WarSclerotic

Ahmadinejad lands in Cairo 4-6 months before Iran reaches nuclear capacity..

( Assuming my analysis about the central change in relative positions occasioned by the destruction of Fordow is incorrect, this is indeed the sorry state of affairs we would be faced with – JW )

DEBKAfile Special Report February 5, 2013, 1:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

The Iranian nuclear challenge is coming closer

As Israel’s old and new parties face off in the haggling for places in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s third government coalition, they are missing hectic events in the background which spell big trouble on their country’s back, front and side doors. This was heralded not least by the arrival in Cairo Tuesday, Feb. 5, of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his offer of a pact with Egypt to “solve the Palestinian problem,” which in his terms means “wiping Israel off the map.”

Iran’s main ally, the Syrian President Bashar Assad is already assured of his coalition with Moscow and Tehran for keeping his regime firmly in power for the foreseeable future. After nearly two years of bloody conflict for his overthrow, the Syrian opposition is knocking on Assad’s door cap in hand to plead with the tyrant for a negotiated end to the agony.
Opposition leader Mouaz al-Khatib has been bustling between US Vice President Joe Biden, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi at the Munich security conference, looking for a concerted multi-national effort to open Assad’s door.
Iran’s National Security Director Saeed Jalili’s trip to Damascus Saturday, Feb. 2, was avowedly to plan retribution for Israel’s reported air strike on the Jamraya military complex and arms trucks near Damascus last Wednesday. But he also put in a word on behalf of negotiations and a request for Bashar Assad to state his terms for opening dialogue with the opposition.
The Syrian ruler is playing hard ball. His strongest card is his regime’s proven survivability in defiance of every Western forecast, including Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s confident prediction since early last year that he would be gone “in weeks.”

Even the Syrian rebels fighting him are beginning to see that they can’t defeat the Assad regime and his army – as debkafile has been reporting for the past year – so long as their archenemy is sustained by Moscow and Tehran with supplies of arms, oil, money and diplomatic support on call.

The Iranian nuclear front never pauses. Tehran can easily afford the optimism voiced by the Iranian foreign minister in Munich Monday, Feb. 4, about the “bilateral dialogue” offered by Vice President Biden, which he welcomed.
This is because Iran is no more than four to six months away from its goal.
Former Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Asher Yadlin, long perceived as the Israeli prime minister’s unofficial spokesman on the Iranian nuclear issue, spoke Monday in his capacity as the head of an Israel research tank, when he said in a lecture that Iran can “achieve breakout in four to six months.”
This would cross the last “red line” set by Netanyahu in his address to the UN last September.

The twin timelines of Syria and Iran look like converging round about May when Iran may have achieved its nuclear weapon capacity at the same time as Assad launches negotiations with his opponents for their capitulation.
Left in ruins would be the grand strategy the Obama administration sold Israel in the past four years, which many Israelis embraced, that it was necessary to break up the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis before tackling the Iranian nuclear threat.
The approaching spring of 2013 will find Israel facing a hostile axis stronger than ever before and, moreover, armed with a nuclear weapon capability.
Netanyahu’s high-flown words about the first priority for his new government being to keep Iran from procuring a nuclear weapon are fast losing their meaning. Iran has already provided itself with all the necessary components for a nuclear device and needs no more than four to six months to assemble them.
It is therefore hardly surprising to find Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, in search of help to save  his country from disintegration, bankruptcy and chaos, turning to the rising force, Iran.
Last December, debkafile and other Middle East media reported that Morsi had invited the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al Qods Brigades commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani for a consulation on the establishment of a militia for bolstering his and the Muslim Brotherhood’s hold on power.
This report though widely reported in Egyptian media was generally overlooked by news publications in Israel and the West.

Ahmadinejad lost no time in taking up the invitation to visit Cairo, arriving Tuesday at the head of the Iranian delegation to the 12th summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which begins Feb. 6.
The first Iranian leader to visit Egypt in three decades, Ahmadinejad was already talking about a joint Egyptian-Iranian effort for solving the “Palestinian problem” and allowing him to pray on Temple Mount, Jerusalem. Solving the Palestinian problem in Iranian terms means wiping the state of Israel off the map.
As seen in his mind’s eye, this should be attainable by a powerful world bloc composed of a nuclear-armed Iran, Egypt, Syria and Hizballah which would triumph over Israel and seize Jerusalem from “the Zionist regime.”
Netanyahu and partners had better hurry up and cobble together their coalition before Israel’s enemies pull ahead.

Iran’s Advanced Centrifuges – Assessment and Significance.

Rafael Ofek

4/2/2013

According to Reuters (January 31, 2013), Iran informed the IAEA by letter of its plans to install and operate advanced centrifuges at its main uranium-enrichment facility near Natanz. The report did not include details about the identity of the advanced model or the amount of centrifuges that Iran intends to install.

However, despite the vague information in the Reuters, report, the IAEA’s reports from the latter half of 2012 might shed some light on Iran’s advanced centrifuge plan. In recent years, Iran has developed two advanced versions of centrifuges: IR-2m, which is a second-generation Iranian centrifuge model, and the fourth-generation IR-4. The rotor in the IR-1 model, Iran’s first generation of centrifuges, which is the primary component in the centrifuge, is composed of an aluminum alloy. However, the rotor in the advanced models is not metallic, but made of carbon fibers. In one of the photos of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, apparently when he visited a factory for the production of centrifuge components, he is seen holding a centrifuge rotor made of carbon fiber. The use of carbon fiber makes it possible to increase the diameter of the rotor, and even significantly increase its rotation speed – thus increasing the yield of the centrifuge considerably. However, at least from the Iranian perspective, while the IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuges are advanced, the technology they are based on was actually developed in the 1970s and 1980s. They are very much copies of second-generation centrifuges, which is itself based on German design, just as the IR-1 is a copy of first-generation Pakistani centrifuges, which are based on Dutch design.

The technological knowledge in the field of centrifuges was sold to Iran in the late 1980s and the 1990s by Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who gained the knowledge while working at a Dutch research facility that took part in the URENCO centrifuge project, which was shared by Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. In the 1970s, Dr. Khan returned to Pakistan, after cunningly copying the URENCO programs and smuggled them into the country. It is quite possible that detailed technological knowledge that helped in the development of the advanced Iranian centrifuges made its way to Iran from the Iraqi centrifuge program, via Iranian intelligence agents who worked in Iraq before the First Gulf War and afterwards.

The centrifuges developed by Iraq before 1990 were also based on the German centrifuge, according to plans that were covertly acquired by the country from German experts. In any case, the operation of the advanced centrifuges might be an advancement from Iran’s perspective, by significantly increasing its uranium-enrichment capability. According to David Albright, manager of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, who deals with intelligence assessments on the issue of nuclear circulation around the world, the yield from Iran’s advanced centrifuge models is five times higher than that of the IR-1 model. According to the IAEA reports, the pilot plant of the Natanz facility has advanced centrifuges installed for a while now. As of the second half of 2012, some of them are operational when fed UF6 gas. The status of these centrifuges, as of August 2012, is as follows: a small and experimental cascade of 10 IR-4 centrifuges, which was operated from time to time to carry out tests and measurements; another cascade of 123 IR-4 centrifuges, installed but not operated; and a third cascade of 162 IR-2m centrifuges, which were installed but not operated.

In the past, the Iranian cascades contained 164 centrifuges. However, according to a new design, the new cascades have 174 centrifuges. It is therefore likely that Iran’s recent announcement to the IAEA comes due to the vast experience acquired in Natanz in the experimental operation of the advanced centrifuges, and in Iran’s view that the time has come for their regular operation in industrial scope. Iran’s latest announcement to the IAEA was apparently vague. It lacks details on the number of advanced centrifuges Iran intends to operate soon, nor did it provide the rate of uranium enrichment that it will be used for. The IAEA reports that have been published so far also lack information about the amount of advanced centrifuges produced by Iran thus far, and about the production capability of the Iranian factories, which produce and assemble the centrifuges.

In any case, it can be assumed that Iran will operate at least the two cascades in Natanz in the near future; Most of the advanced centrifuges have already been installed in these cascades – whose full installation may have already concluded, or will conclude soon. It is possible that these things will be made clear in the IAEA report that will be published in the coming month.

**

Lt. Col. (Res.) Dr. Rafael Ofek is an expert of physics and Iranian technology. He has served in the past as a senior researcher and analyst in the Israeli intelligence community.

Why Iran is spreading and Saudi Arabia is shrinking.

By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

Al Arabiya

Tuesday, 05 February 2013

We must commend Iran’s ability in keeping the world busy, fabricating battles in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Eretria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, South Eastern Asian and Central African countries while supporting its groups even in the West.

Iran seems like a superpower that inserts its hand in every corner of the world. The obvious question is: How does Iran possess all these funds and capabilities? And why don’t we see a spread similar to Iran and its effectiveness by richer countries, like Saudi Arabia?

Iran’s spending

 Iran definitely has the desire and enthusiasm to spend and squander its money on setting up fires across the globe, and it is good at practicing this type of activity 

Abdulrahman al-Rashed

Iran definitely has the desire and enthusiasm to spend and squander its money on setting up fires across the globe, and it is good at practicing this type of activity. It must be better than Saudi Arabia in the value of every dollar it spends to achieve this aim.

As Iran has become financially broke due to sanctions and military spending, Saudi Arabia has around 700 billion dollars of reserves at banks. At a time when Iran wastes its funds on its armed groups in Iraq, Hezbollah brigades in Lebanon and others, Saudi spends huge sums of money on around 150,000 students studying at western universities!

On the industrial level, Saudi Arabia owns a wide industry base built on its petroleum products while the Iranian government spends its funds on developing and manufacturing arms.

Celebrating achievements

Two weeks ago, Tehran said it sent a monkey to space as part of its progressive scientific experiments, and the story transformed into a joke. No one has believed it yet. The day before last, it announced that it had built a Stealth aircraft (called the ghost in Arabic) that represents the utmost degree of scientific progress in military aviation as radars cannot detect it while flying.

Tehran has previously celebrated building and inaugurating naval submarines that compete with similar American ones. For years, Iran has announced developing a system of missiles. Critics, on the other hand, have insisted that these missiles were only similar to Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s missiles – Russian ones with Arabic or Islamic names and are amended by decreasing their load of explosive material so they cross longer distances.

Citizens pay the cost

What does Iran aim to say by its massive military spending and promotional ads of its scientific achievements? Perhaps it aims to say that it will win the next war? Or that it has become a superpower that deserves a seat at the U.N. Security Council? Or that it is a country capable of challenging an international boycott? Or is it merely local publicity to soothe the Iranian citizen who pays for militarization and foreign adventures in order to pacify the ego of President Ahmedinejad, the revolutionary guards and the supreme leader.

Inflation has eaten up the savings of citizens who now live on government aid to buy bread and fuel. It is a similar promotion to what North Korea feeds its hungry people as it speaks of international conspiracies and military accomplishments. At the time of Mao Tse-tung, China also distracted the Chinese people with this talk.

It seems that Iran chooses the dates of announcing its achievements before international meetings that address Iranian affairs such as the nuclear program and the economic sanctions.

Even those who say that military findings regarding deals of Western weapons are gut-wrenching, it is in fact, on the level of spending, less than what Iran puts on military projects and foreign adventures doomed to fail.
At last, if it weren’t for Iran and its aggressive policy, the Americans may have not had an excuse to fill the Gulf with battleships and the land with military bases. Iran is the justification for defensive weapons’ deals and the tension dominating our region since 1980.

This article first appeared in Asharq al-Awsat on Feb. 5, 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)

Ahmadinejad: First Iranian leader to visit Cairo in more than 30 years.

Tuesday, 05 February 2013

Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian president to visit Cairo since the 1979 Iranian revolution ruptured diplomatic ties between the two most populous countries in the Middle East. (AFP)

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U.S., allies ready more anti-mine drills as Iran tensions simmer | Reuters.

(Reuters) – The U.S. military announced on Monday an anti-mine exercise in “the Middle East’s international waterways” in May with more than 20 nations participating, the latest show of global will to keep waterways open as tensions with Iran simmer.

The drill was characterized as defensive and a follow-up to the IMCMEX 12 exercise held last September, focused on keeping oil shipping lanes open by clearing mines that potentially Iran, or even guerrilla groups, might deploy to disrupt tanker traffic.

“This year’s effort will reaffirm the ongoing, global cooperation that this mission enjoys with the international community’s strong support for free trade,” General James Mattie, commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said in a statement.

U.S. officials have in the past sought to play down any link between the drills and ongoing tensions with Iran, which is pushing forward with a nuclear program the West fears is aimed at giving it the capability to build an atomic bomb. Tehran says the program is peaceful.

But the anti-mine exercises are widely seen as a clear show of determination by a broad coalition of states to counter any attempt Iran might make to disrupt Gulf shipping in response to an Israeli or U.S. strike on its nuclear facilities – a form of retaliation Iran has repeatedly threatened.

Central Command said the drill in May, IMCMEX 13, would focus on mine countermeasures, as well as maritime security operations and protecting maritime infrastructure. It did not provide further details.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Todd Eastham)

Iran’s nuclear standoff reaching tipping point | The Times of Israel.

Ahead of another round of talks, neither Tehran nor world powers show any sign of backing down

VIENNA (AP) — Judging by its expanding nuclear program, harsh sanctions against Iran have done little but impose hardship on its people, while diplomacy has also failed to slow the Islamic Republic’s atomic progress. And while more talks are planned for later this month, there is a growing sense that the nuclear standoff between Iran and the international community is reaching a tipping point.

Iran can theoretically back down. But because it insists that all of its nuclear work is peaceful and protected by international law it is unlikely to go further than repeating its top leader’s religious edicts against nuclear weapons in pushing for an end to sanctions. That in turn will lead to another negotiating failure — and mounting pressure for military intervention to prevent Tehran from becoming a threshold nuclear weapons power.

Each side wants what the other is bringing to the table at the planned Feb. 25 talks in Kazakhstan. The problem is that both want the other to blink first.

For the P5 +1 — the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany — the onus is on Iran. They want Tehran to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent — a grade that is only a technical step away from the level used to arm nuclear warheads. Then, they want it to transfer its 20-percent stockpile out of the country. They also demand that Iran shut down Fordo — the bomb-resistant underground bunker where Iran is enriching uranium to 20 percent. Only then are they ready to discuss sanctions relief on Iranian oil and financial transactions.

But Iran insists it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical programs — a right that all nations have. It denies any interest in nuclear weapons, considers Security Council demands that it stop enrichment invalid, and U.N. and other sanctions illegal. Tehran wants a promise that non-U.N. sanctions at least will be lifted if it makes even the smallest commitments on uranium enrichment.

Demands and counter-demands have shifted since the talks began in 2003 between Iran and Britain, France and Germany, later expanded to include the United States, Russia and China. But one constant remains: failure not only to reach a breakthrough but even to make substantive progress.

Neither side is known to be bringing new proposals beyond what was in play the last time they met, in June in Moscow. Success seems even more elusive thanks to Iran’s recent announcement that it would speed up the pace of its uranium enrichment, and with planned new U.S. sanctions to take effect Wednesday.

“The situation has changed for the worse for both sides since last summer,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert and former senior official at the U.S. State Department. With further enriching, Iran already has enough material for several nuclear weapons, and Fitzpatrick says that since the Moscow talks, Iran has produced enough additional low-enriched uranium to produce an additional weapon with further enrichment. As for Tehran, “the sanctions bite has gotten worse” since the two sides last met.

Even ahead of the new U.S. penalties, Iran’s revenues from oil and gas exports are now down by 45 percent from normal levels. That, and severe restrictions on its ability to access international banking networks led the rial, Iran’s currency, to lose 45 percent of its value last year. Over three years, it is 350 percent down.

But Iran shows no sign of budging, and Israel’s threat to hit Tehran’s nuclear targets if negotiations fail stands, as does the possibility that such a move would draw the United States into the conflict. Iran could enrich uranium to arm one weapon within half a year even though analysts say it would take years longer for it to actually create a full working nuclear weapon.

That is a longer time line than Israel accepts. But independently of Israel, President Barack Obama may not have more than a year or two to decide whether Iran has embarked on making nuclear weapons or whether it has only reached the ability to do so. If it’s the latter, he has to judge whether Iran is content to stay on the nuclear threshold and if America can tolerate that status.

For diplomacy to succeed, “both sides need to move with greater urgency and flexibility toward a lasting solution,” says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “Iran apparently does not yet have the necessary ingredients for an effective nuclear arsenal, but its capabilities are improving. ”

An Iran with the capability to make the bomb might choose not to do so. Iran could be shaping its nuclear ambitions after Japan, which has the full scope of nuclear technology — including the presumed ability to produce warhead-grade material — but has stopped short of actually producing a weapon. It creates, in effect, a de facto nuclear power with all the parts but just not pieced together.

In that light, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent repetition of his fatwa, a proclamation that nuclear weapons are banned by Islam, could be another way of stating Iran’s nuclear goals — ready to assemble weapons but doing so only if threatened.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that he would not allow the Islamic Republic to reach that level of weapons capability. But he is unlikely to attack without U.S. military backing — and he and Obama may have different interpretations of when such action may be needed.

“Our policy toward Iran’s nuclear program has been defined by Obama’s red lines, not Netanyahu’s, meaning that the U.S. isn’t likely to use military force unless and until it’s clear that Iran is taking active steps to weaponize its program,” says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Israel official: Turkish tirades … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

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.”