WarSclerotic

Netanyahu: Centrifuge report shows Iran nearing ‘red line’By HERB KEINON, REUTERS02/21/2013 19:07Prime minister responds to IAEA report saying 180 centrifuges are hooked up at Natanz, Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant, calls findings “very grave;” White House says window for diplomacy “will not stay open indefinitely.”Centrifuges unveiled in NatanzCentrifuges unveiled in Natanz Photo: REUTERSVIENNA – Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, a UN nuclear report said on Thursday. In response, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Iran is closer today than ever before to obtaining the necessary enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. The White House said that the window remains open for diplomacy with Iran but will not stay open indefinitely.Netanyahu termed the report “very grave,” and said it proved that Iran is moving swiftly toward the red line he set out at the UN in September. He said during that address that Iran must be stopped before it crosses that line, something he said at the time could happen as early as the spring.Related: ‘Iran can ease nuke fears if rights are recognized’ Expert: Iran nuke won’t start Mideast arms raceThe Prime Minister’s Office said that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons will be the first issue on the agenda when US President Barack Obama comes to visit in less than a month’s time.In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been hooked up at the plant near the central town of Natanz.If operated successfully, such machines could enable Iran to significantly speed up its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy purposes.The report also said Iran had increased to 167 kg 367 pounds its stockpile of uranium refined to a fissile purity of 20 percent – a level it says it needs for conversion into reactor fuel. About 240-250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium is needed for one atomic bomb if refined to a high degree.Click here for full Jpost coverage of the Iranian threatIran resumed converting higher-grade enriched uranium for fuel production in December and had since fed 28.3 kg of the material for this stated purpose, the report added.It further said that “extensive” activities – an allusion to clean-up and renovations – at Iran’s Parchin military site would seriously undermine an IAEA investigation to determine whether explosives research relevant to nuclear weapons was done there.

via Netanyahu: Centrifuge report sho… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Jeffrey Goldberg – Authors – The Atlantic.

( The best defense is an irrelevant offense, ehh my little whining Goldberg? – JW )

One of Chuck Hagel’s most vociferous critics is a Breitbart writer named Ben Shapiro, who is responsible for this bit of immortal journalism:

On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”

There is, of course, no group called “Friends of Hamas,” and Chuck Hagel did not receive funding from this group, which, as I just mentioned, does not exist. (Dave Weigel did the hard work of proving its non-existence, and Dan Friedman, from the New York Daily News, subsequently explained that he may have inadvertently introduced, in a joking fashion, the idea that such a group did, in fact, exist.)

I bring this up not to question the quality of journalism perpetrated by writers associated with the Breitbart site. (Full disclosure: Breitbart.com has argued that I am a “court Jew” who has been “obsequiously bending over for Barack Obama for some time.”) Instead, I bring this up to note the remarkable fact that Mr. Shapiro, who has positioned himself as a stalwart defender of Israel and of the Jewish people, has expressed views that place him squarely in the fascist camp. Not only is he to the right of Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama, he is to the right of the mainstream pro-Israel community; of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America; the Likud Party; and the governing body of the West Bank settlement movement.

In a column published in 2003, Shapiro explicitly endorsed the idea of forcibly expelling the Palestinians from the West Bank. This was the position of the extremist Meir Kahane, who was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from participating in Israeli politics because of his racist views. Here is an excerpt from one of Shapiro’s columns, entitled “Transfer is Not a Dirty Word,” which, to the best of my knowledge, he has never renounced, not that it would matter particularly much:

The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It’s not genocide; it’s transfer. It’s not Hitler; it’s Churchill.

After World War II, Poland was recreated by the Allied Powers. In doing so, the Allies sliced off a chunk of Germany and extended Poland west to the Oder-Neisse line. Anywhere from 3.5 million to 9 million Germans were forcibly expelled from the new Polish territory and relocated in Germany.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was pleased with the result. In 1944, he had explained to the House of Commons that “expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble … a clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by the prospect of the disentanglement of populations, nor even by these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they ever were before.” Churchill was right. The Germans accepted the new border, and decades of conflict between Poles and Germans ended.

Arab-Jewish conflict is exponentially more volatile than German-Polish conflict ever was. And the solution is far easier. If there was “room in Germany for the German populations of East Prussia and of the other territories,” as Churchill stated, there is certainly room in the spacious Muslim states of the Middle East for 5 million Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. If Germans, who had a centuries-old connection to the newly created Polish territory, could be expelled, then surely Palestinians, whose claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is dubious at best, can be expelled.

It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution.

Shapiro has argued that Jews who support Barack Obama (the majority of American Jews, in other words) are, in essence, self-haters and “Jews in name only.” But Shapiro is the one who seems completely divorced from Jewish values. His leadership role in the dump-Hagel movement reflects well on Barack Obama.

Hagel called Netanyahu a ‘radical,’ urged talks with Hamas | The Times of Israel.

( Is this bone-headed dirtbag really going to be the US Secretary of Defense? ! – JW )

In 2010 speech, defense secretary nominee also reportedly warned Israel risked becoming an apartheid state if it blocked Palestinian state

Former Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s choice for defense secretary, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 31 (photo credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Chuck Hagel, the embattled nominee for US Secretary of Defense, reportedly said in a 2010 speech that Israel risked becoming an “apartheid state” by refusing to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. (Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said much the same in an address in Israel in February of that year.)

Hagel, a 66-year-old Vietnam veteran and former Nebraska senator, has come under fire from Jewish and Republican groups for his voting record on pro-Israel resolutions and past statements in which he expressed emphatic opposition to a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In a speech at Rutgers University in April 2010, Hagel accused Israel of violating every UN resolution since 1967 as well as agreements with the Middle East “quartet” — four entities involved in the peace process — the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

The report was based on an email that one attendee, Kenneth Wagner, claimed to have sent to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee at the time of the speech.

Wagner, whom the Free Beacon describes as a pro-Israel activist, wrote at the time that Hagel said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “was a radical and that even [former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi] Livni, who was hard nosed, thought he was too radical and so wouldn’t join in a coalition [government] with him. … He said that Hamas has to be brought in to any peace negotiation.”

On Thursday, the Free Beacon reported that Hagel called the US State Department an extension of the Israeli government at Rutgers in 2007. That report was based on a contemporaneous account of the speech written by a Hagel supporter, and spurred a number of Jewish groups and Republicans to call for Hagel to explain his statements.

While Senate Democrats have pushed for confirmation of President Barack Obama’s pick for the job, Republicans have held up the vote until they receive answers from the White House about how the attack on the US Embassy in Libya in September was handled.

Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.

Egypts Floods Smuggling Tunnels to Gaza With Sewage – NYTimes.com.

( I love irony, but this is almost too much… JW )

By FARES AKRAM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

¶ GAZA —The Egyptian military is resorting to a pungent new tactic to shut down the smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza: flooding them with sewage. Along with the stink, the approach is raising new questions about relations between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their ideological allies in Hamas who control the Gaza Strip.

¶ “Awful,” said Abu Mutair Shalouf, 35, a Palestinian smuggler on the Gaza side, watching workers haul buckets of sewage-soaked soil from the shaft of a tunnel flooded by the Egyptian military 15 days ago. “I don’t know why they did this.”

¶ Advisers to the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, say the answer is simple: they are determined to shut the tunnels to block the destabilizing flow of weapons and militants into Sinai from Gaza — a vow Mr. Morsi made with evident passion in an interview five months ago.

¶ And the more muted response from Hamas, a militant offshoot of the Brotherhood, is the strongest indication yet that its leaders are now pinning their hopes on their ideological allies in Cairo, even if at the moment they appear to be harming the interests of the citizens of Gaza. The tunnels remain a vital source of certain imports to Gaza and smuggling-tax revenue for Hamas, and when the former president, Hosni Mubarak, used far less effective methods to close the tunnels, Hamas screamed of betrayal.

¶ After the sewage flooding, several Hamas officials instead emphasized Egypt’s right to protect its borders as it chose. “Egypt is a state of sovereignty and we do not impose on it anything,” said Salah al-Bardawil, a Hamas official in Gaza. “We address the Egyptian side about the issue and hope they will understand us and our needs,” he added. “We trust the Egyptian leadership that they will not leave the Palestinian people alone.”

¶ Analysts offer many theories about the timing. At a moment of political and economic difficulties, with a financial aid package stalled in the United States Congress, Egypt’s Islamist-led government “is showing itself once more as a valuable ally,” speculated Yasser el-Shimy, Egypt analyst at the International Crisis Group. “It can do something like this, which, perhaps, promotes strategic interests.”

¶ Or perhaps, Mr. Shimy said, Mr. Morsi’s government aimed to remind Israel that it, and not Egypt, still bore responsibility for Gaza’s poverty and problems. Or perhaps the Egyptian military was sending some domestic message of its own, either to the Brotherhood or other domestic constituents, about the generals’ independence from the Islamists.

¶ Concern in Cairo about the tunnels spiked last August, when 16 Egyptian soldiers died in a militant attack on a military outpost in Sinai. The Egyptian government believes the attackers came through the tunnels.

¶ Then, after Egypt helped broker a truce between Hamas and Israel to end a week of fighting in Gaza last November, Israel eased restrictions on imports over the border. Most notably, it began allowing in more construction material previously considered to have a potential military use, though Palestinians say the Israelis still block steel and other materials.

¶ Essam el-Hadded, Mr. Morsi’s national security adviser, suggested this week that the loosened restrictions at the border crossing might have encouraged the crackdown on tunnels. “Now we can say that the borders are open to a good extent — it could still be improved — and the needs of the Gazan people are allowed in,” Mr. Hadded told Reuters.

¶ Under Mr. Mubarak, Palestinians said, the Egyptians sometimes flooded tunnels with gas, which was easily remedied by pumping in air.

¶ But around the beginning of February the Egyptian military began for the first time to use waste water instead, eventually flooding about two dozen of the 200-odd tunnels. (The Egyptian authorities say there are 225; Palestinians say 250.)

¶ Mr. Shalouf, 35, who imported mainly gravel, said that before removing the buckets of dirt he had pumped out the water. Now he plans to lay down sand and sawdust and reinforce the ceiling. Repairs could take three weeks.

¶ Palestinians say that so far the flooding has hurt individual livelihoods but not the total volume of goods moving below ground. On Wednesday, about two cargo trucks per minute were pulling out of the main smuggling zone inside Gaza, laden with cement, gravel, canned food, citrus and vegetables. Hamas customs officers kept a record of each truck and load.

¶

Car bomb explodes near Assad’s Baath party HQ in Damascus: police.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

They Syrian capital has so far mostly avoided the large scale violence that has destroyed other Syrian cities. (Al Arabiya)

  nShare

At least 31 people were killed after a powerful car bomb exploded near the headquarters of Syria’s ruling Baath party in the center of Damascus on Thursday.

Syrian state TV reported that the blast occurred in the central Mazraa neighborhood and called it a “terrorist” attack. It did not say what caused the explosion but reported that there were casualties and that the wounded included four children.

The car explosion allegedly took place at a security checkpoint between the Russian Embassy and the headquarters of the ruling Baath party of President Bashar Assad, reported Reuters.

“It was a car bomb at the 16 November Square, near the al-Imam mosque,” near the Baath party offices, a police official at the scene told AFP.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in the country, said initial reports suggested a building of the ruling Baath Party was targeted, according to the Associated Press.

Ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion, which also shattered windows and sent up a huge plume of smoke visible throughout much of the city.

The Syrian capital has so far mostly avoided the large scale violence that has destroyed other Syrian cities, though deadly car bombings have targeted government buildings before.

The news comes as opposition activists said that three explosions had hit the al-Barzah district in Damascus, according to Al Arabiya.

Hizballah on high alert, jockeys for a role in potential Syrian peace accord.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 21, 2013, 1:39 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli drone downed over Lebanon

Hizballah forces went on alert Thursday, Feb. 21, upon the expiry of a 48-hour ultimatum slapped down by Syrian rebels to halt the Lebanese group’s military support for Bashar Assad – in particular, its artillery and mortar backing for Syrian troops from bases in Lebanon.
debkafile’s military sources report that relevant to this chain of events is the Syrian claim that its anti-aircraft missiles downed an Israeli drone Wednesday over the Lebanese village of Deir al-Aachayer in the Rashaya region.
Those events were touched off by the onset in Moscow of preparations for a political process between Syria’s warring parties for determining the country’s future. Representatives of Bashar Assad and the Syrian opposition will be facing each other under the Russian aegis, but Hizballah and Israel are also involved and the Lebanese group is bidding for a strong voice in the process on three issues:

1. Will the HIzballah-ruled Lebanese Beqaa Valley continue to serve Assad and his army as their strategic hinterland?

2. Will the Syria-based Hizballah units, especially those securing the Shiite villages around Homs, stay there under accords reached between Assad and the rebels?

3. Will the ceasefire deals on which talks are due to begin soon in Moscow apply to HIzballah?

The general wisdom in the West and Israeli media is that Assad’s fall is inevitable and imminent.

The facts on the ground tell a different story. debkafile’s military sources report that Assad goes into political talks with his army controlling enough of the country to keep his regime in power for another two years at least, until the next presidential election expected to take place in 2014.

The Syrian ruler will seek to have Hizballah covered by a Syria ceasefire, hoping for Moscow’s backing on this point. Inclusion of this ally would strengthen his standing and boost his army.

It would also keep Tehran in the picture and gain its acquiescence to any deals struck in the Moscow talks. Assad understands that Iran will want to be sure Hizballah’s interests are protected and is fully capable of torpedoing any accords that throw its proxy to the wolves.
The downing of the Israeli drone Wedneday over the Beqaa Valley was a move by the Syrian ruler to push Israel out of any discussion on the future role of Hizballah and the Beqaa Valley, as well as putting a stop to Israeli Air Force flights over the Beqaa and the Lebanese-Syrian border.
Israel has not so far responded to this step, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will remain passive or stop its Lebanese overflights.
This chain of events could culminate over the weekend in the Syrian rebels making good on their ultimatum and attacking Hizballah targets. The Syrian civil war would then be thrust into the byway of a Sunni-Shiite showdown athwart the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Militarily, the rebels can’t stand up to Hizballah’s far more organized and professional capabilities. If they do decide to go on the offensive, they are liable to suffer heavy losses.

World Briefing | Africa

Nigeria: Security Service Says It Halted Group Watching Israeli and U.S. Targets

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 20, 2013

Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.

Twitter List: Reporters and Editors

Nigeria’s State Security Service said Wednesday that it broke up what it characterized as a terrorist group, backed by “Iranian handlers,” that wanted to gather intelligence about locations frequented by Americans and Israelis. The service said it arrested three suspects, but one remained at large. A spokeswoman, Marilyn Ogar, who was reading from a statement, identified the head of the group as Abdullahi Mustaphah Berende, a leader of a local Shiite sect. “He personally took photographs of the Israeli culture center in Ikoyi, Lagos,” she said. The group also conducted surveillance on USAID and the United States Peace Corps, she said. Ms. Ogar did not take questions.

via Nigeria – Security Service Says It Halted Group Watching Israeli and U.S. Targets – NYTimes.com.

Defense minister: Iran’s cruise, ballistic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in region

inShare2

Defense minister: Iran’s cruise, ballistic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in region

18 February 2013, 17:52 (GMT+04:00)

See Also:

Iran’s Defense Minister threatens Israel

Iran to unveil new 1,000-3,000 km radars soon

Iran’s defense minister: Life of current hegemonic countries to end by 2035

China protests US sanctions on companies over alleged arms deals with Iran, North Korea, Syria

U.S. lists new Iran sanctions on several Chinese firms

Khamenei: Policy of U.S. in Middle East failed, so it wants to negotiate with Iran

Iran-US direct talks unavoidable

Iran FM spokesman: direct U.S. talks with sanctions and pressure are meaningless

E-mail.

Print.

Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.18 / Trend S. Isayev/

Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Iran’s cruise and ballistic missiles are capable of striking U.S. warships that are located in the regional waters, Fars news agency reported.

He noted that Iran’s deployment of anti-ship missiles on its Southern coast is a blow to U.S. strategic goals in the region.

Vahidi also stressed on the importance of Iran’s naval forces in securing the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

Previously Vahidi said that the Asian countries would rule the world after the hegemonic powers collapse.

“The countries that have naval and marine control, will take on major role in administration at the world arena,” he noted.

Vahidi noted that despite that the Western nations want to keep their domination over the international community, in the future Iran would play a strong role in the world, regarding its strategic position among the nations.

Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at agency@trend.az

via Defense minister: Iran’s cruise, ballistic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in region – Trend.Az.

Nigeria nabs terrorists planning attacks on Is… JPost – Defense.

Iran installs uranium enrichment accelerators | The Times of Israel.

Diplomats say Tehran upgrading fissile material production, nearing ability to outfit nuclear warhead

February 20, 2013, 10:44 pm Updated: February 21, 2013, 12:34 am

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to the crowd after speaking in Tehran on Saturday (photo credit: AP/Office of the Supreme Leader)

VIENNA (AP) — In a disheartening signal to world powers at upcoming Iran talks, Tehran has started installing high-tech machines at its main uranium enrichment site that are capable of accelerating production of reactor fuel and — with further upgrading — the core of nuclear warheads, diplomats said Wednesday.

Iran already announced last week that it had begun mounting the new enriching centrifuges, but one diplomat said at the time that the announcement was premature with only a “small number” on site and not yet installed.

Diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday, however, that installation was now well on its way, with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency seeing close to 100 or more machines mounted when they toured the site a few days ago. Depending on experts’ estimates, the new-generation centrifuges can enrich uranium three to five times faster than Iran’s present working model.

The Islamic Republic insists it is not working on a nuclear weapons program, but rather is enriching uranium only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes — as allowed by international law.

But many nations are suspicious because Iran went underground after failing to get international help for its uranium enrichment program in the 1980s, working secretly until its activities were revealed a decade ago. More recent proposals for international shipments of reactor fuel in exchange for Iranian enrichment concessions have foundered, with each side blaming the other.

Shrugging off demands to mothball enrichment — and growing international sanctions — Iran has instead vastly expanded the program to where experts say it already has enough enriched uranium for several weapons if the material is further enriched.

The start of the centrifuge upgrade at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment site southeast of Tehran, flies in the face of world-power efforts to induce Iran to scale back on enrichment. As such, it is likely to hurt chances of progress at Feb. 26 talks in Kazakhstan between the two sides — adding to a string of negotiating failures.

When Iran announced its intentions last month, Western diplomats downplayed the proclamation’s significance, noting Tehran did not say when it would start populating Natanz with the new machines. But any start of an upgrade is sure to increase international concerns, particularly if verified as expected in an IAEA report later this week.

The three diplomats speaking to the AP on Wednesday all are involved in the Vienna-based IAEA’s attempts to monitor Iran’s nuclear program. They demanded anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss confidential information.

Meeting Iran in Kazakhstan are the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Russia and China often are at odds with the West on how harshly Iran’s nuclear activities should be censured, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said recently that Iran was within its legal rights to install new generation centrifuges. At the same time, he called for a suspension of uranium enrichment during negotiations to improve the political atmosphere.

While moving to increase the potency of its enrichment program with the new centrifuges, however, Tehran also has recently resumed converting some of its higher-level enriched uranium at its Fordo enrichment site into reactor fuel plates after suspending the activity last year. That is likely to provide some reassurance to nations concerned about Iran’s nuclear aims because the plates are difficult to reconvert back into weapons usable material.

About 700 of the old machines at Fordo are churning out higher-enriched material that is still below — but just a technical step away — from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it needs that higher-enriched level to fuel a research reactor

With higher-enriched uranium their immediate concern, the six powers over the past months have inched toward meeting Iranian demands of sanctions relief but say Tehran must first suspend its output at Fordo. Iran, in turn, wants sanctions eased before it commits to even a discussion of an enrichment cutback.

The diplomats said Iran was also upgrading its enrichment capabilities at Fordo but declined to provide further details ahead of the release of the IAEA report.

In first revealing plans to update last month, Iran indicated that It could add more than 3,000 of the new-generation centrifuges to the more than 10,000 older models it has at Natanz turning out enriched uranium at grades lower than at Fordo. The lower the grade, the harder it would be to turn into weapons-grade material.

Olli Heinonen, the former IAEA deputy director general in charge of Iran, told the AP last week that Iran could install 3,000 or more of the high-tech centrifuges at Natanz within six to nine months, assuming that Tehran had the material to make the machines.

Iran, in its dealings both with the six powers and the IAEA, has continually acted as if it were in the position of strength. On Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, asserted that his country was not seeking nuclear weapons, but that if Tehran intended to build them, “the US could in no way stop the Iranian nation.”

David Albright, whose Institute for Science and International Security is a source for the US government on proliferation issues, said Iran’s hopes that the new centrifuges could strengthen its hand at the Kazakhstan talks could backfire.

“Given the low expectations for negotiations during the next several months, Iran risks giving the impression to the West that it is racing to the bomb rather than strengthening its negotiating position,” he said Wednesday.

But analyst Yousaf Butt, professor and scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said that — with Iran legally entitled to enrich —the six powers first “should consider rolling back some sanctions” if they want Iran to respond.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.