WarSclerotic

Report: Iran building militias in Syria in case Assad falls – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( Thanks, Luis… – JW )

Experts tell Washington Post Tehran, Hezbollah sending weapons, cash to proxy groups to preserve supply routes to Lebanon

Ynet

Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah are building a network of militias inside Syria to protect their interests in the event that President Bashar regime collapses or is forced to withdraw from Damascus, the Washington Post reported, citing US and Middle Eastern officials.

“It’s a big operation,” a senior Obama administration official was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it’s important for Iran to have a force in Syria that is reliable and can be counted on.”

A senior Arab official told The Washington Post that Iran’s strategy has two tracks: “One is to support Assad to the hilt, the other is to set the stage for major mischief if he collapses.”

Western, Israeli and Middle Eastern elements have expressed growing concern over the possibility of Syria’s fragmentation along tribal or religious lines and over the lack of unity among the Syrian opposition.

‘Major mischief if he collapses.’ Bashar Assad (Photo: Reuters)

According to the Washington Post, the militias set up by Iran and Hezbollah are fighting alongside Syrian government forces to keep Assad in power. However, the report said, officials believe Tehran’s long-term goal is to have reliable operatives in place in the event that Syria fractures into separate ethnic and sectarian enclaves.

Each of Syria’s internal actors has external backers, The Washington Post stressed in its report.

Iranian soldiers during military parade in Tehran (Photo: AFP)

According to the report, Tehran’s interest in preserving a Syrian base partly explains why the financially strapped Iranian government continues to send weapons and cash to groups such as Jaysh al-Sha’bi, an alliance of local Shiite and Alawite militias.

American and Middle Eastern officials who have studied the organization told the Washington Post that Jaysh fighters are predominantly a sectarian fighting force supervised by Iranian and Hezbollah commanders.

“Jaysh is essentially an Iran-Hezbollah joint venture,” David Cohen, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, told the newspaper. “Given the other constraints on Iranian resources right now, it’s obvious that this is an important proxy group for them.”

The Treasury Department said Iran had provided it with “routine funding worth millions of dollars.”

A Treasury statement noted that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commander has said that Jaysh was “modeled after Iran’s own Basij, a paramilitary force subordinate to (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps) that has been heavily involved in the violent crackdowns and serious human rights abuses occurring in Iran since the June 2009 contested presidential election.”

Experts told The Washington Post that Iran is less interested in preserving Assad in power than in maintaining levers of power, including transport hubs inside Syria. As long as Tehran could maintain control of an air or seaport, they could also maintain a Hezbollah-controlled supply route into Lebanon and continue to manipulate Lebanese politics, the experts argued.

Iranians on revolution day chant ‘death to America’.

( So how much coverage of this in the US ? –  JW )

Sunday, 10 February 2013

Hundreds of thousands of people marched on Sunday in Tehran and other cities chanting “Death to America” as Iran marked the 34th anniversary of the Islamic revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah. (AFP)

  inShare1

Why an Obama visit to Israel?.

By Ray Hanania

Al Arabiya

Sunday, 10 February 2013

Fresh out of his easy second-term re-election victory over Mitt Romney, who made the issue of Israel a cornerstone of his foreign policy, President Barack Obama is going to visit Israel. What can we expect from the visit?

Obama is a president who loves drama. After his first election, Obama made a dramatic visit to Cairo where he delivered a moving speech to the Islamic world that he titled “A New Beginning.” In it, Obama argued that Americans and Muslims have much in common and that America has no inherent animosity against Islam, the world’s largest religious group.

Well, tell that to the thousands of anti-Muslim American activists like Pamela Geller, or the many anti-Muslim organizations like Christian evangelical groups, all of whom host thousands of online web sites that promote Islamophobia.

Expectations

 “The first is that Obama is a Muslim and was not born in America. The second is that Obama is a Muslim and hates Israel (code word for “Jews”).” 

The excitement of the “Cairo Speech” was welcomed by Muslims but the light quickly faded as nothing seemed to be achieved in moving Middle East peace forward. In America, it only fueled the anti-Obama movement which embraces two key assertions against America’s first African American president. The first is that Obama is a Muslim and was not born in America. The second is that Obama is a Muslim and hates Israel (code word for “Jews”).

The animosity in America was so great against Obama it provoked Israel’s rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to openly oppose Obama’s reelection. Obama was vilified because he “failed” to visit Israel during his first term in office. Since President Harry S. Truman, the first president to recognize Israel, only four of the nation’s 11 presidents before Obama had visited Israel and no one attacked the seven who had not. Yet, Obama defeated Mitt Romney in a resounding landslide and exposed how weak Netanyahu really is as an Israeli leader.

The Obama victory pulled the cover off the true basis behind Netanyahu’s power base — Israelis who hate Muslims, covet all of Palestinian land, and would rather have conflict and land over peace and compromise. Obama’s victory did mobilize the dormant Israeli peace movement. Netanyahu took a political beating in the most recent election and his coalition held on to power with a razor-thin edge of 60 out of 120 Knesset seats. Self-described “Centrist,” Yair Lapid, of the new Israeli political party, Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”), took much of the wind out of Netanyahu’s sail. All this begs the question, what does Obama’s visit to Israel really mean? Does it mean Obama is giving Netanyahu an olive branch, maybe thinking about his post-presidential legacy the same way Bill Clinton put his own legacy above a just peace? Does it mean Obama has a secret strategy based on a popular rule of American politics to “keep your friends close but your enemies closer?”

Mideast Peace?

 “The right thing for Obama to do is to push for peace. Force the intransigent Netanyahu to halt illegal settlement expansion, and dismantle most if not all the settlements. End the illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and recognize a Palestinian State.” 

Does it mean Obama is clever, cozying up to Netanyahu using “love” to push Netanyahu to embrace peace and a Palestinian State? Does it mean Obama is using a meeting with Netanyahu as a pretext so he can openly meet and reinforce the feeble Palestinian National Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas? Or, it may mean only that Obama is just a seasoned politician who, in order to move his American domestic policies, needs to brush aside the image that he is “anti-Israel”.

The right thing for Obama to do is to push for peace. Force the intransigent Netanyahu to halt illegal settlement expansion, and dismantle most if not all the settlements. End the illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and recognize a Palestinian State.

Obama can’t push Israel too hard without risking how he will be viewed by history years from now. Maybe Obama knows that no matter how hard he pushes, Israel just isn’t interested in real compromise with Palestinians.

Israel has everything it could ever want: Control of all of historic Palestine; billions of dollars in American funding that only comes when it is in a state of conflict; and a nuclear arsenal that makes it one of the greatest military powers and greatest threats in the Middle East region.

Politically, Palestinians can’t seem to leverage the justice of their cause against the ineffectiveness of their political leadership. Maybe, the only reason Obama wants to visit Israel is to see the Holy Land sites, pray at the Church of the Nativity and convince Americans that he really is a “Christian” after all. The “Christian thing” to do would be to stand up for justice and push for Palestinian rights. In that respect, Obama may not be Christian enough.

This was first published in the Saudi Gazette on Feb. 10, 2013

Ray Hanania is an Arab-American Palestinian Christian journalist, professional communicator, media consultant, author, standup comedian, satirist, filmmaker, radio talk show host. He covered Chicago City Hall for 16 years from 1976 through 1992, including every Chicago Mayor “from Daley to Daley.” He is a two-time winner of Chicago Newspaper Guild Stick-O-Type Award. In 1990 he was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times as Pulitzer Prize candidate.

Assad is surviving thanks to Russia and Iran, not his sect.

By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

Al Arabiya

Sunday, 10 February 2013

I looked read Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s statements to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper more than once because he addressed sensitive issues very frankly. It is not often that politicians open up their minds to others.

He knowingly spoke of Syria, where he lived for many years when he was an opposition figure. He said he was not surprised by the path of the ongoing struggle and that he was not surprised by the regime’s ability to survive. He also said that during a visit to Washington he projected this outcome for the crisis during talks with U.S. president, vice president and former Secretary of State.

Maliki said that they thought Assad will fall in two months while he made a bet that Assad will not fall even after two years. Why? Maliki says the regime in Syria is a sectarian issue and that the presence of Alawites in power provides survival net for the sect and that their ouster from power would put them in a situation where they all be slain. To Maliki, the Alawites are fighting with their men and women because they are obliged to, and that’s why the regime has withstood.

Alawite support

 “Maliki himself and his party, Al-Daawa, fought Saddam Hussein for 20 years, and they did not succeed in seizing one inch of Iraq because the borders were closed and their weapons were light. When Saddam fell, he fell due to a U.S. ‘Armada’.” 

Abdulrahman al-Rashed

Although Maliki’s estimation of the regime’s determination and entrenchment by Alawites is right and although all what he said is true, it is not true that Assad’s survival for all this long time, amid the destruction, is because the Alawites are steadfast or more united and determined or, as he put it, because they are in a state of desperation, that is defending in a manner similar to the defense of those besieged.

No. Although these reasons are an important factor to Assad’s survival in power, they are not the reasons the regime has stayed. The real reason is clear. Assad’s regime is fighting with the help of Russia and China. It is confronting a huge popular gust of millions of people who are neither immune nor backed. These people fight with primitive weapons and confront warplanes and tanks with rifles. This type of war does not achieve massive and quick victory, and it may never achieve victory.

Maliki himself and his party, Al-Daawa, fought Saddam Hussein for 20 years, and they did not succeed in seizing one inch of Iraq because the borders were closed and their weapons were light. When Saddam fell, he fell due to a U.S. “Armada.” And so Assad’s regime did not withhold and remain because the Alawite men and women stood by it.

The truth is the opposite of that. They stood by Assad when they saw that he is succeeding in convincing Russia and China to staunchly support him and that he is also succeeding in neutralizing Western countries and the Vatican, alleging that there is a sectarian war against the Christians and Druze and that the revolution will help establish an extremist religious regime.

The rebels war

The rebels only got a little from Turkey and almost nothing from Jordan. Their backs are exposed, and they carry primitive weapons to the point that more than one fighter uses the same rifle and when ammunition runs out so they are forced to withdraw.

Saddam fell easily in 2003 because America, the world’s superpower, ended him in eight days. Saddam survived for eight years when Iran fought him and killed a million without winning. What I mean is that balances of power are not only rooting, willpower and faith.

Afghan mujahedeen kicked out the Soviets with “Stinger” missiles that paralyzed the Russian warplanes and with the massive aid of progressive Western weapons. This is true in the case of the Viet Cong in Vietnam with the generous Chinese backing it overthrew the regime supporting Washington while the liberation movement in Chechnya failed against the Russians because it was isolated.

Today, the Syrian majority is fighting a regime which cannot be called sectarian but a security and suppressive one that resembles all dictatorship fascist regimes. Sunni and Christian pockets of resistance fight alongside Assad because they share the same interests or fears.

Both sides with all their categories; men, women and children tirelessly fight. It is a bloody absurd war because of the loitering of the international community.

We are in front of the biggest massacre of the 21st century. We have not known of a war where one party uses warplanes, tanks and cannons daily to shell cities and kill thousands of civilians and that has gone month after month. Show me one such scene from our modern history.

What Maliki says of the Alawites’ heroisms is not true and is not even important. The story is that without Iran’s and Russia’s generous support, the regime would run out of ammunition and fuel for its tanks and warplanes.

What Maliki did not deny and did not speak of was the end of the war, as he knows well; Assad’s regime in Damascus will fall no matter how long the struggle takes.

This story was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on Feb. 10, 2013

Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today.

Insight: Iran nuclear fuel move may avert mid-year crisis | Reuters.

(Reuters) – Iran appears to have resumed converting small amounts of its higher-grade enriched uranium into reactor fuel, diplomats say, a process which if expanded could buy time for negotiations between Washington and Tehran on its disputed nuclear program.

The possibility of Iran converting enriched uranium into fuel – slowing a growth in stockpiles of material that could be used to make weapons – is one of the few ways in which the nuclear dispute could avoid hitting a crisis by the summer.

Tehran could otherwise have amassed sufficient stock by June to hit a “red line” set by Israel after which it has indicated it could attack to prevent Iran acquiring enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Yet few expect progress in talks until after the Iranian presidential election in June – a formula for a potentially explosive clash of timetables.

Diplomats accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna told Reuters that Iran had apparently resumed converting into fuel small amounts of higher-grade enriched uranium – thereby reducing the amount potentially available for nuclear weapons – though they had few details and one told Reuters that “very, very little had been done” so far.

A fuller picture is unlikely until a new IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear activity, due by late February. But the question is crucial in determining the size of its stockpiles and how close these are to Israel’s red line. “We will all be doing the mathematics soon,” said one diplomat.

In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not let Iran acquire enough material for a bomb; enriching uranium raises the less than one percent of fissile isotope U-235 found in mined metal to higher concentrations: about 4 percent for reactor fuel, up to 90 percent for a bomb.

While scientists differ about how much uranium is needed to have the ability quickly to make a bomb, analysts say the Israeli figure is believed to be 240 kg of uranium enriched to 20 percent; at that concentration, the material is nine tenths of the way to the weapons-grade of about 90 percent, since most of the unwanted isotopes have been separated out by then.

“Israeli officials, in private, widely use the 240kg figure,” said Shashank Joshi, a Research Fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “The figure is so specific and so widely used that they must understand the implications of drawing this red line: that Iran is free to produce anything up to that amount, but that producing any more would force Israel to choose between humiliation or war.”

Iran averted a potential crisis last year by converting around 100 kg of its 20-percent enriched uranium into fuel – prompting some analysts to believe it was deliberately keeping below the threshold for potential weapons-grade material set by Israel, while still advancing its nuclear technology. It is not believed to have enriched uranium beyond 20-percent.

Iran, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying its aim is electric power and some higher-grade enriched uranium for medical purposes. It says non-signatory Israel, assumed to have nuclear arms, is a threat.

Last year’s fuel conversion only slowed Iran’s accumulation of 20 percent enriched uranium and was stopped. As it continues to produce fresh supplies – diplomats believe it is adding 14 to 15 kg a month – stockpiles are rising quickly and they calculate Iran will hit the Israeli red line by May or June, unless it again expands fuel conversions or slows its rate of enrichment.

It is here that the complex calculations of nuclear experts and international diplomacy collide.

IRANIAN ELECTION

The Iranian nuclear program is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who last week publicly rebuffed U.S. overtures for direct talks. While he is not facing voters himself, he is seen as unlikely to want to make any concessions until he has a firmer grip on the warring factions vying for power beneath him after the presidential election in June.

“I think, until we get a clearer sense of how that plays out, that the Iranians are going to be basically in a holding pattern,” said Shannon Kile, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Iran would not negotiate under pressure but would talk if others stopped “pointing the gun”. At odds with Khamenei, Ahmadinejad will step down in June but appears to maneuvering to maintain influence.

At the same time, there appears to be a growing recognition among world powers that using economic sanctions to force Tehran to curb its nuclear program are unlikely to succeed without a broader political dialogue between the United States and Iran to ease acrimony dating back to the 1979 Iranian revolution.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden repeated an offer for direct talks at a conference in Munich early this month.

Negotiations with Tehran are currently run jointly by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – known as the P5+1. These are expected to make at best limited progress in a meeting with Iran due in Kazakhstan on February 26.

“It has been obvious for years that Iran would only move on this issue in the context of a direct dialogue with the U.S.,” said one former senior diplomat who has negotiated with Iran.

“Before that, it will continue to be a managed exercise in futility on the part of Iran waiting for this to happen, while mastering the technology in the process.”

Taking the two together, the shifting diplomatic approach and advancing Iranian engineering, there would be a short window of time after June for any U.S.-Iran talks to produce results.

After that, the progress of Iran’s technology could hit new Western red lines, including reaching a perceived “breakout” capacity, where it could move from the ability to make a weapon to actually building a bomb fast enough to avoid detection.

How then, is Israel’s red line to be postponed enough to allow time for diplomacy in the second half of the year?

MUDDLING PAST DEADLINE

Iran has shown no sign of slowing down the rate at which it enriches uranium to 20 percent in a plant at Fordow, diplomats say, though, perhaps significantly, it has not so far put into operation some new machinery – two cascades of inter-connected centrifuges which could have rapidly expanded that program.

Based on data reported by the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear agency, Iran will hit Netanyahu’s red line in May or June unless it converts more of its stockpiles into fuel, or slows enrichment.

An alternative scenario would be for Israel to blur the definition of its red line, given enough reassurance that its key ally the United States would be ready to stop Iran gaining nuclear weapons through diplomatic or military means.

Having lost seats in a parliamentary election last month at which many voters indicated they did not fully share his anxiety about Iran, Netanyahu may also be ready to bide his time.

With U.S. President Barack Obama due to visit Israel in March on a trip Netanyahu says will focus on Iran, Syria and the Palestinians, there are tentative signs Israel might give some space to the United States to pursue its diplomacy – though not necessarily on the issue of highly enriched uranium stockpiles.

“It is notable that, recently, there have been no new assassinations of Iranian scientists, no prominent covert action or explosions, and broad Israeli restraint on statements of military intent,” said Joshi at RUSI in London, referring to a widely assumed covert campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

“They are conceding U.S. leadership on this issue – whether by choice or American design.”

Former Israeli army intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said it was in Israel’s interest that Washington or the P5+1 reach an agreement with Iran. Writing in a report by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, he said: “Such a solution is preferable to a strategy with two exclusive alternatives of ‘an Iranian bomb’ or ‘the bombing of Iran’.”

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

‘Obama is coming to tell Netanyahu not to strike Iran’ | The Times of Israel.

( If this story was anything other than disinfo, do you really think it would have been broadcast on IDF radio?  C’mon… – JW )

Army Radio report says first presidential visit aims to ensure the prime minister won’t initiate attack on Tehran’s nuclear program

Netanyahu and Obama at a March 2012 meeting in the White House (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90)

Barack Obama will be making his first presidential visit to Israel next month primarily in order to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in person to hold off on any military intervention in Iran, it was reported Sunday.

Quoting unnamed Israeli sources, Israel’s Army Radio said the president would indeed seek to host some kind of summit meeting between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and possibly Jordan’s King Abdullah, to try to re-energize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

But the key reason for the visit and its timing, the report said, is that Netanyahu cited spring 2013 in his speech to the UN General Assembly last fall as a notable deadline relating to thwarting Iran’s nuclear drive, and the president wants to tell the prime minister face-to-face that the time is not yet ripe for military action. “Obama fears that the prime minister will decide to strike in Iran now, at a time when he is backed by a new government and can set up a new security cabinet in which two reported [ministerial] opponents of military intervention — Dan Meridor and Benny Begin — will no longer be present,” the Army Radio report said. Meridor and Begin both lost their Knesset seats in the January 22 elections.

Obama will reiterate US determination to ensure that Iran does not attain nuclear weapons, and will remind Netanyahu that the US has military “capacities” that Israel does not possess, the report added. New Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that the diplomatic option remained open, but that all other options were also on the table.

“Obama decided to come himself and deliver to Netanyahu the direct message, ‘Don’t strike at Iran. Let me oversee the contacts with Iran as I see fit. If necessary I’ll take action against them. We have capacities that you do not have’,” the radio report said.

Netanyahu told Sunday’s cabinet meeting that the upcoming visit was an important reassertion of the strong US-Israel alliance. He said he and the president, when discussing the trip in a phone call two weeks ago, agreed that it would focus on “Iran’s attempt to attain nuclear weapons, the instability in Syria and its implications for regional security, and efforts to advance the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, told Army Radio that the notion that the Obama visit would be focused primarily on Iran made sense since that was the most urgent regional challenge — “a race against time” — followed by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, with the Palestinian issue “the least urgent.” Arad said he did not know whether Obama was coming to say precisely what the unnamed sources were asserting, however.

The radio report said Obama could have discussed Iran and all other issues with Netanyahu in Washington, DC, in early March, when the prime minister is likely to attend the annual policy conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. But the president preferred not to be dealing with Netanyahu amid the AIPAC gathering, the report indicated, where the White House fears that Netanyahu will deliver “an aggressive speech on Iran.”

In interviews last week, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said the Obama visit was a sign of unshakable US-Israel relations and an opportunity for “consultations” on key regional issues, notably including Iran’s nuclear drive, the collapse of the Assad regime, and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Iran’s Ahmadinajad rejects Western pressure – Israel News, Ynetnews.

In speech marking 34th anniversary of Islamic revolution, Iranian president says ‘You can’t point a gun at the Iranian nations and expect them to negotiate with you’

News agencies

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Tehran would not negotiate about its disputed nuclear program under pressure, but would talk to its adversaries if they stopped “pointing the gun”.

In a speech to mark the 34th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad struck a more conciliatory tone than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Feb. 7 rebuffed a US call for direct negotiations on disputes between the two countries.

Ahmadinejad does not have the authority to authorize negotiations over the nuclear program, which lies with Khamenei.

The US and some of its allies suspect Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons capability under the cover of a civilian nuclear energy program, a charge Iran has denied.

“You cannot point a gun at the Iranian nation and then expect them to have negotiations with you,” Ahmadinejad said, speaking to a crowd gathered in Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square.

His speech, which partly dealt with Iran’s policy towards its ‘enemies’, was carried live on Iranian state television.

“Talks should not be used as a lever to impose one’s opinions.”

He added: “If you stop pointing the gun at the Iranian nation, I will negotiate (with you) myself.”

He said the West had recently taken a “better” tone toward Iran – a nod to statements made by Vice President Joe Biden last week, in which he said the United States was prepared talk directly to Iran. But the Iranian president said this was not enough.

“The Iranian nation will not give up one iota of its rights,” Ahmadinejad said. “Your efforts had aimed at preventing us from become nuclear, but we did.”

However Ahmadinejad admitted that sanctions have taken a bite. “Today, because of dishonorable pressure by enemies, people are under pressure. The government is concerned about the uneasy situation of a big portion of the country.”

State TV meanwhile broadcast rallies throughout the country to mark the anniversary. Many demonstrators chanted “Down with the US” and “Death to Israel,” slogans traditionally used to denounce the Islamic Republic’s arch-enemies.

Khamenei on Thursday slapped down an offer of direct negotiations with the United States, saying negotiations and pressure were incompatible.

Officials: Obama coming to Israel… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

( Do you smell a powerful odor of mendacity in this story ?  – JW )

IDF says calm on Syria border ‘deceptive’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Military sources say escalating civil war in Syria, anti-Israel aggression fostered by Assad, increase likelihood of terror attack on what has essentially been Israel’s most tranquil border thus far

Yoav Zitun

Despite the alleged strike against a Syrian arms convoy some 10 ago, which foreign media sources hinted was the IAF’s doing, the Israel-Syria border is actually the quietest among the Jewish state’s borders. But IDF officials fear that may soon change.

The border stretches some 80 kilometers, from Mount Hermon in the north to the border junction with Jordan in the south.

The border’s tranquil visage, the majority of which is painted with lush green, was recently disturbed by echoes of the bloody civil war ripping through Syria, and while the sounds of war have somewhat faded in the area, the IDF knows that the calm will not last for much longer.

The growing unrest in Damascus, and President Bashar Assad continuous attempts to blame the West in general and Israel is particular for the violence plaguing the country, has translated into growing agitation; and the volatile climate means one thing – a terror attack against Israeli targets in the area is only a matter of time.

The immediate area adjacent to the Syrian side of the border is home to villages that have become brimming with terror activity over the past two years.

Israel-Syria border (Photo: AFP)

Assad’s loose grip on the area has made it safe for terror operatives to seek refuge there; and thousands of them – from Saudi, Iraqi and Yemeni al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad-affiliated groups – are believed to be on the ground.

Not ‘if’ – when

Syria, as a symbol that it does recognize Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan Heights, has never built a border fence in the area. Israel’s original border, laid out in 1976 and now rusting away, is being replaced with a state-of-the-art fence.

The future border fence, which according to IDF sources is being rapidly built, had advance surveillance and alert features, and is designed to warn the GOC Northern Command of any contact made with it.

The fence also aims to counter the current border’s “blind-spots” via advance fiber-optic systems, compounded by radars and cameras. The project, estimated at several hundreds of million of shekels, is meant to provide the IDF with absolute control of the border’s area; as well as with “eyes” and “ears” further inland Syria.

The GOC Northern Command’s operational premise is that of an imminent threat and as such, it has also bolstered the presence of troops on the ground. The soldiers are joined by the IDF’s Oketz Canine Unit, whose dogs help detect suspect individuals and materials alike.

Training. IDF troops (Archives: IDF)

Over the past few months Oketz teams have assisted in the apprehension of six suspects believed to be on reconnaissance missions. All six were turned over for questioning by security forces.

“In my 25 years in the IDF, I’ve never seen such non-combat deployment in the area,” Nahal Commander Colonel Yehuda Fox, whose troops are preparing to relieve Golani troops along the border, told Ynet.

“We’re gearing for all scenarios in the sectors. The build-up is underway. If we do see a complex terror attack on the border, the last thing we could say is that is was a surprise and any such incident would have to be contained very quickly.”

The timing of such a terror attack, if the IDF’s scenarios prove true – whether it would take place before or after the demise of Assad’s regime – is unknown; and neither is the nature of the day after.

Another unknown parameter in the already complex equation is what authority – if any – the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), entrusted with enforcing the Israel-Syria ceasefire, would retain.

The collapse of the Damascus regime is likely to render 50% of the agreement null and void. UNDOF, much like UNIFIL in Lebanon, is wary of the developments.

Meanwhile, the White House refused to send weapon to the Syrian opposition for fear of it reaching the hands of al-Qaeda and other terror organizations that are part of the effort to topple Assad’s regime.

In Israel, political sources urged Jerusalem to find a way to negotiate with the Syrian opposition via a third, European party in order to ensure Israel’s security interests are maintained during a transition of power.

‘Obama willing to up Iran heat in return… JPost – International.