WarSclerotic

Israel Developing New Arrow Missile – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Arrow 3

IDF Photo

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is developing a new version of the “Arrow” missile that will be quicker and more accurate than its predecessors, an official said Thursday, according to Kol Yisrael radio.

Speaking at a program as part of the annual Researchers’ Night at Tel Aviv University, the director of the Arrow 3 program at the IAI, Inbal Kreis, said that the new missile system will be able to intercept ballistic missiles at high altitudes, far beyond the borders of Israel.

In February, the Ministry of Defense successfully carried out a flight test of the Arrow 3, in conjunction with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

The Arrow 3, which is supposed to be an improved version of the Arrow 2 system, is part of the multi-layer defense system that is intended to protect the state of Israel, which also includes the Iron Dome system and the Magic Wand system.

Iron Dome deals primarily with short range missiles, and has proven to be very successful, especially during last year’s Operation Pillar of Defense, when it was able to intercept 84% of the rockets and missiles fired at Israel by Gaza terrorists. Magic Wand will deal with the medium-range threat.

Development of the Arrow 3 is expected to take two more years, whereas Magic Wand is due to become operational in 2014.

The previous generation of Arrow missiles became operational use 13 years ago and batteries are placed in different places throughout Israel.

Report: Assad scattering chemical weapons to 50 sites – Israel News, Ynetnews.

American officials say US, Israeli intelligence agencies still believe they know where most of Assad regime’s chemical weapons are located, but with less confidence

Ynet

A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the US to track, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing American and Middle Eastern officials.

The American newspaper quoted officials as saying the movements of chemical weapons by Syria’s elite Unit 450 could complicate any US bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks,. It also raises questions about implementation of a Russian proposal that calls for the regime to surrender control of its stockpile, they said.

US and Israeli intelligence agencies still believe they know where most of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons are located, but with less confidence than six months ago, US officials said.

The US claims a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on Aug. 21 killed more than 1,400 people, including at least 400 children, in rebel strongholds on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday again denied any involvement in a chemical attack, but said his government was prepared to sign an agreement banning the use of chemical weapons.

The Wall Street Journal reported Unit 450—a branch of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center that manages the regime’s overall chemicals weapons program—has been moving the stocks around for months, officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence said.

Movements occurred as recently as last week, the officials said, after Obama said he was preparing to launch strikes.

Victims of Aug. 21 gas attack (Photo:Reuters)

The unit is in charge of mixing and deploying chemical munitions, and it provides security at chemical sites, according to US and European intelligence agencies. It is composed of officers from Assad’s Alawite sect. One diplomat briefed on the unit said it was Alawite from “janitor to commander.”

According to the report, US military officials have looked into the possibility of gaining influence over members of Unit 450 through inducements or threats. “In a perfect world, you would actually like to co-opt that unit. Who cares who pays them as long as they sit on the chemical weapons,” a senior US military official was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying.

Although the option remains on the table, government experts say the unit is so close knit that they doubt any member could break ranks without being exposed and killed, the report said.

The US estimates the regime has 1,000 metric tons of chemical and biological agents. “That is what we know about. There might be more,” one senior US official told The Wall Street Journal.

The regime traditionally kept most of its chemical and biological weapons at a few large sites in western Syria, US officials said. But beginning about a year ago, the Syrians started dispersing the arsenal to nearly two dozen major sites.

Unit 450 also started using dozens of smaller sites. The US now believes Assad’s chemical arsenal has been scattered to as many as 50 locations in the west, north and south, as well as new sites in the east, officials said.

The Wall Street Journal said the US is using satellites to track vehicles employed by Unit 450 to disperse the chemical-weapons stocks. But the imagery doesn’t always show what is being put on the trucks. “We know a lot less than we did six months ago about where the chemical weapons are,” one official said.

The movements, activities and base locations of Unit 450 are so sensitive that the US won’t share information with even trusted allies in the opposition for fear the unit would be overrun by rebels, current and former US officials told WSJ.

The US wants any military strikes in Syria to send a message to the heads of Unit 450 that there is a steep price for following orders to use chemical weapons, US officials said.

At the same time, the US doesn’t want any strike to destabilize the unit so much that it loses control of its chemical weapons, giving rebels a chance to seize the arsenal.

“Attacking Unit 450, assuming we have any idea where they actually are, would be a pretty tricky affair because…if you attack them you may reduce the security of their weapons, which is something we certainly don’t want,” Jeffrey White, a veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a defense fellow at The Washington Institute, told WSJ.

The Pentagon has prepared multiple target lists for possible strikes, some of which include commanders of Unit 450, according to the report.

However, a senior US official told WSJ that no decision has been made to target them.

In some respects, officials said, the hands-on role that Unit 450 plays in safeguarding the regime’s chemical weapons secrets makes it too valuable for the US to eliminate, even though the US believes the unit is directly responsible for the alleged chemical weapons abuses.

Officials said the US doesn’t plan to bomb chemical weapons sites directly because of concerns any attack would disperse poison agents and put civilians at risk, WSJ reported.

In addition to satellites, the US also relies on Israeli spies for on-the-ground intelligence about the unit, US and Israeli officials told the newspaper.

Though small in size, Unit 450 controls a vast infrastructure that makes it easier for the US and Israel to track its movements, according to the report.

Whenever chemical munitions are deployed in the field, Unit 450 has to pre-deploy heavy equipment to chemical mixing areas, which the US and Israel can track.

Blocking action on Syria makes an attack on Iran more likely – Washington Post.

Ironically, if these opponent succeed, they may prevent a conflict that President Obama has been determined to keep limited and has the means to do so. After all, even after Israelacted militarily to enforce its red line and prevent Syria’s transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad, Iran and Hezbollah have been careful to avoid responding. They have little interest in provoking Israeli attacks that would weaken Syrian forces and make them vulnerable to the opposition.

For all the tough talk about what would happen if the United States struck targets in Syria, the Syrian and Iranian interest in an escalation with the United States is also limited. Can the same be said if Israel feels that it has no choice but to attack the Iranian nuclear infrastructure? Maybe the Iranians will seek to keep that conflict limited; maybe they won’t. Maybe an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program will not inevitably involve the United States, but maybe it will — and maybe it should.

If nothing else, it is time to ask the opponents of authorization of strikes in Syria if they are comfortable with a position that is very likely to rule out any diplomatic outcome on the Iranian nuclear program. Even in their eyes, the costs of inaction may then not appear so low.

An Israeli Strike on Iran Just Got More Likely | New Republic.

John Kerry’s accidental diplomacy may have saved President Obama in Washington, but here in Israel, the White House’s indecisiveness of the last few weeks will cast a long shadow.

Israel has kept a low profile in the Syrian civil war, launching anonymous strikes periodically to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, but otherwise keeping mum—and with good reason. A collapse of the Syrian state and the rise of jihadist groups would threaten the long-standing calm along the Golan Heights and is no less distasteful to Israel than Assad’s continuation in power. Israel certainly has a vital stake in the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal (Assad has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv; so does Hezbollah), but Benjamin Netanyahu still sees the issue through the same prism he sees ALL issues these days: As he said Wednesday, “the message Syria receives will resonate very strongly in Iran.” It will resonate very strongly in Israel as well.

The Obama administration (and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has argued to Congress that a failure to enforce the president’s red line on chemical weapons would embolden the Iranian leadership to test his red line on nuclear weapons. And, indeed, a no vote on the Syria resolution would devastate American credibility in Tehran. But Iran has shown few signs of being deterred even in the face of crippling sanctions and an American threat of military action, so the more salient question is how the handwringing in Washington will affect the calculus in Jerusalem as Israel continues to debate military action.

Before tackling that question, it’s important to dispense with a couple of misconceptions that have taken root around the world as Netanyahu has failed to follow through on his threats to strike Iran. The first is the idea that Netanyahu is bluffing—that the bluster, the innuendo, and the leaks of the past few years are all part of an elaborate ploy to goad the world into harsher measures. It is true that Israel has an incentive to overstate the urgency of the matter. Still, conversations over the past two years with individuals who have been directly involved in the decision-making process have convinced me that Netanyahu is quite serious about striking Iran and would have done so by now had it not been for intense American pressure.

The second misconception is that there is a meaningful debate within the Israeli government and security establishment about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear program. There is not. Virtually all top Israeli officials agree that given the choice between “bomb or bombing,” bombing is the lesser of two evils. The debate instead has been over whether Israel has more time to wait for other measures to take their toll or whether, by waiting too long, it risks allowing Iran to enter what former defense minister Ehud Barak called the “zone of immunity,” when the Iranian nuclear program would be beyond Israel’s military reach. There are a number of factors at play here, from the amount of uranium Iran possesses to the number and quality of centrifuges, not to mention the measures Iran is taking to hide and fortify its program. But the major question before Israel has ALWAYS been whether it could trust the U.S.—with its superior military capabilities—to strike in the event that its own window of military opportunity closes.

Until now, a number of senior Israelis have believed it could. “I heard very carefully what President Obama said,” former Mossad chief Meir Dagan told “60 Minutes” last year. “And he said openly that the military option is on the table, and he is not going to let Iran become a nuclear state.” Current president Shimon Peres was even more emphatic in an interview with The New York Times Magazine, arguing that Israel should give the U.S. more time to pursue sanctions and diplomacy. “If none of this works, then President Obama will use military power against Iran,” he said. “I am sure of it.”

Netanyahu is, well, less sure. While he has long expressed a preference for American military action—“I’m going to divulge a secret to you about [American] 
capabilities,” he once told Piers Morgan. “They’re actually greater than ours”—he doubts that Obama has the stomach for it. He also knows that Israel and the U.S. have different red lines. Netanyahu’s—which he famously sketched out at the U.N.—is Iran’s possession of enough fissile material for a bomb. Obama’s is the actual manufacture of a bomb.

Netanyahu had a fellow skeptic in Barak, who with him lobbied fellow members of Israel’s security cabinet in support of a strike before last year’s U.S. presidential election. While the details remain murky, all indications are that Barak changed his mind in the final weeks after receiving American assurances. The question in the wake of the great Syria zig-zag is what an American assurance is worth. If Syria is a test case for American reliability, it hasn’t been an encouraging one for Israelis. An immediate strike would have bolstered those Israelis urging greater consultation with the U.S., but Obama’s eleventh-hour move to put the decision in the hands of the likes of Rand Paul and Alan Grayson made him seem gun-shy. It also set a precedent that, if applied to Iran, would make any American military threat hollow. Unlike the limited strike on Syria that Obama has been proposing, an air campaign against Iran would be time-sensitive. Iran will soon have enough fissile material and centrifuges that, providing its weaponization program is sufficiently advanced, it may be able to produce a bomb within a matter of weeks if it decides to do so.

The argument will come up sooner than most think. Based on my reporting, I’ve become increasingly convinced in recent months that—barring an unforeseen diplomatic breakthrough—Israel will strike Iran before the end of next year, and conceivably well before then. The officials who order that strike may never know whether Congress would have voted down the Syria resolution and whether Obama would have acted anyways. But it doesn’t take negative answers to these questions for Israel to be concerned. The questions themselves are worrisome enough.

Syria says it ratified treaty banning use of chemical weapons | JPost | Israel News.

Move comes hours after Assad said he would give up his arsenal of chemical weapons on condition that the US cease threatening him; Syria was one of seven countries that refused to sign Chemical Weapons Convention.

Western strike force for Syria disperses. Syrian launches offensive near Israeli border.

Syrian rebels lose heart

Russian President Vladimir Putin, while engaged in active cooperation with President Barack Obama over Syria, was not averse to going over his head to push his agenda with “the American people” in an article he published in The New York Times Thursday, Sept. 12.

He continues to protest against all the evidence that the calamitous chemical attack of Aug. 21, east of Damascus, was perpetrated by Syrian rebels, not the Syrian army.

This is clearly an attempt to turn the American people and its lawmakers once and for all against US military intervention in Syria in any shape or form.

If Putin succeeds in getting his message across, it would be the second time in a decade that Moscow has worked its will on the American people. The first time, the Russians aimed at discrediting the Bush administration by convincing the world ahead of America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, although he was on record as having gassed 5,000 of his Kurdish citizens to death in 1988.
In his article, Putin went on to say sanctimoniously: “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as one relying solely on brute force.”
The famously peace-loving Russian leader was lambasting an American president known for his extreme shyness of military action. Putin must be utterly confident that Obama is too far along their joint diplomatic path with Iran on Syria to back out now. He is evidently counting on a military attack being finally off the table and the Assad regime guaranteed safe.

debkafile’s military sources report that the Western military armada built up opposite Syria in the past two weeks was breaking up as the US president’s resolve for military action faded under relentless pressure from Moscow.

The British and French ships headed through the Suez Canal for the Red Sea Wednesday, Sept. 11, and the American vessels pulled back from Syrian shores to waters between Crete and Cyprus.
Obama has therefore caved in on his original intention of keeping the war armada in place – as heat for Assad to comply with the Russian plan for the elimination of his chemical weapons.

Every reputable chemical and military expert has advised the US president that there is no way that Assad’s chemical arsenal can be located and destroyed without importing an army of monitors long term for the job, and this can’t be accomplished while a civil war is raging in the country. Even if it becomes feasible, it will take years.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army is not waiting for diplomacy to run its course and Thursday, resumed offensive operations in the south, targeting Deraa and advancing rapidly towards the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border intersection.
The rebels’ morale is in the pits out of a sense of betrayal by the Obama administration and their resistance to the Syrian army’s onslaught is half-hearted at best.

Netanyahu’s remarks on Iran: a cheap shot at Obama – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz.

( The far left hits “critical mass.”  This isn’t cherry picking, it’s cherry pit picking.  Hoisted on their own petard of failed ideology they spew derision on those still left standing.  Truly nauseating, but instructive nonetheless. – JW )

PM Netanyahu is both foolish and plain wrong to criticize President Obama by stating that Israel can only rely on itself to act on Iran in view of the U.S.’s risk-averse Syria policy.

By Alon Pinkas | Sep. 12, 2013 | 3:40 PM | 4

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the weekly gov’t conference in Jerusalem. May 24th, 2013. Photo by Emil Salman

You knew it was coming. After several weeks of prudent and calculated silence; after numerous clarifications that Israel in neither involved nor has a stake in the Syrian civil war; after consenting to a request to assist President Obama in his efforts to muster support in Congress and all that time knowing that a U.S. strike on Syria may not necessarily benefit Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu just had to say something.

And in the best tradition of such statements, both the substance and the timing were off, unhelpful and meaningless.

Evoking just the first half of the sage Hillel’s ancient maxim: “If I am not for myself, who will be?” Netanyahu essentially criticized the U.S., implying that in the case of Iran, Israel will have to rely only on itself since the U.S. approach to Syria can and should be projected into the future in respect to Iran policy.

Conveniently, Netanyahu omitted the second half of Hillel’s existential determination: “…and if not now, when?” immediately soliciting instant-analyses that the Syria crisis incentivizes Israel to strike Iran sooner rather than later.

There are several possible ways to interpret such a statement. The easy one is to dismiss it as “so he said it, so what?” Netanyahu was uttering a general Jewish/Israeli cliche that has cultural foundations rooted in 2000 years of statelessness and persecution. Jews strived for self-reliance and figured out the hard way that they need to control their destiny. In fact, most nations act on this principle, so Netanyahu said nothing profound.

Secondly, self-reliance is a basic tenet of Israel’s national security doctrine. From David Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu Israel always adhered to the principle of defending itself, seeking material support and diplomatic cover from France, Britain and for the last forty five years the US, but always vowing – as a matter of value and policy – to never ask a foreign power to defend it physically. In this respect, Netanyahu said nothing new.

But there is a two-fold foreign and security policy dimension to what Prime Minister Netanyahu said. The first has to do with the possible U.S. strike on Syria and the second, by implication, is the Iran issue.

The odd thing about the Syria crisis was that the U.S., Russia and Israel had a common policy preference: A weakened, hemorrhaging, under-attack Assad in power is better than any other alternative, certainly the chaos, anarchy and inherent instability that would inevitably ensue the regime’s fall from power. Yet none of the three ever admitted that this was their definition of “The best of a host of bad options and scenarios”. Supporting Assad outrightly is unaesthetic, immoral and wrong to pronounce given his unpredictability. Furthermore, it is safe to assume that Israel had no strategic advantage resulting from a U.S. strike, certainly if it had devolved into a ‘rolling operation’ replete with complications and escalation that could have potentially sucked Israel into the fray.

So when President Obama reportedly enlisted AIPAC to help in his Capitol Hill campaign, Israel was less than enthusiastic. Israel’s detractors always see an Israel-AIPAC symbiotic relationship, so had the President failed to gain authorization for a military operation in the House of Representatives AIPAC’s image and perception as an oh-so-powerful lobby would have been dented. Had he managed to get both the Senate and the House to support Israel would, in some quarters, been (falsely) seen and criticized as driving the US to (another) adventurous Middle East war on its behalf, reversing the Hillel-Netanyahu foreign policy principle.

Enter the Iran issue. Undoubtedly, when Mr. Netanyahu said: “If I am not for me, who will be?” he was referring to Iran. Clearly, Netanyahu is making a direct linkage between U.S. Syria policy and pattern of behavior and the future Iran policy. The logic is simple: Obama showed lack of resolve; allowed a red line that he demarcated to be breached with defiance and tease; vacillated on the use of force and capitulated to Russia.

That is a legitimate interpretation. It also happens to be distorted and wrong. There are no U.S. interests in Syria, no political or geo-political objectives, no allies to side with and no clear and present danger to the U.S. A nuclear Iran is the exact opposite. Regional proliferation, regional instability, Israel and Saudi are endangered allies, a nuclear Iran is undeterrable if the regime senses it is in existential danger. Assuming the U.S. will craft an Iran policy based on its risk-averse policy in Syria is a miscalculation. The reason Russia proposed the diplomatic plan is precisely because the Russians saw the U.S. threat as credible and real and were protecting their interests: the alliance with Syria and the naval base in the port of Tartus.

But there is an alarming underlying quality to Netanyahu’s “self-reliance” statement. What if he is taken at face-value and the world, so weary, fatigued and fed up with the Middle East basically ignored him and by implication says: Do what you think you have to do, just leave us out. How could that possibly benefit Israel?

Even if you have reservations about U.S. policy vis-a-vis Syria, President Obama is your ally, indeed your only ally, on Iran. What is the point of effectively telling him: “I don’t trust you”?

Alon Pinkas was Adviser to four Israeli Foreign Ministers and was Consul General of Israel in New York. He is currently a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum.

Has Obama Left Israel on Its Own? « Commentary Magazine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks yesterday about his country needing to rely on its resources to protect itself against potential threats broke no new ground. At another time, his comments might be considered mere boilerplate material since it has been an article of faith for all Israeli leaders dating back to David Ben Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, that if Zionism means anything, it is that the Jewish state must depend on no one but itself on security matters. But coming as it did the day after President Obama’s shocking retreat on Syria, the statement was highlighted in a New York Times article and got major play in the Israeli media. The juxtaposition of the U.S. accepting a dubious Russian proposal that would ensure there would be no Western attack on the Syrian regime over its use of chemical weapons with the Netanyahu statement left many wondering whether Jerusalem thinks it is now on its own when it comes to other threats, such as those from a nuclear Iran. While it would be an exaggeration to claim Washington has completely abandoned Israel, no amount of White House spin about Obama’s zigzag course on Syria changes the fact that his fumbling has left the Middle East a far more dangerous place than it already was.

The reality after the Syria back-down is one in which the prestige and influence of the United States has declined. The president’s inability to make up his mind has not only gotten Bashar Assad off the hook and convinced Vladimir Putin that there is hope for his long-cherished dream of rebuilding the old Soviet empire. It has also made it difficult to envision the U.S. taking on the even more daunting task of a military confrontation with Iran. Since there is no reason to believe further diplomatic outreach to Tehran will be any more fruitful than past efforts, that leaves Israelis with the unpleasant thought that if Iran is to be prevented from going nuclear by force, then they will have to do it themselves. Under those circumstances, what choice is Netanyahu left with other than to try to send a signal of his own to the ayatollahs?

As the New York Times reported:

“The world needs to make sure that anyone who uses weapons of mass destruction will pay a heavy price for it,” Mr. Netanyahu said Wednesday at the graduation ceremony for a naval program. “The message in Syria will also be heard very well in Iran.”

He cited President Obama’s speech Tuesday, in which he said that Israel could defend itself but also had Washington’s “unshakable support,” and quoted a famous saying of the ancient Jewish scholar Hillel, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

“The operational translation of this rule is that Israel should always be able to defend itself and will protect itself by its own strengths against every threat,” Mr. Netanyahu told the crowd. “The state of Israel is today prepared to act with great strength.”

In fact Israel has already applied this principle in Syria repeatedly, striking at weapons convoys they feared might be payoffs from Assad to the Hezbollah terrorists in return for the latter’s efforts to boost his side in his country’s civil war. Israel also knocked out Syria’s nuclear reactor back in 2007 over the objections of the Bush administration, a decision that, in retrospect, seems even wiser now than it did then.

However, the current tangle in Syria illustrates both the mutual interests of the U.S. and Israel as well as their differences. While President Obama has been calling for the fall of the Assad regime for years, Israel has no favorite in the confusing fighting in Syria. But the Jewish state and its American friends are invested in the idea of a strong America as a force for stability in the Middle East. That’s why AIPAC and other elements of the pro-Israel community were drawn into the debate on Syria. They were not so much concerned with helping the rebels or punishing Assad (though many sympathize with that effort) as they were with ensuring that a Congress that is increasingly under the influence of isolationist elements didn’t trash American credibility.

Obama’s surrender to the Russians left Israel to ponder a new balance of power in the region in which the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance is stronger than ever and aided by a more assertive Russia, a point that, as I wrote yesterday, was emphasized by the announcement that Putin has approved the sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran.

Despite Israel’s boasts, its armed forces are nowhere near as capable of dealing a crippling blow to Iran as the United States. Moreover, so long as President Obama is pursuing yet another diplomatic initiative with Iran based on the false perception that its new President Hassan Rouhani is a moderate, there is no chance that Israel would attack on its own. That may put any potential strike on hold until long after the Iranians have made it even more difficult to attack their nuclear facilities.

The upshot of all this is not so much that Israel is on its own—something Netanyahu may have already known last year when he was urging Obama to adopt “red lines” on Iran—but that it is essentially helpless to act on that fact. A weaker United States led by a president who is incapable of acting decisively isn’t just a problem for Israel. But right now it looks as if it means there may be no viable option for heading off the threat of a nuclear Iran before it is too late to do anything about it.

Syria will hand over its chemical weapons, says Bashar al-Assad – Telegraph.

Bashar al-Assad has said he will place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control in line with a proposal from Russia.

Syria and Russia deny that President Bashar al-Assad’s military is responsible for the attack Photo: AP

Assad: US military threat did not cause Syria’s decision to cede chemical arms | JPost | Israel News.