WarSclerotic

Iran calls for ‘respect rather than sanctions,’ Tehran Times, February 26, 2014

(Iran deserves more “respect” than the P5+1 negotiators. Although her military nuclear programs are not open for inspection or discussion, she has already gained substantial relief from sanctions that will be difficult if not impossible to restore. Her “open for business” sign is already bringing in funds and will likely continue to do so regardless of whether the talks ultimately fail. — DM)

TEHRAN – An Iranian official has urged the major powers to address Iran with respect rather than sanctions, as negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program are underway between the two sides.

The head of the press office of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, Hamid Babaei, made the remarks in a letter published by the New York Times on Tuesday in response to an Op-Ed essay critical of Iran published by the same newspaper on February 21.

The article, written by the president and the chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), called for more “economic and diplomatic pressure on the Iranian government” to achieve what it claimed to be the “peaceful dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

Following is the text of the letter entitled “Respect rather than sanctions:”

The writers claim that they are not advocating further conflict with the Islamic Republic while spreading unfounded accusations of deception and intransigence against Iran and its officials.

Let’s try to develop new approaches to thinking about Iran.

If a meaningful and adequate response is expected from Iran, the language of respect rather than sanctions and threats will work. Iran is the harbor of peace and stability in this tumultuous region. The writers’ arguments may add more joy to the annual gathering of their organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but in practice will not change the realities.

While negotiations for reaching a comprehensive deal between the P5-plus-1 countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany) and Iran are underway, it’s reasonable to refrain from hyperbole to make the world safer for all.

Russian military drill may be lead-in to Crimea occupation and Ukraine split.

DEBKAfile Special Report February 26, 2014, 6:09 PM (IST)

The Russian Combat Army in a drill

 

There is no way that President Vladimir Putin will relinquish Russian control of the Crimean peninsula and its military bases there – or more particularly the big Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol. This military stronghold is the key to Russia’s Middle East policy. If it is imperiled, so too are Russia’s military posture in Syria and its strategic understandings with Iran.

This peril raised its head Wednesday, Feb. 26, when pro-Russian and pro-European protesters clashed violently in the Crimean town of Simferopol, the Peninsula’s financial and highway hub.

Most of the protesters against Moscow were members of the minority Tatar community, who had gathered from around the region to demand that Crimea accept Kiev rule.

The majority population is Russian speaking and fought the Tatar demonstrators. However,  rival historic claims to this strategic peninsula were in full flight, sparking red lights in Moscow to danger.

The Tatars ruled Crimea in the 18th century. If they manage to expel Russian influence from Simferopol and then the rest of the region, it would be the signal for dozens of the small peoples who make up the Russian Federation to go into separatist mode and raise the flags of mutiny. The Kremlin is therefore bound to nip the Tatar outbreak in the bud to save Russia.

And so, Putin ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to stage an urgent four-day drill to test the combat readiness of Russian military forces in central and western Russia, starting with a high alert for the military and the deployment of some units to shooting ranges.
The exercise will involve Russia’s Baltic and Northern Fleets and its air force.

In a televised statement after a meeting of top military officials in Moscow, defense minister Gen. Shoigu said the forces “must be ready to bomb unfamiliar testing grounds” and be “ready for action in crisis situations that threaten the nation’s military security.”

A senior Russian lawmaker on Tuesday told pro-Russia activists in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula that Moscow will protect them if their lives are in danger.

The Russian president’s military move Wednesday signaled his readiness to send his army into Ukraine and divide the country, if Moscow’s national interests and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine are at stake. Having broadcast that message, Putin will now wait to see if it picked up by Washington and Brussels for action to restrain the new authorities in Kiev.

But it is no longer certain how much control Western powers have over the former protesters of Kiev, who appear to have taken the bit between their teeth.

Hezbollah says it was hit by Israel, vows response | The Times of Israel.

Terror group announces it will ‘choose the right time and place to retaliate’ for reported Israeli strike on Monday near Syrian border

By Times of Israel staff February 26, 2014, 12:07 pm

Israel Air Force F-16 jet prepares for take off. June 28 2010.(photo credit: Ofer Zidon/Flash90)

Hezbollah on Wednesday vowed to retaliate for a Monday night attack on its forces that was widely reported to have been an Israeli airstrike, calling it an attack against all of Lebanon.

The statement on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station was the first acknowledgement of the strike for the terror group. Al-Manar had previously denied that a strike on the group’s forces had occurred, despite reports in Lebanese media earlier Wednesday that four Hezbollah operatives had been killed.

“The resistance will choose the right time and place to retaliate for the Israeli offensive,” Hezbollah was quoted as saying by Al-Manar.

The group denied that it had suffered any deaths or injuries in the strike, but said there had been material damage. It said the strike occurred near the city of Janta in the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold.

“This new assault is a flagrant aggression against Lebanon, its sovereignty and territories, not against the resistance only,” the Hezbollah statement said.

Lebanon’s Daily Star reported that two trucks transferring missiles and a missile launcher were targeted in the raid as they were being transported from Syria to a Hezbollah storage facility. However, Hezbollah denied that a missile or artillery site was the target.

The attack was widely reported upon and attributed to Israel on Monday night, and a senior Israeli security official told Time magazine on Tuesday that the Jewish state was indeed behind the bombing.

A Hezbollah poster in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. (photo credit: CC BY CazzJj, Flickr)

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman discussed the airstrike with Army Chief of Staff Maj. Walid Salman on Tuesday, the Beirut-based Daily Star reported, and the two discussed how to confront “such aggressions.”

There had been conflicting reports as to whether the strike in the mountainous Baalbek region occurred in Lebanese or Syrian territory.

Janta lies along a known smuggling route for arms between Syria and Lebanon, the Daily Star reported. According to a 2012 report, Hezbollah built a training facility at Janta “which includes a suspected driver training course, a 100-meter firing range and a possible urban terrain assault course.”

Hezbollah’s silence until now was seen as an attempt by the Shiite group, already tied down in Syria fighting for President Bashar Assad’s regime, to avoid being forced into responding to Israel.

The group fought a punishing month-long war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

The organization, considered a major political force in Lebanon, was also blamed for a bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, in July 2012 in which five Israelis and a local bus driver were killed.

Syrian-Lebanese border partly erased by hectic war traffic. Israeli air strike Monday mostly inside Syria.

Nabi Sheet highway crosses from Syria to Lebanon

According to Middle East sources, Israel’s air strikes Monday, Feb. 24, were far more limited in scope than presented – no more than one or two warplanes which aimed four rockets at a single target, an SS-21 surface missile launcher on the Syrian side. Four Hizballah operatives were killed.

The hectic traffic of arms, men and smuggling networks between Syria and Lebanon, run by Hizballah and the Syrian military, has virtually obliterated large sections of the border between the two countries.  A broad military zone has taken its place, which is characterized by lofty peaks 1,600 meters high, deep gulches and narrow winding roads through wild vegetation. Traffic moving along those roads is hard to identify.

Hizballah arms and missile stores in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley are in free use as strategic reserve supply centers for the units – both Hizballah and Syrian – fighting in border sectors such as the battles in the Qalamoun mountain range.

Brig. Gen. Ellie Sharvit, commander of the Navy base in Haifa, touched on this situation Tuesday, when he noted that Israel presumes that any weapons systems reaching Syria have also come into the hands of he Lebanese Hizballah. Israel is therefore on a constant state of alert. He mentioned advanced Yakhont shore-sea missiles as well as top products of Iran’s and Syria’s military industries in this regard.

Brig. Sharvit was the first IDF officer to confirm debkafile’s reporting in the past year that large quantities of weapons were moving between Syria and Lebanon. This traffic is by now by and large out of the IDF’s control – except for pinpointed strikes. Any attempt to seal the border to this illicit traffic would be unrealistic.
Most Israeli military officials are still trying to present President Bashar Assad as losing the Syrian war and Hizballah’s military capabilities as being eroded.

Contrary to this view, our Middle East sources describe the old Lebanese-Syrian border area as having been transformed into the busy hive of a burgeoning international Shiite legion of mercenaries, who are arriving in ever larger numbers from outside the region. Hizballah has opened European recruiting centers for the Syrian war effort in Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and Kosovo. More than 1,000 mercenaries are already undergoing brief instruction at its Beqaa Valley training facilities. After they are familiarized with the weapons in the use of the Syrian army and Hizballah, they are sent across into battle.

The IAF ‘scalpel’ and the epidemic of weapons transfers | The Times of Israel.

Monday’s alleged IAF strike against Hezbollah-bound weapons is yet another stage in the deadly game playing out in the border regions to Israel’s north

By Mitch Ginsburg February 26, 2014, 2:40 am

IAF pilots near a plane after training (Illustrative photo: Moshe Shai/Flash90)

In January, during his annual address at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, spoke about the current “war between wars.” The IAF, “a sledgehammer,” he said, was being asked to do the “work of a scalpel.”

That appears to be what happened on Monday night. According to Lebanese sources, four “warplanes for the Israeli enemy,” flying southwest off the sea, entered Lebanese airspace at 9:50 p.m., streaking toward the Beqaa Valley. Thirty-five minutes later, the planes exited Lebanon via Nakoura and were back out over the sea.

The strikes took place in the northern Beqaa Valley region, “where recruitment and training of [Hezbollah] fighters are carried out,” and along “a well-known route for arms smuggling between Lebanon and Syria,” according to the Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star.

Al Arabiya suggested that the target was a convoy of long-range surface-to-surface missiles. This was not confirmed. But what is clear, according to Maj. Gen. (res) Eyal Ben-Reuven, the deputy commander of the northern front during the Second Lebanon War, is that the front, ever since Hezbollah and Iran came to the aid of the then-waning Bashar Assad, has changed shape entirely. “Today Lebanon and Syria are one front, under the umbrella of Iran,” Ben-Reuven said in a conference call.

The tens of thousands of rockets and missiles Hezbollah possesses have always come largely from the stores of the Syrian army. Today, though, the balance of power has shifted. Bashar Assad won Qusayr and held the capital thanks to Hezbollah soldiers on the ground and Iranian Quds Force officers at the helm. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, is now “running the war himself,” according to a 2013 New Yorker profile. Iran, which gave the regime a $7 billion loan in 2013, has been sending troops and arms daily to Damascus.

The price for these self-serving heroics, Ben-Reuven said, is the delivery of “game-changing weapons” to Hezbollah.

The transfer of those arms – the cornerstone of Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria – is a murky, deadly affair. Hezbollah troops guard an array of arms depots in Syria. They might simply be safeguarding the weapons from rebel troops or they might be watching over the arms until the order is given to move the matériel into Lebanon. Quite possibly both. Further complicating matters, many of these weapons are put into motion and then, according to a January report in The Wall Street Journal, transferred “piece by piece” to Lebanon.

On Monday night, after weeks of clear skies in the region, Hezbollah may have tried to operate under the cover of stormy weather, veteran military affairs analyst Ron Ben-Yishai wrote Monday. If so, the organization’s calculations were off. Brig. Gen. (res) Asaf Agmon, the head of the Fisher Institute, said that while meteorological conditions are a factor “that always influences things,” the IAF has the sort of thermal or radar-guided capacities “to operate in this sort of weather.”

Eshel did not elaborate on the difficulty of tracking weapons through the mountainous and fog-enclosed border regions. He did say, though, that the “bubbling spring” of continuous, low-grade conflict was “a daily problem,” which the IAF, on account of its flexibility and near-immediate readiness, was uniquely equipped to deal with.

Acknowledging, though, that certain actions could, as in 2006, spark a full-scale conflict, he said that the test of each decision made is that “the efficacy will be immediate and will not make things worse or lead to war.”

Thus far, the alleged Israeli considerations have proved correct but the Middle East, as Ben-Reuven noted, has a logic of its own.

Vigilance in the North | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST EDITORIAL

02/25/2014 21:18

The air force attacked Hezbollah targets on the Lebanon-Syria border on Monday night, according to Lebanese and other Arab media sources. The IDF has declined to comment.

The air force attacked Hezbollah targets on the Lebanon-Syria border on Monday night, according to Lebanese and other Arab media sources. The IDF has declined to comment.

The strikes targeted a “qualitative” weapons shipment to Hezbollah, Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper reported, quoting unnamed military sources.

In all, four Israeli planes launched four rockets in the Janta area, in the mountains separating the east Lebanon village of Nabi Sheet from Syrian.

The Janta area houses a Hezbollah post, where recruitment and training of fighters are carried out. Janta is also a well-known route for smuggling arms between Lebanon and Syria, the Daily Star’s source said.

The target was a Hezbollah missile base, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al-Arabiya television, citing unconfirmed reports, said Hezbollah’s “moving convoy” was attacked because it tried to bring ballistic missiles from Syria to Lebanon.

One day before the reported air attack, a senior security source told The Jerusalem Post’s military correspondent Yaakov Lappin that the IDF prevents Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel from growing stronger “almost every night.”

Despite these efforts, however, Hezbollah has arm itself with about 100,000 rockets and missiles, including a small number of satellite-guided projectiles that can be used to target key Israeli installations and infrastructure.

The growing size of global jihadi operatives such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and, of course, various al-Qaida organizations such as al-Qaida Central Command and al-Qaida in Iraq present another threat.

In addition to Iranian-made arms smuggled into Lebanon, there is concern Russian-made weapons are making their way to Hezbollah hands.

Yiftah Shapir, head of the Middle East Military Balance Project at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the Post some of the weapons Russia is providing the Assad regime have no apparent use in the war against rebel forces, but would be highly effective in attacks against Israel. One example is the SA-17 or “Buk” surface-to-air missile. The Syrian rebels have no air force, so why would the regime need these types of ballistic weapons? The rebels do not have a navy either, so why do Assad’s forces need Russian-made P800 Yakhont supersonic antiship missiles? The regime might want them to protect itself against Turkey. Another, more likely possibility, is to use them against Israel.

If Hezbollah acquires these weapons, they would represent a dangerous upgrade in the Shi’ite organization’s capabilities vis-à-vis Israel.

In August 2013, anonymous US officials told The New York Times that a July 5 IAF strike on a Syrian warehouse near Latakia targeted a cache of these Yakhont missiles, which were, it was reported, destined for Hezbollah.

Israel has very limited goals in Syria and has no interest in taking sides in the civil war. Keeping the regime in power is not a clear Israeli interest since, unlike Hafez Assad, with whom Israel managed to maintain a modus vivendi, Basher Assad has been unreliable. The alternatives to the regime are, however, even worse.

Israel, an oasis of stability in a highly volatile region, has restricted its involvement in Syria and Lebanon to a minimum. Nevertheless, Jerusalem cannot afford to ignore the situation due to the severe threat presented by the smuggling of advanced weapons from Syria to Hezbollah. Israel must remain vigilant in the face of the challenges coming from the North. Monday night’s air attack, if indeed the IAF carried it out, was a necessary part of that vigilance.

IDF sees steep rise in submarine operations | The Times of Israel.

Last year saw spike in deployments for Israel’s nuclear-capable fleet, which is set to grow by two more vessels this year

By Times of Israel staff February 25, 2014, 11:20 pm

An Israeli navy Dolphin-class submarine (photo credit: Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

The IDF’s submarine flotilla has seen a sharp increase in the number and duration of its at-sea operations, with a special focus on Israel’s northern neighbor Lebanon.

According to a senior Israel Navy officer, 58 percent of the navy’s submarine flotilla’s time at sea in 2013 were in operational deployments, while the remaining 42% were for training purposes. That marks a dramatic increase from the three previous years, when submarines spent just 36% of their time at sea in operational deployments.

The navy’s submarines also conducted 54 special operations in 2013, a similarly sharp increase from previous years. The operations included deployments to the Lebanese coast and deployments lasting several weeks that took the submarines thousands of kilometers from Israel.

The navy’s figures mark a rare revelation on the part of the IDF that suggests the military has significantly upped its operational presence to counter threats from Hezbollah and the more distant Iran.

It is also likely a message to the German government, which is visiting Israel this week in a delegation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel for high-level talks with Israeli counterparts.

Israel buys its top-of-the-line, nuclear warhead-capable (according to foreign reports) Dolphin submarines from Germany, and the navy expects two new Dolphin-class subs to be delivered in the second half of 2014, the INS Tanin and INS Rahav.

An Israeli Dolphin-class submarine at port. (photo credit: CC BY shlomiliss, Wikimedia)

The new submarines have engines that don’t require surfacing to acquire new air supplies, effectively expanding Israel’s naval (and, reportedly, nuclear) reach and allowing for more distant and long-lasting operations.

“Last year we carried out thousands of hours of operations in the submarines,” the commander of the navy’s submarine flotilla, Col. “G,” said in a briefing Tuesday.

“G” called the new submarines “very technologically sophisticated vessels that require highly trained and professional crews to operate them… We operate in different theaters, including the northern theater, to ensure the security of the State of Israel,” he said.

According to Brig. Gen. Eli Sharvit, commander of the navy’s Haifa base, the navy’s northern deployments are intended to protect Israel from a “highly operational” Syrian navy, which is armed with “strategic weaponry” and has maintained a powerful presence in the region despite the civil war raging in the country.

Israeli official confirms: IAF hit missile convoy entering Lebanon last night | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST.COM STAFF, TOVAH LAZAROFF

02/25/2014 23:06

Following Lebanese media reports of Israeli strike on Monday night, anonymous Israeli official tells TIME that IAF jets struck a transport destined for Hezbollah of surface-to-surface missiles near the Syria-Lebanon border.