Deadly Fighting Between Hezbollah and Israel, Fox News with Oliver North via You Tube, January 29, 2015
(Obama: acting like a “petulant child.” — DM)
Posted tagged ‘Israel’
Deadly Fighting Between Hezbollah and Israel
January 30, 2015Bibi, Iran’s Nukes, and Military Force in a Changed Middle East
January 30, 2015By: J. E. Dyer
Published: January 30th, 2015
via The Jewish Press » » Bibi, Iran’s Nukes, and Military Force in a Changed Middle East.
{Originally posted on author’s website, Liberty Unyielding}
Over at The Atlantic, there’s a comprehensive worldview being built on the question of whether there’s a “military solution” to the Iran nuclear problem, and how Benjamin Netanyahu has Israel positioned vis-à-vis the problem in general.
Jeffrey Goldberg thinks Netanyahu has Israel positioned very poorly indeed.
James Fallows’ conclusion, agreeing with Goldberg on the worldview, is encapsulated in a quote from a war-game director and retired Air Force officer in 2004:
“After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers,” our main war-game designer, retired Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner, said at the end of our 2004 exercise. “You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.” That was true then, and truer now.
I don’t doubt at all the sincere belief Fallows has in this conclusion. But if you unpack the work that led to it 2004, you find that it was based on a fatally flawed premise. (More on that in a moment.)
Moreover, the situation of 2004 no longer obtains. That means that the calculations of two major players must now be different. One is Israel; the other is the United States. The calculations I refer to include not merely the consequences of each party’s actions, and whether the parties’ capabilities are sufficient for the necessary task. They also include what the threat has become, and the fact that it is graver now than in 2004.
Don’t make assumptions about what I mean by that. It may not be what you think.
Why the 2004 conclusion about “military force” is flawed
I’ll begin by explaining my point that the premise of the 2004 war game sponsored by The Atlantic was flawed. There are several criticisms that can be levied, but this is the one that matters most. (And I don’t mean to impugn the care and diligence that went into the war game. You’ll see, however, why I found it fatally flawed at the time – before I was an active blogger – and still do.)
To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’ll quote a key passage from the 2004 war-game summary. Several players were assembled to act out the roles of the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, and James Fallows narrates the events of the game:
The President wanted to understand the options he actually had for a military approach to Iran. The general and his staff had prepared plans for three escalating levels of involvement: a punitive raid against key Revolutionary Guard units, to retaliate for Iranian actions elsewhere, most likely in Iraq; a pre-emptive air strike on possible nuclear facilities; and a “regime change” operation, involving the forcible removal of the mullahs’ government in Tehran. Either of the first two could be done on its own, but the third would require the first two as preparatory steps. In the real world the second option—a pre-emptive air strike against Iranian nuclear sites—is the one most often discussed. Gardiner said that in his briefing as war-game leader he would present versions of all three plans based as closely as possible on current military thinking. He would then ask the principals to recommend not that an attack be launched but that the President authorize the preparatory steps to make all three possible.
The fatal flaw here is posing the problem set by the president as one of creating options for a “military approach” to Iran. That’s why the options end up being, respectively, useless, vague, and appalling.
Asking what a “military approach to Iran” would look like is asking the wrong question. The first question – the right question – is always what the objective is. If you read through the war-game summary, I believe you’ll agree with me that no strategic objective was ever set for the players. The three options outlined above imply three different objectives. If I were the president, and those three options were presented to me, I would ask what could have possessed my staff to forward options one and three.
Fallows relates that the Principals Committee players spent most of their time thinking of reasons why option three was bad. Of course they did. But why they were even discussing it is the real question.
They spent very little time on option two, according to Fallows, which is the only option that would have fit the objective as most Americans understood it: to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons by inflicting destruction on her nuclear program. This is his account of the time they gave to it:
The participants touched only briefly on the Osirak-style strike [i.e., option two] during the war game, but afterward most of them expressed doubt about its feasibility.
This is by no means the only reason to dispute the conclusion the war-gamers came to. But it’s the most important one. They were not asked to respond to a specific objective with options for accomplishing it. In particular, they weren’t told to focus on the objective that was relevant and widely understood to be the potential purpose of military operations – and they didn’t focus on it!
They were asked, in the absence of a specific objective, to discuss some random options for using military force. That tells us nothing about the efficacy of military force. It tells us that the planning process asked the wrong question.*
Fast-forward to 2015
In 2015, we are no longer in the situation of 2004. Three important conditions have changed since then. The importance of these conditions can’t be overstated, in fact, because they change both what’s possible, and what matters.
Jeffrey Goldberg wrote the following on Tuesday (emphases below are added by James Fallows):
Whatever the case, the only other way for Netanyahu to stop Iran would be to convince the president of the United States, the leader of the nation that is Israel’s closest ally and most crucial benefactor, to confront Iran decisively. An Israeli strike could theoretically set back Iran’s nuclear program, but only the U.S. has the military capabilities to set back the program in anything approaching a semi-permanent way.
Fallows disagrees with him, invoking the 2004 war game to assert that “military force,” per se, just can’t get the job done:
Israel doesn’t have the military capacity to “stop” Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and neither does the United States, at least not in circumstances short of total war.
The key problem with working off of either of these premises, Goldberg’s or Fallows’, is that their framing is stuck in 2004. Here are the three conditions that have changed since then:
(1) The U.S. no longer has the conventional military capability to “set back Iran’s nuclear program in something approaching a semi-permanent way.” This is a relative condition, and it’s because of the loss of readiness in our armed forces, independent of any other reason.
(2) Iran’s nuclear program is considerably advanced from 2004, and setting it back has a different definition now. This doesn’t mean it’s infeasible, but it does mean that no one now has the capability to use a conventional strike campaign to set Iran’s program back to where it was ca. 2004 or earlier. A setback can only be to some much more advanced point in Iran’s progress.
(3) Iran’s geopolitical posture in the Middle East has changed materially since 2004. The regime’s intentions have never changed, but the facts on the ground about what territory Iran can use to menace her neighbors – as well as U.S. interests – have changed dramatically.
I’ll discuss each of these factors in turn.
Decline in U.S. military capabilities
Here is the thing to keep in mind about U.S. capabilities. In 2004, it was correct to say that the capabilities we had were sufficient to contemplate destroying every Iranian facility related to the nuclear weapons program, using conventional means. Not only did we have the weaponry; the weapon systems were in a readiness state high enough to be deployed and used.
There was a political question, certainly, about how hard we wanted to hit Iran. There were a number of factors to consider, and valid reasons why it was not done. But it was feasible to do it, with the arsenal we had readily available.
In 2015, we could no longer conduct that same attack: the attack that was necessary in 2004, against a smaller and less advanced nuclear program. We don’t have the same assets available now, because our strike-fighters, in the Air Force and Navy, are unable to maintain the same level of force-wide readiness they could in 2004. When they’re not deployed or within 3-5 months of deploying, our strike fleet aircrew and aircraft now fall to the lowest level of readiness, and can’t be “worked up” on a short timeline.
There are no extra ready squadrons to call on today, and fewer are routinely present in the CENTCOM area of responsibility than in 2004. The same is true of aircraft carriers and Tomahawk missile shooters. (Read more about how we got to this point here, here, here, here, and here.)
If the president wanted to assemble a force to attack Iran, the force would be smaller than what he would have had in 2004, and any “build-up” would involve pulling assets off the front line in other theaters: Europe, where NATO is trying to deter Russia with an enhanced military presence, or the Far East, where we are trying to deter North Korea and China.
Alternatively, the president could ask Congress for the funding to increase force readiness so that there would be more of the strike fleet available at a given time. Implementing that approach would take at least six months to see the first effects: e.g., one or two squadrons at improved readiness. The issue isn’t just things like pilot qualifications; it’s things like non-deployed aircraft being cannibalized for parts, and the whole fleet being backed up with deferred maintenance.
We continue to keep our global strategic bombers – B-2s and B-52s – at a generally higher level of readiness, and could use them to attack Iran with conventional ordnance. Their operations would be constrained, however, by the limitations of strike-fighter readiness and specialty aircraft (e.g., the Navy F/A-18 “Growlers” that provide electronic warfare support). The bombers need escorts, as they need in-flight refueling; having enough ready bombers isn’t the same thing as having enough ready capability.
Moreover, the U.S. could expect to have limited access to airfields in the Persian Gulf region. It became clear as early as 2010 that Gulf nations would seek to restrain U.S. operations against Iran from their bases, and today, we should expect the Gulf emirates to be very picky about what they allow. They won’t buy into tentative, non-decisive military operations that leave Iran able to retaliate against them. If they fear that we aren’t going to act decisively enough, it’s likely that all three of our major hosts – Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait – would deny us the use of their bases for an operation against Iran.
That limiting condition would take out the Air Force as a source of strike-fighters, and make it much harder to operate tankers, reconnaissance aircraft, and AWACS.
Add in factors like the uncertain future of the Tomahawk missile (the Obama administration proposed to end production in 2014), and what we have today is a much more limited set of options than we had in 2004. Although we still have a capability to attack Iran’s nuclear-related facilities, we can’t mount the kind of crippling attack we could have in 2004. What we could achieve now is limited to a smaller effect.
Put it this way: in 2004, the five-day attack described in option two of the Atlantic war game was less than what was needed to impose that “semi-permanent setback” referred to by Jeffrey Goldberg. But we could have mounted that option two attack with negligible inconvenience to ourselves. It was well within our capabilities. We also had the means, by deploying more force, to bring off the larger attack required to administer the “semi-permanent setback.”
In 2015, something like the five-day attack is the very most we could bring off. It was less than what was needed to achieve a semi-permanent setback to Iran’s program in 2004 – and today, it is far less.
Advances in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs
Iran has made significant advances in her nuclear and missile programs since 2004, demonstrating the ability to enrich uranium to near-weapons-grade purity; demonstrating the ability to enrich uranium on an industrial scale; acquiring enough enriched-uranium stock for 7-8 warheads; and demonstrating the ability to boost a payload into orbit, and therefore, inevitably, a ballistic missile to ICBM ranges. Iran had none of these capabilities in 2004, and in fact was not even close to having them.
(It is worth noting that the January 2015 appearance in Iran of a launch platform capable of supporting an ICBM has occurred right on schedule, in terms of when analysts in the last decade thought it would. As of 2015, we have seen most of the developments that were predicted in the Iranian nuclear program in the 2005 NIE – see here as well – and the missile-system developments predicted in that NIE and an East-West Institute analysis published in 2009.)
ICBM-capable launcher observed near Tehran in Jan 2015. (Israel Ch. 2)
The Iranians have also installed missile silos for their medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) – hardening them against attack – and, according to British intelligence, successfully launched a solid-fuel mobile MRBM to a range of 2,000 km (1,200 statute miles) in 2011. The latter feats mean Iran has a no-notice, shoot-and-scoot MRBM capability that can reach well into Europe.
These various advances, and other related ones, have two significant implications. One is that the “bottleneck” of Iran’s nuclear weapons program – the part of it we would get the highest payoff from attacking – has shifted.
There are other, related implications, such as the right way to attack elements of the program. It wouldn’t be enough today to simply blast away at the Natanz uranium enrichment complex, for example; we would have to follow through afterward and actively prevent Iran from rebuilding a uranium enrichment capability, which the Iranians now have more than ample expertise to do. In 2004, it would have been a tremendous setback to them to lose Natanz. They still couldn’t absorb such a loss easily, but their recovery now would be a matter of time and money, not rebuilding from scratch.
At any rate, the bottleneck, or critical node, in their program shifted some time ago, from uranium enrichment, which Iran has mastered, to weaponization of a warhead: that is, fitting a functioning warhead to a delivery system (presumably a ballistic missile, at least to begin with. Cruise missiles would come later). Although we have a reasonable idea of which sites to hit to attack that “weaponization” bottleneck, it is the most shadowy aspect of the Iranian nuclear program. Our confidence in what to hit is slightly lower than it is for the uranium chain or the missile design and production chain.
The other key implication about Iran’s advances is, of course, that the threat has increased. It is greater today, and it’s more imminent. We can less afford to do nothing about it than we could in 2004.
And what that means is that even if we can only do less now than we would prefer, the urgency of doing it has increased.
Iran’s geopolitical posture and the resulting threat
That is one facet of the situation faced by Israel. It’s also a situation faced by the United States, now that Iran is ten years closer to having an ICBM capability, and at the very least could soon be able to hold every partner we have in the Middle East hostage with nuclear-armed MRBMs.
For Israel, however, it isn’t possible to separate the security implications of the nuclear-missile problem from the geopolitical problem. Both work together to change Israel’s security conditions – which is what Iran intends.
Jeffrey Goldberg wrote his piece Tuesday as if nothing has changed for Israel, other than that there are now face-to-face negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. But since January 2011, Israel’s security situation has changed significantly, and Iran is one of the biggest factors in that.
Graphic used by retired Gen. Jack Keane to brief Congress 27 Jan on 4-fold increase in radical Islamic threat since 2010. (Graphic: Institute for the Study of War; CSPAN video)
It’s particularly meaningful to frame the issue by starting from the fact that Israel’s capability against the Iranian nuclear program has always been more limited than America’s. (Stay with me; this does relate to the Iranian geopolitical posture.) It’s possible for America to recover the ability to pressure and intimidate Iran into a level of compliance, along the lines of the strategy outlined in my footnote below. It will never be possible for Israel to do that.
If Israel is going to act, it will have to be with an actual attack. And that means that what Iran has to do is make it as hard as possible for Israel to bring off such an attack. That is a driving facet of the geopolitical problem Iran sets for herself. Iran has larger designs on the region; her plans against Israel “nest” into them. But the focus on Israel is unmistakable, and one of the key reasons is that hemming Israel in with threats will dilute Israel’s capability to mount an attack against Iran’s high-value facilities.
As little as five years ago, Iran’s options for servicing this requirement were quite limited. Hamas and Hezbollah could launch rockets and dig tunnels from Gaza and southern Lebanon. Hezbollah had successfully used an Iranian-supplied anti-ship missile in 2006, but there was little likelihood of such an attack being brought off again.
Iran, however, had begun sending warships to the Horn of Africa for antipiracy operations as early as December 2008, and with the onset of the Arab Spring, her military profile across the region metastasized. The presence of Iranian warships has become routine in the Red Sea, and in 2011, Iran sent warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since the 1979 revolution. Iran has announced deploying submarines to the Red Sea as well. Every new weapon the Iranian navy tests or drills with in the Persian Gulf – including cruise missiles and high-speed torpedoes – it intends to use in its forward patrol areas, which now include the waters of the Red Sea, and potentially the Eastern Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, Iran now has Special Forces deployed in Iraq, as well as wherever the Assad regime is in (nominal) control of territory in Syria. There is intriguing evidence that the Iranians have taken over a nuclear-related facility in western Syria: in fact, that they arranged for Hezbollah to “liberate” it from Sunni jihadists because it’s a nuclear facility, and is being used for Iran’s purposes.
Iran’s aggressively expanding posture across the region. (Google map; author annotation.)
And earlier this month, the Iranians sent a very high-level military delegation to perform reconnaissance in the Golan Heights – just one of the recent pieces of evidence that Iran wants to open a new front for Israel to have to defend. The Iranians want to preoccupy Israel’s military, and increase her insecurity overall by forcing Israel to counterattack into Syria, thus creating the ongoing danger of escalating an already unstable situation.
Google map; author annotation. Inset: Wikimedia Commons, author annotation)
It’s important to understand that Iran’s campaign serves multiple purposes, because its implications for Israel are therefore bigger. Israel isn’t just concerned now about Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has to be concerned about what Iran, with or without nuclear arms, will do with her expanding territorial leverage in the region. Iran gaining a foothold in Yemen with the Houthi coup there is the latest disturbing development, one that could give the Iranians a base from which to deploy midget submarines into the Red Sea, for example, or base military aircraft, or position missile launchers to complicate Israel’s missile defense picture. Yemen could certainly become a waypoint for the flow of illicit arms from Iran to a variety of recipients. Where once Israeli intelligence could focus on ports in Sudan, it now may have the entire western coast of Yemen to contend with.
The brewing crisis in the Golan may by itself be enough to present Israel with a matrix of game-changing decision points in the next 12 months. There’s a limit to how much harassment Israel can afford to live with and retain viability as a free and secure nation, making a good life possible for her people. The confrontation with Iran is growing in more than one dimension, and Israel can’t treat the Iranian nuclear program as a theoretical, specialized threat, separate from the overall menace Iran presents to her.
right, IRGC General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, one of two IRGC general officers and six Iranians conducting reconnaissance in the Golan Heights on 18 Jan 2015, when their convoy was struck by (presumably) the IDF. Allahdadi is seen here hanging with former President Khatami in 2009. (Image: Iranian TV via Twitter)
It’s not 2004 anymore
The profile of Iran’s activities makes it abundantly clear that none of what she does is “about” Israel making concessions on West Bank settlements, or otherwise falling in with proposals made by the Obama administration for a final status agreement. Iran is all over the region – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan – taking advantage of the opportunities created by the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
Jeffrey Goldberg suggests that Israel should strengthen Obama’s negotiating position by making more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs. But in 2015, nothing in the region’s main dynamic is even about that anymore. The main dynamic is the feeding frenzy for the territory of Syria and Iraq. The various actors are shaping up to be Iran, ISIS, the Kurds, and some combination of others who still retain a legacy set of “status quo” objectives (including, e.g., the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and perhaps Turkey).
Not one of those actors can be deterred or influenced by artificially forced developments in the now-defunct Oslo process. But at least two of the actors – Iran and ISIS – will exploit Israel however they have to, to gain advantage for themselves. That’s what Iran is doing with her foray into the Golan, which gives “top cover” to her nuclear program, but also has the real potential to become as much of an existential threat to Israel as an Iranian bomb.
Israel can’t afford to ignore the fact that the whole unfolding strategy interlocks. In essence, Iran has already begun a new phase in her long-running campaign against Israel, and the Obama administration is asking Israel to behave toward the negotiations with Iran as if that hasn’t happened: as if it’s still 2004, and everyone still has the same situation and the same options.
An emerging trigger point
Israel doesn’t. It’s not 2004 anymore. There was a time, as little as a year ago, when the triggers for Israel to have to attack boiled down mainly to these two: either Iran was about to cross the “red line” Bibi briefed to the UN in 2012, or the Iranians were about to deploy a modern anti-air missile system that would make it too difficult for Israel to pull the attack off, once it was in place.
But we’re past that point now. Developments in the nuclear program, or inside Iran, aren’t Israel’s only concern. The Israelis may well have to execute a preemptive strategy that baffles and blunts Iran’s whole package of activities in the Israeli security perimeter. Attacking the Iranian nuclear program – facilities in Iran – will probably form some element of that, but it won’t be enough.
And the trigger matrix has changed. The intolerable juncture for Israel is likely to be connected with Iran’s emerging campaign in the Golan. Neither the prompts for military action, nor its purpose and targets, will be bounded by the old outlines of the “Iranian nuclear” problem. The problem is bigger now: simultaneously more threatening and immediate, and more diffuse. A strike campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities, with F-15s, is no longer the main mental picture we should have.
Like the Oslo-legacy negotiations, the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran have little relevance to the security conditions Israel faces today. One of the most important things the U.S. could do to reset the clock is now out of reach: that is, pacify and effectively settle the situation in Syria and Iraq, where Iran, like ISIS, is gaining strength and position from conflict. The Obama administration doesn’t seem aware that the situation has changed, and with it the motives and concerns of everyone in the region. Netanyahu has to deal, nevertheless, with a reality that’s changing under our feet with each passing day.
Center, with scarf: Iranian Qods Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, with local Iraqi military leaders in Iraq in 2014. A U.S. defense official said in 2013 that Soleimani was “running the whole Syrian war by himself.” (Quoted by Dexter Filkins in “Shadow Commander,” The New Yorker, 30 Sep 2103. Image via Twitter)
* I’m fully aware, incidentally, that policy is sometimes made in just this way. But that doesn’t mean that we can accurately judge whether military force would be effective by approaching our evaluation through an inherently flawed policy-making process.
An objective and a strategy
For what it’s worth, this is what I would have asked the NSC and principals to look at back in 2004. The strategic objective would have been to rope Iran into a heavily and genuinely supervised mode with her nuclear program, understanding that political change in Iran might be encouraged that way (alongside other methods), through frustrating the regime and weakening its reputation, but would ultimately have to come in other ways from the Iranian people. Outreach to reformers in Iran would have been the highest American priority overall.
The objective of using military force would have been to set Iran’s nuclear program back significantly – by at least 24 months – and inflict some level of additional damage as a deterrent, against both immediate retaliation and future activities.
I would have wanted a process of escalating pressure on Iran with a concurrent military build-up in the Gulf region, designed to force Iran to open up all the facilities identified by the IAEA and Western intelligence as suspect. If Iran didn’t comply in good faith by a deadline, the strikes would start. The strike threat would have been implied, not spelled out. The deadline would have been a short one (30-45 days), only long enough to accommodate the build-up, but not so long that Iran could change all her program arrangements to evade attack.
The scope of military strikes for which the build-up was designed would have included the significant “bottleneck,” or critical node, of Iran’s program at the time – the uranium enrichment complex at Natanz – as well as the suspicious special-use facilities in the Parchin area southeast of Tehran.
There would have been some other targets in the nuclear and missile programs, but those two installations would have been the top priorities. Equally important targets would have been the IRGC assets most useful for projecting power outside Iran’s borders, including ballistic missiles, coastal cruise missiles, and submarines, as well as the IRGC’s paramilitary organization. Attacking the air defense network and national command and control nodes would have been necessary to hold air superiority for U.S. forces while they were operating in Iranian air space.
Ideally, the preparations for this, and the escalating pressure on Iran (very possibly including intense economic pressure), would have gotten Iran to make some meaningful concessions at the time. We need not oversell what we could have wrested from Iran without an attack, but odds were better than even that we could have gotten meaningful concessions: concessions that justified the effort, even if they weren’t everything we wanted. Rinsing and repeating would almost certainly have been necessary.
My own preference would be for an extended process in which we could force Iran’s program more into the open, and keep pushing Iran back, without having to strike. Instead of letting Iran play for time, we should be playing for time: time for Iranian reformers, who poked their heads up in 2009, and who are still there to be worked with.
About the Author: J.E. Dyer is a retired US Naval intelligence officer who served around the world, afloat and ashore, from 1983 to 2004.
Yazidis ask Israel for help
January 29, 2015Yazidis ask Israel for help, Al-Monitor, Jacky Hugi, January 28, 2015
A man from the minority Yazidi sect stands guard at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, Dec. 20, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ari Jalal)
[I]t is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.
******************
“They have already killed many of us. What do we have to fear?” Lt. Col. Lukman Ibrahim responded when I asked him if he was afraid to openly communicate with an Israeli in a recent long-distance phone conversation from Tel Aviv to Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border. Ibrahim, a Yazidi militia officer, is hoping to obtain military aid from the State of Israel.
“The Arab countries do not recognize us, nor do they recognize you,” he said. “They are telling us that we are infidels. Why should we be afraid to talk to you, when even neighboring Arab countries have become our enemies? We regard you as a friendly state, with an opportunity for relations on the basis of neutrality and respect. We do not want more than that.”
Ibrahim, a journalist by profession, serves as an assistant to Marwan Elias Badl, one of the senior field commanders of the Sinjar Protection Forces, the Yazidi militia established ad hoc in August 2014 to halt the Islamic State (IS) onslaught against Yazidi population centers west of Mosul. The militia numbers some 12,000 fighters, most of them untrained, ordinary men who rushed to take up arms to thwart IS’ designs. A few of them are rank-and-file fighters, while some are officers with the Kurdish peshmerga. According to internal estimates, the IS militants killed thousands in their pogrom against the Yazidis. About 5,000 Yazidis are still being held by IS.
The Yazidis have no formal relations with Israel, nor an organized leadership. Yet they need aid, in particular military assistance, and they have chosen to make a public plea for help. “We appeal to the Israeli government and its leader to step in and help this nation, which loves the Jewish people,” said Ibrahim. “We would be most grateful for the establishment of military ties — for instance, the training of fighters and the formation of joint teams. We are well aware of the circumstances the Israelis are in, and of the suffering they have endured at the hands of the Arabs ever since the establishment of their state. We, too, are suffering on account of them.”
When asked what kind of weapons they needed, Ibrahim cited protective measures. “We are not acting against anyone,” he clarified. “And we do not covet other people’s land. We just want to protect ourselves. For example, [we need] armored [Humvees], machine guns and light weapons.”
Contact with Israel is a dirty business in this neighborhood, military contact all the more so. Be that as it may, in a reality where all levees have been breached and the worst appears to have already befallen the Yazidis, what could they possibly lose by seeking a rapport with Jerusalem?
The conversation with Ibrahim was not the only call with Sinjar. Majdal Rasho, a native of Sinjar, had settled in Germany and built his life there. He married and had a family, making a living as a manufacturing supervisor at a chocolate plant. In his spare time, he served as a photographer for TV stations broadcasting in the Kurdish language. He returned to Sinjar as a fighter, but also in his capacity as a video photographer for German TV networks.
“What I have seen here, I just can’t describe,” he said by phone from a battle zone. “Our people had no choice but to flee. We are not Arabs, nor are we Muslims. We see ourselves as sharing a fate with the Israelis, who went through similar pogroms. Those besieged on the mountain approached me and asked, ‘Maybe our Israeli brethren could lend a hand?’”
Yazidism is a religion with no more than a million followers. Its adherents are centered around Mosul and the Sinjar mountain range, in northern Iraq. Their largest diaspora in the West is in Germany, estimated to number some 100,000.
A common destiny with the Jews is a recurring theme in the Yazidis’ discourse. “What happened to us is the biggest genocide since the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe,” said Dr. Mirza Dinnay, a pediatrician based in Germany. “In the Holocaust, the goal was to annihilate an entire people, the Jews. IS has a similar plan — to exterminate an entire people, the Yazidis. No such extermination process had taken place in the past 500 years, with the exception of the Holocaust and what came to pass in Sinjar.”
Dinnay left Germany for Sinjar at the outbreak of the pogrom, leading a delegation of human rights activists. During one of the aid flights arranged by the Iraqi air force, a helicopter carrying food supplies and medication to the besieged Yazidis crashed. Some of the passengers aboard, among them Dinnay, were injured.
The communication between the Yazidis and the Israeli media has been coordinated by Idan Barir, 34, a researcher at the Tel Aviv University Yavetz School of Historical Studies. In the months since IS’ offensive against Yazidi population centers, Barir has become Israel’s top expert on the Yazidis, thanks to his extensive connections with members of the Yazidi community.
“I can think of a range of activities that Israel is experienced in that would not undermine the world order,” Barir told Al-Monitor. “For example, providing military assistance to the Yazidi forces in Sinjar who are crying out for cooperation and aid; setting up a field hospital for medical and psychological treatment of the casualties among the displaced in northern Iraq — not only Yazidis, by the way; sending humanitarian aid to displaced Yazidis in the refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan; absorption of a symbolic number of displaced Yazidis in Israel, with preference given to humanitarian, whether medical or mental, cases; incorporation of young Yazidis into military service in Israel; and support of civil initiatives aimed at strengthening and deepening ties between Israelis and Yazidis. It all depends on the decision made by the Israeli government, on its determination and goodwill.”
So far, Israel has not officially responded to such calls, which have yet to be fully formulated and have only recently began over the last few days. In fact, no formal request has come from the Yazidis for asylum as refugees. Barir is currently trying to find a way to reach decision-makers in Israel to pass on the messages from his faraway friends. Without a doubt, it is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.
“It is a moral obligation to ring every bell and to do everything possible to stop the Yazidi tragedy,” said Attorney Zvi Hauser, the former Cabinet secretary in the most recent Netanyahu government (2009-13). “It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, someone’s attempt to eliminate an entire people, because of its faith and religion, is met with indifference.”
Hauser is the first senior figure in Israel who agreed to comment on the Yazidis’ call for help. As a private person, he refrained from reference to the Yazidis’ request for military aid, taking care to say nothing that might be interpreted as a promise. He believes, however, that Israel should favorably consider the Yazidis’ calls.
“The Yazidi narrative is evocative of ours. We, too, went through 2,000 years of existence without sovereignty, in the course of which we faced extermination schemes,” Hauser said. “Israel is a sovereign state, formed by an ethnic minority. It is the national manifestation of an ancient civilization. It would thus be appropriate to examine ways to establish relations and forge an alliance with them, if only to ensure a pluralistic Middle East. This issue has a universal aspect, as well. The development of human civilization is contingent on the diversity and multiplicity of [ethnic] groups and nations. Hence, the extinction of one of these would hurt not only the Yazidis, but also the entire fabric of human life.”
Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel
January 29, 2015Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, January 29, 2015
Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
**********************
There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as negotiating while their nuclear program advances.
Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of “pinocchios” for his latest effort, suggesting he was all but lying on the matter. No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they have more running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on demand, they have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they have not agreed to end any missile program they are working on for delivery of a nuclear bomb.
”Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran,” Obama said, ”where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:
”But has Iran’s stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last November, Iran halted work on the most dangerous material, 20 percent refined uranium. However, Iran is still making lower-grade uranium. According to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency last November, Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium gas and 5 percent enriched uranium were both growing. Also, the agency cautioned that their figures only covered ’declared sites,’ the nuclear facilities Iran has publicly acknowledged and allowed to be inspected.”
In the days after his address to Congress, the president repeated his threats about vetoing new sanctions legislation, when meeting with Democratic senators, several of whom, along with a few Republican colleagues, had been lobbied on the matter by Britain’s visiting Prime Minister David Cameron. The president upped the ante, accusing Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new sanctions, of not thinking long-term, but just trying to make his donors (could Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.
The idea of a foreign leader directly lobbying members of Congress on an issue like the Iranian sanctions bill took on a new life when House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on the Iranian issue on February 11. The White House predictably blew its lid, accusing Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an invitation. (It should have been coordinated with the White House.) The usual Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to lambaste Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel Pollak describes Goldberg’s argument:
”In his most recent Atlantic column, he claims, for example, that Obama worked ‘in tandem’ with Netanyahu to promote sanctions on Iran: ‘Netanyahu traveled the world arguing for stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.’
“That is simply factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions for months, defying even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Not only was Israel frustrated, and Congress, but Europe as well, which accused Obama of re-inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started under (gasp) George W. Bush.
“In fact, Obama pushed the world towards a more lenient position on Iran, allowing nuclear enrichment in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
And then there is this doozy:
”It is Netanyahu’s job, Goldberg says, as ‘the junior partner in the Israel-U.S. relationship,’ to make concessions.”
When it comes to negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not sit at the table with the Iranians, but Obama’s representatives do. And it is U.S. negotiators who have been making concessions month after month since the talks began, in what appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal they can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives. That objective has now been reduced to providing some minimum breakout time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability if they ditch the deal. What will the West do in that time if Iran moves towards the bomb? It is pretty clear, any military response from Obama is out of the question.
The administration has further demonstrated its unhappiness about Netanyahu’s impudence in scheming with Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits Washington, a date now moved back three weeks to overlap his visit to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse, couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be improper for the president to meet with a candidate for office abroad so close to the time of that country’s election. That would be equivalent to electioneering and interference in the other country’s race. Presumably when President Bill Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton’s mind.
The Obama team may not meet with Netanyahu when he visits, but an experienced Obama campaign team from 2012 is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in and of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from the Left and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the current anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State Department funded group:
”U.S.-based activist group OneVoice International has partnered with V15, an ‘independent grass-roots movement’ in Israel that is actively opposing Netanyahu’s party in the upcoming elections, Haaretz reported on Monday. Former national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy Bird is also reportedly involved in the effort.
“OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler said the group would be working with V15 on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts but would not engage in overtly partisan activities. She said OneVoice and V15 are still formalizing the partnership.”
Obama’s team has gone further to poison the waters for Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz that the Mossad was opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge they publicly rebutted.
The Goldberg article was designed to deliver a message that Israel has two important objectives now — to keep Iran from going nuclear (for which their best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the job for them in negotiations), and second, to keep American close and happy with Israel’s behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is killing the good vibes that presumably must have existed during the Obama years by his recent behavior.
There is an alternative interpretation for what is going on. Obama is really not terribly bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks like it delays Iran’s entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad option. It also allows Obama to check off one more box on his achievements list before his formal request to have his likeness carved into Mount Rushmore. Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the bomb. Why not Iran, the leading Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now our strategic partner, fighting with us to battle ISIS in Iraq.
The latest evidence that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the New York Times editorial calling for accepting that having Assad hang on in Syria is the least bad result, so backing a non-ISIS Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The New York Times editorial page is little more than a conveyance tool for White House messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly Obama’s posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a side that is fighting Iran’s ally Assad in Syria?
Meanwhile, Hezbollah is stepping up its activities in the Golan. The Iranian goal appears to be to establish a base in Syria where Israel can be targeted by the Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli response in Lebanon itself. What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran have Israel in their sights. If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation options for Israel when Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much more limited. There is no certainty that Iran subscribes to the mutually assured destruction deterrence club.
But not to worry. Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
The Imaginary Islamic Radical
January 28, 2015The Imaginary Islamic Radical, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 28,2015
(Ask Secretary Kerry.
Please see also Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department. — DM)
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
******************
The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems.
But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side?
It can’t be beheading people in public.
Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.
It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.
Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for Obama.
If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have to do to get really radical?
Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.
Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave them. So that can’t be extreme either.
If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme? What is it that makes ISIS extreme?
Our government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very willingness to negotiate is moderate.
The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist groups in the Sinai.
A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.
From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American values.
The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.
Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.
That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told them to say.
It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal terrorists, not the extremists).
Secretary of State Kerry insists that ISIS are nihilists and anarchists. Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links to its actions.
This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own through spontaneous combustion.
Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.
If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did not?
The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or not killing non-Muslims.
Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic tyrants and Islamic terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the tyrants were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights and their view of us, there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.
It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic tyrants to convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was foolish of us.
We can’t win the War on Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and ambitions.
We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.
Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus
January 28, 2015Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus, Front Page Magazine,
As Iranian and American chief diplomats continue to meet to find ways to speed up nuclear negotiations and strike a final nuclear deal that would lead to the removal of all international sanctions on the ruling clerics, the Obama administration persists in ignoring the recent revelations about the Islamic Republic and its covert operations in the region.
A new Western intelligence assessment points to efforts by the Syrian government to renew its operations in an underground and clandestine nuclear facility near Qusair, close to the border of Lebanon, in order to produce nuclear weapons. Citing the Western intelligence assessment, the German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the reconstruction of the nuclear facility is being conducted with the assistance of the Islamic Republic, North Korea, and Hezbollah.
The intelligence report indicates that dialogue between Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission of Iranian, and North Korean and Hezbollah affiliates were “intercepted.” In addition, according Abu Muhammad al-Bitar, the Free Syrian Army has also noticed the “unprecedented” presence of Iranian and Hezbollah security members in the town of Qusair on the suburbs of Homs.
If Iran is engaged in such operations assisting Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it is breaching the protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as posing a great threat to security in the region.
If, even before obtaining nuclear weapons, the ruling clerics of Iran are assisting their allies to become nuclear states, how can we trust the Islamic Republic in nuclear negotiations and how can one rely on their claim that they are not seeking to build a nuclear bomb?
Iran-Syria and North Korean-Syria military and nuclear cooperation has been going on for a long time. When it comes to the issues of ballistic missiles, Syria has previously cooperated with both Iran and North Korea.
Syria possess approximately 50 tons of uranium which could be adequate enough to create 5 nuclear bombs. For developing nuclear weapons either highly enriched uranium or an adequate amount of plutonium is required.
Some might make the argument that Syria developed the uranium by itself without the assistance of other countries or other non-state actors. Nevertheless, technically, pragmatically and realistically speaking, Syria does not possess the capability of developing an estimated 50 tons of natural uranium. This suggests that the role of other states and non-state actors have definitely played a significant role. Some of the only allies that the Syrian government has still kept are Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah.
It is crucial to point out that, without a doubt, becoming a nuclear state for the Syrian and Iranian government would be a formidable tool in to suppress opposition, maintain power, and deter foreign intervention in case of crimes against humanity.
There are two major nuclear site in Syria. The first one is the Al Kibar reactor in the northeast of the city of Deir Ezzour and the second one is Marj Sultan in the outskirt of Damascus where the fuel is reportedly stored.
News with respects to the Syrian government renewing its nuclear program were previously reported in 2013. There had been reports that some activities were being carried out at an alleged Syrian nuclear facility close to an eastern suburbs of Damascus, Marj Sultan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported previously that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzour. Reportedly tons of enriched uranium in Damascus are being protected by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.
According to Der Spiegel, “Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location…..It is an extremely unsettling piece of news.”
In addition to the aforementioned concerns about the undeclared Syrian nuclear site and nuclear proliferation, one of the crucial issues is that the nuclear material might fall in the hands of multiple other players and Islamist groups. In other words, if these nuclear sites are seized by some radical groups or Al Qaeda-linked affiliates, they might be capable of utilizing the highly enriched uranium and produce nuclear weapons.
Iran’s other indisputable and multi-layered activities and engagements in Syria — including the military, financial, intelligence, and advisory assistance to the Syrian government which have further radicalized and militarized the ongoing Syrian war — persist. In addition, the recent intelligence report and satellite images of secretly renewing nuclear activities with the assistance of the Iranian and North Korean governments poses a grave threat to stability and security in the region. Unfortunately, despite the seriousness of this issue, the Obama administration continues to ignore these issues and persists on trusting the Islamic Republic in the nuclear negotiations.
Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials
January 27, 2015Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials
As rockets hit Golan Heights, foreign minister in Tehran says Americans told to tell Israel to ‘await consequences’ of deadly airstrike last week
By AP and Times of Israel staff January 27, 2015, 7:14 pm
via Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials | The Times of Israel.
This is a banger, lets watch who is spinning this like an iranian centrifuge .
Civilians and members of the armed forces carry the flag draped coffin of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi during his funeral ceremony outside the Guard compound in Tehran, Iran, January 21, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)
Iran said Tuesday it has sent a warning to Israel through the United States over the recent killing of an Iranian general in an alleged Israeli airstrike, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The report came as Israel’s Golan Heights came under rocket attack from Syria, over a week after several Hezbollah and Iranian operatives were killed in the airstrike in Syria.
“We told the Americans that the leaders of the Zionist regime should await the consequences of their act,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was quoted by IRNA as saying.
He added, “The Zionist regime has crossed our red lines.”
Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, was killed along with six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in a January 18 airstrike in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
Both Iran and Hezbollah blamed Israel for the strike and vowed to respond; the Israeli government refused to comment.
Amirabdollahian said Iran delivered the message to US officials via diplomatic channels. He did not elaborate.
Amirabdollahian’s remarks came during a commemoration ceremony in Tehran for the slain general and the Hezbollah fighters. In the same ceremony, General Hossein Salami, acting commander of the Guard, said Iran will retaliate soon.
“We tell [Israel] to await retaliation, but we will decide about its timing, place and the strength,” he said, according to the IRNA report.
Allahdadi was one of the highest ranking Iranian officers known to have been killed abroad in decades.
On Tuesday afternoon, two rockets slammed into open Israeli territory in what was widely viewed as retaliation for the airstrike. Israel responded to the rockets by shooting 20 shells into Syria.
The Israeli military has been on high alert along the northern border since the airstrike, fearing retaliatory action from Hezbollah or its patron in Tehran.
At the same time Israeli leaders have warned that Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria will pay a price for any attacks against Israel.
“They who play with fire – will be hit with fire,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
On Monday, Arabic daily al-Hayat reported that Israel had sent a message to Hezbollah via foreign diplomats warning against attacking Israeli or Jewish interests abroad.
Iran and the US cut diplomatic ties after militant Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran during the 1979 revolution and held a group of American diplomats for 444 days.
The two nations normally exchange diplomatic messages through the Swiss embassy, which looks after US interests in Iran. But diplomats from both countries also meet directly on other occasions — such as the current negotiations to limit the scope of the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for easing harsh international sanctions against Tehran.
Also on Tuesday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan stressed that his country fully supported Hezbollah and added that Tehran would aim to heavily arm Palestinians in the West Bank, the Iranian Fars news site reported.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s position on the Zionist regime is unchangeable, and given the fact that the resistance stream is standing against the Zionists and the terrorist and Takfiri groups, we will make our utmost efforts to support and strengthen Hezbollah and the resistance of the Lebanese people,” Dehqan told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday.
“The constant and general policy of the Islamic Republic is arming the West Bank and strengthening the resistance stream and Hezbollah forces to confront the Zionists’ usurping and occupying regime,” Dehqan said.
Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations
January 27, 2015Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations
January 27, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield
via Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations | FrontPage Magazine.
Remember the time that Obama lied and claimed that Gaddafi was committing genocide and began bombing Libya? That turned out really well. We currently don’t recognize the government in charge of Libya which almost got taken out by ISIS.
Which is now also in Libya. Because Obama’s regime change in Libya turned out almost as well as ObamaCare.
Gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Libya’s capital Tuesday, killing at least five foreigners and three guards, authorities said.
The attack, which included a car bombing, struck the Corinthia Hotel, which sits along the Mediterranean Sea.
Another security official earlier said the gunmen killed three guards and took hostages, but had no further information on the captives’ identities.
Mahmoud Hamza, commander of the so-called Special Deterrent Force, said five foreigners were killed, without elaborating.
Another security official earlier said the gunmen killed three guards and took hostages, but had no further information on the captives’ identities.
He said the hotel had Italian, British and Turkish guests, but the hotel was largely empty at the time of the attack. He said the militia-backed Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi usually resides at the hotel, but was not there Tuesday.
Why is Hamza’s force so-called? Because we don’t recognize it either.
Fighters wearing black uniforms labeled “police” and loyal to the Tripoli government — one of two rival governments now fighting for control of Libya — responded to the attack, cordoning off streets and surrounding the hotel. Their forces entered a long standoff with assailants still inside.
A group calling itself the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State, the extremist group that has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, issued a statement on social media claiming responsibility for the attack just as it was beginning. The group portrayed the assault as retaliation for the abduction last year by American commandos of a Libyan Qaeda operative, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known as Abu Anas al-Libi.
Mr. Ruqai, 50, died this month in a New York hospital of complications from liver surgery as he was waiting to stand trial for a role in Qaeda bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Tripoli is currently controlled by an alliance of Islamists ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood (as the New York Times calls them “moderate Islamists” to straight up Al Qaeda.
Since ISIS likes to pick fights with its own pals, it may have been targeting them. Or it may have been aiming for the UN. Or random foreign hostages.
The Malta-owned hotel is also where the United Nations support mission in Libya holds its meetings. The mission is currently hosting political talks with rival Libyan groups in Geneva.
So that’s going well.
Meanwhile here’s a brief overview of the latest headlines from the Libya Herald, not even counting this attack, to give you a snapshot of how screwed up things are.
United States reiterates it does not recognize GNC and its Tripoli Hassi government
Hardline Hassi claims US coming to the rescue
Confusion as Audit Bureau reverses its freezing of all government accounts
Abducted Deputy Foreign Minister freed; government probe begins
Tanker crew still held over fuel smuggling claim
Many reported dead in Benghazi as LNA moves to flush out Ansar Al-Sharia
Further clashes in both east and west despite ceasefire
Libyan Ambassador to Egypt insists he is still in post
Civilians involved in Zawia attacks
Health sector legal advisor kidnapped in Tripoli
Tripoli’s Dat Al-Imad office complex received ”serious destruction threat” – LANA
This is what happens when a really smart ‘smart power’ guy like Obama practices regime change. He walks away whistling and the media pretends nothing happened.
Pat Condell: A special kind of hate – Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe
January 27, 2015A special kind of hate, Pat Condell via You Tube, January 27, 2015
( IMPORTANT ! PLEASE watch this video… – JW )
Behind Obama’s love affair with Iran
January 27, 2015Behind Obama’s love affair with Iran
The murder of dozens of Jews in Buenos Aires 20 years ago by Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists is being whitewashed in Barack Obama and the West’s desperate policy of making nice with Tehran
BY Steve Apfel
On 26 January 2015 09:06
via Behind Obama’s love affair with Iran – The Commentator.
AMIA attack in Buenos Aires, 1994
In downtown Buenos Aires there is a cream painted building locked down like Fort Knox. Alongside the building is a billboard, but it’s no suave ad for Kelvin Klein. The billboard is black, and eighty five names, handwritten in white, cover it from top to bottom.
They are mainly the names of Jews. Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists murdered the eighty five when they blew up the Jewish community building, badly injuring many more. This happened in 1994.
Lately, Argentinian President Cristina de Kirchner, another Eva Peron in her beauty and blinding ambition, has been bartering with Iran: a cover-up of the crime in exchange for Iranian oil and Argentine grain.
To add to the witch’s brew, the prosecutor who spent a decade compiling a million page case on the bombing, and was about to testify on the cover-up of de Kirchner and her cronies, got a bullet to the head in his bathtub. His name was Alberto Nisman. Last year he indicted a Hezbollah man and some former Iranian officials of high rank, for whom arrest warrants were then issued.
Now comes word that American President Obama tipped his own bag of tricks into the bubbling pot. Diplomatic sources have told World Tribune that the US pressed Argentina to end, or at least fudge the investigation of Iran’s involvement in the bombing of the Jewish building.
It was to be Iran’s quid pro quo for a thaw in relations with America and Europe. At one high-level meeting the US boldly asked Argentina “to lay off, according to a source close to de Kirchner. “Buenos Aires,” said the source, “eventually complied.”
The murdered Alberto Nisman left a 289 page complaint against the Argentine government. In it, Nisman writes that leaders “took the criminal decision of inventing Iran’s innocence to satisfy commercial, political and geopolitical interests.” What is not clear is whether the report contained evidence of U.S. involvement in the plot to clear Iran of the crime.
Now, as America and Europe go helter skelter to ‘make nice’ with Iran, Obama has vowed to veto a congressional bill that would re-impose sanctions on Iran. Senator Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, considers Obama to be Iran’s leading defender.
Menendez claims that the administration is coordinating with Teheran in efforts to block U.S. sanctions. The US State Department may have been playing a supportive role as far back as 2013. In that year Alberto Nisman was invited by U.S. lawmakers to testify about his findings at a Congressional hearing on, “Threat to the Homeland: Iran’s extending influence in the Western Hemisphere.”
Argentina’s public prosecutor stopped Nisman from testifying, but in his absence, panel chairman Rep. Jeff Duncan noted that the State Department had omitted Nisman’s findings in its assessment that Iranian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean was “waning.”
Duncan added: “In stark contrast to the State Department’s assessment, Nisman’s investigation revealed that Iran has infiltrated for decades large regions of Latin America through the establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and is ready to exploit its position to ‘execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides to do so.”
Obviously there is more to the West’s nuclear talks with Iran than meets the eye. One thing is clear: the West puts a higher priority on ‘making nice’ with Iran than in bringing to justice the murderers of several dozen Jews.
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