regret the aggression it launched against Syria,” Jalili said at a press conference ending a three-day visit to the Syrian capital.

Jalili’s reported rebuffing of Assad represents an about-face from Iran, which has loudly backed Syria.

Earlier in the week, Jalili said, “The Islamic world will not allow aggression against Syria… Syria stands on the front line of the Islamic world against the Zionist regime… The Islamic world must show due reaction to the Israeli aggression.”

Late last month, Iran warned the West against intervening in the ongoing civil war in Syria, with top adviser Ali Akbar Velayati saying that “an attack on Syria is considered an attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”

In a televised interview Monday, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij signaled Syria may not be planning to retaliate at all. He said Israel attacked the research center near Damascus because rebels were unable to capture it. He called the rebels Israel’s “tools.”

Freij was asked in an interview with Syrian state TV why Damascus does not retaliate against Israel.

“The Israeli enemy retaliated. When the Israeli enemy saw that its tools are being chased and did not achieve any (of their) goals, they interfered,” he responded. “It was a response to our military acts against the armed gangs,” Freij added. “The heroic Syrian Arab Army, which proved to the world that it is a strong army and a trained army, will not be defeated.”

However, many Syrians are calling on Damascus to attack Israeli interests on the Golan Heights, which borders Syria, Channel 2 Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari reported Monday night. Yaari said he was worried by an upsurge in overt demands by Syrians, interviewed on Syrian TV, for attacks on Israel across the Golan.

“I don’t like it,” said Yaari, showing clips of a succession of Syrian civilians repeating the mantra that they “want to open up the Golan front.”

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war. “For 35 years, Syrians have been forbidden by the regime from talking about opening the Golan front. Today, for the first time, [the regime] sent people to demand this,” Yaari noted.

Israel has been bracing for a possible Syrian response to the strike, but has not formally taken responsibility for it. On Sunday morning, Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted that Israel was involved, however, and Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser, said over the weekend that Israel was responsible. In 2007, Israel reportedly blew up a Syrian nuclear reactor, but never acknowledged responsibility, and Syria did not respond.

The former head of IDF Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin, warned Monday that the apparent lack of a response so far from the Syrians and their proxy Hezbollah was no indication that there would be no retaliation in the future. Rather, they will choose to take action in a limited, symbolic way, he posited, “in nations across the sea, or by firing rockets with no one taking responsibility.”

AP contributed to this report.

Iran could build nuclear bomb in 4-6 months, expert says | The Times of Israel.

Still, there’s time for military or diplomatic action, says former head of military intelligence, and an Israeli attack wouldn’t mean regional war

Amos Yadlin, former director of military intelligence, Jan 2012. (photo credit: Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90)

Iran has what it needs to build a nuclear bomb in a matter of four to six months, and the civil war in Syria, contrary to the prevailing military assessment, has improved Israel’s national security standing, Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, said Monday.

“Iran has completed in the last two years two components that… give it all of the necessary means to manufacture a nuclear weapon as soon as it chooses to do so,” Yadlin, a former Israeli army intelligence chief, told journalists at a presentation of the Institute for National Security Studies’ annual report on Israel’s strategic status.

Regarding Syria, he said that the destruction of its “modern, formidable army,” is a “positive strategic development” that dwarfs the dangers of dwindling state control on Israel’s northeastern front.

The assessment, which mirrors the sort of briefing Yadlin once gave annually to Knesset as the head of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate, also touched on the erosion of the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the diplomatic and public relations battle against deligitimization and the need for either an accord with, or unilateral action against, the Palestinians.

Yadlin said Iran’s race toward the bomb would require a 4-6 month sprint during which Iran would try to enrich its uranium to military grade. That, in the current climate, is a risk the country is not willing to take, he said.

Calling the final sprint for the bomb “the last strategic mile,” Yadlin assessed that Iranian leadership is looking to shorten the break-out period and waiting for a crisis and a subsequent lapse in international attention in order to progress.

He said it was unclear why Israel’s red line had shifted from Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s earlier formulation – of 3,000 centrifuges underground at the facility in Fordo (Iran currently has 2,700, he said) – to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s formulation of sufficient medium grade uranium for a single bomb, but noted that “the Iranians can cross the red line of the prime minister whenever they decide.”

Yadlin said that if forced to choose between allowing Iran to attain the bomb and bombing Iran, he would recommend the latter, but argued that the choices had not yet been that whittled down to such extremes. Instead he called for a middle road that might force an agreement that would “turn the Iranian clock back 2-3 years,” and allow for “face-saving, symbolic uranium enrichment in Iran.”

Barring that, he suggested that the confrontation could reach a head in 2013.

After dismissing any comparisons between Iran and North Korea, calling the latter “a Chinese puppet,” and arguing that the former, Iran, represented a clear national security threat to the United States, he said that if Israel chose to strike in Iran, “the Iranian reaction – and there will be a reaction, because they will not be surprised like Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad – will be calculated and limited.”

Turning to Syria, the former head of IDF intelligence dismissed what he called “the black headlines,” and contended that the ongoing civil war along Israel’s border is good news Israel. He suggested five possible outcomes of the war: One, Assad refrains from antagonizing Israel and Turkey, and manages to maintain Russian protection and in that way survives. Two, the civil war “continues forever. Three, Syria disintegrates into three sectarian states – Allawite, Sunni and Kurd. Four, a largely Sunni state emerges. And five, a “full disintegration” of all sovereignty, reminiscent of Somalia.

“In each one of these developments Israel is less threatened than two years ago when I was still head of intelligence,” he said.

In an interview after the briefing, Brig. Gen. (ret) Shlomo Brom, a former head of the IDF General Staff’s planning division and a senior fellow at INSS, said that he disagreed with this assessment. Bands of terror operatives would hold fewer weapons, he allowed, but they would be very difficult to deter. Shrugging, he said of the disagreement, “we are not China,” and said it was likely that there were similar differences today within the General Staff.

Discussing Israel’s peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, Yadlin called them one of “the pillars of national security.” He said the strength of the agreements had suffered erosion in 2012 but that, in Egypt, even the Muslim Brotherhood realizes that “going to war with Israel is counter-productive.”

In Jordan, he said, people could look over one shoulder at Iraq and the other at Syria and see why revolution might not be in their best interest. “The King,” he said of Abdullah, the ruler of Jordan, “is handling the reforms in the best way.”

In the West Bank, he suggested, Hamas had little chance of taking the seat of government from Fatah by force but contended that change could be ushered in at the polling booths, which would explain why the PA has been “saying elections will be next year for the past four years.”

He estimated that the chances for peace were low but that, in order to “achieve the moral high ground,” Israel had to submit “a decent, moral proposal to the Palestinians.”

If the Palestinians refuse the offer, he said, Israel would “win the blame game,” and then would have to conduct a “unilateral shaping of borders.”

The “disengagement” from Gaza, he said, “was maybe not such a mistake,” but that Israel would have to draw three major lessons from that 2005 withdrawal: it would have to occupy the Jordan Valley and bar weapons from entering the West Bank; the withdrawal would have to be up until the security barrier, incentivizing further talks; and Israel would have to strive for maximal coordination.

An Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, or perhaps even the premise of one, would, he suggested, allow Israel to forge closer ties to the Sunni world, including Turkey, in its campaign against Iran.

Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has “a history of 100 years and will be the main issue in the next 100 years.”

Ed Koch remembered by Israeli envoy as ‘one of us’ | The Times of Israel.

Consul general says Israel mourning loss of legendary NY mayor; Jerusalem owes debt of gratitude for commitment to Zionism

By Greg Tepper and AP February 4, 2013, 8:09 pm

A casket containing the remains of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch is brought into Temple Emanu-El, for his funeral in New York on Monday. (photo credit: AP/Seth Wenig)

An Israeli envoy, a former US president and New York’s current mayor all paid tribute to Ed Koch at his funeral Monday morning, hailing the former New York mayor for his Jewishness, Zionism and commitment to the Big Apple.

“Ed Koch was one of us,” Israel’s consul general in New York Ido Aharoni told gathered mourners Monday at Temple Emanu-El on the city’s Upper East Side. “We, the Israelis, owe Ed Koch a great debt of gratitude for his long standing support, friendship, unconditional love and commitment to the Zionist movement and to the Jewish homeland,” the envoy said.

Koch, who steered the city from 1978 to 1989, passed away from heart failure Friday in New York at age 88. An outspoken New Yorker’s New Yorker, Koch was an avowed Zionist who wore his Jewish pride on his sleeve and his gravestone.

Bill Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg were also among the eulogizers at the funeral. After the ceremony, Koch’s casket was carried out of the synagogue to the strains of “New York, New York,” and taken to Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan to be buried.

Aharoni told a packed gathering that Israel was mourning the loss of Koch, who also served as a congressman. He recalled the relationship between former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, and Koch, calling them “lifelong friends.”

Aharoni said that Koch, who “bled for Israel” after taking a rock to the head while on a visit to Israel during the First Intifada, called Kollek the “mayor of all mayors.”

The bond that Ed shared with Teddy, between two mayors, two leaders is the one New York and Jerusalem share, is the one Israel and the United States share. ”

“Ed Koch was one of a kind,” he said. “Before he died, he let it be known that he wanted his gravestone engraved with the most famous prayer in Judaism — Shema.It is a declaration of faith. A pledge of alleigance to one God and to the nation of Israel. The shema is said upon arising in the morning and upon going to sleep at night. It is said when praising God and when calling upon him. ” It is  the first prayer that a Jewish child is taught and it is the last words a Jew says prior to death.”

“Israel hears you loud and clear,” he said. “May your memory be blessed and may you rest in peace, dear friend,” adding in Hebrew, “blessed be the true judge,” a Jewish expression of condolence.

Koch’s gravestone also features a quote from slain journalist Daniel Pearl in the moments before he was killed by Islamists: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”

Recalling Koch as “brash and irreverent,” Bloomberg said the man who governed the city during the late 1970s and 1980s must be “beaming” from all the attention created by his death.

“No mayor, I think, has ever embodied the spirit of New York City like he did,” continued Bloomberg.

Bloomberg noted that the funeral was being held near “a certain East River span” — referring to the 59th Street bridge, which was renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in 2011.

Describing the bridge dedication ceremony, Bloomberg drew laughter from the crowd as he recalled how Koch stood there for 20 minutes, yelling: “Welcome to my bridge!”

Noah Thayer, Koch’s grand-nephew, praised him as a “doting grandfather” who was devoted to his family. Thayer recalled fond memories of Koch attending elementary-school soccer games and getting a manicure with his 11-year-old grand-niece.

“While he knew he was often portrayed as a lonely bachelor, it didn’t matter,” Thayer said. “He saw in his family only perfection.”

Former president Bill Clinton, who served as a representative of President Barack Obama at the funeral, said the world was a better place because Koch had “lived and served.”

“He had a big brain,” Clinton said. “But he had a bigger heart.”

Six uniformed officers from the NYPD and the fire department were standing alongside his wooden coffin as part of Koch’s honor guard.

Koch was a friend of both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was helpful during her successful campaign for the US Senate from New York, according to Koch spokesman George Arzt. Koch also backed Hillary Clinton in her presidential run.

The funeral was held at one of the nation’s most prominent synagogues, a Reform Jewish congregation on Fifth Avenue. Bloomberg is a member, as are comedienne Joan Rivers and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

“I don’t want to leave Manhattan, even when I’m gone,” Koch told The Associated Press in 2008 after purchasing a burial plot in the Trinity Church Cemetery, at the time the only graveyard in Manhattan that still had space. “This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me.”

Koch led his city for 12 years, with a brash, humor-tinged style that came to personify the New York of the 1980s.

The Democratic mayor is credited with helping save New York from its economic crisis in the 1970s and leading it to financial rebirth. But during his three terms as mayor, he also faced racial tensions and corruption among political allies, as well as the AIDS epidemic, homelessness and urban crime.

In his weekly radio address, Bloomberg called Koch “our most tireless, fearless, and guileless civic crusader.”

The mayor said his predecessor’s “tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship… helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback.”

He added, “When someone needed a good kick in the rear, he gave it to them.”

Koch lost the Democratic nomination for mayor in 1989 to David Dinkins, who succeeded him.

Koch said he was defeated “because of longevity.” In his words, “people get tired of you.”

But as the votes were coming in, he said he told himself, “I’m free at last.”

Also Monday, US Rep. Carolyn Maloney will make a recommendation to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to rename a Manhattan subway station in Koch’s honor.

She will propose that the subway station at East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue be called “Mayor Ed Koch subway station.” She will also announce renaming the street corner there to “Mayor Edward I. Koch.”

City officials have introduced legislation to officially rename the station.

Iran FM: US changing approach to Tehran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Ali Akbar Salehi says Biden’s offer for bilateral dialogue a sign of change of approach by US administration

Reuters

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday he saw US Vice-President Joe Biden‘s offer this weekend of bilateral dialogue between their two countries as a sign of a change in approach to Iran by the US administration.

“As I have said yesterday, I am optimistic, I feel this new administration is really this time seeking to at least divert from its previous traditional approach vis-à-vis my country,” Salehi told the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

Salehi, who attended the Munich Security Conference at the weekend where Biden made the offer, said in Berlin that it was still very difficult for Tehran and Washington to trust each other. “How do we trust again this new gesture?” he said.

Salehi said he hoped Barack Obama would keep what he said was a promise by the US president to “walk away from wars…and approaches that bring destruction, killings, bloodshed”. He did not elaborate.

Negotiations between Iran and six major world powers – Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and Germany – over Tehran’s nuclear activities have been deadlocked since a meeting last June.

European Union officials have accused Iran of dragging its feet in weeks of haggling over the date and venue for new talks.

The EU said this weekend it had proposed talks in the week of Feb. 24 which could happen in Kazakhstan. Salehi called this “good news” – but the EU says Iran has not yet accepted.

‘Boring’ nukes

“I think it is about time both sides really get into engagement because confrontation certainly is not the way,” Salehi said in Berlin, referring to the United States.

“And another thing: this issue of the nuclear file is becoming boring,” added Salehi, a physicist by training who once headed the Iranian atomic energy agency and represented his country at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Salehi faced tough questioning on Tehran’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war in which about 60,000 people have died. Iran and Russia, Assad’s main backers, met the Syrian opposition leader this weekend but Tehran seems to remain convinced that Assad must not be ejected from power.

He denied Iran was sending solders to help Assad, saying: “The army of Syria is big enough, they do not need fighters from outside.”

Iran was only sending economic assistance, food and fuel, said the minister, adding that the Damascus government and opposition should sit down, agree a ceasefire and call free elections in which he said Assad should be free to take part.

Iranian opposition members protested at the venue and one managed to sneak in among the diplomats, interrupting the minister with shouts of “He’s a murderer!”

Salehi was asked by an Israeli newspaper correspondent if he would visit the Holocaust monument in Berlin to 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, and what he thought of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated denials that the Holocaust took place.

“Any holocaust is a human tragedy,” Salehi replied, refusing to be drawn deeper on the subject.

The Aviationist » Air strike on Damascus military complex shows Syrian Air Defense can do nothing against Israeli Electronic Warfare.

Posted by David Cenciotti in : Military Aviation, Syria , trackback

The Israeli air strike on a weapons convoy and military complex near Damascus, on the night between Jan. 29 and 30 has something in common with a similar air strike, the Israeli Air Force launched in 2007: the bombers entered and egressed the Syrian airspace almost completely undetected by the Syrian air defenses.

On Sept. 6, 2007, ten F-15I and F-16 jets attacked a nuclear facility being built in Syria. The success of that mission, dubbed “Operation Orchard“, was largely attributed to effectiveness of the Israeli Electronic Warfare platforms that supported the air strike and made the Syrian radars blind: some sources believe that Operation Orchard saw the baptism of fire of the Suter airborne network system against Syrian radar systems from some ELINT aircraft.

It is quite likely that Israel’s EW capabilities, most probably furtherly improved since 2007 (someone speculated Israel is capable to inject malware from its F-16s), have played a major role in the recent strike that hit a target located only 5 kilometers from Assad’s headquarters.

Although the current status of the SAM (Surface to Air Missile) coverage around Damascus is quite difficult to assess, since some of the batteries protecting the capital town may have been sabotaged or hit by the rebels activity, the area is still believed to be heavily defended by several Soviet-made anti-aircraft system (even if most of all not so up to date).

The following image comes from 2010′s survey of the Syrian SAM deployment, published on the interesting Sean O’Connor’s IMINT & Analysis blog.

Although probably outdated, it still gives an idea of how crowded of SAM systems the area surrounding Damascus is.

In June 2012, a Syrian anti-aircraft artillery battery downed a Turkish Air Force RF-4E Phantom that had violated the Syrian airspace at low altitude over the Mediterranean Sea, thus proving that Damascus’s air defense are still somehow dreadful for enemy fighter jets.

Even though EW coverage (embedded in the strike package or supporting it from distance) has probably contributed to the successful outcome of the air strike making the bombers somehow “stealthy”, another key factor in last night’s attack was the relatively short distance of the target area from the border and the local orography, that has helped the Israeli jets flying at low altitude achieving some terrain masking.

The following image, drawn by The Aviationist’s contributor Giuliano Ranieri, shows a possible ingress route that exploits the terrain masking provided by the Mt. Heron and overflies a scarcely populated area.

It’s just a hypothesis, still, likely, not too far from the route actually flown by the Israeli fighters.

Some videos have been uploaded to Liveleak allegedly showing the Israeli fighter over Damascus at dawn. The one you can watch here has nothing to do with the air strike though: the type of contrails, the type of formation and, above all, the altitude of the planes depicted in the footage are not consistent with the IAF raid.

Analysis: Israel airstrike may foreshadow Iran attack – World News.

( This piece completely ignores Ehud Barak’s  “The Americans can handle it surgically.”  I feel further from an Israeli attack on Iran than I’ve felt since moving back here four years ago. We already attacked and we succeeded. – JW )

Oliver Weiken / Pool via Reuters

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed up his rhetoric last week with an airstrike targeting a Syrian convoy.

News analysis

It’s hard to get a handle on it – few Israelis are willing to talk about it on the record – but there’s been a palpable shift in thinking in Israel about launching an airstrike on Iran. Nowhere more than in the counter-terrorism community itself.

Even among the more reasoned – and moderate – voices there, the tone has moved from cautious optimism that an Israeli strike on Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities could be avoided to gloomy inevitability.

“It’s no longer a question of if but when,” replied one Israeli analyst when asked if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would respond militarily if Iran crossed his “red lines” and acquired a nuclear bomb.

Several analysts ticked off different factors behind the change of heart:

• A growing realization that sanctions – no matter how robust – won’t stop Tehran from crossing Netanyahu’s “red lines” and posing an existential threat to the nation.
• Fueled by the Arab Spring, a sense of chaos swirling around Israel’s borders has led Israelis to vote once again for the tough-minded Netanyahu – albeit in fewer numbers – and to sympathize with his hardline policy of protecting Israel at all costs, with walls, fences, and airstrikes, if necessary.
• There was a belief – call it a hope – that Netanyahu would not “go it alone” against Iran – that President Barack Obama would prevail upon him to avoid any unilateral action that might trigger an unforeseen Arab conflagration against Israel. But some Israeli analysts say that Netanyahu seems much less worried than Obama about a lethal Arab response to an airstrike on Iran.

Only a few months ago the Israeli consensus on Iran felt much different. At the height of last fall’s Iran–Israel crisis, former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak – once Netanyahu’s boss in an elite commando unit – not only had the prime minister’s ear, but seemed to counter his most hawkish impulses. Then, in late November, Barak quit the cabinet – and Israeli politics.

After elections last month, a new centrist party and leader were swept onto the political scene. Yair Lapid – a charismatic, former news anchorman – was expected to pressure Netanyahu into softer positions. So far, just the opposite has happened.

“It seems that Lapid is not as committed as Bibi (Netanyahu) to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear…(Lapid) is not being regarded as a military authority in Israel and he might not have the weight to balance Bibi,” said Dr Boaz Ganor, director of the Herzliya Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Ganor went on to say that – ultimately – the order to strike Iran will be most influenced by the next Israeli defense minister. It now looks likely that will be the even more hawkish vice premier, Moshe Yaalon (unless Barak returns to the fold).

With some reports suggesting that Iran is only months away from a nuclear bomb, the Obama administration is sticking to its support for tough sanctions, but also saying that Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has backed up his rhetoric: last week, the Israeli Air Force summarily destroyed a Syrian convoy of sophisticated rockets – inside Syria – allegedly heading to Lebanon and into the hands of Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel.

“In Israel, there is wall to wall consent that Israel should do whatever it takes so that Hezbollah does not get access to these dangerous materials,” Ganor said.

Will Iran be next?

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has just returned from an assignment in Israel.

Don’t ignite entire region – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Israelis have become addicted to expectation that something terrible is about to happen

( I wholeheartedly support everything said in this article excepting the last paragraph.  I think our leaders are doing just fine, thank you. – JW )

Merav Betito

The sound of the drums of war is coming mainly from the television studios, which bombard us with news reports from the front – craving for another image of people preparing their shelter for the winter or for the analysis of another former IDF general.

Yes, apparently an attack in Syria did take place, and there may even have been “a number of strikes on a number of targets.” And yes, some people did call the Home Front Command to ask where they could pick up their gas masks. But the truth is that the Israeli public has become addicted to the routine expectation that something terrible is about to destroy it, because the sense of togetherness intensifies when a supposed existential threat is looming.

The combination of the words “chemical weapons” and “Hezbollah” is the secret code that activates within the Jewish person an ancient and broad spectrum of baseless fears that feed the national phobia with great efficiency. This phobia can turn into a real disaster if we will dare to ignite the entire fragile region in which we live.

No past experience is needed to understand that we have lost our ability to apply simple logic. Let’s begin with Syria: A country that has been torn apart by an evil dictator who is still in power because of the international community’s silence. The last thing Assad junior needs now are Israeli planes penetrating his airspace and interfering with his efforts to defeat the rebels.

Hezbollah? To those who may have forgotten, let me remind you that Hezbollah is the operational arm of the Iranians and the Syrians; it is a terror organization that draws its hatred and ability from the tireless duo Assad and Ahmadinejad. The criminal from Tehran has to deal with UN inspectors, an arms race, global sanctions and at least three or four Western heads of state who monitor his every move.

Israel’s modern-day leaders lack the level-headedness that is required at this time. They conduct the country’s foreign and security policy according to the ‘compressed spring’ principle and drive our vehicles of war with unnecessary hysteria. The attack, whether it took place or not, achieved its most important goal: It gave a clear indication of Israel‘s military capabilities.

Iran could build nuclear bomb in 4-6 months, expert says | The Times of Israel.

Still, there’s time for military or diplomatic action, says former head of military intelligence, and an Israeli attack wouldn’t mean regional war

Amos Yadlin, former director of military intelligence, Jan 2012. (photo credit: Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90)

Iran has what it needs to to build a nuclear bomb in a matter of four to six months, Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, said Monday.

“Iran has completed in the last two years two components that… give it all of the necessary means to manufacture a nuclear weapons as soon as it chooses to do so,” Yadlin, a former Israeli army intelligence chief, told journalists at a presentation of the INSS annual report on Israel’s strategic status.

Yadlin noted, however, that despite the narrow window of opportunity to thwart Iran before it breaks out toward a weaponized nuclear capability, there was still time for diplomatic and/or military action.

An Israeli attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, he assessed, would elicit an Iranian response, but not of a magnitude that would precipitate a regional war.

“It may be that they’ll decide to act in 2013, and then we’ll require Israeli and perhaps also American action,” he said. “If Iran is attacked, there’ll be a military conflagration in the Middle East. But our assessment is that the Middle East won’t be enveloped in all-out war and the Iranians will respond in a calculated, limited fashion.”

Turning to Syria, the former head of IDF intelligence said Israel’s strategic situation would improve after the fall of President Bashar Assad. “Removing Syria from the axis of radicalism, if Assad falls, will be an important strategic line for the State of Israel,” he said. A post-Assad Syria, “whatever form it takes,” will be preoccupied with rebuilding. “I don’t see Syria looking for war with Israel… The [Syrian] army will face inwards, not outwards.”

On the diplomatic front, Yadlin said the greatest challenge for Israel was to break its isolation. “The Europeans are at the stage where they are considering sanctions against Israel,” he warned.

He criticized the government for not doing more to advance negotiations with the Palestinians. Overall, though, Yadlin said, “2012 was more positive than negative for Israel.”

Ahmadinejad wants to be Iran’s first astronaut – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( An idiocy, but just too damn funny not to post.  Enjoy… –  JW )

Iranian president declares he is willing to sacrifice his life for Islamic Republic’s space program

Associated Press

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he’s ready to be the first Iranian astronaut sent into space as part of Iran’s goal of manned space flight.

Ahmadinejad says he’s willing to sacrifice his life for Iran’s ambitious space program.

His comments were reported on Monday by the official IRNA news agency.

Iran sent a monkey into space last Monday, describing the launch a successful step toward Tehran’s plan to send an astronaut into space within the next five to six years.

The monkey named “Pishgam,” or “Pioneer” in Farsi, reportedly traveled 72 miles into space and then safely returned to Earth.

In 2010, Iran said it launched an Explorer rocket into space carrying a mouse, a turtle and worms.