1.
DEMPSEY TOLD ISRAELIS U.S. WON'T JOIN THEIR WAR ON IRAN
By Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service
February 1, 2012
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106621
WASHINGTON -- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.
Dempsey's warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.
But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to make war on Iran, and it is counting on the influence of right-wing extremist views in U.S. politics to bring pressure to bear on Obama to fall into line with a possible Israeli attack during the election campaign this fall.
Obama still appears reluctant to break publicly and explicitly with Israel over its threat of military aggression against Iran, even in the absence of evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.
Dempsey's trip was highly unusual, in that there was neither a press conference by the chairman nor any public statement by either side about the substance of his meetings with Israeli leaders. Even more remarkable, no leak about what he said to the Israelis has appeared in either U.S. or Israeli news media, indicating that both sides have regarded what Dempsey said as extremely sensitive.
The substance of Dempsey's warning to the Israelis has become known, however, to active and retired senior flag officers with connections to the JCS, according to a military source who got it from those officers.
A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commander Patrick McNally, offered no comment Wednesday when IPS asked him about the above account of Dempsey's warning to the Israelis.
The message carried by Dempsey was the first explicit statement to the Netanyahu government that the United States would not defend Israel if it attacked Iran unilaterally. But Defence Secretary Leon Panetta had given a clear hint in an interview on "Face the Nation" Jan. 8 that the Obama administration would not help defend Israel in a war against Iran that Israel had initiated.
Asked how the United States would react if Israel were to launch a unilateral attack on Iran, Panetta first emphasized the need for a coordinated policy toward Iran with Israel. But when host Bob Schieffer repeated the question, Panetta said, "If the Israelis made that decision, we would have to be prepared to protect our forces in that situation. And that's what we'd be concerned about."
Defence Minister Barak had sought to dampen media speculation before Dempsey's arrival that the chairman was coming to put pressure on Israel over its threat to attack Iran, but then proceeded to reiterate the Netanyahu-Barak position that they cannot give up their responsibility for the security of Israel "for anyone, including our American friends."
There has been no evidence since the Dempsey visit of any change in the Netanyahu government's insistence on maintaining its freedom of action to attack Iran.
Dempsey's meetings with Netanyahu and Barak also failed to resolve the issue of the joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise geared to a missile attack, "Austere Challenge '12", which had been scheduled for April 2012 but had been postponed abruptly a few days before his arrival in Israel.
More than two weeks after Dempsey's meeting with Barak, the spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby, told IPS, "All I can say is that the exercise will be held later this year." That indicated that there has been no major change in the status of U.S.-Israeli discussions of the issue since the postponement of the exercise was leaked Jan. 15.
The postponement has been the subject of conflicting and unconvincing explanations from the Israeli side, suggesting disarray in the Netanyahu government over how to handle the issue.
To add to the confusion, Israeli and U.S. statements left it unclear whether the decision had been unilateral or joint as well as the reasons for the decision.
Panetta asserted in a news conference Jan. 18 that Barak himself had asked him to postpone the exercise.
It now clear that both sides had an interest in postponing the exercise and very possibly letting it expire by failing to reach a decision on it.
The Israelis appear to have two distinct reasons for putting the exercise off, which reflect differences between the interests of Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Netanyahu's primary interest in relation to the exercise was evidently to give the Republican candidate ammunition to fire at Obama during the fall campaign by insinuating that the postponement was decided at the behest of Obama to reduce tensions with Iran.
Thus Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, explained it as a "joint" decision with the United States, adding, "The thinking was it was not the right timing now to conduct such an exercise."
Barak, however, had an entirely different concern, which was related to the Israeli Defense Forces' readiness to carry out an operation that would involve both attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and minimizing the Iranian retaliatory response.
A former U.S. intelligence analyst who followed the Israeli military closely told IPS he strongly suspects that the IDF has pressed Barak to insist that the Israeli force be at the peak of readiness if and when they are asked to attack Iran.
The analyst, who insisted on anonymity because of his continuing contacts with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, said the 2006 Lebanon War debacle continues to haunt the thinking of IDF leaders. In that war, it became clear that the IDF had not been ready to handle Hezbollah rocket attacks adequately, and the prestige of the Israeli military suffered a serious blow.
The insistence of IDF leaders that they never go to war before being fully prepared is a primary consideration for Barak, according to the analyst. "Austere Challenge '12" would inevitably involve a major consumption of military resources, he observes, which would reduce Israeli readiness for war in the short run.
The concern about a major military exercise actually reducing the IDF's readiness for war against Iran would explain why senior Israeli military officials were reported to have suggested that the reasons for the postponement were mostly "technical and logistical".
The Israeli military concern about expending scarce resources on the exercise would apply, of course, regardless of whether the exercise was planned for April or late 2012. That fact would help explain why the exercise has not been rescheduled, despite statements from the U.S. side that it will be.
The U.S. military, however, has its own reasons for being unenthusiastic about the exercise. IPS has learned from a knowledgeable source that, well before the Obama administration began distancing itself from Israel's Iran policy, U.S. Central Command chief James N. Mattis had expressed concern about the implications of an exercise so obviously based on a scenario involving Iranian retaliation for an Israeli attack.
U.S. officials have been quoted as suspecting that the Israeli request for a postponement of the exercise indicated that Israel wanted to leave its options open for conducting a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the spring. But a postponement to the fall would not change that problem.
For that reason, the former U.S. intelligence analyst told IPS he doubts that "Austere Challenge '12" will ever be carried out.
But the White House has an obvious political interest in using the military exercise to demonstrate that the Obama administration has increased military cooperation with Israel to an unprecedented level.
The Defense Department wants the exercise to be held in October, according to the military source in touch with senior flag officers connected to the Joint Chiefs.
--Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
2.
Opinion
IS ISRAEL PREPARING TO ATTACK IRAN?
By David Ignatius
Washington Post
February 2, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-israel-preparing-to-attack-iran/2012/02/02/gIQANjfTkQ_story.html
BRUSSELS -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.
Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June -- before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon -- and only the United States could then stop them militarily.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak may have signaled the prospect of an Israeli attack soon when he asked last month to postpone a planned U.S.-Israel military exercise that would culminate in a live-fire phase in May. Barak apologized that Israel couldn’t devote the resources to the annual exercise this spring.
President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold. But the White House hasn’t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack.
The Obama administration is conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States: whether Iran would target U.S. ships in the region or try to close the Strait of Hormuz; and what effect the conflict and a likely spike in oil prices would have on the fragile global economy.
The administration appears to favor staying out of the conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets, which would trigger a strong U.S. response.
This U.S. policy -- signaling that Israel is acting on its own -- might open a breach like the one in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned an Israeli-European attack on the Suez Canal. Complicating matters is the 2012 presidential campaign, which has Republicans candidates clamoring for stronger U.S. support of Israel.
Administration officials caution that Tehran shouldn’t misunderstand: The United States has a 60-year commitment to Israeli security, and if Israel’s population centers were hit, the United States could feel obligated to come to Israel’s defense.
Israelis are said to believe that a military strike could be limited and contained. They would bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz and other targets; an attack on the buried enrichment facility at Qom would be harder from the air. Iranians would retaliate, but Israelis doubt that the action would be an overwhelming barrage, with rockets from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. One Israeli estimate is that the Jewish state might have to absorb 500 casualties.
Israelis point to Syria’s lack of response to an Israeli attack on a nuclear reactor there in 2007. Iranians might show similar restraint, because of fear the regime would be endangered by all-out war. Some Israelis have also likened a strike on Iran to the 1976 hostage-rescue raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which was followed by a change of regime in that country.
Israeli leaders are said to accept, and even welcome, the prospect of going it alone and demonstrating their resolve at a time when their security is undermined by the Arab Spring.
“You stay to the side, and let us do it,” one Israeli official is said to have advised the United States. A “short-war” scenario assumes five days or so of limited Israeli strikes, followed by a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. The Israelis are said to recognize that damage to the nuclear program might be modest, requiring another strike in a few years.
U.S. officials see two possible ways to dissuade the Israelis from such an attack: Tehran could finally open serious negotiations for a formula to verifiably guarantee that its nuclear program will remain a civilian one; or the United States could step up its covert actions to degrade the program so much that Israelis would decide that military action wasn’t necessary.
U.S. officials don’t think that Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project. But senior Americans doubt that the Israelis are bluffing. They’re worrying about the guns of spring -- and the unintended consequences.
3.
World
ISRAEL: MORE WORLD SUPPORT FOR POSSIBLE IRAN HIT
By Karin Laub
Associated Press
February 2, 2012
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israel-military-action-needed-iran-15499211#.TyuIcIG-yE4
HERZLIYA, Israel -- Capping a day of strident warnings by Israeli officials about the dangers posed by Iran, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Thursday that the world is increasingly ready to consider a military strike against Iran if economic sanctions don’t halt Tehran’s suspect nuclear program.
Earlier in the day, officials gathered at a strategy conference in this posh seaside suburb asserted that Iran has already produced enough enriched uranium to eventually build four rudimentary nuclear bombs and -- in what would be an explosive new twist -- was even developing missiles capable of reaching the United States.
In perhaps the most startling instance of saber-rattling, Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon, who heads the strategic affairs ministry and is a former commander of the military, said all of Iran’s nuclear installations are vulnerable to military strikes.
Yaalon appeared to contradict assessments of foreign experts and Israeli defense officials that it would be difficult to strike sensitive Iranian nuclear targets hidden dozens of yards below ground.
Much of the attention focused on the heightened sanctions imposed on Iran by Europe and the United States.
Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that officials in Israel -- all of whom spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss Iran -- were concerned that the measures, while welcome, were constraining Israel in its ability to act because the world expected the effort to be given a chance.
Barak appeared to confirm this, suggesting that the sanctions needed to be given a chance to work. But he also said there was a growing sense around the world that failure would in effect justify military action.
“There is no argument about the intolerable danger a nuclear Iran (would pose) to the future of the Middle East, the security of Israel, and to the economic and security stability of the entire world,” Barak said.
“Today as opposed to in the past, there is a wide global understanding that Iran must be prevented from becoming nuclear and no option should be taken off the table... Today as opposed to in the past, there is wide world understanding that in the event that sanctions won’t reach the intended result of stopping the military nuclear program, there will be need to consider action.”
Israel has been a leading voice in calls to curb Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, and the latest revelations could help generate further international support for moves against the Iranian regime. At the same time, there is growing international concern about a possible Israeli rogue attack on Iranian nuclear installations.
Iran denies it’s trying to develop nuclear weapons, insisting it seeks nuclear power for nonmilitary uses. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that some of Iran’s alleged experiments can have no purpose other than developing nuclear weapons.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, who gave the final speech at the Herzliya conference, has said it’s the responsibility of Iran to prove it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. “I believe they have not yet done so,” he said after a meeting with Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Israel’s military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, said Iran is undeterred. “Iran keeps advancing its capabilities, keeps developing its very ambitious nuclear program, at the basis of which is to get nuclear power,” Kochavi said at the conference.
In his presentation, Yaalon said Iran is trying to develop missiles with a range of 6,250 miles (10,000 kilometers), or enough to strike the U.S., and has already produced enough enriched uranium to eventually build four rudimentary nuclear bombs. Yaalon said Iran’s attempt to develop 6,250-mile missiles became apparent in the aftermath of a mysterious explosion several months ago at what he described as a missile research and development site in Iran. The cause of the blast remains unknown, and Yaalon did not elaborate.
Iran insists the blast was accidental, but speculation over sabotage remains strong. The remarks by Yaalon appeared to be the first public suggestion that the missile site was the scene of highly advanced projects and could boost suspicions that outside forces played a role in the explosion.
Israeli officials have said privately that Israel must act by summer if it wants to effectively attack Iran’s program. They have said a window of opportunity is closing because Tehran is moving more of its installations underground.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said even the most sophisticated U.S. bunker-buster bombs aren’t powerful enough to penetrate all of Iran’s defenses.
Yaalon played down such concerns, suggesting that forces guarding the nuclear installations could be targeted. Referring to the debate over bunker-buster bombs, he said that “at the end of the day it’s possible to strike all the installations.”
An Iranian counterstrike at Israel is seen as likely if Tehran’s nuclear installations are attacked.
Kochavi said Israel’s enemies have about 200,000 rockets and missiles that could strike Israel. Most have a range of about 25 miles (40 kilometers), but several thousand have a range of several hundred miles (kilometers), he said.
Iranian proxies in the region, mainly Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, have fired thousands of rockets into Israel and have been building up their arsenals in recent years.
--Associated Press writer Brian Murphy in Dubai contributed reporting.
4.
Middle East
U.S. PLAYS DOWN WARNING BY ISRAELI OVER IRAN's MISSILES
By Ethan Bronner
New York Times
February 2, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/world/middleeast/israel-warns-iranian-missiles-might-threaten-us.html
JERUSALEM -- A senior Israeli official said Thursday that the missile testing site near Tehran that was destroyed in a huge explosion three months ago was developing missiles with a range of about 6,000 miles that could reach the United States.
The assertion went far beyond what rocket experts have established about Iran’s missile capabilities, and American officials questioned its accuracy.
The Israeli, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy prime minister and minister for strategic affairs, said the blast at a missile base of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hit a system “getting ready to produce a missile with a range of 10,000 kilometers.”
“That’s the Great Satan,” he said, invoking a name Iran has used for the United States. “It was aimed at America, not at us.”
Mr. Yaalon was trying to make the point that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat not only to Israel but to other nations, creating “a nightmare for the free world.” He said that it was a concern to Arab states as well as to the United States and Israel.
American officials said they believed that Mr. Yaalon’s assertions were at best premature, and at worst badly exaggerated.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because assessments of Iran’s missiles are largely classified, the officials said that Iran might harbor the ambition of having missiles that could reach the United States, but that it was not close to achieving that goal. They declined to say what kind of work was being done at the base where the blast took place.
Today, the maximum range of Iran’s known ballistic missiles is roughly 1,200 miles, rocket experts say. That means they could reach targets in the Middle East, including Israel, as well as Turkey and parts of Eastern Europe.
Iran is known to be working on missiles with a range of 2,000 miles, which are considered medium range. The United States defines long-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles as having ranges greater than 3,400 miles.
A range of 10,000 kilometers, slightly more than 6,200 miles, would let a missile fired from Iran fly halfway around the globe to reach the United States.
Mr. Yaalon’s comments came in an address to an annual conference that examines Israel’s security challenges.
Mr. Yaalon, who was in the United States last week for talks with American officials, said that Turkey had been helping Iran circumvent international sanctions by allowing it to use its banking system. He also argued that all of Iran’s nuclear sites could be hit with Western weapons.
“We need a credible military option,” he said. “The Iranians understand the West has capabilities, but as long as the Iranians don’t think that the West has the political stomach and determination to use it, they will not stop. Currently they don’t think the world is determined.”
Earlier, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the chief of Israeli military intelligence, told the audience that he believed crippling sanctions could persuade the Iranian government to abandon what he believed was its determination to build a nuclear weapon. He said if Iran chose to build a bomb, it would take it about a year.
General Kochavi also estimated that Israel faced 200,000 missiles and rockets aimed at it from its enemies.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, speaking at a NATO meeting in Brussels, declined to comment on a column by David Ignatius in the *Washington Post* that reported that Mr. Panetta believed there was a “strong likelihood” that Israel would strike Iran in April, May or June.
Mr. Panetta would say only that “Israel has indicated that they’re considering this, and we have indicated our concerns.”
--William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller from Brussels and David E. Sanger from Washington.
5.
Opinion
THE U.S. NEEDS TO LEAVE IRAN ALONE
By John Glaser
The Daily Caller
January 28, 2012 (updated Feb. 1)
http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/28/the-u-s-needs-to-leave-iran-alone/
Washington’s hostility towards Tehran is fast making war inevitable. But the bluster, sanctions, and covert action are aimed at foiling Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a threat that may be entirely imaginary.
Most of the Republican presidential candidates have openly called for a preemptive military strike on Iran. And they have support from Washington insiders.
John Bolton, George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Fox News that the best “way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly.” Mark Helprin recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that any president “fit for the office” should “order the armed forces of the United States to attack and destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons complex.” Matthew Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs whose title said it all: “Time to attack Iran.”
The Obama administration has been almost as belligerent. After Congress heaped crippling economic sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking sectors, the administration sent diplomats to our European and Asian allies to pressure them into banning Iranian oil imports. Columbia University Professor Gary Sick has called this effort “the equivalent of a blockade. It’s an act of war.”
The covert war against Iran is already taking place. A downed American drone aircraft proved that a significant spy program is underway. The United States has also been assisting Iranian dissident groups that aim to overthrow the regime. Successive assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, whether orchestrated by the United States or Israel, are among the most explicit acts of war yet.
All of this is supposedly being done to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program. There’s just one problem: there’s no evidence that program exists.
All 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2007, and again in 2011, that there is no military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. And despite the hyperbolic reporting on it, the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, “the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.”
A U.S. intelligence official explained to the Washington Post that Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons: “Our belief is that they are reserving judgment on whether to continue with key steps they haven’t taken regarding nuclear weapons.”
Even the Obama administration has had to admit this. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.”
This conforms to previous assessments. Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama’s former director of national intelligence, told Congress in March 2009, “We judge in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons design and weaponization activities” but that Tehran “is keeping open the option to develop them.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA, said that same year that he did not “believe the Iranians have made a decision to go for a nuclear weapon, but they are absolutely determined to have the technology because they believe it brings you power, prestige and an insurance policy.”
Tehran has chosen this tack in order to signal to potential adversaries that it is capable of acquiring a deterrent if it is attacked. Iran is acting out of a perception of fear, and understandably so.
The United States has invaded and occupied two countries on Iran’s eastern and western borders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Directly to Iran’s south, in the Persian Gulf, fleets of U.S. Navy warships are on continuous patrol. U.S. troops reside in a number of Iran’s neighbors in both Central Asia and the Middle East. Despite the reprehensible policies of Saudi Arabia and Israel, the U.S. heavily supports both, which happen to be two of Iran’s top security threats.
In addition to all of this, the United States has launched cyber-attacks against Iran to sabotage its civilian nuclear program. Iran is on the defensive, not the offensive.
The economic sanctions placed on Iran threaten to cripple the nation’s entire economy. Already, Iran’s currency has lost half its value in less than three months, and a European oil embargo will virtually paralyze Iran’s export industry. This is not a recipe for Iranian submission.
In fact, the mullahs are the least vulnerable segment of Iranian society. The powerless will suffer most. As American Enterprise Institute scholar Fred Kagan said in 2009, “Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions.” Sadly, this is actually intended by some in Washington. As one of the drafters of the sanctions bill, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), wrote: “Critics also argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”
Many have pointed to similar sanctions regimes on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1990s, which left the country destitute and led to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children. Increasingly bellicose measures, such as the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, eventually led to the 2003 invasion, the subsequent devastation of Iraq and the deaths of several hundred thousand more Iraqis.
Once again, posturing politicians are paving the road to war with Iran. The potential repercussions cannot be overstated. The Obama administration needs to end the harmful sanctions, stop trying to dominate the region and clearly reiterate to Americans that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and presents no threat. Otherwise, blood and treasure will be lost in yet another unnecessary war in the Middle East.
--John Glaser is the assistant editor of Antiwar.com.
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