WarSclerotic

Israel Matzav: Iraq returns the favor? Lebanese paper reports Syria hiding chem weapons in Iraq.

You will recall that I have presented proof in the past that the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein transferred chemical weapons to Syria in the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the Lebanese daily al-Mustaqbal, Syria is now returning the favor.

Syria has moved 20 trucks worth of equipment and material used for the manufacturing of chemical weapons into neighboring Iraq, the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reported on Sunday.

The government in Baghdad has denied allegations that it is helping the Syrian government conceal chemical stockpiles.

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The newspaper reported that the trucks crossed the boundary separating Syria with Iraq over the course of Thursday and Friday. Border guards did not inspect the contents of the trucks, which raises suspicions that they contained illicit cargo, according to Al-Mustaqbal.

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Last week, the head of the Free Syrian Army told CNN that opposition intelligence indicated Assad was moving chemical arms out of the country.

“Today, we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq,” General Salim Idriss told CNN.

“We have told our friends that the regime has begun moving a part of its chemical weapons arsenal to Lebanon and Iraq. We told them do not be fooled,” Idris told reporters in Istanbul.

Hmmm….

Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

As if the Iran nuclear issue was not already difficult enough, it became even more complicated when Bashar al-Assad unleashed his chemical weapons across Damascus suburbs last month. Suddenly, the Syria issue is overshadowing all other factors concerning Iran.

The Obama administration is increasingly justifying its decision to respond militarily to Assad’s chemical weapons use in terms of the likely impact on Iran. Certainly, punishing Assad for crossing Obama’s red line on chemical weapons will make it less likely that Iran will cross Obama’s red line on the production of nuclear weapons.

U.S. deterrence against weapons of mass destruction will be strengthened worldwide. North Korea, for example, which has even more chemical weapons than Syria, will be on notice not to even think about using them in any provocation against South Korea or in any conflict that might erupt as a result of a provocation.

Retaliatory strikes against Assad will also reinforce allies’ confidence that the United States has their back. In deciding last year not to order a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was persuaded that Obama would not let Iran become nuclear-armed. Netanyahu’s faith in that assurance will be stronger if Obama demonstrates he is both willing and able to employ military power against Syria.

Personal credibility

It’s not so much Obama’s personal credibility as the United States’ strategic credibility that is at stake. Letting Assad go unpunished could be the straw that breaks Netanyahu’s faith in the United States and leads to a premature and counterproductive Israeli attack on Iran that then brings the United States into an unwanted war.

Letting Assad go unpunished could be the straw that breaks Netanyahu’s faith in the United States and leads to a premature and counterproductive Israeli attack on Iran that then brings the United States into an unwanted war.

 

Mark Fitzpatrick

On the other hand, U.S.-led air-strikes against Syria could set back prospects for peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue. A real solution to the problem is probably impossible, given the depth of differences between the protagonists: Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and its adversaries don’t want Iran to have it.

Short-term confidence-building measures may be possible now that Hassan Rowhani is in the presidency, but even such interim steps will require Iran to accept limits, such as shutting down operations at the Fordow enrichment plant, that so far have been out of the question in Tehran. Rowhani would be hard-pressed in the best of circumstances to persuade hardliners to accept such compromises. If their Syrian comrades-in-arms are attacked by the United States, the hardliners will be smarting for revenge, not reconciliation.

The hardliners’ mood will be especially dark if Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ‘advisors’ suffer losses in the bombing. Given the extensive military support that Iran has been providing Assad, some Quds forces are likely to get caught in the crosshairs. This could trigger an asymmetric response.

Already there is a report that the IRGC has instructed militia proxies in Iraq to attack U.S. interests there in reprisal for any U.S. strikes on Syria. Iran won’t want to get dragged into a war with the U.S. because of Syria, but unintended escalation could ensue anyway.

As much as Rowhani will oppose action that could lead to conflict with the United States, he does not control the IRGC. At the very least, they will redouble their supply of armaments to Assad’s forces, using Iraqi airspace and highways as transit routes.

Gaming out the potential impact on the Iranian nuclear program is one reason to limit U.S. air-strikes, which should in any case be proportionate to Assad’s crime. Rowhani likely will have heard from former U.S. diplomat Jeff Feltman, now U.N. Under-Secretary for Political Affairs, who visited Tehran last week, that the limited U.S. strikes are not directed against Iran’s interests.

Mission creep

That message should be repeated and honored. The Iran angle is not a justifiable reason for refraining from punishing Assad, but it is among the reasons for avoiding mission creep.

Meanwhile, it is Iran rather than the United States that stands to lose most from the Syrian conflict. Tehran’s backing of Assad’s brutality casts it in a villain role on the Arab street throughout the Sunni world. Iran’s pretentions that its own 1979 Islamic revolution was a precursor to the Arab Spring have been shown to be manifestly hypocritical.

And now Assad’s chemical-weapons slaughter of women and children has exacerbated divisions in Iran itself, with former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accusing the Syrian government. The Iranian people know that the armaments and financial props that Iran provides Assad soak up revenues that are more precious with each new sanctions measure Iran faces. In many ways, Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam: a quagmire from which it has no apparent escape.

Best option

Iran’s Syria predicament gives the United States new-found leverage. The best option for Iran is to lend its weight to a negotiated settlement on Syria. Seeing itself as the major power in the region, Iran has always wanted to be part of any Syria peace talks. Now, more than ever, it desperately wants to join Geneva-II as a way out of its predicament.

Whether or not Obama can bring the fractious Syrian opposition into peace talks, he does have the power to say yes or no to Iranian participation. To date, the arguments for not inviting Iran have won out: it has been part of the problem. But the Iranians can also be part of the solution, not least because of their leverage over Assad.

Iran’s desire to be at Geneva-II is why U.S. air-strikes against Syria need not set back nuclear negotiations for very long. Obama should play the Syria card to get Iran to engage meaningfully on the issues of most importance for each.

This article is from the IISS and was originally published at IPS New Service on September 6, 2013.

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Mark Fitzpatrick directs the IISS Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program. Mr. Fitzpatrick’s research focus includes nuclear proliferation concerns and preventing nuclear danger in the emerging ‘nuclear renaissance’. He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes (IISS Adelphi Paper 398, 2008) and has written articles on non-proliferation in the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Survival, and other publications.

The best possible outcome | JPost | Israel News.

To ensure success, a military threat against Assad should be present; the US Congress should endorse this policy.

Iran lauds US for using ‘rationality’ in Syria deal | JPost | Israel News.

Ali Larijani asks US politicians to avoid “extremist behavior.”

US, Russia deal on Syria’s chemical weapons thanks to Kerry, Lavrov | JPost | Israel News.

In spite of increased tensions between the US and Russia, exasperated by their leaders Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov’s dedication to diplomacy reaps yields.

Liberman offers tentative support for Syria arms deal | JPost | Israel News.

Likud Beytenu MK Avigdor Liberman says “the arrangement with Syria is good for Israel – but the test will be in its implementation”; questions Syrian President Bashar Assad’s reliability.

Israel: We’ve been ‘absolutely certain’ for months Assad using nerve gas | The Times of Israel.

Army’s top intelligence analyst, in rare interview, also says it is ‘extremely unlikely’ Israel could be taken by surprise as it was in the 1973 war

Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, head of the IDF Military Intelligence research and analysis division, at a Foreign Affairs and Defense committee hearing at the Knesset in 2012 (photo credit: Noam Moskowitz/Flash90)

Israel has been “absolutely certain” for many months — long before the alleged August 21 chemical weapons attack that prompted the current Syria crisis — that President Bashar Assad was using chemical weapons in the civil war, the Israeli army’s top intelligence analyst said in an interview broadcast Saturday.

Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the senior analyst in the IDF’s Military Intelligence hierarchy, said the Israeli army had an extremely effective intelligence-gathering capacity on Syria, but declined to go into specifics.

That capacity, he indicated, allowed Israel’s intelligence chiefs to assert with high confidence that there was only a ‘low probability” that the Assad regime would attempt to fire chemical weapons into Israel in the event of international intervention in the civil war.

In the rare interview, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israel War — known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War — Brun said it was “almost impossible” that Israel could be hit by a surprise enemy attack at it was in that conflict, in which 2,500 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Awareness that Israeli army intelligence had failed to predict the Arab armies’ attack on the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, Brun said, “accompanies me every day.” He said the failure by his predecessors was a function of their limited imagination and the fact that they were “welded to a conception” that Egypt was too weak to attack Israel and that Syria would not attack without Egypt.

Nowadays, the IDF carried out war games, had special teams that questioned assumptions, worked on all kinds of scenarios, and took a range of other measures designed to ensure that the country could not be surprised again, he said.

It was Brun who, in April, delivered a bombshell lecture in which he declared publicly that Assad was using nerve gas against rebel forces: “To the best of our professional understanding, the regime has used lethal chemical weapons,” he said in late April, and specified that the IDF believed the toxic element was Sarin. He noted then that it had been used on more than one occasion, including in an attack on March 19.

His assertion was initially queried, but subsequently accepted, by US and other officials. The Israeli conclusion was “based on very special work,” by a team that “saw very clearly,” Brun said on Saturday.

In his April address, Brun showed a photo of a child with narrowed pupils and foam coming out of his mouth. Both of these were indicative of a nerve agent, he said. He repeated those indicators in the Saturday interview, broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 news, while making plain that the IDF had other, more conclusive, sources of information.

Israeli military intelligence reportedly played a key role in providing evidence of Assad’s chemical weapons use in the August 21 attack that sparked the current crisis over Syria. On the Friday after that attack, Channel 2 reported that the weapons were fired by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, a division under the command of the Syrian president’s brother, Maher Assad. The nerve gas shells were fired from a military base in a mountain range to the west of Damascus, the TV report said.

The report did not state the source of its information. But subsequently, Germany’s Focus magazine reported that an IDF intelligence unit was listening in on senior Syrian officials when they discussed the chemical attack. According to the Focus report, a squad specializing in wire-tapping within the IDF’s prestigious 8200 intelligence unit intercepted a conversation between high-ranking regime officials regarding the use of chemical agents at the time of the attack.

Iran reduces enriched uranium stockpile – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Islamic republic’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi says stocks have fallen from 240 kilograms to around 140 kilograms as it is converted into fuel for a medical research reactor

News agencies

Iran said it had significantly reduced its stocks of 20%-enriched uranium by converting it to reactor fuel.

The announcement appeared aimed at easing Western concerns over Iran’s continuing production of 20% uranium, which is enriched to a higher level that used to fuel most energy reactors, closer to the 90% needed for a warhead.

The US and its allies demand Iran halt all enrichment, which Tehran rejects.

Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi told state TV late Thursday that stocks have fallen from 240 kilograms to around 140 kilograms as it is converted into fuel for a medical research reactor. He said the remainder is also being converted.

Rohani, Putin in Kyrgyzstan, Friday (Photo: AFP)

 An August report by the UN nuclear watchdog put Iran’s stockpile 20% enriched uranium at 185.5 kilograms.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Friday that he wanted a swift resolution to a dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Western states fear is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

“Regarding the Iranian nuclear issue, we want the swiftest solution to it within international norms. Russia in the past has taken important steps in this sphere,” said Rohani, speaking at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin

FSA chief says U.S.-Russia deal is a blow to Syrian uprising – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

The head of the opposition Free Syrian Army on Saturday rejected an agreement between the United States and Russia to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stock by mid-2014.

“We cannot accept any part of this initiative,” General Selim Idriss told reporters in Istanbul, saying it is a blow to the two-and-a-half year uprising aiming to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We in the Free Syrian Army are unconcerned by the implementation of any part of the initiative… I and my brothers in arms will continue to fight until the regime falls,” he said in a statement carried by Agence-France-Presse.

Idriss said the deal would allow Assad to avoid being held accountable for killing hundreds of civilians in a poison gas attack on Damascus on Aug. 21. Assad has denied responsibility for purported attack.

The United States’ strike plans were put off after Russia proposed that Damascus put its chemical arms under international supervision, Assad agreed to the proposal.

Idriss spoke shortly after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the agreed time frame, after three days of talks in Geneva.

“Are we Syrians supposed to wait until mid-2014, to continue being killed every day and to accept [the deal] just because the chemical arms will be destroyed in 2014,” asked Idriss.

“We respect our friends [in the international community], and we hope our friends understand our position… We cannot accept this initiative because it ignores… the massacre of our people.”

(With Reuters and AFP)

Kerry heading to Israel to update Netanyahu on Syria deal – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz.

Kerry is in Geneva for talks with his Russian FM Sergei Lavrov over the plan to remove Syria’s chemical weapons and avert U.S. military action. He will meet with Netanyahu and Abbas on Sunday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva to discuss a plan to disarm Syria’s nuclear arsenal. Photo by Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in Israel on Sunday, and he will update Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on developments in securing a deal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons.

Over the weekend, Kerry will continue with talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in an attempt to confirm the Russian plan to remove Syria’s chemical weapons, and avert U.S. military action.

A senior U.S. State Department official told Haaretz that Kerry’s visit will deal with Syria, but also with peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Kerry will meet Sunday with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Kerry and Lavrov said on Friday they hoped that talks on Syria’s chemical weapons would help revive an international plan for a “Geneva 2” conference to end the war in Syria.

After meeting UN special envoy on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi in Geneva, where they are trying to confirm Russia’s plan, Lavrov and Kerry said they agreed to try and make progress on a broader effort to end a conflict that has divided the Middle East and world powers.

Kerry, who said the ongoing talks on chemical weapons were “constructive,” told a news conference in Geneva that he and Lavrov planned to meet in New York later this month and hoped to agree a date for the Geneva 2 conference then.