WarSclerotic

Iranian FM: We have seen nothing but lies from Netanyahu | JPost | Israel News.

( A comment from “Pinketigars” –  JW )

These forces total about 945,000 active personnel (not including the Law Enforcement Force. All branches of armed forces fall under the command of General Headquarters of Armed Forces. The Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics is responsible for planning logistics and funding of the armed forces and is not involved with in-the-field military operational command.

Iran’s military was called the Middle East’s most powerful by General John Abizaid, Commander, United States Central Command . However, General Abizaid said he did not include the Israel Defense Forces as they did not fall into his area of operations.
Revolutionary Iran was taken by surprise, by the Iraqi invasion that began the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988. During this conflict, there were several confrontations with the United States. From 1987, the United States Central Command sought to stop Iranian mine-laying vessels from blocking the international sea lanes through the Persian Gulf in Operation Prime Chance. The operation lasted until 1989. On April 18, 1988, the U.S. retaliated for the Iranian mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58)in Operation Praying Mantis. Simultaneously, the Iranian armed forces had to learn to maintain and keep operational, their large stocks of U.S.-built equipment and weaponry without outside help, due to American sanctions. Reaching back on equipment purchased from the U.S.A. in the 1970s, the Iranians began establishing their own armaments industry; their efforts in this remained largely unrecognised internationally, until recently. However, Iran was able to obtain limited amounts of American-made armaments, when it was able to buy American spare parts and weaponry for its armed forces, during the Iran-Contra affair. At first, deliveries came via Israel and later, from the USA.

The Iranian government established a five-year rearmament program in 1989 to replace worn-out weaponry from the Iran-Iraq war. Iran spent $19 billion between 1989 and 1992 on arms. Iran ordered weapons designed to prevent other naval vessels from accessing the sea, including submarines and long-range Soviet planes capable of attacking aircraft carriers.

A former military-associated police force, the Iranian Gendarmerie, was disbanded in 1990.

In 1991, the Iranian armed forces received a number of Iraqi aircraft fleeing from the Persian Gulf war of that year; most of which were incorporated into the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force.

From 2003, there have been repeated U.S. and British allegations that Iranian forces have been covertly involved in the Iraq War. In 2007, Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces also took prisoner Royal Navy personnel when a boarding party from HMS Cornwall (F99)was seized in the waters between Iran and Iraq, in the Persian Gulf.

According to Juan Cole, Iran has never launched an “aggressive war” in modern history, and its leadership adheres to a doctrine of “no first strike”.The country’s military budget is the lowest per capita in the Persian Gulf region besides the UAE.

Since 1979, there are no foreign military bases present in Iran. According to Article 146 of the Iranian Constitution, the establishment of any foreign military base in the country is forbidden, even for peaceful purposes.

Iranian military doctrine constitutes a unique hybrid of western (especially U.S.) military concepts coupled with ideological tenets, including martyrdom and revolutionary zeal. Since the 1979 revolution, Iranian military doctrine has continued to evolve and adapt with the regime’s shifting threat perceptions and regional political developments.

Iran’s armed forces have tailored their war-fighting strategies to counter technologically superior adversaries, such as the United States. Tacitly acknowledging it has little chance of winning a conventional force-on-force conflict, Iran has opted for deterrence-based model of attrition warfare that raises an opponent’s risks and costs, rather than reducing its own. The goal is to inflict a psychological defeat that inhibits an enemy’s willingness to fight.

Asymmetric warfare plays a central role in Iranian military theory. Iran’s armed forces appear to be focusing on the development of niche capabilities that play to Iranian strengths—manpower, strategic depth and a willingness to accept casualties—while exploiting the weaknesses of Iran’s adversaries, who are regarded as risk averse, casualty sensitive and heavily dependent on technology and regional basing facilities for access.

Doctrine evolution
The basis of Iranian military doctrine was developed during Iran’s long and traumatic war with Iraq (1980-1988). Most senior officers are veterans of the “imposed war,” which has had a major influence on Iranian strategic thinking. Concepts such as self-reliance, “holy defense,” and export of the revolution first entered the military lexicon during the Iran-Iraq War and were codified as doctrine in the early 1990s. These ideas mingled with concepts from pre-revolutionary doctrine, which was heavily influenced by the United States, to form a unique hybrid that distinguished modern Iranian military doctrine from its largely Soviet-inspired counterparts in the Arab world.

After the war, Tehran gradually scaled back its efforts to export its revolution. As its foreign policy goals shifted, Iran’s national security strategy also became more defensive. Iranian military strategists began to pay more attention to the principles of modern maneuver warfare, such as combined and joint operations. In the mid-1990s, there was even talk about merging the IRGC with the regular military, the Artesh, to alleviate the command and control-related problems of having two parallel military services operating in tandem. Iran’s military capabilities still lagged behind its doctrine, but by the end of the decade, its forces were gradually evolving into professional, Western-style militaries.

The 9/11 attacks and U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan led Tehran to reconsider the trajectory of its armed forces. The regional security environment had changed drastically. Ba’athist Iraq and Taliban Afghanistan—two of Iran’s main rivals—were no longer a threat. But the United States suddenly had troops positioned along both its western and eastern flanks. This confluence of events, coupled with rumblings in Washington about opportunities for regime change, led Tehran to reassess its national security strategy. Iran’s armed forces began to tailor their strategies specifically to counter the perceived U.S. threat.

Land warfare doctrine
In 2005, the IRGC announced that it was incorporating a flexible, layered defense —referred to as a mosaic defense—into its doctrine. The lead author of this plan was General Mohammad Jafari, then director of the IRGC’s Center for Strategy, who was later appointed commander of the IRGC.

As part of the mosaic defense, the IRGC has restructured its command and control architecture into a system of 31 separate commands—one for the city of Tehran and 30 for each of Iran’s provinces. The primary goal of restructuring has been to strengthen unit cohesion at the local level and give commanders more latitude to respond to potential threats—both foreign and domestic. But the new structure would also make it difficult for hostile forces to degrade Iranian command and control, a lesson the Iranian military has learned by analyzing U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

The mosaic defense plan allows Iran to take advantage of its strategic depth and formidable geography to mount an insurgency against invading forces. Most of Iran’s population centers and major lines of communication are spread out within the interior of the country. Iran’s borders are ringed by rugged mountain ranges that serve as natural barriers to invasion. As enemy supply lines stretched into Iran’s interior, they would be vulnerable to interdiction by special stay-behind cells, which the IRGC has formed to harass enemy rear operations.

The Artesh, a mix of armored, infantry and mechanized units, would constitute Iran’s initial line of defense against invading forces. IRGC troops would support this effort, but they would also form the core of popular resistance, the bulk of which would be supplied by the Basij, the IRGC’s paramilitary volunteer force. The IRGC has developed a wartime mobilization plan for the Basij, called the Mo’in Plan, according to which Basij personnel would augment regular IRGC units in an invasion scenario.

IRGC and Basij exercises have featured simulated ambushes on enemy armored columns and helicopters. Much of this training has been conducted in an urban environment, suggesting that Iran intends to lure enemy forces into cities where they would be deprived of mobility and close air support. Iran has emphasized passive defense measures—techniques used to enhance the battlefield survivability —including camouflage, concealment and deception.

Naval doctrine
Tehran views maritime combat operations much the same way as it views land-based operations. Iranian naval doctrine is geared toward confronting a technologically superior adversary—often assumed to be the U.S. Navy—with a form of guerrilla warfare at sea. The bases of this doctrine were developed during the Tanker War (1984-1988), during which Iran used aircraft, speedboats, sea mines and land-based anti-ship cruise missiles to attack civilian tanker shipping in the Persian Gulf. After a U.S. frigate, the Samuel B. Roberts, was badly damaged by an Iranian mine, the U.S. Navy retaliated with Operation Praying Mantis (1988), destroying two Iranian oil platforms and sinking several Iranian surface vessels, including a corvette, a guided missile patrol craft and smaller gunboats.

After Operation Praying Mantis, Iran apparently determined that its maritime forces would not be as effective in a conventional force-on-force naval conflict with adversaries such as the United States. Incorporating lessons learned from the Tanker War, the IRGC Navy (IRGCN) and, to a lesser degree, the regular Navy (IRIN) developed an asymmetric strategy based on avoiding direct or sustained confrontations at sea. It instead relies on surprise attacks, ambushes and hit-and-run operations. Rather than inflict a decisive defeat, Iran’s maritime forces would seek to inflict enough causalities to raise the cost of victory to an unpalatable level.

Iran’s naval doctrine relies on a layered defense and massing of firepower, integrating multiple sea, land and air-based weapons simultaneously to overwhelm and confuse adversaries. As Iran’s naval doctrine has matured, the Iranians have acquired a large inventory of naval materiel suitable for asymmetric warfare. This includes naval mines, which can be covertly deployed using small boats or commercial vessels; land and sea-based anti-ship cruise missiles; small fast-attack craft, which can engage in swarming operations or suicide attacks; and submarines, including three Russian-supplied KILO-class diesel-electric submarines and numerous North Korean and domestically produced midget submarines, which can be used in the Gulf’s shallow areas.

Geography is a key element in Iranian naval planning. The Gulf’s confined space, which is less than 100 nautical miles wide in many places, limits the maneuverability of large surface assets, such as aircraft carriers. But it plays to the strengths of Iran’s naval forces, especially the IRGCN. The Gulf’s northern coast is dotted with rocky coves ideally suited for terrain masking and small boat operations. The Iranians have also fortified numerous islands in the Gulf that sit astride major shipping lanes.

Iran has developed a strategy to deny hostile navies access to the Persian Gulf that focuses on the strategically sensitive Strait of Hormuz. This strategic maritime chokepoint is only 29 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. Iranian officials have hinted that they might close the strait during a conflict, thereby temporarily cutting off as much as 30 percent of the world’s oil supply. But closing the strait would also cause tremendous economic damage for the Iranians, so they are not likely to undertake such a measure lightly. Given the strait’s importance, however, disrupting maritime traffic in it or even threatening to do so would be an effective tool for Iran to pressure neighbors and intimidate foes.

Air and air defense doctrine
Iranian air and air defense doctrine is focused on defending Iranian airspace and deterring aggression, although certain Iranian aircraft, such as the Su-24 fighter-bomber, can be used in an offensive capacity. Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and interceptor aircraft—most of which belong to the regular Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF)—both play an important role in this effort. Iran’s pilots are among the best trained in the region. They continue to use U.S. training manuals and employ U.S. tactics—a legacy of U.S.-Iranian military exchanges during the shah’s rule.

The IRIAF and the Air Defense Force, a separate command within the Artesh, face numerous challenges in defending Iranian air space. In this case, geography is a limiting factor, given the size of Iran and its mountainous terrain, which tend to produce gaps in radar coverage. For the IRIAF, aging and outdated equipment remains another problem. Many aircraft in the IRIAF’s inventory, including mainstays such as the F-14A and the F-4D, were supplied by the United States before the 1979 revolution. Some of these platforms have been kept running, either by cannibalizing parts from other aircraft or procuring spare parts on the black market, but IRIAF readiness levels are assumed to be low due to maintenance issues.

Iran has managed to acquire several batteries of the advanced Tor-M1 medium altitude SAM system from the Russians, but its air defense capabilities remain limited. As of mid-2010, efforts to buy the advanced long-range SA-300 SAM from the Russians had failed. Iran also lacks an integrated air defense network or the ability to engage air-to-air targets beyond visual range.

As a result of these challenges, Iran’s military has opted to use its limited air and air defense assets to protect high-value point targets, including Tehran and the country’s nuclear facilities. Iranian pilots have been trained to compensate for the limitations of their aircraft, avionics and weapons systems by using advanced tactics, such as terrain masking, to ambush enemy aircraft without being detected. Iran’s air and air defense forces have also attempted to augment the survivability of their units with passive defense measures, including asset dispersion and the use of forward operating bases, hardened shelters and hidden installations.

Ballistic missile doctrine
Iran’s ballistic missile program dates back to the middle of the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War. For Tehran, Iraq’s use of ballistic missiles against Iranian strategic targets highlighted a critical vulnerability in Iran’s defenses; it also demoralized Iran’s civilian population. To deter Iraq from attacking its population centers and strategic industries, Iran initiated its own ballistic missile program, beginning with the initial shipment of a limited number of SCUD-B missiles from Libya. By the end of the war, Iran had launched over 100 ballistic missiles at Iraqi targets in what would become known as the “War of the Cities.”

Iran’s strategic missile forces are now key to its deterrence strategy, in part because they are implicitly linked to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction programs. In 2010, Iran had the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. The IRGC, which has operational control over Iran’s missile forces, continues to extend the range and improve the performance of its ballistic missiles, several classes of which can range Israel and the Gulf countries. Their limited accuracy suggests they would not be useful in a conventional counter-force role. Instead, they are probably intended for strategic targets such as cities, oil production and export facilities, ports and water desalinization plants.

The future

Iranian military doctrine is primarily defensive in nature and based on deterring perceived adversaries. Iran is therefore unlikely to seek a direct, force-on-force confrontation with the United States.

However, there is ample room for miscommunication between Iranian and U.S. forces at the tactical and operational levels. The recent push to decentralize command and control within the IRGC could have unintended consequences in terms of escalation, especially in the Persian Gulf.

For the foreseeable future, lack of coordination between the IRGC and the Artesh is likely to remain a key weak point in terms of Iranian military planning, due to underlying structural issues and institutional rivalries.

Demonization of IDF – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Time and time again, foreign media outlets fall into anti-Israeli web of lies

Noga Gur Arieh

The part the media have in our lives is not something to underestimate. Each and every one of us relies on one of the various media forms to receive information on recent events.

The papers not only decide for us what we will talk about, but also what to think of the matter. This is called Media Framing. The exact same story will be presented in different ways in different news media. While appearing completely objective and neutral, the articles read or viewed always have an opinion hidden behind them. Even if it is not explicit or intentional, it can be quite noticeable. We must only ask ourselves several questions before reading: What is being presented? Which side is being presented first? Which last? What words does the editor use in the headline? “Pro-Palestinians” and “human rights activists” are descriptions used in papers for the same group of people. What words are being used in relation to the different quotes (“claims”/”says”)? On what aspects of the story does the news source focus? What does NOT appear?

When it comes to foreign news reports about the IDF, the message that is being framed is clear: The Israeli Defense Forces are a killing machine. News reports should be impartial, and that is how it is being perceived by some of the public, even when it is often nothing but biased anti-Israeli propaganda. Time and time again, foreign media outlets fall into the anti-Israeli web of lies, and instead of being messengers of truth, the guardians of democracy, they disguise opinions and biased points of view as solid facts.

Reports about IDF only show parts of the truth, conveniently matching the message they want to pass along. They present Israel as a vicious ruler, whose army takes illegal and inhumane action in the name of democracy. It is all an attempt to demonize the IDF, its soldiers, and the country it represents and for whom it fights. For example, last Friday, Reuters reported that IDF soldiers “threw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yanked a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.” The Diplomat, Marion Castaing, was quoted saying: “They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity. This is how international law is being respected here.”

The truth is that the foreign diplomats’ attempt to erect tents in the area was an illegal act, as the Supreme Court ruled building there was illegal. When people are disregarding a Supreme Court rule in a democratic state, any state, what should the state do? It must stop the illegal act. It doesn’t matter if the Supreme Court’s ruling was moral, or perceived to be right or wrong, it must be respected. Israel is not different from any other democratic state. Therefore, IDF soldiers arrived, but the activists teased them, violently objecting while throwing stones and striking the soldiers. Accordingly, the security personnel contained the violence with riot dispersal means, and that was enough to feed the foreign media’s need for targeting the IDF.

Pictures of the French diplomat lying on the ground with soldiers surrounding her, aiming a gun at her forehead, were published, and the public was fed a story of a strong army preventing humanitarian aid from reaching innocent Palestinians.

Reuters assumed that no one would ask any questions. They assumed that no one will care that the gun in the picture is not really aimed at the diplomat, or that she and her fellow foreign diplomats abused their diplomatic privileges, or that the IDF soldiers are 18 and 19 year old teenagers who are trained to defend and protect, not to offend.

As readers, we tend to accept news reports as solid, impartial truth, but we must remember that news is created by people with certain opinions. When it comes to Israel, the media enjoys feeding us lies or partial truths, and sells us the story of an aggressor and a victim. It is a story readers find easy to swallow, instead of the very complicated truth.

The IDF exists to protect us, the citizens of Israel, from the enemies surrounding us, who wish that there will be no Israel. Time and time again, they have publicly called for our death. Our high school graduates sacrifice three years of their lives for the army to prevent it from happening. IDF soldiers are trained to protect and defend, and to keep us safe, not to abuse innocents. If and when a soldier forgets his role in the IDF, he is being punished accordingly, for the IDF has zero tolerance for such actions.

What we need to do is always remember to ask the right questions, and reveal the real story behind the headlines. But we mustn’t stop there! We have to share the truth with others, so that those who haven’t asked themselves the right questions will know the whole truth.

Fundamentally Freund: Islamic terror, murder and mayhem | JPost | Israel News.

Clearly, Cameron and others like him prefer to repeat the mantra that terrorism has nothing to do with religion in order not to offend Muslims. But what they fail to realize is that by doing so, they insult and obfuscate the truth.

EU’s Ashton says she supports keeping pressure on Iran during nuclear talks | JPost | Israel News.

EU foreign affairs chief says pressure is what brought Tehran to the table, but cautions that US should consider how to create best atmosphere for October 15 talks when considering passage of new sanctions.

Netanyahu holds his tongue, and will have to hold his fire | The Times of Israel.

The prime minister is certain there is no diplomatic route, just a blind ally, but he was only too aware there was no convincing the president

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama meeting with other officials at the White House Monday. (photo credit: Israeli Embassy in US via Twitter)

You’re wrong, I’ll be vindicated, but I know I can’t stop you trying.

Stranger things have happened, I’m not a fool, and you’re damn right you can’t stop me trying.

That was the blunt, unspoken essence of the gracious display staged by President Barack Obama and his guest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, showcasing a mature but asymmetrical partnership — between a superpower and, however unpalatable for Israel, a supplicant.

The prime minister “is always candid,” Obama vouchsafed just a little wryly at the tail end of his remarks. And one can imagine that Netanyahu was candid indeed behind closed doors, marshaling compelling argument, and evidence, to underpin his public contention that Iran “is committed to Israel’s destruction.”

But ultimately, Netanyahu knew all along that he and Obama would have to agree to disagree, that the president would not be deterred from putting the diplomatic route to the “test,” and that attempting a repeat of his May 2011 Oval Office lecture style (when he told Obama bitterly that Israel’s pre-1967 lines are indefensible) could only be counter-productive. He is certain there is no diplomatic route, only a blind ally, but he held his tongue.

And so Obama — much more familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking, and with Israel’s nuances, after his visit in March — could afford to be magnanimous.

Thus the president promised that economic pressure on Iran would not be lifted lightly, assuring his visitor airily that “anything that we do will require the highest standards of verification in order for us to provide the sort of sanctions relief that I think they are looking for.” And importantly for Netanyahu, he declared that “we take no options off the table, including military options, in terms of making sure that we do not have nuclear weapons in Iran” — a threat he had chosen not to issue in the specific Iranian context during his address to the United Nations General Assembly last Tuesday.

There are those who might see in Obama’s restating of the military option, and his apparent tough line on sanctions, a victory of sorts for Netanyahu. But in truth, anything less would have been a stinging public rejection of Israel’s assessments and orientation.

Netanyahu has no time for Hasan Rouhani’s we’re-no-threat-to-anyone platitudes. He is certain that Tehran is fooling the international community, and that the regime is duplicitously seeking to attain and retain nuclear breakout status — with the means and the material to make a dash for the bomb when it so chooses. That must not be allowed to happen, and so for Netanyahu, as he put it on Monday, “the bottom line, again, is that Iran fully dismantles its military nuclear program.”

Yet for Obama, now at least, there is a modicum of doubt, and a readiness to consider that Iran might just be changing for real. Or a readiness, at least, to play out the diplomatic track.

In what he considers the certain event that Iran proves obdurate and unforthcoming, Netanyahu would like the US to intervene militarily, or failing that to back Israel in doing so.

But the Israeli option has plainly receded for the time being, since the prime minister can hardly contemplate military action so long as the president is engaging with Iran and giving peace a chance. If, as Netanyahu has always contended, the Iranians are buying time, he has little choice but to hold his fire and wait things out. In eschewing the bitter public lecture style on Monday, Netanyahu seemed to be acknowledging as much.