WarSclerotic

IDF wins battle for supplemental budget.

The cabinet Thursday approved an extra NIS2.7 bn for the defense budget, replacing most of the amount slashed in the across-the-board cutbacks of the state budget last May.

The high IDF command said funding was needed to speed up preparations for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program.

US official confirms Israel struck Syrian airbase | The Times of Israel.

( Obama throws Israel under the bus and gives away our secrets…. AGAIN!  – JW )

Damascus target hit in addition to Latakia airbase; both sites said to contain arms meant for Hezbollah, Al-Arabiya reports

Satellite footage of alleged missile base in Latakia, Syria (photo credit: Wikimapia)

While Israel has remained tight-lipped over an alleged strike in Syria, an Obama administration official confirmed to CNN on Thursday that Israeli warplanes had in fact attacked an airbase in Latakia on Wednesday. The target was “missiles and related equipment the Israelis felt might be transferred to Hezbollah,” the report said.

Earlier Thursday, on the heels of reports that the airbase had contained advanced, Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles, Al-Arabiya reported that Israel had attacked not one, but two targets in the civil war-torn country.

Al-Arabiya’s report said two targets had been hit in Syria on Wednesday night – not just the Latakia air defense base, but a target in Damascus as well. Both targets were said to have contained shipments of Russian SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles meant for Hezbollah, which were reportedly completely destroyed.

A map of the Latakia airbase posted online shows three batteries of the Russian-made surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile at the base, outside Snobar Jableh in the country’s coastal Latakia region.

Earlier Thursday, Al-Arabiya quoted opposition forces as saying the base held S-125 missiles.

The S-125 is especially effective against maneuverable low- to medium-altitude targets, including aircraft. The Egyptians used such missiles with some success during the War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and batteries used by Iraq may have knocked down coalition aircraft in the First Gulf War.

The system has undergone improvements since then, but countermeasures have also progressed significantly.

A massive explosion was reported at the base late Wednesday night, with some reports that it was targeted by missiles fired from the sea. The Syrian news outlet Dam Press, considered loyal to the regime of Bashar Assad, reported that the site was damaged but that there had been no injuries.

Earlier on Wednesday the Lebanese government news agency reported six Israeli aircraft flying through Lebanese airspace along the coast north of Beirut.

The coastal strip of Syria, encompassing the cities of Tartous, Latakia and Baniyas, is part of a predominantly Alawite portion of the country which remains loyal to the Assad regime in its lengthy campaign against rebels.

Israel has been accused of striking Syrian sites in the past, including in January and May this year. Israel refused to confirm the reports that it targeted weapons transfers, possibly to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which has remained loyal to Assad during the country’s bloody civil war.

Syria is reportedly in the midst of upgrading its missile defense system to the Russian-made S-300, a move Israel has lobbied against.

Report: Israel attacked twice in Syria, SA-8 missiles destroyed – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Day after report that IDF attacked air defense base near Latakia, Al-Arabiya says Israel also attacked in Damascus, claims both strikes took out missiles designated for Hezbollah

Roi Kais

Israel attacked in Syria twice Wednesday night – near the port city of Latakia and in the capital Damascus, the Al-Arabiya network reported Thursday.

Earlier Thursday, a Syrian news website reported that a missile fired from the Mediterranean hit a Syrian missile base in Latakia, but Al-Arabiya’s report was the first on an alleged attack in Damascus.

Sources quoted by Al-Arabiya said that in both attacks missile shipments were completely destroyed. According to the report, the attacks targeted SA-8 missiles which were meant to be transferred to Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

The report on the alleged Israeli attack launched Wednesday night was published by Syrian website Dampress.com, which quoted eyewitnesses as saying that there were no injuries in the explosion but severe damage was caused to a base located near Snobar Jableh, south of Latakia.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported of a blast in an air defense bases in the same area. On Wednesday, Lebanese press reported that Israeli Air Force jets circled over south Lebanon.

In July it was reported that a “foreign army” attacked in the Latakia area a stockpile of Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles belonging to President Bashar Assad’s forces. The Yakhont missiles have a range of 300 kilometers and are considered very accurate.

Syrian state-owned media outlets have yet to respond to the reports on the alleged strikes, and a Syrian security official denied the reports altogether.

Anti-aircraft missile batteries in base near Latakia

 In an interview with Arabic-language Russia Al-Youm, Syrian official Amar al-Assad said: “We in Latakia did not hear any blast. The media outlets that are the source of these reports may have dubious intentions that serve the interests of the enemies.”

MTV Lebanon quoted “sources in Jerusalem” as saying that Turkey was behind the attack on the air defense base near Latakia. According to the report, which was not confirmed by any other source, the attack came in response to the downing of a Turkish fighter jet a few months ago.

Ynet’s military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai stresses that regardless of the veracity of the Al-Arabiya report, Syria consistently tries, apparently these days as well, to transfer ground-air missiles to the hands of Hezbollah. Hezbollah members have already trained in operating SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles with the Syrian air defense forces near Damascus.

There were attempts in the past, which some were successful, to transfer such missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. An unknown number of such anti-aircraft missile batteries are already in the country.

The SA-8 is a fairly outdated missile that was already in use by the Syrian army in the 1980s. This is a portable missile, that operates on one vehicle, on which a detection radar is also installed, together with the missiles and another radar for fire control that aims the missile to its target. This vehicle, which runs on caterpillar tracks, can rapidly change location with hardly any preparation for the firing itself. It travels, stops – and fires. Since its dimensions are small, it is very easy to conceal it and thus very difficult to uncover and attack it. Immediately after the missiles are launched, the radar is turned off and the radiation cannot be tracked.

The SA-8 hit and shot down an Israeli Phantom jet in Lebanese airspace during the First Lebanon War in 1982.

The most important factor is that the Russians sold Syria heaps of the renewed and more dangerous model, the SA-17, a missile that is even more difficult to expose, its range is longer, it is more precise and can employ several targets at once. This missile is a strategic weapon in the hands of the Syrians, even more so if they manage to transfer it to Hezbollah, as they have tried relentlessly for some time.

If the reports regarding attacks in Syria on Wednesday prove true, it may be that they were carried out in order to prevent the transfer of such portable missiles to the hands of Hezbollah, and perhaps also in order to punish the Syrians for transferring, and attempting to transfer, these anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah.

Beres At Harvard: Facing a Nuclear Iran with Sun-Tzu – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

(And now for something completely different…. – JW )

I first wrote about the modern applications of ancient Chinese military principles, as articulated specifically in Sun-Tzu’s classic, The Art of War,[1] over ten years ago, and returned to the topic from time to time. At least one other author has developed this theory as it pertains specifically to U.S. strategy, as well.

The time is right to revisit this conversation, and to integrate classical Greek notions of dialectical reasoning, which I have considered separately in the context of an “avant-garde” approach to decisionmaking, and which makes increasing sense as a complement, indeed, a necessary component, of a strategic thought process inspired by Sun-Tzu.

For Israel, in particular, now already at the eleventh hour with respect to any remaining unilateral options for preemptive self-defense against a steadily-nuclearizing Iran, ancient principles could signify a possibly last opportunity to learn something genuinely indispensable.

An examination of Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War should focus upon Israel’s nuclear deterrent, and on its corollary but routinely changing order of battle.

Israel’s Defenses and Deterrence

Israel’s national defense against aggression has never been solely vested in technological remedies. Instead, it has relied, from its national beginning in 1948, on assorted forms of deterrence, including nuclear deterrence. It is true, of course, that Israel has recently been placing an increasing emphasis on its ballistic missile defenses, especially the Arrow, or Hetz, programs. But, because any system of BMD could ultimately display unacceptable levels of “leakage,” the ultimate guarantor for national survival has steadfastly and more-or-less conspicuously remained the country’s (now still tacit, or undeclared) nuclear threat.

Ironically, as U.S. President Barack Obama pursues rapprochement with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, pressure will build upon Jerusalem to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1968), and/or to enter into a “Nuclear Weapon Free-Zone.” If Israel denuclearizes, the deteriorating balance of power in the Middle East caused in part by the so-called “Arab Spring” and Iranian nuclearization – which I have described elsewhere in my writings and lectures as a “correlation of forces” issue – could fundamentally threaten the Jewish State.

If, as is likely, Israel’s comparative power vis-à-vis regional state and sub-state adversaries deteriorates further, security functions grounded in its nuclear threat will become progressively more important. There are at least seven such essential functions to be studied and borne in mind:

(1) deterrence of large-scale conventional attacks by enemy-states;

(2) deterrence of all levels of unconventional attack by enemy-states;

(3) preemption of enemy-state nuclear attacks;

(4) support of conventional preemptions against enemy-state nuclear assets;

(5) support of conventional preemptions against enemy-state nonnuclear assets;

(6) nuclear war-fighting; and

(7) the so-called “Samson Option.”

In making any preemption decisions, Israel would first of all need to determine whether expressions of “anticipatory self-defense” would be tactically or operationally cost-effective.

How does jurisprudence affect nuclear threat functions, primarily deterrence? Contrary to the generally prevailing conventional wisdom on law and geopolitics, nuclear deterrence, as well as its various associated forms of nuclear posture and infrastructure, do not necessarily function outside the authoritative expectations of international law. This is true even for preemption, insofar as a state could have the right to resort to anticipatory self-defense using even nuclear weapons if it’s leaders felt national survival was at stake, in accordance with a July 8, 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.

In the end, the ability of international law to prevent both nuclear and conventional war in the Middle East will depend upon far more than formal treaties, customs, and those general principles “recognized by civilized nations.” It will also be contingent, especially, upon the success or failure of individual countries’ military strategies in the region. This position was first explicitly codified at the landmark Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which recognized that national sovereignty, driven by self-interested states, created the greatest incentive for peace.

If Israel’s transforming nuclear strategy should serve to reduce the threat and/or seriousness of war, either because of its successful forms of nuclear deterrence, or even because of presumptively “no alternative” preemptive strikes launched against an illegally nuclearizing Iran, this strategy could then be “counted” as an authentic component or expression of international law enforcement. This is because we continue to live in a “Westphalian” system of international law, a system without any designated supranational authority or arbiter, and one in which the historic role of a balance-of-power must continue to assume at least a quasi-legal function.

Shaping a New Strategic Posture with The Art of War

How, then, should Israel proceed? Drawing upon Sun-Tzu, its leaders should consider the ancient Chinese strategist’s favored principles concerning diplomacy. Political initiatives and agreements may be useful, Sun-Tzu instructs, but, nonetheless, certain military preparations should never be neglected.

Fusing power and diplomacy, says Sun-Tzu, the primary objective of every state should be to weaken enemy states without ever actually engaging in armed combat. In his classic work, this always overriding objective links the associated ideal of “complete victory,” in which an enemy may be subjugated by attacking its plans, to a controlled and reciprocal “strategy for planning offensives.”

Here is an example. Presently, in spite of an alleged rapprochement on nuclear issues between Iran and the United States, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu remains prudently determined to maintain a suitable preemption option. In terms of diplomacy, the initial task must be to convince his Iranian counterparts that proceeding with nuclearization (now, apparently, proceeding via both enriched uranium and plutonium routes) could never be gainful.

To accomplish this important goal, Tehran must soon be made to realize that going beyond a certain point of nuclear no-return (a so-called “red line”) would assuredly prompt an Israeli preemption against pertinent hard-target infrastructures.

In Chapter Four, “Military Disposition,” Sun-Tzu tell his readers: “One who cannot be victorious assumes a defensive posture; one who can be victorious attacks…Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven.”

Even today, this advice may seem obvious enough. Yet, current Israel Defense Force strategic posture depends substantially upon various implemented forms of ballistic missile defense (BMD), especially the Arrow. By mistakenly placing too much hope in its active defense systems, particularly at a time when Arrow-3 programs are facing perilously reduced funding due to budget cuts, Israel could effectively be forced to disavow any remaining preemption options.

In consequence, Israel could have to plan to survive at the pleasure of its most recalcitrant enemies. Because placing too much faith in Arrow and related active defenses could place the country in needless existential peril, Jerusalem must always assure that it can maintain a recognizably secure and aptly robust second-strike or deterrent nuclear force. Taken together, a proper amalgam of efficient active defenses and wide-ranging strategic weapons would be necessary should Iran succeed in becoming fully nuclear. Sooner or later, therefore, having been permitted to develop weapons of mass destruction because both Israel and the United States had been burying themselves away “below the lowest depths of Earth,” certain of these enemy states could choose to attack. Plainly, the most conspicuous threat in this regard would be a now-nuclear Iran.

None of this is meant to suggest that Israel’s nuclear deterrence can remediate all conceivable existential threats. Israel’s advanced deterrent posture notwithstanding, there could still come a time when its implicit nuclear threat would be rendered powerless in a number of ways, even if it were dealing with an adversary that was reliably rational. Rationality, after all, would say nothing about the actual accuracy of the information used in that leadership’s rational calculations. Hence, altogether rational Iranian decision-makers might still make certain errors in calculation which would lead them to nuclear war.

Furthermore, some might argue the only response to an enemy who multiplies its stockpile of pertinent weapons, disperses those weapons across various platforms, and secures those weapons in hardened silos, is an after-the-fact retaliation. Inevitably, if this argument is correct, any such total reliance upon deterrence and active defenses could represent an existential (and potentially fatal) Israeli indifference to the enduring general principles of classic Chinese military strategy.

“Unorthodox” Strategies

Sun-Tzu’s repeated emphasis on the “unorthodox” can help Israel to compensate for any disproportionate reliance upon implicit nuclear deterrence and ballistic missile defense. This tricky but nuanced passage could represent a subtle tool for tactical implementation, one that might usefully exploit a particular enemy state’s identifiable matrix of military expectations.

As I’ve explained before, Israel should refine and develop “unorthodoxy” before the battle. To prevent the most dangerous forms of battle, those engagements which could become expressions of all-out unconventional warfare, Israel should examine and fashion a number of promising new military postures. These postures would focus more-or-less upon a reasoned shift from an image of “orthodox” rationality to one of “unorthodox” irrationality. This thinking may have played a decisive role back in October 1962, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy had threatened to board any Soviet ship that defied his “quarantine” of Cuba.

For now, as I have argued, every enemy of Israel can predict with considerable confidence, how Israel would initiate major military action, and also how it would respond to an armed attack or armed conflict initiated by others.  If, however, Israel did not always signal such perfect rationality to its enemies – that is, if its actions (both defensive and offensive) were not always so utterly measured and predictable – it could plausibly enhance both its overall deterrence posture, and its capacity to carry out certain still-needed preemption options.

This identical lesson applies to the United States, which is similarly mired in all-too-plainly predictable military policies and parameters.

Unorthodoxy Revisited: The Samson Option

The “Samson Option” is generally thought to reference a last-resort survival strategy, one wherein Israel’s nuclear weapons are used not for the prevention of war, or even for unavoidable war-waging, but simply as a “last spasm of vengeance.” Here, faced with an End of the Third Temple scenario, Israel’s leaders would have accepted that the Jewish State could no longer survive, but would insist, nonetheless, that it would consent to “die” only together with its pertinent enemies.

The view of the Samson Option, as I have predicted, from the Arab/Iranian side should be clear. Israel would resort to nuclear weapons only in reprisal, and only in response for overwhelmingly destructive first-strike attacks.

Correspondingly, anything less than an overwhelmingly destructive enemy first-strike would elicit “merely” a measured and duly “proportionate” Israeli military response. Nonetheless, although it is always in Israel’s overall interest to avoid any actual resort to nuclear weapons use, there are certain identifiable circumstances in which nuclear war-fighting could become unavoidable, such as where an enemy first-strike against Israel does not destroy the Jewish State’s nuclear second-strike, or retaliatory nuclear capacity.

By striking first, an Iranian enemy would likely expect to have an advantage in controlling the metaphoric ladder of escalation, based on a presumed Iranian opinion that Israel would confine itself to limited reactions.

Israel could enhance its national security if it simultaneously reformulates its Samson Option and its policy of nuclear ambiguity. By selectively taking the bomb out of the “basement,” and by indicating, simultaneously, that its nuclear weapons were not limited to Third Temple scenarios, Jerusalem would not be revealing the obvious – that is, that Israel merely has nuclear weapons – but rather Jerusalem would begin articulating that these particular weapons are distinctly usable, sufficiently invulnerable, and penetration-capable.

In essence, Jerusalem could update and incorporate Sun-Tzu’s timeless principles of war, in part by exhibiting a visible departure from perfect rationality; by displaying, in other words, the rationality of threatened irrationality.

To identify most efficiently the ways that Israel could make the “unorthodox” appear “orthodox,” Israel requires a pattern of thinking adapted historically not only by Sun-Tzu, but also by certain of his non-military contemporaries in ancient Greece.   This pattern of thinking, a strategic “dialectic,” originates from an ancient Greek (Platonic) expression for the art of conversation. Adapted to a specifically Israeli military planning point of view, essential but non-exclusive components of a potentially useful strategic dialectic would include:

(1) a method of refutation;

(2) a method of repeated logical division of broad categories into their components;

(3) logical reasoning that uses premises that are probable, or at least generally accepted;

(4) formal logic; and

(5) a logical development of thought via thesis and antithesis, oriented toward a purposeful synthesis of opposites.

To codify a nuclear doctrine that Israel’s decisionmakers can apply to specific tactical and strategic questions, Israel’s leaders will need to engage in a “strategic dialectic,” asking and answering pertinent questions, again and again, and approaching their most urgent security problem as an interrelated series of thoughts, until core survival problems are confronted frontally.

Contained in this strategic dialectic, as Sun-Tzu was already deeply aware, is an unavoidable obligation to continue thinking. Logically, this imperative could never be met entirely, because of what the philosophers would call an “infinite regress problem,” but it must still be attempted. Armed with such an explicitly dialectical form of military strategy, moreover, Israel could focus not only upon assorted unique threats and situations (e.g., Iranian nuclear weapons development), but also upon various dynamic interactions between discrete threats, complex interactions known commonly as “synergies.”

As Israel considers the overlapping and varied threats it faces, insights from ancient Greece and Rome could usefully reinforce the instructive principles of Sun-Tzu, especially in regard to the lawfulness of any still-contemplated preemption against Iran.

I am fond of Cicero’s explanation, as recalled by Hugo Grotius in his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, that a justification for anticipatory self-defense exists  ”whenever he who chooses to hesitate will be obliged to pay an unjust penalty, before he can exact a just penalty… For, as Aelian says, citing Plato as his authority, any war (preemption) that is undertaken for the necessary repulsion of injury, is proclaimed not by a crier, nor by a herald, but by the voice of Nature herself.”

Grotius, of course, the proverbial “father of international law,” wrote these strong and unambiguous words in the seventeenth-century, long before any state had ever needed to consider its existential security from enemy nuclear attacks. Recalling Sun-Tzu, the French maxim, for the most part, has it right. Plus ça change…

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Professor Beres is a recent prior contributor to the Harvard National Security Journal.

Reports: Syrian air base destroyed in missile attack from sea | JPost | Israel News.

Unclear who is behind the attack on base located in stronghold of Assad’s Alawites, but Syrian, Lebanese media accuse Israel; Channel 2 reports attack’s target were S-125 surface-to-air missiles.

A Syrian air defense base near the port city of Latakia was completely destroyed on Thursday morning in a missile attack from the sea, Arab media reported.

According to reports emanating from the rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, a large explosion occurred near the army base in Latakia on Wednesday night. Witness posted on Twitter that the explosion happened near coastal city Jableh, 30 kilometers south of Latakia, a stronghold of Assad’s Alawites.

It is unclear who is behind the explosion or its purpose. There were no reports of casualties.

Members of the Syrian and Lebanese media have charged that Israel is behind the attack. Israel’s defense establishment has not responded to the report.

Channel 2 News reported that the attack’s target was a S-125 surface-to-air missiles battery.

Satellite images of the area obtained by Channel 2 show the Russian-made Neva missiles, as well as a SA-3 missile battery, that also includes a command center with a radar to track the missiles’ targets and broadcasting anthenas to track the missiles as they are launched. The missiles have a range of 35km. and a 70k. warhead.

Lebanese media also reported that six Israel Air Force planes flew over Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun in southern Lebanon overnight. Such reports are common in the Lebanese media.

Last week, Kuwait newspaper Al-Jarida reported that IAF warplanes destroyed a shipment of missiles that were to be delivered to Hezbollah near the Lebanese-Syrian frontier.

The paper’s story, which quotes a senior Israeli official, has not been confirmed by any other news source. It was also unclear whether the attack took place on Lebanese or Syrian soil.

Israel has reportedly launched at least three attacks against convoys that were said to be delivering arms to the south Lebanon-based Shi’ite organization.

JPost.com staff contributed to this report.

Israel Hayom | Manipulating Jewish leaders.

When the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington released a report last week saying that Iran has the ability to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb within weeks, one could almost hear U.S. President Barack Obama’s heart sink.

His despair was not due to the findings of the report. Rather, it was because of the effect they would have on his ability to persuade Congress to ease up sanctions on the Islamic republic, to give diplomacy a chance.

Not only that. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making it difficult for the fabulists on Capitol Hill to tout Iranian President Hasan Rouhani as a moderate — which, of course, he is not. What he is, as Netanyahu has pointed out, is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The ISIS assessments, then, are highly inconvenient for the Obama administration, which keeps assuring Netanyahu and members of Congress who believe that sanctions should be increased that the U.S. will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attended a nuclear disarmament gala in Washington, where he reiterated his administration’s belief that Rouhani’s willingness to engage in talks constitutes “an opportunity to try to put to test whether or not Iran really desires to pursue only a peaceful program, and will submit to the standards of the international community in the effort to prove that to the world.”

He also made a veiled dig at Netanyahu’s repeated warnings about Iran’s use of dialogue as a cover for stepped-up centrifuge activity. The U.S., he said, would not let “fear tactics” interfere with its intention to give Iran the benefit of the doubt.

But just to be on the safe side, the White House hastily organized a National Security Council briefing for Jewish leaders on Tuesday. Enlisting the support of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League would be one way of putting pressure on Congress to take a more conciliatory stance in relation to Iran.

More specifically, Obama wants to buy time until the next round of talks between the P5+1 countries (Russia, the United States, China, France and Britain — plus Germany) and Iran, scheduled for Nov. 7-8.

Though the Obama administration is moron-heavy, this particular manipulation on its part was pretty clever. After all, there is nothing that organization heads covet more than having access to the White House and being privy to inside dope.

One can only imagine how important these leaders must have felt to be summoned to a hush-hush meeting with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and Deputy National Security Advisers Antony Blinken and Ben Rhodes.

Indeed, if the statement released by the Conference of Presidents on Tuesday night is anything to go by, Obama must be feeling extremely pleased with himself.

“Leaders of several Jewish organizations participated in an off-the-record discussion with senior administration officials about issues of the highest priority for the U.S., for our community and for America’s allies, halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” it read.

“We had a constructive and open exchange and agreed to continue the consultation to enhance the prospect of achieving a transparent and effective diplomatic resolution. We welcome the reaffirmation of the president’s commitment to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear capability and that all options remain viable to assure that end.”

Obama’s mission, like Rouhani’s, is being accomplished. What this means is that Netanyahu’s had better be in an advanced stage of planning.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”

The U.S. is gambling on longtime allies – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Why is Russian FM Lavrov angry? – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

( A good analysis of what the wily Putin {Forbes’ most powerful man in the world} is up to and why he brokered the Syria deal. – JW )

This was the first time we heard Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov complain about the Syrian opposition’s supporters. He said for very opposition there are countries supporting it and that Russia knows the countries supporting the Syrian opposition.

He is right. We all know who is supporting the Syrian revolution. Saudi Arabia supports the Free Syrian Army which represents the backbone of the armed opposition. Meanwhile, extremist groups, like al-Qaeda, are managed by Iran and the Syrian regime.

But what is interesting about Lavrov’s comment is that he addressed regional countries that support the Syrian revolution by saying: “Those who have direct influence on different opposition groups in Syria must [prevent those groups] from committing any provocations that may obstruct [the dismantling of] chemical weapons and, once again, raise the necessity of foreign intervention.”

The Russian minister wants to blame the opposition in case the plan to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile fails. But what is more important is that he refers directly to the armed opposition, which is still standing on its own feet as it fights against Russian experts, Syrian regime forces and Iranian, Iraqi and Hezbollah fighters in support of the regime.

As to why he requested countries in support of the opposition – he means Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others – to prevent the armed Syrian opposition from obstructing the dismantlement of Syrian chemical weapons, it is because the plan is the first international test to reveal who is really in control on the ground.

Chemical weapons dismantling

In principle, the Syrian opposition cannot mind the dismantling of chemical weapons. It is in its interest that the stockpile is dismantled as soon as possible so the regime does not use such weapons to annihilate residents of opposition-controlled areas, or to destroy Syrian opposition bases. If these weapons remain in Syrian they may also be used by people against each other if the war expands into a civil one. Therefore, getting rid of weapons of mass destruction is in Syria’s best interest.

However, it also serves Syria’s interest that the Russians do not exploit the dismantling of chemical weapons in order to stop the fighting and thus improve Bashar al-Assad’s position or to reward him at the Geneva II conference.

It does not make sense that Assad’s regime is invited to the conference, along with Tehran, and is allowed to remain in power just because it gave up its chemical weapons. This regime is supposed to be punished and not rewarded for the crimes of murdering hundreds of women and children using Sarin gas.

The Russian game

We are aware of the Russian game to use the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile to preserve Assad’s position and his security regime. This gives them an excuse to besiege opposition fighters and obstruct political change in the country. Therefore, when Assad and the Russians failed to halt the fighting, Lavrov made an appearance to frankly and publicly talk about the countries which support the opposition and asked them to deter the Syrian opposition from making any real gains.

He also appealed to Washington to pressure these countries to, in turn, pressure the Syrian opposition to stop its activities on the ground. Doesn’t this remind us of what we used to say before? That Russia must pressure its ally, the Assad regime, to stop its attacks.

The Gulf countries will not accept to interfere in managing the armed opposition as long as the international community is silent over the regime’s crimes and its continuous murder of thousands of innocent people.

It is no one’s right to tell the opposition to clear the way for international inspectors as they pass by besieged cities and towns whose residents are eating cats and dogs to stay alive. This sounds as if using chemical weapons is the only red line and that forcing people to starve is acceptable! Assad is no longer fighting the opposition. He has instead resorted to besieging cities and towns while carrying out massive destruction using long-range artillery and other heavy weapons.

This article was first published in al-Sharq al-Awsat on Oct. 31, 2013.

_____________________________
Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today.

Israel Hayom | Meanwhile, back in Iran.

The Obama administration has bought into what my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ray Takeyh, calls the “Rouhani narrative,” according to which Iranian President Hasan Rouhani is a reformer, Iran is ripe for change and reform, and progress is at hand.

As in the Cold War days when we were told we needed to compromise to “help the reformers in the Kremlin,” so today we must not be too tough in negotiations lest we weaken Rouhani and his reformist brethren.

But the reforms in Iran are imaginary, making Rouhani either complicit in the deception or unable to make any changes.

As the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported on Oct. 28: “In the past three days alone, the judiciary has banned the reformist daily Bahar, sentenced the prominent actress Pegah Ahangarani to 18 months in prison, and put to death 18 individuals who are ethnic minorities.”

According to AFP, “An Iranian court has sentenced filmmaker and actress Pegah Ahangarani to 18 months in prison, her mother told the Iranian Students’ News Agency Monday, apparently for her social activities, political comments and interviews with foreign media.”

Here is the Amnesty International comment:

“Two death row prisoners from Iran’s Kurdish minority are at imminent risk of being executed after the Iranian authorities carried out 20 death sentences over the weekend.”

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa deputy director at Amnesty International, said: “This surge in executions shows that behind words and promises, the Iranian authorities continue to rely on state-sponsored killing, sparking fears that Zaniar Moradi and Loghman Moradi, two Kurdish minority prisoners on death row, could be next.

“‘Iran’s new government has been cautiously lauded on the world stage for limited signs of progress, including releasing some prisoners of conscience. But the renewed dependence on the death penalty gives a startling example of one area where the Iranian authorities are clearly stubborn.”

The Obama administration has shown its lack of interest in Iran’s human rights situation since June 2009, when the president seemed indifferent to the wave of protests that arose around the presidential election. Today we find in regime stalwarts, who have represented the Islamic republic for decades and smiled while acts of terrorism took hundreds of lives, new hope for reform. But inside Iran, there is no reform; human rights violations continue apace. The “reformer” Rouhani has appointed as justice minister Moustafa Pour-Mohammadi, whom Human Rights Watch called “minister of murder” in 2005 for his previous conduct, including hundreds of extrajudicial executions.

What is the relationship between Iran’s internal situation and its nuclear file? Simply this: We are fooling ourselves if we see in Rouhani a reformer who wishes to change the Iranian system, move toward democracy, and abandon the nuclear weapons program. That “Rouhani narrative” was carefully constructed to ensnare Western diplomats, officials, and journalists. We have no excuse if we fall for it.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams’ blog “Pressure Points” here.

Braced for imminent nuclear accord with Iran, US pulls away from military option, IDF stays on the ready.

( “Hence the IDF’s request for a supplemental NIS3.5bn (app. $1bn) defense budget this week…” Gents, this is happening. – JW )

Israeli Air Force on the ready for Iran

Israel’s high command, working on the assumption that an American-Iranian nuclear accord is near its final stage, plans to keep in place advanced preparations for a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear program into 2014 – hence the IDF’s request for a supplemental NIS3.5bn (app. $1bn) defense budget this week.

–
debkafile’s military sources report exclusively that the main body of the accord is essentially complete. All the same, President Barack Obama plans to announce before Christmas that only partial agreement has been achieved and negotiations will continue.
He will be cagey in public – partly because not all parts of the accord have been finalized, although the pace of US-Iranian negotiations have been accelerated, and partly to avoid coming clean on the full scope of the deal with Tehran.
The US-Iranian talks are being held at three levels:

1. American and Iranian diplomats and nuclear experts are discussing the technical aspects of the accord in Vienna. Some of these meetings – but not all – take place at International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in the city.

The talks in Vienna between IAEA chief Yukiya Amano and Iranian deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi on Oct. 29-30 in Vienna were held to review items already approved between the American and Iranian delegations. It remained for the two officials to consider how to integrate those understandings in the future IAEA inspections routine.

Araqchi reported he had brought new proposals to the talks, saying they were productive. Amano said more cautiously: “I am very hopeful that we can come out with a good result.”

2. Secretary of State John Kerry and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, who is the senior US negotiator, are handling the second level of direct negotiations opposite Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif and his deputy Abbas Araqchi.

Because of his direct involvement, Kerry sounded unusually impatient Monday October 28, when he said, “Some have suggested that somehow there’s something wrong with giving diplomacy a chance. We will not succumb to those fear tactics and forces that suggest otherwise.”

He did not name Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but clearly lashed out against what he regards as the prime minister’s “fear tactics.” Neither did he admit how much progress had been made in the direct US line with Tehran.
3. The third level deals with sanctions. It is run by officials of the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees the sanctions regime, and senior staff from President Hassan Rouhani’s bureau.
They are working to determine which sanctions will be lifted and at which stage of the negotiations.
This process aims at lifting decision-making on sanctions out of the hands of Congress and transferring it to this secret negotiating mechanism. By this means, President Obama hopes not only to thwart Congressional calls for tighter sanctions against Iran, but also to forestall Netanyahu’s efforts to this end.
On Tuesday October 29, a group of Jewish leaders was invited to the White House to meet with members of the National Security Council for an update on the Iran negotiations and a bid to defuse tensions with them and Israel. But none of the above information about the accelerated progress of a US-Iranian accord was released to them.