WarSclerotic

Counterterrorism Blog: Dinner in Damascus: What Did Iran Ask of Hizballah?.

By David Schenker and Matthew Levitt
March 2, 2010

On February 26, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah for a dinner in Damascus. Nasrallah is a routine guest in the capital, but the timing of this high-profile trip — just a week after the United States dispatched Undersecretary of State William Burns to Damascus and nominated its first new ambassador in five years — seemed calculated not only to irritate Washington, but also to highlight the central role Hizballah plays in Iran and Syria’s strategic planning. Apart from serving as a pivot between Tehran and Damascus, however, the group also holds the power to engulf Lebanon and perhaps the entire region into another war through actions of its own.

Unfulfilled Promise of Retaliation

Two years after Hizballah military commander Imad Mughniyah was assassinated in Damascus — prompting Nasrallah to declare an “open war” on Israel, the presumed perpetrator — the group has yet to successfully retaliate. But it is not for lack of trying: in 2008, two Hizballah operatives and several Azerbaijani nationals were convicted of plotting attacks against the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Baku and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The same year, Turkish authorities foiled as many as six possible Hizballah terrorist plots targeting Israelis and possibly the local Jewish community. Iranian intelligence agents were reportedly helping the group establish a network of operatives posing as tourists.

During his February 16, 2010 speech marking the martyrdom of Mughniyah and other Hizballah heroes, Nasrallah rationalized the conspicuous lack of significant retaliation: “Our options are open and we have all the time in the world….[W]e are the ones to choose the time and place and target.” He also suggested that Hizballah had not yet found a target that “rises to the level” of Mughniyah.

Meanwhile, the group has been preparing for a conventional fight against Israel by stockpiling weapons in the south in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. In July 2009, for example, a large arms depot believed to contain bullets, rockets, and artillery shells exploded in Khirbet Silim village, nine miles north of the Israeli border. Three months later, another Hizballah cache detonated near Tayr Filsay village just south of the Litani River. It is unclear whether these explosions were coincidental or acts of (presumably) Israeli sabotage. In addition, a month after the second explosion, the Israeli navy interdicted a ship carrying fifty-five tons of Iranian weapons to Hizballah. Then, in January 2010, UN peacekeepers uncovered 660 pounds of explosives buried along the Israel border, reportedly pre-positioned by the Shiite militia.

These discoveries represent only a fraction of the weapons Hizballah has procured during its most recent massive military buildup. Since the 2006 war with Israel, the group has acquired an estimated 40,000 rockets and — with Syria’s help — reportedly improved the quality of its arsenal. In addition to boosting the range of this stockpile, Syria may have provided the organization with the Russian-made shoulder-fired Igla-S antiaircraft system, which is capable of downing Israeli F-16s. Nasrallah hinted at this possibility in February 2009, stating, “Every few days, reports appear that the resistance has acquired…sophisticated air defense missiles,” adding coyly, “Of course, I neither deny nor confirm this.” U.S. officials have already confirmed in the Arab press that Hizballah is training with Syria on the antiquated SA-2 antiaircraft system.

New Strategy against Israel

To complement its upgraded arsenal, Hizballah recently spelled out a new, more aggressive military posture toward Israel. Since the 2006 war, rumors have persisted that the group would cross the border and “take the fighting to Israel” in the next conflict. During his February 16, speech, Nasrallah offered a new vision of strategic parity with Israel, if not an advanced conception of the organization’s longstanding “balance of terror” strategy.

Deriding Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system as a “science fiction movie,” Nasrallah upped the ante by pledging to go toe to toe with Israel in the next campaign. In 2009, he had warned that if Israel bombed the Hizballah stronghold in Beirut’s southern Dahiya suburb,, then the group would “bomb Tel Aviv.” This time he went one step further, stating that if Israel bombed Beirut airport, “We will bomb Ben Gurion airport,” and then adding ports, oil refineries, factories, and power plants to the list. He also boasted that Hizballah would confront Israeli threats “not with withdrawal, hiding, or fear, but with clarity, steadfastness, preparedness, and with threats, too.”

Repairing Hizballah’s Image in Lebanon

Despite considerable success in rebuilding an impressive military infrastructure under the nose of UN observers, Hizballah’s image has suffered at home. In May 2008, the group invaded and occupied Beirut. In June 2009, it failed to win a majority in Lebanese parliamentary elections. That same month, the fraudulent presidential election in Iran undermined the legitimacy of Hizballah’s chief patron and its controversial doctrine of velayat-e faqih (Islamic governance), to which the group adheres.

Even more detrimental to Hizballah’s domestic standing is evidence implicating the group in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, as reported by Der Spiegel in May 2009 and underscored by Le Monde last month. Nasrallah has repeatedly denied these stories, but the public perception that the Shiite militia was involved in the killing of the Lebanese Sunni leader persists. Worse, in September 2009, one of Hizballah’s chief local financiers went bankrupt in a Ponzi scheme — a particularly damaging scandal given that it involved the same kind of corruption that the group routinely accuses the Sunni government in Beirut of perpetrating.

Nasrallah has attempted to mitigate the impact of these accusations and soften public attitudes toward the group. In his February 16 speech, for example, he offered condolences to the Hariris on the anniversary of Rafiq’s martyrdom. And in December 2009, he delivered a surreal speech promoting the novel idea that his constituents should adhere to Lebanese laws, such as respecting traffic signals, paying for (as opposed to stealing) government water and electricity, abiding by building laws and civil codes, and putting an end to smuggling that undercuts Lebanese businesses. In addition, he emphasized the importance of civil servants showing up for their jobs and actually performing their duties.

Hizballah’s efforts to improve its image also included the publication of a new “manifesto” in November 2009, updating its 1985 charter. Although the new document reiterated the group’s longstanding enmity toward the United States and its commitment to “resistance,” it differed from the 1985 version in ways seemingly designed to reingratiate the organization to a broad Lebanese audience. For example, the new version downplayed Hizballah’s allegiance to the clerical leadership in Tehran and instead focused on its participation in the Lebanese political system. Likewise, rather than urging Lebanese Christians to convert — as the 1985 manifesto put it, “We call upon you to embrace Islam” — the group adopted the more palatable conciliatory language of consensus politics.

Conclusion

If Hizballah succeeds in avenging Mughniyah by striking an Israeli target — whether on the border or abroad — it could set off another round of fighting similar to that of 2006. This time, however, other actors could well enter the fray. If one takes Damascus at its word, Syria may decide to participate in the next Israeli-Hizballah war, a development that could spark a region-wide conflagration. At the moment, Hizballah may be keeping its powder dry on orders from Tehran, in anticipation of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Still, avenging Mughniyah is a key priority for the group, and its success or failure in meeting this goal could be the difference between the current status quo and a regional war.

David Schenker is the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow and director of the Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Hizballah Israel Syria

Sophisticated anti-air IGLA missile

Syria has defied Israel’s caution that handing over new strategic weapons to the Lebanese Hizballah would compel Israel to strike targets inside Syria. debkafile‘s military sources disclose that Damascus has just smuggled across the border a number of Russian-made IGLA-S surface-to-air missiles capable of intercepting low-flying F-16 warplanes, drones, helicopters, cruise missiles, transports and surveillance aircraft in all weather conditions, by day or night.
Tuesday, March 2,  the head of the research division of Israeli Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Yossi Beidetz, reported to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee that Syria had smuggled to Hizballah strategic weaponry more sophisticated that it had ever dared transfer before.
Beidetz did not specify the type of missiles, but our US sources disclosed he was referring to the advanced Russian IGLA 9K338, a shoulder-mounted missile which poses a threat to low-flying aircraft and other flying projectiles in all weather conditions. Its other prime asset is that it is virtually impossible to jam its launch and trajectory with electronic counter-measures.

The US sources could not say whether these missiles were taken out of the stock recently consigned by Moscow to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or delivered to Syria and thence to Hizballah.

debkafile‘s military sources report that the IGLA-S in Hizballah’s hands will seriously hamper Israeli Air force surveillance activity over Lebanon and curtail its operational options against the surface-to-surface rockets when positioned to shield them against attack.
Its presence in the Hizballah armory means that the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite extremists will be free to loose their missiles and rockets against Israeli towns in relative safety, with Israeli aircraft hard-pressed to destroy them.
Moscow and Damascus have covered the IGLA-S transaction to a third party by defining the system as defensive. However, seen from Israel, it adds another layer to Hizballah’s aggressive capabilities by shielding its massive array of rockets against aerial attack.

While visiting Washington last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that, if attacked by Hizballah, Israel would also go for its sponsors, Syria and Iran.

Who will blink first in Iran’s nuclear poker game? – Haaretz – Israel News.
“Do not strike” is what the Americans are telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Let’s first try sanctions on Iran.”

“Do not strike” is what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is saying to Netanyahu. “If you go crazy and go to war, it will be the end of the Zionist regime.”

Netanyahu managed to convince the world that Israel is on the verge of a preemptive war to try to foil Iran’s nuclear program. His speeches on a second Holocaust and Amalek, the acceleration of military preparations, the exercises on the Home Front, the distribution of gas masks and even the stockpiling of dollars by the Bank of Israel all suggest that Israel is preparing to strike Iran, as it did when it attacked the nuclear plants in Iraq and Syria.

The preparations for war give Israel unprecedented international significance. U.S. President Barack Obama, who kept his distance at the beginning of his tenure, is now airlifting senior officials to ask Netanyahu to hold back. When he wanted to deal with the Palestinian problem, Obama made do with a retiree without authority in the form of George Mitchell.

It turns out that the Israeli threat to spark a regional war is bothering the administration a lot more than the occupation and the West Bank settlements. Not only are the politicians troubled, representatives of global investment firms are curious to know “when they will attack,” as a way of gambling on oil prices. It turns out that Israel’s economic significance is buried in its ability to cause trouble – not in high tech, start-ups or the Bamba snacks the Israelis pride themselves in.

Netanyahu will certainly argue that his assertive stance is what convinced Obama to take a tougher line on Iran. But the prime minister’s approach is risky: What will happen if diplomacy and sanctions fail, as they are expected to, and Ahmadinejad continues on his nuclear path? Will Netanyahu then be able to pull back from his heated statements and announce that the Iranian threat is not so bad? Or has he already burned the bridge for a withdrawal and will have to go to war?

Netanyahu is playing poker and hiding his most important card: the Israel Defense Forces’ true capabilities to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations. If he attacks, he is risking a war of attrition in which Tel Aviv will be hit by missiles and Ben-Gurion International Airport will be closed. And the longer the violence continues, the more international firms will leave the country; the talented and wealthy will abandon it, too.

Netanyahu sees the same danger, but from the other side. He believes that if Iran goes nuclear, the elites and high tech will leave and the economy will be destroyed, so an Iranian bomb must be prevented.

Ahmadinejad is also playing poker, and in recent weeks he upped the ante when he posed the destruction of the Zionist regime not merely as a religious-ideological ambition, but as a practical goal. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is functioning as a super-adviser to Netanyahu for national security affairs, said in response that “the clock for the Iranian regime’s downfall is ticking.”

Israel and Iran are gambling that only one of them will survive the confrontation. Is this threat serious? History suggests it is. In the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition, Israel defeated Nasserism, which, like Ahmadinejad today, preached the wiping of Israel off the map of the Middle East. The price was high and cost Israel the Yom Kippur War, but the Arabs became convinced that the Jewish state is not a passing phenomenon.

The third player, Obama, holds the weakest hand. This is so because of domestic political weakness and because he can’t seriously threaten Ahmadinejad or Netanyahu. Obama doesn’t want to attack Iran himself and will find it hard to restrain Israel at the moment of truth.

What will he do? Will he turn off the American early warning radar in the Negev and announce that there will be no airlift and no diplomatic support, and as far as he’s concerned Tel Aviv can burn because Israel acted against his advice? It’s hard to imagine that Obama will abandon Israel to its fate. He can only complain and signal to Netanyahu that American support is not guaranteed for any Israeli action.

Before war breaks out – if indeed it does – the real hands the leaders are holding will not be seen. But in the meantime the stakes are constantly rising with the expectations that one of the players will recognize his weakness, blink and leave the table.

Global Politician – Delusional USA – Syrian Overtures.

Elias Bejjani – 3/2/2010

It is extremely bizarre and astonishing that Western countries, especially the USA and France, stubbornly refuse to learn from their own manifold mistakes and finally see and grasp the deeply rooted criminal, inhuman, savage and terrorist nature of the Syrian Baathist dictatorial regime. They naively kept on repeating their same unproductive strategies and accordingly reaped with frustration the same disappointments and failures.

Since the early eighties these countries have loosely and erratically been adopting a carrot and stick policy with Syria’s brutal rulers, and for reasons incomprehensible to political analysts, they never went far enough to topple this regime and support the Syrian people’s rights for freedom and peace as was the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is worth mentioning that Syria has been on the US Department of State’s terrorist watch list since December 29, 1979, and is considered globally by policy makers and think tanks the number one state worldwide that sponsors and breeds terrorist groups.

In spite of the USA’s and EU’s recent hasty and unjustified overtures toward Syria’s dictator, Bachar Al Assad, the Syrian regime brazenly continues to provide overt massive political and material support to Hezbollah and many Palestinian terrorist groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), HAMAS, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

Even when all tangible proof and documents have demonstrated that day after day Syria is recruiting, training, sponsoring and facilitating the infiltration of militant insurgents into Iraq since 2003, no decisive deterrent action was taken by the USA except mere verbal condemnations through press releases and empty rhetorical threats.

One wonders why this pariah regime has still not been toppled when its rulers have been oppressing, terrorizing, murdering and impoverishing their own people and destabilizing through terrorism all its neighboring countries, especially Lebanon and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Syria’s dictator, Bachar Al Assad, keeps on defying the Western and Arabic countries’ demands, wishes and hopes in regard to his relations with Iran and the terrorist groups and continues steadily to solidify and intensify Syria’s relations and ties with the Iranian mullah’s terrorist regime, Hezbollah and Hamas on all levels and in all domains.

Against all logic and odds the Obama administration has been appeasing and cajoling Al Assad in a rapprochement bid to cut his ties with Iran and stop his country’s sponsorship and weaponry supply to Hezbollah and Hamas. In this context the USA gave its close ally, Saudi Arabia, the approval to amend its bitter relations with Al Assad, decided to return its ambassador to Damascus who was withdrawn in February 2005 in the aftermath of the Lebanese PM, Rafic Al Hariri’s assassination in a bombing widely blamed on Syria, and last Monday it lifted a travel warning to Syria that was in place since September 2006 when armed assailants attacked the US Embassy in Damascus.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a Senate budget debate last Wednesday (17.02.10) said that the United States is urging Syria to distance itself from Iran as well as to stop arming Hezbollah and interfering in Lebanon. In disclosing US demands for engagement with Syria, Clinton was blunter than ever about Washington’s bid to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran. Clinton presented a set of demands that Washington is making to Syria now that a US ambassador is returning to Damascus for the first time in five years under President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement. She said that William Burns, the number three diplomat at the State Department, “had very intense, substantive talks in Damascus” when he visited there last week. “And we’ve laid out for the Syrians the need for greater cooperation with respect to Iraq, the end to interference in Lebanon and the provision of weapons to Hezbollah, a resumption of the Israeli-Syrian track…,” she said. Clinton said Washington is also asking Syria “generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran, which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States.”

On Thursday (25.02.10), Al Assad while sitting happily and proudly next to his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a joint conference held in Damascus, slapped the Obama administration on the face, ignored all its overtures as well as its conditions and sarcastically ridiculed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement which urged his country to distance itself from Iran and stop sponsoring terrorist groups. Assad responded by signing a new friendship pact with a grinning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Moreover, he mocked Clinton by saying: “We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement.”

In an arrogant tune and humiliating smile Al Assad said: “Our support for the resistance is a moral and legal duty”, and expressed surprise at Clinton’s call for Syria to distance itself from Iran. “We thank them (the Americans) for their advice,” “I am surprised by their call to keep a distance between the countries when they raise the issue of stability and peace in the Middle East”, “The region’s people should be ready for any Israeli attack”, he told reporters.

The Iranian president, in his turn, said Arab countries will usher in a new Middle East “without Zionists and without colonialists.” He said that “if the Zionist regime wants to repeat its past mistakes, this will constitute its demise and annihilation.” Ahmadinejad said the region’s peoples, including the Lebanese, will stand against Israel. The U.S. should pack up and leave the Middle East and stay out of regional affairs, Iran’s president added. Ahmadinejad’s trip to Damascus follows a string of US efforts to break up Syria’s 30-year alliance with Tehran.

Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah met Thursday (25.02.10) evening in Damascus along with their senior advisors, and discussed regional developments and “the Zionist threat,” it was revealed Friday. The two were the guests of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who had dinner with the two and participated in the talks. According to Arab media reports, the meeting was not reported upon until after it had taken place for security reasons. Ahmadinejad has meet also with high ranking officials from Hamas and other Palestinian armed Jihadist groups.

Ahmadinejad said his talks in Syria will focus on “reaching new decisions on the possible threats” from Israel, adding that Iran and Syria “stand at the forefront of the resistance to the Zionist regime.” Speaking at the airport in Tehran before leaving for Syria, he said, “The Zionist regime and its supporters in the region are quickly approaching a dead end. The situation whereby the Zionists continually threaten countries near occupied Palestine makes it necessary for Iran and Syria to reach new decisions to deal with the possible threats from the Zionist regime.”

During the last week, Ahmadinejad said during three telephone conversations with Al Assad, Lebanon’s president, Michel Suleiman, and Hezbollah’s General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah that Israel should be resisted and finished off if it launched military action in the region. “We have reliable information that the Zionist regime is after finding a way to compensate for its ridiculous defeats from the people of Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.” “If the Zionist regime should repeat its mistakes and initiate a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all,”.

Facing Syria’s ongoing rudeness, arrogance, and defiance, the USA policy makers need to re-evaluate the Obama administration’s hasty opening on Al Asaad and seriously start taking serious practical steps in all domains, including sanctions and military means to either force the Syrian regime to comply with the peace requirements and worldwide anti-terrorism efforts or to face the same choice of being toppled as had Iraq’s Sadam Hussein.

What the Western countries and particularly the USA, should recognize in regard to the current Syrian dictatorship, is that Al Assad’s Baathist regime cannot change, because if it does it will fall from the inside as was the situation with the USSR and Romania. This dictatorship cannot survive in a milieu of peace, openness, freedom or democracy, and therefore all those policy makers and world leaders who keep deluding themselves that they can change the criminal and terrorist nature of the Syrian regime are required to read Middle East history more thoroughly and study more deeply the criminal record of Syria’s rulers during the past 30 years.

In conclusion, there will be no peace in the Middle East before toppling the Syrian regime, containing by force the Iranian nuclear threat and disarming and dismantling Hezbollah. All other venues and means will give more time to Iran to build its atomic bomb and for Syria to breed more terrorist groups and for Hezbollah to totally devour and destroy the democratic and multicultural Lebanese system. Those who have ears need to hear and stop sinking in their delusions and day dreams.

The question is: How many times does the Obama administration have to get slapped in the face and ridiculed by Bachar Al Assad before it stops offering his regime an ”open hand”?

Elias Bejjani is a human rights activist, journalist & political commentator who writes for the Global Politician about issues concerning Lebanon. He is the Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF) and the Media Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
E-Mail: phoenicia@hotmail.com LCCC Web Site: http://www.10452lccc.com

Russian gunships give Lebanese firepower – UPI.com.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: US-Iran nuclear bomb Israel Hillary Clinton

US Secretary of State

Washington eased the threat of harsh sanctions hanging over Iran’s head over its nuclear program at the very moment that it was beginning to take effect and Tehran was showing signs of stress. Tuesday March 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane to Buenos Aires: “We are moving expeditiously and thoroughly in the Security Council, I can’t give you an exact date, but I would assume some time in the next several months.”
This abrupt reversal of US tactics on Iran’s nuclear activities took place when Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak was hardly out the door from Washington after receiving assurances from administration officials that a new round of tough sanctions would be in place by the end of March, with or without the Security Council. Clinton herself assured a Senate panel last week that stiff sanctions would be clamped down on Iran “in the next 30 to 60 days.”
Clinton and defense secretary Robert Gates, when they talked to Barak last Thursday, Feb. 25, were so sure of that timeline that they fixed a date for the defense minister to return got Washington for the second time in a month after sanctions were in place.
debkafile‘s Iranian sources add that the Islamic Republic’s leaders were also convinced last week that the US and likeminded European governments had finally made up their minds to new sanctions in the space of a month. They read the reports leaked to the US media by administration sources about plans to freeze Iran’s external banking connections and cripple Revolutionary Guards businesses, and heard that the White House and a number of staunch European Union governments was ready to go ahead and sidestep the slow-moving, hamstrung Security Council.
Tehran’s anxiety brought Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running to Damascus on Feb. 25 to pull his alliance together. Brandishing his fist, he warned that Iran would not knuckle under to sanctions and the Middle East stood at the threshold of a new war.
Iran’s war preparations hinged on the assignment of operational tasks to its allies and proxies, including the leaders of eleven Palestinian terrorist organizations based in Syria and Lebanon, who were summoned to Tehran Saturday, Feb. 27. They were given their instructions and treated to the most vicious anti-Israel, anti-Semitic invective from Ahmadinejad heard anywhere since World War II.
In another threat, the deputy Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami stressed Sunday, Feb. 28 that Iran controlled 50 percent of the world’s fuel reserves and if sanctions were imposed, Europe would be very cold next winter.
The Obama administrations response to these threats has been to buckle.
Suddenly, Secretary Clinton announced sanctions would take a leisurely “several months,” so easing Tehran’s concerns and enabling its rulers to carry on its dash for a nuclear bomb, even after the new International Atomic Energy Agency director in Vienna Yukiya Amano noted that its peaceful nature could not be confirmed.
The American U-turn has left Israel high and dry with the Iranian nuclear threat looming ever closer.
Month after month, the Obama administration was able to hold Israel back from attacking its nuclear facilities only by a guarantee of tough sanctions, first promised for the end of last year and latterly by the end of March. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu believed he was in tune with Washington when he visited Moscow two weeks ago to discuss sanctions in the immediate term and arms sales to Tehran, and sent minister for strategy affairs Moshe Yaalon to Beijing to persuade the Chinese not to stall urgent sanctions at the Security Council.
Israeli government officials now feel they have been strung along and, moreover, that their diplomatic efforts in Moscow and Beijing were irrelevant.
To mark Washington’s change of face, John Kerry, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee landed in Jerusalem this week, to be followed March 8 by Vice President Joe Biden. They are on hand to bulldoze the Obama administration’s bid to keep Israel in what Kerry called “alignment” with Washington on the Iranian nuclear threat. They will first have to explain to prime minister Netanyahu and Barak how their previous “alignment “on speedy sanctions suddenly broke down and no effective international action is any longer in play to delay Iran’s ambitions.

American Thinker: Does Ahmadinejad Want a Radioactive Cloud over Iran?.

March 02, 2010

By James Lewis

Iran, Syria may talk a big talk, but too scared to act – Haaretz – Israel News.
The banquet at Syrian President Bashar Assad’s palace last weekend was held in the best tradition of Western state dinners, complete with white silk tablecloth, name cards at every place setting, fine china, pure silver flatware and three delicate crystal glasses for every diner.

The only difference was in the choice of appetizers, a la mezes, familiar to us from our nicer Middle Eastern restaurants. The main course was not culinary, but rather political. Seated around the table were not epicureans, but the heads of the axis of evil, and on everyone’s plate was, naturally, Israel.

The host was the same Assad who had only recently proposed peace talks with Israel a number of times. To his right was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who proclaims the destruction of the Zionist state. To his left, Hassan Nasrallah, who wholeheartedly supports that goal.

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According to foreign reports, Nasrallah came disguised, with his goal, one may surmise, being the formation of a military alliance to deter Israel and/or the United States from taking steps that would harm Iran’s nuclear program, which the whole world fears along with Israel.

This surprising summit is certainly in Iran’s interest, but it is unclear whether it is in Syria’s. Assad’s regime is among those Iran would like to bring down.

Assad is not only not Shi’ite, he is not religious. He is a member of the Syria’s ruling minority and needs to be closer to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt rather than Iran.

If foreign press reports can be believed, there are good reasons to fear Israeli intelligence and its ability to infiltrate and expose the enemy.

They shouldn’t fear the James Bond-style hit in Dubai, but the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, which happened in the heart of Damascus.

As opposed to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who came and went openly to and from Dubai and spoke freely on the telephone with his brother in Gaza, Mughniyeh concealed his identity. If we throw in a few more mysterious actions, among them the uncovering and bombardment of the secret Syrian nuclear reactor, Assad has good reason to be concerned.

As for Ahmadinejad, he has a big mouth – so big that he does not understand that the more he threatens us with a second Holocaust, the more he spurs Israel to build greater means of deterrance and increases its willingness to use them.

Ronen Bergman wrote last week in Yedioth Ahronoth that former prime minister David Ben-Gurion told Yuval Ne’eman, one of the fathers of Israel’s nuclear program, that his worst nightmare was that the survivors of the Holocaust in Europe, whom he had brought to Israel, would be victims of a second Holocaust here.

The reasoning, Bergman wrote, which won the day when former prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of the Iraqi reactor and by which the Syrian reactor was bombed, is that a country calling for the destruction of Israel must not be given the means to do so.

This is not a one-way threat. Iran might misunderstand the voices emanating from Israel. Iran’s leaders might be mistaken about Israel’s capabilities or exaggerate the extent of American pressure on Israel not to act against Iran. But our deterrance is based on force and the willingness to use it in the face of a threat to our survival.

In the days before the 1967 Six-Day War, when our soldiers were sitting for weeks doing nothing under the burning sun, with Egypt threatening to attack, Moshe Dayan was finally appointed defense minister and everyone awaited his decision. But in his first meeting with foreign correspondents, he was ambiguous – “It’s too late to act militarily and too soon to sum up diplomatic efforts.”

The journalist Winston Churchill (grandson of the British premier) decided he was wasting his time and that same night flew back to London, while our planes were on their way to bomb the Egyptian air force.

Israel’s reputation is built on deterrence. Iran, full of itself, could presume that we will not act or we will not be allowed to act. But good intelligence on their part can depend on precedents where we did act in similar circumstances.

In bombing the Iraqi reactor we surprised the Americans, although they might have given their agreement in a wink and a nod. At the Damascus summit Iran’s leaders are attempting to build an offensive axis against Israel and its home front. In the words of Henry Kissinger, even the paranoid have enemies. They certainly have a big mouth, but they are afraid to act.

Kerry hints: We are here to keep Israel from attacking Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will address the Israeli public directly next week during a speech he is scheduled to deliver at Tel Aviv University, focusing on American commitment to Israel’s security, Iran’s nuclear program and the peace process. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday in Jerusalem that Biden is seeking to ensure that Israel and the United States are in alignment on the issue of preventing the Iranian nuclear threat.

To date the U.S. administration has not made a serious effort to reach out to the Israeli public, unlike addresses by President Barack Obama aimed at the Arab and Muslim world. Obama will continue to convey his message, which began during speeches in Turkey and Egypt, with another during an official visit to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country.

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Obama has also not yet visited Israel as U.S. president.

Biden is due in Israel on March 8, for a three-day visit that will also include the Palestinian Authority.

An Israeli political source has told Haaretz that Biden would like “to make a speech that is important and significant for Israeli-American relations.”

The political portion of his visit will likely concentrate on the Iranian nuclear question, with Biden stressing before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. expects Israel to assist in the effort to foil, using diplomatic means, Iran’s nuclear ambitions through the imposition of effective sanctions at the UN Security Council, thus avoiding unilateral steps that may include an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

Senator Kerry, who is privy to the details of efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, hinted yesterday at a press conference in Jerusalem after a meeting with the prime minister that Biden’s visit to Israel, and that of other senior administration officials, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, aims at restraining Israel against the possibility of unilaterally attacking Iran.

In response to a question on whether the U.S. is concerned about the possibility of such Israeli action, he said that “the prime minister is more than aware through his conversations with the Secretary of State and the President himself, as well as just through his own common sense – I think he is very tuned in to not being rash or jumping the gun here or doing something that doesn’t give those other opportunities a chance.”

Kerry explained that one of the reasons for the sort of dialogue that has been taking place with the visits of U.S. officials and “one of the reasons that I am here and other people were here and VP Biden is coming shortly – is to make sure we are all on the same page and that we are all clear about what time frames may exist or what threat levels may be real or unreal and what options may be on the table for us. I think we are on the same page and I found the prime minister tremendously supportive of the initiatives that we are taking right now, and other countries are taking, and very hopeful that they can have an impact.”

Iran says plans to test fire new guided-bomb soon | Reuters.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s air force will soon test a new version of a 2000-pound guided-bomb, a top Iranian military commander said on Monday.

World

Iran has built up its forces in recent years, developing missiles and other new weapons, ostensibly due to Tehran’s concerns about the U.S. military presence neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Iran, embroiled in a nuclear dispute with the West over its nuclear program, has also threatened Israel and another military commander warned on Sunday that Iranian missiles could target any adversary.

“The 2000-pound Qassed-1 guided-bomb has been mass produced and given to the Air Force … its new version will be test fired soon,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Air Force commander-in-chief Hassan Shahsafi as saying.

“The Qassed-2 has a longer range, more accuracy and enjoys more explosive power than its older version,” Shahsafi said.

The Qassed (Herald) bomb was first test-fired in 2006 during a large-scale military exercise in Iran.

In February, media reported that Iran officially started production of two new missiles, only three days after it launched a rocket which can carry a satellite.

Iran often makes announcements of progress in its military capabilities, in an apparent attempt to show its readiness to respond to any possible military attack.

(Reporting by Hossein Jaseb; Writing by Reza Derakhshi; Editing by Jon Hemming)