WarSclerotic

France’s Hollande assures Netanyahu that Paris will maintain pressure on Iran | JPost | Israel News.

French leader phones PM, says Rouhani will have to show actions.

Netanyahu’s show of muscle comes too late to deter a nuclear Tehran.

( Debka does the “doom and gloomers” proud.  Can’t wait till they get it in their face… – JW )

Israeli Air Force in long-range drill

Israeli Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighter squadrons this week carried out exercises testing their capability to conduct missions at long ranges from base, the Israeli military said Thursday, Oct. 10. The drills included air-to-air refueling and dogfights against foreign combat planes. They were conducted together with Hellenic Air Force aircraft and naval units over the western Peloponnese and the Myrtoon Pelagos of Greece, shortly before the Six Power talks begin in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli commentators noted that the drill broadcast a message to Tehran that Israel’s military option for bombing its nuclear program was alive and kicking. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bombarded European TV media with interviews warning their leaders that the Iranians were conning the world while continuing to develop a nuclear weapon capability. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was acting as though he believed he still holds three spanners for throwing into Iran’s nuclear program:

1. The Israeli military as embodied in its air force;

2. European leaders, who are dismayed by President Barack Obama’s precipitate rapprochement with Tehran. Addressing them, Netanyahu warned: “Better no deal than a bad deal.”
3. The US Congress, on which he counts to block future presidential applications to approve the lifting in stages of sanctions against Iran, simply by withholding approval of his agreements with Tehran.
However, the truth which every Middle East and Western leaders knows by now, is that the battle against a nuclear Iran is lost.

President Obama has wound up his secret negotiations with Iran and instructed US delegates to put on the table of the Geneva negotiations on Oct. 15 the understandings or deals he has reached with Iranian leaders.

Those understandings are about to be endorsed by the P5+1 (the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany) for implementation in stages. They will leave Iran with the capacity, reduced but intact, to continue to enrich uranium along with its ability to use clandestine sites to house the nuclear weapons they are able to produce.
Netanyahu may keep on calling this a bad deal. But after all, it took shape on his watch as prime minister. And after Barack Obama became president in 2009, Israel failed to stall Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb – not in Parchin, Arak and Fordo – but in the White House.

The prime minister staged the long-distance air force drill more for domestic consumption than for use as a deterrent to impress Tehran. The Iranians have succeeded far too well in their diplomatic maneuvers to take much notice. They are sure the Netanyahu government will tire of its campaign, end up aligning once again with the Obama administration and swallow its deals with President Vladimir Putin on Iran, just as it did for Syria’s chemical weapons.

Analysis: Egypt’s message to Obama – Keep your aid | JPost | Israel News.

After US cuts military aid to Cairo, Washington faces possibility that Egypt will turn to a rival country for aid: “Any inch Obama loses, another power will gain and we will not mind,” Egyptian official says.

NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress – First Read.

The Capital is mirrored in the Capital Reflecting Pool on Capitol Hill in Washington early Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013.

By Domenico Montanaro, Deputy Political Editor, NBC News

Throw the bums out.

That’s the message 60 percent of Americans are sending to Washington in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, saying if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would. Just 35 percent say they would not.

According to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, the shutdown has been a political disaster. One in three say the shutdown has directly impacted their lives, and 65 percent say the shutdown is doing quite a bit of harm to the economy. NBC’s Chuck Todd reports.

The 60 percent figure is the highest-ever in that question recorded in the poll, registered in the wake of the government shutdown and threat of the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. If the nation’s debt limit is not increased one week from now, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warns that the entire global economy could be in peril.

“We continue to use this number as a way to sort of understand how much revulsion there is,” said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the poll with Republican Bill McInturff. “We now have a new high-water mark.”

Read the full poll here (.pdf)

The numbers reflect a broader trend over the last few years. Americans have traditionally said that while they might not like Congress, they usually like their own representatives. But that sentiment appears to have shifted.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks in the White House driveway following a meeting Thursday with President Barack Obama.

The throw-them-all-out attitude has slowly taken hold over the last three years, coinciding with two things – the rise of the Tea Party caucus in the House and the debt ceiling fight of 2011.

In October 2010, a majority of Americans – 50 percent to 47 percent – said they would not fire all congressional members. But by August 2011, 54 percent said they would toss every lawmaker from office; in January 2012, 56 percent said that; and just three months ago, in July, it was 57 percent.

Frustration was evident among poll respondents across the ideological spectrum.

“You look at 800,000 people being out of work merely because Congress can’t come to an agreement to do their job, which we sent them there to do,” said a respondent from Mississippi, a strong Democrat. “I am prayerful for a revolution.”

The sentiment isn’t limited to Democrats. One Ohio woman, who considers herself a strong Republican, said her husband is a federal worker and they are worried about paying the bills.

“We will not get a paycheck,” she said. “It is federal pay and mortgage is due. Who is going to pay that — Obama or Congress who is still getting paid?”

Hart points out that the seeds are there to give rise to independent or third-party candidates.

According to Hart, “Somewhere, someone’s going to pick up and run with the ‘throw them all out’” banner.

The number of Americans who say they want to fire everyone is fairly consistent among most groups – at around 60 percent – but it spikes among rural voters (70 percent), white independents (70 percent) and those in Republican-held congressional districts (67 percent). Just 52 percent of respondents in Democratic-held districts would vote to fire every lawmaker on Capitol Hill.

In another sign of dissatisfaction with the state of politics, 47 percent of Americans said they do not strongly identify with either party.

The numbers in this poll also reflect a broader anger and pessimism among Americans, especially when it comes to the economy.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sat down with Tina Brown at The Daily Beat Annual Hero Summit to talk debt ceiling, shut down, and what’s going on in Washington D.C.

A record-low 14 percent think the country is headed in the right direction, down from 30 percent last month. That’s the biggest single-month drop in the poll since the shutdown of 1990. And a whopping 78 percent think the country is on the wrong track. Just 17 percent think the economy will improve in the next year, while 42 percent think it will worsen.

Americans’ confidence in the economy has nose-dived, they say, because of President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans’ negotiations – or lack thereof – on the budget. Almost two in three – 63 percent – say it makes them less confident that the economy will get better.

“What these numbers tell us is that the already-shaken public – this kicked the stool out from under them,” Bill McInturff said. “We’re seeing numbers that are associated with historic lows in public confidence.”

Almost two-thirds – 65 percent – also say the government shutdown is having quite a bit or a great deal of harm on the U.S. economy.

“That linkage between these actions in Washington and economic confidence and what that means for trying to stabilize our economy, I think at a big-picture level [shows] how destabilizing” the standoff has been for the economy.

Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who helped conduct the poll with Hart, added that Americans are paying attention to this fight and want it resolved before the debt ceiling deadline of Oct. 17.

“This isn’t the calm before the storm,” Yang said. “This is the storm before the storm.”

Israel Hayom | A message to Iran? IAF conducts long-range exercise.

Israel Hayom | Obama’s grand civilizational bargain.

Ignoring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for complete dismantlement of Iranian uranium enrichment facilities and no let-up on sanctions, high-ranking European diplomats who were here in Israel this week indicated that they will settle for far less than that.

Israel Hayom | EXCLUSIVE: Peering into The Pit.

The first thing that gets you is the vertigo — the inability to navigate the space around you. From the moment you pass through the system of electronic gates and descend down the wide stairs, you begin losing your sense of direction. Another small turn, either to the left or to the right, and that’s it. You don’t know where you are. Without guidance, you are lost. You have no idea which way is north, where the exit could possibly be or what to do in the event of a real emergency.

The truth is that in the event of a real emergency, “The Pit,” at the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv known as the Kirya — dozens of meters underground — is probably the safest place you can be. An underground city through which the army passes as a matter of routine. It is by way of the Kirya that the IDF manages emergencies: layers upon layers of cast concrete, countless bare-walled corridors lined with miles and miles of cables — the only line of communication with the outside world. This is probably the only place left on earth where there are no mobile phones — because they are prohibited for fear of documentation or cyberattack but also because of the simple fact that there is absolutely no reception. There are only land lines in The Pit.

This complete isolation from the outside world is not just for guests. On the second day of the November 2012 campaign in Gaza — Operation Pillar of Defense — at dusk, the top echelon of the IDF convened in The Pit for yet another operations consultation on the ongoing fighting. The chief of staff sat in the center, surrounded by the heads of the general staff departments. On video phones were the GOCs of the various arenas speaking from their respective headquarters. Other screens displayed a string of different aerial photos from the battleground in Gaza, including footage of launches and assaults. Everything was strictly routine. That is precisely what The Pit was designed to create — a bubble of fighting without any external or distracting noise. That is why none of the participants in the discussion could hear the sirens that wailed at the time over the Tel Aviv skies, paralyzing the city’s inhabitants, warning of an incoming rocket. It was only after a few seconds that the GOC Homefront Command informed the top military echelon by conference call that the sirens had been activated in Tel Aviv.

At that moment, the people entrusted with our security were biting their nails along with the rest of us, waiting anxiously to see what happens, without any ability to change the outcome. Moments later, the IDF spokesman emerged from The Pit into the open air and reported that “there was no strike on the ground.” This incident prompted a decision to expedite the deployment of another Iron Dome missile defense system battery. The battery was hastily placed at the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Shortly down the line it even intercepted a few projectiles.

Not everyone approved of the rare and exclusive glimpse, afforded only to Israel Hayom, into the beating heart of the IDF — the operational center of the military. The debate was harsh, replete with principles. The gatekeepers argued that this was a fortress that could not be allowed to fall; that it was essential for the operational mechanism to remain obscured from the media. There were also those who were in favor of the exposure, but even they had to admit that there was logic to the opponents’ argument. Anything that gets out cannot be put back in. Ultimately it was decided to grant us access, and, for the first time, let us take photos, but under strict supervision. We agreed to all the conditions, knowing that they would allow us to give the world, for the first time, an inside look at the place where things really happen.

But we also did it for the history. After all, it was in these corridors that countless fates were sealed. Almost all the transcripts that were recently released for publication from the Yom Kippur War 40 years ago represented events that took place here, in these conference rooms, deep underground in The Pit. The surprise attack of October 6, 1973 and the consequent fiasco, which ultimately turned into an impressive military victory — all these were managed from here. And even before then, the victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the War of Attrition that followed it, and two years later the First Lebanon War, and then the Second Lebanon War, not to mention the thousands of operations launched in between.

The sparse photos on the odd wall do not reveal the intensity of the drama that took place here since The Pit was first used in 1956 — not by a long shot. Even people who served here in The Pit have trouble recounting the events, and not just because of the strict compartmentalization of information that passes through here. The intensity, in such a chaotic country as ours, makes it so events don’t have individual, pinpoint significance — they are plots on an endless sequence that appears completely natural. The fluorescent lights are never turned off in The Pit.

Focus on the big picture

The routine in the Operations Directorate, as much as you can call it a routine, can be crudely divided into two parts: Half the time, maybe slightly less than half, the focus is on the everyday work — routine security measures, training, operational models etc. — and the other half of the time is dedicated to preparing for operations. Every war plan executed by Israeli forces is designed and put together here. This is where they take shape, get a name, and then get sent down the line to the commanders and to the relevant branches, where the content is poured into them.

“The Operations Directorate is not interested in tactical work,” the outgoing head of the department, Colonel B., explains. “It is less important to us which air force squadron carries out a mission or which armored corps division. We define the targets, the ‘what’ and the individual branches decide on the ‘how.'”

In practice, what Colonel B. is saying is nearly impossible. In a country where every tactical move becomes strategy instantly, the tendency is to intervene, to influence. The officers of the Operations Directorate all came from command posts, and will return to the field in the future. They get phone calls, pressure and requests from the people in the field. And that is just the least of their problems. The bigger problem arises during emergencies: Modern technology makes almost anything possible; from The Pit one can look through every camera, observe every bomb and supervise almost every soldier. The temptation is to run the battle from The Pit, instead of the field commanders. To prevent this from happening, a separate conference room was built for the chief of staff. It is situated adjacent to the central war room, where emergency situations are overseen, but it is also separated from it so that the chief of staff can focus on the bigger picture without being sucked into the pinpoint clashes.

This room, the chief of staff’s room, contains an elliptical desk and several screens mounted on the walls. A glass partition separates it from the war room, where the top brass of the IDF sit in a half crescent: The chief of staff in the center, flanked by the relevant officers on either side and behind him. They are all facing screens displaying the relevant video conference and the operational footage. On the other side of the corridor lies the chief of staff’s office, adjoined by a small break room. On that side there are also the offices of the other high ranking general staff officials, the prime minister, the defense minister and another conference room for meetings of the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet. Everything is extremely minimalistic, mainly due to crowding, but also for the sake of efficiency. There is no ceremony in The Pit. There is no showing off; no guests; no festive receptions. People come here only to work and to oversee military operations or wars.

During routine peacetime, when the high ranking officials and dignitaries are not there, The Pit is occupied by the Operations Directorate. Their job, in its most distilled form, is to serve as the operations headquarters for the general staff — the arm with which the general staff activates the entire army. This is where the general staff gets its information on things that have already occurred, and plans for what will occur in the future. It could be as minor as providing assistance to a foreign government when needed, or an operation to free a captive Israeli soldier, like Gilad Schalit. If the IDF is involved in something in any way, it is from The Pit.

There are, of course, exceptions. They occur mainly in the gray areas, which the IDF has recently labeled with the code name BBW, or battle between wars (or the more pleasant name that has been going around the Kirya lately, “presentations between operations”). This gray area presumably includes all the operations for which Israel does not explicitly claim responsibility, but are attributed to Israel by the foreign media. Such operations are more classified, and the number of people in the know is far more limited. A covert operation in a faraway country may not elicit an immediate response, but any action in neighboring countries always has the potential to become volatile. In such a case, the mechanism has to be prepared and ready for action, sometimes without any warning. Even when it is impossible to call up a draft in advance or to prepare the homefront, so as to avoid causing panic or exposing secrets, someone has to be ready with a contingency plan, in case the need comes up.

Such contingency planning, in general terms, exists for every front and every arena. When the prime minister or the defense minister tells the Israeli public in recent years that Israel is capable of striking Iran, that means that someone has made an operational plan for such a strike with more than just an attack plan — which jets drop which bombs on which sites — but also accompanying plans in the realms of intelligence, oversight, teleprocessing, and, of course, the homefront. If there is a plan for an attack on Iran, there is certainly a plan for a possible confrontation on the northern front or in Gaza. The plans change all the time, obviously, as various intelligence is gathered or the threats and targets shift, but these plans have to exist to prevent the opening of a dangerous void, like the one that emerged during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. In 2006, the IDF went to war without a clear cut plan and found itself chasing its own tail in southern Lebanon without a clear objective or purpose.

That war was replete with failures, most of them resulting from faulty management and bad decision making in the higher echelons. But it exposed two more prominent issues, having to do directly with the Operations Directorate: The IDF entered a war without being trained or ready for the missions at hand (which were not clearly defined anyway); and the war itself, at least the military aspects of the war, was not overseen from The Pit.

Then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz held consultations at his above-ground office and didn’t stick to a “war clock,” which dictates a logical and continuous sequence of situational assessments, meetings, approval of missions and operations, and everything over again from the beginning. Such a timetable is designed to force the entire mechanism into an organized pattern. Ostensibly, this is just semantics, but in practice, military investigations have proven that there was a fundamental problem with the management of this war. When you hold consultations in The Pit with a permanent order of actions and the same permanent individuals you mold the process into a having a clear shape and allow for continuous self-monitoring. Halutz, who chose to consult with changing teams of people, in meetings that frequently changed format, and didn’t convene a single meaningful meeting in The Pit (which didn’t even serve as a war room), sabotaged the IDF and, in the process, himself as well.

The Operations Directorate’s files

As a lesson of the Second Lebanon War, the IDF went back to basics. The Operations Directorate was bolstered; The Pit was made into a war outpost, and the military resumed training. Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who replaced Halutz as the chief of staff, raised the concept of going back to basics to an almost godly level, to the point that everyone around him felt that he had gone too far: he was spending too much money, investing too many resources and too much energy in training and equipment. Meanwhile, no one knew for sure whether any of it would ever actually be useful. This was especially true for land operational structures, which are growing less and less central in any future battle scenario. If Ashkenazi had invested less in training and more in amassing means, the IDF may have preempted the recent budget cuts and gone through the same process it is going through now, but during a time of budgetary freedom.

But alongside the criticism, there is also the fact that the IDF entered an organized process of real preparation for the next war. In Operation Cast Lead (the Dec. 2008 campaign in Gaza), led by Ashkenazi, the IDF was far more prepared. In Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, there was another leap forward, in all aspects of the fighting. It began with the level of preparedness, which started with a clear operational plan that was handed down to the commands and the various branches, and continued through with guidance as to the need for the operation. One example was the systematic, painstaking documentation of rocket launching sites, and the location of Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders. This information was diligently collected and documented on maps, which were then pulled up when needed and used in real time.

Immediately after the IDF assassinated Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari in November 2012, the air force launched a campaign to destroy rocket launchers and munitions, and started deploying forces in the south, in accordance with another plan pulled directly from the Operations Directorate files.

“The Second Lebanon War is before our eyes every day,” says Colonel B. “That war, with all its failures, has an existential presence in the military. It is present in every operations plan, in every briefing, even in budget meetings.”

And still, the lessons of that war are most tangible in The Pit — a place whose entire essence is the rapid shift from routine to emergency in no time. To the outside observer it may seem inconsequential — what connection could there possibly be between a place and an essence? — but anyone who lives this on a daily basis understands that it is critical. The organized conduct, with a continuous process of planning for the days ahead coupled with regular situation assessments, and all the while having the ability to draw an accurate, real time picture from any arena and to manage it, all could very well determine the end result.

There are about 300 to 400 officers and soldiers serving in The Pit who are responsible for this process. During times of emergency, they are joined by a few hundred reservists, some of them much older. A senior officer who spent a significant amount of time in The Pit in recent years recounts that this was one of the things that he found most surprising. “You see people in their sixties down there, sometimes older, who could have been exempted from reserves duty years ago, but they continue to come and serve in the reserves, overseeing the fighting. As cynical and cocky that we are, convinced that we know everything, we learned that there is no substitute for their experience.”

Part of this experience is in synchronizing the mechanism. This is a civilian practice that was adopted by the military and is carried out regularly at The Pit. The synchronization is required not only in the event of a specific operation — between the fighters and auxiliary forces in the intelligence, logistics, sometimes the Mossad, the Shin Bet security agency and the Foreign Ministry — but also on a wider scale, between arenas. When the IDF fights in Gaza, there is always the fear that the northern arena will ignite as well. When a rocket is fired at Eilat, there is a fear that Lebanese copycats could emerge in the north.

This process of transferring information upward, to the general staff, and sideways to the branches and commands, is done here, under the supervision of the arena commanders. They are all senior officers and combat fighters who have two jobs: to represent the chief of staff in the commands and to represent the commands in the Operations Directorate. In this way, the IDF ensures that the general staff directives make it all the way to the field, that they are fully understood and implemented in both planning and active operations, but also that the experience amassed by the command officers, who naturally have a better understanding of their arenas and are the ones who have to fight in it, make it to the Kirya and meet with the general staff.

Naturally, some arena commanders’ authority spans over the commands (southern command, northern command, central command and homefront command) while additional arena commanders are responsible for routine security measures and the reserves and all the activity known in the IDF as “combined” — the air force, navy, and all the special units (including the Mossad and the Shin Bet).

“Our jobs span the core to the knife,” says Colonel B. “We can wake up one morning with a possible routine security threat on the Gaza border and go to sleep that night with a potential war on our hands. Endless flexibility is required, proficiency in the field, and most importantly, the ability to be ready quickly — to go from zero to a hundred in seconds.”

In order to ensure that the system is running smoothly, the Operations Directorate holds frequent drills. The understanding that the processes that happen here will determine the success or failure of the next operation or war, and every action in between, calls for a well-oiled, skilled mechanism. All the officers here come from the operational core of the IDF: The arena commanders are combat soldiers who commanded over battalions. The department heads were brigade commanders, the head of the Operations Directorate was a division commander. Most of them have a well-defined career trajectory, knowing where they will be posted next, taking with them the experience they accumulate in The Pit.

“When you are a regiment commander, you don’t always understand how everything, even the smallest thing like a safety violation or contact with a fence, makes its way immediately to the chief of staff,” says the head of the Operations Directorate. “Here, you learn that it is all part and parcel of a well-oiled mechanism that tries to keep chance occurrences to an absolute minimum.”

And still, unplanned events are a part of life. Sometimes, it takes even the Operations Directorate time to prepare properly. Such was the case, for example, in the terror attack on route 12 in Aug. 2011 (a series of cross-border attacks in southern Israel near the Egyptian border), in which seven Israeli soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded. The IDF took a relatively long time to understand and confront the situation. Part of that stemmed from Israel’s relations with Egypt and some of it from the distance and topographical conditions and the absence of any actual barrier at the border. Since then, the arena has changed completely. The Kirya has also drawn the necessary conclusions, especially in regard to the handling of the delicate meeting point between the military and civilians in a region that can turn into a battlefield in an instant.

This meeting point is of great interest to the IDF in recent years. The endurance of the homefront is a central component of any operational plan, which is why a special place is reserved for the homefront command in The Pit, alongside the combat commands.

“Once we thought about everything in terms of front and rear, but today we know that there is only one front,” says Colonel B. “The homefront’s and the economy’s ability to remain continuous is critical to allow us to fight, and the chief of staff must take this into account in every decision he makes. That is why the reserves draft is done here, in the Operations Directorate. Not just to ensure that it is closely monitored, but also because it is usually done under fire, and with quite the pandemonium going on. There has to be a body that ensures that things are done in an orderly fashion.”

A scenario that begins like a terror attack

The Operations Directorate conducts a series of training exercises that stretch over the course of the entire year. These exercises focus on scenarios. Recently, the navy was drilled (and the rest of the military as well, as a result, with an emphasis on intelligence and the air force). The scenario began as a seeming terror attack on civilians. A ship was kidnapped by a terror organization in response to disagreements over allocation of natural resources in the Mediterranean Sea. The main challenge for the units being drilled was to identify the ship, to reach it as quickly as possible and to prevent it from being taken into enemy waters.

To make the drill more realistic, the IDF rented a private boat that had just returned from a trip abroad, “commandeered” it, and only then summoned the navy forces, accompanied by the entire IDF. It took the navy some time to locate the ship, then to figure out who the kidnappers were, what they wanted and even what language they were speaking. In today’s terror world, with the endless variety of global jihad organizations, the IDF may have to negotiate in a language that very few Israelis, if any, actually speak.

The drill spanned four days, and ended with navy commandos taking control of the ship and extracting the hostages. In the meantime, Israel was attacked by Hezbollah, and retaliated. There were many casualties, and for a moment there was a real concern (how a drill can imitate the real world sometimes) that things could devolve into all-out war.

During those moments of stress and adrenaline, Colonel B. says, the only thing that the people in The Pit dream about is a tiny window and a drop of oxygen. Indeed, in their world, between alcoves and tunnels, with recycled, compressed air, chronic fatigue and nosebleeds are common symptoms. There is no contact with the outside world, precisely because of the need to isolate the facility from the world. Here, too, there is a paradox: the very location of The Pit (and the entire Kirya headquarters for that matter), puts Israelis in harm’s way. In any future conflict, the enemy would likely target the Kirya in efforts to undermine the IDF’s capabilities. The assessment of a future conflict involving Tel Aviv talks about hundreds of rockets and missiles that will obviously hit not just military facilities but also surrounding civilian sites.

The best solution would be to remove the Kirya from Tel Aviv. This would also give rise to a significant real-estate frenzy (the Kirya is located in a prime real estate location). In this day and age, there is really no relevance to where the headquarters are situated. The general staff could do its job just as well in Jerusalem or Modiin. But as of now there are no such relocation plans. The next war will be overseen from the same old Pit, which was last renovated more than 30 years ago and looks like the polar opposite of the fancy office buildings that were recently built in the Kirya. This is a silent testament to everything that the IDF truly wants to represent: professionalism, efficiency, simplicity.

Israel Hayom | Iran’s first ‘charm offensive’.

Dore Gold

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s recent U.N. visit was not the first time a top Iranian official succeeded in hoodwinking the West and especially its leading newspapers and media outlets.

Just before he arrived in Tehran in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded at waging a successful deception campaign from his place of exile at Neauphle-le-Chateau, just outside of Paris. He completely hid his true intentions of what he planned to do once he would become the ruler of Iran.

A committee of advisers recommended to him that he refrain from rhetorically attacking the US or saying anything against women’s rights. He sent his personal representative, Ibrahim Yazdi, who had American citizenship and would later become his foreign minister, to meet U.S. officials in Washington as well as many influential academics. This was the first Iranian charm offensive.

The results of this Iranian effort were impressive. There was the embarrassing case of Professor Richard Falk from Princeton University who wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, entitled “Trusting Khomeini.” He wrote that the people around Khomeini were “moderate” and even “progressive.” He even added that they had “a notable concern for human rights.” Years later it should be noted, Falk adopted increasing extremist positions, even accusing the U.S. government in 2004 of complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Nonetheless, in 2008 the U.N. appointed him as a “special rapporteur” on Palestinian human rights. In 1979, his article was typical of many elite attitudes about Khomeini in academia and in the U.S. government.

In fact, among American experts there was little knowledge about Khomeini’s background, except for information transmitted by his supporters. The one exception to this trend was the case of Professor Bernard Lewis, who served in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army in World War II and then became one of the most influential Middle Eastern historians at British and American universities. One of his assistants found a written book by Khomeini in the Princeton University Library that contained the Arabic lectures he had delivered in 1970, while he lived in exile in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in Iraq. The book was entitled “Islamic Government.”

The CIA, as well as other parts of the American government, apparently did not even know the book existed. But Lewis studied the text, revealing Khomeini’s extremist positions, which he shared with the Washington Post. These included calls for “armed jihad” and the need to “take the lead over other Muslims.” The book was plainly anti-Semitic, suggesting that the Jews were seeking “to rule over the entire planet.”

There were American academics who were cultivated by Khomeini’s people and were prepared to suggest that Lewis had quoted Khomeini “out of context.” Henry Precht, who was head of the Iran desk at the U.S. State Department, went even further and rejected Lewis’ conclusions. He even said that the book that Lewis found was a forgery. He criticized the Washington Post for publishing excerpts of the book. Precht, who had met with Khomeini’s envoy, argued in internal meetings in Washington that after the fall of the Shah, Khomeini’s government would leave Iran more stable.

Years later, Khomeini admitted that he employed traditional techniques of deception, specifically referring to the tactic of khod’eh, which according to his biographer, Amir Taheri, meant “tricking one’s enemy into a misjudgment of one’s true position.” Thus in 1978, Khomeini told the British daily, The Guardian, that he was not interested in having “the power of government in my hand.” Many analysts thought he would retire to the Shiite seminaries of Qom, after he returned to Iran. William Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador to Tehran, wrote a cable in 1978, in which he envisioned Khomeini taking up a “Gandhi-like role.”

Among his British counterparts, there were those who anticipated “enlightened Islamic rule.” The French intelligence services were somewhat better since they carefully monitored the speeches that Khomeini recorded and distributed on cassette tapes, but their recommendations were ignored by the political eschelons in Paris under the leadership of French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. In short, Khomeini’s deception campaign worked.

What followed after Khomeini reached Iran was the exact opposite of what Western experts had predicted. Revolutionary courts were set up which arbitrarily arrested and executed anyone suspected of opposing the new government. A bloodbath followed as hundreds were sent before firing squads. Khomeini’s regime was brutal. Under international pressure, the Shah had ordered a halt to the use of torture in Iranian prisons; Khomeini reintroduced torture when he came to power. He did not retire to Qom, but rather promulgated a religious doctrine, known as velayat-e faqih (the rule of the head jurisprudent) that made him the supreme source of authority in Iran.

In foreign affairs, Khomeini’s constitution called for “the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad.” A month after declaring Iran as an Islamic Republic in 1979 he established the Revolutionary Guards, which not only protected the regime from internal threats but also took part in the export of the Islamic Revolution, by undermining the internal stability of Arab states. U.S. allies in the Arab world were quickly targeted. For example, Shiite uprisings in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia in 1979 and 1980 were backed by Tehran.

At this time, the Iranians promoted popular Shiite revolts in Bahrain and Iraq as well. They deployed an expeditionary unit of Revolutionary Guards in eastern Lebanon which gave orders to Hizbullah after its foundation in the early 1980s. This included the attacks in 1983 on the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut and the headquarters of the French peacekeeping forces there. Years later, Iraqi Shiite politicians disclosed that the Revolutionary Guards also directed an organization known as al-Dawa to undertake attacks in 1983 against the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.

While Iran was invaded by Iraq in 1980, it recovered all its lost territories by 1982 and yet Khomeini continued his war against Saddam Hussein for another six years. The Iranians even expanded their war with Iraq to the waters of the Persian Gulf where it attacked the tankers used by Arab states to export their oil. By the early 1990s, Revolutionary Guards were also stationed in Sudan, where Iran sought facilities for a future naval presence in the Red Sea. Today, using the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, which was specifically formed for these foreign operations, its commander General Qassem Sulaimani is active in advancing Iranian hegemony across the Middle East, by intervening in local wars with weapons, advisers, and even military forces.

It now appears that the community of Middle Eastern experts — both inside and outside of government — had absolutely no idea back in 1979 what the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini would mean for the future of the Middle East. They were charmed into believing that Iran, after the fall of the Shah, would adopt a moderate course. The consequences of their miscalculation were disastrous for the Iranian people and the world.

The first Iranian charm offensive required two parties to succeed: Iranians who skillfully employed a campaign of deception and gullible commentators in the West, who took at face value what the Iranians said. It can only be hoped that this time, with Rouhani’s charm offensive, this dangerous combination will not reappear, leading the U.S. and its allies to repeat the errors in interpreting Iranian intentions, that were committed in the earliest days of Khomeini’s rule.

Israel Hayom | Iran? Not in our neighborhood.

Israel Hayom | The two-way US-Israel street.

( “All this is true, but after all they’re Jews… F-ck ’em!” – JW  )

Yoram Ettinger

In 1948, U.S.-Israel relations were a classic case of a one-way-street: the U.S. gave and Israel received, economically and militarily.

In 1952, the U.S. administration rejected a proposal by General Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to elevate Israel to a role of a major ally, just like Iran and Turkey.

In 2013, notwithstanding Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s rhetoric, Iran is the fiercest enemy of the U.S.. Erdogan’s Turkey follows a Muslim Brotherhood, rather than a NATO-oriented policy. Egypt is an increasingly unstable, unpredictable and anti-U.S. country. And, the long-term stability, reliability and capabilities of Saudi Arabia — as an ally of the U.S. — have been severely eroded by the ongoing Arab Tsunami.

In 2013, the combusting Arab street highlights Israel as the only stable, reliable, predictable, capable, democratic and unconditional Middle Eastern ally of the U.S.

In 2013, Israel is the only ally of the U.S. that is able and willing to extend the shortened strategic hand of the U.S., while the threats to the U.S. are mounting and Russian and Chinese penetration of the Middle East is intensifying.

In 2013, U.S.-Israel relations constitute a classic case of a two-way street, win-win, mutually beneficial ties, with Israel increasingly contributing to vital U.S. economic and defense interests; expanding U.S. employment, research and development and export base; serving as the most battle-tested laboratory of U.S. defense industries; enhancing U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering capabilities; and upgrading U.S. battle tactic and homeland security.

For example, some 300 U.S. high tech giants operate in Israel — a pipeline of commercial, defense and homeland security technologies to the U.S. — leveraging Israel’s brain power and enhancing their global competitiveness. Fifty-five percent of Hewlett Packard’s recent software developments originated in its seven research and development centers in Israel. In August, 2013, IBM acquired its 13th Israeli company and its research and development centers in Israel registered 463 patents during 2006-2010, followed by SandDisk — 394, Intel — 321, Microsoft, HP, Apple, General Electric, etc. Most of Intel’s laptop microprocessors, and many of Google’s applications, originated in Israel. Marvell’s largest design center outside the U.S. is in Israel.

Israel serves as the most battle-tested laboratory for the U.S. defense industry, employing hundreds of U.S. military systems (such as the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter planes), sharing with U.S. manufacturers lessons learned during battle, facilitating thousands of modifications and upgrades, thus dramatically enhancing the U.S. global competitive edge, expanding U.S. research and development, employment and exports, yielding a mega-billion dollar bonanza to the U.S. defense industry, while advancing the national security of Israel and the U.S..

Israel’s battle tactics against Palestinian terrorism are at the core of counterterrorism training at Fort Leavenworth, the intellectual center of the U.S. Army. U.S. Marines and Special Operations units are trained in Israel on their way to Afghanistan. They benefit from Israel’s unique experience in urban warfare and in tackling suicide bombers, car bombs and improvised explosive devices. U.S. bomb squads travel to Israel, improving their explosives neutralizing capabilities. The U.S. and Israeli air forces hold annual joint exercises, aimed at enhancing cooperation and leveraging Israel’s intense battle experience. After the 1967 War, the U.S. sent 15 senior military personnel to study Israeli lessons from the war and to implement them in the U.S. military. After the 1973 War, the U.S. sent 50 top commanders, who produced five volumes of lessons which were implemented by the U.S. military.

Israel has been a strategic beachhead of the U.S. as demonstrated by the 1967 War, which intercepted Egypt’s attempt to topple the House of Saud. In 1970, Israel mobilized its regulars and reservists, which forced pro-Soviet Syria to roll back its invasion of pro-U.S. Jordan without firing a single shot. In 1981, Israel pre-empted and devastated Iraq’s nuclear reactor, thus eliminating a clear and present lethal threat to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other pro-American Arab regimes. In September 2007, Israel destroyed Syria’s nuclear reactor, sparing the free world a much more dangerous civil war in Syria. In 2012-2013 Israel bombed advanced military systems in Syria, thus preventing their use by Assad, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaida.

The scope of military intelligence transferred by Israel to the U.S. exceeds that which is transferred by all NATO countries combined. Israeli intelligence, shared with the U.S., plays a key role in U.S. counterterrorism efforts in general, and the campaign against Iran’s nuclearization, in particular.

According to the late General Alexander Haig, who was supreme commander of NATO and U.S. secretary of state: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier, which does not require a single U.S. aircraft or boot on board; cannot be sunk; and is deployed in a vital area for critical U.S. commercial and military interests. If there were not a Jewish state in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, then the U.S. would have to deploy additional aircraft carriers and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to the Mediterranean. It would have cost the American taxpayers some $15 billion annually, which is spared by a viable Jewish state.”