WarSclerotic

Making case to Congress for Syria strike, Obama says he has strategy to defeat Assad | JPost | Israel News.

‘US pressure nixed Israeli strike on Iran last year’ | The Times of Israel.

( “Israel possesses the military capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program at will.” – JW )

Former National Security Council head: Netanyahu ‘seriously considered’ attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, looks toward US President Barack Obama as he speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

An Israeli plan to attack Iran in 2012 was canceled due to US objections, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council confirmed Tuesday.

“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu seriously considered a preemptive strike on Iran, and the Americans were not excited about the idea,” Maj. Gen. (res) Giora Eiland told The Times of Israel.

The conservative Israeli political website Mida on Tuesday quoted Eiland (Hebrew link) to the effect that Israel possesses the military capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program at will.

According to the report, Eiland discussed the Israeli plan and Washington’s objections during a closed conference two weeks ago, saying that Netanyahu had originally intended to order a strike on Iran sometime between September and October of 2012, at the height of the US presidential campaign and around the same time as Netanyahu’s famous speech at the United Nations.

The report claimed that Netanyahu was requested by the Obama administration to call off the attack, possibly so as not to interfere with the American electoral process.

The former general was quoted as saying that although Israel is not controlled by the US, it does take American considerations into account with regard to issues of global significance.

“On many subjects Israel can perform independently,” Eiland was quoted as saying. “The construction in Jerusalem, the attack on Gaza as well as other regional issues — we don’t need to ask the Americans before we take action, even if they don’t like it. But, when an issue involves something of American interest, we cannot act against their will.”

However, “changing times” could allow for an Israeli strike in the future, he reportedly said, also noting that in light of Washington’s apparent lack of appetite for military action in Syria, the chances of an American strike in Iran were slim.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Eiland distanced himself from the statements attributed to him by Mida.

“The quotes are rife with inaccuracies,” Eiland said, though he didn’t specify further. However, he did confirm that an attack had been mulled by the Israeli prime minister.

“At any rate, I don’t feel like getting into this discussion; there’s nothing new here,” he concluded.

Former national security adviser Giora Eiland (photo credit: Flash90)

According to reports, Israel’s security chiefs vetoed a plan by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak to attack Iran in late 2010.

In August, Amos Yadlin, who served as chief of the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate from 2006 to 2010, claimed US opposition to an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program may be abating.

“The American stance on an Israeli strike against Iran has changed dramatically recently,” Yadlin said.

“In 2012 the [Americans’] red light was as red as it can get, the brightest red,” Yadlin said in an interview with Army Radio. “But the music I’m hearing lately from Washington says, ‘If this is truly an overriding Israeli security interest, and you think you want to strike,’ then the light hasn’t changed to green, I think, but it’s definitely yellow.”

Yadlin is thought to be close to parts of the US defense establishment. He served as Israel’s military attache in Washington from 2004 to 2006, and was a Kay Fellow in Israeli national security at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2011.

The US and its allies fear Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies, saying its atomic program is meant for peaceful purposes only.

In efforts to get Iran to account for its nuclear ambitions, President Barack Obama and other Western leaders remain publicly committed to diplomacy though they stress military options against Iranian nuclear sites are not off the table.

Haviv Rettig Gur contributed to this report

Breaking with Arab League, Abbas opposes Syria strike | The Times of Israel.

( “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – Santayana.  I remember how much good supporting Saddam did for the Palestinians in the Gulf War.  Abbas is opposing the Arab League and the US. WTF?! – JW )

Arabs attacking Arabs is one thing — Americans attacking Arabs is something else, PA president tells his party

PA President Mahmoud Abbas at Fatah’s Revolutionary Council meeting in Ramallah, September 1 (photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

Breaking with the Arab League, which on Sunday endorsed UN-backed military action in Syria, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is promoting a diplomatic plan for resolving the crisis in Syria.

Surprising Fatah members at a gathering of the Revolutionary Council in Ramallah , Abbas declared that the Palestinian leadership was opposed in principle to a military strike against Syria.

“We are against any military strike against Syria, and will not allow an Arab country to be bombed from the outside. We condemn the use of chemical weapons by any party,” Abbas told the gathering Sunday, according to a report Tuesday on the official WAFA news agency. “The solution to the crisis in Syria must be political. There is no military solution.”

The Palestinian leadership has been facing mounting criticism for its inability to protect Palestinian refugees living in Syria from the civil war raging in the country since March 2011.

Palestinian delegations that traveled to Syria to plead with the Assad regime to leave refugee camps out of the of fighting have returned empty-handed. On Tuesday, Palestinian Syrians launched an online campaign titled “The week of breaking the silence on Palestinian refugee camps.”

Abbas’s statement clashed sharply with the position expressed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, who said on Sunday during an Arab ministerial meeting in Cairo that responding militarily to the plight of the Syrian people cannot be considered “foreign intervention.”

The ministers’ closing statement also reflected those sentiments.

“The United Nations and the international community are called upon to assume their responsibilities in line with the UN Charter and international law by taking the necessary deterrent measures against the culprits of this crime that the Syrian regime bears responsibility for,” the ministers said in a statement following their session.

Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and Algeria represented the minority position opposing military intervention in Syria.

Abbas’ political plan for Syria was presented to US President Barack Obama during his visit to the region back in March, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told the pro-Assad news channel Al-Mayadeen on Monday. Malki would not reveal the details of the plan, but said it was also presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the Chinese leadership, and UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi.

In his speech to the Revolutionary Council, Abbas said that both the Americans and the Russians accepted his plan, which has become the cornerstone of the international diplomatic drive on Syria.

With regards to the use of force, Abbas said there was an essential difference between Arab nations attacking another Arab country and the United States doing so.

“If Arabs strike each other, we say ‘May God guide them’ and we don’t intervene. But if someone [else] attacks Arabs, we will not stand by them. For instance, we stand by the United Arab Emirates with regards to the Islands [in dispute with Iran] and against any attack on an Arab state. Therefore, we are against the US attacking Syria with missiles, and this is our position and policy.”

US general says Syria action could be ‘more substantial than thought’ – Telegraph.

A former US army chief has claimed that Barack Obama is eyeing intervention in Syria that would go beyond a mere deterrent against chemical weapons to damage the military capacity of the Assad regime.

Bashar al-Assad and Barack Obama Photo: EPA

“What he has told the two senators is that he also intends to assist the opposition forces, so he is going to degrade Assad’s military capacity and he is going to assist and upgrade the opposition forces with training assistance.”

Gen. Keane said any training would probably be done in neighbouring Jordan rather than in Syria itself.

The US general, who retired in 2003, attributed Mr Obama’s surprise decision to seek congressional support for intervention to David Cameron’s “humiliating defeat” in the Commons.

He said the US would “much rather” have British backing for any strikes against Bashar Assad’s regime.

Gen. Keane explained: “We operate side by side with the UK and we know who our closest ally is. We certainly would much rather do this with the UK side by side, that’s how the military feels, I really think the leaders of the country feel.

“I think, if I may use some rich language here, the humiliating defeat the Prime Minister suffered in Parliament, I can only surmise was stunning to the President and I think it impacted on him.

“I think that’s one of the motivations that introduced what I call palpable fear and one of the reasons why he is seeking political cover himself.”

Israel conducts joint missile interception test with US in Mediterranean.

The Israeli Ankor (Sparrow) target missile

The US and Israeli Tuesday, Sept. 3, carried out a joint anti-missile missile test in the Mediterranean to prepare for a possible Syrian-Hizballah attack on Israel and Jordan in retaliation for the planned US military strike on Syria. US and Israel officials reported that the Israeli Ankor (Sparrow) was used as the target missile for testing the interceptors.
According to debkafile’s military sources, the test demonstrated that since delaying his planned strike on Syria last Saturday, President Barack Obama has revised his plans and instead of  “a narrow, limited” attack is contemplating a broader offensive for degrading the Assad regime. The arrival of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier in the Red Sea is further evidence of this intention.
The missile trial also indicates an updated US-Israeli consensus that Iran, Syrian and Hizballah mean business by the mounting level of the threats to fire missiles at Israel, Jordan and Turkey if the Americans go through with their strike against Syria. Such retaliation cold lead to the Syrian conflict expanding substantially into a regional war, which Moscow, Tehran and Damascus have in the last 48 hours admitted was virtually unavoidable.
Israel has been using the Ankor as the target missile for its own and US tests of their Arrow-2 .Washington has made no mention of the joint test. It is therefore not known whether American missiles took part in the test. Neither was there any word about whether the test was successful.

Russia on Tuesday announced that its missile early warning station at Armavir on the Black Sea had detected the launch of two missiles from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea fired towards the Sea’s eastern coastline. Armavir was set up to track missile launches from Europe and Iran.

According to debkafile’s military sources, US warships cruising opposite the Syrian coast and carrying Aegis anti-missile missiles, alongside Tomahawk cruise missiles ready for the strike on Syria, did take part in the test.
The practice also activated the sophisticated X-band radar system stationed in the Israeli Negev. This system is critical for identifying Iranian, Syrian or Hizballah rockets fired against Israel and Jerusalem and provide 3-5 minutes early warning of an attack.
The first report of the anti-missile test came from Moscow in a Russian Defense Ministry report that two ballistic missile launches had been detected in the Mediterranean by its Armavir early warning station on the Black Sea. President Vladimir Putin was immediately informed.  Armavir was set up to track missile launches from Europe and Iran.

Israel announces successful joint missile test with US in Med | JPost | Israel News.

( YES!!!!  Get the message scumbags?  Am yisrael chai!!! – JW )

Dozens of armed Salafist, Palestinian casualties in Egyptian copter strike in support of Gaza blockade.

Egyptian gunships on anti-terrorist raid in Sinai

A pair of Egyptian Air Force helicopter gun-ships surprised Salafist and Palestinian terrorists Tuesday, Sept. 3, by firing 13 rockets into two gatherings at Al-Muataa and Touma, south of the town of Sheikh Zuweid near the northern Sinai border with the Gaza Strip. Egyptian security officials reported “dozens” killed and wounded.

debkafile’s military sources report that the Egyptians struck to break up the stormy disturbances staged by thousands of Bedouin Islamists and armed Palestinians against the large-scale Egyptian military counter-terror operation ongoing in northern Sinai. An uproar erupted when Egyptian forces Saturday, Aug. 31 set about carving out two off-limits security zones to shut down the smuggling tunnels linking Egyptian Sinai to the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
This project aims at putting a stop to the free movement of Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami gunmen between the two territories.
Our military sources note that for the first time in eight years, the Egyptian army is honoring the obligation undertaken by the deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2005, when Israel pulled out unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. That commitment was never upheld until now.

Since the coup against Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian army has embarked on two simultaneous strategic operations to curtail terrorist activities which endanger both Egypt and Israel:

1. They are cleansing the 14-kilometer long, 500 meter broad “Philadelphi corridor” separating Gaza from Sinai, which reaches up to the Egyptian-Israeli-Gaza border crossing of Kerem Shalom. Vegetation has been cleared and the Palestinian houses located there, which hid secret tunnel entrances, were flattened and their occupants forcibly evacuated to the Egyptian side of the divided town of Rafah.

2.  Egyptian Rafah is in lockdown behind dozens of checkpoints manned by Egyptian troops to seal the town against access. This move cuts both sides of Rafah off from northern Sinai.

An Egyptian military belt now fences in the entire Egyptian-Gazan border, cutting its connections to and from Sinai and providing the Egyptian army with full control over the smuggling tunnels still snaking underneath.

For some days, thousands of inhabitants of Rafah, Bir al-Abed and Sheikh Zuweid rioted in an effort to disrupt the Egyptian operations. Tuesday, Sept 3, the Egyptian commander of Sinai, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Wasfy decided to put a stop to the disturbances. He launched a surprise airborne rocket attack on the rioters after receiving warning that armed Salafists who had mingled among the rioters were preparing a major assault on the Egyptian forces engaged in establishing the two security zones.

Russia detects ballistic launch in Mediterranean; Israel denies knowledge | JPost | Israel News.

Report: Russia says ballistic ‘objects’ fired in Mediterranean – Middle East Israel News Broadcast | Haaretz.

Russian news agencies do not say who had carried out the launch but add that projectiles fell into the sea; the Russian Defense Ministry declines to comment.

A ship in the Mediterranean. Illustrative. Photo by AFP

Russian radar detected the launch of two ballistic “objects” towards the eastern Mediterranean from the central part of the sea on Tuesday, Russian news agencies quoted the Defense Ministry as saying.

The projectiles fell into the sea, state-run Russian news agency RIA cited a source in Damascus as saying.

Russia’s embassy in Syria said there was no sign of a missile attack or explosions in Damascus, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. A Damascus resident told Haaretz he had not heard anything that might indicate a strike on the capital.

The Interfax news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying the launch was detected at 10:16 A.M. Moscow time (0616 GMT) by an early warning radar station at Armavir, near the Black Sea, which is designed to detect missiles from Europe and Iran.

The agencies did not say who had carried out the launch and whether any impact had been detected. The ministry declined comment to Reuters.

The Israeli military said that it is “not aware” of any missile launch in the area.

“The trajectory of these objects goes from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern part of the Mediterranean coast,” Interfax quoted the ministry spokesman as saying.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had informed President Vladimir Putin of the launch.

A ministry official had earlier criticized the United States for deploying warships in the Mediterranean close to Syria.

Hezbollah said to mobilize troops ahead of possible showdown | The Times of Israel.

With US strike on horizon, Arab media report Lebanese fighters absent from villages; joint command center with Assad formed

By Aaron Kalman September 3, 2013, 10:17 am

Hezbollah fighters hold party flags during a parade in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. (photo credit: AP/Hussein Malla/File)

Hezbollah has reportedly redeployed its forces throughout the region ahead of a possible US strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad — a longtime ally of the Lebanon- based Shiite terror group.

Members of Hezbollah have “disappeared” from villages around Lebanon, AFP reported Tuesday, citing Lebanese media and witnesses. The site noted that Hezbollah fighters in strongholds along the coast, in the Bekaa valley, near the Syrian border and in southern Beirut had left town, with many turning off their cellphones to avoid being tracked.

While security measures remain in place, checkpoints around the terror group’s nerve center in the capital are now being manned by teenagers instead of regular Hezbollah fighters, the news agency said.

Witnesses in the area around Tyre told AFP there appeared to be a general mobilization of Hezbollah members in the area. On Monday the Arabic daily Al-Akhbar, a paper considered close to both Assad’s regime and Hezbollah, said the group “called on all its officers and members to man their positions.”

The “Syrian army has mobilized units” which had not yet taken part in the civil war, Al-Akhbar reported, drawing an image of drastic changes not only by Hezbollah but also by Assad’s regime. The two have “established an operations room” with representatives from both fighting forces, it said.

Hezbollah has threatened to hit Israel in response to a possible US military action against Syria currently being debated by lawmakers in Washington. On Monday, Lebanese media reported that Hezbollah planned to launch rockets at Israel from the Syrian city of Homs, to avoid drawing Lebanon into the conflict.

A report Monday night by Israel’s Maariv news outlet suggested Hezbollah had mobilized its fighters after Iranian intelligence forces warned the group about an upcoming Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program.

The hike in tensions come as the US and France are mulling action against Assad’s regime for the reported use of chemical weapons in an attack on August 21 that the US says killed over 1,400 people.