WarSclerotic

Gantz: We have no choice but to keep winning – Israel News, Ynetnews.

IDF chief of staff writes Memorial Day missive to IDF soldiers, stresses army’s commitment to families of war casualties

Yoav Zitun

“Israel has no other option but to fight and win,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz wrote Sunday in a Memorial Day missive to IDF soldiers.

“We will support the bereaved families in their ongoing struggle with the loss of their loved ones. We embrace them and extend to them a helping hand and a shoulder of support. Such is our commitment to them,” Gantz wrote.

Referring to Memorial Day, he added: “Today is the day Israel revisits the images of the fallen with pain and recognition. We take time to remember their battlefield heritage, their actions for the safety of the State and its people. And beyond the tales of battlefield heroism, we remember with nostalgia and a twinge of regret the young lives cut short; each and every one of them a whole world in his or her own right.”

“Just like us they donned uniforms and bore arms. They sought to protect their parents, children, sisters and brothers, their friends. And today we, fighting against the same enemy they fought against, keep silence in their memory. Thousands of names engraved forever in stone and in the heart, are a constant reminder of the oath we gave: to remember them, to follow their lead and to complete their mission.”

Ganz added that “for sixty-five years Israel had to fight and win. Each generation carries the security of Israel on its shoulders, and each generation in turn, unfortunately, suffers thinning among the ranks of its IDF soldiers. Every war takes of us a bloody toll. But against all enemies working to wreak harm on our citizens and our country, enemies that do not accept our existence in the land of Israel, we have no other option but to fight and win.”

Gulf officials hold emergency meet over Iran’s nuclear proximity – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Iran denies it wants nuclear arms and says its atomic work is for electricity generation and other civil uses. (AFP)  

Gulf environmental officials on Sunday held an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital to discuss possible threats posed to surrounding Gulf countries by the Iranian nuclear plant in Bushehr.

Last week, a powerful earthquake struck close to Iran’s plant, killing 32 people and injuring 850, it also destroyed homes and devastated two small villages.

The nuclear plant is around 1200 kilometers south of Iran’s capital, Tehran, and is built near Bushehr port that overlooks the Arabian Gulf.

Experts who spoke to Al Arabiya said that what makes the situation worse is the movement of the Gulf waters. The waters’ current travels from the Iranian coast towards Gulf shores, meaning the water could carry nuclear waste resulting in possible environmental and oceanic disasters.

These supposed threats have led ministers in the surrounding Gulf states to establish an environmental monitoring center, based in the UAE. The center measures the degree of nuclear radiation in the Gulf region in order to avoid any possible disaster the Iranian nuclear plant may caus.

Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, urged Iran to join the U. N.’s Convention on Nuclear Safety, which allows greater review by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog agency, reported AP.

The plant is 277 kilometers away from Kuwait, 300 kilometers away from Bahrain, 350 kilometers away from Iraq’s southern city of Basra, about 410 kilometers away from the Qatari capital Doha, 600 kilometers away from the UAE’s Abu Dhabi and about 620 kilometers away from the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The plant poses a threat to these countries because it falls within a seismically active area; the aforementioned countries could be under the risk of being subjected to uranium and nuclear radiations leaks.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed safety concerns over the Bushehr plant, which began operations in September 2011 after decades of delays.

Israel, Gulf Arab states and many Western countries fear Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, while the Islamic Republic is battling with international sanctions aimed at curbing specific areas within its atomic program.

Iran denies it wants nuclear arms and says its atomic work is for electricity generation and other civil uses.

The head of the Gulf states’ main political bloc is urging Iran to join an international accord on nuclear safety following an earthquake near the country’s lone energy-producing reactor.

Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, opened a meeting Sunday in Riyadh to discuss nuclear safety issues after last week’s 6.1 magnitude quake about 96 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Bushehr, the site of Iran’s reactor.

The quake killed at least 37 people. Iran says there was no damage to the reactor and insists it was built to withstand far stronger quakes.

Al-Zayani urged Iran to join the U. N.’s Convention on Nuclear Safety, which allows greater review by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog agency. But Iran is part of other U.N. pacts to report any nuclear accidents.

Iran warns of World War III.

General: Country’s army has finger on the trigger

Published: 45 mins ago

Reza Kahlili 

dia as an expert on Iran and counterterrorism in the Middle East.

Iran ratcheted up its vitriol against Israel and the United States over the weekend, warning that an attack on the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities could lead to global war.

The rhetoric eerily matched that currently coming out of North Korea against its perceived enemies.

“Iran will not stand by in the face of such aggression,” Ali Ahani, Iran’s ambassador to France, said Sunday, according to the Islamic regime’s PressTV. “This can entail a chain of violence that may lead to World war III. A potential Israeli attack against Iran with an objective of destroying its scientific and nuclear facilities is sheer madness. Its consequences are disastrous and uncontrollable.”

The deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen Masoud Jazayeri, warned the United States on Saturday that Iran would continue its nuclear program.

“We would not trade off our rights,” he said, adding that Iran would stand with North Korea in its faceoff with America.

According to Mehr News, Jazayeri blamed the tension on the Korean Peninsula on the U.S. presence in the region.

“Whenever necessary, we would stop the U.S. excessive demands,” he said. “The Islamic Revolution will never leave its past and present friends. The U.S. and its allies will suffer great losses if a war breaks out in this region.”

The commander of the Islamic regime’s ground forces, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Poordastan, in his speech at Friday Prayers, also warned “the enemies” that the country’s army has its finger on the trigger and that any attack on the country will make the “enemy” regret its actions.

All enemy activities at Iran’s borders and in the region are being monitored by the country’s intelligence analysts, and Iran’s armed forces are prepared for any scenario, he said.

The regime’s PressTV ran an op-ed analysis on Saturday with a headline “Iran deals deathblow to U.S. global hegemony.” The analysis, by Finian Cunningham, an Irishman whom the outlet calls “a prominent expert in international affairs,” blames America for much of the world’s problems and warns of its decline.

“Iran, however, presents a greater and more problematic challenge to U.S. global hegemony,” Cunningham wrote. “The U.S. in 2013 is a very different animal from what it was in 1945. Now it resembles more a lumbering giant. Gone is its former economic prowess and its arteries are sclerotic with its internal social decay and malaise. … Iran exerts a controlling influence over the vital drug that keeps the American economic system alive – the world’s supply of oil and gas. Any war with Iran, if the U.S. were so foolish to embark on it, would result in a deathblow to the waning American and global economy.”

Cunningham said the story will not end there: “The attainment of world peace, justice and sustainability does not only necessitate the collapse of American hegemony. We need to overthrow the underlying capitalist economic system that gives rise to such destructive hegemonic powers. Iran represents a deathblow to the American empire, but the people of the world will need to build on the ruins.”

The world powers once again failed at Almaty, Kazakhstan, to get Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program and allow further inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The talks, which lasted two days, were held last week between Iran and the 5-plus-1 powers: the United States, Britain France, Russia, China, plus Germany.

As reported exclusively on WND on March 20 and in a follow-up in The Washington Times the next day, information provided by a high-ranking intelligence officer in the regime’s ministry of defense revealed yet another secret site where Iran is engaged in completing its nuclear bomb program and arming its ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

The source added that not only does the regime have enough plutonium for several bombs, but it also has enriched uranium to weapons grade.

The new site, 15 miles from another previously secret site exposed in 2009 (the Fordow nuclear facility), is approximately 14 miles long and 7.5 miles wide, consisting of two facilities built deep into a mountain along with a nearby missile facility with over 380 missile garages and silos, surrounded by barbed wire, 45 security towers and several security posts.

American experts who viewed satellite imagery of the new site are concerned that Iran may be much further along in its nuclear bomb program than perceived and that the images of the site are a clear indication that the regime’s strategy is to put together an “objective force” and not just one or two nuclear bombs. An objective force is defined as the level of military forces needed within a finite time frame and resource level to accomplish approved military objectives, missions or tasks.

Last week, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, in a hasty and unusual press conference, denied the existence of this site, dubbed “Quds,” at which the rogue nation is making great progress in creating nuclear warheads for an array of long-range missiles stored underground nearby. He did not elaborate as to what the site is and what work is being done out of the facilities.

The satellite images clearly show this vast site is visible to the naked eye and that it is a high-priority site with secret work conducted deep within the mountain.

Yaalon plans to restructure the IDF as small, self-contained armies.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 14, 2013, 6:58 PM (GMT+02:00)

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon

The two top ministers in the new Netanyahu government both have big plans. While overlapping at some points, the two will certainly butt heads on others. Finance Minister Yair Lapid in particular has his eye on deep cuts in defense spending to reduce the budget deficit. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon plans to do away with such ambitious military programs as the Chariot Tank Mark 4 and the “Tiger” APC. But his blueprint for restructuring the Israeli Defense Forces will definitely cost big shekels.
Yaalon’s innovative blueprint is influenced by a pervasive new concept that the big Arab armies which attacked Israel in the past have been relegated to obsolescence by the Arab Revolt and the decline of the Egyptian and Syrian armies – the first crippled by economic calamity and the second, debilitated by more than two years of fighting a civil war. Ergo, according to this concept, Israel is now for the first time in its 65 years no longer menaced by a large professional army capable of waging a full-blown war.

Is full-scale war really outdated?
This concept is criticized by debkafile’s military sources as far from fail-safe and short-sighted.
If fails to take into account the threats of a nuclear-armed Iran and its armed forces launching a war of extinction against Israel in the course of 2013; and a Lebanese Shiite Hizballah hugely expanded into a fully-fledged military force, armed with tens of thousands of missiles.
That the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s secret militia designed on the lines of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards may link up with the still robust sections of the Egyptian armed forces cannot be ruled out; or a mutiny in parts of the Syrian army for joining forces with radical Islamist rebel groups to wage jihad on Israel.
The IDF is already being drawn into its first covert activity in Sinai and South Syria. In the current incendiary climate, full-scale combat could erupt on three of Israel’s borders, Egyptian Sinai, southern Syria and Lebanon.
And to the east, the sudden fall of the Hashemite throne could drag Israel into an unforeseen conflict on an unforeseen scale.

Taking advice from spymasters

In 2008, when he was appointed Minister for Strategic Affairs in the former Netanyahu government, Yaalon, 63, carried over the work methods he cultivated as chief of staff. He gathered around him a brains trust of valued advisers, consisting mostly of senior players from Military Intelligence and the Mossad, rather than army generals like his predecessors. These spymasters and undercover mavens kept him up to the minute with input and insights for his policy decisions in the constantly shifting regional environment.
Ya’alon has also chosen to break with another of his predecessors’ practices by strictly delegating his department’s many tasks. Management of the armed forces is left to the incumbent chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, and his professional GHQ, and the running of Israel’s sophisticated multibillion military industries to professional executives.
This leaves the minister free to perform as policy-maker and find the right answers to the country’s core national security issues, which he sees as standng up to a prospective nuclear Iran, attaining a budget matching his ministry’s program and the restructuring of Israel’s military assets.
Get the US aboard an Iran strike
Yaalon’s perspective on Iran is clear: Israel must do its utmost to win America as partner before embarking on an attack on Iran and its nuclear facilities.

But if Washington rules out any form of attack and Iran is on the verge of acquiring an operational nuclear arsenal, it will be up to Israel to embark on a unilateral offensive – even without American participation.

A swelling stream of intelligence has reached the US and Israel in the last few months attesting to the speed with which Iran is amassing enriched uranium and developing nuclear-capable weapons.

Ya’alon has therefore started coming around to the conclusion that, if in the course of 2013, Washington still holds back from military action to curb Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon, Israel may find it has no choice but to go it alone.

Alongside the perils of a nuclear Iran this year, the new minister perceives the unresolved war on Israel’s doorsteps with the pro-Iranian Shiite Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip after Israel’s 2005 disengagement as two dangerous pieces of unfinished business. He has long believed that both radical terrorist groups are crouched for the right moment to pounce and overrun Israel’s borders. Ultimately, he believes, Israel will be forced to settle these issues by military initiatives before they blow up in its face.

HIzballah’s involvement in the Syrian war on behalf of the Assad regime, Yaalon believes, has boosted the radical Shiites’ confidence in its ability to vanquish Israel. He is certain that the Lebanese-Israel border will never be peaceful until Hassan Nasrallahy’s Shiite army is decisively defeated and disarmed (as mandated by UN Security Council resolution 1731) and sections of southern Lebanon south and north of the Litani River are recaptured by Israeli forces as a buffer.

The IDF’s radical overhaul

Yaalon’s planning for the revolutionary overhaul of the Israel Defense Forces from the bottom up is in its final stages, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources first reported (in Issue 580 of March 22).
The crux of the proposed new structure is the substantial downsizing in stages of the IDF’s ground and armored forces, starting with the heavy Chariot 4 tank and large Tiger troop carrier units. He believes the time has come to do away with the classical divisions, brigades and professional corps, such as artillery and tanks, which characterize a conventional army, and replace them with small, self-contained armies capable of operating independently.

Each such mini-army would be equipped with its own attack helicopter, tank, artillery and special forces units and self-supply facilities.

In contrast, the Defense Minister aims to expand the Navy, Air Force and Missile Arm for the key task of securing Israel’s airspace and territorial waters. Special Forces units will additionally secure these strategic spaces.

He ascribes equal importance to the establishment of a new Cyber Warfare Command, our military sources say, and plans to earmark for this new unit a generous allocation in the next defense budget.
The sum total of Moshe Yaalon’s redesign for the IDF will scarcely entail savings in Israel’s defense spending. The reverse is more likely

“Bring Back the Country I Know” – Song for Yom Haatzmaut from Latma TV – YouTube.

הנה מה טוב ומה נעים שבת אחים גם יחד

Please God, show me the way
Help and bring me back
To my country.

For the non Israelis, the leaves eaten with the beers and the nargilas are “gat.”

Mid East cocoa….

Happy Independence day!

–

Opinion: North Korea already won – CNN.com.

(CNN) — World leaders are moving carefully and anxiously, trying to prevent a disaster in the Korean Peninsula. This increasingly unpredictable round of saber-rattling is far from over, but so far the winner is the North Korean regime and the losers are the brutally oppressed North Korean people, joined by much of the rest of the world.

While we watch the drama from far away, it’s worth noting just how far North Korean weapons programs — not just the weapons themselves — can reach.

U.S. intelligence officials differ on their estimates of the range and accuracy of North Korean missiles, nuclear-tipped or not. But the country’s nuclear and missile technology has already found its way to the Middle East.

North Korea helped Syria develop a nuclear reactor. It has sold missile technology and weapons to anyone willing to pay, and it has developed close cooperation with Iran.

If the crisis ended right now — with every piece of military hardware back to where it stood a few months ago and everyone taking a vow of silence on the matter so that we get no more threats and no more demands — the confrontation would have already sent clear and damaging messages across the globe, encouraging tyrants and regimes seeking or considering the idea of developing nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s message seems to be: If you have nuclear capabilities, it doesn’t matter how outrageously you behave; it doesn’t matter how horribly you mistreat your people; it doesn’t matter how flimsy your economy is.

When you have a nuclear arsenal, countries that could topple your regime with a tiny fraction of their power suddenly become afraid of making you angry.

This is a pernicious reality with tragic and hazardous consequences.

Nuclear development makes it easier for the totalitarian regime to condemn the North Korean people to grinding poverty and imprisonment in nightmarish gulags. Several generations of the same

While the North Korean people go hungry, the regime diverts scarce resources to its nuclear and missile programs while its top leader, the youthful Kim Jong Un, adds insult to injury with his visibly expanding girth.

As the latest crisis unfolded and as North Korea threatened a “preemptive nuclear attack” on the United States, a “final destruction” of South Korea, and a “nuclear attack” on Tokyo, world powers held a new round of talks with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program. Coincidence or not, the talks with Iran produced nothing, not even the customary agreement to hold more talks.

Iran, one can only imagine, must be paying close attention to the dance macabre between Pyongyang and the rest of the world. North Korea, whose entire economy is worth about $40 billion — less than a small-sized American city and a tiny fraction of prosperous South Korea and its trillion-dollar economy — has ordered the whole world to attention.

family can live and die in captivity.

Is North Korea bluffing?

Experts are scratching their heads, trying to figure out what exactly Kim Jong Un wants and how far he will go. There’s general consensus that he wants, like all dictators, to strengthen his hold on power and to secure the support of the military.

But he is accomplishing more than that. North Korea is giving its crucial weapons industry a huge boost of publicity. Every headline is a Super Bowl-size ad for the country’s destructive wares.

Current and future clients may have noticed that its arsenal has allowed North Korea to get away with creating these crises, which fortify the regime and sometimes even bring generous international aid. Without its dangerous arsenal, it’s unlikely Pyongyang would have gotten away with the 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong island, when it killed two South Korean marines and three civilians, sent the population fleeing in panic and set homes and forests on fire.

Despite South Korea’s vow of “enormous retaliation,” the regime is still in place.

Not only is it still standing, it is spreading its deadly know-how.

North Korea has long been one of the world’s top proliferators of missiles and other weapons systems. U.S. officials say Iran recently received North Korean missiles capable of reaching Western European capitals. Last September, Tehran and Pyongyang signed a scientific cooperation agreement, which experts say is almost identical to the one North Korea signed with Syria a decade ago.

That agreement with Damascus brought North Korean technicians to help the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad build a nuclear reactor that Israeli warplanes destroyed in 2007. And the North, incidentally, is still sending weapons to Damascus.

Back home, when North Korea carried out its third nuclear test earlier this year, news reports in the region said Iranian scientists were there to observe.

This standoff is not over, but Pyongyang has already won. From the moment the North obtained nuclear weapons, however rudimentary, the game changed. From that moment, the chances that the North Korean people will rejoin the world and have a chance at a better life diminished greatly. From that moment, the South and the West’s room to maneuver became much more limited.

The challenge now is to prevent a greater disaster, while keeping the regime from scoring an even greater victory, as it has in the past, by walking away from this confrontation with new rewards.

Beyond that, the world must seek a creative way to help free the North Korean people, while bearing in mind the disastrous consequences of allowing dangerous regimes to obtain nuclear weapons.