WarSclerotic

A few miles from my home: U.S. Marines Land In Aqaba, Jordan for exercise “Eager Lion” – YouTube.

U.S. Marines and Sailors assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), are transported from the USS San Antonio (LPD 17), to Port Aqaba, Jordan, via a landing craft utility while offloading for Exercise Eager Lion 2013, June 7, 2013.

Exercise Eager Lion 2013 is an annual, multinational exercise designed to strengthen military-to-military relationships and enhance security and stability in the region by responding to realistic, modern-day security scenarios. This is a recurring exercise.

The 26th MEU is deployed to the 5th Fleet area of operations as part of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group. The 26th MEU operates continuously across the globe, providing the president and unified combatant commanders with a forward-deployed, sea-based quick reaction force.

Analysis: US arming Assad’s foes forces Iran to bleed resources in Syria | JPost | Israel News.

Hezbollah fighters battle rebels near Syrian capital, says NGO – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

The move by Hezbollah was an attempt to cut rebel supply lines, according to the Observatory. (Reuters)

Hezbollah fighters joined Syrian regime troops in their offensive against rebels near Damascus on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has said.

The move by Hezbollah was an attempt to cut rebel supply lines, according to the Observatory.

Army troops, together with Hezbollah, fought rebels near the Khomeini hospital in the Zayabiyeh village, southeast of Damascus, the group stated.

“Hezbollah fighters, who have a strong presence at Sayyida Zeinab [in southeastern Damascus], are trying to seize control of villages near Zayabiyeh and Babila,” said the group, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground for its reports.

The Syrian army shelled both Zayabiyeh and Babila, according to the group.

Activists say the regime is trying to crush the rebellion on the outskirts of Damascus in order to cut off supply lines leading into rebel pockets inside the capital.

‘Critical’

“There is a fierce campaign against the [rebels] south of the capital,” said Damascus-based activist Matar Ismail, as quoted by AFP.

“The humanitarian situation is very critical…We believe the [regime] is trying to test the [rebels’] strength, in order to try to advance on the south of the capital,” said Ismail.

Ismail said Hezbollah and the Abu Al-Fadl Abbas brigade – a mostly Syrian Shiite force that has also attracted Shiite fighters from elsewhere in the region – were playing a key role in the fight.

Hezbollah was also credited with an important role in the Syrian army’s recapture of the former rebel stronghold of Qusayr in central Homs province earlier this month.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, has said the Lebanese group will remain engaged in Syria’s conflict.

The Syrian army meanwhile renewed shelling of other rebel areas near the capital, including northwestern Zabadani and Qalamoun to the northeast, according to the Observatory.

Both areas are a short distance from the Lebanese border.

Fighting in Idlib

Elsewhere, fierce battles broke out between rebels and troops in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, the Observatory said.

Opposition forces captured an army post on the road linking the coastal province of Latakia to Ariha in Idlib province, and two tanks were destroyed.

In regime stronghold Latakia, an explosion at an ammunition depot wounded at least 13 soldiers, said the Observatory.

State television said the blast was the result of a technical failure, and that only six had suffered light wounds.

Wednesday’s violence comes a day after at least 83 people were killed across Syria, said the Britain-based Observatory.

(With AFP)

Running out of time on Iran, and all out of options | The Times of Israel.

The Iranians will complete their nuclear program unless somebody stops them, says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterror chief. But military intervention could have ‘apocalyptic’ consequences

Richard A. Clarke speaks at the Third Annual International Cyber Security Conference of Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Ne’eman Workshop (Photo credit: Courtesy)

Richard A. Clarke was the counterterrorism chief for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

It was Clarke who was in the hot seat, running the White House Situation Room, on 9/11 — he it was who had overseen the efforts to prevent 9/11, and he who wrote a devastating book on 9/11, “Against All Enemies,” after resigning in 2003. The book castigated George W. Bush’s administration for failing to heed his warnings on al-Qaeda before 9/11, for squandering the opportunity to eliminate al-Qaeda in the wake of 9/11, and for deciding instead to go to war in Iraq.

Clarke used to come to Israel often as the United States’ National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism, but he hadn’t been here for 15 years, until last week. As chairman of the Washington, DC-based firm Good Harbor Security Risk Management, Clarke flew in to speak about cyber warfare at Tel Aviv University’s Third Annual International Cyber Security Conference.

During the conference, Clarke, 62, sat down with The Times of Israel for a characteristically no-nonsense interview in which we discussed Iran’s nuclear program, the Syrian civil war, ongoing terror threats to the United States, the reasons behind the continued incarceration of spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard and a whole lot more.

As was to be anticipated for a man who held vast responsibility for the wellbeing of his nation, Clarke was brisk, blunt and clear in his assessments. He said flatly that the Iranians will “complete” their nuclear program unless someone stops them. He also said that he was “on the apocalyptic side” when gauging the repercussions of military intervention to stop them. “The Iranian government won’t take it lying down,” said Clarke. “And there’s some relatively high risk that it would expand into a war that not only involves Israel, but involves attacks in the United States through cyber attacks from Iran, and involves attacks on the American Gulf allies. And that could be very, very messy. It could have worldwide economic effects. And I don’t know how it ends.”

He also said that the Stuxnet computer virus that penetrated Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility had been a failure, and that there was no cyber means now to thwart the Iranian drive.

Assessing that time after time, America had arrogantly, albeit with good intentions, “gone into countries” believing it could “fix” them, and failed, he said that in the case of Syria “sometimes, taking action makes things worse.” In grappling with Syria, “you’ve got a choice between really bad alternatives,” he said. And it was President Barack Obama personally — not the State Department and not the Defense Department — who had prevented greater US involvement.

He also highlighted what he said was an under-appreciated Israeli concern regarding Russia’s on-off sale of S-300 air-defense systems to Bashar Assad’s regime: If the S-300 were deployed by Damascus, Clarke noted, it could provide air cover for Hezbollah, denying Israel air supremacy in southern Lebanon — a real game-changer.

Shifting focus to American soil, Clarke said the US was “unlikely to see” another 9/11-style mega attack, because terrorism was so high a priority for the FBI and the police nowadays, whereas “it wasn’t on the top 5″ in 2001. But attacks like the Boston bombings would recur, he feared, because “I don’t think America or any country that I know of has the ability to detect when someone who has been radicalized moves into violence,” and a couple of people acting together can so easily buy guns and the components for bombs.

Richard Clarke (photo credit: Times of Israel staff)

We spoke in a white-walled, unfurnished, small-windowed room situated a long way down a winding corridor to the side of the main conference hall. Only the fresh fruit on the desk between us offset the interrogation room atmosphere. That, and the entry midway through our interview of a Tel Aviv University maintenance worker, who proceeded, fairly loudly, to make himself a cup of coffee.

The Times of Israel: It seems to be the new common wisdom at this conference that the Stuxnet computer virus was a failure — that it barely set back the Iranian nuclear program and that it detrimentally legitimized that kind of warfare.

Richard Clarke: Well, it did. I think it’s hard for the United States now, if someone else were to do something like that, it’s hard for the United States to criticize it because people will say, “well, you did it.” So, yes, I think Stuxnet had a few down sides.

One of those down sides was that the actual attack code became publicly available. As far as I can tell the attack code was supposed to die and not get out onto the Internet, but apparently the same way it got into Natanz [Iranian nuclear enrichment facility], it got out, and ran around the world trying to attack things. But of course it couldn’t, because it was programmed only to attack in a rather specific set of circumstances. Nonetheless it tried to attack things and people therefore grabbed it and decompiled it, so it’s taught a lot of people how to attack.

And in the gung ho-ness of being offensive, people have neglected defensive protections?

I don’t think I would put it that way. People have neglected defensive systems, not because they’re spending all their time on the offense, but because no one really knows how to do defensive systems. The technology right now doesn’t work as well on the defense as it does on the offense. Historically, there’s this phenomenon in military science called “offense preference,” where certain circumstances are created where the offense always wins. And usually that’s in a small period in history and then the technology shifts. But right now and for some time now, we have been in this period of offense preference in cyber, where the offense usually wins.

Is there a cyber means to stop Iran, to stop this nuclear program?

Well, I think we’ve kind of tried that. And by trying Stuxnet when we did and being discovered, I think it’s going to be very difficult to do something like that again. The Iranians are now much more careful, much more observant.

They’ll have enough material to make many bombs, not just one or two — an arsenal in waiting. And the breakout time could be a matter of weeks after that

And therefore, how do you see the Iranian nuclear drive playing out?

I think you have to believe that over time, they’ll complete the program, unless someone stops them.

And they will want to break out to the bomb, or they will stop at the breakout level?

They may not know yet themselves. They will complete the program in the sense that they will have the weapons components that can be easily assembled and they’ll have enough material to make many bombs, not just one or two. They’ll have sort of an arsenal in waiting, and the breakout time could be a matter of weeks after that.

Whether or not they’ll take the next step and assemble parts into weapons, I don’t know. I don’t know if they know. But it can’t be much longer before they’re in that circumstance.

And therefore this current US administration’s assertion that we’ll know and we’ll have time, which is what I understand the administration is saying, which Joe Biden said…

I think the Israeli government said that too.

That we’ll know and we’ll have time?

Yeah. The last time that the president and the prime minister talked about this publicly together, they said that they had reached an agreement on the intelligence. There was no disagreement on the intelligence. There was a disagreement on interpretation about policy. So I think there is probably an understanding that both sides have, that they will know when a certain line has been crossed. There’s a disagreement on where to draw that line. The United States is willing to wait longer into the program than Israel would prefer.

If we’re now seeing essentially, the increasing mastery of the process by Iran, and the increasing accumulation of material — so that when they get to breakout level they’ll be able to build several bombs, rather than one bomb — and they’re very close now, then any differences that there might be [between the US and Israel] are surely marginal now in terms of how much time you’d then have…

Apparently the US government doesn’t believe that we’re at breakout yet. Now you could argue that maybe the US intelligence isn’t as good as it thinks it is; maybe the Iranians have taken steps to camouflage or to conceal or deception; they may be further down the line, there may be two programs, all that. But, we’re pretty close.

Has this been handled sensibly by the US and Israel? Are you confident that basically the Americans and Israel know what they’re doing and they’re handling it as best as they possibly could…?

A president deciding to bomb an Iranian nuclear facility has to know there is some significant probability that that will precipitate a major conflagration

Look, if the United States and/or Israel ever had to use force against the Iranian nuclear program, I believe that would precipitate a major conflagration. Now, there are people who say, “Oh, they’ll just take it. They’ll just take the hit, they’ll go to the UN, they’ll complain and they’ll go back and start it all over again.” I don’t think so. I know that there are people in the Israeli government who believe that.

There’s a range, from relatively sanguine all the way to apocalypse.

Right.

So, you’re…

I’m more on the apocalyptic side. I think the Iranian government won’t take it lying down. And there’s some relatively high risk that it would expand into a war that not only involves Israel, but involves attacks in the United States through cyber attacks from Iran, and involves attacks on the American Gulf allies. And that could be very, very messy. It could have worldwide economic effects. And I don’t know how it ends.

I’m not saying it’s definitely the outcome. I’m saying it’s a high enough probability. You know, when you go to a president of the United States with considerations for something like this, you always get a “What are the risks?” and you try to put probabilities on those risks. It’s not a science, so you really can’t do that with any accuracy. But I think a president of the United States deciding to bomb an Iranian nuclear facility has to know there is some significant probability that that will precipitate a major conflagration in the region, that will have adverse effects on Israel, on America’s friends in the Gulf, and perhaps on the United States.

And therefore…

Well, Obama and Netanyahu seem to have closed the door — Netanyahu certainly has, and I think Obama has publicly closed the door — on accepting an Iranian nuclear capability. There was, until maybe last year, at least the option that the United States could say, “Well, we’re going to engage in deterrence, we’re going to engage in containment.” Obama pretty well shut that door.

So, despite all sorts of potentially apocalyptic consequences, the key players here are saying that Iran has to be stopped.

Yeah, I think the straightforward analysis at the moment is, if Iran continues and crosses the red line, wherever you think the red line is, that the United States has said it will act. And if it does, I think there’s a really high probability of a major conflict.

That appears to be the road that we’re on.

It appears to be the road that we’re on if you believe that Iran will cross the red line. If you believe the Iranians are “rational” within our framework, our mental view of the world, they won’t cross the red line, because their economy is already teetering, they have domestic stability issues. They may believe that being bombed and being involved in a major conflagration will threaten the regime. Others over there may believe that it would unite the country behind the regime. But you remember when the Iran-Iraq war ended, it did so because the ayatollah [Khomeini] said continuing down this path will threaten the revolution.

And the current grand ayatollah [Khamenei] may believe continuing down the path to full weaponization would risk the revolution. That’s a possibility. So they may short stop – they may get up to a line and not go across it.

In other words, you think that our notion of rationality may apply to them?

We don’t know. It’s very hard to put yourself in the mindset of the Iranian leadership, particularly if it comes down to one man.

We recently carried an opinion piece by an Iranian-born academic being very adamant that these guys are awaiting the hidden imam, that this is where Khamenei’s head is, where Ahmadinejad’s head is, which would not be rational by our understanding…

That’s certainly not rational in our worldview, but they may nonetheless, despite all of their mystical beliefs, religious beliefs, they may nonetheless understand that if they cross this line on weaponization, all hell is going to break loose.

And that their survival…

And that their survival at the moment is threatened, and that they should therefore put it off to some future date when maybe the invisible imam can tell them what to do.

Is there more that can be done on the sanctions level, on the diplomacy level?

You know, we’re kind of running out of sanctions. The good news is they’re having an effect. The sanctions in South Africa took a very long time to have an effect, but they did. The sanctions on Libya took a moderately long time to have an effect, but they did. If you’re willing to stick with it and really go after enforcement — because the country that being sanctioned always finds ways to get around – if you’re really good at enforcement and you’re really persistent, over time sanctions can have an effect. I think they’re having that effect on Iran.

America has given them various ways out though, and could have done more to prevent some of those.

Could have done more, and could have done it sooner.

If you were advising the president now, you would say, ‘Tell the Israelis we will take action if necessary, you don’t need to act alone, hang tight for a little while longer.’

I think that is what the president is being advised.

And that’s good advice?

At the moment it is, because the alternative is too risky.

Let’s talk a little bit about the situation up north — American policy on Syria, and how you see that affecting Israel by extension. It seems like a terrible moral failure of the international community that Bashar Assad has been allowed for two years to massacre his people. And America, as the representative of the free world and decency and the value of the gift of life, would seem to be very hesitant, and has allowed this situation to persist. And now, by the way, we see maybe Assad’s actually going to prevail, which is another victory for Iran of course and trouble for us…

That’s all true. People assume, when there’s a crisis in this region, that the United States should do something about it. And they assume, therefore, that the United States should take action. And sometimes, taking action makes things worse.

I think we have a president who is acutely aware of that – a president who has looked at the history of American action in this region and elsewhere, and seen that with all the good intentions in the world, the United States has gone into countries with a certain amount of arrogance. Whether it’s the big problem of Vietnam, or the big problem of Iraq, or the little problem of Somalia, the United States believed it could, if it spent enough money, gave it enough attention, it could “fix” a country or “fix” a problem. And our record of fixing problems is not very good.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, visits the Umayyad Electrical Station on May Day, May 1, 2013, a day after a powerful bomb hit the capital (photo credit: AP/SANA)

You look at the Syrian situation. It is, as all situations are, unique. Analogies to Libya, analogies to other places, really don’t hold up. There is not just a small tribe like Gaddafi had. In Syria, 15 percent of the population are Alawite and then you add in the Copts and the Druse and he’s got about 20 percent of the population behind hiim, and they are the 20 percent of the population that run the security services and the military. They have nowhere to go. They’re not going to go to Switzerland or Riyadh and spend the rest of their lives in some palace like Idi Amin.

So, you have that difference. You have the difference that Iran and Russia are players; the difference that they have a pretty good air defense system. Not that you couldn’t take it out. You could, but it would be costly, and in the process the Russians would perhaps get involved. You also have, and after the revolutions in Egypt and Libya we are acutely aware of this, you also have the problem that the people who might take over are probably as bad from an Israeli perspective or from an American perspective as the existing regime.

Who wants the Muslim Brotherhood running Syria? So you’ve got a choice between really bad alternatives.

If you have S-300s in Syria, that range extends over the Hezbollah parts of Lebanon. Then, in the future, when Hezbollah starts firing Katyushas or more advanced rockets into Israel, and Israel wants to do something about it – retaliation – if Syria pays back their debt to Hezbollah, that changes the military balance.

And I think what you’re seeing in the US policy is Barack Obama — it’s not the US government, because at various points in time I think the State Department and the Defense Department have been willing to do things. The leaderships of those departments have been willing to do things and Obama has said, “no. I’m not persuaded. I’m not convinced.”

Sometimes the best course is to do nothing when all the courses of action are a) unpredictable as to the outcome and b) run serious risks.

It’s a terrible situation. You’d like to be able to do something to stop it. It’s not clear that we can do something to make the situation better.

It would seem that Russia is continuing to supply weaponry to Syria and that the lines between the regime in Damascus and Hezbollah are increasingly blurred. There’s acute concern here about some of his weaponry that is flying around, and we’ve hit them two or three times and now they’ve told us that they’re going to hit back if we hit them again…

Yeah.

It’s pretty scary right now.

Yeah, I think the situation is scary right now because if Russia feels that there is a real risk of the US and its friends imposing another no-fly zone, then they want to get air defenses in there in advance. The S-300 [air-defense system], I gather, is a very impressive system that may change the air balance, and that’s a problem for Israel. Israel likes to have the freedom to operate over Syria when it has to. And with that system going in, that may change things. [The S-300] may also extend into Lebanon and provide a sort of air cover for Hezbollah in Lebanon, which changes the dynamic there. I haven’t seen the media focus on that. There’s undoubtedly a decision being made down the street here about whether or not to do something when the S-300 shows up.

We have the sense in the last few days that maybe the Russians have delayed it or are delaying it…

They should have understood from the beginning that this is not just about defending Damascus. The S-300 changes the balance over Lebanon.

If you have S-300s in Syria, that range extends over the Hezbollah parts of Lebanon. Then, in the future, when Hezbollah starts firing Katyushas or more advanced rockets into Israel, and Israel wants to do something about it – retaliation – if Syria pays back their debt to Hezbollah, that changes the military balance.

In the context of Syria, and of Iran, is Israel an asset to the United States, a huge, wonderful, undeniable, 100% asset? Or, if it wasn’t here you wouldn’t have the risk of apocalyptic warfare breaking out in one context or another every few years? ‘We love the Jewish state, but if it was somewhere else that would be a lot more convenient for us?’

I think this region is inherently a place of instability. And if Israel weren’t here, the instability would be here anyway…

Israeli policy for as long as I can remember has been that Israel needs to be able to defend itself without having the United States fight alongside. That policy evolved a little bit, so that Israel has to be able to defend itself, perhaps with American weapons, perhaps with American intelligence support and all that. But Israel has always said, “Look, we want to be able to take care of ourselves and we don’t want to drag you in unnecessarily.” Frankly, if Israel were here or Israel were not here, this region, which continues to have important economic implications for the world because of the oil, would always have been unstable. What you’re seeing now is the playout of Sunni-Shia hostility that goes back centuries. Now it’s resurgent.

If you look from the Iranian-Iraqi border all the way through to the Mediterranean — across Iraq and across Syria and across Lebanon — what you’re seeing play out is one large Sunni-Shia conflict that has nothing to do with Israel. So if Israel were somehow in Latin America, this region would still be unstable, and still be important.

Coming to the US now, in the context of the Boston bombing, do you think that America is more effective at protecting itself, and has taken the necessary steps to protect itself against Islamic extremist threats and other terrorist threats?

I don’t think America or any country that I know of has the ability to detect when someone who has been radicalized moves into violence. You can’t know when that’s going to happen. You can’t predict when that’s going to happen. And it’s a problem for the United States and it’s a problem for European societies as well, where we have in our countries thousands of people who have been radicalized into Islamic extreme beliefs. And we have to accept that. We have to tolerate that. Their having those beliefs is not a crime.

The amount of time and energy and resources given to countering violent extremism is pretty small, and the reason for that is in part we don’t know what to do

Many of them are citizens of the UK or Germany or the United States. You can’t monitor them all 24 hours a day. And when one or two of them get together and make that crossover from being radicalized to being willing to do violence, you can’t tell. And I don’t know of any way effectively to stop that, to monitor that – with thousands of people — and know when that has occurred.

Maybe the West could be doing more to try and marginalize Islamic extremism and encourage a more moderate Islam. I think America gets things better than Britain, for example. I mean, the Brits are incredibly stoic, but rather reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the problem.

The Brits have had problems. I think they recognize the problems. They have difficulty doing anything about it.

This composite photograph shows Tsarnaev Tamerlan, 26 (left), and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing (photo credit: AP/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young)

The fact of the matter is that Western governments and Western experts on counter-terrorism have realized that what we have to do is get into the pre-radicalization phase. There’s this whole thing now called “countering violent extremism,” and the theory behind that is that governments would conduct programs that would make it less likely that Islamic youth will become Islamist youth. And it’s also going on in Islamic countries. No one’s got it right yet and we all pay lip service to the need to do this, but the amount of time and energy and resources given to countering violent extremism is pretty small, and the reason for that is in part we don’t know what to do. It’s a relatively new field where there’s not a lot of empirical evidence of what works.

Here, you have a UN organization that is responsible for education of the Palestinians in the refugee camps in Gaza, and I am sure that generation after generation are growing up being taught about Israeli illegitimacy. Media is a huge factor here as well. There are things that you can do. You can make funding contingent on…

…curriculum changes

Right. And you can invest in media.

You know some Arab countries, not many, but some, are trying to change curriculum. They are trying to monitor what imams say in mosques on Fridays and that’s good. It’s just not enough. Not enough people are doing it.

I have a few other specific things I want to ask you about. There’s an Argentinian prosecutor named Alberto Nisman who investigated the AMIA bombing. He issued a new report last week in which he talked about the fact that Iran had basically set up via its embassies terror networks all over Latin America and as far as he knows they’re still there. And he also connected this same network and some of the same people to the 2007 thwarted attack at JFK. My bigger question is about America’s defense against terrorism, post 9/11: Is America as vulnerable as it was, much less vulnerable…?

No, it’s nowhere near as vulnerable as it was because for one thing, the federal government and the state and local governments have all made this a priority. Frankly, prior to 2001, it wasn’t. The number one issue for our FBI, our domestic, federal police, is now terrorism. It wasn’t on the top 5 in 2001. Now you’ve got somewhere between a third and half of the federal agents of the FBI who are counter-terrorism officers, so they go around looking, in small towns throughout the country, they go around looking for terrorists.

People can’t register for flight school in America nowadays without being noticed?

What we cannot detect and therefore cannot stop and therefore will continue to happen, are things like the Boston bombing,

No. It’s a whole series of things which are much better than they were then. That having been said, it’s still very easy for one or two people to cause a lot of chaos. And it’s virtually impossible to stop it. So, it’s going to happen periodically, and what’s always surprised me is that it happens relatively little. People ask me why and I don’t know why. It may be because the FBI does so many sting operations that most people think if someone comes up to them and proposes a terrorist attack, they’re an FBI agent. I’m serious, which is fine. It may be that potential terrorists think our defenses are better than they are, and think that we really are listening to all their phone calls and last week [with the controversy over PRISM] probably helped them think that even more. But we really don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often.

A massive mega-attack?

Big, big attacks that require large numbers of people, lots of preparation, lots of communication, lots of training are much more likely to be detected now than ever before and therefore we are unlikely to see those. I won’t say it won’t happen, but it’s a lower probability than ever before.

What we cannot detect and therefore cannot stop and therefore will continue to happen, are things like the Boston bombing, where you get one or two people acting together that can buy guns — because you can buy guns on the corner in the United States, on the corner of any street you can buy a machine gun. It’s ridiculous, but you can. And you can buy the components for making bombs at your local drug store or local hardware store, and all the instructions are on the internet. And so we’ll probably continue to have that – every society will probably continue to have that.

What about a mega cyber-attack? Are there terrible and devastating things that can be done that are not well-protected against?

In theory.

If a cyber attack could take control of the traffic grids in this country, water distribution — they’re defending against cyber-attacks all the time — electricity… Is the West effectively protected? Is the US protected or is that the big thing we have to worry about?

Thus far, major cyber-attack capability has been resident only in states. There’s been capability of individual hackers and criminal groups to do theft and that sort of thing. But to do the kind of intelligence preparation and then execution necessary to take down a power grid, that’s been something that only a state organization could do. I think over time that changes. I think over time that skill set gets out into non-state actors and people who can be rented. So, theoretically, you could have major cyber disruptions in the future from non-state actors.

A police officer walks by the nose of Pan Am flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988 (AP/Martin Cleaver)

I’m endlessly fascinated by the Lockerbie affair [the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 in which 270 people were killed], which you, in your book ‘Against All Enemies,’ mention as the Libyan bombing at Lockerbie. I can’t imagine it wasn’t Iranian. I can’t imagine it wasn’t done, you know, via this PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt, but everybody tells me that I’m wrong.

I didn’t run that investigation. I know the people who did. I’ve gone over it with them a lot. They initially did not believe it was Libyan and the evidence drew them to that conclusion. They didn’t come in with that conclusion. They are aware of all the other evidence and I think what we’re dealing with here is a case where there’s coincidence. And I know intelligence analysts like to say, “Coincidences never occur,” but they do. They do. And I believe it was Libyan.

Do I have 100 percent confidence of that? No. But I have pretty high confidence.

Last thing. Is there anything you can tell me about [Jonathan] Pollard. The degree of insistence in the United States that this man should not be free does not quite add up on the basis of what we know publicly.

Jonathan Pollard speaking during an interview at the Federal Correction Institution in Butner, NC, in May 1998. (photo credit: AP/Karl DeBlaker/File)

Yeah and I don’t know whether there’s some additional information. I don’t know whether there’s additional information about what he may have done that adds to the heinousness of the crime and explains the intelligence community’s insistence. I will say this: The US intelligence community, the US law enforcement that supports the intelligence community, treats any espionage or even the disclosure of information, like we have in the case of the Snowden guy, they react in extremes to it. And they always say, as they have with Snowden, that incredible damage has been done. Sometimes they exaggerate. But it’s not Pollard alone. This is part of a pattern of the institutional bureaucracy of the intelligence community, and the law enforcement community supports it, reacting extremely strongly to espionage.

And I think that’s because they want to deter it. I think that’s because they realize how vulnerable they are to it. You know, the last number I saw was 875,000 people in the United States who have “top secret” clearance. How many people live in Tel Aviv?

Less than that. (About 400,000.)

So, the chances of an Edward Snowden or a Pollard happening are pretty high out of 875,000. And even with modern technology, it’s very hard to monitor people’s activities and stop this or predict who’s going to be a problem. So for the US counter-intelligence community, they are constantly living on a time bomb. And they want to demonstrate to anyone who is thinking about this sort of thing that there’ll be no break. You do this, it’s a life sentence. And you can’t think about, “Oh I’m going to do this and run the risk that, if I get caught, well, it will only be 20 years of my life” and maybe the cause is worth that. They want to send a message. And it’s not anti-Israeli. It’s just an anti-espionage message that anybody who does this is going to go away for life.

Russian marine and air power head for Syria versus Western intervention – “to defend Russian citizens,” says Moscow.

The Russian Vice Admiral Kulakov destroyer heading for Syria

Just one day after the G8 Summit ended in the failure of Western leaders to overcome Russian resistance to a resolution mandating President Bashar Assad’s ouster, Moscow announced Wednesday June 19, the dispatch to Syria of two warships carrying 600 Russian marines. 

They were coming, said the official statement, “to protect the Russian citizens there.” Russian Deputy Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Gradusov added that an air force umbrella would be provided the Russian expeditionary force if needed.
debkafile‘s military sources report that the pretext offered by Moscow for sending the force thinly disguised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intent to flex Russian military muscle in response to the delivery of Western heavy arms to Syrian rebels – which debkafile first revealed Tuesday, June 18.

Putin was giving the West due warning that if they persisted in arming the rebels any further, a Russian troop landing in Syria would take place in the guise of an operation to evacuate endangered Russian nationals.

Some 20,000 Russians live in Syria. In former stages of the conflict, they were given the locations of assembly points should Moscow decide to lift them out of the war-torn country. The evacuation of Russian citizens would in itself dramatically denote the expansion of the Syrian conflict.

The Russian Interfax news agency identified the warships heading for Syrian shores as the Nikolai Filchenkov Large Landing Ship and the Vice Admiral Kulakov, a Udaloy 1 class destroyer, each carrying 300 marines. Aboard the former are also 20 tanks and 15 armored troop carriers or military trucks, while the Kulakov is designed mainly for anti-submarine warfare.
debkafile‘s military sources also reveal that, although Moscow described the warships are preparing to depart for Syria, they have actually been cruising in the Mediterranean since mid-May. Upon receiving their orders, they could reach Syria in just a few hours.

Maj.-Gen. Gradusov was quoted as saying: “We won’t abandon the Russians and will evacuate them from the conflict zone, if necessary.”

Asked if the Russian aircraft were intended as air cover for the Russian warships coming to Syria, he declined to answer, saying said only “They will act on orders.”

The Moscow communiqué does not say when the Russian forces are scheduled to reach port in Syria or in which part of the country they are to operate. Our military sources say their impending presence in the war zone and the possibility of Western-supplied weapons in Syrian rebel hands causing Russian casualties are enough to contribute three more perilous dimensions to the Syrian conflict:

1. The harming of Russian soldiers would give Moscow an excuse to pile on more military reinforcements in Syria;

2.  Russian air power is on its way to Syrian airspace before any decision is taken in the West about imposing a US-led no-fly zone over Syria;

3.  The presence of Russian military personnel in Syria would pour more fuel on the already highly incendiary diplomatic and military tensions between Washington and Moscow over this conflict.

Dagan: Israel has ‘unique’ opportunity for new regional alliances – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Former Mossad chief says Israel must initiate talks with elements old and new in rapidly shifting Mideast in order to define dialogue on own terms

Noam (Dabul) Dvir

The rapid transformations taking place in the region represent opportunities from Israel’s perspective, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said Wednesday at the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.

Such Middle East trends as outers of autocratic rulers and the shifting, dynamic nature of the region’s political map are “creating unique opportunities for Israel to seek different alliances and reassure our presence in Middle East,” according to the retired intelligence chief.

“I believe the situation is not becoming worse. We should not sit and wait but take initiative and create opportunities,” Dagan further added. “Regional upheavals are far from over, and Israel needs the support of the Arab world in order to make progress in peace negotiations with the PA. Israel must initiate, and not be concerned with doomsday scenarios. We share the same interests with Egypt, the PA and Gulf Arab states.”

Dagan added he didn’t “like every aspect of Arab peace initiative – but as a starting point to sit down and discuss – I believe it is a vital necessity for Israel to do it.”

 Dagan at Presidential Conference

On the subject of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Dagan remarked that it is a hugely complex issue. Israel, he said, will oppose the return of the refugees, which is why Arab states should grant them citizenship.

“There are dramatic changes in the region,” Dagan said during an appearance on a panel of former diplomats at the Presidential Conference. “There are processes that are ongoing, and they don’t stop. It is very hard to determine what the result will be.”

Given the changing landscape the departure of a number of long-time Arab and Islamic leaders like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi, Dagan said that Israel has an opening to change its regional standing.

“I think Israel has a rare opportunity to forge various alliances in the region,” the ex-Mossad chief said. “I don’t like every aspect of the Arab peace initiative, but the need to negotiate is crucial in my view. The Arab League today is less hostile to Israel. The Arab initiative should form the basis of renewed negotiations. We need to look for opportunities at a time like this.”

Dagan urged the Israeli government to engage in “serious” negotiations with the Palestinians. “To say that this is not possible is very damaging to Israel,” he said. “There are many serious questions and it will take time to solve them. These issues can’t be solved through direct talks with the Palestinians, but there is a need to get the Arab League involved.”

Dagan sounded cautious optimism on the Iranian issue, saying that while Iran regards Israel as a threat, it’s dire financial condition might lead it to compromises. There is a possibility for dialogue, the former intelligence chief announced, even if not, at this point, an official one.

He further added he believed incoming Iranian President Hassan Rohani was elected despite not being Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s first choice. Unless Israel takes the initiative, the change may be forced upon it, and then the price will be dear. Both with the Palestinians and the Arab world in general, Israel should be always on the prowl for opportunities, Dagan rounded off.

Reassure our presence in Middle East (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

One of Israel’s former envoys to the UN Dore Gold sounded more cautious, saying the fragmentation of states such as Syria into smaller segments governed by diverse elements represents a threat, as many of the new entities have managed to stockpile considerable arsenals of advanced munitions.

Addressing the stalled peace talks, Gold, a former adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said “there are far more important issues affecting the peace process than West Bank settlements.”

Gold mentioned that the Oslo Accords were signed without Israel instituting a settlement freeze, which constitutes a key Palestinian precondition for a resumption of peace talks.

A plenary session featuring President Shimon Peres, the Middle East Quartet’s envoy Tony Blair, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem Wednesday morning. During the plenary session on “Leadership that Makes a Difference,” former British Prime Minister Blair said “No-one wants military action, but a nuclear armed Iran is the worst choice, and we must not make it.”

“We have to be prepared to be strong in defense of our values, that is why Iran is a threat, and we must be determined to confront it.”

Turning his attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Blair said, “Some say two states is a fantasy, the fantasy is thinking one-state is sustainable or consistent with Israeli values.”

He warned that the two-state solution has a short window of opportunity that “could close, maybe forever.”

“Peace will symbolize reconciliation not only between two states, but two peoples,” Blair said, adding that the Palestinians “should have state not as a reward but a right.”

Israel Hayom | Israel will be first country to receive F-35 stealth jet fighter.

Arens: Israel can get by without US security aid – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Former US ambassador to Israel says possible phasing out of security assistance ‘may be healthy for Israel. Ex-Defense Minister Arens says ‘we can get along without it’

The Media Line

A legislative caucus created to educate Israeli lawmakers to the basic realities of the American system of government was launched on Tuesday in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Although a discussion of whether the United States should reduce its financial support for Israel seems like a strange subject for a group that seeks to foster bilateral relations, Israeli lawmakers representing seven political parties and a former American ambassador to Israel did just that as they celebrated the launch of the new Knesset Caucus on Israel-US Relations.

“We may be reaching a point that after discussion of how to assure the security and intelligence cooperation (between the US and Israel), we can actually phase out the security assistance,” former US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer told The Media Line. “It represents a very small part of Israel’s GDP. Israel needs access to the technology and needs assurances that R-and-D and other join projects will continue, but standing on its own two feet may be healthy for Israel.”

Support came from Moshe Arens, a former minister of defense, who also served as Israel’s Ambassador to Washington. Arens reminded the assembled parliamentarians and representatives of American Jewish organizations present that there was a time when US aid to Israel made up more than 20% of Israel’s GDP, while today it represents only 1.5% of the total budget.

“We love to get it, and our finance minister would probably kill me if he heard me say this, but we could get along without it,” Arens said. The United States is going through a financial crisis with debts in the trillions of dollars. We would be unhappy to find that aid is being cut but we could survive without it.”

By the same token, Knesset member Nachman Shai of the Labor party, who is the initiator of the caucus, disagreed.

“We do need the three billion dollars a year for defense and military purposes because we are still in a terrible arms race,” he told The Media Line. “If we want to maintain our qualitative edge over our enemies, the only way is to rely on America. At least in the next ten years I can see Israel totally dependent on America for this.”

In 1987, the US assistance package was created with an annual allocation of $1.8 billion in economic aid and $1.2 billion in military aid. In his first term in office in the late 1990s, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to gradually relinquish economic aid at a rate of $120 million per year over a 10-year period while military aid grew to its current level of $3 billion a year, almost three-quarters of which must be spent in the United States on the acquisition of American defense equipment, services and training.

‘Only way is to rely on America.’ MK Shai (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Despite the close alliance between the two nations, many on both sides believe that there are still fundamental misunderstandings about each other’s governments. The caucus had actually been formed during the previous government headed by Ronit Tirosh, who represented a party no longer in the Knesset. Following her exit, Jay Ruderman, the president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, approached Nachman Shai.

“I’ve been living in Israel for seven years and as I got to meet Knesset members and government ministers, I realized they didn’t understand the American Jewish community,” Ruderman told The Media Line.

He also said that the generation of American Jews who remember Israel’s early history as an embattled nation, is being replaced by a younger generation with a different perspective.

“The connection of the younger generation with Israel is changing,” Ruderman said. “They are more integrated into American society. If that relationship is changing, Israeli leaders have to be aware of those changes because they will impact the relationship.”

Nachman Shai, who has extensive experience with the American Jewish community, said many of his fellow lawmakers don’t have a clue about the United States or its Jewish community.

“I think there is a deep lack of information and understanding of America,” Shai told The Media Line. “I think I can use my knowledge to deepen their understanding and knowledge of the political system there; the culture of the US; and the Jewish community there.

The Ruderman Family Foundation has already sent two delegations of Knesset members to the United States to learn about the American Jewish community. However, some of those who participated with the foundation are no longer members of parliament following the January election which saw 48-new faces sweep into the 120-member legislative body.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Ofir Akunis told The Media Line of his experience as a participant with the Ruderman Family Foundation delegation. “Such visits are, in my opinion, the best way to build and support the mutual understanding between our nations.”

Among the caucus’s first time lawmakers is Rabbi Dov Lipman of the Yesh Atid party, an immigrant from the state of Maryland who had to give up his American citizenship in order to become a member of the Israeli parliament.

“I’ve only been in the Knesset four and a half months,” Lipman told The Media Line. “I can definitely say that in terms of the misinformation about Israel, there is a lack of education here in terms of what we need to do in order to better portray ourselves in the (American) national arena.”

Along with all of the positive sentiment, some of the tensions in the US-Israeli relationship were also on display.

“What happens when there are differences of opinion between partners and allies?” former Defense Minister Arens asked. “If the subject at issue is of vital importance to one of the partners in the alliance, the other partner will defer. The issue of Judea and Samaria, of Israel’s borders, is of vital importance to the State of Israel. It’s not of vital importance to the US,” Arens said using the Biblical names for land Israel acquired in the 1967 war and remain the primary bone of contention between Israel and the Arab nations.

Kurtzer spoke to the American side of the issue, explaining how pressure to reduce spending, which makes foreign assistance a natural target for trimming the US budget, can arguably be expected to affect Israel. He suggested to The Media Line that while so far Israel has been immune from the cutbacks resulting when “the American population sees their lifestyle declining…It is part of our dialogue to focus on areas where Israel has significant requirements and give back something to the US in budgetary distress.”

In Shai’s estimation, “We have three or four years for this. At the end of this Knesset term I can tell you whether it worked or didn’t work. We have a lot of work to do.”

Article by Felice Friedson and Linda Gradstein

Pentagon Shoots Down Kerry’s Syria Airstrike Plan – Bloomberg.

Twenty years ago, in a debate over the war in Bosnia, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, issued a challenge to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell. Albright wanted the U.S. to confront an aggressive Serbia; Powell and the Pentagon were hesitant. Albright grew frustrated: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Albright asked. Powell later said that he thought Albright was going to give him an aneurysm.

Flash-forward to this past Wednesday. At a principals meeting in the White House situation room, Secretary of State John Kerry began arguing, vociferously, for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime — specifically, those fields it has used to launch chemical weapons raids against rebel forces.

It was at this point that the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the usually mild-mannered Army General Martin Dempsey, spoke up, loudly. According to several sources, Dempsey threw a series of brushback pitches at Kerry, demanding to know just exactly what the post-strike plan would be and pointing out that the State Department didn’t fully grasp the complexity of such an operation.

Dempsey informed Kerry that the Air Force could not simply drop a few bombs, or fire a few missiles, at targets inside Syria: To be safe, the U.S. would have to neutralize Syria’s integrated air-defense system, an operation that would require 700 or more sorties. At a time when the U.S. military is exhausted, and when sequestration is ripping into the Pentagon budget, Dempsey is said to have argued that a demand by the State Department for precipitous military action in a murky civil war wasn’t welcome.

Military Wariness

Officials with knowledge of the meeting say that Kerry gave as good as he got, and that the discussion didn’t reach aneurysm-producing levels. But it was, in diplomatic parlance, a full and frank vetting of the profound differences between State and Defense on Syria. Dempsey was adamant: Without much of an entrance strategy, without anything resembling an exit strategy, and without even a clear-eyed understanding of the consequences of an American airstrike, the Pentagon would be extremely reluctant to get behind Kerry’s plan.

As we know now, the Pentagon’s position is in sync with President Barack Obama’s. The outcome of the meeting last week was to formalize a decision made weeks ago to supply the more moderate elements of the Syrian opposition with small arms and ammunition. The assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies that Assad had used chemical weapons against small pockets of rebels — confirming those made several months earlier by the intelligence agencies of U.S. friends in Europe and the Middle East — forced the administration to make a gesture of support for the opposition.

Members of the White House national security team, who tend to be more hawkish than Obama or Dempsey (though not as quite as militant as Kerry), had been arguing that, in the words of Tony Blinken, the deputy national security adviser, “superpowers don’t bluff.” Once Obama had drawn a red line around chemical weapons, the White House had no choice but to take some sort of action.

Blinken was clever to use the word “bluff” in his arguments to the president, implicitly linking his posture on Syria to his position on Iran’s nuclear program. Last year, in an interview with me on the subject of Iran, Obama said, “As president of the United States, I don’t bluff.” On Iran, he has lived up to his words, but he was in danger — and remains in danger — of being seen as a bluffer on Syria.

No Bluffing

What is so odd about Dempsey’s adamant opposition to Kerry’s aggressive proposals is that it hasn’t previously been made public. Obama told Charlie Rose this week that he is worried about sliding down the slippery slope toward greater intervention in Syria. Having Dempsey openly in his corner would be useful to him, but the administration hasn’t made hay over the Pentagon’s opposition to airstrikes. (When I asked the Pentagon for official comment, Dempsey’s spokesman would only say that he would not “discuss classified internal deliberations,” though he went on to say that the National Security Council principals “routinely debate a wide range of options to include how the military can and should support a comprehensive, regional approach to this conflict.”)

One senior administration official explained it this way: The White House doesn’t want Dempsey to make an enthusiastic case on “Meet the Press” against intervention, just in case Obama one day decides to follow Kerry’s advice and get more deeply involved. At that point, Dempsey’s arguments against greater involvement could come back to haunt the administration.

The decision to provide small arms to the Syrian opposition has made no one happy — not the rebels, who understand that these quite-possibly ineffective weapons will take many months to reach them; not Kerry, who, while arguing that these shipments may become a “force multiplier” in the conflict, thinks that only a show of American air power will convince Assad and his Hezbollah allies that the U.S. is making a serious attempt to level a playing field that has been tilting their way for some time; and not the Pentagon, which thinks that Obama, despite saying that he is wary of the slippery slope, might be pushed down that slope anyway, by interventionists on his team or by events on the ground.

It is possible, even for those of us who have been inclined toward intervention, to have a great deal of sympathy for Dempsey’s position. There are those in the Pentagon who think that the State Department has romanticized the Syrian opposition. What diplomats see as a civil war featuring bands of poorly armed moderates struggling to free themselves from the grip of an evil dictator, the generals see as a religious war between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Why would the U.S. risk taking sides in a battle between two loathed terror organizations? Memories of Iraq, too, are fresh in the minds of Dempsey and his colleagues.

On the other hand, a Kerry partisan told me, U.S. intervention in Syria would not necessarily have to look like U.S. intervention in Iraq. When I mentioned the Albright-Powell exchange of 20 years ago, he pointed out something obvious: President Bill Clinton eventually decided to use air power in the Balkans. And it brought the Serbian government to its knees.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist.)

To contact the writer of this article: Jeffrey Goldberg at jgoldberg50@bloomberg.net.

What Obama can (and should) do about Iran – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: US president’s ‘open hand’ policy merely giving Tehran more time to pursue a nuclear bomb without repercussions

David Meyers

Americans’ news feeds are overflowing with images of domestic scandals, protests in Turkey, and war in Syria. But the real story is Iran. By year’s end, we may be confronted with a choice: Accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or support a military action to delay the program.

President Obama’s policy on Iran has failed. Diplomacy has fizzled. And even The New York Times’ news page and Obama’s former advisors agree that sanctions aren’t working. And this is why Obama’s reaction to the recent Iranian election is so troubling.

As many others have noted, Rohani’s election will likely change very little in terms of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The nuclear program is entirely controlled by Supreme Leader Khamenei (who personally approved Rohani’s candidacy). And Rohani has previously articulated a strategy whereby Iran would continue to build a nuclear weapons program, while trying to convince the world that it was not doing so.

This is even worse than Ahmadinejad – at least he was honest with us.

Nonetheless, the Obama Administration said it was encouraged by the election of such a “moderate” candidate and would pursue diplomatic negotiations with his new government. Yes, the election does demonstrate that Iranians are discontent. But we already knew that.

There is no sign, however, that the mullahs have altered their calculation regarding the nuclear program. In fact, they are racing ahead at record speed. By announcing a new round of talks, without requiring Tehran to make any meaningful concessions first, Obama is just giving Tehran more time to pursue a nuclear bomb without repercussions.

Obama tried a similar “open hand” policy when he entered office. In return, Iran sponsored terrorism, sped up its nuclear program, and used murder and violence to crush the Green Revolution. How could Obama be so naïve to make the same mistake again?

But criticizing Obama (as I and many others have done) is easy. What’s difficult is finding an effective solution to the problem. President Obama is not a malevolent or incompetent man. If there were an easy, or even moderately difficult, answer to the Iranian crisis, he would have taken it by now.

Every possible solution presents serious consequences for the United States and the international community. But although President Obama is not incompetent, he has not shown the leadership, resolve, or bravery to make the difficult decisions on Iran. Instead, he’s decided to drift along the present course as Iran races towards a nuclear weapon. Not only is this ineffective, it is dangerous. President Obama has shown the mullahs there will be no consequences for their actions, which has only emboldened Iran, and made a nuclear-armed Iran more likely.

At least he was honest. Ahmadinejad at Iranian nuclear plant (Archive photo: AP)

So what should Obama do? The first answer is anything. Right now, the Iranians do not take Obama’s warnings seriously because he has not lived up to his past promises. Iran continues to make a masquerade of negotiations, but Obama continues to pursue them. Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in Syria, but Obama took months to react. Our “allies” such as Russia are turning into tyrannies before our eyes, and the president refuses to confront them.

President Obama needs credibility on the international stage, and he needs it now. There is no magic bullet for achieving this, however. Obama simply needs to start backing up what he says, and flexing America’s hard and soft power. Arming Syrian rebels was a good start, but Obama must follow through here. Other ideas for building credibility include an even stronger stance in Syria, pressuring our allies to go after Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah, bringing real consequences to bear on Vladimir Putin for his outrages at home and abroad, and taking a more aggressive posture on North Korea.

Incoming Iranian President Hassan Rohani (Photo: AFP)

Unfortunately, even if President Obama were able to rebuild US credibility in these areas, it might be too late to have a meaningful impact on Tehran’s behavior.

The most obvious way to wake up the mullahs would be to seek an advance Congressional authorization of military force against Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has said that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable and that all options are on the table to prevent it. Thus far, Obama has tried every option except for two: The serious threat of military force or the actual use of force. If President Obama still believes a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, he must choose one of these options.

We can all agree that a threat of military force that compels Iran to change its behavior is preferable to the actual use of force. But for this threat to work, Iran must actually believe it.

So what can Obama do to prove to Iran’s leaders that this time will be different? First, he should make good on previous promises in places such as Syria. Next, Obama should undertake a series of speeches to explain to the American people why a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable, and why the use of force is necessary to prevent it. This would show the Iranians that Obama is serious about building the public support necessary to use force.

Finally, President Obama should publicly announce that he would support an Israeli strike against Iran if Israel has proof that Tehran is on the verge of a nuclear breakout.

The mullahs might continue to ignore these warnings, but if they really believed that Obama was serious, they might not.

If Iran continues to pursue a nuclear weapon, Obama will be confronted with the most serious test of his presidency: Should he launch a military strike against Iran or let Tehran obtain a nuclear weapon?

The dangers of a military strike are obvious. First, it could lead to a full out confrontation with Iran, lead Iran to retaliate against America with conventional and unconventional attacks, and inflame worldwide sentiment against the United States.

Next, a US attack could rally the Iranian people around the current regime – which is somewhat antithetical to our goals. The only peaceful way to stop the Iranian nuclear program would be an internal revolt or regime change. Given how effectively Iran crushed the Green Revolution, and the world’s unwillingness to aid the Syrian rebels, an internal revolution seems nearly impossible. Nevertheless, an American attack could rally support for the regime, and destroy any chance of a future uprising.

Finally it’s unclear that a military strike could destroy the Iranian program completely or significantly impede it. It’s likely that we can, but this situation is still a known unknown.

So is a strike worth it if all other options fail? Reasonable Americans can disagree, but there are strong reasons to support a strike.

A nuclear armed Iran would be emboldened to export and sponsor even more acts of terror and violence, continue its nefarious activities in the region (which, including its support for Assad, have contributed to the deaths of more than 100,000 people – including Americans), make the regime immune to any future military attack no matter how horrendous its behavior, and spur a Mideast nuclear arms race.

Still, it’s easy to see why President Obama is reluctant to use force because the risks are severe. And although a nuclear-armed Iran would be a disaster for the Mideast and the world, it probably does not pose a mortal danger to America’s existence.

Israel, on the other hand, would be mortally threatened by a nuclear Iran. For the Israelis, a military strike against Iran is probably a much easier decision (although the consequences would be greater for Israel, so would the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran).

President Obama should use this to his advantage, and announce his support for an Israeli attack. This would let Obama avoid committing US forces (at least at the outset), and offset some of the negative consequences of a US-led strike.

There is a possibility that the US might need to get more aggressively involved if the Israelis don’t succeed in taking out the program, or if Iran and its neighbors retaliate so severely that Israel’s existence is threatened. Nevertheless, the consequences would still probably be less than if the United States initiated a strike on its own.

Hopefully, President Obama never has to make this choice. But if Obama really means what he says about preventing a nuclear Iran, this might be his least bad option.

David Meyers worked in the Bush White House from 2006 to 2009, and later in the Senate