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Some clues as to what was discussed at terror trio’s meeting

March 5, 2010

Last week, we told you how a troika of terror heads–Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah–had a little dinner party.

Although some Western powers, including the U.S., continue a policy of engagement with Syria (Undersecretary of State William Burns visited Damascus just a week before the dinner party and the U.S. is sending its first new ambassador in five years), ties between Assad and Hezbollah remain strong. According to the Washington Institute, since the 2006 war with Israel, Hizbullah has procured an estimated 40,000 rockets and – with Syria’s help – reportedly improved the quality of its arsenal.

Syria also may have provided the Russian-made shoulder-fired Igla antiaircraft system, which is capable of downing Israeli F-16s.

Ha’aretz writer Yoel Marcus wrote that the well-publicized banquet was “certainly in Iran’s interest, but it is unclear whether it is in Syria’s.” After all, the Syrian regime is among those Iran would like to bring down: Not only is Assad not a Shi’ite Muslim like the Iranian mullahs, but he and his government are secular — something the Iranian regime wants to stomp out.

Marcus continues, showing just how “scary” Israelis find the troika (summary: not very):

As for Ahmadinejad, he has a big mouth – he does not understand that the more he threatens us with a second Holocaust, the more he spurs Israel to build greater means of deterrence and increases its willingness to use them. The reasoning, as Ronen Bergman wrote last week in Yediot Ahronot, which won the day when former Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of the Iraqi reactor and by which the Syrian reactor was bombed, is that a country calling for the destruction of Israel must not be given the means to do so. Our deterrence is based on force and the willingness to use it in the face of a threat to our survival.

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

Trio of terror has a night out in Syria…

March 1, 2010

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall at a formal banquet hosted by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad whose guest list included Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, AFP reports.

It was a rare public outing for Nasrallah, who keeps his schedule private due to fears that he’s on the list of terror leaders Israel is looking to assassinate. According to AFP, he “has seldom left his Lebanese stronghold and has made few public appearances.”:

With an Israeli death threat hanging over him, the Hezbollah chief has even avoided religious or political gatherings in Lebanon, and his televised speeches have been taped or broadcast from secret locations.

Apparently, though, the chance to discuss “the latest developments in the region, and Zionist threats against Lebanon and Syria” was enough to lure him out of his hiding place.

Iran and Syria are the main backers of Hezbollah, the only militia that has kept its military arsenal since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

Assad and Ahmadinejad signed a visa-scrapping accord in Damascus on Thursday, signaling even closer ties and brushing aside US efforts to drive a wedge between the two allies.

Everything the U.S. ever wanted to know about UAVs (unmanned drones), it learned from Israel

February 26, 2010

Earlier this week, we told you about Israel’s newly developed drone, The Eitan, the world’s largest un-manned aerial vehicle (UAV). (These are the drones that keep “eliminating” Taliban leaders and helping U.S. forces in Iraq without imperiling U.S. troops.)

What we didn’t tell you is that a significant part of the U.S. technology has come from Israel, which has been at the forefront of UAV development for decades. The U.S. Air Force did try using unmanned drones for reconnaissance in Vietnam, but eventually shut down all its UAV funding until Israel changed world opinion about UAVs in the early 1980s.

During the First Lebanon War in 1982, the IDF used small UAVs to trick radar installations into becoming active in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, thus revealing their locations. Once spotted, regular Israeli fighter places moved in to destroy the radar sites.

According to this interesting article in Popular Mechanics, the Bekaa Valley campaign convinced the Americans that UAVs had major potential. (They’re spending $5.4 billion on UAVs in this year alone!)

The article continues with specifics about how the Eitan might play into an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations:

The Eitan can carry a ton of payload and can reach Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the United Nations last week determined is hiding an active weapons program. But that does not mean these will be used as bombers. The IAF has been buying and upgrading airplanes specifically for long-distance strikes such as a potential attack against Iran. At least 50 F-15 Raam and F-16 Soufa aircraft have been converted by installing extra fuel tanks for greater range and countermeasures to defeat radar and missiles. So maybe the warplane/UAV tag team presented at the “operational acceptance ceremony” speaks to how manned and unmanned aircraft will work together on missions: The drone provides information while the manned airplanes drop the guided munitions.

Working from high altitudes, the Eitan will likely be used to provide prestrike information on targets, to eavesdrop on electronic communications and to send battle damage assessments back after an attack. It will also undoubtably be used to monitor any retaliation for the airstrike—seeking rocket launches and eavesdropping on Iran. The onboard power required to electronically jam radar and communications equipment is not in the Eitan, Israeli defense industry officials told the trade journal Defense News. But the ability to carry so much weight opens up questions about the drones’ ability to conduct long-range, high-risk bombing missions on their own.

Early literature suggested the Eitan would have a role in shooting down enemy missiles in flight as well as in bombing targets.

Israel announces military innovation

February 24, 2010

Last weekend, the Israeli Air Force officially introduced the world’s largest Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV).

The drone can reach altitudes of 45,000 feet and has a 26 meter wingspan (the wingspan of a Boeing 737 passenger jet), according to Israel Aerospace Industries. The drone will be operated by a specially trained squadron.

Called the Eitan but known internationally as the Heron TP, the military drone made its operational debut during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza strip last year.

Heralded by the world press as a “super-drone,” the Eitan is especially significant because of its long-range flight capability. The Eitan is capable of reaching Iran to gather crucial intelligence information. “It could provide surveillance, jam enemy communications and connect ground control and manned air force planes,” reported the New York Times.

“The Gulfstream costs three or four times more than Heron TP, and the UAV can remain airborne longer in high-threat territory,” a Ministry of Defense development official told the trade journal Defense News.

“Israel has been at the forefront of UAV development for decades, and taught the U.S. a thing or two about drones,” notes the magazine Popular Mechanics, which also speculates about the possible role the UAV could take in Israel’s conflict with Iran.

There he goes again…

February 21, 2010

In keeping with the apparent preferred sport of Iranian leaders’–tossing invective toward Israel–on Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Hezbollah’s leader to wipe out Israel “once and for all,” if a regional war “breaks out” in the near future, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Iranian state news agency, Ahmadinejad told Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah that “the preparations should be of the level that, if they (the Israelis) want to repeated the mistakes of the past (by attacking), then their case should be closed once and for all and the region delivered from their evil ways forever.”

The slight problem with Ahmadinejad’s logic is that Israel hasn’t started wars with Hezbollah (you have to love the way AP uses the neutral term “breaks out” — as if war just sort of happens). Rather, Israel went into Lebanon after repeated cross-border attacks by Hezbollah, including the July 12 attack that set off the war: Hezbollah sent a barrage of rockets into northern Israeli towns and then sent a team of terrorists into the Jewish state (some military minds might call this “an invasion”), who killed three Israeli soldiers, wounded two, and dragged the bodies of an additional two soldiers–who were seriously wounded and may have died pretty much immediately–back across the border.

The purpose of Israel’s incursion was to recover the two soldiers, about whom Hezbollah refused to provide any sort of information, including signs of life. It wasn’t until a prisoner swap two years later that the families of the soldiers–Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev–discovered that the two–their sons, brothers, and husbands–had probably been dead the whole time.

In addition to such flagrant flouting of the rules of combat, Hezbollah actively attempts to emotionally torment Israeli civilians — beyond refusing to provide any information about captives, the organization has the lovely habit of erecting billboards just inside the Lebanese border with Israel that include graphic photos of dead and dismembered Israeli soldiers, with statements taunting Israelis and Israeli leaders.

We don’t think Israel is the one with “evil ways” from which we all need deliverance.

Hezbollah receives funding and other support from Iran. Its also closely allied with the dictator state of Syria, whom it recently joined in issuing threats against the Jewish state.

Less Skepticism About Iran

February 20, 2010

According to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran might be building a nuclear bomb.

The U.N. Agency has now officially acknowledged that “past or current undisclosed activities … run by military related organizations” in Iran include “nuclear and missile related aspects.”

“The expression of concern over the ‘weaponization’ of enriched uranium is a first for the agency,” noted the Wall Street Journal.

Reuters reported that the IAEA “report also confirmed Iran had produced its first small batch of uranium enriched to a higher purity — 20 percent.”

According to a senior government official quoted by ABC News, “There is less and less credibility to the Iranian statement that their program is peaceful and much stronger international recognition that we are facing a country that is seeking a nuclear weapons capability.”

The news probably does not surprise Israel. Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak spoke directly about the ongoing  threat of Iran when he addressed a graduating class of ground forces on Wednesday:

“The world is very aware that Iran continues to display open hostility and hatred toward the Middle East, through means of funding and the transfer of weaponry to Hezbollah and Hamas … We are prepared to make firm decisions, for the sake of a better future.”

In what could be seen as a step toward support by Russia following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow, officials announced a “delay” in a scheduled sale of surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Iranian officials interpreted the delay as a deliberate “failure” on Russia’s part to fulfill their obligation to Iran.

Israeli war victims go after Iran for $1 billion

February 18, 2010

What will this flag of Hezbollah turn into if Israeli war victims are able to cut off the the source of Hezbollah's funding and military assistance: Iran.

Eighty five Israelis who were wounded in Second Lebanon War are going after Iran in American courts since, they say, without Iran’s support, Hezbollah would never have been able to spark the war that injured them, UPI reports.

The claimants have filed legal suit in the US against Iran’s central bank and Iranian commercial banks for a total of $1 billion.

The group’s lead attorney told reporters:

“The central bank of Iran and the Saderat Bank are the chief monetary pipelines from Iran to Hezbollah … Without these funds, Hezbollah would not have been able to build and maintain its infrastructure, to train the terrorists in its ranks, or carry out massive rocket fire at Israel.

“These banks act freely and knowingly aid terrorism. They are responsible for the damages incurred on the civilians in these attacks.”

The suit is based in part on a 2007 U.S. Treasury finding the Saderat Bank knowingly transferred funds for terrorist activities to Hezbollah from 2001 to 2006 in London.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah went on Lebanese television to declare that the terrorist group plans on hitting Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport.

Ahmadinejad Invents News, Media Reports

February 17, 2010

In recent odd news, media coverage of the Middle East has become a game reminiscent of ‘he-said/she-said,’ with AFP now reporting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s interpretation of current events as news.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly invoked Israel in statements about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, shaping the media coverage so that it appears the danger is limited to Iran and Israel. Now in what appears an attempt to escalate his own creative interpretation of events, Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel is not only a looming threat to newly nuclear-powered Iran, but she is considering starting a war “next spring or summer.”

In Russia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the claim—as usual—and offered a skeptical alternative, generously doing the media’s job for them:

“I would not be surprised if these things we are hearing now are… (the) result of the Iranian feelings ahead of the impending United Nations Security Council discussions on sanctions.”

Iran was expected to be a major talking point in Netanyahu’s meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this week in Moscow, since Russia has been hesitant up to this point to commit to further sanctions. International agreement on sanctions against Iran has been a slow process, and one that Ahmadinejad clearly would like to further delay.

Dozens of Iranian militiamen swarm embassy after Italian PM calls for sanctions during Israel visit

February 10, 2010

About 100 pro-government Basij militiamen swarmed the Italian embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, chanting “Death to Italy, Death to [Prime Minister] Berlusconi” as part of a well-coordinated assault on Western diplomatic missions in the Iranian capital, the Washington Post reported.

Italian Foreign Ministry officials said police intervened before any of the egg and stone-throwing protestors could enter the building. Similar demonstrations were also held outside the French and Dutch embassies.

According to the Post, the protests were linked to calls the Italian Prime Minister made last week for increased sanctions against Iran while visiting Israel:

The protests came a week after Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced – in Israel – that Italy was scaling back its economic dealings with Iran and wanted tighter sanctions against the Tehran leadership. Italy has long been Tehran’s biggest trading partner in the EU.

Television footage of the protests shown on Sky TG 24 showed protesters throwing stones and eggs at the Italian embassy. Foreign Ministry officials said none of the protesters managed to get inside and that police intervened.

Frattini told the Senate that the protest was “hostile” and that the group tried to assault the building.

The Italian news agency ANSA, citing unidentified sources, reported Tuesday that the Iranian Foreign Ministry had summoned the Italian ambassador to protest Berlusconi’s remarks in Israel.

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