WarSclerotic

Kerry to return to region in peace push | The Times of Israel.

( Why does this news give me an ironic smile? – JW )

US secretary of state set to visit Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Qatar next week, may also meet Abbas and Netanyahu

John Kerry during a visit to Jerusalem in May 2012 (photo credit: Uri Lenz/Flash90)

Just two weeks after playing point man on US President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry will reportedly return to the region next week for official visits to Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Qatar.

As part of a US push to restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the secretary of state is to meet with Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday in Amman, Jordan, according to a PA official quoted by the AFP on Wednesday.

Kerry will also likely meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an al-Quds report cited by Ynet News, although it was unclear whether that meeting would take place in Jordan or Israel. Abbas reportedly said he would be willing to meet with Netanyahu if Israel frees 120 Palestinian security prisoners who were jailed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Kerry is to visit Turkey ”this weekend,” according to a Tuesday Hürriyet Daily News report, while an anonymous State Department official told Reuters that the visit was likely to take place on “Friday or on Saturday.” Kerry is likely to discuss the ongoing Syrian civil war while in Ankara, among other topics.

On Monday, Kerry is reportedly to fly to Qatar for a meeting with Arab League representatives regarding the Arab Peace Initiative.

Kerry had planned to depart next week for meetings in London and then South Korea, China and Japan. But he has moved up his departure to Saturday to build on the rapprochement that President Barack Obama brokered between Turkey and Israel during his visit to the region, US officials said.

Since securing his position as secretary of state on February 1, Kerry has been extremely active in Middle Eastern affairs, and made surprise visits to Iraq and Afghanistan following his March trip to Israel.

In February, he held a high-level meeting in Ankara with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and President Abdullah Gül. Erdoğan is reportedly to meet with Obama in Washington in mid-May.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Syrian, Iraqi jihadi groups said to be cooperating | The Times of Israel.

Border area ‘is a nest of terrorist cells’ carved out by al-Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates, Iraqi government spokesman says

BAGHDAD (AP) — The wounded Syrian government troops were returning to their country in trucks escorted by Iraqi soldiers. They’d almost reached the border, near the frontier town of Akashat, when the attackers struck.

Regional intelligence officials saw the March 4 ambush, which left 48 dead, as evidence of a growing, cross-border alliance between two powerful Islamic extremist groups — al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra or Nusra Front in Syria. Nusra Front is the most effective rebel faction fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime, and the US designates both Sunni jihadi groups as terrorist organizations.

Iraqi intelligence officials say the burgeoning cooperation is pumping new life into the Sunni insurgency in their country. They point to nearly 20 car bombings and suicide attacks that killed over 65 people, mostly in Baghdad, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq last month.

The alliance is also nurturing Nusra Front, which emerged as an offshoot of Iraq’s al-Qaeda branch in mid-2012 to battle Assad’s regime as one of a patchwork of disparate rebel groups in Syria. Nusra Front’s presence on the battlefield complicates desperately needed international support for Syrian rebels because foreign backers do not want to bolster Islamic extremist groups.

Two Iraqi intelligence officials said the cooperation reflected in the attack on the wounded Syrian troops prompted their government to request US drone strikes against the fighters. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to reporters about the subject.

A US official confirmed that elements within the Iraqi government had inquired about drone strikes. But the official said the US was waiting to respond until the top level of Iraqi leadership makes a formal request, which has not happened yet.

Iraq is also turning elsewhere for assistance. Ministry of Defense spokesman Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said that in Iraq’s last weapons deal with Russia, Baghdad requested aircraft and heavy weapons to try to seize control of the Iraqi-Syria border region where the groups are operating.

The two Iraqi intelligence officials said the jihadi groups are sharing three military training compounds, logistics, intelligence and weapons as they grow in strength around the Syria-Iraq border, particularly in a sprawling region called al-Jazeera, which they are trying to turn into a border sanctuary they can both exploit. It could serve as a base of operations to strike either side of the border.

“We are very concerned about the security situation in Iraq,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Moussawi. He said Iraqi ground troops and the country’s tiny air force were unable to quell the militant activity in the border zone.

“This area is a nest of terrorist cells,” he said.

A Jordanian counterterrorism official said al-Qaeda in Iraq was assisting Nusra Front “with all possible means, including weapons, fighters and training.”

Another regional security analyst cited the attack on the wounded Syrian troops in Iraq as decisive proof of cooperation.

“This is operational collaboration,” the analyst said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “The transfer of weapons, tactics and ideas, what they call complex suicide attacks.”

Iraq and Syria’s other neighbors, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel, all fear the spillover effects of the 2-year-old civil war. Iraq, Lebanon and Syria all share a similar, fragile ethnic mix and the concern is that the conflict could cause sectarian warfare between Sunnis and Shiites to spread throughout the region.

Under Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government, already tense relations with minority Sunnis have worsened. There are also longstanding strains between Arabs and Kurds, who control their own autonomous region in Iraq’s north.

In Syria, Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and his security forces are heavily stocked by fellow Alawites and Shiites. But Alawites are a minority, and the opposition fighting him is predominantly made up of majority Sunnis.

Shiite-dominated Iran and Shiite militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon are Syria’s two closest allies in the Mideast.

Iraq pledged on Friday that it would conduct more searches of Syria-bound planes and vehicles, days after visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry asked al-Maliki to stop shipments of Iranian weapons and fighters through Iraqi territory to help Assad’s regime.

But al-Moussawi also pointedly noted that Iraq would try to halt weapons shipments to rebels.

Nusra Front’s role in Syria’s civil war is troubling not only for Iraq but for international supporters of the Syrian opposition as well.

Since it emerged in mid-2012, it has transformed into the most potent fighting force among rebel groups, with a strong presence in the eastern provinces of Raqqa, Deir el-Zour and Hassakeh close to the Iraqi border.

The group has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest suicide bombings against the regime and military facilities. Its success has led to popularity among fighting groups, though a source of friction with more moderate and secular brigades in Syria. Nusra Front has complicated the fractured Syrian opposition’s cause and remains a chief reason the US has been reluctant to arm the Syrian rebels.

Intelligence officials estimated last month that about 750 Nusra Front militants — including foreign fighters from other Arab countries — were among approximately 2,000 anti-Assad fighters who control long stretches of borderlands on the Syrian side. The officials said the Syrian militants were increasingly crossing into Iraq to meet their al-Qaeda counterparts.

They mostly operate from the al-Jazeera region that straddles three provinces of western Iraq. The region abuts part of the porous, 375-mile border, composed of desert valleys, orchards and oases.

Their cooperation with al-Qaeda intensified when Nusra Front seized control of two border crossings between Syria and Iraq, freeing up space for the militants to operate, the Iraqi intelligence officials said.

The rebels seized the Rabia-Yarubiya crossing in March and the al-Qaim crossing in September, according to a report on Nusra Front by the UK-based Quilliam Foundation. One crossing still remains in Syrian hands — the Walid-Tanf post near where the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders intersect.

Government spokesman al-Moussawi and Jassim al-Halbousi, a provincial council member in Iraq’s Anbar province, also confirmed the two groups were using “nests” — Arabic slang for small bases — in the area.

“This battle has two directions, from Syria to Iraq and from Iraq to Syria,” said analyst Mustafa Alani of the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

The Jordanian counter-terrorism official said al-Qaeda in Iraq was also providing “expertise and logistics” to the Nusra Front.

“During training, Nusra elements are taught how to fire rockets and machine guns, maneuver in the desert terrain and handle arms supply to its in-the-field fighters,” he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the training is conducted in “temporary camps in a no-man’s land along the Syrian-Iraqi border.” After training sessions, the camp is usually dismantled so as not to leave traces behind.

“It’s natural for al-Qaeda to help another group with a similar ideology,” he said. “The aim is to control the street in Syria as a step toward toppling Assad and setting up an Islamic jihadi state there.”

According to the Iraqi officials, the group is helping al-Qaeda expand in western Iraq and conduct high-profile attacks against mostly Shiite targets.

A wave of daring and coordinated strikes in March led intelligence officials to conclude that al-Qaeda militants had strengthened their weapons-smuggling networks as well as their ability to find volunteers and carry out attacks.

They said the surge was caused by increased cooperation with Nusra Front fighters who appear to have facilitated the flow of suicide bombers, weapons and explosives into Iraq.

The ambush on the wounded Syrian troops only strengthened the notion of cooperation. An intelligence official said attackers appeared to have been tipped off.

The soldiers were making their way back to Syria in an Iraqi-escorted convey traveling hundreds of miles westward.

The assault began with militants detonating explosive charges on the military escort vehicles assigned to protect trucks carrying the Syrian soldiers, al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed in a statement posted on its website after the attack.

After that, “the fighters launched an attack from two directions using light- and medium-range weapons as well as rocket-propelled grenades,” it said. “Within less than half an hour, the whole convoy … was annihilated.”

US and Iraqi forces had mostly quelled al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq before American troops withdrew in late 2011. But by September 2012, Iraqi intelligence officials were warning that al-Qaeda was regrouping, seizing on regional instability and government security failures to regain strength.

They reported at the time that fighters linked to al-Qaeda were crossing into Syria to battle the Assad regime. Since then, those fighters have strengthened the al-Jazeera area into what they hope will be a haven to battle their foes, intelligence officials said.

“For these guys,” said the regional security analyst, “the border between Iraq and Syria is not even a real thing.”

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

When there is no peace | JPost | Israel News.

PM: Israel’s primary objective is to prevent nuclear Iran | JPost | Israel News.

On the eve of another round of talks between the world powers and Iran Friday in Kazakhstan, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came out Wednesday against continuing to negotiate with Tehran as it moves forward with its nuclear development.

Before meeting visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, Netanyahu said Iran must not be allowed to develop a model whereby it negotiates while in parallel it develops and threatens to use nuclear arms.

“There are many  important issues in the Middle East,” he said, “such as trying to reach peace with the Palestinians and other regional issues, but they are all overshadowed it Iran believes it has the right to develop nuclear weapons, and continues to do so. Our main objective is to prevent that.”

Eide said that Norway is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and is concerned about Iran’s lack of cooperation. “We are allowed to visit sites that are not important, but not those that we are interested in visiting,” he said.

Meanwhile in Ankara,the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was “cautiously optimistic” about the nuclear talks, but said it was vital that Tehran responded to an offer put forward by major powers.

“I remain always cautiously optimistic. But I am also very clear that it is very important that we do get a response (from Iran),” Ashton told reporters in the Turkish capital when asked about the talks in Almaty.

Reuters contributed to this report

IDF Adds Fifth Iron Dome Battery – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Iron Dome

IDF Spokesperson’s Office

The Israeli military has added another Iron Dome battery to its arsenal of anti-missile defense systems.

A fifth unit, one deployed for emergency use in central Israel during the IDF’s counter terror Operation Pillar of Defense in November, has just become fully operational.

The unit has been assigned to the Israel Air Force for combat conditions together with the necessary military personnel and commanding officers, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

Two other Iron Dome units are also deployed in northern Israel, where the IDF is currently maintaining an operational alert pending any enemy missile activity.

Israel has been particularly watchful of the northern border with Syria in the Golan Heights, where there has been occasional “spillover” from the savage civil war raging between troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and fragmented opposition forces.

The system, produced by Rafael, detects and identifies rockets and artillery shells as they are launched, and monitors their trajectories. The target data is transmitted to a battle management and weapon control (BMC) instrument for analysis and the expected impact point is estimated, allowing military personnel to determine whether it poses a critical threat.

If so, an interceptor missile is launched within seconds against the threat, guided by a radar seeker that allows it to acquire the target with a special warhead that detonates the threat over a neutral area, reducing damage to the protected region.

The Iron Dome is a mobile unit and is used to counter short-range rockets and 155mm artillery shells within ranges of up to 70 kilometers (43 miles) in all weather conditions, including low clouds, rain, dust storms or fog.

Iran’s nuclear quest ‘has cost Tehran over $100 billion’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Report says though sanctions take heavy toll on Islamic Republic, its nuclear program is ‘entangled with too much pride to simply be abandoned’

Reuters

A report by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists said Iran’s atomic work could not simply be ended or “bombed away” and that diplomacy was the only way to keep it peaceful.

“It is entangled with too much pride – however misguided – and sunk costs simply to be abandoned,” the report’s authors, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group and Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour, said of Iran’s five-decade-old nuclear program, which began under the US-allied shah.

“Given the country’s indigenous knowledge and expertise, the only long-term solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is to find a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution,” the report said.

Iran says its nuclear work has medical uses and will produce energy to meet domestic demand and complement its oil reserves.

The United States and other states suspect Iran is covertly seeking a nuclear arms capability. Israel has threatened military action to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring atom bombs. Tehran denies pursuing nuclear weapons.

The US and its allies have demanded that Iran curb its enrichment of uranium and have imposed increasingly tough sanctions on Iran’s energy, banking and shipping sectors that have cut Iranian oil exports by more than half since 2011.

Iran and six world powers are due to meet in Kazakhstan this week in the hope of finding a solution to the standoff. Their last meeting in February failed to achieve a breakthrough.

The report, titled “Iran’s Nuclear Odyssey: Costs and Risks”, seeks to tabulate the opportunity costs of the nuclear program, and puts these at “well over $100 billion” in terms of lost foreign investment and oil revenues.

Relatively small uranium deposits will keep Iran from being fully self-sufficient in nuclear energy, it said, while Tehran has neglected to maintain existing infrastructure and develop other resources that could better secure its energy needs.

For instance, Iran’s 1,000-megawatt Bushehr nuclear reactor, which came on-stream in 2011 after repeated delays, accounts for just 2 per cent of its electricity production, while about 15 per cent of “generated electricity is lost through old and ill-maintained transmission lines”, the report said.

Iran has vast oil and gas reserves, but sanctions have forced major Western firms to abandon the petroleum sector, making crucial upkeep difficult. Iran’s solar and wind energy sectors have also gone undeveloped, the report said.

“No sound strategic energy planning would prioritize nuclear energy in a country like Iran,” the report said.

“Instead of enhancing Iran’s energy security, the nuclear program has diminished the country’s ability to diversify and achieve real energy independence.”

The authors recommended that outside powers engage with Iranians through “grassroots public diplomacy” and make clear what they could gain by compromise.

“The Iranian people have been largely absent from the nuclear discussion,” they wrote.

“While US officials and members of Congress frequently speak of ‘crippling sanctions’, they rarely impress upon Iranians the concrete costs of their country’s nuclear policies and the potentially myriad benefits of a more conciliatory approach.”

A lasting deal would have to include commitments by Iran to abstain from activities vital to weapons production, which could give confidence that Iran could continue to enrich uranium to low levels needed for power generation, it said.

“There is virtually no chance that Iran will abdicate what it and many developing countries now insist is a right – a right to enrichment,” the report said.

Negotiators should also discuss less politically charged topics such as nuclear safety cooperation and alternative energy options for Iran, “increasing the chances of breaking free of zero-sum games and creating win-win opportunities”, it said.

Israel Hayom | ‘Iran engaging in nuclear explosives work now’.

Israel Hayom | The US and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams’ blog “Pressure Points” here.

Egypt’s situation is in many ways immensely complicated. But in others, it is simple: Egypt’s new government is restricting human rights in ways that no American should ever support. During the Mubarak years, we often did support, or showed indifference, to violations of the basic rights of citizens, and we should not repeat that error yet again.

Today there is a simple case. The comedian Bassem Yousef, who is known as Egypt’s Jon Stewart, is being prosecuted for various non-crimes: insulting the president, spreading rumors, propagating lies — all charges that mean only that the powers that be don’t like what he is saying. Those powers know that his prosecution is under assault internationally, yet they have continued to pile on new charges.

We cannot prevent this, but we can make our attitude clear. In fact the Obama administration has, somewhat late and somewhat weakly, expressed disagreement, but we should be condemning these efforts to bring Egypt’s brief moment of freedom of speech and press to an end. To put it starkly, the U.S. has no interest in the success of the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt or anywhere else. The Brotherhood does not share our values, nor does it share our aspirations for the region. Its success is nothing we should seek or facilitate. There is of course a counterargument, that if the Brotherhood fails worse will follow — Salafis, for example.

In truth we do not know nor will we have any say in what is next for Egypt if and when citizens conclude that the Brotherhood cannot deliver the freedom or the economic progress that Egyptians appeared to seek when they drove Hosni Mubarak from power. Disorder is possible, a new dictatorship may arise, the army may take power, or Egypt may become an Arab Pakistan, where the army rules behind the facade of civilian politicians.

Egyptians and not we will determine all of this, so the best we can do — and it is important that we do this — is to stand for our own principles of freedom of speech, press, assembly, trade unions, religion, and free elections. The Bassem Yousef prosecutions (one must now use the plural) are indefensible and should be met with loud and repeated U.S. protests. We do not know where Egypt is heading, but we know what we believe and we ought to know that we must support those Egyptians who seek a truly democratic Egypt.

2 rockets hit Sderot as tensions rise on Gaza front | JPost | Israel News.

Projectiles fired into southern Israel for second straight day; IAF strikes targets in Gaza Strip for first time since truce.

Revealed: Qassam fell in empty Sderot preschool during Obama visit – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( This story is obvious and unadulterated disinfo.  There’s no way the damage would have been missed even on the day the missile was fired.  It wouldn’t have served Israel’s interest to have the people fired up calling for revenge while Obama was there. So… – JW )

Two weeks after US president’s visit, a partially-exploded rocket which penetrated roof found in Sderot preschool empty because of Passover recess

Neri Brenner

The rocket could have had devastating results and dramatically changed the current status quo in the south: Two weeks after US President Barack Obama‘s visit, it was discovered Tuesday that during his visit a rocket fired from Gaza had landed in a Sderot preschool – penetrating the roof and only partially exploding.

The rocket made its way through the roof of Margalit’s preschool in Sderot, which usually houses three year olds, and partially exploded.

According to estimates, it was fired from the Gaza Strip on March 21 – the day Obama gave his now famous Jerusalem speech – along with four other Qassam rockets fired at Sderot and the Gaza vicinity communities that day.

The projectile was only discovered Tuesday for the same reason it failed to cause causalities – school was out because of the Passover vacation.

The children are scheduled to return to the preschool on Wednesday. Staffers who arrived at the building Tuesday to prepare it for the children’s arrival discovered a hole in the ceiling and a Qassam on the floor. They immediately alerted security officials.

On the same day IDF forces identified five rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip, however, they thought only two had successfully landed in Israeli territory.

Qassam in Sderot (Photo: Roee Idan)

According to the IDF, five rockets were fired from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, after a relatively long period of calm following Operation Pillar of Defense.

One of the rockets exploded in the courtyard of a Sderot house, another fell in an open area, and the other two were assumed to have landed in Palestinian territory, as was the fifth. However, Tuesday it turned out that the fifth had in fact landed in the preschool.

Sarah Haziz, whose house was hit by the Qassam, recalls how the alarm caught her off guard while she was cleaning it.

“The house was full of water, I managed to lift my eight-year-old daughter to the sheltered area, but I was still outside when I heard the explosion.

“I knew the explosion was from my house. We’ve grown accustomed, it wasn’t the first time we’ve been hit.”