WarSclerotic

Analysts: Weak U.S. Action in Syria Could Embolden Assad, Iran | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

As the world waited on Wednesday for the U.S. government to make a decision over whether or not to launch an attack on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after he crossed President Obama’s declared “red line” by using chemical weapons, residents of the region prepared for a possible fallout from a strike, armies maneuvered their troops, and analysts questioned U.S. resolve for carrying out a strike on Syria with enough force to send a decisive message.

In the Middle East, residents were on edge. In Israel, long lines gathered for government issued gas mask kits and syringes of atropine, an antidote for chemical weapons poisoning. One distribution center was mobbed, and gas mask kits were looted. Israeli MKs pointed to a recent budget cut of NIS 1.3 billion ($364 million) of funding, now needed to supply the 4 out of 10 Israelis who still don’t own gas masks. In Kiryat Shemona, in the north of Israel, along the country’s border with Lebanon and Syria, 140 bomb shelters were opened by local authorities, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Additionally, the Israel Defense Forces called up reserve soldiers and placed an additional Iron Dome missile defense battery in the north. In Turkey, missile batteries were pointed in the direction of Syria, according to Turkish daily Today’s Zaman. In Lebanon, a former AFP correspondent who blogs at Syria Deeply, a news website created to cover the crisis in the country, told Twitter followers: “Everyone getting mentally prepared for strikes over here […] It’s like watching a slow motion car accident.”

Over the last three days, in Amman, Jordan, defense chiefs and generals from 10 nations, including Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, met with U.S. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss their response to the Syrian chemical weapons use, but no information had been shared by the allied military forces on Wednesday.

On the ground, the U.S. has 1,000 troops based in Jordan, including a headquarters unit, and an F-16 fighter detachment, at Jordan’s Mafraq air base, as well as Patriot anti-missile systems at two sites in the kingdom, according to a report from U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, published Sunday.

The USS Kearsarge, a Marine amphibious assault ship, is reported to be approaching Aqaba— Jordan’s sole port—and the U.S. Navy has deployed an extra destroyer to the eastern Mediterranean, bringing to four the number of warships in the area capable of firing cruise missiles against land targets, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Jordanian military, numbering 120,000 troops, has deployed combat units to the border with Syria to prevent a spillover of the ongoing fighting between Assad and Syrian rebel groups, and manage the Syrian refugees — about 600,000 so far — who have fled across the frontier into Jordan.

The Syrian regime has responded to the allied “drums of war” and growing military build up in the Mediterranean, with threats of their own for reprisals against Israel and promises that Moscow will respond  in the country’s defense. Iran’s Director-General at the Parliament for International Affairs, Hossein Sheikholeslam, told the country’s national FARS news agency, “No military attack will be waged against Syria. Yet, if such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack.”

Mohammad Esmayeeli, member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told FARS, “The U.S., as well as the western and Arab states and certain regional countries, are beating the drums of war, but they should know that this is not to their benefit. If [it] starts a war with Syria, the U.S. will not achieve its desired and needed results. Russia will likely stand up to these threats.”

Amid the ratcheting escalation the onus now falls on U.S. President Barack Obama, who, analysts said, needs to follow through on what he laid out by declaring the use of chemical weapons as his “red line” for Syria.

“Perhaps for the fourth time now, Assad’s used chemicals weapons, and this was just the most egregious,” said Dr. Michael Makovsky, newly appointed  CEO of JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a non-profit that brings leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces and their supporters into contact with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel, in an interview with The Algemeiner. “Obama has said that is the ‘red line’ with serious consequences, so now the world is waiting to see how Obama responds.”

“I can appreciate that Obama doesn’t want to be seen like [previous U.S. President George W.] Bush and overreact, but the ‘red line’ he set was chemical weapons, and that’s what we have here,” said Dr. Makovsky, who was the former Foreign Policy Director for the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank,  where he specialized in Iran policy. “This is an opportunity for the Obama administration to show serious mettle; a lot of people are going to be watching this strike, particularly in Iran.”

“If the U.S. does not strike a serious blow, it doesn’t do serious damage, doesn’t impact chemical weapons capability, doesn’t impact the regime’s abilities, it could boomerang to Iran’s benefit. Another limited strike could actually embolden Assad and the Iranians,” Dr. Makovsky said.

The question of how much force might be expected was assuaged Wednesday by Obama administration leaks to the media that called for ‘limited’ cruise missile strikes, likely fired by U.S. ships rather than planes.

“A big response is needed to preserve U.S. deterrence, but too big means risk escalation,” said Eytan Sosnovich, a former Middle East analyst for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who plotted out a decision process tree that Obama’s “red line” might have led him towards. Unfortunately, Sosnovich pointed out, Obama “should have thought it all out before drawing the red line.”

A “limited strike” with only cruise missiles shows “a more nervous approach,” like [former President Bill] “Clinton in Tanzania,” Dr. Makovsky said, “as Israelis would use airplanes, as they have to attack certain installations or truck convoys, so it will be very important to watch out what kind of attack is launched, and what that signals. The U.S. needs to send a serious signal that chemical weapons can’t be used, that countries can’t go against UN Security Council resolutions, regarding chemical weapons, and, by extension, for Iran, nuclear weapons. The big game here is Iran.”

Obama affirms Assad to blame, but officials say gas attack intel incomplete | The Times of Israel.

Statement from US president comes as Washington and London appear to back off quick action against Damascus

President Barack Obama during the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (photo credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday declared unequivocally that the United States has “concluded” that the Syrian government carried out a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians. Yet US intelligence officials say questions remain about whether the attack could be linked to Syrian President Bashar Assad or high officials in his government.

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Obama did not present any direct evidence to back up his assertion that the Syrian government bears responsibility for the attack. US. officials were searching for additional intelligence to bolster the case for a strike against Assad’s military infrastructure and rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the Syrian military could have used the weapons on its own authority.

While Obama said he is still evaluating possible military retaliation, he vowed that any American response would send a “strong signal” to Assad.

“We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out,” Obama said during an interview with “NewsHour” on PBS. “And if that’s so, then there need to be international consequences.”

New hurdles emerged that appeared to slow the formation of an international coalition that could use military force to punish Syria. Earlier Wednesday, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council failed to reach an agreement on a draft resolution from the British seeking authorization for the use of force. Russia, as expected, objected to international intervention.

Obama administration officials said they would take action against the Syrian government even without the backing of allies or the United Nations because diplomatic paralysis must not prevent a response to the alleged chemical weapons attack outside the Syrian capital last week.

British Prime Minister David Cameron promised British lawmakers he would not go to war until a UN chemical weapons team on the ground in Syria has a chance to report its findings, pushing the U.K.’s involvement in any potential strike until next week at the earliest. Cameron called an emergency meeting of Parliament on Thursday to vote on whether to endorse international action against Syria.

Even so, British Foreign Secretary William Hague suggested that US military action need not be constrained by Britain. “The United States are able to make their own decisions,” he told reporters late Wednesday, just after speaking with Secretary of State John Kerry.

More intelligence was being sought by US officials. While a lower-level Syrian military commanders’ communications discussing a chemical attack had been intercepted, they don’t specifically link the attack to an official senior enough to tie the killings to Assad himself, according to one U.S. intelligence official and two other US officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence publicly.

The White House ideally wants intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle, to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military acting without Assad’s authorization.

That quest for added intelligence has delayed the release of the report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence laying out evidence against Assad. The report was promised earlier this week by administration officials.

The CIA and the Pentagon have been working to gather more human intelligence tying Assad to the attack, relying on the intelligence services of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the officials said. The administration was planning a teleconference briefing Thursday on Syria for leaders of the House and Senate and national security committees in both parties, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have their own human sources — the rebel commanders and others who cross the border to brief CIA and defense intelligence officers at training camps in Jordan and Turkey. But their operation is much smaller than some of the other intelligence services, and it takes longer for their contacts to make their way overland.

The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment on the intelligence picture, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Obama said he was not seeking a lengthy, open-ended conflict in Syria, indicating that any US response would be limited in scope. But he argued that Syria’s use of chemical weapons not only violated international norms, but threatened “America’s core self-interest.”

“We do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable,” he said.

Laying out a legal justification for a US response, Obama said Syria was violating the Geneva Protocols, an agreement signed in 1925 in the wake of World War I to ban the use of chemical gases. The White House has also cited the Chemical Weapons Convention, a 1992 agreement that builds on the Geneva Protocols by prohibiting the development and stockpiling of chemical weapons.

Syria is a party to the original Geneva accord, but not the latter chemical weapons agreement.

Syria, which sits on one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, has denied the charges. Moreover, Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, is demanding that United Nations experts investigate three alleged chemical weapons attacks against Syrian soldiers. He said the attacks occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25 in three suburbs of the Syrian capital and dozens of soldiers are being treated for inhaling nerve gas.

He also blamed Israel for pushing the US into intervening militarily in the two-year-old civil war.

Certain members of Congress are expected to get a classified U.S. intelligence report laying out the case against Assad. An unclassified version is to be made public. Officials say it won’t have any detail that would jeopardize sources and methods.

Some lawmakers have argued that Congress must authorize any military action unless there has been an attack on the U.S. or the existence of an eminent threat to the US Both Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday pressed the White House to provide a clear explanation of how military action would secure US objectives.

Specifically, in a letter to Obama, House Speaker John Boehner asked him to make his case to Congress and the public about how military action would “secure American national security interests, preserve America’s credibility, deter the future use of chemical weapons, and, critically, be a part of our broader policy and strategy.”

Boehner said it was “essential you address on what basis any use of force would be legally justified.”

___

Times of Israel staff, AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Washington and Associated Press writers Raphael Satter and Greg Katz in London contributed to this report.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Threatening Israel | JPost | Israel News.

Strike on Syria delayed? Britain wants proof – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( The backpedal begins.  Obama instructs Britain to “want proof.” – JW )

UK says Security Council ‘must have the opportunity’ to review findings of chemical weapons inspectors before backing any military action in Syria. Putin, Rohani stress need for ‘diplomatic resolution to crisis’

News agencies

Britain believes that the UN Security Council should see findings from chemical weapons inspectors before backing any military action in Syria, according to a copy of the motion to be placed before the UK parliament released on Wednesday.

“The United Nations Security Council must have the opportunity immediately to consider that briefing and that every effort should be made to secure a Security Council Resolution backing military action before any such action is taken,” the motion, to be debated on Thursday, reads.

Berlin said on Wednesday that the leaders of Germany and Britain believe that Syria’s government should not to go unpunished for an apparent poison gas attack on its own people.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister David Cameron agreed in a telephone discussion that the use of poison gas in last week’s attack near Damascus was now sufficiently proven, the German government said in a statement.

“The Syrian regime must not hope to be able to continue this warfare that violates international law … Therefore an international reaction is inevitable in the view of the chancellor and the prime minister,” it said.

Just four weeks before elections in which Merkel hopes to win a third term, she faces a balancing act in how to respond to pictures of the suspected chemical weapons attack, as German voters are overwhelmingly opposed to military action there.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rohani agreed that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and signaled their shared opposition to military intervention in Syria war, the Kremlin said after the leaders spoke by phone.

“Both sides consider the use of chemical weapons by anyone intolerable,” Putin’s press service said in a statement about the conversation on Wednesday, which it said Iran initiated.

“Taking into account the calls being voiced for external military intervention in the Syrian conflict, they also stressed the need to seek a path to a resolution through exclusively political and diplomatic means,” it said.

Fears of a possible US strike against Syria’s regime over an alleged chemical weapons attack rippled across the region Wednesday, as about 6,000 Syrians fled to neighboring Lebanon in a 24-hour period and Israelis scrambled for gas masks in case Damascus retaliates against them.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon pleaded for more time for diplomacy and to allow UN investigators to complete their work. The experts, wearing flak jackets and helmets, collected blood and urine samples from victims during a visit to at least one of the areas hit in last week’s attack.

Seven days after chemical weapons were purportedly unleashed on rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, momentum grew toward Western military action against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

US leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden, have charged that Assad’s government was behind the Aug. 21 attack that Doctors Without Borders says killed at least 355 people. The White House says it’s planning a possible military response while seeking support from international partners.

The US has not presented concrete proof of Syrian regime involvement in the attack, and UN inspectors have not endorsed the allegations, although the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said evidence suggests some kind of “substance” was used that killed hundreds.

Will UK delay Obama’s attack plan? Photos: AFP, MCT, EPA

Two senior Obama administration officials said US intelligence agencies are drawing up a report laying out the evidence against Assad’s government. The classified version would be sent to key members of Congress and a declassified version would be made public.

One of the officials said the administration is considering more than a single set of military strikes and “the options are not limited just to one day” of assault.

“If there is action taken, it must be clearly defined what the objective is and why” and based on “clear facts,” the senior administration official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss internal deliberations publicly.

President Barack Obama is weighing a limited response that focuses on punishing the Syrian government for violating international agreements that bar the use of chemical weapons. Any US military action, officials say, would not be aimed at toppling the Assad regime or vastly altering the course of Syria’s civil war, which has already claimed 100,000 dead.

As the US, France and Britain push for military action, the UN secretary-general urged restraint to give U.N. inspectors time to finish their investigation, which began Monday.

“Let them conclude … their work for four days and then we will have to analyze scientifically” their findings and send a report to the UN Security Council, Ban said. The UN said the analysis would be done “as quickly as possible.”

Syria’s Ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja’afari, said he sent Ban a letter demanding that the inspectors extend their investigation to what he described as three chemical weapons attacks against Syrian soldiers in the Damascus suburbs. He said the attacks occurred on Aug. 22, 24, and 25, and that dozens of Syrian soldiers are current being treated for inhaling nerve gases.

Ja’afari also blamed the rebels for any chemical weapons attack, saying “the Syrian government is innocent of these allegations.”

AP, Reuters contributed to the report

Candidly Speaking: The implications of Obama’s failure | JPost | Israel News.

To date, US President Barack Obama’s efforts to appease or engage Islamists have either failed or backfired. US influence in the Middle East is at an all-time low and Islamic fundamentalism continues to gain strength at an alarming pace.

Egypt, which until a year ago was regarded by the US as an ally, is perhaps the most dramatic example of Obama’s complete failure to understand the nature of the region and the steps that must be taken to stabilize it. The current horrors and barbarism in Syria should not divert attention from events in Egypt, the outcome of which is likely to have a major impact on the entire region.

Obama’s first blunder in Egypt was the antagonism he displayed toward president Hosni Mubarak. Immediately following his first election, Obama insisted on inviting members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to his Cairo address. As a result, Mubarak boycotted the event.

Obama displayed the full extent of his contempt for Mubarak when the public riots first erupted against the Egyptian regime, calling on him to step down immediately. This provided an opening to the Islamists and sent shock waves throughout those Arab regimes that regarded themselves as US allies.

While there is no disputing that Mubarak was an odious, authoritarian leader, he was considered a moderate within the context of the Arab world, a loyal ally of the US, and a combatant of Islamic terrorism – facts the implications of which Obama either inexplicably failed to grasp or naively chose to ignore.

The Obama administration’s greatest failure with regard to Egypt has been its inexcusable and naive mischaracterization of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a fanatical Islamist organization, established in 1928, with the objective of imposing medieval Islamic Shari’a law throughout the world, employing violence and terror to achieve the goal. The organization was suppressed for most of its 85-year history, and many of its leaders were jailed in Egypt during the Mubarak era.

The Brotherhood opposes freedom of religion and incites hatred against Christians and Jews, demands the death penalty for apostates, homosexuals and adulterers and has relegated women to third-class status. It engineered the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

Despite this damning record, the Obama administration has inexplicably characterized the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate movement and suggested that it could become part of a multicultural, Egyptian democratic government that could collaborate with other secular, liberal political streams.

Obama could not have been more wrong. When Mohamed Morsi, one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading members, took over the reins of government (gaining just 25 percent of the electoral vote due to the organizational chaos of his opponents), he began purging non-Brotherhood government officials and replacing them with Islamists and their cronies.

Instead of focusing on stabilizing the economy and reaching out to other factions, his new parliament concentrated on outlawing foreign languages in state schools and sanctioning female genital mutilation. During Morsi’s brief tenure, Islamists made major inroads in the Sinai Peninsula and the provinces, where radical elements succeeded in killing Egyptian military and police, murdering Christian Copts, who comprise 10 percent of the population, and burning and desecrating more than 50 of their churches.

President Morsi would have confronted the US and introduced amendments to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, had Egypt’s economic crisis not demanded his full attention. Much like Hitler, Morsi moved determinedly toward dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Egyptians became enraged. More than 30 million people signed a petition calling for Morsi to step down. Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who Morsi had appointed, demanded that the government be more inclusive. But Morsi ignored the calls, and the army intervened. Violence erupted, he and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested, and more than a thousand Brotherhood supporters were killed in riots. Egyptians strongly supported the army and its imposition of martial law.

As of now, the military has the upper hand and violent resistance from Brotherhood elements has apparently been suppressed.

Throughout this period of chaos and collapse, the Obama administration did nothing more than call for a reinstatement of a democratic government that never existed. In their last conversation, Obama assured Morsi that he continued to regard him as the democratically elected president of Egypt. While Obama hitherto had avoided severing relations with Egypt, he outraged many Egyptians by criticizing General El-Sisi but supporting the repressive and murderous Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated objective is the transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state.

In contrast to Obama’s fantasies, Israeli leaders are focused on realities and fully aware of the risks that Egypt’s instability poses to Israeli security. They recognize that a fanatical Islamic dictatorship allied with an organization that created Hamas and is utterly committed to the elimination of Jewish sovereignty is a disastrous scenario.

However, Israel has also learned from experience that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.

Mubarak exploited anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism among the Egyptian people to divert attention from economic and domestic problems.

There is thus always a remote possibility that a desperate Egyptian military government could turn on Israel to divert attention from domestic problems.

(Indeed, some elements within the Tamarod movement, which facilitated the military coups, have displayed anti-Semitic tendencies and called for an end to dependence on the US and the severing of ties with Israel, and Al- Ahram, the most widely circulated Egyptian daily newspaper, has warned of a “Zionist-American-Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy against Egypt.”

Nonetheless, we recognize that a military regime is far preferable to a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship that created Hamas, considers Israel Muslim territory that must one day be regained, and is notorious for its feral anti-Semitism, with its leaders continuously referring to Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs” and “vampires.”

However, the Egyptian military has already reined back Hamas and closed many of the tunnels through which arms were being transferred to Islamic extremists in Sinai. There are also reports of close cooperation between Israeli and Egyptian military authorities in neutralizing threats from terrorists in Sinai.

In Egypt today the choice between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood is clear. Despite the justifiable repugnance of military juntas, there should be no equivocation. While the Obama administration obsessively attempts to impose democracy on a society that lacks democratic political experience, it is potentially enabling the takeover of most populous Arab state by tyrannical jihadist autocrats.

By failing to support the Egyptian military, the US may also be fostering Egypt’s economic and social collapse.

That Obama is considering abrogating economic aid to Egypt suggests that the US has not absorbed the lessons arising from Jimmy Carter’s naïve and disastrous approach to Iran, which paved the way for the ayatollah’s takeover. Without urgent, remedial aid to Egypt, which depends on imports for the bulk of its food and is rapidly running out of hard currency, total economic meltdown, hunger, riots and even civil war are likely.

In addition, ongoing US pressure to “democratize” Egypt could enable Russian President Vladimir Putin to restore the Russian-Egyptian nexus which prevailed prior to Sadat’s break with the Soviet Union.

Instead of seeking to impose democracy from without, the US should support Egypt’s military government as a mechanism for forestalling the transformation of Egypt into a breeding ground for jihadists and al-Qaida.

Democracy is a gradual process which can only be developed from within and only after the formation of a functioning government authority. The majority of the Egyptian people are clearly totally opposed to an extremist Islamic takeover. The US and the West should welcome the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, as it represents a major blow to the globalization of Islamic fundamentalism – the greatest threat to the Western world and international stability.

The writer’s website can be viewed at http://www.wordfromjerusalem.com.

US: NATO allies dismiss UN on march toward Syria | JPost | Israel News.

Citing Russian logjam, US says it will act on Syria without UN green light | The Times of Israel.

As Security Council meeting ends with no progress, State Department says it can’t be held up by Moscow’s ‘intrasingence’

Security Council members voting during a meeting in March. (photo credit: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

WASHINGTON — As an internationally coordinated attack against Syrian targets seemed increasingly close, United States State Department officials said Wednesday that America would act with or without approval from the United Nations Security Council.

Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf repeatedly emphasized that “Russian intransigence” in its opposition to measures that would weaken embattled Syrian President Bashir Assad had caused a logjam in the UN.

“We’ve consistently said that we support Security Council action, but we heard nothing different from the Russian delegation today than what we’ve heard in recent months. So we had no reason to believe that efforts at the Security Council would result in any other outcome than previous efforts,” Harf said, speaking shortly after the Security Council failed to advance a British-sponsored resolution against the Syrian government’s alleged chemical weapons attack last week.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday that Russian and Chinese envoys walked out of the UK-sponsored Security Council debate on an international response to the chemical weapons use in Syria.

A separate report, credited by Al-Arabiya to the Russian Interfax news service, said that a senior Russian official asserted Wednesday that Russia would stay out of the way in the event of a US-led strike on Syria. But Russia, a major supporter of the Syrian regime, has still said its air defense systems supplied to Damascus would complicate US-led efforts at military intervention.

Reading a pre-prepared list of instances in which the Russian delegation blocked council actions concerning Syria, Harf said the Russians had already vetoed three resolutions on the conflict.

“We see no avenue going forward given continued Russian opposition to meaningful Security Council action,” she said.

“We do not believe that the regime can continue to hide behind the fact that the Russians will block any meaningful actions by the Security Council,” Harf warned. “The Security Council is an important venue…but we cannot be held up in responding by Russia’s continued intransigence.”

Although she was pressed on the question, Harf would not clarify that diplomatic attempts to contact and work with the Assad regime have been exhausted, but she did reiterate the message that “it is important that we send a strong message that this kind of mass scale indiscriminate use of chemical weapons is not acceptable.”

NBC News reported on Wednesday that the US had “passed the point of no return” on a Syria strike, quoting a senior American official. But officials in Washington and London have also cautioned that what form a response to Syria would take had still not been decided.

The US and others have said there is undeniable evidence last Wednesday’s gas attack occurred and was carried out by regime forces, a claim Syria denies.

Harf shined a sliver of light on the content of the soon-to-be declassified intelligence report on last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed hundreds of Syrian civilians.

“There were multiple rockets fired by a specific delivery system,” Harf said, emphasizing that only Assad’s regime has that sort of capability.

The Salafist al-Nusra opposition forces, she said, definitely did not have the capability to use the type of chemical weapons that were deployed in the attack.

No reason to panic… probably | The Times of Israel.

Assad may indeed be unlikely to strike at Israel, but there are good reasons why many Israelis aren’t convinced by assurances that there’s no cause for alarm

Israelis carry boxes with gas masks at a distribution center in Tel Aviv on August 28, 2013. (Photo credit: Roni Schutzer/Flash90)

Israelis should go about their usual routine, Benny Gantz, the IDF’s chief of staff, said Tuesday evening, speaking off-the-cuff to an Israeli TV reporter moments after he had delivered an address warning Syria’s President Bashar Assad that the army was “sharp” and “ready” to defend Israel against any aggression he might be so foolish as to launch.

The IDF Spokesman issued the same kind of reassuring remarks Wednesday morning, telling the public there was no cause for alarm, despite clear Syrian and Iranian threats that a US-led strike against Assad regime targets would prompt retaliation against Israel.

There’s “no reason to change daily routines,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as telling Israelis on Wednesday afternoon, at the end of an anything-but-routine five-hour consultation with his security chiefs — the third in three days — over the Syria crisis.

Ever since last Wednesday’s alleged chemical weapons attack by Assad’s forces killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in the suburbs of Damascus, and the US moved reluctantly into attack mode, the Hebrew media has overflowed with assessments by officials and pundits that the likelihood of an Assad-instigated retaliation against Israel was very, very low.

After all, the commentators reasoned, an Assad strike at Israel would inevitably prompt a harsher Israeli strike at Assad, an attack that, if Israel so chose, could easily shift the balance of the civil war definitively in favor of the rebels fighting to oust the Alawite president. Far more likely, the assessments have continued, that Assad will bite his lip, absorb the limited strike the Americans are about to deliver, possibly authorize a terror attack on Israeli or Jewish targets overseas or a minor Hezbollah action on the Lebanon border, and get on with his key business of winning the civil war.

But to judge from the dramatic upsurge in Israelis seeking gas mask protection kits in the past few days, not all of the public is entirely persuaded that the daily Israeli routine is going to be completely unaffected by the imminent US-led intervention on the other side of the northern border.

Confidence in the capacity of the Israeli security establishment to assess what is about to unfold around us, after all, has hardly been bolstered by the hierarchy’s consistent incapacity since the outbreak of the amusingly named Arab Spring to predict the radical twists and turns of regional instability and how they might affect little Israel.

This is, it must be said, a pretty difficult period for those whose job is to make sense of intelligence information emanating from the unstable nations in the neighborhood. Difficult or not, though, the fact is that the recent track record is one of failure — including, but not limited to, failure to foresee the revolution that ousted Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, failure to predict that Syrians would put their lives on the line and take to the streets to try to oust Assad, even failure to anticipate Hasan Rouhani winning in the first round of the Iranian elections.

If there’s one thing Israelis are certain of, indeed, it’s that just about anything can happen in the Middle East right now. Oh, and that the doubtless well-intentioned Israeli authorities, and their more dutiful pundits, can by no means be guaranteed to give them credible advance word about it.

Sure, many Israelis have likely been reasoning in the last few days, a pragmatic Assad would hardly provoke his own demise by striking at Israel. But equally, they might counter, a pragmatic Assad would hardly have prompted US-led military intervention by gassing hundreds of his own people. Maybe Assad is a pragmatist. Maybe he isn’t. Perhaps more relevantly, maybe Assad is in full control of those branches of his armed forces that are equipped to gas Syrian civilians and those that are equipped to fire on Israel. And maybe he isn’t.

Yes, indeed, Israelis might further have been musing, Assad ought well be deterred by Netanyahu’s Tuesday vow to hit Syria hard if Israel detects so much as a threat in our direction. But then again, Assad may believe Israel isn’t actually interested in his demise — only in him being weakened — since the beneficiaries of his ouster would include highly unsavory al-Qaeda-affiliated forces. He might therefore think he could get away with a limited but face-saving swipe at Israel.

Most relevant of all, though, for Israelis’ willingness to continue their daily routines, or not, is the knowledge that the home front authorities have not stocked up on enough gas masks for the whole population. As the former IDF spokesman, now Labor MK, Nachman Shai, bemoaned for the umpteenth time on Wednesday, there are sufficient gas mask kits for only some 60% of the population. So hearing assurances from the authorities later Wednesday that the home front command is “ready to provide any assistance” that might be necessitated by ongoing developments would not have been received with universal confidence. And the latest rush on the gas mask distribution centers, with phone systems collapsing, and insufficient kits on hand, underlined public concern.

The best way to ensure that the public stays calm is to provide clear, credible information, to acknowledge when a situation is so uncertain as to render any predictions pointless, and crucially to plan ahead so that citizens are as well protected as possible from the unpredictable. Simply telling people to stay calm when those conditions have not been met is almost guaranteed to ensure the opposite result.

Assad may indeed be unlikely to strike at Israel. And few Israelis doubt the IDF’s capacity to hit back with devastating force if needed. But they’d be more comfortable in their normal routines if the authorities were straighter with them, in acknowledging that, actually, there are no guarantees about what’s about to happen, and if they all already had at home the gas mask kits they’re being assured they almost certainly won’t have to use.

IAEA: Iran pushing ahead with nuclear program | News | DW.DE | 28.08.2013.

IAEA: Iran pushing ahead with nuclear program

Israeli security cabinet approves limited enlistment of IDF reservists | JPost | Israel News.

( The calling up of reserves is the only thing of consequence in this piece.  Maybe it really is “limited” or maybe it’s 20,000.  There’s no way of finding out.  Only the Gov. knows the true number. – JW )