Israeli Debate About Whether to Go to War Against Iran Intensifies

Iran Steps Up Nuclear Warhead Work, Israel Media Report

Reuters
August 12, 2012

Iran has stepped up work to develop a nuclear warhead, Israeli newspapers said on Sunday, citing officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and leaked U.S. intelligence.

The front-page reports in the liberal Haaretz, a frequent Netanyahu critic, and in the conservative, pro-government Israel Hayom could intensify Israeli debate about whether to go to war against Iran - and soon - over its disputed atomic projects.

Doing so would defy appeals by U.S. President Barack Obama, seeking re-election in November, to allow more time for international diplomacy. Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful and has threatened wide-ranging reprisals if attacked.

Citing an unnamed senior Israeli official, Haaretz said a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) compiled by the Obama administration included a "last-minute update" about significant Iranian progress in the development of a nuclear warhead "far beyond the scope known" to U.N. inspectors.

Israel Hayom reported NIE findings that Iran had "boosted efforts" to advance its nuclear program, including work to develop ballistic missile warheads, and said U.S. and Israeli assessments largely tallied on this intelligence.

Neither daily newspaper provided direct quotes or detailed evidence. For Haaretz, it was the second report since Thursday purporting to draw on a new NIE.

Israeli government spokesmen had no immediate comment. Asked about the reports in an Israel Radio interview, Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser suggested they be taken at face value.

"There is too much attribution of manipulation, which does not exist, to this or that official," Hauser said. "There are a great many things that are just as they are, for better or worse."

Washington has not commented on whether such an NIE exists. But its officials say the U.S. intelligence assessment remains that the Islamic republic is undecided on whether to build a bomb and is years away from any such nuclear capability.

DOMESTIC DIVIDE

Israel, widely reputed to have the region's sole atomic arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal menace and has long threatened to attack its arch-foe preemptively.

The war talk is meant, in part, to stiffen sanctions on Tehran by conflict-wary world powers. Israel and the United States have publicly sought to play down their differences.

Much of the media scrutiny has been on opposition to the war option within the Israeli cabinet, military and public, given the tactical and strategic risks involved. But opinion polls suggest support for an attack is growing.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper suggested on Friday that a destabilizing Israeli attack on Iran before November could undermine Obama, a Democrat whose ties with Netanyahu have been testy, and help Republican rival Mitt Romney, who casts himself as a better friend of the Jewish state.

But a senior Israeli official quoted in a separate Haaretz story spoke of the question of who would head the next U.S. administration as largely irrelevant regarding Iran given Israel's belief that "we cannot place our fate in the hands of others" and "in statesmanship there are no future contracts".

That official was described by Haaretz as a "decision-maker" and veteran security figure who owns a grand piano - strong signals it was Ehud Barak, Israel's longtime, centrist defense minister. Ex-general Barak is also an accomplished pianist who has recently briefed media in his Tel Aviv penthouse.

Though the Obama administration has refused to rule out a U.S. war of last resort to deny Iran the means to make a bomb, the Israeli official quoted by Haaretz said "expectation of such a binding American assurance now is not serious".

"And if Mitt Romney is elected, history shows that presidents do not undertake dramatic operations in their first year in office unless forced to," the Israeli official said.

Ahmadinejad Was Misquoted: He Didn‘t Actually Say Israel Must Be 'Wiped Off the Map'

Israeli Deputy PM: Ahmadinejad Didn‘t Actually Say Israel Must Be ’Wiped off the Map’

“They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out’. But ‘it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks ago again.”

The Blaze
April 21, 2012

Israel’s deputy prime minister acknowledged this week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has never actually said Israel must be “wiped off the map.”

The oft-repeated quote attributed to Ahmadinejad is actually a mis-translation of remarks he made in 2005. According to Israel’s Ynet News, Ahmadinejad was actually quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini when he said:

“The imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dan Meridor said Iran’s leaders nevertheless have a history of making other incredibly disturbing statements.

“They all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive,” said Meridor, who also serves as minister of intelligence and atomic energy.

“They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But ‘it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks ago again.”

When Al Jazeera reporter Teymoor Nabili said he was “glad” to hear Meridor acknowledge the distinction, Meridor repeated:

“They say it will be removed, needs to be removed.”

“They said that it will cease to exist in a historical context,” Nabili said.

“This is what they said: Israel should not exist, it’s not legitimate, not the borders, not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, not Jerusalem, not refugees, Israel is unnatural, it will not exist, it is on the verge of collapse,” Meridor said. “When you hear that from these people you need to take it seriously.”

He added, “To say not to take it seriously, [say it's] just rhetoric, is wrong.”

Watch the entire interview below; specific comments about begin at the 4:10 mark:

Israel Warns Negotiators to be Tough with Iran

Iran Minister Hails Gunter Grass Israel Poem

AFP
April 7, 2012

Iran's deputy culture minister on Saturday hailed German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass's poem in which he accused Israel of plotting Tehran's annihilation, local media reported.

In a letter addressed to "Distinguished author Dr Gunter Grass," Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari was quoted as saying: "I read your literary work of human and historical responsibility, and it warns beautifully."

"Telling the truth in this way may awake the silent and dormant conscience of the West. Writers are able single-handedly to prevent human tragedies, in a way that armies cannot."

The 84-year-old Grass sparked outrage at home and abroad on Wednesday when he published "What must be said" in a newspaper in which he said he feared a nuclear-armed Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike."

Grass, a long-time leftist activist, said in interviews on Thursday that the media had attacked him without understanding his message, and although he found the personal accusations against him "hurtful," he had no plans to back down.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday called Grass's poem "shameful."

Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has said it is keeping all options open over Iran's nuclear programme which it says is aimed at securing atomic weapons, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.

Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned Israel's right to exist, has denied that its sensitive nuclear work is aimed at making atomic bombs.

Israel Accepts Focus on Curbing Iran's Purer Atom Fuel

Reuters
April 8, 2012

Israel has signaled it would accept, as a first priority, world powers focusing on persuading Iran to stop higher-level uranium enrichment when they resume stalled nuclear negotiations this week with Tehran.

Israel, which has threatened last-resort attacks on its arch-foe's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails, demanded last month that any negotiated resolution should end all uranium enrichment, high and low level, and remove all fuel already stockpiled by Iran.

But Western diplomats have said the six powers - the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany - that are due to open new talks with Iran on Friday would first tackle its uranium refinement to a fissile concentration of 20 percent rather than its more abundant 3.5 percent-pure fuel. The two sides have not yet agreed where the talks will take place.

The 20 percent enriched uranium would be far easier to enrich to bomb-grade 90 percent purity, though Iran denies having such designs, saying it is only seeking electrical energy and medical isotopes.

"We told our American friends, as well as the Europeans, that we would have expected the threshold for successful negotiations to be clear, namely that the P5+1 will demand clearly that - no more enrichment to 20 percent," Barak said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS to be aired on Sunday.

Iran's stocks of 20 percent-pure uranium should be removed "to a neighboring, trusted country", Barak said, according to an advance transcript of the interview.

Iran says it has a sovereign right to peaceful nuclear technology and has repeatedly rejected U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of all uranium enrichment.

But it has at times appeared more flexible regarding 20 percent enrichment, which it began in early 2010, and some experts say that initially getting Iran to stop this higher-grade work could open a way to ease the deadlock.

Asked about Barak's comments to CNN, another Israeli official confirmed that the Netanyahu government was focusing lobbying efforts on Iran's 20-percent pure uranium but said the long-term goal remained the ending all of its enrichment work.

"The understanding that has emerged in our contacts with the powers is that there should be a staggered approach," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

COUNTDOWN ON ISRAELI DECISION

Western diplomats have similarly stressed that an initial focus on 20 percent enrichment should not be seen as "legitimizing" lower-level work as the U.N. Security Council has demanded a full suspension.

Iran has enough 3.5 and 20 percent-enriched uranium for around four bombs if refined further, Western experts say.

Barak's remarks dovetailed with what the New York Times said on Saturday would be submitted to Iran by the United States and other Western nations in the upcoming talks.

According to the report, the world powers, which have ramped up sanctions against Iran, also plan to press it to close and ultimately dismantle a recently completed enrichment bunker in a mountain near Qom - another demand leveled by the Israelis.

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented U.S. President Barack Obama last month with propositions for an Iran deal that included allowing limited operations at its main enrichment facility at Natanz.

Netanyahu's office had no comment on the Yedioth report.

Many analysts believe it may be unrealistic to demand that Iran suspend all enrichment as its leaders have invested so much national and personal prestige in the project.

In return for allowing limited, low-level enrichment, those analysts argue, Iran would need to accept much more intrusive U.N. inspections to make sure there is no military diversion.

Widely assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran would be a mortal threat.

"We don't have to make a decision next week, and we cannot wait years, though," Barak said in the CNN interview when asked about the prospect of an Israeli pre-emptive attack. "We don't have any decision about what to do or a date for (a) decision."

He dismissed speculation that Israel might settle for a Cold War-style nuclear deterrence with the Iranians if they get the bomb.

"No mutually assured destruction kind of situation ... will serve as a modifier or stabilizer in this case, because we are not continents, and Israel is not either the United States or the Soviet Union," Barak said.

Israel Warns Negotiators to be Tough with Iran

AFP
April 8, 2012

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday warned the six-power group negotiating with Iran to set stringent limits on its nuclear enrichment at forthcoming talks.

"If the P5+1 will set a much lower threshold, like just stop reaching 20 percent it means that basically the Iranians at a very cheap cost bought their way into continuing their military programmes, slightly slower but without sanctions," Barak said in English in an interview aired on Sunday by CNN.

"That would be a total change of direction for the worse," he added.

The so-called P5+1, comprising the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, is scheduled to begin talks with Iran in coming weeks, though no date has been set and Tehran has rejected at least one proposed venue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month set three "benchmarks" for a peaceful settlement of the Iran nuclear issue: That the Islamic republic dismantle its underground nuclear facility in Qom, stop uranium enrichment and get rid of all enriched material in Iran beyond what would allow it to make medical isotopes or generate nuclear power.

"And when I say all the material, I mean all the material, from 3.5 percent up," Netanyahu said, during a March 2 visit to Ottawa on his way to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington.

The New York Times reported late Saturday that the United States and its European allies plan to demand the immediate closing and ultimate dismantling of the Qom plant, a halt in the production of uranium fuel that is considered just a few steps from bomb grade, and the shipment of existing stockpiles of that fuel out of the country.

"Mr. Obama and his allies are gambling that crushing sanctions and the threat of Israeli military action will bolster the arguments of those Iranians who say a negotiated settlement is far preferable to isolation and more financial hardship," the Times wrote.

The Obama administration says it does not believe Iran has taken a decision to develop a nuclear weapon, or that the time is right for military action, preferring to give sanctions time to work.

But Israel, which sees a possible Iranian nuclear weapon as a threat to its very existence, claims Iran may be on the cusp of "breakout" capability -- when it could quickly build a nuclear weapon -- and it does not rule out staging a pre-emptive strike of its own.

Iran last held talks with the six powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- in January 2011 with no results.

Obama has told Iran the United States would accept Tehran having a civilian nuclear programme if the Islamic state can prove it is not seeking atomic weapons, the Washington Post said Friday.

Obama sent such a message to Tehran via Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who delivered it to Iran's Supreme leader Ali Khamenei last week, said the newspaper's foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius.

Iranian Students Chant 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel' While Forming Human Chain to Defend Nuclear Site

Iran Taking Military Strike Threat Seriously: Official

AFP
November 15, 2011

Iran is taking seriously the reported threat of a military strike against its nuclear facilities, a senior Iranian official said Tuesday while insisting that any such action would be "very silly."

With tensions again rising over Iran's nuclear program, Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and head of the government's human rights council, insisted his country would never give up its right to acquire nuclear technology.

Questioned about reported threats of a military strike, Larijani told reporters: "No threat to Iran is taken superficially by the people in charge. We are fully prepared to confront any challenge. And to attack Iran may not be very difficult."

Military strikes would be "very silly," Larijani added on the sidelines of a visit to the United Nations. He also referred to the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists which the Islamic state has blamed on Israel and the United States.

"If you kill two scientists there are hundreds more, if you hit one place then another one will be built," he said.

"We are very proud that we know this technology and science. We are very proud that we are number one in the region. Nobody can deprive Iran of this capability," he declared.

Larijani repeated accusations that Israel "with the cooperation of the United States" was behind the killings in January 2010 and November last year of two Iranian nuclear scientists.

He was also asked about an explosion on Saturday at a military base near Tehran in which a top missile expert was killed. Larijani said first signs indicated "an accident" but that an investigation was underway.

The International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors' meets in Vienna on Thursday and Friday, and western powers want a resolution condemning Iran over a new report on its nuclear drive.

The United States and its European allies accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies the charge. Reports that Israel or another nation could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities have stoked the tensions.

Iran Students Form Chain to Defend Nuclear Site

Iranian students, one holding a picture of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, form a human chain outside the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, vowing to strongly respond to any strike by arch-foe Israel, Fars news agency reported. The students chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." (AFP)

AFP
November 15, 2011

Hundreds of Iranian students on Tuesday formed a human chain around one of the Islamic republic's nuclear sites, vowing to strongly respond to any strike by arch-foe Israel, Fars news agency reported.

"We are promising the leaders of world arrogance (the West) that even if one bullet is fired towards Iran we will demolish Tel Aviv in three days," Fars quoted a student leader as saying in a speech at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.

Chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," the students carried a Wild West-styled wanted poster depicting US President Barack Obama's as a fugitive from law.

The demonstration comes about a week after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported "credible" evidence that Iran had worked towards nuclear weapons.

Iran criticised the Vienna-based atomic watchdog for giving up its "earlier objectivity" in the report, which it rejected as "baseless" and hewing to Israeli and US intelligence.

Tuesday's student gathering, which is not the first of its kind in the past decade of Iran's stand-off with the West over its controversial nuclear drive, comes amid speculation of an Israeli military strike.

The rumours were further stoked by a news report saying that Israel's foreign intelligence service Mossad was behind a deadly munitions blast in Iran last weekend.

In an interview published Sunday in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he sees no more room for compromise in the battle over Tehran's contested nuclear programme.

At the same time, Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani warned Tehran must review its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog due to the hostile nature of the report.

Subject to four sets of UN sanctions and several Western sanctions over its enrichment programme, Iran has so far refused to freeze its uranium enrichment activities.

Washington and its Western partners want the IAEA board to approve a "clear resolution" condemning Iran at a scheduled meeting on Thursday and Friday. This could even go as far as to referring Iran to the UN Security Council.

Israel Behind Massive Blast Outside Tehran to Impede Iran's Ability to Develop and Deliver a Nuclear Weapon

Did Israel Assassinate Iran's 'Missile King'?

Iran hasn't accused Israel of causing the bomb blast at an ammunition depot near Tehran, and Israel hasn't taken credit. But the blast, which killed the founder of Iran's missile program, fits a pattern.

By Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2011

Iran today buries a senior commander of its missile force, amid claims that the huge explosion that killed him and at least 16 others at a Revolutionary Guard base on Saturday was the work of Israeli agents.

Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was heralded by fellow commanders as the "founder" of Iran's missile program, which has deployed ballistic missiles with ranges up to 1,500 miles -- enough to reach Europe. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) praised his role in developing artillery and missile units. His importance was such that even Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei attended the funeral.

That background would make Moghaddam a prime target in what appears to be a concerted Spy vs. Spy campaign – from assassinations and facility explosions, to three destructive computer viruses, by Iran's count – that have dealt setbacks to Iran's controversial nuclear and ballistic missile programs in recent years. Speculation that Moghaddam was the latest casualty, in the series of strikes that Iran blames on Israel and the US, has been spurred by the fact that such a critical Guard officer was present and killed, during what Iran calls an "accident" involving a routine transfer of munitions.

"Iran's current missile capability is owed to commander Moghaddam's efforts," Brigadier General Abbas Khani told the official IRNA news agency. "Due to his role ... the enemy always wanted to identify and eliminate him," he said.

Iran has in the past blamed the "Zionist regime" and the US for being secretly behind what it styles a campaign of sabotage. Neither the US nor Israel have ruled out military strikes to prevent Iran acquiring a bomb. Analysts say the death of Moghaddam may be part of a broader, unconventional fight that has been on-going for years.

"Without concluding that this was an assassination, it fits in line with the kind of actions that have...deprived Iran of some of its top influential leadership" in nuclear and missile efforts, says Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. "Missiles are a major component of having a nuclear weapons capability, and this is the first time that we've seen some hint that the missile aspect is bearing the brunt," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, who edited a comprehensive 150-page dossier on Iran's ballistic missiles earlier this year.

The Islamic Republic insists its nuclear program is only to produce energy. Yet the latest report on Iran's efforts by the UN's watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), released last week, found a "systemic" effort by Iran to master weapons-related nuclear work, until it was halted in 2003.

Though some experts question the validity of the IAEA intelligence, the IAEA claimed that some weapons-related work "may" still continue.

Suspicious blast

The blast Saturday, 30 miles west of Tehran, was so large it could be heard and felt in the capital.

As Iran declared it would launch an investigation – and warned that any "foreign hand" would be met with revenge – one Western intelligence source credited Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

"Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the unidentified Western source told Time in a report from Jerusalem. "There are more bullets in the magazine."

The Israeli government has been at the forefront of calls for military action to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. It does not accept the conclusions of a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran in late 2007 – and reportedly reaffirmed earlier this year – that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons work in the autumn of 2003, and has made no subsequent decision to go for a bomb.

The latest NIE report included data from "cutting-edge surveillance techniques," and the results of a six-year effort by US soldiers "working with Iranian intelligence assets," according to a report last June by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.

The techniques involved surreptitiously replacing street signs in Tehran with similar looking ones implanted with radiation sensors, "say, near a university suspected of conducting nuclear enrichment," the New Yorker reported.

"American operatives, working undercover," also exchanged bricks from a "building or two" in central Tehran thought to house enrichment activities, "with bricks embedded with radiation-monitoring devices," wrote the New Yorker.

Close to a bomb?

None of those actions, and others described in the magazine, revealed an ongoing nuclear weapons program. The IAEA report largely confirmed that analysis, with the data it spelled out in unprecedented detail last week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, said on Sunday that the IAEA report was limited to information that "can be proven; facts that can be presented in court."

"In practice there are many other things we see, and hence the leading states in the world must decide what do to in order to stop Iran," said Netanyahu. "The efforts thus far did not prevent Iran from progressing towards a bomb, and it is closer to acquiring it, sooner than people think."

Israeli newspapers on Sunday carried reports intimating that the Jewish state was behind the latest blast in Iran and other events going back to a 2007 explosion at another missile base.

A headline in Maariv asked, "Who is responsible for attacks on the Iranian army?" noted Time, over a story that simply listed a half dozen violent setbacks for Iran's nuclear and missile programs.

Other Israeli newspapers listed an October 2010 blast at a Shahab missile facility, the killings on the streets of Tehran of three nuclear scientists in the past two years, and the Stuxnet computer worm that caused a portion of Iran's thousands of spinning centrifuges – which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, or at higher levels of a nuclear bomb – to operate out of control.

"It hasn't stopped Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability," says Fitzpatrick of IISS. "Iran is only a political decision away from having a nuclear weapon – a political decision and a certain amount of time."

If the IAEA report and intelligence is correct, he says Iran "has already conducted a lot of the weapons development research, and stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) for at least two if not four weapons," if enriched further.

Espionage and assassinations

Fitzpatrick said that the Stuxnet malware was "probably overhyped," but "appears to have knocked out 1,000" of Iran's centrifuges, a sizable portion of the roughly 8,000 that Iran has installed. Still, Iran today has more LEU than it did before the virus took hold in Iran's nuclear facilities, and its ballistic missile force can deliver nuclear weapons, even though shrinking them to fit any warhead remains a hurdle.

"I would be very surprised if there were not other efforts in the works" to undermine Iran's progress, adds Fitzpatrick. "So Iran's nuclear weapons community has to be constantly looking over its collective shoulders anticipating further efforts.

"The countries that ... won't abide [a nuclear-armed Iran] don't want to undertake military attack," he says, "so there are a range of other tools they are aggressively employing to try to stop Iran's program without resorting to military attack."

Even among the leadership of the IRGC – which controls Iran's missile program, and has many links, at least, with its nuclear efforts – Moghaddam appears to have had a special place as one of the few favored by Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

"A major part of (our) progress in the field of missile capability and artillery was due to round-the-clock efforts by martyr Moghaddam," Saeed Qasemi, an IRGC commander, told the conservative news website rajanews.com, according to the AP.

"The exalted leader had a special interest in him," said Mr. Qasemi.

A photograph that emerged in Tehran showed a younger Ayatollah Khamenei -- who has made all final state decisions in the Islamic Republic for more than two decades -- holding his left hand to the epaulet of the Guard uniform of the young, bearded Moghaddam.

Iranian officials have complained that their nuclear scientists have been killed on the streets of Tehran – sometimes after their identities and work were disclosed by the UN.

Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist who survived an attack a year ago, of a magnetized "sticky bomb" stuck to his car in traffic by a motorcycle-borne assassin, has since recovered and been named the director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

A colleague, Majid Shahriari, was killed moments earlier on the same day, in a similar attack in another part of Tehran.

Just days after those attacks last December, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, took part in talks with world powers about Iran's nuclear program in Geneva.

With a portrait of Mr. Shahriari beside him at the podium – a strip of black cloth across the upper left corner of the dead scientist – Mr. Jalili said it was "disgraceful" for the UN Security Council that the listing of Iranian scientists for sanctions, he claimed, had led directly to the killing.

Was Israel Behind a Deadly Explosion at an Iranian Missile Base?

TIME
November 13, 2011

Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus.

For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it.

"Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.

The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel.

Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site."

The explosion killed at least 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, described by Iranian state media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development and the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of "ensuring self-sufficiency" in armaments, a challenging task in light of international sanctions.

Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel's threat to launch airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website on Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions.

But the incident also argued, maybe even augured, against an outright strike. If Israel — perhaps in concert with Washington and other allies — can continue to inflict damage to the Iranian nuclear effort through covert actions, the need diminishes for overt, incendiary moves like air strikes. The Stuxnet computer worm bollixed Iran's centrifuges for months, wreaking havoc on the crucial process of uranium enrichment.

And in Sunday's editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps." The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program — two last year and one in July.

At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word deterrence.

But it doesn't mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether.

Saturday's blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb.

"Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility," the resident says. "All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was."

Military-intelligence Official Decrying Possible Israeli Strike on Iran

‘An Attack on Iran Will End Israel as We Know It’

RichardSilverstein.com
June 10, 2011

Maariv publishes an important article (Hebrew) noting that Meir Dagan is not the only senior military-intelligence official decrying a possible Israeli strike on Iran. Among the others who agree with him are former chief of IDF intelligence Shlomo Gazit, former defense minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer, and former Mossad director Ephraim HaLevy, and many others.

This article is so resonant and penetrating I’ll translate bits of it here. Quoting Anthony Cordesmann’s research on the subject (which I’ve covered here), it begins by noting that Israel itself predicts that a major air assault to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities would involve the loss of fully one-third of the planes, which would be knocked out by missiles and Russian-provided air defense systems.

Think of this. Israel would have to assign scores if not hundreds of planes and pilots to this operation. A third will not return. A third. Pilots are among the most skilled of all the personnel in the IDF: the creme de la creme. If one-third of the personnel don’t return it will be an enormous hit for the service and a enormous loss for the nation. Personally, I think it is a loss that the nation as a whole will neither forgive or forget (though it might rally round Bibi in the short term).

Those who do return will come back to a nation altogether different than the one they left. The Iranian response will be massive and painful, utilizing Shihad 3 land to land missiles which can reach every corner of the country. The article envisions (though I tend to doubt this part) that some of the missiles will be equipped with chemical warheads and extract a painful cost in loss of life.

In writing of Cordesman’s research here previously, I’ve noted the other parts of his scenario: that Iran will activate groups willing to act in solidarity with it, notably Hezbollah and possibly Hamas. Besides massive terror attacks, there will be rockets raining down on Israel from Lebanon as in 2006 and from Gaza as in 2008. From its perch on the Persian Gulf, Iran will attempt to strangle the flow of oil from all fields whose shipping must pass through these straits. This will result in massive spikes in oil prices and a serious blow to the world economy.

Maariv’s reporter also notes Ephraim HaLevy’s comments in a Time Magazine 2008 interview in which he predicts the results of an Israeli attack will be “devestating in the long run:”

It may impact us for the next 100 years, including an enormous negative affect on Arab public opinion toward us.

In an interview for the current article, HaLevy went even farther, pointing out that in the Time interview he hadn’t said “100 years,” but rather “a century,” by which he meant the negative impacts would be felt for generations, possibly even more than 100 years.

Shlomo Gazit goes even farther and his language is shocking and unrestrained:

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear reactors will lead to the liquidation of Israel. We will cease to exist after such an attack. The result we seek in this attack of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability will have the opposite result. Iran will immediately become an explicit nuclear power. Iran will play the oil card to force the UN to pressure Israel to return to 1967 borders. Such a settlement will, of course, include Jerusalem as well.

The threat of missiles across every part of Israel, international pressure and the necessity of returning the Territories. This we will not be able to survive. This is what Meir Dagan is trying to say. Use some common sense and ask yourselves why such an attack is necessary.

Even one of those who planned and conceived the Osirak attack in 1979 on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, Aviam Sela, warns that Israel was forced to spend huge sums to defend itself from expected Iraqi counter-attack, which didn’t materialize until the SCUD attacks of the 1991 Gulf War. Sela says far and away the most desired method of resolving this conflict is through negotiation. ”The military option,” he says, “is the least desirable solution.”

The director of Israel’s Atomic Energy Agency at the time of the Osirak attack, Uzi Elam, opposed it vehemently because he believed it would cause the world to invoke sanctions against Israel and would ratchet up a Middle East arms race, which is precisely what he claims happened, with Saddam dabbling in WMD, biological weapons, (which by 2003 he had abandoned), etc.

“The attack didn’t stop Iraq’s desire to develop nuclear weapons, it strengthened it.

Similarly, Benyamin Ben Eliezer warns that an attack may delay development of nuclear material at the facility attacked, but it will not delay overall development. In fact, it will only strengthen Iran’s determination to become a nuclear power.

Another senior official of Israel’s Home Defense, which will be responsible for caring for the Israeli refugees from Iranian counter-attack, also warns that an attack on Iran, instead of ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions, may ignite a nuclear arms race in the region, the opposite of Bibi’s intent.

The jingoists rooting for war should understand that Cordesman, HaLevy, Gazit and all the others are not dealing in theoreticals. They’re dealing in actuality if Bibi goes for broke. The dead won’t be imaginary either in Iran or Israel. The blood won’t be like in a movie. It will be from the bodies of real live people with fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers. It will decimate entire families and communities. That’s what they mean when they say Israel won’t be the same if it survives at all. Is this a price Israel can afford to pay even if it wants to?

Related posts:

1. Meir Dagan: Israel Attack on Iran ‘Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Heard’
2. Israel’s Intelligence Hocus-Pocus Regarding Iran Attack
3. Israeli Attack on Syrian Reactor, Template for Iran Attack?
4. Israel’s ‘Curtis LeMay’: IDF Attack Iran Before U.S. Mid-Term Elections
5. IDF Censors Israeli Reporting on War Game Exercises Training for Iran Attack

Israel and the Arab World

Israel Seizes Ship with Iran Arms for Gaza

Reuters
March 15, 2011

Israeli naval commandos on Tuesday seized a cargo ship in the Mediterranean carrying what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said were Iranian-supplied weapons intended for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

A military spokeswoman said Israeli forces met no resistance when they intercepted the German-owned "Victoria" some 200 miles from Israel and were taking the vessel to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Israel maintains a land and naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, a coastal enclave controlled by Hamas, an Islamist movement opposed to peace with the Jewish state.

The military said the vessel had set off from the Syrian port of Latakia and stopped in Mersin, Turkey, before heading toward Alexandria in Egypt. Turkey has no involvement in the arms shipment, the military said.

Palestinians use a network of tunnels to smuggle weapons and other goods from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu said he personally approved the operation, which he told reporters was carried out "on the high seas in accordance with international law."

"Many weapons were found on board, intended for terrorist forces in the heart of Gaza," Netanyahu said. "Iran is the source of the weaponry."

IRANIAN DENIAL

Asked about Israel's allegation that it seized Iranian arms on the vessel, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said: "Don't trust Israeli media news. There is no such thing. We do not confirm it in any way."

An Israeli military spokesman said an initial search turned up three containers loaded with arms and more cargo would be examined after the ship reached Israel.

Last May, there was an international outcry when Israeli naval commandos seized a Turkish ship that was part of a flotilla trying to break the Gaza blockade.

The soldiers met violent resistance from pro-Palestinian activists when they boarded the cruise vessel Mavi Marmara and killed nine of them, in an incident that strained Israel's ties with Ankara.

In 2009, about 100 miles off Israel's Mediterranean coast, Israeli commandos seized the Francop, a freighter the Israeli military said was carrying hundreds of tonnes of Iranian arms, including rockets, to Lebanon's Hezbollah group.

Nine years ago, Israeli forces intercepted the merchant ship Karine-A in the Red Sea and brought it to the Israeli port of Eilat, where the military displayed 50 tonnes of weapons, including rockets, which Israel said Iran had sent to Palestinian militants.

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  Mar 8 2011

Israel on High Alert as Iranian Warships with Missiles Enter Suez Canal en Route to Syria

Iranian Naval Vessels Enter Suez Canal en Route to Syria

Associated Press
February 22, 2011

Two Iranian naval vessels entered the Suez Canal on Tuesday en route to Syria, officials said, the first time in three decades that Tehran has sent military ships through the strategic waterway.

Canal officials said the ships — a frigate and a supply vessel — are expected to reach the Mediterranean later in the day.

Israel has made clear it views the passage as a provocation. Israeli officials refused to comment Tuesday, though earlier this week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he viewed the move "with gravity."

The canal linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean enables ships to avoid a lengthy sail around Africa. The Iranian ships are headed for a training mission in Syria, a close ally of Iran's hard-line Islamic rulers and an arch foe of Israel. In Syria, officials at the Iranian embassy said it would mark the first time in years that Iranian warships dock in a Syrian port.

The ships paid about $300,000 in fees for the passage, according to a Maritime agent. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Iran's request to send the warships through the Suez Canal came at a particularly difficult time for Egypt as the nation's new military rulers try to focus on pressing domestic issues, including restoring security after the uprising that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.

The military rulers apparently had no choice but to grant the ships passage because an international convention regulating shipping says the canal must be open "to every vessel of commerce or of war." Egypt also cannot search naval ships passing through the waterway.

Iranian warships have not passed through the Suez Canal since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Egyptian-Iranian ties broke down following the Islamic Revolution and the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty the same year. Later, the relationship improved slightly, with contacts currently channeled through interest sections in the two capitals.

Iran Warships to Begin Suez Canal Passage Tuesday

Suez Canal officials: Iranian warships to enter waterway Tuesday, first passage in decades

The Associated Press
February 21, 2011

Suez Canal officials say two Iranian naval vessels are expected to start their passage through the strategic waterway early Tuesday.

Canal officials say the ships are expected to pay a fee of $290,000 for the crossing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

If the ships make the passage, it would mark the first time in three decades that Iranian military ships have traveled the canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

Israel has made clear it views the passage as a provocation.

Canal officials said Monday that the ships, a frigate and a supply vessel, are close to the southern entrance of the canal. The vessels are headed to Syria for a training mission.

'Israel on High Alert:' Iranian Warships with Missiles

Israel on high alert for Iranian warships' Suez transit. Kharg brings missiles

DEBKAfile Special Report
February 19, 2011

Tehran connived to slip the two Iranian warships through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sunday, Feb. 20, after a series of fake delaying tactics agreed between them to cover the flotilla's movements. Egypt's military rulers approved the passage of Iranian flotilla through the Suez Canal without inspecting their freights for banned cargo, taking advantage of the sandstorm over the region which obscured them from spy satellites and helped them to give monitors the slip. Tehran marked this landmark event with an official state TV statement Sunday that the ships had entered the Mediterranean and were on their way to Syria. Sunday, Cairo was still saying they will only reach Suez Monday.

From earlier debkafile reports: Cairo's approval for Iranian warships transit of the Suez Canal has brought Israel and Iran closer than ever before to a naval collision at sea. debkafile reports: Israel has learned that the Iranian cruiser Kharg is carrying long-range missiles for Hizballah which it plans to unload at a Syrian port or Beirut harbor.

US State Department spokesman P.J Crowley said he was "highly skeptical" of the Syrian claim that the two ships' visit was for training.

"If the ships move through the canal, we will evaluate what they actually do. It's not really about the ships. It's about what the ships are carrying, what's their destination, what's the cargo on board, where's it going, to whom and for what benefit," Crowley told a news conference.

He was responding to questions in the wake of debkafile's disclosure that the Karg was carrying missiles for Hizballah and indicating that the US and all other UN members were authorized by UN sanctions against Iran to board and search Iranian ships suspected of carrying illegal weapons.

The war ships' passage through Suez has been delayed as Cairo and Tehran spar over an Egyptian navy inspection of the vessels' cargoes.

In Israel, government and military officials were urgently casting about for a way to prevent those missiles reaching the Lebanese terrorists. Heavy US and Israeli pressure failed to dissuade Egypt's military rulers from letting the Iranian flotilla through Suez. So now the waterway has been opened wide for Iran to consign heavy weapons deliveries to Syria and Lebanon - in the first instance, and eventually to try and break Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and bring Hamas the heavy munitions that were impossible to transport through smuggling tunnels.

On February 16, debkafile reported:

Twenty-four hours after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the Egyptian upheaval had no military connotations for Israel, Tehran applied for the Iranian frigate Alvand and cruiser Kharg to transit the Suez Canal on their way to Syria Wednesday night, Feb. 16. Their passage was termed "a provocation" by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. In Beirut, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said he was looking forward to Israel going to war on Lebanon because then his men would capture Galilee.

Israel was closely monitoring the Iranian flotilla, whose visit to the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah on Feb. 6, preparatory to transiting Suez, was first revealed exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly481 on February 10.

Up until now, Saudi Arabia, in close conjunction with Egypt and its President Hosni Mubarak, led the Sunni Arab thrust to contain Iranian expansion – especially in the Persian Gulf. However, the opening of a Saudi port to war ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the first time in the history of their relations points to a fundamental shift in Middle East trends in consequence of the Egyptian uprising. It was also the first time Cairo has permitted Iranian warships to transit Suez from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, although Israeli traffic in the opposite direction had been allowed.

Iran made no secret of its plants to expand its naval and military presence beyond the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to the Mediterranean via Suez: On February 2, Iran's Deputy Navy Commander Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Biqam announced the flotilla's mission was to "enter the waters of the Red Sea and then be dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea."

However, Israeli military intelligence which failed to foresee the Egyptian upheaval and its policy-makers ignored the Iranian admiral's announcement and its strategic import, just as they failed to heed the significance of the Iranian flotilla's docking in Jeddah.

debkafile's military sources report that Iran is rapidly seizing the fall of the Mubarak regime in Cairo and the Saudi King Abdullah's falling-out with President Barack Obama (see debkafile of Feb. 10, 2011) as an opportunity not to be missed for establishing a foothold along the Suez Canal and access to the Mediterranean for six gains:

1. To cut off, even partially, the US military and naval Persian Gulf forces from their main route for supplies and reinforcements;
2. To establish an Iranian military-naval grip on the Suez Canal, through which 40 percent of the world's maritime freights pass every day:
3. To bring an Iranian military presence close enough to menace the Egyptian heartland of Cairo and the Nile Delta and squeeze it into joining the radical Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish alliance;
4. To thread a contiguous Iranian military-naval line from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip and up to the ports of Lebanon, where Hizballah has already seized power and toppled the pro-West government.
5. To eventually sever the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, annex it to the Gaza Strip and establish a large Hamas-ruled Palestinian state athwart the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.
By comparison, a Fatah-led Palestinian state on the West Bank within the American orbit be politically and strategically inferior.
6. To tighten the naval and military siege on Israel.

Israeli-Iranian Conflict

Iran Accuses Quran Burning in U.S. "Planned by Israel"

Xinhua
September 9, 2010

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki Thursday condemned a U.S. church's plan to burn the Quran and said this has been planned by Israel, local satellite Press TV reported.

Mottaki warned of the reactions of Muslims and the followers of other religions, the report said.

"Such actions will ignite the reaction of not only the world's Muslims but the followers of other divine religions," he was quoted as saying.

The U.S. officials should carry out their duties to guarantee the basic right of American Muslims and prevent the promotion of such offensive acts, Mottaki said.

The Iranian foreign minister described the plans to burn the Quran, by a U.S. priest, as "soft war" schemed by Israel following its failures in the wars against Muslims, he added according to the report.

Terry Jones, a pastor at the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, plans to mark the 9/11 attack by burning copies of the Quran in his church on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the planned burning is a "disgraceful plan" which could be harmful to the U.S. troops.

'No True Christian Would Burn Quran'

PressTV
September 10, 2010

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says no pious Christian would support the "evil" plans of a US church to burn copies of the holy Quran.

The remarks were made after a meeting with foreign ambassadors, as plans by Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attack continue to draw condemnation from Muslim and non-Muslim leaders.

"We are certain that no true follower of Christ is willing to act in line with this pastor's wishes and go down this path with him," Mehr News Agency quoted Mehmanparast as saying on Thursday.

Mehmanparast said Foreign Minister Mottaki had called on the envoys to discuss the anti-Islamic plans with their governments and properly respond to this matter.

He went on to echo earlier remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who denounced the plans as a "Zionist plot, and against the teachings of all divine prophets."

Jones' decision has even angered the Catholic Church, with the Vatican council blasting the Florida church's scheme as an "outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community.”

Senior Washington officials have slammed the plans as "disrespectful," "disgraceful" and "un-American."

Earlier on Friday, angry demonstrators marched in Tehran to condemn the Islamophobic decision, as protests in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as India and Indonesia continued.

Following the fierce international condemnation of the plan, Jones, a radical evangelist, announced on Thursday that he had put his Quran burning plans on hold.

Israeli-Iranian Conflict

Ahmadinejad: Even War Cannot Save Israel

Press TV
March 11, 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Israel that initiating a new military conflict in the Middle East would not save it from downfall.

Speaking in the southern Iranian Province of Hormozagan on Thursday, Ahmadinejad said that Israel was a Western progeny that had now "reached the end of its road."

"See what has become of Israel. They [the West] gathered the most criminal people in the world and stationed them in our region with lies and fabricated scenarios. They waged wars, committed massive aggression… and made millions of people homeless," he told a crowd of supporters in the provincial capital, Bandar-Abbas.

"Today, it is clear that Israel is the most hated regime in the world… It is not useful for its masters [the West] anymore. They are in doubt now. They wonder whether to continue spending money on this regime or not," said Ahmadinejad.

"But whether they want it or not, with God's grace, this regime will be annihilated and Palestinians and other regional nations will be rid of its bad omen," he added.

The top Iranian executive official pointed out that he did not believe that "even a new military conflict" could save the Israeli regime.

"They think in their underdeveloped minds that if they launch another war against Lebanon or Syria it might help them survive a little longer. I am telling them that you are in a situation now that more aggressions or wars will not save you."

Ahmadinejad also advised the US and its allies to pull their troops out of the Middle East and stop "making mischief."

"What are you doing in our region? Why are you deploying military forces here," he asked.

"If you think military deployment will help you seize the oil in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf, I must tell you that the young generation of the Middle East will cut your hands off from the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf," he added.

Israeli-Iranian Conflict

Scenarios: Global Impact If Israel Strikes Iran

Reuters
March 29, 2010

If Israel were to strike Iran over its nuclear activities, markets would be watching one thing only -- Iran's response.

The scale of that response could be the difference between a brief spike in oil prices and pushing the world back to economic crisis.

Below are possible scenarios together with projected potential market reactions suggested by analysts, economists and foreign policy strategists.

NO IMMEDIATE REACTION

Tehran announces that Israel's military attacked civilian locations but inflicted little damage. It hurls furious rhetoric at Israel but stops short of any military response.

"It may make sense for the Iranians to play the victim," said IHS Global Insight Middle East analyst Gala Riani. "They may also use it to build the regime's legitimacy internally."

-- news of the strike would see oil prices spike $10-$20 and wider investor flight to safer assets such as U.S. treasuries, while equities and risky currencies would suffer. But without further action, sentiment would recover.

-- relatively used to conflict, Israeli markets might prove more resilient to the initial news. Some analysts suggest that a successful strike that significantly put back an Iranian nuclear program could be positive for Israeli markets.

Key unknowns:

-- assessing the effectiveness of an attack on Iranian facilities could prove almost impossible. The longer-term impact of the strikes on Iran's internal politics, regional politics and Western support for Israel would be hard to predict.

-- can Israel achieve its aims with a single strike, or would it require a more sustained operation potentially lasting several days and hitting markets much harder?

PROXY RETALIATION

Iran steers clear of any overt response, but backs intensifying attacks by Hamas from the Palestinian territories and by Hezbollah from Lebanon. It might also back proxy attacks on Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The most likely response would be to increase their subversive activity across the Middle East," said IHS's Riani. "It would most likely be focused in Palestine, Lebanon and to a lesser extent around the Gulf."

-- might have some short-term impact on oil prices -- particularly if the attacks included Iraq -- but generally global markets would be little affected.

-- Israeli markets would likely take initial attacks in their stride, but a prolonged campaign would drag on the economy, driving up defense spending and undermining markets as they did during the Palestinian Intifada.

Key unknowns:

-- the duration of increased violence. Proxy violence could escalate to include militant attacks on Western and oil targets.

-- If Hezbollah strikes Israel, Israel will retaliate in a way that quickly expands the conflict. Israel has threatened to hold the governments of Lebanon and Syria responsible for any Hezbollah attacks.

MISSILES STRIKE ISRAEL

Iran retaliates by launching ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. While more accurate than the Scuds launched by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, damage from each strike would be limited.

"It's certainly not something you can rule out," said Metsa Rahimi, intelligence analyst for risk consultancy Janusian. "The Iranians are going to want to retaliate. But they know if they do this, they are going to get hit back again."

-- oil prices would certainly spike higher, although attacks on Israeli cities would not directly have any impact on oil production. Wider global markets would sell off and watch nervously for any further escalation.

-- Israeli markets might again prove more resilient. They actually rallied in January 1991 during the missile attacks as it became clear the strikes were not chemical and not causing significant damage. Much would depend on the level of damage and for how long any missile barrage continued.

Key unknowns:

-- Israeli and Western reaction. Would there be further retaliation? Would weapons used remain conventional?

-- Would Israel strike military targets and civilian infrastructure in Iran, possibly including oil facilities? That would push-up prices and force primary customer China to look for supplies elsewhere.

CLOSING HORMUZ

Iran makes good its threat to close the Straits of Hormuz to traffic, blocking the flow of some 17 million barrels a day of oil, roughly 40 percent of all seaborne oil trade -- but likely inviting swift retaliation from United States forces.

"Iran doesn't even need to be successful in their threat," said Michael Wittner, global head of energy research at Societe Generale. "Even a credible threat or near miss and insurance rates will spike. Then no one's going to send any oil through there for a couple of weeks until somebody's navy can re-establish control."

-- analysts estimate this could push oil prices up toward $150 a barrel. Alternative oil producers such as Russia, Nigeria and Angola might benefit, but rising fuel costs would likely undercut growth everywhere. China, Iran's main export destination, would have to seek supplies elsewhere.

-- Other financial markets would suffer and fall sharply if they believed disruption would be long term.

-- Israeli markets are likely to be affected by the wider frenzy, although probably less than volatile emerging markets.

Key unknowns:

-- how long could Iran maintain its blockade? Military analysts believe its handful of mine-laying ships, helicopters and submarines might quickly be neutralized by the US military.

SPARKING WIDER CONFLICT

Ultimately, the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran are hard to predict. At worst, it could fuel an upsurge in wider regional violence.

"I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike," Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said on a recent visit to Israel.

-- a more violent Middle East would put an inherently higher risk premium on oil, pushing up prices and possibly undermining global recovery from the financial crisis. It might also drive consuming nations toward non-Middle Eastern suppliers and alternative technologies.

-- investors would also view Israel as much higher risk, while much higher defense spending would weigh on the economy.

Key unknowns:

-- duration and severity of any conflict. Would the world's wider powers -- China, Russia, the United States and European Union in particular -- move toward a consensus on the Middle East or would the conflict exacerbate their differences further?

Israeli-Iranian Conflict

Israeli Leaders Visit Europe as EU Foreign Ministers Dump Iran Sanctions

DEBKAfile
January 26, 2010

Israel's president, prime minister and foreign minister are visiting Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest this week, apparently impervious to the European Union foreign ministers' decision in Brussels Monday, Jan. 25, to back away from sanctions for Iran's nuclear program outside the UN Security Council.

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle signed off on the motion, the day before Israeli president Shimon Peres' Hebrew address to the German parliament in Berlin.

The Netanyahu government clings to the anchor of supposed international sanctions for halting Iran's advance on a nuclear weapon. Monday, before traveling to Poland, prime minister Netanyahu said at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum:

"Today there are new Jew haters with new reasons to destroy the Jewish people. This is a test for humanity, and we will see in the coming weeks how the international community will stop the evil before it spreads."

Well, he had his answer than same afternoon, yet this eloquence vanished on the plane trips to Europe.

None of the Israeli travelers have commented on the decision by the European foreign ministers to dump the sanctions option in the laps of Russia and China, knowing their vetoes are committed in advance and that both stand out for more diplomatic engagement plus concessions to Tehran. The EU foreign ministers stated:

"With Iran, [sanctions] will work out only if all the UN Security Council permanent members agree."

Every one of those ministers was fully aware that this proposition was a fantasy.

If Israel counted on Washington staying the course, there too are signs of cold feet. Obama has reduced the target of possible unilateral measures to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is responsible for Iran's nuclear program, in order to avoid harming the Iranian people.

As debkafile has stressed before, the Revolutionary Guards have umpteen mostly criminal ways of beating sanctions:

They run a vast network of straw companies worldwide and move money around through international crime, smuggling, terror and drug conduits out of America's reach rather than the banking system.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi are undoubtedly Israel's best friends on the European continent, but they too conduct a dual policy on Iran. They sternly denounce Iran, while at the same time hundreds of German and Italian companies do business with the Islamic Republic, some even selling components for its missile and nuclear programs. Indeed, German and Italian firms are in tight competition over the Iranian market, with the latter reportedly gaining the edge this year.

No German transaction with Iran has been cancelled under Israeli pressure contrary to reports to this effect.

The most realistic European leader is French president Nicolas Sarkozy who Tuesday, Jan. 26, called for new and different steps to be pursued to halt Iran's dash for a nuclear bomb. Still, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner did not hold out against his colleagues consensus in Brussels.

Iran Crosses Red Line, Can Enrich Uranium Up to 20 Percent

DEBKAfile
January 25, 2010

Attaining the ability to enrich uranium up to 20 percent grade brings Iran dangerously close to "break-out" point for a nuclear weapon capability, debkafile's intelligence sources report.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised the "good news" would be announced during the Feb. 1-11 celebrations of the Islamic Revolution. The "news" was the subject of an urgent cabinet meeting in Jerusalem last week.

His announcement is a provocative mark of contempt for the six world powers and their offer to trade Iran's low-grade uranium for 20 pc enriched product overseas. By going public on the banned process and abandoning concealment, Iran's rulers are throwing down the gauntlet to them and Israel.

debkafile's Iranian sources report that the hawks of the Islamic regime led by Ahmadinejad and spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have won the day for their tactics of jumping ahead of any possible US-led or Israel steps against their nuclear program by pursuing its own aggressive initiatives.

The Iranian president's enrichment announcement at a time that the Obama administration is pondering tough sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards was part of this policy; so were the Syrian and Hizballah declarations of military preparedness for a purported Israeli attack last week, taking advantage of an IDF war game to raise the alarm.

Our political sources predict that Tehran's provocative move will be met with more of the five months of foot-dragging with which Washington and Jerusalem have met Iran's contempt for one deadline after another for ending nuclear enrichment. Both will continue to dither and pretend that stiff sanctions will scotch the Iranian nuclear threat. The Netanyahu government will keep up the pretence that the world and its sanctions can do the job. Tehran has meanwhile made good use of those five months to go forward and achieve a 20 pc enrichment capability.

The only straight talk from any Western leader has come from French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Saturday, Jan. 23, he told visiting Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri that France has evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons contrary to its claims. He warned that Israel "would not stand by while Iran develops nuclear weapons.

Sarkozy Warns Israel May Strike Iran Over Nuke Threat

Haaretz Service and Reuters
January 23, 2010

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that Israel will not sit idly by while Iran continues work on its nuclear program, Israel Radio reported Saturday quoting London-based newspaper Al-Hayat.

According to the report, Sarkozy, who recently met with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, reportedly told him that France has proof Iran is working to develop an atomic bomb.

"Israel might take action to prevent the Iranian regime, which wants to wipe it off the map, from obtaining a nuclear bomb," Sarkozy reportedly said.

Sarkozy also reportedly said that if he had to choose between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he would prefer the Israeli leader despite some diplomatic differences they may have.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Sarkozy said the European Union should also "assume its responsibilities" in putting pressure on Tehran to enter into negotiations.

"To hesitate or to prevaricate in the face of such an issue would carry with it a great weight of responsibility," Sarkozy said while addressing EU diplomats. "The only aim of sanctions is to lead Iran to the negotiating table," he added.

Iran has ignored U.S. President Barack Obama's end of 2009 deadline to respond to an offer from six world powers of economic and political incentives in exchange for halting its uranium enrichment program.

However, UN security council members, Russia and China, both appear reluctant to impose more sanctions on Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Friday that world powers should beware of pushing Iran into a corner.

But Sarkozy said the time had come for the international community to draw the consequences of Iran's refusal to talk.

"Despite all our efforts, and a new engagement by the United States, and despite our ambitious proposals for cooperation, the Iranian authorities are blocked in a one-way street of proliferation and radicalism," Sarkozy said.

"Today, they have added to that the brutal repression of their own people," he added.

"France wants the [UN Security] Council to adopt strong measures and for the European Union as well to assume its responsibilities," he said.

He added that North Korea should be treated in similar fashion.

Israeli-Iranian Conflict

2010: A Year of Decision for Israel on Iran

Haaretz
December 18, 2009

... Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, a former head of the National Security Council, said this week that in his view, Israel will have to decide in the year ahead whether to attack or not.

"The question of a decision on attacking Iran's nuclear capability is liable to be very much not theoretical but very practical in 2010," Eiland said at the same conference at which Yadlin spoke.

According to Eiland, an Israeli attack will be feasible only in the event that a crisis occurs in nuclear-related talks between Iran and the great powers, followed by a cessation of negotiations altogether and the failure by the United States to cobble together an international coalition against the Iranians.

Another retired major general, Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel, who was a Kadima MK in the previous Knesset and advised Olmert on security affairs, noted at the same conference:

"If there is no choice, Israel can set back the Iranian nuclear process."

Iran can be expected to retaliate against such an attack with Shihab missiles. Ben-Israel, who specialized in operations research in the air force and took part in planning the attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1981, estimated that Israel would be hit by about 80 Iranian missiles - twice the number that Saddam Hussein fired at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dimona during the 1991 Gulf War. According to Ben-Israel, the Iranians would also make use of Hezbollah, which serves them to deter Israel from attacking their nuclear facilities:

"Hezbollah has more missiles than it had during the Second Lebanon War, but the number of missiles that will be fired at Israel will not be much larger than it was then." (In 2006, some 4,200 Hezbollah missiles and rockets struck Israel, killing 54 people.)

Even if Obama agrees to an Israeli attack, the real dilemma that will confront Netanyahu, his colleagues in the forum of seven and the heads of the army and intelligence, will lie in assessing the benefits vs. the damage. Israel will survive an Iranian missile attack and a rain of rockets from Lebanon. But an attack also carries strategic costs, which will only be aggravated if the operation against Iran does not succeed: Israel will be denounced as a militant and aggressive state, the price of oil will soar, America and its allies in the gulf are liable to be adversely affected - and worst of all, Iran will be perceived as the victim of Israeli aggression and will obtain international legitimization to renew the devastated nuclear project. Israel will also have to gamble on whether Syrian President Bashar Assad will join the war on the side of Iran, or will follow custom and sit on the sidelines.

Another critical question in this discussion concerns the deployment on the Israeli home front. In the wake of the Second Lebanon War, the political and military echelons understand how exposed the civilian population is to a massive missile and rocket attack. The summer of 2010 has already been earmarked by the IDF as an in-principle target date for completion of repairs on essential lacunae. But despite the massive media coverage given to the multilayer defense system against missiles, it is worth recalling that most of its components still exist only on paper. In every scenario of warfare projected for the years ahead, many more missiles will be fired at Israel than can be intercepted by its anti-missile system.

In the face of all the risks and damage, what will Israel gain from an attack? A three- to five-year delay in the manufacture of the Iranian bomb, according to the optimistic estimate. Is that worth the certain price that will be paid and the risk entailed in a complicated air mission so far from home? Do Netanyahu and Barak have what it takes to make that decision? It's not certain.

And these doubts lead the experts to assess that Israel will agonize and will talk about a strike, but will do nothing. In their view, it is more reasonable that the U.S. and Iran will continue their dialogue, with "controllable" crises erupting from time to time. As long as Obama sees to it that Israel does not feel isolated and abandoned in the face of the Iranian threat, Netanyahu will not dare attack.

Understanding this, Obama dispatched 1,500 soldiers to Israel for a missile-defense exercise about two months ago, and he continues to operate the sophisticated warning radar that Bush stationed in the Negev. The president prefers to reassure Israel on the Iranian front and exact concessions from Netanyahu on the Palestinian front.

The question that is apparently not now under discussion between Jerusalem and Washington is the stage at which Iran will agree to stop its nuclear project under international pressure. Will this be a case of Iranian nuclear brinkmanship, with Tehran just a decision away from a bomb, or will Iran gamble and go the whole way? Even then, it's likely there will be enough experts in the administration and in American research institutes who will recommend that Israel take a deep breath and adapt to the new situation. In other words, learn how to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Despite the experts' assessments -- and as MI head Yadlin hinted this week -- no scenario promises that the year ahead will be quiet and tranquil. Most of the wars in the past broke out by surprise, because of mistaken risk assessments or seemingly irrevocable political commitments. The same could happen between Israel and Iran.

Prof. Yehoshafat Harkabi was director of Military Intelligence in the second half of the 1950s. Some officers in the present General Staff continue to view his books, notably "Israel's Fateful Hour" and "Nuclear War and Nuclear Peace," as relevant guidelines even today.

"What is special about our situation in Israel is that we cannot allow ourselves a process of learning by trial and error," Harkabi wrote in 1986 in the last chapter of "Israel's Fateful Hour." "We cannot allow ourselves the calamities of mistaken policy, lest we are unable to turn around and start over. Our great weakness is that it is very doubtful whether we will be able to backtrack from the wrong path ... Many countries can adopt foolish policies and will suffer accordingly, but without experiencing any great ill, whereas we are permitted only narrow margins of error" [unofficial translation].

Harkabi quotes the British military historian Basil Liddell-Hart:

"An important difference between a military operation and a surgical operation is that the patient is not tied down. But it is a common fault of generalship to assume that he is."

Iran: New Centrifuges Being Developed

Associated Press
December 18, 2009

Iran's nuclear chief said Friday the country has started making more efficient centrifuge models that it plans to put in use by early 2011 - a statement that underscores Teheran's defiance and adds to international concerns over its nuclear ambitions.

The official, Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, said Iranian scientists are still testing the more advanced models before they will become operational at the country's enrichment facilities.

Teheran has been saying since April that it is building more advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium with higher efficiency and precision, but Salehi's remarks were the first indication of a timeline when the new models could become operational.

The new centrifuge models will be able to enrich uranium much faster than the old ones; some experts estimate that this next generation could double or even triple the rate of uranium production.

Such a development would add to growing concerns in the West because they would allow Teheran to accelerate the pace of its program. That would mean Iran could amass more material in a shorter space of time that could be turned into the fissile core of missiles, should Teheran choose to do so.

Iran's uranium enrichment is a major concern to the international community, worried that the program masks efforts to make a nuclear weapon. Teheran insists its enrichment work is peaceful and only meant to generate electricity, not make an atomic bomb.

Iran has threatened to expand its enrichment program tenfold, even while rejecting a plan brokered by the UN nuclear watchdog agency to supply fuel for Iran's research reactor if Teheran exports most of its enriched stockpile. The UN plan would leave Iran - at least temporarily - without enough uranium to produce a bomb.

Centrifuges are machines used to enrich uranium - a technology that can produce fuel for power plants or materials for a nuclear weapon. Uranium enriched to low level is used to produce fuel but further enrichment makes it suitable for use in building nuclear arms.

"We are currently producing new generation of centrifuges named IR3 and IR4," Salehi told the semiofficial Fars news agency. "We hope to use them by early 2011 after resolving problems and defects."

He did not elaborate on the technical details or the difference between various centrifuge types.

However, Salehi added:

"We are not in a rush to enter the industrial-scale production stage."

The new centrifuges would likely replace the decades-old P-1 centrifuges, once acquired on the black market and in use at Iran's main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran.

Iran has said the new centrifuges would also be installed at Iran's recently revealed secret uranium enrichment facility. The plant is still under construction at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.

Salehi said that more than 6,000 centrifuges are currently enriching uranium - 2,000 more than the figure mentioned in a November report by the UN watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA has reported that it is watching Iran's efforts to improve its centrifuges.

Iran says it will install more than 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz, but currently they have installed fewer than 9,000, so there could easily be room for more advanced models in the future, a Vienna nuclear expert said. The expert spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Iranian officials have claimed that most parts for the new centrifuges are made domestically and others have been imported -- a sign that Iran was able to get around UN sanctions imposed on the country for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran's defiance has not wavered amid recent signals of possible more UN sanctions over its enrichment. Salehi said Friday such new sanctions won't stop Iran from developing its nuclear program.

"We don't welcome new (UN Security Council) resolutions," he told ISNA, another semiofficial news agency. "But resolutions won't stop us in any field, including the nuclear."

Netanyahu Must Decide Whether to Strike Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

The Times
December 14, 2009

The moment is fast approaching when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, may have to make the most difficult decision of his career — whether to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities and risk triggering a conflagration that could spread across the Middle East.

Israeli experts believe the point of no return may be only six months away when Iran’s nuclear programme will have — if it has not already — metastasised into a multitude of smaller, difficult-to-trace facilities in deserts and mountains, while its main reactor at Bushehr will have come online and bombing it would send a radioactive cloud over the Gulf nations.

Mr Netanyahu has consistently called Iran the most serious threat Israel faces. President Ahmadinejad of Iran has called for Israel to be obliterated and his Revolutionary Guards supply training, money and weapons to both Hezbollah in Lebanon, on Israel’s northern border, and to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, whose missiles are believed to be capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

In the run-up to his election this year, Mr Netanyahu promised that “under my Government, Iran will not be allowed to go nuclear.” Yet Mr Ahmadinejad has promised to produce 20 per cent enriched uranium: a big step towards weapons-grade fuel.

With the Iranian threat at the front of his strategic thinking, Mr Netanyahu has surrounded himself with old comrades from Israel’s most prestigious military unit, the Sayeret Matkal, or General Staff Reconnaissance. Mr Netanyahu served in the elite unit in the 1970s under Ehud Barak, who went on to become Israel’s most decorated soldier and later Prime Minister in his own right.

When Mr Netanyahu came to power, he made great efforts to recruit his former commander as Defence Minister. Mr Barak serves with another former leader of the unit, the Deputy Prime Minister, Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon. The Israeli Prime Minister has hard-wired his core Cabinet with so much military experience for a good reason. Striking Iran’s nuclear facilities would be a huge military and political gamble. Although Russia has delayed supplying Iran with S300 anti-aircraft missiles, which could weaken any Israeli attack, the air force would have to mount one of its largest long-range attacks to have a chance of disabling Iran’s nuclear installations.

Earlier this year a report by Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, warned that “a military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities is possible . . . (but) would be complex and high-risk and would lack any assurances that the overall mission will have a high success rate.”

At roughly the same time, Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, went on a covert visit to Israel to seek assurances that the new Government would not surprise the Obama Administration with a sudden unilateral attack.

In 2007, in what is often seen as a trial run for an attack on Iran, an Israeli squadron flew undetected through Turkish airspace and over Syria’s unprotected border to destroy what was thought to be a nuclear facility under construction with Iranian and North Korean support.

In June 2008, the air force staged exercises over the Mediterranean, with dozens of fighters, bombers and refuelling tankers flying roughly the same distance as between Israel and Iran. Earlier this year, Israeli jets again carried out a long-range bombing mission, hitting trucks in Sudan that were believed to be bringing Iranian weapons to Hamas via Egypt.

In the immediate term, the threat of a strike has receded. Israel is satisfied that Iran’s hostile stance towards the international community has increased the chances of serious, crippling sanctions. Officials noted that for the first time Russia seemed to be serious about isolating Tehran.

But that international front could easily crack, and then Mr Netanyahu would be faced with the decision on whether to order his bombers into action. Iran has already threatened to bomb Israel’s cities with its long-range missiles should its nuclear facilities come under attack.

It could also, in stages, order Hezbollah to launch rockets across the northern border. The attack could come in conjunction with a Hamas assault from the Gaza Strip.

Alternatively both sides may choose to do nothing. Some analysts believe that Israel might tolerate Iran as a “threshold nuclear state”, capable of building a bomb but not testing it.

Iran could opt for the path chosen by Syria in 2007, if Israel strikes at isolated facilities miles from an urban areas, where the only casualties would be technicians and guards. After the strike against Syria, neither side admitted what had happened, thereby avoiding a war and saving face.

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