WarSclerotic

Israel’s Man in Damascus | Foreign Affairs.

Efraim Halevy

May 10, 2013A man holds a roll of pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a rally in support of him  in Damascus, 2011. (Khaled al-Hariri / Courtesy Reuters)

In October 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to inform him that peace was at hand between Israel and Syria. Two weeks later, Rabin was dead, killed by a reactionary Jewish Israeli fanatic; the peace agreement that Rabin referenced died not long thereafter. But Israeli hopes for an eventual agreement with the Assad regime managed to survive. There have been four subsequent attempts by Israeli prime ministers — one by Ehud Barak, one by Ehud Olmert, and two by Benjamin Netanyahu — to forge a peace with Syria.

This shared history with the Assad regime is relevant when considering Israel’s strategy toward the ongoing civil war in Syria. Israel’s most significant strategic goal with respect to Syria has always been a stable peace, and that is not something that the current civil war has changed. Israel will intervene in Syria when it deems it necessary; last week’s attacks testify to that resolve. But it is no accident that those strikes were focused solely on the destruction of weapons depots, and that Israel has given no indication of wanting to intervene any further. Jerusalem, ultimately, has little interest in actively hastening the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Israel knows one important thing about the Assads: for the past 40 years, they have managed to preserve some form of calm along the border. Technically, the two countries have always been at war — Syria has yet to officially recognize Israel — but Israel has been able to count on the governments of Hafez and Bashar Assad to enforce the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974, in which both sides agreed to a cease-fire in the Golan Heights, the disputed vantage point along their shared border. Indeed, even when Israeli and Syrian forces were briefly locked in fierce fighting in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war, the border remained quiet.

Israel does not feel as confident, though, about the parties to the current conflict, and with good reason. On the one hand, there are the rebel forces, some of whom are increasingly under the sway of al Qaeda. On the other, there are the Syrian government’s military forces, which are still under Assad’s command, but are ever more dependent on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah, which is also Iranian-sponsored. Iran is the only outside state with boots on the ground in Syria, and although it is supporting Assad, it is also pressuring his government to more closely serve Iran’s goals — including by allowing the passage of advanced arms from Syria into southern Lebanon. The recent visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Salehi to Damascus, during which he announced that Iran would not allow Assad to fall under any circumstances, further underscored the depth of Iran’s involvement in the fighting. It is entirely conceivable, in other words, that a post-Assad regime in Syria would be explicitly pro–al Qaeda or even more openly pro-Iran. Either result would be unacceptable to Israel.

Of course, an extended civil war in Syria does not serve Israel’s interests either. The ongoing chaos is attracting Islamists from elsewhere in the region, and threatening to destabilize Israel’s entire neighborhood, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. It could also cause Assad to lose control of — or decide to rely more on — his stockpile of chemical weapons.

Even though these problems have a direct impact on Israel, the Israeli government believes that it should deal with them in a way that does not force it to become a kingmaker over Assad’s fate. Instead, it would prefer to maintain neutrality in Syria’s civil war. Israel does not want to tempt Assad to target Israel with his missile stockpile — nor does it want to alienate the Alawite community that will remain on Israel’s border regardless of the outcome of Syria’s war.

Last week’s attacks were a case in point. Israel did not hesitate to order air strikes when it had intelligence that arms were going to be funneled from Syria to Hezbollah. Although Israel took care not to assume official responsibility for the specific attack, Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon publicly stated that Israel’s policy was to prevent the passage of strategic weaponry from Syria to Lebanon. But parallel with that messaging, Israel also made overt and covert efforts to communicate to Assad that Jerusalem was determined to remain neutral in Syria’s civil war. The fact that those messages were received in Damascus was reflected in the relatively restrained response from the Assad regime: a mid-level Foreign Ministry official offered a public denouncement of Israel — and even then the Syrian government offered only a vague promise of reprisal, vowing to respond at a time and in a manner of its choosing.

As brutal as the Syrian war has become, Israel believes that another international crisis is even more urgent: Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear program. Jerusalem has long believed that mid-2013 would be an hour of decision in its dealings with Iran. In the interim, Israel wants to focus its own finite resources on that crisis — and it would prefer that the rest of the world does the same.

That is not to say that Israel will make efforts to actively support Assad; like most other countries, Israel believes that it is only a matter of time until the Syrian leader is forced from power. But a country of Israel’s size needs to prioritize its foreign policy goals, and Jerusalem does not feel like helping shape an adequate alternative to Assad is in its interest or within its capacity. It will leave that task to others. Indeed, Israel has welcomed the initiative by Russia and the United States to organize a peace conference aimed at resolving the conflict. In the run-up to the conference, Jerusalem will be sure to remind both Washington and Moscow that they share an interest in preventing a permanent Iranian or jihadist presence on Syrian soil.

In that sense, it is safe to say that Assad is not the only recipient of covert communications from Israel. That leaves two questions — when the White House will decide what its own policy will be, and how it will implement it.

Arabs Ask U.S. to Lead on Syria – WSJ.com.

BY JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON—The U.S.’s closest Arab allies are jointly pressing President Barack Obama to take the lead in bridging the Middle East’s divisions over Syria, traveling to Washington to personally drive home their fears that some of the region’s other leaders are strengthening radicals and prolonging President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The coordinated message was delivered to Mr. Obama during separate White House meetings in recent weeks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the United Arab Emirates’ Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, according to senior U.S. and Arab officials familiar with the discussions.

EU threatens pullout of south Lebanon peacekeepers | The Times of Israel.

Europe says it will withdraw from UNIFIL unless Beirut can improve security

By Gavriel Fiske May 12, 2013, 10:16 am

A UNIFIL patrol near the Israeli-Lebanese border (photo credit: Hamad Almakt/Flash90)

The European Union has threatened to remove its troops from UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, unless the Lebanese government improves the security situation in the area.

The EU’s ambassador in Beirut, Angelina Eichhorst, recently told Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati that unless Lebanon can make guarantees to safeguard the operational safety of its forces, the EU will withdraw from the UNIFIL coalition guarding the Israeli-Lebanese border, according to a EU source quoted by Maariv on Sunday.

The source said that the EU is deeply concerned about the situation in Syria and with Lebanon-based Hezbollah’s entanglement in the Syrian civil war.

“Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria has already affected a number of places in Lebanon, caused riots and deaths by gunfire. In the wake of the recent kidnapping carried out on the Syrian-Israeli border, we are not willing to take the risk,” the source said.

Last week, four UN peacekeepers from the UNDOF force on the Syrian side of the Golan were kidnapped by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, an Islamic faction of the Syrian opposition. They were unconfirmed reports Sunday morning that the four had been released and transferred to Israel. As a result of the kidnapping, the EU’s Foreign Affairs committee met to discuss the situation in Lebanon and decided to send an ultimatum to the Lebanese government.

The UNIFIL force was established in the late 1970s and most recently given a renewed mandate by UN Resolution 1701 in 2006, in the wake of Israel’s extensive strike against Hezbollah targets known as the Second Lebanon War. The international peacekeeping force, made up of troops mainly from European countries, has occasionally encountered difficulties or hostilities from villagers or Hezbollah operatives.

UN resolution 1701 determined that UNIFIL act as a supplementary force to the Lebanese military south of the Litani River, but Hezbollah has been the de facto military power in southern Lebanon ever since Israel dismantled its southern Lebanon defense zone in 2000, after 18 years of IDF presence there.

In early May, the Daily Star reported that a gradual withdrawal of Lebanese army forces from southern Lebanon has frustrated UNIFIL officers, because it has led to more confrontations with Hezbollah.

Experts doubt U.S.-Russia common ground on Syria – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

A bid by Washington and Moscow to find a political solution in war-torn Syria has set off a flurry of diplomacy, but experts aren’t sold that there’s much common ground between the two.

In the latest twist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month over concerns Moscow is preparing to supply Syria with advanced air defense weapons.

It would come on the heels of this week’s relaunch of the United States’ diplomatic efforts with Russia, the powerful protector of President Bashar al-Assad, amid a ballooning casualty toll in Syria and the likely use of chemical weapons.

Now in its third year, the conflict has claimed between 70,000 and 100,000 lives, according to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and threatens to spill over into the entire region.

With that as a backdrop, the top U.S. diplomat met Tuesday in Moscow with Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Deeply divided for months on Syria, they agreed to make a joint push for peace and to hold an international conference on the conflict.

This gathering, which could take place in Geneva in late May, would build upon the Geneva Communique agreed by world powers on June 30, 2012.

Never implemented, it set out a path toward a transitional government in Syria without ever spelling out al-Assad’s fate.

Washington, in contrast to Moscow, has long insisted that Assad must go, but Kerry suggested that Washington no longer considered the Syrian leader’s departure a prerequisite to establish a transitional authority.

“The change is that both we and the Russians are going to work very hard to get both of these sides to the table and implement this plan,” deputy State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Thursday.

But on Friday, Lavrov confirmed that Russia was continuing to deliver military hardware to the Assad regime, including anti-aircraft systems, in defiance of calls for a freeze.

Netanyahu’s plans to visit Moscow later this month was reportedly prompted by concerns that Russia was preparing to ship Syria S-300 surface-to-air missiles, which can defend against multiple aircraft and missiles.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the visit to AFP, but declined to give details, while Israeli officials said on condition of anonymity that the two leaders would meet “soon” but did not elaborate.

Israel has twice this month launched air strikes inside Syria to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, the Shiite force in Lebanon allied to Syria and Iran.

Meanwhile, U.S. experts are skeptical that the United States and Russia are truly prepared to work in concert on Syria.

Stephen Sestanovich, an expert in Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said this week’s agreement on a peace conference “moves the Geneva formula one step further, but what is one step beyond complete meaninglessness?”

“The real issue is whether the Russians are prepared to tell Assad and his supporters that the jig is really up for their regime,” he added.

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said he was not convinced that the different players’ positions had changed “that much.”

“There is some verbal acrobatics, as I would call it, that are coming out of the White House and the State Department,” he said.

But Shaikh stressed that “the situation on the ground” — rather than diplomatic efforts — “will continue to shape events.”

President Barack Obama said that there were no “easy answers” on Syria, two weeks after his administration first cited the Syrian regime’s possible use of chemical weapons against its own people.

While calling such a move a “game changer,” Obama has stressed there was insufficient proof to determine whether a “red line” had indeed been crossed.

The Obama administration is haunted by a precedent set in 2003, when former president George W. Bush launched the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

“The one lesson we learned from Iraq and the last administration is… How can I say it? In managing the affairs in Iraq, they destroyed every institution. There was no structure left. There wasn’t even a Department of Public Works,” Vice President Joe Biden told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview published Friday.

“And we know we can fix that, if we’re willing to spend a trillion dollars and 160,000 troops and 6,000 dead, but that we cannot do,” he added, in reference to the U.S. troop deployment and toll in blood and treasure in Iraq.

Rafsanjani’s last-minute entry transforms Iranian race – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Former Iranian president’s candidacy radically alters what was previously seen as contest between rival conservative groups. A relative moderate, Rafsanjani backed 2009 opposition movement

Reuters

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani threw himself into Iran’s election race on Saturday as a flurry of heavyweight candidates rushed to beat the registration deadline in the most unpredictable contest for decades.

Iranian media reported that Rafsanjani – a relative moderate – had registered for the June 14 presidential election with just minutes to spare. His candidacy radically alters what was previously seen as a contest between rival conservative groups.

The former president could scupper the hopes of ‘Principlists’, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are aiming to secure a quick and painless transition and paper over the deep fissures between the opposing camps.

Rafsanjani, 78, who was president from 1989 to 1997, is expected to draw some support from reformists because he backed the opposition movement whose protests were crushed after the last, disputed election in 2009.

The election comes at a critical moment, as Iran reels from international sanctions over its disputed atomic program and faces the threat of attack by Israel if it crosses what the Jewish state calls a ‘red line’ towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. Tehran strenuously denies it wants an atomic bomb.

Riots after 2009 elections (Photo: Permerz Hashemi)

A vast field of more than 400 candidates have thrown their names into the ring as potential successors to outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has long been at odds with the supreme leader.

Nuclear negotiator

Shortly before Rafsanjani’s announcement, Saeed Jalili, a hardline conservative who is seen as close to Khamenei and has led rounds of so far unsuccessful nuclear talks with world powers, entered his name as a candidate.

Soon afterwards Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, an aide to Ahmadinejad and a man viewed with intense distrust by conservatives, registered for the race, gripping Ahmadinejad’s hand as the two flashed peace signs for photographers.

Khamenei’s camp sees Mashaie as leading a “deviant current” that seeks to set aside clerical influence in favour of a more nationalistic doctrine.

The presidential vote is the first since Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election four years ago, when mass “Green movement” protests erupted after the defeat of reformist candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi. Dozens were killed in the worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.

The outcome of next month’s contest will signal the extent of Khamenei’s control at the summit of power in the Islamic Republic.

It will also show whether he feels the need to reach out to opposition groups and whether the reformists are capable of making a comeback. Proponents of greater social and political freedoms have been suppressed or sidelined: Mousavi, his wife and Karoubi have been under house arrest for over two years.

‘So many wild cards’

After a day of intense speculation about his intentions, the last-minute entry by Rafsanjani was a moment of political drama. Iranian television showed him smiling and waving as he sat in the crowded office where he registered his candidacy.

“He knows if he runs he can have both the reformists’ vote, and have some of the principlists. Rafsanjani is not the type to put aside power,” said Mohammad Hossein Ziya, who campaigned for reformist Karoubi in 2009 and now edits Karoubi’s website from the United States.

Another reformist ex-president, Mohammad Khatami, endorsed Rafsanjani on Friday.

“Rafsanjani is a pillar of the Islamic Revolution, whereas Khatami is a standard bearer of the reform movement,” said Yasmin Alem, a US-based expert on Iran’s electoral system.

“In the 2005 presidential poll, their constituencies competed against each other. But, since then, both have been marginalized and are now playing on the same side.

“With so many wild cards now in the game, the fate of the election is now concealed in a smoke screen.”

The candidacy of Jalili promised to move the nuclear dispute to the forefront of the election campaign, and may also affect the tortuous negotiations between Iran and a six-power group consisting of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

“In any scenario, Jalili’s candidacy is likely to put nuclear diplomacy on hold for a while,” said Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“He can’t pursue the nuclear talks and his electoral campaign simultaneously. And if he is elected president, there will be a learning curve for his successor.”

Jalili is one of a host of Khamenei loyalists to put themselves forward, including charismatic Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, and Mohsen Rezaie, who headed the Revolutionary Guards and lost to Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Ahmadinejad’s vice-president Mohammad Reza Rahimi also registered on Saturday.

All candidates must be vetted by a conservative body of clerics and jurists known as the Guardian Council, which can disqualify any candidate without offering a justification. It typically narrows the field to just a handful of men.

But there appears to be little of the popular enthusiasm that marked the run-up to the 2009 election, when many sensed a possibility of real change.

In comments gathered before Saturday’s rush of developments, ordinary Iranians said they were more preoccupied with the economy than with political infighting.

“I only want to be able to feed and provide for my family. Anyone who can bring down inflation, create more jobs and lower rents will have my vote,” said Majid, who works in a publishing company.

Clothing designer Sotoudeh, 32, said: “I won’t vote at all, no matter who comes. They stole our vote four years ago and I see no point in voting now.”

Israel has new diplomatic mission in Persian Gulf, budget reveals – Diplomacy & Defense – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Israel has set up 11 new diplomatic missions worldwide between 2010 and 2012, says the document, which appears on the Finance Ministry’s website.

Fishing boats sailing in front of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf off the UAE on Thursday, January 19, 2012. Photo by AP

Israel has opened a diplomatic mission in one of the Persian Gulf States, according to a Finance Ministry paper being submitted for cabinet approval this week. The paper is an economic plan for the next year and does not name the location of the new mission.

The Foreign Ministry said, “We cannot comment on this matter.”

Israel has set up 11 new diplomatic missions worldwide between 2010 and 2012, says the document, which appears on the Finance Ministry’s website. These consist of a mission in the Gulf, embassies in Ashgabat ‏(Turkmenistan‏), Wellington ‏(New Zealand‏), Accra ‏(Ghana‏), Tirana ‏(Albania‏) and the Caribbean, consulates in Guangzhou ‏(China‏), Sao Paolo ‏(Brazil‏), Munich and St. Petersburg, and “a diplomatic delegate to the Pacific.”

Israel’s relations with the Gulf States are a highly sensitive issue. Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, wrote in an article published by the Institute for National Security Studies in February 2012 that Israel and the Gulf States have joint economic and strategic interests.

Hadas-Handelsman, who served as head of the Israel mission in Qatar in 2002-2003 and then as director of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East department, wrote that with the peace process in a bad way, Israel was unlikely to have open relations with Gulf States, certainly not a diplomatic mission of any kind. But, he added, “this situation is fluid and could change.”

One state Israel conducted covert diplomacy with was the United Arab Emirates. In a classified cable from the State Department dated March 2009, which was disclosed by WikiLeaks, Ambassador Hadas-Handelsman tells an American diplomat that UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had “good personal relations.”

But the UAE is “not ready to do publicly what they say in private,” the ambassador is cited as saying in the cable.

Hadas-Handelsman said the UAE “believe in Israel’s role because of their perception of Israel’s close relationship with the United States, but also due to their sense that they can count on Israel against Iran.”

“They believe Israel can work magic,” he adds.

In a cable from August 2005, then Bahrain foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa tells the deputy American ambassador in Manama that he had met “Israel’s roving ambassador, Bruce Kashdan” a day earlier. Khalifa said Bahrain has had “quiet, businesslike contacts with Israel for some time.”

In another cable from April 2007, Bahrain’s then foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, told the American ambassador in Manama that after he had given an interview, the “Israeli envoy in the Gulf, [Bruce] Kashdan, had called him to say he liked the interview.”

Attacks calculated to force Iran’s hand.

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Israel’s recent airstrikes on Syria are calculated to force Iran to respond, thus opening the door for a counter-attack aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to sources in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The Jewish state believes Iran is in the process of making nuclear weapons.

Sources here say the two airstrikes in three days on Syria have gotten the expected response from Tehran, and the Islamic Republic and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, have pledged full support of Syria, suggesting they would launch their own attacks in response.

While sources say that the immediate airstrikes were aimed at weapons transfers from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the intent actually is aimed at provoking a response from Tehran that will provide a basis for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

Israel believes that Iran is approaching the point that the uranium which already has been enriched will form a stockpile that can be further enriched to nuclear weapons grade of 90 percent or more to acquire the means of making nuclear weapons.

Israel believes Iran technologically is fast approaching, if it hasn’t already reached, the point at which it has declared a “red line” in achieving weapons-grade enrichment for nuclear weapons.

Israel believes that it not only must knock out what it perceives is Iran’s nuclear weapons development program but it also views Iran and Hezbollah as providing fighters to sustain the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

If the Syrian regime survives, Israel believes that it then could be threatened with Iranian missiles aimed at its heartland.

As WND/G2Bulletin recently pointed out, Syria for all intents and purposes has its military and intelligence being run primarily by Iran. Iranian Revolutionary Guard members are not only training but fighting in Syria, as are fighters from Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah.

Analysts believe having al-Assad’s regime rely on Hezbollah fighters may have been calculated by the Syrian president to draw Israel into the conflict, believing Tel Aviv supports the Syrian opposition.

The Israeli airstrikes also could give the Syrian president a basis to suggest that Tel Aviv actually is aiding Syrian opposition forces to oust his regime.

The Israeli airstrikes aren’t without risk, since this perception could prompt Syria to retaliate by firing missiles into Israel.

Israel may have calculated, however, that because Syria has its hands full fighting opposition forces that the attacks were worth the risk.

However, these sources believe that the real target in striking Syria is aimed at Iran. Israel had expectations that a wedge could be driven between Damascus and Tehran, with the prospect of weakening the al-Assad regime until it fell.