WarSclerotic

10 reasons why Barack Obama is the most naïve president in US history – Telegraph Blogs.

Israeli attack on Iran might lead to nuclear conflict – Medvedev | Top Russian news and analysis online | ‘RIA Novosti’ newswire.

MOSCOW, April 12 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned Israel against a military attack on Iran, saying it might lead to nuclear war and global disaster.

The United States and Israel have refused to rule out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.

In an interview with the ABC News, the Russian leader said an attack on Iran would be “the worst possible scenario” in the Middle East, because “everyone is so close over there that nobody would be unaffected.”

“And if conflict of that kind happens, and a strike is performed, then you can expect anything, including use of nuclear weapons. And nuclear strikes in the Middle East, this means a global catastrophe. Many deaths,” Medvedev said.

He added that he was uncertain on whether Israel would decide to carry out an airstrike against Iran.

“The Israelis are directing their own policy. I do have a good relationship with the president and prime minister of Israel. But those are independent people. And I would say that on many questions they are defending stubborn positions. Very tough,” he said.

“The US has seen the proof of that lately,” he added, in a reference to the issue of the Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem,

Hopes for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were dealt a serious blow by Israel’s recent decision to build 1,600 houses for Jewish families in East Jerusalem, considered occupied territory under international law. East Jerusalem is also claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of their future state.

Fury as Russia sells its missile system to Iran – Exclusive – mirror.co.uk.

By Chris Hughes 12/04/2010

Iran is buying an ultra-sophisticated missile system from Russia to protect its nuclear sites.

The S-300’s surface-to-air rockets can hit many targets at once, including in-coming cruise missiles, making any Western or Israeli strike on Iran much more difficult.

News of the multi-billion pound deal with Moscow has caused fury and fear among Western powers as they desperately try to stop the country developing nuclear weapons.

An intelligence source told The Mirror: “In the game of bluff and counter-bluff this is bad news for Israel and the West.

“The new missile system will hugely empower Tehran which already has a fairly inflated view of its military and defence capability.

“This has everyone worried – Israel because it knows the US is currently not up for attacking Tehran and the US because it knows Tehran has the upper hand.”

The S-300, which Iran has been trying to buy since 2005, can hit a target at 100 miles and will be delivered to them within months.

It is a massive blow to Israeli defence chiefs who fear Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, below, is building up a nuclear capability to attack them.

Pentagon chiefs have already written up a detailed plan to strike as many as 100 targets if they have to destroy Tehran’s nuclear installations.

Bunker-buster bombs would hit underground complexes and Hellfire missiles targeted to kill the country’s top scientists.

Mikhail Dmitriyev, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Military Co-operation confirmed delivery of the S-300 is imminent. Russia’s stateowned news agency RIA Novosti said: “Contracts have been signed.”

iran: Tel Aviv to be targeted if Islamic Republic attacked.

An aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the Islamic republic will strike Tel Aviv with its missiles if it comes under attack, Fars news agency reported last Tuesday.
“If the enemy takes its chance and fires a missile towards Iran, the dust from an Iranian missile strike will rise in the heart of Tel Aviv even before the dust from the enemy attack settles” in Iran, said cleric Mojtaba Zolnoor, who is Khamenei’s representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Fars reported that Zolnoor made the comments at a mosque on Monday, where he also said Iran’s foes were aware that Teheran “has become a ballistic power”.
Iran has regularly boasted of its missile capability, saying it has an arsenal which can strike its regional arch-foe Israel.
Israel and the US meanwhile have never ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its galloping nuclear program.
Iran has reiterated that any new sanctions against Teheran by world powers will not halt the pursuit by the country’s of its nuclear program.
“Sanctions won’t have any impact on our activities”, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast at his weekly press conference when asked about the potential impact of possible new sanctions on Teheran.
“We do not find them a deterrent. The more the sanctions, the more determined we will be to pursue our rights”, he said in Persian, which was translated by the state-owned English language Press Television channel.
Iran has steadfastly maintained that it has the right to pursue nuclear technology as it has agreed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Washington is ratcheting up pressure to impose new sanctions against Teheran for aggressively pursuing nuclear technology, which they suspect is aimed at making an atom bomb.
Iran denies these allegations, saying its program is purely for generating electricity.

Can the CIA sabotage Iran’s nuclear project?
The reported defection of an Iranian scientist to the United States has renewed speculation about a CIA plot to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program through covert action.
But it remains unclear whether Shahram Amiri, the young physics researcher who reportedly joined forces with the US spy agency, represents an intelligence coup for Washington or a minor setback for Teheran, former CIA officers explained.
ABC Television in New York reported that Amiri, who went missing without explanation in Saudi Arabia last year, had defected and resettled in the United States in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Amiri, in his thirties, worked at Teheran’s Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, part of a network of research centers with close ties to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards and the country’s weapon industry.
The scientist did not appear to play a senior role in the country’s nuclear project, and his knowledge may have been confined to a single aspect of the program.
“It’s really impossible to say how much of a window this kind of a defector could provide without knowing how much he was reading into aspects of the entire program, as opposed to chipping away at one part of the program”, said CIA veteran Paul Pillar.
“One ought to be very cautious about how much a difference any one individual might make”, said Pillar, now at Georgetown University.
Some media reports suggested the scientist may have helped inform the Americans about a secret enrichment site near Qom, which caused international outrage when it was revealed in September.
Amiri’s disappearance appeared to confirm reports in recent years that US intelligence agencies have tried to lure away key civilian and military figures to undercut Iran’s nuclear drive in an operation dubbed “Brain Drain”.
The fate of a former Iranian deputy defense minister who disappeared in Istanbul in 2007, General Ali Reza Asgari, remains unresolved, amid speculation he defected as well and offered his knowledge of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The suspected defections offer a glimpse into a secret struggle between Western intelligence agencies and Iran, with the United States and its allies working to delay Teheran’s nuclear project by clandestine means even as they seek international support for tougher sanctions.
“The one thing that we have done, and this has come out in the open press… is to feed faulty components into the supply chain for Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” said Clare Lopez, who worked for the CIA during and after the Cold War.
Working through a family of Swiss engineers, the CIA reportedly managed to provide Libya and Iran with flawed parts for several years, according to The New York Times and other media.
In 2006, a sabotaged power supply failed at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, reportedly causing 50 centrifuges to explode and setting back Teheran’s nuclear fuel work.
Former intelligence officers said defections are a delicate, risky business, and it remained uncertain whether Amiri had cooperated with the Americans over a long time.
“By and large defections like this are what you call walk-ins, that is they come to you”, said Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA officer and fellow at the Brookings Institution research group in Washington.
“Typically, a response for a walk-in is, ‘Hey wait, we’d rather you stay in place and provide an ongoing stream of intelligence’”.
Iran remains a difficult target for American spies, as Washington has not had an embassy in Teheran for 30 years, cutting off opportunities to develop intelligence sources and contacts.
Moreover, Iran has honed an effective counterintelligence service with “a good track record” of exposing foreign espionage, Riedel said.
Amiri could be a gold mine, offering a trove of information about the nuclear program, which US and European governments insist is a cover for a clandestine nuclear weapons project.
“The other alternative is we’re so desperate to gain information on the Iranian nuclear program that we’ll take anything we can get”, Riedel said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case”.

Netanyahu at Holocaust ceremony: Stop Iran.

Netanyahu: World is gradually accepting Iran’s extermination calls – Haaretz – Israel News.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the world “to confront Iran’s exterminatory intentions and act resolutely to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” Netanyahu spoke at the state ceremony on the eve of the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. “The historic failure of free societies to confront the Nazi beast was that they did not face it in time,” Netanyahu said. “And today we are witness to the old hatred of Jews once again, fueled by extremist Islamic authorities, led by Iran and its satellites.” “Iran’s leadership is racing to develop nuclear weapons and declares its intention to destroy Israel. The world is gradually accepting Iran’s exterminatory declarations regarding Israel and still we do not see the international determination required to stop the arming of Iran. But if we learned something from the Holocaust, it is that we cannot remain quiet or flinch in the face of evil.” Earlier in the ceremony, President Shimon Peres said the world must not repeat its indifference at the face of new cries for the destruction of the Jewish people. Peres went on to say that “Israel will never forget the two decrees which the Holocaust enforced.” “The firm demand to sustain an independent Jewish state, one that holds its security in its own hands while at the same time tirelessly seeking peace as well as the demand to treat threats of annihilation, Holocaust denials, and terror mongering with the utmost severity.” Referring to comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has threatened to “wipe the Zionist regime off the map,” Peres said that it was Israel’s right “and duty to demand the nations of the worlds never to repeat their indifference, one which cost millions of lives, including their own.” “The ears of the United Nations must be attuned to the threats of annihilation made by one member of the UN against another. Otherwise, the foundation which holds the UN charter will collapse,” Peres said. Referring to efforts to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, the president said that “in order to reach clean skies in the Middle East we must first dismantle the threats of annihilation.” “Weapons of mass destruction in hands capable of destroying masses accompanied by voices calling for such destruction are the combination most perilous to world peace. They turn the world into an uncontrollable place,” Peres said. The President added that he believed that some “parts of the Iranian people are themselves ashamed of the tyranny which has taken hold of it,” adding that he thought the Arab states were “aware that Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel incitement is meant to disguise his real aim, which is establishing Iran as a regional power.” “The [Second] World War broke with the Nazis’ devilish incitement, claiming that they were a supreme race and Deutschland Uber Alles. We must never return to the beastly conception according to which there is such a thing as a supreme man, or supreme regime, or supreme race which can do whatever it sees fit,” Peres said. Earlier in his speech, President Peres said that with night falling on all of Israel, evening had also fallen “not long ago on Antopol, Zhoromin, Rodnik and Mikhalova, towns that three quarters of their population was was wiped out. Not a single Jew is left.” “Night has fallen on the village of Tostanovitza, where 2,803 Jews were murdered, on Libau in Latvia, where 7,101 Jews were murdered, on Khelm by Lublin from which 15,000 Jews were sent to their death,” Peres said, adding that “darkness has also started covering the shadows of Dachau, Auschwitz and Birkenau, as well as Vishnive, where I was born and visited again as an Israeli minister, with not even one wooden beam left from the Jewish homes and the synagogue.” Recalling the trip to his childhood town, Peres said he “visited the well that stood in our backyard. The water did not burn. I drew the bucket to taste the wasters of my childhood, and the water burned in my mouth, the taste of the fire which destroyed the town’s people, my family, who remained there.” “This night spread like a mourner’s hut on the thousands of communities whose existence became a petrified tombstone, whose people and culture burned to ashes.” A sundown covering the devastated synagogues and shuls, theaters and cultural institutions, the books that were set alight, the schools that turned to ashes. All erased, the lives, the houses, the culture, a world’s smoky embers.” “That fire will continue to burn within us, as an impossible farewell to our six million brothers, men, women, and elderly people, to a million and a half of our children, an immense potential of life and talent that was annihilated, an unreturnable loss.” “He who passes today through the town of Zivorov in the Ukraine cannot know that in that place, one summer day in the beginning of 1941, a thousand Jews were shot to death and buried in two pits in the town.” “He who passes today cannot hear the cry of April 9, 1943, when 2,300 Jews were forced to dig their own graves near the Sokolinaya gymnasium. They were murdered and thrown into the pits they dug with their own hands.” “‘What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion?'” asks the Book of Lamentations, and asked the survivors of the ramps in Treblinka, Auschwitz and Birkenau, and asked those who arrived in Israel and immediately enlisted to the defense of the people in their fight for independence.” Also referring to the defense of the Jewish people in light of the lessons learned by the Holocaust, Israel Defense Forces chief Gabi Ashkenazi said earlier Sunday that never again would the Jewish people lack the means to defend themselves. Speaking at the Yad Vashem memorial, Ashkenazi said the Jewish people “will never again be dependent on the benevolence of others,” Ashkenazi said. “Never again will Jewish children be fearful or begging for mercy. Never again will an advocate of evil be able to dictate the future of the Jewish people.” “In the name of my father and his family who fought for a sovereign and independent state and in the name of the millions who were unable to witness the realization of their dream, I stand here today as the commander of the Hebrew defense force, the Israel Defense Forces.” Ashkenazi talked about the experiences of his father, a Holocaust survivor from the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. “On the night of March 9th, 1943, my father’s family opened their door to find Bulgarian police ordering them to prepare to be deported from Bulgaria within a few hours,” Ashkenazi said. “Along with 6,000 other Jews, my father assembled in the yard of the school and recited the prayer ‘Shema Yisrael.’ In the end, my father and the Jews of Plovdiv were not sent to the death camps. The cancellation of their deportation order arrived when they were already at the train station, a short time before they were supposed to depart.

A “green light” to Israel?

“We’re probably going to get another UN Security Council resolution, and that’s really important in its own right, in terms of isolating Iran.  But it’s also important in terms of a legal platform for organizations like the E.U. and individual countries to take even more stringent actions against Iran.”

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U.S. Defense Secretary: A nuclear Iran is not inevitable – Haaretz – Israel News.

Meet The Press: Gates: Iran not yet ‘nuclear capable’

Iran is not yet “nuclear capable” and the U.S. government has not concluded that it is inevitable that Tehran will get the bomb, Pentagon chief Robert Gates said in remarks aired on Sunday.

“It is our judgment … they are not nuclear capable, not yet,” Gates, the U.S. defense secretary, said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Asked if the U.S. government had concluded this was inevitable, Gates said, “No. We have not … drawn that conclusion at all, and in fact we are doing everything we can to try and keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

However, he added that “they [the Iranians] are continuing to make progress on these [nuclear] programs. It is going slower than they anticipated but they are moving in that direction.”

U.S. President Barack Obama is pressing other global powers to agree to a fourth round of United Nations sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt nuclear work that the West suspects is aimed at making bombs, a charge Iran denies.

But some critics of Obama’s attempts to engage Iran have said they fear his administration may be preparing to shift from a strategy of keeping Iran from getting the bomb to a strategy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran.

“We are probably going to get another UN Security Council resolution” of sanctions on Iran, Gates told NBC.

Gates added that the United States and other countries will continue trying to convince the Iranians that they are “headed down the wrong path” by pressuring Iran with sanctions as well as more missile defense and other military cooperation in the Gulf region.

“At the end of the day, what has to happen is that the Iranian government has to decide that its own security is better served by not having nuclear weapons than by having them,” Gates said.

Earlier Sunday, Iran’s foreign ministry said that the Islamic republic will lodge a complaint with the UN about what it sees as Obama’s threat to attack it with nuclear weapons.

Obama made clear last week that Iran and North Korea were excluded from new limits on the use of U.S. atomic weapons – something Tehran interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary to attack it with nuclear bombs.

“The recent statement by the U.S. president … implicitly intimidates the Iranian nation with the deployment of nuclear arms,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised meeting with military and security officials.

“This statement is very strange and the world should not ignore it since in the 21st century, which is the era of support for human rights and campaigning against terrorism, the head of a country is threatening to use nuclear war.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the semi-official Fars news agency Iran would lodge a formal complaint with the UN, a move backed by a letter signed by 255 of Iran’s 290 members of parliament.

Reflecting fears of attack on its nuclear sites from the United States or its closest Middle East ally Israel, the defense ministry said Iran had started producing a prototype of an advanced anti-aircraft missile system.

“The Mersad air defense system … is able to destroy modern aircraft at low and medium range altitude,” the ISNA news agency on Sunday quoted Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying.

“The mass production of this product has begun and in the course of the current year a large number of them will be delivered to the armed forces,” he said.

While Iran hopes the development of its own system will make it more self-sufficient in weapons defense, it is also urging Russia to resist Western pressure not to deliver the S-300 missile defense system it has ordered.

On Friday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran’s nuclear program was “irreversible” despite limits on importing foreign technology and the threat of new sanctions, and he unveiled a prototype of an improved centrifuge which would enrich uranium faster than existing models.

Western analysts say Iran has exaggerated progress in the past to bolster domestic pride about its nuclear program and to improve its bargaining position with major powers.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization played down the idea that Iran faced big technical hurdles.

“Iran’s nuclear issue is not a technical issue … we are not in a hurry. Second generation centrifuges will be mass produced in the next few months … in a year we will have prototype cascades of the third generation,” Ali Akbar Salehi told ISNA

IRAN: Tehran’s unveiling of new air defense system seen as a warning to the West | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.

Iran unveiled a new “homemade” missile defense system on Sunday that its defense minister claims is capable of destroying “advanced airplanes flying at low and medium altitudes” in a show of force that can easily be read as a warning to Western powers seeking to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.

The Mersad air defense system was debuted days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced technological advances in nuclear fuel production that could, if implemented, greatly advance Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“The main components of this new system are detection radars, software and hardware networks, launching pads and control centers,” Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told state television. “We owe this digitally designed system to our experiences of eight-year war with Iraq.”

He added that the system was also capable of “resisting electronic warfare” and that it would be handed over to Iranian armed forces by the end of this year.

According to some media reports, the system was tested Friday using a Shahin medium-range rocket. Previewing the system is being widely interpreted as a warning to Israel and the United States that Iran is prepared to defend itself against a possible Israeli air attack on its nuclear facilities should the new round of U.S.-led sanctions fail to pass or prove ineffective.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking to top military brass on Sunday, attacked President Obama over the U.S. leader’s recently unveiled nuclear strategy, which did not rule out a nuclear attack on Iran.

“In recent years, the Americans did their best to make the world believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not come clean about its nuclear programs,” Khamenei said. “Now, it is clear that the nuclear-armed governments and those who disgracefully threaten to use atomic bomb against others are unreliable. The U.S. president’s remarks are scandalous.”

But according to an ABC News interview with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Obama administration doesn’t appear to be panicking over Iran’s military capabilities, nuclear or otherwise.

“When it comes to Iran, we take everything they say with more than a grain of salt because we know that they have a — a tendency to say things that may or may not be carried out, may or may not be accurate,” Clinton told ABC’s White House correspondent Jake Tapper Sunday. “But in fact their belligerence is helping to make our case every single day.”

— Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Iran’s attempts to beef up its missile defense system have been seen as a warning to Israel and the West. Credit: Agence France-Presse

Ray Takeyh – A link to break: Iran and Mideast peace talks.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

In the midst of the recent U.S.-Israeli tumult, a curious conventional wisdom is starting to evolve. A Washington that cajoles Israel on its settlements and resumes the peace process in earnest may finally garner Arab support for dealing with Iran’s nuclear menace. Although pressuring Israel to restrain its settlements may be a sensible means of gaining constructive Arab participation in the peace talks, it is unlikely to affect the region’s passive approach to Iran. Indeed, should Tehran perceive fissures and divisions in U.S.-Israeli alliance, it is likely to further harden its nuclear stance.

The notion that the incumbent Arab regimes are reluctant to collaborate with the United States on Iran because of the prevailing impasse in the peace process is a misreading of regional realities. The Arab states, particularly the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, have an odd policy toward Iran. In private, as any visiting American dignitary can attest, they decry Iran’s ambitions, fear its accelerating nuclear program and even hint at the advisability of using military force against its atomic installations. Yet they are loath to be part of an aggressive strategy, which they would see as unduly antagonizing the Islamic Republic. The Arab states will gladly purchase U.S. arms and enhance their defenses, but they would be reluctant to participate in coercing Iran. Arab leaders would prefer that someone else take care of the Iran problem without their active complicity. Absent such a solution, they are likely to coexist with the Iranian bomb. No degree of peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians is likely to alter that calculus.

Meanwhile, the guardians of Iran’s theocracy understand their neighborhood better than the succession of U.S. emissaries who journey to the Gulf in hope of Arab solidarity. Iran’s leaders appreciate the limits of Arab belligerence and realize that a strong regime of economic sanctions and diplomatic confrontation will not emanate from the sheikdoms. U.S. allies will assess their own capabilities and vulnerabilities, shape alliances and pursue their interests understanding that they are susceptible to Iranian influence predicated on religious ties and political subversion. A policy of hedging their bets is more in line with the traditions of the emirates, with their penchant for caution and circumspection.

If Iran dismisses threats from the Gulf states, it similarly discounts the possibility of U.S. military retaliation. Since becoming Iran’s president in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hard-line supporters have assured their compatriots that U.S. preoccupations with Iraq and Afghanistan provide Iran with a deterrent policy. No American administration, they insist, is likely to jeopardize the fragile stability of its war-torn charges by forcefully taking on Iran’s nuclear portfolio. It is entirely possible that Iranians are once more misjudging America’s predilections. The history of the Middle East, after all, is riddled with rulers who misapprehended Washington’s intentions. However misguided they may be, Iran’s leaders comfort themselves with thoughts that their nuclear provocations will not trigger American retribution.

Israel, then, looms large in Iran’s strategic calculations. Unlike the Arab states, Israel approaches Iran with resolution. And unlike the United States, Israel is not entangled in conflicts that Iranian mischief can aggravate. Hamas and Hezbollah are not only unreliable proxies but ones that Israeli armor can handle. Fulminations aside, Iranian leaders take Israeli threats seriously and are at pains to assert their retaliatory options. It is here that the shape and tone of the U.S.-Israeli alliance matters most. Should the clerical oligarchs sense divisions in that alliance, they can assure themselves that a beleaguered Israel cannot possibly strike Iran while at odds with its superpower patron. Such perceptions cheapen Israeli deterrence and diminish the potency of the West’s remaining sticks.

All this is not to suggest that Washington cannot criticize Israeli policies, even publicly and forcefully. The ebbs and flows of the emerging peace process will cause disagreements and even tensions between the two allies. But as they plot their strategies for resuming dialogue between Israel and its neighbors, U.S. policymakers would be wise to vociferously insist that the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will not affect Washington’s cooperation with Israel on Iran. A concerted effort to decouple the peace process from Iran’s nuclear imbroglio is the best means of declawing the Islamic Republic.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.