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Tags: Fortified wall Hizballah Syria

Syria deepens its footprint in Lebanon

Hizballah and Syria are building a massive fortified wall, running from Rashaya Al-Wadi on the western, Lebanese slopes of Mt. Hermon (85 kilometers southeast of Beirut) in the south, to the Lebanese Beqaa Valley town of Aita el-Foukhar, in the north, debkafile‘s military sources reveal.
The structure, 22 kilometers long in parallel to the Lebanese-Syrian border promises to be one of the biggest fortified structures in the Middle East. It is designed as an obstacle against any Israeli tank forces heading through Lebanon toward the Syrian capital, Damascus. When it is finished, the barrier will isolate a key Lebanese border region – 14 kilometers wide and 22 kilometers long – from the rest of the country and place it under Hizballah-Syrian military control.

This region is inhabited most by Druzes and Christians.
The project became possible in the last year, after Lebanon’s Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, turned away from his pro-Western allegiance and threw in his lot with the pro-Syrian camp, lining up with Syrian president Bashar Assad and Hizballah’s secretary Hassan Nasrallah and buying into the military alliance headed by Iran.
Behind the rising wall, Hizballah and Syria can freely smuggle weapons across concealed from outside surveillance, while deepening Syria’s footprint in Lebanon.
In any case, as debkafile has disclosed, they pulled off their subterfuge for getting the Scuds across by stationing two Hizballah brigades on the Syrian side of the border for training in the new missiles. When Israeli failed to make good on its threat to strike those missiles if they reached Hizballah hands, Damascus and Hizballah felt free to go forward with Part Two of their plan for Lebanon’s militarization – first the Hizballah militia’s transformation into a modern army with sophisticated weapons, and now the raising of a fortified wall and creating a Syrian-controlled buffer region inside Lebanon, 55 kilometers east of Beirut and 35 kilometers north of South Lebanon and the Israeli border.
According to our military sources, Syria intends to keep that region off-limits to Lebanese military access -except for Hizballah. Syrian troops, officers and arms stores are to be based there and maintained in a state of war readiness.

Syria stands to gain another prime strategic asset with its control of Rashaya Al-Wadi, at the southernmost point of the new wall: This scenic village commands the Taim valley, whence flow a number of water courses that feed the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee; for the first time in many years, Damascus will be placing a hand on one of Israel’s primary water sources.
Satisfied that the Netanyahu government will continue to sit on its hands, Syria and Hizballah are not hiding the massive barrier project’s progress. Long convoys of trucks crossing in from Syria can be seen converging on the site, loaded with cement and other building materials.
Our Middle East sources report that the project is so immense and the work so intensive, that shops in Damascus have run out of cement, forcing many other construction works in Syria to a standstill.

Fatemeh Keshavarz: The Goals of Ahmadinejad.

The Latest Charade
By FATEMEH KESHAVARZ

Mr. Ahmadinejad was here again last week with nothing new to add to his old line. Upon arrival in the U.S. on May 3rd, he said in a Persian interview that the purpose of his trip was not to attract the trust and goodwill of anyone. That same evening he said in an interview with Charlie Rose “Iran is not worried about US sanctions; it is used to 30 years of sanctions.” Later he added “Sanctions are meaningless in the world of free trade.” Both these claims are open to debate. Certainly, Iranians who already live in harsh economic conditions would beg to differ with their “President.” Nonetheless, Mr. Ahmadinejad is telling the truth, when he says defending the Iranian nuclear agenda, or avoiding sanctions, are not the goals of his trip.

His main objectives I believe are two, one international and one domestic. On the international scene he requires a smoke screen to hide the horrendous executions (the latest figure, 4 young men and 1 woman yesterday including a young teacher called Farzad Kamangar) and human right abuses that are intensifying as the anniversary of the disputed June 2009 election approaches. The nuclear issue, and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s headline grabbing dismissive attitude provides this coverage by diverting attention from these actions to the fear of a nuclear Holocaust. On the domestic side, he needs to project the image of a confident, legitimate and internationally recognized President for the country. Upon return to Iran, his state-run television will use carefully selected excerpts from the trip to piece together a heroic Ahmadinejad embarrassing western reporters and winning the hearts and minds of those oppressed by the west. In the process it deals a demoralizing blow to the seekers of reform in Iran by highlighting the fact that he gets the attention of the U.S./ the world not them. He represents the country.  The central message: the post election painful and bloody struggle for social justice is already a thing of the past.

His dismissive smirk notwithstanding, Mr. Ahmadinejad has always cared deeply about the world opinion. He uses his security forces to prevent the reformist opposition leaders from getting any international attention. Weeks before his unnecessary trip of May 3rd, his police force prevented the former Iranian President Mohamad Khatami from leaving the country. Parleman News, the official website of the minority faction of the Iranian parliament, reported that on April 15 former President Mohammad Khatami, about to leave Iran for Japan to attend a summit on nuclear disarmament, was turned back from Tehran airport. There are no legal charges against Mr. Khatami and he is unlikely to have been able to do any damage to the current government besides being received respectfully by some of the world leaders and Iranians living aboard. Weeks before that, Simin Behbahani, the Iranian Poet Laureate and Head of the Iranian Writers Association, was also prevented from leaving the country. Behbahani, a deeply respected national figure, is an 83 year-old poet twice-nominated for the Noble prize. She could have caused no harm to the current regime except through attracting the respect and the attention of the western media and the Iranians living abroad for her outspoken defense of a democratic Iran.

Back in Iran, as the heroic basher of the U.S. Media, Mr. Ahmadinejad has the most disdainful remarks for these reporters and the questions they usually ask him. May be, after all, he has a point in not thinking highly of a media which fails to take him to task for the kind of criminal government he is presiding over. Lending him, instead, its publicity tools, unwittingly, by showcasing his trip and by interviewing him on outdated and irresolvable issues such as “Is Secretary Clinton a friend of Iran?” and “Is Iran afraid of sanctions?”, “The current location of Osama Ben Laden” and the like. Mr. Stephanopoulos must be totally unaware of the long term animosity between Al-Qaeda and Iran. Even so, does he really think that if Ahmadinejad were to hide Ben Laden in Iran, he would confess to it on ABC?  In these interviews, which are carried out in conditions of near zero expertise on the realty of life in present Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad comes across as confident and brave and the interviewer as irritated, skeptical, and frequently subjected to the interviewee’s ridicule.  In the process, the criminal behavior of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government, including the total silencing of journalism, the continued arrests, assassinations, and executions, the re-opening of the Karizak Prison, and the like, are not even brought up.

If a well-informed reporter ever interviewed Mr. Ahmadinejad, s/he might ask how could he have run on the platform of fighting corruption when the most recent investigations – even though real investigations are close to dreams in present day Iran – have described his government as “the most corrupt” among all governments following the 1979 revolution. According to this report, prepared by the country’s top investigator Mr. Mustafa Pourmohammadi, submitted to the Supreme Leader and leaked to the press, 27 officials appointed by Mr. Ahmadinejad are under investigation for embezzlement.

Other informed questions would include, if his government had 63% of the vote, why ten months after the election is the number of those kept in jail still in the thousands (most without a stated crime and without a lawyer), why are there new arrests on a daily basis, why are the university dorms across the country continue to be raided injuring and arresting more students.  Why does Iran have the largest number of official reporters in jail (67 to be precise)? Why do eight out of the eleven highest ranking Iranian clerics refuse to even meet and speak with Mr. Ahmadinejad? Why did the workers who on May first demonstrated in at least five major cities in Iran claimed their management to be corrupt and their wages unpaid.  The list could go on with the latest item on it being the assassination of progressive academics by unknown individuals who miraculously find their way through the maze of the security forces into their offices and attack them for “personal” reasons. Could these attacks which are carried out only against the supporters of the Green Movement be aiming at terrorizing the student and faculty opposition crucial historically to the survival of social justice movements in Iran?  Could it be because they are still refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government?

Iran is a large and complex country. It is not easy to set a clear timetable for the collapse of its current brutal government. What is clear, however, is that its condition is far from stable and the opposition to it far from quelled. The government keeps the lid on things by walking an extremely fine line. On May first, The teachers and the workers day in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad crossed this line by using his usual trick of trying to get into Tehran University from the back door to speak to a group of handpicked students – so a film of the event could put his victory on national display. In a matter of minutes, thousands of students had gathered to protest his presence on the university campus. He left the way he always has, quietly and through the back door http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxq4gOhNTCc .

Neither Charlie Rose nor George Stephanopoulos who interviewed Ahmadinejad seem to be aware of any of the above facts or even more recent events such as workers and student demonstrations in a dozen Iranian cities on May 1st. Worse still, they did not seem to know that Professor Motamedi, President of Amirkabir Polytechnic University in Tehran, and a supporter of the Green Movement was stabbed in his office on the same day that Mr. Ahmadinejad was assuring Charlie Rose and millions of American viewers that life in Iran had returned to normal. In fact the situation at the universities is so grave that the world academics have created an online initiative appealing to the international community for its support of academics in Iran: http://digilander.libero.it/university4iran/

Despite the sensors, the filters, and the punishments, educated Iranians (whose rate of literacy at age 15-25 is above 92%) continue to view themselves as citizens of the world. They follow the reactions of the world in the hope of recognition for their struggle in one of the harshest conditions of suppression. They know that Ahmadinejad’s government has moved its violence to student dorms, interrogation rooms, and prisons to prevent them from showing their wounds to the world. He prevents them from making headlines by generating his own headlines built around Israel bashing and nuclear sensationalism to persuade them that the U.S. / world media has abandoned them. There is a “wiping off the map” going on here and that is wiping the struggle of Iranians for social justice off the world’s consciousness by hiding them under a smoke screen.

Mr. Ahmadinejad will take any opportunity to visit the U.S. even when heads of states are not invited and he has nothing new to add to his old lines. While here, he will promote his creative version of life in Iran: free, strong, and unafraid of war or sanctions. And, he will reiterate his old uncompromising position on the Iranian nuclear industry to encourage his opponents to repeat their threats including the unrealistic threats of a military strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities. The renewal of verbal threats of military attack against Iran justifies more sensor and more executions.

In the meantime, Iranians are watching…and enduring bravely. One can only hope that their endurance will outlast the Iranian government’s ability to maintain its charade of legitimacy.

Fatemeh Keshavarz is Chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Washington University and the author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran.

The new Lebanon battlefield – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Israelis don’t fully realize scope of military threat posed by Hezbollah

Alex Fishman

Clinton: We won’t get a serious response from Iran without sanctions – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

• Published 22:54 14.05.10
• Latest update 22:54 14.05.10

Secretary of State also said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces an uphill climb in trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that Iran still refuses to discuss its nuclear program with the international community and is unlikely to do so until the United Nations imposes new sanctions on the Islamic republic.

	U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
	Photo by: AP

“I have told my counterparts in many capitals around the world that I believe that we will not get any serious response out of the Iranians until after the Security Council acts,” Clinton told reporters after a meeting with new British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Clinton also said that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces an uphill climb in trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Lula plans to press Iran’s leaders to revive a stalled proposal under which Iran would send low-enriched uranium abroad and receive a higher grade uranium in return – a plan that has gone nowhere since it was floated in October.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover for pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its program is solely to generate electricity.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Lula in Moscow that he had a 30 percent chance at best. Lula, in contrast, put his own odds of success at 9.9 on a scale of one to 10.

“The interchange between President Lula and President Medvedev in Moscow today illustrated the hill that the Brazilians are attempting to climb,” Clinton told reporters.

DEBKA.

Benyamin Netanyahu and Gabi Ashkenazi

The leaders of Israel, Syria and Hizballah all issued statements this week uniformly declaring they were not planning a summer war.
Their armies told a different story. DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources tracked six moves which served to further raise the war suspense:

1. Israel reservists in their biggest exercise in four years

The exercise took place in northern Israel close to its border with Lebanon directly opposite Hizballah’s missile positions. Reserve units from the infantry, armored corps, artillery corps, special forces, Air Force and Navy practiced repelling a surprise cross-border attack by Hizballah for the seizure of Israeli locations (See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 430 of Jan. 22: Iranian-backed Hizballah Marks Out Patches of Northern Israel for Capture. )
The units also drilled tactics against intensive enemy barrages directed at command centers, troop concentrations, supply routes to the Northern Front and urban districts of Israeli cities.
Reservist units tested their ability to reach front lines under fire, throw invading Hizballah forces back into Lebanon and pursue them across the border for a counter-attack to wipe out Hizballah missile bases and fortified lines of defense.
The four-day exercise began Sunday, May 9, and ended Wednesday, May 12.

2. Hizballah cuts down border-crossing time

Hizballah responded to the Israeli exercise by fielding two brigades (See DNW 441 of April 16: Assad is Modernizing Hizballah as His Defensive Shield for Damascus) stationed in Syria alongside the Scud missiles they have just received. They practiced rapid crossings into Lebanon, the while firing those self-propelled missiles on “advancing Israeli forces.”
Its commander claimed they had managed to shorten the time span for the crossing from two hours to one hour-20 minutes.
Syrian ruler Bashar Assad‘s declaration that he wants peace drew from Israeli President Shimon Peres the remark in Moscow that Assad must be the only ruler in the world who thinks giving Hizballah (Scud) missiles is a peace move.
(See separate article on Russian-Israeli relations in this issue).

3. Obama speeds smart bombs to Israel

In view of the incendiary tensions on Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, the Obama administration expedited the delivery of an assortment of smart bombs for the Israeli Air Force. These kinds of arms are particularly effective against the fortified structures and systems used by Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Syrian Army.
They fall into three categories, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Washington report:
A. Guided Bomb Unit 28 (GBU-28), called Deep Throat. These are ‘bunker busters’ weighing 2,268 tons.
B. Smaller GBU-39 bombs that weigh 113 kilograms apiece and are well suited to being carried by IAF F-15 jets. They can penetrate smaller field fortifications and 1.83-meter thick reinforced concrete, of which most Hizballah fortifications in Lebanon are built.
The United States will soon supply Israel with similar ordnance for its F-16 bombers.
C. Laser-Guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (LJDAM) for improving these smart bombs’ accuracy and effectiveness. Developed jointly by the American Boeing and Israeli Elbit corporations, this system enables the bombs to be launched from a maximum distance of 28 kilometers and strike home in all weather conditions. In providing the LJDAMs, the US is taking into consideration that in the next war, Hizballah will have enough anti-aircraft weaponry to restrict Israeli aerial movement over Lebanon, and so the IAF needs an optional weapon for striking enemy targets from afar.

4. Turkish military in support of Syria

It transpired this week that Ankara left Turkish anti-aircraft missile batteries out in the field close to its border with Syria after they finished their joint military maneuver of April 27-29. Instead of being pulled back into their bases inside Turkey, these batteries are now deployed to counter over-flights of Turkish skies by Israeli warplanes heading to strike targets in Syria and Lebanon.
This is the first time Turkey, until recently Israel’s closest military ally in the region, has acted to inhibit the IAF’s freedom of action in the eastern Mediterranean.

5. Israel scatters its rear bases for extra security

Israel has put in place a new strategy for safeguarding its military rear facilities against missile and rocket attack by distributing essential equipment, war materials and equipment among small logistics facilities. Announced by the head of the IDF’s Logistics Division Brig. Gen. Nissim Peretz on Wednesday, May 12, this key redeployment was scarcely reported, even though it would normally be seen as symptomatic of an approaching war situation.
He stressed that the relocation of these vital military facilities would ensure the IDF’s ability to fight uninterrupted and supported by an undisturbed flow of essential supplies – even when under missile assault.
The officer also announced a special conference of top Israeli commanders to discuss ways and means of better securing these rear bases.

6. Hizballah suddenly starts building a massive wall in Lebanon

DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources have just discovered Hizballah starting on a massive project, helped by Iranian military engineers, to build a huge wall, apparently designed as an anti-tank barrier. The work has begun at Rashiya al-Wadi, which is situated at the central Lebanon mountain chain’s southern extremity as it tips into the Beqaa Valley on the Syrian border. The colossal scale of the project is indicated by endless convoys of trucks loaded with cement and iron heading out of Syria to the site, and the sudden dearth in the last few days of building materials and cement in Damascus.

7. A lone diplomatic initiative

The only diplomatic action anyone took this week to defuse the heightened war suspense between Israel, Syria and Lebanon was undertaken by Spanish foreign minister Miguel Moratinos: He shuttled between Jerusalem and Damascus bearing assurances from both sides that neither intends to start a war.
No-one was listening.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Brazilian president Turkish PM US-Iran

Brazilian president in Moscow

Washington seems to be in two minds on key aspects of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, providing  momentum for the Brazilian and Turkish leaders to promote their mediation bid in Tehran  Sunday, May 16, debkafile reports from Washington and Tehran.
Tuesday, May 11, President Barack Obama’s nuclear adviser Gary Samore told reporters that “setbacks in Iran’s uranium enrichment program have significantly delayed its progress towards building a nuclear weapon.” Three days later, on Friday, May 14, an official at the UN nuclear watchdog’s Vienna headquarters contradicted him: “Iran has set up new equipment that will allow it to boost its efficiency in enriching uranium at higher levels,” the anonymous source told reporters.

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile plan to launch a diplomatic initiative to bridge the gaps between Iran and the bloc of five UN Security Council powers and Germany over its offer to process Iran’s low-grade enriched uranium overseas to 19.5 percent, to prevent Iran making the short jump to weapons grade material.
Iran has meanwhile claimed it can produce its own high-grade (19.5 percent) uranium, without recourse to the six-power offer.
There are other gaps for the would-be brokers to address. And so the Brazilian president dropped in on Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow Friday and will meet Erdogan before they present their proposal to the Iranian leaders Sunday. Their offer to top up the uranium enrichment process outside Iran in Brazil, Turkey or Russia came up in Medvedev’s talks with Syrian president Bashar Assad in Damascus Tuesday and with Erdogan in Ankara Wednesday.
Thursday, President Obama was on the phone to the Russian president, sounding amenable. He did not object to the new mediation bids, in which Moscow too has a stake, he said and if there is progress, he will take note.

But the day before, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opted for the reverse tack.
She warned the Turkish and Brazilian foreign ministers that Iran is not serious about accepting international demands to prove its nuclear program peaceful. “Tehran must face fresh penalties unless it does a quick about-face and complies,” she said, adding, “In our view, Iran’s recent diplomacy was an attempt to stop Security Council action without actually taking steps to address international concerns about its nuclear program.”
A third tack came from London Wednesday, when the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which has close ties with the US intelligence community, determinedly played down Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities in “a net assessment.”

Some Middle East sources inferred from this surprising report and the confusing signals from Washington of the last week that, rather than going all out to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Washington and London are intent on blocking the road to sanctions.

Diplomats: Iran improving technology for high-grade uranium – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran first started enriching small amounts of uranium to higher levels in February, saying it wanted to make fuel for a medical research reactor.

	A nuclear reactor in Bushehr
	Photo by: Bloomberg

Iran has been setting up extra equipment which could improve the way it enriches uranium to higher levels, diplomats said, a move which shows Tehran seeking to enhance its atomic work as big powers discuss new sanctions.

Iran first started enriching small amounts of uranium to higher levels in February, saying it wanted to make fuel for a medical research reactor. This raised Western suspicion as Iran is seen to lack the ability to make the fuel assemblies needed.

Western powers, which called the move provocative, fear the Islamic Republic ultimately aims to stockpile potential material for nuclear weapons. Iran says its aims are purely peaceful.

Iran has been using one set or “cascade” of 164 centrifuge machines to refine small amounts of uranium to up to 20 percent purity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s last report in February.

But a system using just one cascade is inefficient, analysts said, as it produces a large proportion of leftover low-enriched uranium (LEU) alongside the sought-after highly enriched material.

In recent weeks Iranian officials have been adding a second cascade at the Natanz pilot plant to allow the leftover material to be re-fed into the machines more easily, obtaining its full potential and making the work more efficient, diplomats said.

“The second cascade is aimed at supporting the work of the first,” a Western diplomat said. It is not yet operational.

The changes do not appear be aimed at increasing the amounts produced or to raise the enrichment level further, moves which would ring alarm bells, diplomats said. But they said the second cascade could be reconfigured to do this should Iran decide to.

This is why the IAEA has been trying to boost monitoring at the site. The work also shows Iran seeking to improve its technique should it wish to expand later.

“It contributes to their knowledge of how to do this recycling at higher levels of enrichment,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Any acquisition of such tacit knowledge, of knowledge that comes from actually doing the operation, does contribute to any future effort to push for highly enriched uranium.”

The IAEA declined to comment.

Western officials fear Iran’s decision to enrich to higher levels is ultimately meant to advance it on the road to generating arms-grade uranium — refined to 90 percent purity.

Iran denies this and says its operation will only produce 20 percent refined uranium with a capacity of 3 to 5 kg a month, enough to make fuel for the research reactor.

Since the higher enrichment started, the IAEA has sought to improve monitoring and inspections at the site. Talks with Iran have yielded some progress, but IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said earlier this month that arrangements were still not “proper”.

The better monitoring is key because inspectors need to ensure the work is not being diverted for military purposes.

Tehran has said it was forced to enrich to higher levels after the breakdown of a fuel deal with Western powers and IAEA, under which it would have sent 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium abroad in return for fuel rods for the medical reactor.

“Iran’s moves make it clear that it is not serious about the fuel proposal,” another Western diplomat said.

The Islamic Republic has voiced optimism about Turkish and Brazilian mediation efforts to revive the fuel offer. Western officials have dismissed the moves as stalling tactics.

Middle East Updatel – Gen. Paul Vallely, PJTV « HOME – Other Right Links and Posts – Remember In November!

Former US General Warns of Chemical Attacks against Israel

Gen. Paul Vallely speaks to PJTV exclusively and reveals how Iranian submarines are now equipping Israel’s enemies with Scud missiles armed warheads filled with chemical weapons.

Click here to see the report/interview…