WarSclerotic

Let’s do almost nothing,  Israel Hayom, Prof. Efraim Inbar, May 15, 2014

(How much is it worth to Israel to “keep America at bay?” — DM)

After the Kerry debacle, Washington is left counting an additional foreign policy failure, trying to digest what happened and pondering how to proceed. Its current instinct is to stay away from interventionist initiatives.

[I]n light of America’s great importance to Israel, uncoordinated unilateral steps by Israel on the West Bank are not advisable. Israeli statements expressing a commitment to future peace negotiations, coupled with restraint in building beyond the settlement blocs, might be enough to keep America at bay and reluctant to intervene. [Emphasis added.]

Now that the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have ended in failure, many suggest taking advantage of the political limbo to advance their preferred unilateral plans. The Israeli political right wing is promoting the annexation of Area C, while the left wing is advocating a “coordinated” (whatever that means) unilateral withdrawal. Government officials have spoken about the need for Israel to “do something.” Others suggest negotiating with the Quartet, instead of the Palestinians.

Activism is unquestionably a trait that is admired in Israel. Zionist-rooted rhetoric such as “we have to determine our borders and destiny on our own” falls on receptive ears.

However, probably the wisest course of action for Israel is a patient and cautious “wait and see” approach. Resolving the conflict is impossible, but attempting to manage it — minimizing the suffering to both sides as well as the diplomatic costs to Israel — is within reach.

Kerry’s initiative has indeed ended in failure. But the sky has not fallen. There is no sense of alarm or fear of a great impending crisis in the region or elsewhere in the world.

Pressure on Israel to change the status quo is unlikely. Actually, it serves Israel’s interests to keep the status quo to hold on to its bargaining cards. The assumption that time is running against Israel is simply wrong. As a matter of fact, the Palestinian issue is likely to become less salient in the international arena over time.

After the Kerry debacle, Washington is left counting an additional foreign policy failure, trying to digest what happened and pondering how to proceed. Its current instinct is to stay away from interventionist initiatives. The U.S., drained by two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and blessed with new energy finds, does not want to get dragged into further conflicts in a Middle East that seems less central to its interests. So the Obama administration may be less inclined to intervene in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict than ever before. Even if the U.S. obsession about Palestinian statehood persists for some reason, it is still better for Israel to wait and learn Washington’s next moves before devising an adequate response.

Moreover, in light of America’s great importance to Israel, uncoordinated unilateral steps by Israel on the West Bank are not advisable. Israeli statements expressing a commitment to future peace negotiations, coupled with restraint in building beyond the settlement blocs, might be enough to keep America at bay and reluctant to intervene.

The U.S. is also unlikely to be confronted with Arab pressure to focus on the Palestinian issue if Israel does not engage in drastic steps. The Arab world is undergoing a tremendously difficult economic and sociopolitical crisis and is busy dealing with domestic problems. Moreover, the Iranian nuclear threat continues to be the most urgent foreign policy issue, putting most Sunni states in the same strategic boat with Israel. Even the Palestinians do not take Arab lip service on their behalf seriously.

In all probability, most countries of the world can also live with an unresolved Palestinian issue. There are many simmering territorial conflicts all over the world. Nowadays, Crimea and eastern Ukraine dominate the news. In the coming months and years, many human and political tragedies will divert attention away from the Palestinian issue.

Significantly, the Palestinians have no impact on truly important strategic issue such as nuclear proliferation or energy that might galvanize powerful states into action. Once, they were an important actor in international terrorism. This is no longer true. Nowadays, Palestinians are very dependent upon international aid. Rocking the boat by using too much violence threatens the livelihood of Palestinians receiving the Palestinian Authority’s salaries and benefits, and risks Israel’s strong retaliation. Simply put, the Palestinians have only limited international leverage and are vulnerable to Israel’s potentially harmful countermeasures.

Moreover, the Palestinians have an excellent record of shooting themselves in the foot. The unity agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is the latest example of this.

Whatever some experts say, Israel is not isolated in the international community. Israel is a strong country, possessing a remarkable web of international interactions. Significantly, Israel’s relations with the world are only marginally affected by its conflict with the Palestinians.

The political actors most obsessed with the Palestinian issue, the Israeli political Left and the Europeans, are in decline. The Oslo process, with which the Israeli Left was associated, has failed, delegitimizing its initiators. Europe and the euro zone are facing acute problems, further reducing their limited ability to be true strategic actors. The ability of these weakened political actors to push the Palestinian issue to the top of the international agenda has become increasingly curtailed. Contemporary international circumstances could lead to further marginalization of the Palestinian issue.

Israelis, like many misguided Westerners, too often succumb to counterproductive hyper-activism. Doing almost nothing might bring about better results than activating unilateral plans of all kinds.

‘Very significant gaps’ remain in Iran nuclear talks, Israel Hayom, May 15, 2014

Optimism on potential for a final nuclear agreement with Iran has “gotten way out of control,” U.S. official says, as six world powers and Iran enter a decisive phase of talks • Deadline for deal is July 20.

ARNEY HAS PHOTO Caption: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif meet in Vienna on Wednesday | Photo credit: AP

Six world powers and Iran launched a decisive phase of diplomacy on Wednesday to draft a lasting accord that would curb Iran’s contested nuclear activity in exchange for a phased end to sanctions that have hobbled the Iranian economy.

After three months of discussing expectations rather than negotiating possible compromises, the sides are to set about devising a package meant to end years of antagonism and curtail the risk of a wider Middle East war with global repercussions.

A  Western official close to the talks said on Wednesday that “progress is being made, but all pieces have to fit together.”

“Nothing is agreed yet,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

 If a deal was reached, Washington’s decades-long estrangement from Iran could ease, improving international stability, but U.S. and other Western officials warned against unwarranted optimism given the persistent critical differences between the sides.

“We’ve spent the last couple of rounds putting all of the issues on the table, seeing where there may be points of agreement, where there may be gaps. There are some very significant gaps,” a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

“It’s not that there aren’t solutions to those gaps; there are. But getting to them is another matter.”

To achieve a deal, the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany will want Iran to agree to dramatically cut back its uranium enrichment program to remove any risk that it could lead to the making of atomic bombs, while Iran will want them to eliminate sanctions against its oil-based economy.

Diplomats from both sides have said they want to resolve all sticking points about issues such as Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and the future of its nuclear facilities, as well as the timeline of sanctions relief, by a July 20 deadline.

After that, an interim deal they struck last November expires and its extension would probably complicate talks.

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates diplomacy with Iran on behalf of the six, said negotiators held a “useful initial discussion” on Wednesday morning and would hold coordination meetings later in the day.

“We are now hoping to move to a new phase … in which we will start pulling together what the outline of an agreement could be. All sides are highly committed,” Michael Mann said.

Looming in the background of the talks have been warnings by Israel, which views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, that it would attack Iranian nuclear facilities if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Iran’s atomic abilities and potential.

U.S. President Barack Obama has not ruled out the last-ditch option of military action either.

Broadly, the six powers want to ensure the Iranian program is curtailed enough so that it would take Iran a long time to assemble nuclear bomb components if it chose to do so, and would be detected with intrusive inspections before it was too late.

Iran denies accusations of having nuclear weapons aspirations, saying it wants only peaceful atomic energy.

Central to this issue will be the number of centrifuge machines, which potentially can enrich uranium to bomb-fuel quality, that Iran would be permitted to operate.

Iran has about 10,000 centrifuges running but the West will likely want that number trimmed to the low thousands, a demand that could be unacceptable to Iran.

Iran’s research and development of new nuclear technologies and the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium it may keep will also be crucial and likely difficult to negotiate. Refined uranium can be used as fuel in nuclear power plants or in weapons if purified to a high enough level.

“Halting research and development of uranium enrichment has never been up for negotiation, and we would not have accepted it either,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

“But a wide variety of issues have been discussed … and on uranium enrichment too we have tried to reach consensus.”

Diplomats say Iran, rather than deactivating centrifuges, wants to expand its enrichment program, saying it needs to do this to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants.

Iran entered talks with the big powers after President Hassan Rouhani was elected last June.

Diplomats have signaled that some progress may have been made during three rounds of expert-level talks since February on one of the thorniest issues — the future of Iran’s planned Arak heavy-water reactor, which Western states worry could prove a source of plutonium for nuclear bomb fuel once operational.

But the U.S. official cautioned that some media reports about progress reached up until now were going too far.

“I’ve read a lot of the optimism you’ve written,” the official told reporters. “It’s gotten way out of control.”

Other diplomats from the powers warned that progress, if any, in the coming talks will be slow. And any agreement may come only at the 11th hour. “It’s very difficult to say how it will all work in practice now. We have no agenda but that’s not different from any other meeting,” said one.

“The figures will come at the end. They will be part of the big bargaining,” he said, referring to decisions about issues such as the number of centrifuges to remain in Iran.

Much of the complexity of the final deal stems from the fact that its various elements are intertwined. A higher number of centrifuges left in Iran would mean the powers wanting Tehran to more substantially slacken the pace of enrichment, for example.

“All the parameters are interdependent,” one diplomat said.

Politically, any deal could still be torpedoed by conservative hawks in the United States or Iran, and another interfering factor could be the approaching U.S. midterm congressional elections.

Divisions in Washington are closely linked to concerns in Israel that any deal might not go far enough.

“We are not against diplomatic solutions. But on one condition, that it is a serious and comprehensive solution. A solution that can be trusted,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s strategic affairs, intelligence and international relations minister, told reporters in Brussels last week.

“Iran should be denied not just [the ability] to produce the bomb but also to have the capability,” he said.

What Kind of Palestinian State? Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, May 15, 2014

(The last paragraph, “All that is left is to sit back and watch the establishment of Hamas’s new Islamic emirate in the West Bank, an enclave of lepers against whom the whole world will unite” seems more than slightly over-optimistic. — DM)

All that is left is to sit back and watch the establishment of Hamas’s new Islamic emirate in the West Bank.

“The shoulders of men were created only to bear rifles.” — Fatah Facebook page

The Ramallah funeral, authorized by the Palestinian Authority, was attended by masses of Palestinians waving green Hamas-affiliated flags — not yellow Fatah flags. Every child knows that if elections were held, Hamas would win in a landslide.

The Palestinian leadership understands that it will not be able to agree to the conditions for peace set out by John Kerry. These conditions do not provide a solution for the millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees, who wish to “return” to Palestine.

Fatah called the “reconciliation” a union of two “military organizations.” At the end of April Fatah’s page featured two masked terrorists holding assault rifles. One wears a yellow headband of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s military-terrorist wing, and the other a green headband of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing. 

The final nail in the coffin of the Israeli-Palestinian peace was the speech given about the internal Palestinian reconciliation by the Palestinian delegate, Azzam al-Ahmed, at the home of Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza.

At the end of April, the internal Palestinian reconciliation was announced, with Fatah leaders posing for the camera with Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Musa Abu Marzouk — all wreathed in smiles. Until the catastrophic pictures were published there were many Palestinians and Israelis who honestly believed there was a chance for a peace agreement that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state coexisting with Israel, but the speeches given by both sides made it clear that the dream of a Palestinian state would finally have to be shelved for the foreseeable future.

Ismail Haniyeh (center) speaks at the signing ceremony for the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement. (Image source: Screenshot of AlJazeera video)

It was no surprise when the Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh reassured Palestinians that their future Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and that the Palestinians would return to their lands in “all Palestine.”

Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and an extremist terrorist organization, has always held that unrealistic position and has never expressed any desire whatsoever for a peace agreement with the Jews. Its aspiration is, and has always been, to destroy Israel by force, slaughter its Jewish inhabitants and establish a Sharia-based Palestine on the ruins.

The real disappointment, however, was the speech given by Azzam al-Ahmed, who said the Palestinians would never recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish national homeland and would never waive the Palestinian “right of return” to Palestine.

Those speeches summed up the joint position agreed on by both Fatah and Hamas; it means there will not be peace. The Israelis will not agree to sign any agreement that will destroy their state through the influx of the millions of descendants of the 1948 refugees.

A few days later Mahmoud Abbas met with Hamas political bureau head, Khaled Mashaal, in Qatar. Apparently the internal Palestinian reconciliation is a done deal.

The events made it clear to one and all that this time it is not just more empty rhetoric, and that, as Palestinians, we will have to start recognizing that our lives will change, now and in the future.

The first signs came when Mahmoud Abbas and his associates threatened to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and lodged a unilateral appeal with the United Nations to have the “state of Palestine” recognized — totally in violation of the framework for the peace process set out by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The Palestinians bluntly told Kerry they would not recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. They based their refusal on the dreamy claim that doing so would damage the historical rights of the Palestinians and the rights of Israeli Arabs.

The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas does not have either the support of the Palestinian people or a consensus to lead, and his term of office ended six years ago. He knows that no decision he makes commits either the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or the Palestinians around the world. Many people claim that because he has no legal governmental status, his decisions are not accepted as valid even in the West Bank.

For that reason, Fatah leader Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Fatah delegation, made a speech in which he claimed that the objective of the reconciliation had been to provide Mahmoud Abbas with a consensual status in the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank, until the upcoming elections are held (if, in fact, they ever are held). Barghouti’s claim was made in response to Israel’s claims that Mahmoud Abbas did not actually represent anybody.

However, every West Bank child knows that Mahmoud Abbas’s regime exists only by the grace of Israeli security services and that if elections were held tomorrow, or in six months as noted in the reconciliation agreement, Hamas would win in a landslide and take over the West Bank.

Mahmoud Abbas is currently at a dead end — and why he chose to join Hamas, through the “reconciliation,” of his own free will. He can control how he hands over the keys to the West Bank to Hamas and can step into the wings without fear of a Hamas putsch or a humiliating defeat in the elections.

More importantly for him, he and his associates can ward off, at least for the time being, attempts to assassinate them and appropriate the assets they have amassed over the years, and avoid the bitter fates of their Fatah compatriots in the Gaza Strip, who were divested of their assets, often kneecapped and hurled off the roofs of high-rise buildings.

The Palestinian leadership understands that it will not be able to agree to the conditions for peace set out by John Kerry. These conditions do not provide a solution for the millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees, who wish to “return” to Palestine.

They will come covertly accompanied by jihad fighters who gained their experience in the killing fields of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, who will accuse Mahmoud Abbas of treason, and, sooner rather than later, assassinate him and his associates and hang their bodies in the main square in Ramallah.

The new mujahideen who enter “Palestine” from Jordan will immediately join Hamas, demand a redistribution of lands and resources, wage a new terrorist campaign against Israel and turn the West Bank into a Gaza-like Islamic emirate ruled according to the Shariah.

Clearly, Mahmoud Abbas and his associates cannot recognize Israel as a Jewish state because they understand it would mean the end of their demand to flood Israel with the refugees’ descendants and upset the Jewish majority. Once the political process is completed, the Palestinians would no longer have a basis for more demands and that would end the conflict once and for all.

Ever since the Palestinian leaders understood that accepting Israel’s conditions would mean their own destruction at either the hands of Hamas extremists or at the hands of the “rejection front,” they have manufactured marginal, if creative, excuses to extricate themselves from the negotiations. They have claimed that Israel refused to implement the fourth phase of a prisoner release (a promise made on condition that there was progress in the peace talks). Apparently the Palestinian leaders have come to the inevitable conclusion that their regime will be toppled one way or the other, with peace with Israel or without it.

Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to gain time and extort Israel into unilateral concessions by enlisting the United States and the EU, while giving nothing in return, has failed. His attempt to convince Israel that he personally would waive the “right of return” to Safed, the city of his birth, has also failed. He waffled, saying that the right of return was an individual right of every refugee, so that he could not waive everyone’s “right” for them.

The Israelis immediately countered by saying that the role of a leader was to represent the collective will of all his people. They said that Mahmoud Abbas was evading taking a stand on a critical core issue, and in fact leaving the issue of the demand for the right of return without a solution.

Azzam al-Ahmed’s declarations only confirmed Israel’s evidently justified suspicions that the Palestinians did in fact want to flood their country with millions of refugee descendants and destroy their country’s demographics. This accurate conclusion was why Netanyahu insisted that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Another conspicuous manifestation of the upcoming change in the balance of power in the West Bank was the funeral held for the Awadallah brothers, two senior Hamas terrorists, killed by Israel, who engineered terrorist attacks that killed enormous numbers of Israeli civilians. The funeral was held near Mahmoud Abbas’s office in Ramallah after the internal Palestinian reconciliation was signed. The funeral, authorized by the Palestinian Authority, was attended by masses of Palestinians waving green Hamas-affiliated flags — not yellow Fatah flags. The crowd chanted the familiar “Khaybar, Khaybar, Jew, the army of Muhammad will return,” the call for the slaughter of the Jews, just as the army of Muhammad had expelled and slaughtered the Jews of Saudi Arabia in the seventh century.

Fatah expressed its satisfaction over the union with the Hamas terrorist organization on its official Facebook page. Fatah called the “reconciliation” a union of two “military organizations.” At the end of April Fatah’s page featured two masked terrorists holding assault rifles. One wears a yellow headband of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s military-terrorist wing, and the other a green headband of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing. The page also features the slogan, “Yes to unity and the end of the [internal Palestinian] rift,” and the caption reads, “The shoulders of men were created only to bear rifles.” The site is full of encouragement for attacks on Israeli soldiers and praise for the new union of the Palestinians fighting the Israeli enemy. That includes Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist fronts that have spent years in a terrorist campaign trying to destroy Israel. The page also included a list of shaheeds [martyrs], role models for the future struggle.

The Israelis are also aware of declarations made by Jibril Rajoub, formerly head of the Palestinian Authority intelligence service and today a government minister, who said that if he had a nuclear weapon he would drop it on Israel.

That sort of declaration gives the Israelis an indication into what the real intentions of the Palestinian Authority for them are.

Declarations made by Tawfiq al-Tirawi in an interview with the television channel Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s mouthpiece, recently clarified the intentions of Fatah as well. Tirawi, who was a senior figure in the Palestinian preventive security force and today is a high-ranking Fatah member, said that “the homeland is all of Palestine, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, from the sea to the Jordan River, according to the principles of Fatah adopted in 1968” [the armed campaign].

All that is left is to sit back and watch the establishment of Hamas’s new Islamic emirate in the West Bank, an enclave of lepers against whom the whole world will unite. The Israelis and Jordanians will choke off Hamas, enabling Israel to take control of the West Bank for the next million years — without interference.

Hagel’s talks in Jordan and Israel to determine if Syrian rebel Golan offensive expands to Damascus.

US and Jordanian special forces

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Israel Wednesday May 14 from an inspection of the US-Jordanian underground command center manned by 273 American officers and located 10 kilometers north of the Jordanian capital, Amman, debkafile’s military sources report. He arrived from attending the GCC defense ministers’ meeting in Jeddah for talks with Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon in Tel Aviv Thursday.
This US-Jordanian war room, known as Centcom Forward-Jordan, was established in August 2013 to direct potential US-Jordanian military action in Syria and counter any military threat posed by Syria or Hizballah to Jordan or Israel. This command center coordinates operations with the network of US air and naval forces in the Mid East. It is also connected to IDF and Israeli Air force headquarters.

Hagel was joined on his visit by the Head of the Jordanian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Mashal Mohammad Al-Zaben and Jordanian Prince Faisal Al Hussein.

Hagel and party heard briefings from the US and Jordanian commanders directing the war room and monitoring the Syrian rebels’ assault on Golan town of Quneitra, and their evaluations of the chances of the rebels taking the town.

It was the first visit by a high-ranking US defense persona to a US military headquarters directly involved in the Syrian war.

As Hagel talked to Jordanian military and political leaders, a joint-US-Jordanian military exercise, dubbed the 8th Annual Falcon Air Meeting, took place in and around the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in eastern Jordan. This base is considered to be the likely staging-ground for any American military intervention in Syria.

debkafile’s military sources say that Hagel’s talks in Jordan and Israel are to determine whether the rebel forces backed by the US open a new southern front against Bashar Assad.
The military aspect of the Syrian civil conflict gains ground as the political dimension recedes with the resignation of the UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, which UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon attributed to the failure of both sides to reach a political solution.

On Tuesday May 13, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, accompanied by senior IDF commanders, toured parts of the Golan border fence to observe the fighting in the Syrian sector. He said, looking toward the town of Quneitra: “From here we can see how the rebels have pushed Assad’s army into a corner.”
Ya’alon no doubt passed this evaluation on to the Defense Secretary during his visit to the war room in Jordan, as food for the decision on whether to let the Golan battles take their course – thus far an even contest with the rebels unable to finish the Syrian forces off and capture Quneitra, the key to a wide stretch of southern Syria – or arm the rebel militias for a major push. This would demand heavy American weaponry, especially a sufficiency of TOW missiles, to tip the scales of the battle. Thus far, only a small amount has been supplied.
This decision will be important in determining how the Syrian war develops, although Secretary Hagel is rarely brought into strictly operational decisions.

If he decides to provide the rebels fighting for Quneitra with enough heavy weapons to wrest the town and parts of the South from the Syrian army, they would also be armed for the option of advancing on Damascus. They could form up into two columns – one moving out of Quneitra and the other from the southern town of Deraa. This formation would directly threaten the three Syrian army bases – Al-Kiswah, Qatana and Kanaker – defending southern Damascus, that are manned by the 9th Syrian Division.
This would be a surprise development for the Syrian commanders and Iranian military advisers, led by Al Qods Brigades chief, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who are currently focused on the northern front up against the Turkish and Lebanese frontiers. It would catch them unprepared and lacking the strategic military reserves to defend Damascus from a new threat without exposing their other fronts.
Hagel faces another major difficulty, which is to determine which Syrian militias qualify for the receipt of heavy American weapons.
The rebel militias fighting close to Israel’s Golan border are interspersed with Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) combatants. Al Qaeda’s ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) ISIS has also begun sending jihadists to the new battlefield around Quneitra. So far, the US and Jordanian officers supervising the arena from the war room near Amman have been able to keep US arms out of their hands. But what happens if those weapons are delivered in large quantities?

US assures Gulf allies that Iran talks won’t undermine security – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Hagel addresses Middle East states ahead of new nuclear negotiations with Iran; promises that regional security most important issue.
Associated Press

JEDDAH – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday promised US allies in the Persian Gulf that negotiations to contain Iran’s nuclear program will not weaken their security.

In remarks opening a conference with his Gulf counterparts, Hagel said Washington is hopeful of progress this week in the Iran deal-drafting talks in Vienna.

Chuck Hagel (Photo: AP)

“As negotiations progress, I want to assure you of two things,” Hagel told the Gulf Cooperation Council. “First, these negotiations will under no circumstances trade away regional security for concessions on Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Pentagon chief continued, “Second, while our strong preference is for a diplomatic solution, the United States will remain postured and prepared to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon – and that Iran abides by the terms of any potential agreement.”

Even if Tehran backs out of the nuclear negotiations, Hagel said, “The United States remains committed to our Gulf partners’ security.” He said there are about 35,000 U.S. troops in the Gulf region.

After his meeting with the Gulf ministers, Hagel said they all agreed on the need to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.

“While we noted that Iran’s diplomatic engagement has been a positive development, we continue to share deep concerns about Iran’s destabilizing activities throughout the region, including its sponsorship of terrorism, its support for the Assad regime in Syria and its efforts to undermine the stability in GCC member nations,” Hagel said.

Hagel also addressed the ongoing civil war in Syria, describing it as a confluence of “violent extremism, fragile states and humanitarian emergencies.”

“The United States remains committed to working with your governments toward a negotiated, political solution that ends the violence and leads to a representative and responsive government,” he said.

After the meeting, Hagel said: “We pledged to deepen our cooperation in providing aid to the Syrian opposition. We agreed that our assistance must be complementary – and that it must be carefully directed to the moderate opposition.”

#BringBackOurGirls and the Left’s Empty Moral Outrage, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, May 14, 2014

(The nature of this beast should be obvious to most. It seems not to be. — DM)

[N]otice that not a word will be said about the misogynistic Islamic doctrines that justify this atrocity, even though a video has been released that claims all the girls have converted to Islam, and shows them dressed in full shari’a regalia. Sentimental Third Worldism and its domestic offspring, multiculturalism, are hypersensitive to the feelings of any and every religious faith except Christianity, which has been tainted by alleged Western crimes and intolerance. That’s why the media and this administration have ignored the slow-motion genocide against Christians in the Middle East.

Most important, outrage is determined by the political needs of an administration whose foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. The sentimental orgy over the schoolgirls distracts us from the disorder and violence that Obama and his foreign policy team have left in the wake of their misguided, ignorant, and ideologically corrupted actions and policies abroad. From Ukraine to the South China Sea, Iran to Latin America, our enemies are invigorated, our rivals heartened, our allies dispirited, and our security and interests compromised.

[T]he spectacle of the kidnapped schoolgirls provides a convenient distraction from all those failures, especially one of the worst – the bungling and political opportunism that resulted in the murder of four Americans, including a diplomat, in Benghazi.

The outrage over the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by the Nigerian jihadist gang Boko Haram reeks of Western hypocrisy and moral idiocy. Boko Haram has for years been slaughtering Christians – up to 2500 this year alone – and burning churches in a classic Islamic jihad against infidels. These depredations apparently weren’t enough to get the group designated a terrorist organization by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. But this indifference to what under international law is a genocide has been indulged as well by our celebrities and the mainstream media, who rarely mention that the group is specifically targeting Christians, and before the girls were kidnapped displayed little interest in the suffering of those Christians. So why this sudden attention?

The recent burst of self-indulgent selfies tweeted by millions, including celebrities and the First Lady, and the sentimental news coverage all reflect the fashionable and selective obsessions of our political and cultural elite and those who ape their fashions. First there is the need to display what Alan Bloom called “conspicuous compassion” for distant misery and suffering. Especially fashionable are compassion and pity for people in the Third World, the display of what Pascal Bruckner called the “tears of the white man” shed for all those victims of Western crimes like colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism. Like Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, photogenic public displays of compassion, “outrage,” and “concern” for global suffering function like a designer label, indicating one’s moral superiority and finely calibrated sensitivity to oppression and suffering. Of course, ignored in all this emotional bluster and self-indulgence is any understanding of why this atrocity is happening, or the motives and aims of the perpetrators, information that would be important if we were really serious about doing something about it other than morally preen for the cameras.

Next is the despicable selectivity about which victims deserve our outrage. Why haven’t the thousands of Nigerian Christians already slaughtered by Boko Haram been worthy of this same uproar as the kidnapped schoolgirls? Of course suffering children are always triggers of easy sentiment and emotion – “I want to reach out and save those kids,” Obama said at Steven Spielberg’s house, at the same time he pretty much implied he wasn’t about to actually do anything. But plenty of children have already been raped and killed by Boko Haram, and many more are dying in Syria, Sudan, Egypt, and numerous other venues. Maybe the fact that the Nigerian girls are destined to be slave-wives – as Robert Spencerpoints out, a practice legitimate under Islamic doctrine and law – fires up leftists, who are always ready to decry a “war on women” and privilege the travails of females over every other kind of oppression and suffering. People who think that a sorority girl who gets drunk at a party and has sex with an equally drunk fraternity brother has been the victim of “sexual assault” are not going to miss this opportunity to highlight the sexist “patriarchy” and the universal rottenness of men.

But notice that not a word will be said about the misogynistic Islamic doctrines that justify this atrocity, even though a video has been released that claims all the girls have converted to Islam, and shows them dressed in full shari’a regalia. Sentimental Third Worldism and its domestic offspring, multiculturalism, are hypersensitive to the feelings of any and every religious faith except Christianity, which has been tainted by alleged Western crimes and intolerance. That’s why the media and this administration have ignored the slow-motion genocide against Christians in the Middle East. People whose dudgeon reaches the stratosphere over some graffiti on a mosque or the word “crusade” have nothing to say, no outrage to publicize, no selfies to tweet, over the church-bombing, kidnapping and rape of girls and women, forced conversions, torture, and execution of Christians that have continually been taking place long before the Nigerian girls were kidnapped.

But that suffering doesn’t serve the left-wing multiculturalist narrative. After all, every orthodox multiculturalist knows that Christianity is the religion of Crusades and Inquisitions, violence and intolerance. It is Islam that is the religion of peace and ecumenical tolerance. Don’t think about the extensive documentation of theologized violence in Islamic doctrine and practice. Keep quiet about the genital mutilation, honor killings, sex segregation, and forced marriages inflicted on girls and women in Islamic countries. Don’t let an eloquent victim of such misogyny, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, be your commencement speaker, lest she speak truths hurtful to Muslims. Instead listen to the slick Muslim apologists and Western useful idiots who explain all that as the malign fantasies and slanderous distortions invented by “orientalist” shills for neo-colonial oppression and Zionist hegemony.

Most important, outrage is determined by the political needs of an administration whose foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. The sentimental orgy over the schoolgirls distracts us from the disorder and violence that Obama and his foreign policy team have left in the wake of their misguided, ignorant, and ideologically corrupted actions and policies abroad. From Ukraine to the South China Sea, Iran to Latin America, our enemies are invigorated, our rivals heartened, our allies dispirited, and our security and interests compromised.

All this failure is the consequence of Obama’s bad ideas about foreign policy: unilateral military action angers our allies and creates new enemies; diplomacy and apology will restore good will; negotiation with a committed enemy can make him change his mind and ignore his own interests; abstract idealism about democracy and human rights can substitute for grim calculations of zero-sum interests and tragic trade-offs; killing bin Laden and droning an endless parade of al Qaeda “number 2’s” will neutralize the organization; establishing a Palestinian nation will eliminate the Muslim grievance against the West that fuels jihadist terror. Worst of all, these debacles reflect the overweening narcissism of a foreign policy tyro ignorant of history and political philosophy, but supremely confident in the power of his personality and public relations, when in fact he has acted on the world stage like a pampered child in the company of hard men who despise him.

Finally, the spectacle of the kidnapped schoolgirls provides a convenient distraction from all those failures, especially one of the worst – the bungling and political opportunism that resulted in the murder of four Americans, including a diplomat, in Benghazi. This disaster began with Obama’s collusion in the removal of Libya’s Ghaddafi, who was behaving himself as far as our interests were concerned. Into the subsequent vacuum rushed any number of jihadist gangs, now armed with the weapons from Ghaddafi’s looted arsenals, and unrestrained by any government control. To hide this failure, our diplomatic mission was left short of military protection lest anyone wonder why this glorious triumph for human rights and democracy had left a failed state full of violent factions from whom our diplomats needed to be protected. And don’t forget the election-year narrative that al Qaeda was “on its heels” and “bin Laden is dead,” a fairy tale challenged by the well-coordinated, sophisticated military attack on September 11, 2012. Hence the spin about an obscure video, a despicable cover-up abetted by Hillary Clinton when she tried to sell it to the grieving parents standing next to their sons’ coffins.

No, better to put on an emotional show over the kidnapped school girls, a terrible event stripped of context and reduced to sentiment, a perfect occasion for displays of self-righteousness and sensitivity – especially when the House has inconveniently established a select committee to get to the truth about Benghazi and the administration’s cover-up. Just forget that none of the tweeting and “outrage” will do anything to get those girls back and punish the perpetrators. But they will distract us for a bit from one of the worst records of foreign policy failure in American history.

Believing Obama on Iran, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, May 14, 2014

(The farce process must continue because President Obama likes processes. — DM)

Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites.

And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community.

What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.

[R]ather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press against Israel.

Brig. Gen. (ret.) Uzi Eilam is an octogenarian who served as the director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission from 1976 until 1985.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Eilam’s interview was his absolute certainty in his judgment.

Eilam, who hasn’t had any inside knowledge of nuclear issues since 1985, would have us believe that he knows better than active duty Israeli intelligence chiefs and US intelligence directors about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He even thinks he knows better than the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Israel assesses that Iran already has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to produce five atomic bombs. As Netanyahu has said, the interim nuclear deal the US and its allies signed with Iran last November only delays Iran’s bomb making capacity by six weeks.

In January, James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, agreed with Israel’s assessment. In testimony before the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence Clapper said that Iran is already a nuclear breakout state. In his words, “Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas – including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors and ballistic missiles – from which it could draw if it decided to build missile- deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Clapper argued that this doesn’t matter because the US’s monitoring capabilities are so trustworthy and advanced that Iran wouldn’t be able to put nuclear weapons together without the US noticing.

Unfortunately there is no reason to believe Clapper is right. Indeed, Netanyahu said as much to US National Security Advisor Susan Rice when she repeated Clapper’s claim during her visit to Israel last week.

And the UN agrees with Netanyahu.

In two reports released in recent days, UN officials have stated that Iran has developed an advanced capacity to hide its importation of components of its nuclear program. According to a Reuters report, this includes hiding titanium tubs in steel pipes and using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain valves and other items for its heavy-water nuclear reactor.

According to an AP report, the IAEA is also concerned because Iran is not cooperating with the watchdog group in revealing information about possible military applications of its nuclear program, or allowing the IAEA unfettered access to all nuclear sites.

Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites.

And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community.

What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.

On Sunday Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited a Revolutionary Guards Corps base. There he was shown what the IRGC claims is a reverse-engineered clone of an advanced US espionage drone that Iran captured in 2011. According to Fox News, after the RAQ-170 Sentinel drone landed in Iran in 2011, the Pentagon presented US President Barack Obama with three different plans to destroy or retrieve the drone.

Obama rejected all of them because “he didn’t want to do anything that could be perceived as an act of war.”

During the same visit, to the IRGC base on Sunday, Khamenei told the commanders to begin mass producing ballistic missiles to use against the US.

In his words, the Americans “expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation.

The Revolutionary Guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass produce. This is a main duty of all military officials.”

In other words, on Sunday, a declared enemy of the US, that the director of national intelligence acknowledges already has the independent capability to produce nuclear weapons, humiliated and threatened the US.

At a minimum Iran’s capture of the US drone indicates that the US capacity to monitor Iran’s nuclear capabilities is vulnerable and imperfect.

As for the ballistic missiles, they should be of utmost concern to the Europeans and the Americans. Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.

It can use artillery, not to mention a human being playing the role of Enola Gay.

But rather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press against Israel.

In back-to-back articles in Newsweek, unnamed US former intelligence officials and congressional staffers presented an utterly false and deeply malicious portrait of alleged Israeli spying on the US. The reports were presumptively targeting Israel’s attempts to end State Department discrimination against Israeli tourists in the US and allow Israel to join the US visa waiver program.

But it is hard to ignore the timing of the unbridled, untrue and hysterical allegations of “rampant” Israeli spying.

The stories were released in the lead-up to this week’s newest round of nuclear talks between the US, the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, and Iran. Those talks were billed as a diplomatic means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, after Rice’s meeting with Netanyahu last week the White House released a statement claiming that “the US delegation reaffirmed our commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

But the terms of the deal that is being negotiated with Iran advance the opposite of its stated goal. The deal on the table will enable Iran to develop nuclear weapons, virtually unopposed, and allow Iran to develop delivery systems for its nuclear arsenal entirely unopposed.

Israeli officials have been outspoken in their opposition to the agreement and the terms the US and its partners are offering Iran. Over and over, Netanyahu and his colleagues warn that the terms will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The White House knows what it is doing, and it wants to continue on course. Consequently, for the administration to sell a deal that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it needs to discredit Israel among sufficient swaths of the general public to enable Obama to move forward with Iran against Israel.

In this context, the administration’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Iran’s brazen threats and acts of contempt while sending out anonymous sources to castigate Israel as a US enemy whose actions are hostile and antithetical to the US makes sense.

The malevolent slander of Israel’s actions and intentions is of course only the opening act in this new administration campaign to discredit Israel ahead of a nuclear deal with Iran. Speaking to The Washington Free Beacon, former Bush administration deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams said he believes the administration will frame the issue “saying that it’s this deal or war.”

He’s doubtlessly correct. After all that what the administration did in November when it signed the interim deal and when it forced the Senate to mothball its sanctions bill against Iran.

The truth is that the choice isn’t between war and an agreement. It is between doing something to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, or doing nothing to prevent that from happening. The administration has opted to do nothing. Unfortunately for the world, the price for doing nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is exponentially higher – in the cost of lives that would otherwise be saved – than the price of doing something.

But hey, at least an 80-year-old who led Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission nearly 40 years ago is willing to take Obama at his word.

Would You Trust Ahmadinejad with Unrestricted Nukes? Commentary Magazine, Michael Rubin, May 14, 2014

Obama is undertaking a huge gamble: He is betting American national security and broader Middle Eastern security on the notion that somehow Rouhani is different than his record indicates and that he knows better than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei what Rouhani’s true intentions are. That’s not a good bet to take, especially since it looks like Rouhani’s honeymoon is rapidly coming to an end, but Obama—like all second-term presidents—is willing to put on blinders in his quest for a legacy.

[I]n the Islamic Republic, the supreme leader calls the shots, not the president. Simply put, the president is about style, the supreme leader is about substance. The second assumption underlying Obama’s diplomacy is that Hassan Rouhani is the Iranian incarnation of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, someone with a hardline past but reform in his heart. At best, this is wishful thinking. It involves dismissing Rouhani’s record and all of his past statements.

The Obama administration’s deal-making with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is based on two assumptions, both of which are false. The first is that the president matters in Iran. The reality is that, in the Islamic Republic, the supreme leader calls the shots, not the president. Simply put, the president is about style, the supreme leader is about substance. The second assumption underlying Obama’s diplomacy is that Hassan Rouhani is the Iranian incarnation of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, someone with a hardline past but reform in his heart. At best, this is wishful thinking. It involves dismissing Rouhani’s record and all of his past statements.

Obama is undertaking a huge gamble: He is betting American national security and broader Middle Eastern security on the notion that somehow Rouhani is different than his record indicates and that he knows better than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei what Rouhani’s true intentions are. That’s not a good bet to take, especially since it looks like Rouhani’s honeymoon is rapidly coming to an end, but Obama—like all second-term presidents—is willing to put on blinders in his quest for a legacy.

Obama is putting all of his eggs in Rouhani’s basket, but what happens if Rouhani is removed from the picture? The purpose of a nuclear deal with Iran—at least from the Iranian perspective—is to normalize Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s de facto lobbyists in the United States are already arguing that after a short period of Iranian compliance with the deal, Iran should be free and clear from restrictions and, in effect, be treated as it had never cheated, never experimented with nuclear-weapons triggers, and never constructed secret nuclear facilities.

Within the Islamic Republic, there is not an inexorable march to reform. The birthrate in Iran today is only half of what is was in the 1980s, and so Iranian leaders figure that there will be fewer hot-headed young people in coming decades. As students start families, they become less willing to rock the boat. Hardliners figure their moment is yet to come. To read Rouhani’s election as the permanent victory of reform or democracy is to misunderstand Iran: There are no free elections inside the Islamic Republic. The Guardian Council selects candidates, and so sets the parameters of debate.

The supreme leader keeps power by insuring a rotation of factions. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, he cleaned house of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s followers. Likewise, when Rouhani won the presidency, the press cheered as he began his purge of Ahmadinejad’s supporters (never mind he simply replaced the pro-Ahmadinejad Revolutionary Guards veterans with intelligence ministry veterans, hardly the sign of sincere reform). It is reasonable to assume that the supreme leader will try to keep Rouhani’s minions from growing too powerful by orchestrating the revival of the Ahmadinejadniks.

And, indeed, that is what is happening according to the Iranian press. The Open Source Center has compiled a number of Iranian press reporters discussing Ahmadinejad’s rehabilitation. On April 3, for example, the hardline website Shafaf spoke about Ahmadinejad fielding a candidate in a by-election this coming fall. Ten days later, Mosalas Online hinted that Ahmadinejad was crafting a strategy to retake the Majlis. This is no idle talk. After all, Ahmadinejad’s pre-presidency claim to fame was organizing the rise of the conservatives in local elections. Entekhab has speculated that Ahmadinejad has his sights set on the 2017 election. Most importantly, the state-controlled Iranian press has begun publishing photographs of the supreme leader with Ahmadinejad (scroll to the third photo from the left). There is no better indication that Ahmadinejad is not so down and out as perhaps many American diplomats hope.

Perhaps Obama has put great faith in Rouhani, and is willing to take risks for a nuclear deal because of him. The question Obama won’t consider—but Congress should—is whether they would trust Ahmadinejad to again take the reins of a nuclear-capable Iran, albeit one with sanctions and controls removed thanks to Obama’s naive faith and misreading of the Iranian political system. Alas, that appears to be the situation in which Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are putting the United States.

UN Figures It Out: Iran Might be Lying! The Jewish Press, Avi Tuchmayer, May 13, 2014

(Hope springs eternal . . . . — DM)

According to a confidential new report by a U.N. panel that compliance with international sanctions, Tehran appears to be using its petrochemical industry as a cover to smuggle forbidden items into the Islamic Republic for use in the nuclear program, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad in nuclear plant

The United Nations is considering the possibility that Iran just might have figured out how to avoid international sanctions in order to continue that country’s drive to develop nuclear weapons.

According to a confidential new report by a U.N. panel that compliance with international sanctions, Tehran appears to be using its petrochemical industry as a cover to smuggle forbidden items into the Islamic Republic for use in the nuclear program, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

According to Reuters, Iran has apparently slowed import of forbidden substances in recent months, but added that there might be a possibility of subterfuge, “rang(ing) from concealing titanium tubes inside steel pipes to using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain items for a heavy-water nuclear reactor.”

The report comes as the international community is preparing for a new round of talks aimed at politely asking Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has warned for nearly 20 years that Iran was marching towards nuclear weapons capabilities, but the international community has been slow to respond.

According to Reuters, Iranian duplicity includes a set of titanium tubes hidden inside a shipment of stainless steel pipes manufactured in and shipped from China.

The report recommends that governments exercise greater vigilance over freight-forwarding firms, which often appear as the ordering party on shipments of items destined for Iran. While such practices are not necessarily illegal, the panel says Tehran could use them to conceal final destinations or uses.

“In three cases inspected under the current mandate, names of freight forwarders were recorded on shipping documentation in the place of consignors or consignees,” the report said.

“The Panel notes that the International Freight Forwarders Association (FIATA) has issued a notice to its members warning about the increased use of counterfeit Bills of Lading in connection with shipments to and from Iran,” it added.

PETROCHEMICAL COVER

Another example of Iranian deception is efforts the Ayatollahs have made for the past two years to obtain German and Indian valves for the heavy-water reactor at Arak, a plant that has proven to be a major sticking point in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations. Reuters notes that one investigation refers to Iran’s  procurement of 1,767 valves for Modern Industries Technique Company (MITEC) from 2007 through 2011. According to the experts’ 2013 report, 1,163 valves appear to have reached the company.

If the Arak reactor goes online in its current form, it will yield significant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium, but the document merely explains how it would produce radioisotopes that could be used in “radiation processing, radiation therapy, radiography, scanning and tracer purposes and other peaceful applications of nuclear energy”.

Iran has warned for years that the Islamic Republic views “wiping Israel off the map” as s a strategic goal for the country. To that end, Iran has financed years of terror attacks against Israeli civilians via its financing of the Hamas terror gang. In addition, Iran is suspected in a string of terror attacks against Jews around the world, most notably the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 people and wounded over 300.

In addition, Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned Western leaders that it is a mistake to pretend that Iran would refrain from attacking Western targets in Europe and North America if given the opportunity.

However, much of the international community has rejected Israel’s warnings. President Barack Obama has pledged repeatedly not to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons “on (my) watch,” but also refused to respond to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s question about what his administration would consider a “red line” that would prompt an American military strike.

Other world leaders have criticised Israel for threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and some have even criticised economic sanctions as a method of causing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Notably, engagement with Iran is a potential economic bonanza for Western countries presumably for two reasons: Iranian oil, and the enormous potential that Western companies could tap by collaborating with building Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to Reuters, several Western diplomats acknowledged that the UN report was supported by intelligence, said Iran’s Supreme National Security Council instructed Iranian banks and state firms to create “front companies” to help the Revolutionary Guards in evade the UN and other sanctions.

“The order, which was issued in April 2013, is reportedly intended to obscure the relationship of such companies to Khatam al-Anbiya and make the activities of the company appear innocent,” the report said.

Reuters also said that the directive to create front companies  remained in effect well after Iran’s new “pragmatist” President Hassan Rouhani took office last August.

Nine US-backed Syrian rebel militias advance on Quneitra, key to controlling Golan.

Small Golan town of al-Kahtaniyya falls to Syrian rebels

Nine Syrian rebel militias were advancing on the main Syrian Golan town Quneitra (pop: 20,000) Tuesday, May 13, to wrest it from the Syrian army, thereby removing one of its last points of access to the Israeli border. They have dubbed their offensive “Levant of the Prophet.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and senior commanders visited the Golan Tuesday, May 13, to survey the rebel offensive. For the third day running, Israel has kept the Quneitra crossing into the Syrian sector closed as a military zone. The off-limits area includes parts of the enclave’s Rtes 98 and 91 and Kibbutz Ei Zivan.

“Syrian rebels have pushed the Assad’s military into a corner,” the defense minister commented. “To the east, we are seeing destruction and death, and sometimes, the injured come to us for medical treatment. To the West, we see the Golan Heights flourishing.”
debkafile’s military sources report that the nine militias, spearheaded by the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front, have been moving north from the Jordanian-Israeli-Syrian border junction. Their first target is the capture of the Quneitra-Ein Zivan crossing as a direct bridge to Israel; its second force, to take Quneitra the town.

The rebel militiamen are taking care to hug the Israeli border fence on their way north, reckoning that the Syrian tanks and light artillery units scattered in the sector would not attack them for fear of shells or rockets straying across into Israel. This would prompt instant reprisals

And indeed, ranged opposite the Syrian forces, are IDF positions of the newly-created 210th territorial Bashan Division. They are armed with Tamuz (Spike) anti-tank missiles of two types: The Spike-SR which has a range of 1.5 km and Spike-MRs which can hit targets at a distance of 2.5 km. Both carry tandem warheads designed to destroy Syrian tanks or artillery by piercing their reactive armor with a hollow charge guided by electro-optical means.
The Israeli positions are under orders not to obstruct rebel movements, but rather take care of their wounded.
While Israeli has formally adopted a position of non-intervention in the more than three-year Syrian war, things are rather different in practice.

Israel allows the SFR to operate on its Golan threshold, because this rebel militia is unofficially backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, according to debkafile’s sources.

debkafile’s intelligence sources reveal that the commander of the Syrian rebel “Levant of the Prophet” operation is Col. Ziyad Hariri, who defected from the Syrian army after serving as an infantry brigade chief. The field commander is Capt. Abu Khaidar.
The operation’s overall commander is the SFR chief, Jamal Maarouf, who operates out of a command center in the Idlib province of northern Syria. But when there is danger, he withdraws across the border to South Turkey.

Maarouf is a pious Muslim who has three wives. He has gone to great lengths to enlist only native Syrians and no foreigners to the SRF and is flatly opposed to al Qaeda’s participation in the war on the Assad regime.

Our military and intelligence sources add that nothing is ever clear-cut in any aspect of the Syrian conflict – whether the state of combat, the identity of commanders or the makeup of the various fighting forces. Although it is presumed that there are no members of Jabhat a-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda, in Maarouf’s militia, a certain number of radical Jordanian Salafis with apparent ties to al Qaeda seem to have infiltrated the militia.
The IDF is letting this go without response. Neither is it entirely clear up to what point this force is backed by American, Saudi and Jordanian intelligence agencies.
All that can be said with certainty is that if this rebel force, whatever its composition, succeeds in wresting Quneitra from the Syria army, Syrian and Hizballah loyalist forces will have lost their presence on the Syrian Golan and southern Syria up to the town of Deraa.

Should Bashar Assad or Hassan Nasrallah wish to attack Israel, they will have to go round to the north and strike from the Hermon range or the Shebaa farms in southern Lebanon.
Tuesday night, Syria filed a complaint with the UN accusing Israel of aiding the rebel war on the Syrian army in the Golan.

After overrunning the small Golan town of al-Kahtaniyya Monday, the rebels dropped flyers over Quneitra to advise inhabitants to leave their homes by Tuesday morning to escape the coming general offensive. Thousands of people were seen fleeing the town Tuesday, just ahead of the fighting.