WarSclerotic

U.S. officials slam pro-Israel Jerusalem ad – Haaretz – Israel News.

United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel’s position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement. The authors of the most recent such advertisements were president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. “All these advertisements are not a wise move,” one senior American official told Haaretz.

In the advertisement, Wiesel said that for him as a Jew, “Jerusalem is above politics,” and that “it is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Koran.” Wiesel called to postpone discussion on Jerusalem until a later date, when there is an atmosphere of security allowing Israeli and Palestinian communities to find ways to live in peace.

The ongoing confrontation with the U.S. administration over construction in East Jerusalem was present in many of the comments made by senior Israeli officials during Independence Day.

Netanyahu himself said in an interview to ABC that freezing construction in the east of the city was an impossible demand, and refused to answer questions on the Israeli response to demands from Washington. Instead, he called on Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table without preconditions.

Foreign Minister Lieberman, meanwhile, made Jerusalem the focal point of his speech in a festive reception for the diplomatic corps at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. President Shimon Peres spoke first, calling for progress in the diplomatic process. Lieberman, who took the podium immediately after Peres, made diametrically opposed statements in his speech, stressing that the Palestinian Authority is no partner for peace.

“Jerusalem is our eternal capital and will not be divided,” Lieberman said. Many of the ambassadors in the audience left feeling stunned and confused, some of them told Haaretz. “The gap between Peres and Lieberman is inconceivable,” one of them said. “We couldn’t comprehend how Lieberman can say all that in front of all the international community delegates.”

Speaking at the torch-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl on Monday, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said that there was “an attack on Jerusalem” and that Israel “will not apologize for the building of Jerusalem, our capital.”

The diplomatic freeze and crisis with the Americans fueled a heated meeting of Labor Party ministers on Sunday. Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Isaac Herzog and Avishay Braverman told Defense Minister and party chairman Ehud Barak that unless there was some movement on the diplomatic front within weeks, the Labor Party should consider leaving the government or working to bring in Kadima.

Senior Labor officials, who declined to be named, said this was the first time the diplomatic freeze was being discussed between Labor ministers. “They main message coming from this discussion is that things can’t go on like this,” one senior Labor official told Haaretz. “The Labor ministers told Barak that we will be approaching a moment of political decision within weeks.”

Barak tried to calm the ministers, saying he was concerned by the state of Israeli-American relations and will travel to Washington next week for talks on the peace process. Barak appears to be set to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special U.S. envoy George Mitchell and national security advisor General Jim Jones.

Editorial – Iran, Sanctions and Mr. Gates’s Memo – NYTimes.com.

Sometime this spring, but still months later than President Obama predicted, Iran may finally face new United Nations sanctions for its illicit nuclear program.

Mr. Obama has done a lot to prepare the ground. He has bolstered American credibility with his — since rebuffed — offer to engage with Iran. He signed a new arms reduction treaty with Russia, improved relations with China and is personally lobbying other United Nations Security Council members to support stronger sanctions.

We are skeptical that even that will be enough to get Moscow and Beijing to sign on to anything with real bite. In the last four years, the Security Council has passed three far-too-modest sanctions resolutions. Tehran has shrugged them all off and kept churning out nuclear fuel.

The good news is that Mr. Obama is also hedging his bets, with an effort — first begun under President George W. Bush — to persuade an ever-widening circle of international corporate interests to eschew business in economically strapped Iran.

Total, the French energy company, and Eni of Italy claim they are planning to end new investments in Iran. Major international banks like Deutsche Bank and HSBC have said that they are withdrawing from Iran. Several oil companies have said they would no longer supply gasoline to Iran, including Royal Dutch Shell, Vitol, Russia’s Lukoil and India’s Reliance. Last week, Malaysia’s state oil firm, Petronas, said it was cutting off shipments. Its prime minister then denied it.

Promises are clearly cheap. The administration will have to keep pressing these companies to live up to their commitments. And it is time for Mr. Obama’s European partners to think about more formal ways to tighten their own sanctions on Iran.

None of this should let the Security Council off the hook. A new resolution would provide important cover for these parallel tracks. Iran is especially vulnerable now, both economically and politically. Its leaders will be watching carefully, especially to see what its longtime trading partners and enablers in Russia and China do.

There, the news is not good. While Russian and Chinese leaders told Mr. Obama that they will work seriously on new sanctions, diplomats say their representatives are already seeking ways to dilute any resolution. Brazil and Turkey, which currently sit on the Security Council and have a lot of international sway, also are resisting. Mr. Obama needs to keep pressing Moscow and Beijing hard. He and his European partners need to make clear that Brazil (which seeks permanent Security Council membership) and Turkey (a NATO member) must step up.

We don’t know if there is any mixture of pressure — or inducements — that will force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. That’s what makes a memo written earlier this year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and reported by The Times on Sunday so important.

Looking beyond the current maneuvering, he raises some very disturbing and difficult questions that need to be addressed. How will the world contain Iran if it actually produces a weapon? What will Washington and its allies do if Iran acquires all of the parts but decides to stop just short of that?

The United States and its allies need to quietly discuss and prepare for those possibilities — without giving Russia, China and others any more excuses not to act.

As for the military options under review, we are sure that an attack would be a disaster. We urge anyone who has doubts to listen closely to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told reporters on Sunday that while military “options would cause delay” to Iran’s nuclear program, “that doesn’t mean the problem is going to go away.”

Editorial – Iran, Sanctions and Mr. Gates’s Memo – NYTimes.com.

Beware the coming war.

The July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah transformed both Lebanese and Arab politics. Hezbollah emerged as the heroic champion of resistance to Israeli aggression across the Arab and Islamic world. While Hassan Nasrallah claimed “divine victory”, Hezbollah lost its autonomy to operate in south Lebanon to units of UNIFEL and the Lebanese Army.

Israel lost its psychological aura of invincibility in the Middle East when its troops were unable to defeat Hezbollah in the village battlefields and rock strewn hills of south Lebanon even though the northern Galilee border is calm for the first time since the late 1960’s. Unfortunately, the balance of power between Hezbollah and Israel is unstable and the calculus of deterrence cannot last.

Israel has myriad strategic reasons to launch a preemptive strike against a resurgent Hezbollah. Despite Ehud Olmert’s brutal Dahiya doctrine, Israeli warplanes were unable to terror-bomb the Shia militia into submission, unable to kill or capture its high command. In fact, Israel’s devastating aerial firepower only turned Nasrallah into the first truly popular Arab war hero since President Nasser during the Suez war in 1956. Hezbollah’s defiance of Israel narrowed the Sunni-Shia cleavage in the Arab world created by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Israel has tried its best to wage psychological war against Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons. Mossad agents assassinated top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, the mastermind of suicide bombings attacks against the US Marine barracks and the American embassy in Beirut. To add insult to injury, Mughniyeh was killed by a car bomb in the Damascus neighbourhood of Kfir Soussa, the citadel of the Syrian secret police. Israeli warplanes bombed an alleged North Korean built nuclear reactor in the western deserts of Syria in September 2007. Israeli F-16’s routinely create sonic booms over Shiite villages in south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Dahiya stronghold of Hezbollah.

In fact, a Syrian-Saudi rapprochement and the procession of Lebanese leaders to Damascus five years after the Cedar Revolution only increases the probability of a preemptive Israeli attack against Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an integral component of the Sunni, Maronite and Druze coalition that now rules Lebanon, no longer a mere “state within a state” whose infrastructure could be safely bombed by the IDF. Hezbollah has rearmed since the July 2006 war. Its military arsenal includes 40,000 long rage rockets and surface to air/anti-tank missiles. Hezbollah’s M-600 rockets have the range to hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, not just Haifa, Tiberias and the north Galilee kibbutz networks. Nasrallah has also been defiant, vowing to destroy Israel in the next war and “change the face of the region”. To the Israeli zealots, Nasrallah and Iran’s President Ahmadinejad are the modern incarnations of Nazis.

The willingness to launch preemptive attacks and use overwhelming force against its enemies has defined the military doctrine of the Haganah and the IDF since the 1948 Palestine war. Israeli deterrence and terror bombing, however, failed against Hezbollah in July 2006. In fact, Hezbollah’s unending attacks in a protracted war of attrition had forced the IDF to humiliatingly withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, a bitter blow to a military machine whose blitzkriegs had once vanquished the Egyptian, Syrian and ordanian armies in the Six Day War. Miscalculation on either side could ignite a new war, as in 2006 when Nasrallah ordered the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers in a cross-border raid.

The Israelis violated the balance of terror when Mossad assassinated Mughniyeh and Netanyahu has publicly threatened to flatten the Dahiya. A war in Lebanon could be the inevitable consequence of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear arsenal or an Iranian Revolutionary Guard attempt to midwife an anti-US Shia coalition in the Middle East. Mired in two wars, unable to broker the peace process, distrusted by its own Lebanese and Arab allies the US is impotent to prevent another war.

The next war will differ from July 2006. The IDF will launch large scale bombing attacks against Shia Beirut, the Bekaa valley and the Shia villages of South Lebanon. A ground offensive on the northern banks of the Litani River to occupy the Nabatiyeh heights, a Hezbollah stronghold. The Sunni, Christian and Druze villages of south Lebanon will not be immune to Israeli attacks nor will the infrastructure of the Lebanese state. Hezbollah’s mobile anti-tank missile batteries will be prime targets, since they can disable even the Merkeva M4, the best armoured battle tank in the Middle East. Israeli tank columns and commonado units could even infiltrate Baalbek and the Hezbollah command nerve centres in Bekaa valley even as UNIFIL units limit Hezbollah’s ability to launch retaliatory rocket attacks against northern Israeli cities. Suicide bombing cells in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem could wreck havoc behind the front line. The next war in Lebanon will be sudden, bloody and protracted, just like the horror show of July 2006.

Jewish leaders caught between criticizing, defending Obama | JTA – Jewish & Israel News.

By Ron Kampeas · April 20, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With anxiety over the White House’s Middle East policy mounting in some pro-Israel circles, several Jewish organizational leaders have found themselves in a discomfiting position: criticizing the Obama administration in public while stridently defending the president in private against the most extreme attacks.

It’s an upside-down version of what pro-Israel groups usually do: lavishing praise on the U.S. government of the day for sustaining the “unbreakable bond” while making their criticisms known quietly, behind closed doors.

The criticism has come in the form of mostly polite statements and newspaper ads questioning Obama administration pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly regarding building in eastern Jerusalem. Such criticisms are voiced as well in private meetings with administration officials.

The defense comes up in dealings with irate donors and constituents, in phone calls, e-mails, addresses to small Jewish groups, shul talk. The theme of the complaints is consistent, and shocking, said multiple leaders, who all spoke off the record, and reflect the subterranean rumblings about the president heard during the campaign: His sympathy lies with the Muslims, he doesn’t care about Israel, he’s an anti-Semite.

The Jewish Federations of North America is sufficiently concerned about the phenomenon to have convened a “fly-in” of Jewish organizational leaders to Washington for an as yet unannounced date in May. The leaders will meet with White House, State Department and congressional officials, in part to “to convey concerns about U.S.-Israel relations” — but also, insiders say, to allay those concerns.

One recent flood of anxious queries followed the Obama administration’s announcement earlier this month of its long-awaited nuclear policy. The reality of the policy was a pledge not to threaten with nuclear weapons those nations that provably disavow their nuclear weapons capability. Nations that continued to maintain a threatening nuclear posture, the policy made clear, would still face the prospect of a U.S. nuclear response should they attack the United States or its allies.

Obama named Iran as such a nation.

Yet instead of being reassured, donors and members of national Jewish groups flooded Jewish leaders with anxious queries about a posture that they interpreted as being aimed at embracing a nuclear Iran and forcing Israel to abandon its own reported nuclear capability.

Another persistent — and unfounded — rumor has it that Obama removed the phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem” from the White House seder in March.

“Where the **** are they getting this?” asked a senior official at an organization that has been publicly critical of Obama since last summer.

Angst was stoked, too, when Obama spoke last week of peacemaking throughout the world necessitated by the cost of “American blood and treasure” through involvement in conflicts. It didn’t help that a New York Times analysis suggested the president had said that the lack of Israeli-Palestinian peace threatened U.S. troops in other parts of the globe — even though the transcript of Obama’s remarks did not bear out any such linkage and other Obama administration officials flatly denied one existed.

Jewish officials said a share of the blame lay with the Obama administration, partly for not adequately reaching out to Jews and to Israel, and partly because of the emergence of what appears to be internecine policy wars.

“The real story of The New York Times story is not that he’s changing Israel policy,” said another leader of an organization that has not been shy about criticizing the Obama administration. “The real story is, why are officials leaking” misrepresentations of his policy “to The New York Times?”

On the other side, one leader blamed the Netanyahu government for sending mixed signals on how to handle the tensions between Israel and the United States over settlement policy.

“Some are saying quiet is the best answer and others are saying loud noise is the best answer,” the Jewish organizational official said.

The official cited reports that Netanyahu personally approved public letters — from Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, and Elie Wiesel, the internationally known Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate — criticizing Obama’s demand for a halt in Jerusalem building.

Despite mounting criticism by some Jewish leaders, polls show that Obama’s support among Jews in general remains strong. His backing has dropped from astronomical highs after he was elected, but remains about 10 points stronger than in the general population. Moreover, to the degree that it has eroded, the dissatisfaction with Obama appears to have more to do with unhappiness over his handling of health care and the economy than it does Israel.

Those who are expressing their concerns, however, are among the most active members of the pro-Israel community and help set the tone for the trilateral U.S.-Israel-Jewish leadership ties. Some are acquiring their information from anti-Obama e-mail blasts and consistently partisan critics of Obama.

Richard Baehr, writing in the conservative online magazine The American Thinker, cited The New York Times’ misreading of Obama’s remarks in arguing that “this president is the greatest threat to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948.”

McLaughlin & Associates, a GOP polling firm, touted signs last week that Jewish support for Obama was eroding, but the survey questions were premised on shaky assertions. One question posited that Obama would support a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence, although U.S. officials have consistently said they would oppose such a move. Another suggested that Obama was ready to force Israel to give up the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, although there has been no such pressure.

Administration defenders cite signs suggesting that beyond the settlement rhetoric, the relationship is improving: Obama has increased defense cooperation, for instance, and strategic consultations between officials of both nations are more frequent than they have been in a decade.

“Our bond with Israel is unshakable and unbreakable both as it relates to security, as it relates to a common set of values and also as a common strategic vision because the threats to Israel are similar to some of the threats the United States faces,” Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, said Monday on Bloomberg TV.

Jewish leaders welcome such reassurances but say they are made defensively, and repeatedly call on the Obama administration to become proactive.

Robert Wexler, the former Florida congressman who was Obama’s chief Jewish proxy during the election and now heads the Center for Middle East peace, suggested a more proactive posture was in the offing.

“Actions in the next several months will begin to reflect it,” he told JTA.

Notably, Emanuel held a behind-closed-doors meeting Tuesday with a group of leading Orthodox rabbis.

Meantime, Jewish leaders are walking a tightrope trying to balance traditional deference to the administration with concerns over the tensions. They also object to what they see as the unwarranted pressure on Netanyahu as opposed to relatively little pressure on the Palestinians to join talks that Israel has embraced with enthusiasm. Israel, they hasten to argue, remains America’s best friend in the region.

Lee Rosenberg, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made the Israel-is-our-best-friend case last week at Israel Independence Day celebrations, sharing the stage with Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod.

“Israel stood by America in spirit and in action after the tragic events of 9-11,” Rosenberg said. “As both our great nations fight the same scourge of terrorism and Islamic extremism, it is Israel which serves on the front lines as an outpost of American interests in a dangerous part of the world.”

The Wiesel and Lauder letters offered a suggestive contrast over how to handle the tensions.

Wiesel’s critique was oblique, not naming Obama, and deferred to U.S. orthodoxy that a final-status agreement must accommodate Palestinian claims to the city.

“What is the solution?” Wiesel asked. “Pressure will not produce a solution. Is there a solution? There must be, there will be.”

Lauder, by contrast, directly addressed Obama and suggested that the president was sacrificing Israel to improve relations with the Muslim world.

“The Administration’s desire to improve relations with the Muslim world is well known,” said Lauder, an active Republican. “But is friction with Israel part of this new strategy? Is it assumed worsening relations with Israel can improve relations with Muslims?”

One of the Jewish leaders said the contrast was instructive.

“For all intents and purposes, the WJC’s relationship with the White House ended last week,” he said of the group Lauder heads. “That’s not a relationship that pro-Israel groups can afford to have over the next couple of years.”

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has publicly criticized the administration on several Israel-related fronts. Still, he said, Jewish leaders have a responsibility to defend the president “when talking to those who accuse him of being an enemy of Israel or a Muslim.”

“For many years, you had a lot of Jews who didn’t vote for President Bush who would say, ‘I don’t like Bush but I love what he’s doing on Israel,’” Foxman said.

“Now the paradigm is changing. A lot of Jews are saying, ‘I like Obama, but I don’t like what he is doing on Israel.”

Foxman added that the most frequent question he hears when speaking to Jewish audiences is whether Obama is a friend of Israel.

“I say yes — but what’s wrong is the implementation of what he promised. What’s flawed is the strategy, not the goal,” Foxman said.

The ADL leader quickly added that despite promises to learn from past mistakes, the administration’s handling of Israel-related issues is “going from bad to worse.”

Israelis Debate Striking Iran Without U.S. Consent – WSJ.com.

By CHARLES LEVINSON

JERUSALEM—The Israeli security establishment is divided over whether it needs Washington’s blessing if Israel decides to attack Iran, Israeli officials say, as the U.S. campaign for sanctions drags on and Tehran steadily develops greater nuclear capability.

Some senior Israeli officials say in interviews that they see signs Washington may be willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, an eventuality that Israel says it won’t accept. Compounding Israeli concerns were U.S. statements this past weekend that underscored U.S. resistance to a military option. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday discussed a memo to National Security Adviser James Jones warning that the U.S. needed new strategies, including how to contain a nuclear Iran—suggesting that Iran could reach nuclear capability without any foreign military force trying to stop it.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated Sunday the U.S. position that a military strike against Iran is a “last option.”

Israel says it supports the U.S.-led push for new economic sanctions against Iran. But Israeli officials have increasingly voiced frustration over the slow pace of diplomatic efforts to get sanctions in place.

Relations between the two allies have soured in recent weeks, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pushing back against Obama administration pressure to freeze building in Jewish areas of East Jerusalem, which Washington says is counterproductive to its Mideast peace efforts.

In another sign of a split, Israeli officials say they believe Iran—whose president has called for the destruction of Israel—could develop a warhead to strike the country within a year if it decides to, though outside experts say such capability is years away. Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful uses.

Such divisions have played into fears in Israel that if Washington’s sanctions effort fails, the Israeli and American positions on Iran could rapidly diverge—and Israel, if it chooses to attack Iran, would have no choice but to do so on its own.

U.S. commanders say an attack would invite retaliation by Iran against American military interests in the region, or wider terrorist attacks by Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. Adm. Mullen said Sunday a strike could have “unintended consequences,” and has long warned it could destabilize the region at a time the U.S. has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, which neighbor Iran.

A senior U.S. official said the U.S. has stated to Israel its opposition to unilateral Israeli action, but that there were still fears within the administration that Israel could strike Iran despite Washington’s objections.

Some Israeli officials worry a unilateral strike would cause a break with Washington that would threaten Israeli national interests even more than a nuclear-armed Iran.

Israel’s track record of coordinating such strikes with the U.S. is mixed. The country caught the U.S. by surprise with its attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. When Israel attacked a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Washington was given advanced warning, according to U.S. officials at the time.

The decision of whether to strike Iran ultimately rests with the prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu. In the past, however, senior military commanders have had significant say in such decisions. A spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment on internal deliberations concerning Iran.

There are a number of routes Israeli attack jets can fly to attack Iran. They all would require Israeli planes to fly through U.S.-controlled airspace in Iraq or through the airspace of U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey, which could cause serious political consequences for Israel.

Many Israeli military experts say Israel can easily cope with any military retaliation by Iran in response to a strike. Iran’s medium-range rockets would cause damage and casualties in Israel, but they aren’t very accurate, and Israel’s sophisticated missile-defense system would likely knock many out midflight. Israel has similarly proved it can handle attacks against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel also hosts a contingent of U.S. troops attached to a radar system to help give early warning against incoming rocket attacks.

More worrying to Israeli strategic planners examining possible attack scenarios is the possibility that Iran would respond to an Israeli attack by ramping up support to groups battling U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to recently retired officials familiar with the military’s thinking on Iran. If American soldiers start dying in greater numbers as a result of an Israeli unilateral attack, Americans could turn against Israel.

Iran could also disrupt the world’s oil supply by cutting off exports through the Persian Gulf, roiling international oil markets.

“What will Americans say if Israel drags the U.S. into a war it didn’t want, or when they are suddenly paying $10 a gallon for gasoline and Israel is the reason for it,” says retired Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, former director of the Israeli army’s Strategic Planning Division.

Former senior members of Israel’s defense establishment have weighed in recently on both sides of the debate.

“We don’t have permission and we don’t need permission from the U.S.,” says Ephraim Sneh, who served as deputy minister of defense under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser, says Israel wouldn’t jeopardize its relationship with the U.S. by launching a military strike against Iran without an American nod.

Late last month, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak seemed to acknowledge publicly the opposing viewpoints inside the administration.

“Only we have the exclusive responsibility when it comes to the fate and security of Israel, and only we can determine the matters pertaining to the fate of Israel and the Jewish people,” Mr. Barak said. “But we must never lose sight of how important these relations are, or the ability to act in harmony and unity with the United States.”

The Palestinians Kiss of Death | Iranian.com.
In the Middle East, everything is a conspiracy theory

by Arash Monzavi-Kia
20-Apr-2010

Defense Secretary Gates points out obvious problems with Iran strategy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on April 17th

(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

This past week, a secret memo from the Secretary of Defense to the president, written in January, was leaked to several government officials.  In the 3 page memorandum, Gates reportedly expresses his concerns with the lack of viable options regarding Iran’s nuclear program and laments what he sees as a lack of a long term strategy in dealing with the Islamic republic.

The memo was written at a critical stage regarding the issue.  In many ways, Iran is in a very strong Geo-political situation.  They claim their nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes, but the rhetoric and evasions of inspections and controls speak to an alternative use.  The Iranian government is playing both sides of the issue, and it is clear that they are attempting to use their capability to produce a nuclear weapon (which analysts say they won’t be able to do for several years) as a deterrence to American attack.

The ambiguity of the Iranian nuclear program echoes the ‘no comment’ policy of Israel, a nation that is estimated to have upwards of 3-4 hundred warheads.  With the prospect of a nuclear Iran on the horizon, Israel believes that they face an existential threat.  If Iran is nuclear, the terrorist attacks on Israel from Hezbollah and Hamas will only intensify, as any Israeli response would then be tempered by the possibility of an attack from Tehran.

Tehran may just be boasting about their capabilities on the nuclear front when they say they can ‘wipe Israel off the face of the Earth’, a tactic that is akin to Saddam Hussein’s evasion of UN weapons inspectors in the run up to the Iraq war.  Iraq didn’t want any of their neighbors to know they no longer held the WMD capability they once held, so they bluffed the UN into thinking they were hiding weapons.  It didn’t work out the way they planned it.

But Iran is much different than Iraq.  With American forces tied down in two adjoining nations, any attack from Israel or America against the hardened nuclear facilities would be met with a multi-faceted military response that would put those troops in grave danger.  Although no options have been ‘taken off the table’, no real military option exists.  Even a massively successful strike that pushed back the nuclear program by years would result in major economic and military retaliation.

The reality is that unless there is a regime change in Iran that is very pro-West, the world is probably going to have to accept a nuclear Iran.  The extreme improbability of that happening makes any strategy a no-win.  A foreign operation to remove the regime would unify Iran and spark a regional war as Iran would use its missile arsenal to disrupt oil shipping and probably attack Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Secretary Gates knows this, President Obama knows this, and so does most of the rest of the world.  Sanctions are supposedly on the horizon for Iran, but they will do nothing to stop their march towards the nuclear club.  Iran will continue to fight Israel via Hezbollah and Hamas, with a likely hot war sometime this summer in Lebanon and possibly Syria.  This gives them more time to produce weapons, or at least make everyone believe they are doing so.  But it is a very tight rope they walk.  With Israel distracted and continuing to be weakened by constant pressure on all sides, the desperation might set in and they may decide to go it alone and strike Iran before they pass their perceived existential point of no return.

None of the prospects look viable at this point.  A lasting Middle East peace treaty would help, but Iranian factions have no interest in co-existing with Israel

Hariri Rejects Israeli Accusations About Scuds – NYTimes.com.

Published: April 20, 2010

By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon’s prime minister this week dismissed Israeli accusations that Syria has been providing Scud missiles to the Hezbollah militia in his country, comparing them to claims that Iraq had unconventional weapons before the American-led invasion in 2003.

The prime minister, Saad Hariri, made his comments late Monday during a state visit to Italy. They were Lebanon’s first official comments about the accusations, aired last week by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres. Mr. Hariri’s comments, though aimed to quell anxiety, hinted at Lebanon’s unease over its possible role as a battleground if the current rumors of a regional war should be realized.

“At the start of the summer season they make such threats,” Mr. Hariri told a group of Lebanese citizens living in Rome, in comments published Tuesday by Al Mustaqbal, the newspaper of his political movement. “All this is similar to what was said previously about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that were never found.”

Syria has denied Mr. Peres’s accusations about the Scuds, which can carry warheads of up to a ton, have a range of hundreds of miles and presumably could make all of Israel vulnerable to an attack launched from Lebanese soil.

American officials have said they did not have any confirmation that Scuds were actually delivered to Hezbollah. But on Monday, the Obama administration summoned Syria’s ranking diplomat in Washington to express concern about the accusations nonetheless.

Syria and Iran are widely believed to have significantly rearmed Hezbollah since the group’s July 2006 war with Israel, which devastated Lebanon’s infrastructure and left more than a thousand Lebanese and several dozen Israelis dead.

On Monday, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, sought to allay fears of a war, saying on Army radio that Israel had no intention of starting one.

Mr. Hariri has often issued warnings about Hezbollah’s weapons and Syria’s role in supplying them, especially in the years after Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. But after Hezbollah asserted itself militarily in the streets of Beirut in May 2008, political realities began to shift, in recognition that the United States — for all its rhetorical support for Lebanon — was not willing to intervene by force. Some of Mr. Hariri’s allies, notably the Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, began to curtail their criticisms of Syria and Hezbollah.

Mr. Hariri himself visited Damascus, Syria, last year after becoming Lebanon’s prime minister, in what was seen as part of Syria’s renewed influence in Lebanon.

Obama feels the heat on Iran’s threat | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | The Guardian.

The release of Robert Gates’s memo has exposed disquiet over Obama’s diplomatic approach to stopping Iran going nuclear

Iran Gives Weapons to Re-Arm Hezbollah, Pentagon Says (Update2) – BusinessWeek.

April 20 (Bloomberg) — Iran has provided weapons and as much as $200 million a year to help the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah re-arm itself to levels beyond those in 2006, when the group waged a war with Israel, the Pentagon said.

The unclassified review of Iran’s military power, the first submitted under legislation passed last year, cites the Persian Gulf nation’s “longstanding relationship” with Hezbollah, which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist group.

Iran views Hezbollah “as an essential partner for advancing its regional policy objectives,” the Pentagon said in the 12-page account, submitted yesterday to congressional committees. The report also examines Iran’s build-up of its navy and air forces, and its ties with China, Russia and Venezuela.

Israel interdicted a merchant vessel in November with 36 containers, or 60 tons, of weapons for Hezbollah, including rockets and anti-tank shells, the Pentagon said. The Iranian and Syrian governments, the main backers of Hezbollah, denied any knowledge of the arms shipment.

Iran also is training Hezbollah fighters in camps in Lebanon and provides as much as $200 million a year in funding, according to the report.

Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim el-Moussawi said in a telephone interview he had no comment on the report.

‘Thorough Understanding’

“It is clear from this report that the Department of Defense has a thorough understanding of the potential threats posed by Iran’s military capabilities,” said Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The report will help “build the necessary strategies to address these issues and keep America and our allies safe,” he said in a statement.

The top Republican on the committee, which also received a classified section of the review, disagreed. California Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon said he will use defense funding legislation “to force the administration to develop a long-term, comprehensive strategy to deal with Iran.”

President Barack Obama’s administration has said it wants to stick to a strategy of diplomacy and increasing pressure, such as economic sanctions, to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium, a process that could lead to an atomic bomb. Military leaders, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have said military action would only delay the nuclear program and inflame an unstable region.

War in 2006

The 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel ended Aug. 14, 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed in the fighting, which also displaced almost 1 million people. The United Nations inserted peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon after the conflict.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah on Feb. 18 of this year that Israel “should be dealt with once and for all” if it makes threats to countries in the region.

Ahmadinejad told Nasrallah in a telephone call that readiness to repel possible Israeli action should be maintained, according to the presidential Web site. “Iran will be on the side of the countries of the region and Lebanon,” the Iranian leader said.

Ramin Mehmanparast, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, couldn’t be reached for comment today when called on his mobile phone and at his office. Calls placed to the public relations offices of the president and the ministry of defense after regular working hours weren’t answered.

Oil Threat

The Pentagon study points to the potential Iranian threat to oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, one of the world’s major waterways for crude exports.

“Iran can attack targeted ships with anti-ship cruise missiles from its own shores, islands and oil platforms using relatively small mobile launchers,” the Pentagon said.

U.S. military officials — including General David Petraeus, the military commander in the Middle East and Central Asia — expressed confidence last week that any attempts by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf could be countered.

Petraeus said in an interview that it is “somewhat unlikely” that Iran would attempt to block the strait because so much of its oil-based economy depends on its own oil traffic through the waterway, which leads to the world market.

Almost a quarter of the world’s oil flows through the 33- mile-wide (53-kilometer) strait between Iran and Oman at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Iran also has an “active” program to develop unmanned aerial vehicles and is trying to build its own fighter aircraft derived from older U.S.-built F-5s, according to the Pentagon report.

Nuclear Defenses

Iran is particularly focused on developing defenses for its nuclear sites, the Defense Department said. That includes establishing a separate air defense force and the prospect of acquiring a weapons system from Russia, a sale the U.S. has opposed.

In late 2008 and early 2009, Iran tested a multistage space launch vehicle, indicating progress on technologies that would be needed for a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the review.

The report also outlines the strength of Iran’s military manpower. Its unconventional forces alone, including commandos and special-forces personnel and the Basij militia, may exceed 1 million, the Pentagon said.

–With assistance from Massoud Derhally in Amman and Ali Sheikholeslami in London. Editors: Edward DeMarco, Mark Schoifet