WAR 03/22 to 03/29 ***The***Winds***of***WAR

What you said, Dutch.

I agree.Israel will have to fight, no choice.

Originally Posted by BREWER View Post
Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.debka.com/article/21865/

Iran flies thousands of pro-Palestinian activists to Syria. IDF fortifies borders
DEBKAfile Special Report March 27, 2012, 5:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran Syria Hizballah Palestinians riots IDF
IDF Golan border unit

Israel boosted its Syrian and Lebanese border units as special flights carrying thousands of pro-Palestinian activists from Tehran touched down in Damascus Tuesday, March 27 for the international Global March to Jerusalem Friday, March 30. Before taking off, they were split into small groups and tutored by Iranian Al Qods Brigades officers in tactics for breaching Israeli border barriers, bursting through and challenging the Israeli military forces defending the border.

On arrival in Damascus, one group of activists was sent by special bus to Lebanon, where Hizballah officers stood by to lead them to villages close to the Israeli frontier; a second is assigned to face Israeli lines on the Golan.

These anti-Israeli activists from several countries are being planted at strategic points to carry out the plan hatched together by Iran, Syria and Hizballah to ignite Israel’s two northern borders in solidarity with the annual Israeli-Arab Earth Day next Friday.

Earlier reports from Damascus that the demonstrators would keep the Quneitra sector of the Golan and the Lebanese Beaufort were meant to put the Israeli command off its stroke by disguising the real scope of their plans and their objective:a mass assault on Israeli borders. They are programmed to coincide with the outbreaks the Palestinian Authority is preparing for Jerusalem and the West Bank and Israeli-Arab disturbances inside Israel – all on the same day, as debkafile reported earlier Tuesday.

The Palestinian extremists of the Gaza Strip will certainly not stand aloof.

Click to expand...

The Flying Dutchman said:

This is an IMPORTANT find Brewer!

This friday (and Saturday) will push Israel will be forced to defend her borders with deadly force; if she doesn't, she'll cease to exhist! And with Syria/Iran and the Hizbullah OPENLY backing and abetting this invasion! I would think that Israel's respondse will be to "Loose the Dogs of War!"

There is a 50/50 chance that by this time next week, our forces will be called upon to help Israel against the Arab "axis!"

*No matter how this is 'sliced'! It aint purty folks! This isn't purty at all....

TFD


=

Click to expand...

I second that appraisal. (China Connection has started a thread on this specific subject).

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3400/the-big-shift

The Big Shift

By krepon | 26 March 2012 | 9 Comments

Since the Cold War ended, no region has experienced more shocks or a more significant reorientation in US foreign policy than South Asia. The big shift was enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and New Delhi’s turn away from Nehruvian economics to market-oriented entrepreneurship. Then came the 1998 nuclear tests, the Kargil War, and the 9/11 attacks on US soil, which served to clarify Washington’s repositioning.

Two of these bell-ringers occurred during the second term of the Clinton administration, when the big shift gained traction. After the 9/11 attacks, the subsequent US military campaign in Afghanistan and the US-India civil nuclear deal during the Bush administration solidified and accentuated Washington’s reorientation.

The end of the Cold War allowed New Delhi and Washington to view each other in a new light, a necessary but insufficient cause for a re-wiring of this magnitude. More consequential was the decisions by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh to launch their market reforms in the early 1990s. With this opening, powerful US interests could be mobilized to support initiatives to improve bottom lines. The rise of China and a far more politically active Indian-American community clearly reinforced economic impulses to improve ties between Washington and New Delhi.

India’s nuclear weapon programs were a major impediment to improved ties with Washington. Until 1998, India was perpetually caught betwixt and between: it couldn’t join global nuclear compacts, but was reluctant to rock the boat. New Delhi’s default position was to champion nuclear disarmament while wishing to join the nuclear club. The indefinite extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1995 and the negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty a year later forced a long-delayed choice. A new, determined coalition government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, finally pulled the nuclear trigger. Pakistan followed suit, and Washington had to adapt to new realities.

India remained in limbo after the nuclear tests because it chose not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and couldn’t rewrite the Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington’s cold shoulder lasted until Pervez Musharraf’s dangerous misadventure in the heights above Kargil. Musharraf may have been seeking to exploit Pakistan’s newly overt nuclear capability as a shield while forcing Indian concessions on Kashmir. Instead, he created a significant opening for US-Indian rapprochement. Desperate for a face-saving exit, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pleaded with President Bill Clinton to take a more direct interest by visiting the subcontinent. By the time he did so, Pakistan was once again under military rule. Clinton spent five days in India and five hours in Pakistan. He then hosted the Indian Prime Minister and his entourage at a huge gala on the White House lawn. The reversal of Indian and Pakistani fortunes was in full swing, and about to be accentuated by the incoming Bush administration, which was looking for a counterweight to China.

The 9/11 attacks offered a short-term fillip to US-Pakistan relations in the form of a lifting of sanctions and the influx of military and economic aid. But US-Pakistan relations have foundered over Afghanistan, where interests merge at a level of generality that is repeatedly undercut by specifics. The familiar Pakistani story of betrayal now has a companion US narrative.

Washington’s reliance on drone attack in order to salvage bad decisions in Afghanistan has badly damaged relations with Pakistan. At the same time, Rawalpindi’s investments in the Afghan Taliban and outfits to serve as its strategic reserves against India have badly frayed ties with Washington. These tactics have also accentuated Pakistan’s economic decline, domestic divisions and diplomatic isolation. Bilateral US-Pakistan relations can still be patched up, but not in meaningful ways as long as Rawalpindi’s policies mortgage Pakistan’s future, use the United States as a scapegoat, and risk new confrontations with India.

In contrast, US-Indian ties will improve, but in measured fashion. Familiar voices in the United States and India will continue to call on Washington to do more and to pick up the pace, even though New Delhi’s performance falls well short of expectations. It’s very hard for two proud and exceptional nations to forge a strategic partnership, especially given the viscosity of Indian bureaucratic and domestic politics. At the end of the day, New Delhi will refuse to be Washington’s junior partner. A coalition of Indian intellectuals has recently proposed a national security policy of “Nonalignment 2.0.”

After a very eventful two decades, Pakistan feels jilted, while the romance of Washington’s new relationship with New Delhi has become routinized. The big shift in US foreign policy toward the subcontinent will not be reversed. But the upswing in US-India ties, like the downward trajectory of US ties with Pakistan, requires managed expectations.

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9 Responses to “The Big Shift”

krepon | March 26, 2012

Note to readers:
A slightly different version of this essay appeared in Dawn, a Pakistani daily.
MK
Reply

JD | March 26, 2012

Nice essay Michael. Some very good points and very timely.

I think the US Paki relationship should get more attention. Although a layman, I understand Pakistan’s ISI group to dominate their Army in some regards and to have poisoned the pot (Afghanistan) for the last 30 years. I don’t know why the US had waited so long to warm to India. A nice read is Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/1594200076

Cheers

JD
Reply

Adil | March 26, 2012

Micahel! Thanks for bringing this up.

Jaswant Singh in his book “A Call To Honour” (p.122) writes that India attempted to test in 80s and “all preparations had been made, the bore shaft had been dug, fully wired and prepared… But then Indira Gandhi changed her mind and called the whole exercise off.”
So indefinite extension of NPT in 1995 and conclusion of CTBT in 1996 may not necessarily be the major triggers for the 1998 tests. India would have done it anyway at an opportune moment.
Strobe Talbot in his book “Engaging India”(p.5), brings out an interesting justification for the Indian tests. According to him; Indians conducted their tests,knowing that “it would force the United States to pay them serious, sustained, and respectful attention of a kind that Indians felt they had never received before.”

India, in fact may have forced the US to enter into a romance, and is receiving more than what it had expected.
Reply

Dforscey | March 26, 2012

No discussion of India-Iran ties?
Reply

Anjaan | March 26, 2012

“The Big Shift” is actually not so big after all.

The US have simply shifted from an outright pro-Pakistan tilt to an apparent middle position, which has been described in so many ways as the “de-hyphenation”. And this has happened due to understandable reasons, China’s rise, India’s deep pocket, future potentials to rival China, and India’s willingness to play ball are the primary ones.

However, many American commentators have already been complaining about Obama ignoring India, and the much vaunted partnership of the 21st century losing momentum.

Against this back-drop, regardless of the optics of the US-Pakistan spat in Afghanistan, which by the way is well choreographed, American military and economic aid to Pakistan in the name of war on terror, is going to increase manyfolds in the years to come.

while the US-India partnership will continue to flounder in the short to medium term, with little substance to show for, Pakistan will eventually grudgingly accept the US-India engagement as a fact of life it has to live with.
Reply

mantej | March 27, 2012

I’m not convienced that U.S has tilted towards india,
pakistan is the pet of U.S. As long as U.S has the ability
to control an entity, U.S won’t leave it. pakistan is still willing to listen to the U.S and be controlled by it. also arms supply to pakistan on the name of war on terror doesn’t go down well in India. India is very cautious and will remain cautious from the U.S for the next at least 30 years.
Reply

narender sangwan | March 28, 2012

Strobe Talbot is right in his assessment of Indian Dream in his book as he was chief negotiator with India and interacted with Jaswant Singh.China,India and Pakistan are Nuclear armed and with difficult history,making them potential threats to the World.America should in collaboration with European powers try to force them to retract their steps through some treaty as USA and USSR have done making the World a safer place.Instead of playing power games,serious efforts should be initiated.
Reply

Neel288 | March 28, 2012

By opening a partnership with India, the US now have an extra leverage on Pakistan by exploiting its fear and hatred of India. At the same time it also opens a bargaining power with India about managing Pakistan’s terror infrastructure directed against India.

It is therefore a brilliant win-win proposition for the US…. !

The author however has finally spoken the truth by characterising US-India engagement in one sentence quote -” At the end of the day, New Delhi will refuse to be Washington’s junior partner.” – unquote.

He is also correct in his concluding observation that ” expectations have to be realistic”.

No wonder, American greed is causing a lot of frustration for them. India, after all, is a country of a billion plus people with a thousanad year old history, a growing economy with a potential to rival China. You can not expect a country of this size and potential to mortgage its strategic autonomy and put America’s interests ahead of its own.

And you ignore a country like India to your own peril.
Reply

mantej | March 28, 2012

I think overall the partnership is good in long term,
may be I’m too narrow minded, that I always think about U.S supply of weapons to pakistan as the ultimate test to the partnership. U.S is still the biggest number 1 economy, so India might just have to live with the fact that free supply of weapons would continue for some time. But overall people of india hold U.S in good esteam.

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical-diary/indigenous-forces-and-war-afghanistan

Indigenous Forces and the War in Afghanistan
March 28, 2012 | 0743 GMT

A two-hour lockdown of the Afghan Defense Ministry in Kabul on Tuesday following a security scare showed the psychological effects of several killings in Afghanistan. Media reports on Monday claimed that nearly a dozen explosives-laden suicide vests had been seized in relation to a plot to attack the ministry. Also on Monday, an Afghan soldier in southern Afghanistan killed two British troops, while a local Afghan policeman killed an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan.

None of Monday's developments constituted an inflection point in the Afghan war. The Afghan Defense Ministry has been attacked, and even breached, before. In February, an Afghan inside a supposedly secure portion of the Afghan Interior Ministry killed two American officers. And so-called “green-on-blue” incidents, in which Afghan security forces attack the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops they work alongside, have become increasingly commonplace in the last year. ISAF casualties have been quite low in 2012 so far; nearly a quarter of hostile fire deaths have been green-on-blue. U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, acknowledged Monday that infiltration is an issue, but he also framed it as a reality common to both the Iraq and Vietnam wars.

Stratfor has long argued that infiltration is an issue bound to emerge within any attempt to resolve a conflict by transferring the operational burden to indigenous forces -- essentially a strategy of Vietnamization. This is particularly true when a distant foreign power is the occupying counterinsurgent force trying to screen and monitor a trustworthy indigenous security force under threat from an established indigenous insurgency. This proves to be an enormous challenge. Indeed, many green-on-blue incidents have nothing to do with infiltration (even if the Taliban claim responsibility for an incident or an assailant later flees to the Taliban for safety), and arise instead from ethnic, cultural or national tensions.

The question is not whether Monday's events constitute a turning point. An insurgent force occasionally succeeds in dealing a decisive blow (e.g. Dien Bien Phu in 1954), but more often succeeds by inflicting a thousand cuts that are cumulatively lethal. So the mounting impact of developments in Afghanistan is important. Allen is right to point out that these high-profile killings are unrepresentative and reflect only a small fraction of day-to-day ISAF-Afghan interactions. There are undoubtedly additional force-protection measures in place to manage even an expansion of such incidents.

But it seems to us that green-on-blue incidents in Afghanistan have exceeded those in Iraq, where a radically different power structure was in play both in terms of ethno-sectarianism and foreign sponsorship. So far, U.S. domestic opposition to the Afghan war has not matched the intensity of opposition to the Iraq war -- and U.S. President Barack Obama has staked his presidency in part on commitment to the Afghan war. So a radical shift in policy in the near-term is unlikely. But the underlying U.S. strategy is to indigenize the conflict, which entails strengthening indigenous forces until they inspire confidence in the local populace. This strategy cannot succeed throughout Afghanistan, given its rugged terrain and diversity, but its broad effectiveness is critical.

Monday's incidents do not directly impact the existing trends in Afghanistan, but they are part of a chain of events that psychologically impact both ISAF and Afghan forces. The most effective way to undercut the indigenization strategy is to sow distrust between ISAF and indigenous forces at the decisive moment of hand-off -- a time period already under way that will continue until drawdown is complete. Critically, Washington has already decided to withdraw, while the Taliban have not yet demonstrated such decisive tactical capability. So the Taliban's challenge is to strike in a way that disrupts the U.S. timetable, while making ISAF's presence significantly more untenable. The Taliban's window of opportunity is closing, however, and so far neither the United States nor its allies have been forced to alter the announced timetable for withdrawal.

Read more: Indigenous Forces and the War in Afghanistan | Stratfor

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/focus-syria-mexico-burns-robert-d-kaplan

With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, by Robert D. Kaplan
March 28, 2012 | 1237 GMT
By Robert D. Kaplan

While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria -- half a world away from the United States -- more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States' southern border, Mexico will affect America's destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East. Indeed, Mexico may constitute the world's seventh-largest economy in the near future.

Certainly, while the Mexican violence is largely criminal, Syria is a more clear-cut moral issue, enhanced by its own strategic consequences. A calcified authoritarian regime in Damascus is stamping out dissent with guns and artillery barrages. Moreover, regime change in Syria, which the rebels demand, could deliver a pivotal blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, an event that would be the best news to U.S. interests in the region in years or even decades.

Nevertheless, the Syrian rebels are divided and hold no territory, and the toppling of pro-Iranian dictator Bashar al Assad might conceivably bring to power an austere Sunni regime equally averse to U.S. interests -- if not lead to sectarian chaos. In other words, all military intervention scenarios in Syria are fraught with extreme risk. Precisely for that reason, that the U.S. foreign policy elite has continued for months to feverishly debate Syria, and in many cases advocate armed intervention, while utterly ignoring the vaster panorama of violence next door in Mexico, speaks volumes about Washington's own obsessions and interests, which are not always aligned with the country's geopolitical interests.

Syria matters and matters momentously to U.S. interests, but Mexico ultimately matters more, so one would think that there would be at least some degree of parity in the amount written on these subjects. I am not demanding a switch in news coverage from one country to the other, just a bit more balance. Of course, it is easy for pundits to have a fervently interventionist view on Syria precisely because it is so far away, whereas miscalculation in Mexico on America's part would carry far greater consequences. For example, what if the Mexican drug cartels took revenge on San Diego? Thus, one might even argue that the very noise in the media about Syria, coupled with the relative silence about Mexico, is proof that it is the latter issue that actually is too sensitive for loose talk.

It may also be that cartel-wracked Mexico -- at some rude subconscious level -- connotes for East Coast elites a south of the border, 7-Eleven store culture, reminiscent of the crime movie "Traffic," that holds no allure to people focused on ancient civilizations across the ocean. The concerns of Europe and the Middle East certainly seem closer to New York and Washington than does the southwestern United States. Indeed, Latin American bureaus and studies departments simply lack the cachet of Middle East and Asian ones in government and universities. Yet, the fate of Mexico is the hinge on which the United States' cultural and demographic future rests.

U.S. foreign policy emanates from the domestic condition of its society, and nothing will affect its society more than the dramatic movement of Latin history northward. By 2050, as much as a third of the American population could be Hispanic. Mexico and Central America constitute a growing demographic and economic powerhouse with which the United States has an inextricable relationship. In recent years Mexico's economic growth has outpaced that of its northern neighbor. Mexico's population of 111 million plus Central America's of more than 40 million equates to half the population of the United States.

Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States, even as half of Central America's trade is with the United States. While the median age of Americans is nearly 37, demonstrating the aging tendency of the U.S. population, the median age in Mexico is 25, and in Central America it is much lower (20 in Guatemala and Honduras, for example). In part because of young workers moving northward, the destiny of the United States could be north-south, rather than the east-west, sea-to-shining-sea of continental and patriotic myth. (This will be amplified by the scheduled 2014 widening of the Panama Canal, which will open the Greater Caribbean Basin to megaships from East Asia, leading to the further development of Gulf of Mexico port cities in the United States, from Texas to Florida.)

Since 1940, Mexico's population has increased more than five-fold. Between 1970 and 1995 it nearly doubled. Between 1985 and 2000 it rose by more than a third. Mexico's population is now more than a third that of the United States and growing at a faster rate. And it is northern Mexico that is crucial. That most of the drug-related homicides in this current wave of violence that so much dwarfs Syria's have occurred in only six of Mexico's 32 states, mostly in the north, is a key indicator of how northern Mexico is being distinguished from the rest of the country (though the violence in the city of Veracruz and the regions of Michoacan and Guerrero is also notable). If the military-led offensive to crush the drug cartels launched by conservative President Felipe Calderon falters, as it seems to be doing, and Mexico City goes back to cutting deals with the cartels, then the capital may in a functional sense lose even further control of the north, with concrete implications for the southwestern United States.

One might argue that with massive border controls, a functional and vibrantly nationalist United States can coexist with a dysfunctional and somewhat chaotic northern Mexico. But that is mainly true in the short run. Looking deeper into the 21st century, as Arnold Toynbee notes in A Study of History (1946), a border between a highly developed society and a less highly developed one will not attain an equilibrium but will advance in the more backward society's favor. Thus, helping to stabilize Mexico -- as limited as the United States' options may be, given the complexity and sensitivity of the relationship -- is a more urgent national interest than stabilizing societies in the Greater Middle East. If Mexico ever does reach coherent First World status, then it will become less of a threat, and the healthy melding of the two societies will quicken to the benefit of both.

Today, helping to thwart drug cartels in rugged and remote terrain in the vicinity of the Mexican frontier and reaching southward from Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas) means a limited role for the U.S. military and other agencies -- working, of course, in full cooperation with the Mexican authorities. (Predator and Global Hawk drones fly deep over Mexico searching for drug production facilities.) But the legal framework for cooperation with Mexico remains problematic in some cases because of strict interpretation of 19th century posse comitatus laws on the U.S. side. While the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to affect historical outcomes in Eurasia, its leaders and foreign policy mandarins are somewhat passive about what is happening to a country with which the United States shares a long land border, that verges on partial chaos in some of its northern sections, and whose population is close to double that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Mexico, in addition to the obvious challenge of China as a rising great power, will help write the American story in the 21st century. Mexico will partly determine what kind of society America will become, and what exactly will be its demographic and geographic character, especially in the Southwest. The U.S. relationship with China will matter more than any other individual bilateral relationship in terms of determining the United States' place in the world, especially in the economically crucial Pacific. If policymakers in Washington calculate U.S. interests properly regarding those two critical countries, then the United States will have power to spare so that its elites can continue to focus on serious moral questions in places that matter less.

Read more: With the Focus on Syria, Mexico Burns, by Robert D. Kaplan | Stratfor

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/62f974b7-c123-4e38-8280-d436b823f5e3.aspx

Philippines, Vietnam plan Spratlys war drills
By Manolo B. Jara
March 29, 2012


MANILAL: The Philippines’ navy has reported that the Philippines and Vietnam agreed to consider the possibility of staging joint military exercises or “war games” in the areas they occupy in the disputed Spratly island group in the South China Sea.

ice-Admiral Alexander Pama said the agreement was reached when he and other PN officers visited Vietnam and held talks with their Vietnamese counterparts, headed by Admiral Nguyen Han Hien.

Pama said they also agreed to study the possibility of joint maritime patrols in areas where the two countries have claims in the Spratlys, which experts have confirmed to be rich in natural resources such as fisheries, natural gas and petroleum.

“This visit is expected to provide opportunities for the conduct of joint maritime exercises in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) and other common maritime domains following proper diplomatic channels under guidance from the Department of National Defence,” said the navy in a press statement.

The Philippines and Vietnam, both members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean), are involved in a territorial dispute with China over parts of the Spratlys.

China has cited historical reasons to lay claim to the whole of the island group.

Two other Asean members — Malaysia and Brunei — as well as Taiwan have also claimed parts of the Spratlys but officials and security experts said their entry was nowhere near the tension arising from the conflicting claims of the Philippines, Vietnam and China.

This was highlighted by “shooting wars” and diplomatic protests and counter-protests filed by Manila, Ho Chi Minh and Beijing on alleged intrusions into the territories occupied by the three contending countries in the Spratlys.

The Philippines and Vietnam have stood firm in their stand that the dispute should be resolved by international treaties like the UN Conference on the Law of the Seas and the Asean Code of Conduct on the South China Sea signed by China.

However, China insisted that the row could be resolved through bilateral meetings with the other claimants without “interference” from outside third parties.

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NC29Ae01.html

Southeast Asia
Mar 29, 2012
6
THE HANOIST
Vietnam builds naval muscle
By The Hanoist

Following a series of high-profile procurement deals, Vietnam's growing naval program symbolizes its evolving military posture. Driven by persistent maritime disputes with China and facilitated by an expanding economy, Vietnam is actively modernizing its military through naval, air and electronic-fighting capability upgrades.

A decade ago, the Vietnamese navy was equipped with Soviet-era hardware based on technology from the 1960s along with an assortment of American-made vessels seized from South Vietnam at the end of the war. This outdated force was inadequate for patrolling the country's 200-mile exclusive economic zone or maintaining its claims over the Spratly Islands, an expansive archipelago also claimed in whole or part by China, Taiwan and several other Southeast Asian nations.

Dedicating approximately 3% of gross domestic product per annum to defense spending, Vietnam has gone on an armaments spending spree in Russia, the Netherlands and Canada, among others. The military hardware from these big ticket contracts is now beginning to enter service and promises to boost significantly Vietnam’s naval and air power.

Last year, for instance, Vietnam deployed its first two Gepard-class light frigates which were constructed at the famed Gorky Shipbuilding Plant. The Gepards, displacing 2,100 tons, feature the Uran-E missile system to target other ships, a helicopter deck and purported stealth technology for evasive maneuvers. Two additional Gepard-class light frigates, specially equipped for anti-submarine warfare, have also been ordered. Together, they will serve as the backbone of Vietnam's surface fleet for years to come.

Vietnam is also in the process of acquiring and deploying smaller missile boats. Of special note is the Molniya-class corvette which Vietnam has already received two from Russia and acquired the license to build locally an additional ten. Armed with SS-N-25 Switchblade anti-ship missiles, these 550-ton corvettes can blend in with coastal fishing vessels while packing a punch against adversaries further out at sea.

The move that has garnered the most attention, however, was the recent US$1.8 billion order of six diesel-powered Kilo-class submarines from Russia. These quiet underwater vessels offer Vietnam entirely new capabilities for patrolling the hotly contested South China Sea. The first Kilo is scheduled to be delivered in 2013, followed by one more each year through 2018.

Vietnam's experience in operating submarines is virtually nonexistent. In 1997, it discreetly obtained two obsolete Yugo midget submarines from North Korea presumably to practice underwater operations. Designed for infiltrating special forces commandos rather than naval combat, the midget submarines probably offered only limited training opportunities for Vietnamese sailors.

For full-scale underwater warfare training, it appears Vietnam will turn to India. The two countries have been engaged in high-level military talks with special emphasis on maritime cooperation. Since the Indian navy also employs Kilo-class submarines, New Delhi would be well suited to train Vietnamese crews. China responded warily to this bilateral warming trend in both words and deeds when a Chinese warship reportedly confronted an Indian navy vessel leaving a Vietnamese port in August.

Concerning where the Kilos will actually be berthed, most of the public information so far has come from Russian media. Moscow will reportedly build a submarine base for Vietnam at strategic Cam Ranh Bay, a one-time American and later Soviet naval base on the country's south-central coast facing the Pacific ocean.

In a surprise development, Vietnam is also finalizing a contract to purchase four Sigma-class corvettes from the Netherlands. Currently operated by the Indonesian and Moroccan navies, the Sigmas, two of which might be built in Vietnam, would be the most modern warships in Vietnam's inventory.

To provide air cover to its naval fleet and skies, Vietnam is in the process of acquiring Russian-made Su-30MK2 multi-role fighter aircraft. By the end of this year, Vietnam will have at least 20 of these advanced warplanes in addition to about a dozen relatively modern SU-27s and scores of leftover MiG aircraft that are older than most of their pilots.

Capable as naval strike fighters, Vietnamese Su-27s and Su-30MK2s will be able to reach the waters adjacent to the Spratly islands which are believed to be beyond the effective range of China's shore-based fighter planes.

To improve naval surveillance, Vietnam has procured six DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft which will be delivered over the next two years. The amphibious aircraft can land and takeoff from the water and are ideally suited for maritime patrol and resupply. Manufactured in Canada, the Twin Otters represent Vietnam's first fixed-wing aircraft purchased in the West.

The question looming over all these acquisitions is how all this hardware will communicate and fit together given the military’s limited experience operating each of these platforms even on a standalone basis.

The interoperability challenge is especially acute since Vietnam is essentially acquiring defense platforms on an เ la carte basis from numerous suppliers - principally Russia, but also the Netherlands, Canada, France, and perhaps one day the United States. Vietnam's military will thus have to devote significant attention to training and transforming into a modern, professional fighting force.

A further reaching question is what doctrine will guide Vietnam’s military broadly and navy in particular. In 2009, the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense published a highly publicized white paper on national defense. This public document was a start but was laced with outdated communist rhetoric and anodyne pronouncements. Presumably Vietnamese planners are able to fully articulate strategic concepts in private without fear of offending Sino sensitivities.

In a 2010 interview, a Chinese vice admiral expressed concern that several Southeast Asian countries were in the process of acquiring submarine fleets. He stated "if this continues at the current rate, in several years the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] countries will create powerful naval forces" and that "this is naturally becoming a challenge to neighboring countries, including China."

Just as China is undertaking an "anti-access/area denial" strategy to keep the US Navy away from the Western Pacific, a better armed Vietnam and its potential partners could pursue a similar deterrence strategy with regards to Beijing in the South China Sea.

The analogy is not a perfect one since China obviously borders these contested waters. Apart from claiming almost the entire South China Sea, China is also preoccupied with at least two other major theaters, namely Taiwan and Northeast Asia. Thus, Beijing may reconsider its current ambitions to dominate the South China Sea if it receives enough pushback.

Vietnam is far from challenging China, but its modernizing military - as evidenced by its increasing naval capabilities - is making important strides towards a more credible deterrence.

The Hanoist writes on Vietnam’s politics and people.

Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved

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Dutch, get a load of this one!!!

From Israel's most LEFT WING/LIBERAL newspaper, HAARETZ!

(Wouldn't they just love this dream to be real!)

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...liest-1.421348

Latest update 01:40 29.03.12

Israel's plan to attack Iran put on hold until next year at the earliest:

Damning U.S. war simulation forces Ehud Barak to reconsider attack plans; Americans pledge more money for Iron Dome antimissile system...


IS THE LIBERAL MEDIA/MINDSET IN ISRAEL ON CRACK???
OR DO THEY REALLY BELIEVE THE STUFF THEY PUBLISH IS REAL???

Is haaretz a creitable source?

Michael111 said:

Dutch, get a load of this one!!!

From Israel's most LEFT WING/LIBERAL newspaper, HAARETZ!

(Wouldn't they just love this dream to be real!)

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...liest-1.421348

Latest update 01:40 29.03.12

Israel's plan to attack Iran put on hold until next year at the earliest:

Damning U.S. war simulation forces Ehud Barak to reconsider attack plans; Americans pledge more money for Iron Dome antimissile system...


IS THE LIBERAL MEDIA/MINDSET IN ISRAEL ON CRACK???
OR DO THEY REALLY BELIEVE THE STUFF THEY PUBLISH IS REAL???

Click to expand...

If this is true then BHO must have had the same conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he had with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

What till after the election and I will give you whatever you want just don’t press the issue now because it will make me look bad...

Housecarl said:

I second that appraisal. (China Connection has started a thread on this specific subject).

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Well, we've always wondered what the trigger event would be... This definitely could be it... For Israel, it's past time to "Lock and Load." Now, it's time to "Fix Bayonets!" One can only guess what effect this may have upon us, here in the USA... Could it be time for the Islamofascist cells to unmask, and attack, rather than allow us to lend Israel what will be much needed aid?

Time will tell...

OA, out...

Housecarl said:

Hummm....

For links see article source...
Posted for fair use....
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=51437

First Published: 2012-03-27

Time for a ‘Grand Bargain’ in the Middle East
What instruments does the international community have for this task? The prime responsibility lies with the UN Security Council and its five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Other influential countries, such as Germany, India and Brazil, could also be brought in to lend their additional weight. Acting together, these powers would be well placed to negotiate a ‘Grand Bargain’ between feuding Middle East opponents, and then use their combined muscle to ensure implementation of any agreement reached. Stick would, no doubt, be needed as well as carrot.

Why a ‘Grand Bargain’? The answer, in a word, is because the nature of Middle East conflicts requires a global rather than a piecemeal approach.al

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Oh, don't worry....you'll get your "grand bargain".

I expect whoever negotiates it will be hailed globally as a great leader and hero---"peace in our time" only this time it WORKS.

For about 3 1/2 years.....

The Flying Dutchman said:

This is an IMPORTANT find Brewer!

This friday (and Saturday) will push Israel will be forced to defend her borders with deadly force; if she doesn't, she'll cease to exhist! And with Syria/Iran and the Hizbullah OPENLY backing and abetting this invasion! I would think that Israel's respondse will be to "Loose the Dogs of War!"

There is a 50/50 chance that by this time next week, our forces will be called upon to help Israel against the Arab "axis!"

*No matter how this is 'sliced'! It aint purty folks! This isn't purty at all....

TFD


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Passover begins in the evening of Friday, April 6, 2012, and ends in the evening of Saturday, April 14, 2012.

Seems Israel's wars always coincide with her Holy Days...

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Thursday, Mar. 29, 2012

Thursday: U.S. must stand by Israel

http://www.thestate.com/2012/03/29/2211742/us-must-stand-by-israel.html​

A country that is led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is bent on killing Jews and Christians alike and specifically is on record in favor of wiping Israel off the face of the earth? I don’t think so.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t think Israel needs war with Iran more than it needs peace with the Palestinians. The unfortunate truth is that the Palestinian people have been for the most part a front for Hamas (sponsored by countries such as Iran) for many years. (Beginning to connect the dots?)

The last thing the United States needs is to sit idly by (deja vu all over again) and watch maniacal terrorist nations develop nuclear weapons to destroy democratic countries and innocent people.

The next time Mr. DiStefano is contemplating world events, he should try bringing it closer to home and imagine the state of Georgia (pretend Iran) having developed nuclear weapons intent on blowing Aiken (pretend Israel) into another universe.

Art Levy

Columbia

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/03/29/2211742/us-must-stand-by-israel.html#storylink=cpy



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Report says Israel to use Azeri airbases

Published: March. 29, 2012 at 7:57 AM
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012...ael-to-use-Azeri-airbases/UPI-29251333022260/​

WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- Israel has access to airbases in Azerbaijan near Iran's northern border to use in a military strike against Iran's nuclear sites, sources told a U.S. magazine.

Unnamed senior diplomats and military intelligence officials were interviewed in the Foreign Policy magazine report, "Israel's Secret Staging Ground," published Wednesday.

"The Israelis have bought an airfield … and the airfield is called Azerbaijan," a senior administration official was quoted as saying.

The Azeri military has four abandoned Soviet-era airfields that would potentially be available to Israel and four air bases for their own aircraft, the report says, quoting details from Military Balance 2011 from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned Israeli military expansion in Azerbaijan will hamper efforts to dampen tensions with Iran, an official told Foreign Policy.

"We're watching what Iran does closely … but we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it," an intelligence officer said.

Ties between Israel and the predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan are believed to be robust, and even if Israel doesn't use the fields for a direct airstrike on Iran, Azerbaijan could still prove useful for Jerusalem's interests in the region, the report says.

American intelligence and diplomatic officials say they believe access to the air bases by Israel was gained through a series of quiet political and military understandings. A senior retired U.S. diplomat was quoted in the report as saying he doubts "there's actually anything in writing … but I don't think there is any doubt -- if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they'd probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades."

The Israeli and Azeri embassies in Washington, the Israeli Army and Mossad all refused to comment on the report.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012...ri-airbases/UPI-29251333022260/#ixzz1qVhyCURz




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Report:
Israel Buys Azeri Air Field on Iran's Northern Border

Foreign Policy magazine reports Israel has purchased an Azeri airfield
on Iran's northern border, prompting the U.S. to watch very closely.

By Chana Ya'ar
First Publish: 3/29/2012, 2:16 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154286​

Foreign Policy magazine reported in an exclusive piece this week that Israel has purchased an Azeri airfield on Iran's northern border, prompting the United States to watch very closely. Journalist Mark Perry wrote the Obama administration is monitoring Israel's relations with Azerbaijan, particularly its military ties.

Israel has tightened up its relations with Baku over the past several years, helping Azerbaijan modernize its military with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and becoming its second-largest customer for oil.

In particular, the $1.6 billion Israeli deal to jointly manufacture 60 drones of various types with Azerbaijan infuriated Turkey, according to a retired U.S. diplomat quoted in the report. The IDF canceled a $150 million contract to develop and manufacture drones with the Turkish military after Ankara demanded an apology following the Mavi Marmara flotilla attempt to breach Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza.

“The Israelis have bought an airfield,” an official told the journalist, “and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.”

The Americans believe Israel may use the site as a springboard for an attack on Iran's nuclear plants, or as a landing and refueling spot following one. The site could also be used for aircraft needed for search, rescue and recovery in the wake of an attack.

“We're watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it,” an official told the Foreign Policy writer.






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Thursday March 29, 2012

'Azerbaijan allows Israel to use
its air bases near Iran border'

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3718​

Foreign Policy quotes U.S. diplomats as saying “We’re now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we’re not happy about it” • A series of quiet political and military understandings have won Israel access to these air bases, senior U.S. sources explain.

Senior American diplomats and military intelligence officers have told Foreign Policy magazine that the United States now believes that Israel has been granted access to air bases in Azerbaijan, which shares a border with Iran. “The Israelis have bought an airfield,” a senior official told Foreign Policy in early February, “and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.”


According to the Foreign Policy report, Israel’s embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad spy agency were all contacted for comment but did not respond.


The Azeri Embassy in the U.S. also withheld a response, but a U.S. military intelligence officer has noted, according to Foreign Policy, that when posed with the question in the past, Azerbaijan’s Defense Minister Safar Abiyev had not explicitly said his country would bar Israeli bombers from landing there after an attack on Iran. Nor did he rule out granting Israel permission to station search-and-rescue units in the country, according to the report.


Israel’s ties with Azerbaijan, a Muslim country that became independent with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, have grown as its once-strong strategic relationship with another Iranian neighbor, Turkey, has deteriorated. For Israeli intelligence, there is also a possible added benefit from Azerbaijan: its significant cross-border contacts and trade with Iran’s large ethnic Azeri community.


Speaking to Foreign Policy, one of the U.S. sources said, “We’re watching what Iran does closely. But we’re now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we’re not happy about it.”


The Azeri military - based on a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance 2011 and brought forth by Foreign Policy - has four abandoned, Soviet-era airfields that could be made available to the Israelis, as well as four air bases for its own planes.


The U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials told Foreign Policy that Israel, through a series of quiet political and military understandings, has won access to these air bases. “I doubt that there’s actually anything in writing,” one senior retired American diplomat with rich experience in the region told Foreign Policy, “but I don’t think there’s any doubt -- if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they’d probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades.”


In February 2012, Israeli defense officials confirmed the completion of a $1.6 billion deal to sell drones and anti-aircraft and missile defense systems to Azerbaijan, bringing sophisticated Israeli technology to Iran’s doorstep.


Israel Hayom reported at the time that it was not clear whether the arms deal with Azerbaijan was connected to any potential Israeli plans to strike Iran, but that Israeli defense officials spoke to Israel Hayom on condition of anonymity because they were not at liberty to discuss defense deals.


Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad, said the timing of the deal was likely coincidental. “Such a deal ... takes a long period of time to become ripe,” he told The Associated Press.


He said Israel would continue to sell arms to its friends. “If it will help us in challenging Iran, it is for the better,” he said.


Former CENTCOM Commander Gen. Joe Hoar explained Israel’s calculations regarding a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to Foreign Policy by saying, “They save themselves 800 miles of fuel. That doesn’t guarantee that Israel will attack Iran, but it certainly makes it more doable.”


Israel’s motivation for using Azeri air bases could be about more than simply saving fuel in a possible attack on Iran, it could be because, according to the report, one senior U.S. military intelligence officer described Israel’s mid-air refueling capabilities as “pretty minimal,” adding, “They’re just not very good at it.”


However, according to the Foreign Policy report, it is “precisely what is not known about the relationship [between Israel and Azerbaijan] that keeps U.S. military planners up at night.”


One former CIA analyst told Foreign Policy that the U.S. had its doubts that Israel would launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as “just too chancy, politically.” The source didn’t rule out the option that Israel could use Azeri airfields for “follow-on or recovery operations,” but added, “Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It’s extremely dangerous.”


Two weeks ago security services in Azerbaijan arrested 22 people they say were hired by Iran to carry out terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israeli embassies as well as Western-linked groups and companies.


Early last month, Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused Azerbaijan of allowing the Mossad to operate on its territory and providing a corridor for “terrorists” to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. Azerbaijan dismissed the Iranian claims as “slanderous lies.”






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Thursday March 29, 2012


Barak:
We need to brace for extreme scenarios on our borders

Ahead of “Global March to Jerusalem” on Friday, security forces finalize preparations for possible unrest along Israel’s borders • Preparations include clarifying IDF rules of engagement, soldier reinforcement across the country, and equipping soldiers with riot control equipment • Defense establishment also closely monitoring social media sites • PA security forces: We are cooperating with the IDF.

Lilach Shoval, Daniel Siryoti, Itsik Saban and Israel Hayom Staff
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3720​

Security forces need to brace themselves for the possibility of “extreme scenarios” on Israel’s borders this week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said ahead of the pro-Palestinian “Global March to Jerusalem,” scheduled to take place on Friday.


As part of the campaign, pro-Palestinian activists from neighboring countries and beyond plan to march toward Israel’s borders in a show of support for the Palestinians.


The march is expected to be held on March 30, which Israeli Arabs mark as Land Day, the anniversary of a 1976 general Palestinian strike to protest Israel’s announcement it would expropriate land for settlements. Observance of Land Day has now evolved into a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinians.


Defense officials are currently preparing for potential disturbances along Israel’s borders with Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.


Barak, who held a series of discussions in recent days regarding security preparations ahead of the marches, instructed security forces to prepare for the possibility of extreme disturbances on the borders, as well.


Security preparations have included clarifying the rules of engagement for Israel Defense Forces soldiers, soldier reinforcement in some sectors across the country, and equipping soldiers with riot control equipment.


The IDF has been bracing for a fairly severe scenario, but intelligence assessments say the scope of the protests will actually be relatively limited. The army is concerned mainly about the march at the Lebanese border, as it is expected that Hezbollah will participate. They are also keeping a close eye on the Syrian border, in light of the continuing unrest in that country.


Defense sources note that Iran and radical Islamist groups been active in spurring the protests toward Israel’s borders on Friday.


The defense establishment is also closely monitoring social media websites ahead of Friday’s events. Social media sites have played a major role in promoting the demonstrations and rallies that have swept the region since last year in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, and have been used as a tool to organize and coordinate protests.


Thousands of police officers have also been gearing up for violent disturbances within Israel, which have the potential, defense officials say, to erupt across the country, mainly in the North of Israel and in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian march to the Temple Mount during Friday prayers is in the works.


Additionally, police forces have been instructed to cancel upcoming vacations and officers already on recess have been requested to return for the purpose of reinforcement of the Jerusalem District and Northern District Police divisions.


The organizers of a “million-man march” set to take place in Lebanon said that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from 80 countries are expected to participate in parallel events to mark Land Day and show support for the Palestinians. One of the campaign coordinators in Lebanon, Dr. Ribhi Halem, said, “The march was intended to convey a message of protest and condemnation of the Israeli occupation policy, and not a message of violence.”


In Ramallah, Palestinian security forces said, “We’ve been cooperating with Israeli forces. We have an agreement by which the IDF will let us handle the Palestinian cities and will avoid entering the area so as not to fan any flames.”


Israel hopes to avoid a repeat of last year’s “Nakba Day” events, when hundreds of Arab demonstrators from Syria protesting the “catastrophe” of Israel’s establishment infiltrated the northern border into Israel and clashed with soldiers, leading to the death of several rioters and sparking an international outcry against Israel.





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29/03/2012, 15:23 (Jerusalem)


Gaza group calls for armed resistance

Published today 14:58
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=472283​

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Popular Resistance Movement on Thursday said armed resistance is the only strategy which will liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation.

At a news conference in Gaza City, the movement called on all factions to approve an agreement to protect the Palestinian resistance.

"The enemy's threats won't scare us. The killing will be met by killing, the destruction by destruction. The resistance knows how to respond to the crimes of the occupation," a spokesman for the group told reporters.

He also warned that Israel's continued provocations against the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian people could lead to a third intifada, or uprising, and urged Palestinians to join international protests planned to mark Land Day on Friday.





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This just gets Better and better folks!


USS Enterprise Prepares To Cross Suez Canal,
Days Away From Anchor In Arabian Sea

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/29/2012 08:06 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/uss-enterprise-preapres-cross-suez-canal-days-away-anchor-arabian-ssea​

Much noise has been emanating out of Israel vis-a-vis its Iranian intentions, with some opinions suggesting an attack is imminent, while others claiming that Israel will ultimately defer to D.C., and postpone an attack, and the eventual gasoline price shock, until after the election.

The truth is nobody but a few select generals, knows: in warfare surprise is the key factor, so outright flashing invasion intentions is usually an indicator of just the opposite. That said, the most recent update that Azerbaijan has granted Israel access to its airbases along the Iran border is hardly encouraging for Nobel peace prize winners and other pacifists.

Yet as we have been claiming for the past two weeks, ever since the launch of CVN-65 on its last tour of duty, the true catalyst, if any, will be the arrival of the USS Enterprise at what may well be its last place of anchor - somewhere in the Arabian Sea, just off the side of CVN 70 and CVN 72 both of which are patrolling the Straits of Hormuz.

And as the map from Stratfor below shows, the Enterprise is about to cross the Suez Canal, from which point it will be at most days from entering its catalyst location, namely supporting the Israel air force. Just because the US has never had 3 concurrent aircraft carriers in proximity to Iran before.







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US gears up for land operation in Persian Gulf?

Published: 28 March, 2012, 18:40
http://rt.com/news/us-amphibious-group-land-operation-iran-663/​

The US is sending an amphibious assault group and a couple of thousand US Marines to the Persian Gulf. With another US carrier making its way to Iran’s doorstep, US military still insist that this is a “regularly scheduled deployment”.

*The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group is comprised of amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, amphibious transport dock USS New York, and amphibious dock landing ship USS Gunston Hall. It is also reinforced with an atomic submarine and a marine helicopter squadron.

The group, which is “a versatile sea-based force that can be tailored to a variety of missions,” left port on Tuesday and is heading to the Gulf, the US Navy says.


Over 2,000 US Marines are to come on board Iwo Jima when the group makes a stop in North Carolina.

Many of those marines are veterans of ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan making their first shipboard deployment, dailypress.com points out.

The US already has an amphibious group with an expeditionary marine unit in the Gulf region. The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group was deployed there in January, after Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route that allows the delivery of around 20 per cent of the world's oil.

Iran has repeatedly reiterated this threat over the last six month, while the US and its NATO partners kept increasing their naval presence in the region.


The US is aware that Iran has enough resources to mine the strait within a relatively short period of time. General Michael Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier that the US must be prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force.

In March, the US sent another four minesweepers to join those already deployed there, bringing the overall number in the region to eight.

Two US aircraft carrier battle groups, headed by the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, are patrolling the waters around the strait. Another carrier, USS Enterprise, is expected to join them next month.

Although many US officials, including President Obama, still insist on using diplomacy and sanctions, they admit that “all options are on the table” to force Iran to drop its nuclear program.


Meanwhile, Israel – the closest US ally in the region – considers nuclear Iran to be “an existential threat,” which needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. Last week, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, spoke of a three-month deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions or face imminent attack.





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We Will Never Surrender

March 29, 2012:
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/syria/articles/20120329.aspx​

The government still faces its most implacable foe in the form of cell phone videos that constantly contradict assertions that troops and police are not attacking civilians. The videos show that the artillery and ground assaults continue. But there are too many towns and villages in rebellion, and too few loyal troops to go after them all and shut down opposition completely.

The government strategy remains one of continuing to attack hostile civilians in the hope that the civilians will give up resisting before the government runs out of cash and armed loyalists. Iran has been subsidizing the government with billions of dollars in cash.

But this is hurting Iran, which is also under international embargo. So that source of money is drying up. Iran has sent security advisors, but no gunmen. Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah gunmen have shown up in small numbers, but it's still up to a shrinking number of loyal Syrian secret policemen, soldiers and police to go after the many protesting civilians and armed rebels. There is so much unrest in the country that the loyal forces are giving up on wiping out all the resistance, and are now just staging raids on rebellious towns, villages and neighborhoods that have driven away the local police.

Nearly 10,000 protestors and armed rebels have been killed in the last year, most of them in the last few months. Some 50,000 Syrians have fled the country, and refugee experts expect this number to quadruple if the violence continues.

In the meantime, the continued violence is embarrassing to Syrian allies (Russia, Iran, China) and critics (the rest of the world, especially the Arab League and neighboring countries.) Everyone wants the ugly violence to go away, but that won't happen until the Assad dictatorship falls, or the Syrian people are beaten into submission. The Assads appear determined to keep fighting until their people submit. That has encouraged more Arab League countries to call for openly supporting the rebels (with weapons, men and more). In theory, this could tempt Iran to makes threats to its Arab neighbors to halt such support. From there, the situations could be interesting. However, Iran has been openly advising the Assads to scale back the violence and make some kind of deal. Trouble is, the Syrian people are not willing to compromise. The Assads have to go. They probably will, after a lot more people die.

So far, the rebels have been buying weapons from Lebanese and Iraqi smugglers. The prices keep going up, along with demand. The rebels have not got enough cash to buy all they need. So cash and weapons from Arab states would be a big help.

The fighting is getting uglier. Not only are the rebels resorting to assassinations of government leaders, but the army and police are rounding up civilians for use as human shields, where there is a risk of being fired on by rebels. All this is going to get worse.

The UN has passed a peace plan for Syria that calls for a halt to government and rebel violence in Syria, but not for the dictator, Bashar Assad, to leave office. The Syrian government only agreed to the UN plan because of pressure from Russia and Iran. But the Syrian government is not following the peace plan, and is instead continuing to attack demonstrators and armed rebels. Meanwhile, the Arab League is meeting in Iraq to debate providing armed support for the Syrian rebels. Saudi Arabia is pushing for this. Syria earlier had its membership suspended, and in response is refusing to have anything to do with the League.

Lebanon is protesting Syrian troops crossing into Lebanon to attack Syrian rebels based in farm buildings a few hundred meters from the border. This has happened more than once recently. Syrian artillery has also fired into Lebanon.






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U.S. Judge Enters $9.4 Billion
Judgment Against Hezbollah

By Bob Van Voris - Mar 27, 2012 6:24 PM CT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-4-billion-judgment-against-hezbollah-1-.html​

A U.S. judge entered a $9.4 billion judgment against Hezbollah after the Lebanon-based group defaulted in a lawsuit over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan today said that Hezbollah, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, must pay the damages to insurers including Chubb Corp. (CB) that sought to recoup payments to business and property policyholders for losses from the attacks.

The insurers won default judgments in 2006 against al-Qaeda and Hezbollah after the groups didn’t contest the suit.

“Obviously we’re pleased that a judgment has been entered,” said Sean Carter, a lawyer for Warren, New Jersey- based Chubb, whose Federal Insurance Co. unit was allocated $4.5 billion, the largest share of the damages.

Carter, who said it’s unlikely the insurers will ever collect the full amount of the judgment, said they can take advantage of a U.S. law that permits parties to execute judgments against terrorist assets frozen by the government.

“It’s not purely an academic or a symbolic exercise,” he said.





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North Korea begins fuelling rocket: report

March 29, 2012 10:26 AM
By Kyoko Hasegawa
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/In...ins-fuelling-rocket-report.ashx#axzz1qW0eIlYm​

TOKYO: North Korea has reportedly begun fueling a rocket for a launch next month, defying calls to abort an event the West says is a disguised missile test, as the United States suspended planned food aid.

"The launch is coming closer. The possibility is high that the launch date will be set for April 12 or 13," Japan's Tokyo Shimbun reported Thursday, quoting a source "close to the government" in Pyongyang.

It cited the source as saying that North Korea had begun injecting liquid fuel into the rocket.

South Korea's defense ministry said Sunday the North has transported the main body of the rocket to a site in the far northwest of the country in preparation for blast-off.

Japan's newspapers pay close attention to North Korea and often break stories on the secretive state. South Korea's Joint Chief of Staff said it could not confirm the report.

North Korea insisted this week it would go ahead with what it calls a peaceful satellite launch, snubbing a call from US President Barack Obama to drop the plan and accusing him of a "confrontational mindset".

The United States has suspended plans to send food aid to North Korea, saying it has broken a promise to halt missile launches and cannot be trusted to give the aid to those who need it, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Under a deal reached last month, North Korea had agreed to a partial nuclear freeze and a missile test moratorium in return for 240,000 tonnes of U.S. food aid.

The West and North Korea's Asian neighbors have urged the nuclear-armed state to scrap the launch, which is seen as a pretext for testing ballistic missile technology that is banned under U.N. resolutions.

South Korea, China and Japan will hold talks in eastern China next month on regional security and cooperation, and the rocket plan is certain to be discussed on the sidelines, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.

Preparations for the event "have entered a full-fledged stage of action", Pyongyang said last Friday. It will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il Sung, grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-Un.

The North insists it has a right to launch a civilian satellite and says it will estimate crop yields and collect weather data.

The home-built satellite will also assess the country's forest coverage and natural resources, the official news agency said late Wednesday in another attempt to stress the purportedly peaceful nature of the exercise.

The satellite weighs 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and will follow a "solar synchronous orbit" at a height of 500 kilometers (around 300 miles), with a lifespan of two years, it quoted an unidentified senior official from the Korean Committee for Space Technology as saying.

The North has said it has invited experienced space experts and foreign media to observe the operation.

The Philippines on Thursday reiterated concern over the threat of debris falling from the rocket, which is projected to land at sea about 180 kilometers northeast of the main Philippine island of Luzon.

"Our main concern here is the debris. If it explodes in the air, where will all that metal fall? We should know so that we will be able to warn all those who could get hit," Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said in Manila.

The North fired off long-range missiles in 1998, 2006 and 2009. After the two most recent launches it swiftly followed up with an underground nuclear test and some analysts see a similar scenario unfolding this time.

But the timing of the latest announcement, just 16 days after disclosure of the U.S. deal, has puzzled many and led to speculation of factional conflicts. Obama said Sunday it was not clear who was "calling the shots" under the young new leader.

Analyst Andrei Lankov, of Seoul's Kookmin University, said the North's mixed signals could reflect poor inter-agency coordination or clashes between different factions.

"The military is always eager to flex its muscles and given that they have much of the power in this closed system, Kim Jong-Un might have decided to placate them," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal article.

"If this is true, it strongly suggests the insecurities of the baby-faced dictator."


Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/In...ins-fuelling-rocket-report.ashx#ixzz1qW0ivZEe
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)




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Military ready to confront Israeli attacks: Army chief

March 29, 2012 02:06 AM
The Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lo...israeli-attacks-army-chief.ashx#axzz1qW0eIlYm​

BEIRUT: Lebanese Army Chief of Staff Walid Salman said Wednesday that the military was ready to confront any Israeli aggression on the country’s borders.

Salman spoke during a visit to the Army’s headquarters in Sidon.

“The Army’s readiness is high to confront any Israeli aggression, even in difficult circumstances the Arab world is going through,” said Salman.

“It is necessary to safeguard the land and strengthen the cooperation with the [U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon] and remain committed to resolution 1701 to thwart the enemy’s plots,” Salman added.

Salman also called on the soldiers to remain vigilant and on high alert to confront threats and challenges.


Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lo...israeli-attacks-army-chief.ashx#ixzz1qW1K2iBe
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)




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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Rabbi and Writer


Obama's Doublespeak on Russian Missile Defense and Israel

Posted: 03/29/2012 10:02 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuley-boteach/obamas-doublespeak-on-rus_b_1387664.html​

President Obama's recent open mic comments to President Medvedev of Russia are troubling, which explains why Obama and the White House have decided to make light of them. It seems that every time a microphone captures the president in unscripted remarks, he's saying something that goes against his own public pronouncements.

There was the famous incident in November, 2011, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy, not knowing his microphone was hot, expressed his contempt for Prime Minister Netanyahu, calling him a liar, with President Obama jumping in to commiserate, lamenting the fact that he has to deal with Netanyahu even more than the French.

And now comes Obama's comments about a missile defense treaty with Russia where the President tells Medvedev that he and Putin have to give him "space" until his reelection when he'll have far greater "flexibility," presumably because he no longer has to answer to the American people.

A great debate has been waged this year as to whether President Obama is reliably pro-Israel and deserves the support of the pro-Israel community. The president made his case to AIPAC by listing a long record of promoting military and intelligence cooperation with the Jewish state, arguing that "I have Israel's back." While I have personally praised the president for that cooperation and other support shown Israel, there is more to the story, and he knows it.

For the first three years of his presidency, Obama largely declared Israel's settlements to be illegitimate, put near-unilateral pressure on Israel to make peace without any expectations from the Palestinian side, declared at a speech that was supposed to be about the Arab Spring that Israel should return to its indefensible 1967 borders -- albeit with land swaps, treated Prime Minister Netanyahu shamefully at a March 2010 meeting where he refused even a photo op with the elected leader of the Middle East's only democracy, and had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dress down the prime minister before that meeting, leaking the harsh tone of the conversation to the media.

Ever since his self-confessed 'shellacking' during the mid-term elections, part of which was due to his perceived unfriendliness to the Jewish state, the president decided to make nice with Bibi and treat him with the same respect he accords other world leaders, albeit without the warmth of the two-armed handshake he reserved for Hugo Chavez or the bow he accorded the King of Saudi Arabia.

At the UN in September, 2011 the president strongly supported Israel against a Palestinian attempt at unilateral statehood. The president deserves credit for the effort. Then, he talked tough to Iran and imposed even greater sanctions, although he has yet to define any red lines that would invoke a military strike. The President has gotten much better in his posture vis-à-vis Israel and he is winning back Jewish support as a result.

But here is the all-important question. Why? Why has he suddenly changed in showing Israel unalloyed support?

I am not one who believes in ascribing insincere motivation to others. I judge people on their actions. But based on his actions, rather than his rhetoric, I believe the answer to the president's new posture toward Israel lies in his words to President Medvedev.

He has no 'flexibility' before an election in which Jewish votes and financial support are critical to what will be a very close race. And he therefore cannot be trusted to refrain from exerting undue pressure on Israel after the election to push through a peace deal that will likely not lead to peace but will simply compromise Israel's security.

And herein lies my mystification at the bizarre story of 15 presidents of orthodox synagogues in Passaic encouraging their congregants to switch registration to Democrat in order to vote for Steve Rothman over Bill Pascrell in the upcoming Democratic primary in New Jersey's ninth district. This is because Pascrell is perceived to be less friendly to Israel since, among other considerations, he was one of 54 congressman who signed the J Street letter criticizing Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Now leaving aside the questionable ethics of the advice, are they seriously suggesting that any Democratic supporter of President Obama is going to be as sound on Israel as, say, Republican Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who both invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress?

The Daily Beast quoted me last week as saying that President Obama is a strong friend of the Jewish people and that anyone who speaks of him as anti-Semitic is guilty of character assassination. I stand by that quote. President Obama has elevated committed Jews like Dan Shapiro to be our ambassador to Israel, and orthodox Jews like Jack Lew to be his chief of staff. But being a great friend of the Jewish people does not automatically make you a great friend of Israel. After all, President Obama has yet to even visit Israel as president.

And yet, the principal problem with President Obama is his belief that Israeli intransigence, rather than, say, Islamist terror or Palestinian rejection of Israel as a Jewish state, is the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East. In this sense President Obama follows in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Israeli toughness, rather than Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist, is the principal cause for the continuation of the conflict.

It was for this reason that I was also perplexed at my friend Dr. Ben Chouake's comments in the Jewish Week when he said that he and powerful NORPAC, which he heads, would be supporting Rothman over my candidacy. "I'm a registered Republican," Dr. Ben said. "I like Shmuley. I've been to his house. He's been to my house. I've done some projects with him. He's a tremendously talented person. He's a gifted orator, no question about it." However when it comes to getting the job done, "I don't know that he can't do it, but I don't know that he can. He's never held public office."

Firstly, recent polls about congressional job approval have shown a collective approval rating at about nine percent, and Dr. Ben is well aware of the fact that most Americans see incumbency as a liability. Secondly, Rothman is the same congressman who declared in May, 2010, while Obama's policies toward Israel were still abysmal, that Obama was, "the best president on U.S.-Israel military and intelligence cooperation in American history." I quickly responded with a column in the Huffington Post criticizing Rothman's statement as absurd. Remember, Rothman made this claim before Obama even shifted course on his lopsided pressure on Israel.

Doesn't the pro-Israel community have a right to expect that a congressman who claims to be staunchly pro-Israel will break with the president when he mistreats Israel, even if they are the same party?

Witness the difference between Congressman Rothman and Senator Charles Schumer, both Democrats. When the Obama administration publicly upbraided Israel over its policies of building in Jerusalem, Senator Schumer, as reported in Politico, went public in April 2010, calling the Obama's stance "counter-productive." He threatened to "blast" the Administration if the State Department did not back down from its "terrible" rebuke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"This has to stop," he said of the administration's policy of publicly condemning Israel's construction of housing in Jerusalem.

"I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk... Palestinians don't really believe in a state of Israel.

They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there... If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands the Palestinians say, 'Why should we negotiate?'" Schumer said.

But Rothman's reaction to the president's pressure was silence. Rothman has never broken with President Obama on anything.

One would think that, given the considerable leverage that NORPAC has right now with Rothman, in choosing to support him over Bill Pascrell, his Democratic challenger, Chouake would at least extract a guarantee that if Obama goes back to his old ways of putting undue pressure on Israel, Rothman will break with the president and publicly criticize Administration policies. But to simply give Rothman a blank check and unconditional endorsement as being so strongly pro-Israel when Rothman never once criticized the president even as Obama treated Israel abysmally is to invite a repeat of Rothman's inaction.

Say what you want about Jimmy Carter but at least his disdain for Israel and its leadership was out in the open and consistent. Here is a man who outrageously compared Israel in his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid to apartheid South Africa. Likewise Clinton, who, as president, treated Netanyahu mostly with contempt, attacked him yet again in September of last year as an obstacle to peace.

But Obama's doublespeak when microphones are off and on is troubling. If the president dislikes Bibi, let him not play games with the American Jewish community and feign friendship for votes. After all, Obama came to the White House as the anti-politician, a man who was going to change the ways of Washington. A leader who was going to say what he means and mean what he says.

How disappointing to discover he is guilty of the same beltway double-speak he once condemned. How disappointing to discover that our president is simply yet another politician. And how worrisome to ponder what his policies on Israel will be once he has greater 'flexibility.'





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Israel’s Secret Staging Ground

U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases
in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?

BY MARK PERRY |MARCH 28, 2012
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/28/israel_s_secret_staging_ground​

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled
"Azerbaijan's discreet symbiosis with Israel." The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country's relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: "nine-tenths of it is below the surface."

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran's northern border and, according to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance -- the security cooperation between the two countries -- is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf -- but one that could include the Caucasus. The burgeoning Israel-Azerbaijan relationship has also become a flashpoint in both countries' relationship with Turkey, a regional heavyweight that fears the economic and political fallout of a war with Iran. Turkey's most senior government officials have raised their concerns with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with the Azeris, the sources said.

The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, were all contacted for comment on this story but did not respond.

The Azeri embassy to the United States also did not respond to requests for information regarding Azerbaijan's security agreements with Israel. During a recent visit to Tehran, however, Azerbaijan's defense minister publicly ruled out the use of Azerbaijan for a strike on Iran. "The Republic of Azerbaijan, like always in the past, will never permit any country to take advantage of its land, or air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we consider our brother and friend country," he said.

But even if his government makes good on that promise, it could still provide Israel with essential support. A U.S. military intelligence officer noted that Azeri defense minister did not explicitly bar Israeli bombers from landing in the country after a strike. Nor did he rule out the basing of Israeli search-and-rescue units in the country. Proffering such landing rights -- and mounting search and rescue operations closer to Iran -- would make an Israeli attack on Iran easier.

"We're watching what Iran does closely," one of the U.S. sources, an intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a prospective Israeli attack confirmed. "But we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it."

Israel's deepening relationship with the Baku government was cemented in February by a $1.6 billion arms agreement that provides Azerbaijan with sophisticated drones and missile-defense systems. At the same time, Baku's ties with Tehran have frayed: Iran presented a note to Azerbaijan's ambassador last month claiming that Baku has supported Israeli-trained assassination squads targeting Iranian scientists, an accusation the Azeri government called "a slander." In February, a member of Yeni Azerbadzhan -- the ruling party -- called on the government to change the country's name to "North Azerbaijan," implicitly suggesting that the 16 million Azeris who live in northern Iran ("South Azerbaijan") are in need of liberation.

And this month, Baku announced that 22 people had been arrested for spying on behalf of Iran, charging they had been tasked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to "commit terrorist acts against the U.S., Israeli, and other Western states' embassies." The allegations prompted multiple angry denials from the Iranian government.


It's clear why the Israelis prize their ties to Azerbaijan -- and why the Iranians are infuriated by them. The Azeri military has four abandoned, Soviet-era airfields that would potentially be available to the Israelis, as well as four airbases for their own aircraft, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance 2011.

The U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials told me they believe that Israel has gained access to these airbases through a series of quiet political and military understandings. "I doubt that there's actually anything in writing," added a senior retired American diplomat who spent his career in the region. "But I don't think there's any doubt -- if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they'd probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades."

The prospect of Israel using Azerbaijan's airfields for an Iranian attack first became public in December 2006, when retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira angrily denounced the George W. Bush administration's lack of action on the Iranian nuclear program. "For our part," he wrote in a widely cited commentary, "we should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran." The "coordination" that Tira spoke of is now a reality, the U.S. sources told me.

Access to such airfields is important for Israel, because it would mean that Israeli F-15I and F-16I fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight during a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but could simply continue north and land in Azerbaijan. Defense analyst David Isenberg describes the ability to use Azeri airfields as "a significant asset" to any Israel strike, calculating that the 2,200-mile trip from Israel to Iran and back again would stretch Israel's warplanes to their limits. "Even if they added extra fuel tanks, they'd be running on fumes," Isenberg told me, "so being allowed access to Azeri airfields would be crucial."

Former CENTCOM commander Gen. Joe Hoar simplified Israel's calculations: "They save themselves 800 miles of fuel," he told me in a recent telephone interview. "That doesn't guarantee that Israel will attack Iran, but it certainly makes it more doable."

Using airbases in Azerbaijan would ensure that Israel would not have to rely on its modest fleet of air refuelers or on its refueling expertise, which a senior U.S. military intelligence officer described as "pretty minimal." Military planners have monitored Israeli refueling exercises, he added, and are not impressed. "They're just not very good at it."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who conducted a study for a think tank affiliated with the Swedish Ministry of Defense of likely Israeli attack scenarios in March 2010, said that Israel is capable of using its fleet of F-15I and F-16I warplanes in a strike on Iran without refueling after the initial top-off over Israel. "It's not weight that's a problem," he said, "but the numbers of weapons that are mounted on each aircraft." Put simply, the more distance a fighter-bomber is required to travel, the more fuel it will need and the fewer weapons it can carry. Shortening the distance adds firepower, and enhances the chances for a successful strike.

"The problem is the F-15s," Gardiner said, "who would go in as fighters to protect the F-16 bombers and stay over the target." In the likely event that Iran scrambled its fighters to intercept the Israeli jets, he continued, the F-15s would be used to engage them. "Those F-15s would burn up fuel over the target, and would need to land."

Could they land in Azerbaijan? "Well, it would have to be low profile, because of political sensitivities, so that means it would have to be outside of Baku and it would have to be highly developed." Azerbaijan has such a place: the Sitalcay airstrip, which is located just over 40 miles northwest of Baku and 340 miles from the Iranian border. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sitalcay's two tarmacs and the adjacent facilities were used by a squadron of Soviet Sukhoi SU-25 jets -- perfect for Israeli fighters and bombers. "Well then," Gardiner said, after the site was described to him, "that would be the place."

Even if Israeli jets did not land in Azerbaijan, access to Azeri airfields holds a number of advantages for the Israel Defense Forces. The airfields not only have facilities to service fighter-bombers, but a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said that Israel would likely base helicopter rescue units there in the days just prior to a strike for possible search and rescue missions.


This officer pointed to a July 2010 joint Israeli-Romanian exercise that tested Israeli air capabilities in mountainous areas -- like those the Israeli Air Force would face during a bombing mission against Iranian nuclear facilities that the Iranians have buried deep into mountainsides. U.S. military officers watched the exercises closely, not least because they objected to the large number of Israeli fighters operating from airbases of a NATO-member country, but also because 100 Israeli fighters overflew Greece as a part of a simulation of an attack on Iran. The Israelis eventually curtailed their Romanian military activities when the United States expressed discomfort with practicing the bombing of Iran from a NATO country, according to this senior military intelligence officer.

This same senior U.S. military intelligence officer speculated that the search and rescue component of those operations will be transferred to Azerbaijan -- "if they haven't been already." He added that Israel could also use Azerbaijan as a base for Israeli drones, either as part of a follow-on attack against Iran, or to mount aerial assessment missions in an attack's aftermath.

Azerbaijan clearly profits from its deepening relationship with Israel. The Jewish state is the second largest customer for Azeri oil - shipped through the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline -- and its military trade allows Azerbaijan to upgrade its military after the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) slapped it with an arms embargo after its six-year undeclared war with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Finally, modernizing the Azeri military sends a clear signal to Iran that interference in Azerbaijan could be costly.

"Azerbaijan has worries of its own," said Alexander Murinson, an Israeli-American scholar who wrote in an influential monograph on Israeli-Azeri ties for Tel Aviv's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "The Baku government has expelled Iranians preaching in their mosques, broken up pro-Iranian terrorist groups, and countered Iranian propaganda efforts among its population."

The deepening Azeri-Israeli relationship has also escalated Israel's dispute with Turkey, which began when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship destined for Gaza in May 2010, killing nine Turkish citizens. When Turkey demanded an apology, Israel not only refused, it abruptly canceled a $150 million contract to develop and manufacture drones with the Turkish military -- then entered negotiations with Azerbaijan to jointly manufacture 60 Israeli drones of varying types. The $1.6 billion arms agreement between Israel and Azerbaijan also left Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "sputtering in rage," according to a retired U.S. diplomat.

The centerpiece of the recent arms deal is Azerbaijan's acquisition of Israeli drones, which has only heightened Turkish anxieties further. In November 2011, the Turkish government retrieved the wreckage of an Israeli "Heron" drone in the Mediterranean, south of the city of Adana -- well inside its maritime borders. Erdogan's government believed the drone's flight had originated in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and demanded that Israel provide an explanation, but got none. "They lied; they told us the drone didn't belong to them," a former Turkish official told me last month. "But it had their markings."

Israel began cultivating strong relations with Baku in 1994, when Israeli telecommunications firm Bezeq bought a large share of the nationally controlled telephone operating system. By 1995, Azerbaijan's marketplace was awash with Israeli goods: "Strauss ice cream, cell phones produced by Motorola's Israeli division, Maccabee beer, and other Israeli imports are ubiquitous," an Israeli reporter wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

In March 1996, then-Health Minister Ephraim Sneh became the first senior Israeli official to visit Baku -- but not the last. Benjamin Netanyahu made the trip in 1997, a high-level Knesset delegation in 1998, Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in 2007, Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2009, and Lieberman again, as foreign minister, this last February. Accompanying Peres on his visit to Baku was Avi Leumi, the CEO of Israel's Aeronautics Defense Systems and a former Mossad official who paved the way for the drone agreement.

U.S. intelligence officials began to take Israel's courtship of Azerbaijan seriously in 2001, one of the senior U.S. military intelligence officers said. In 2001, Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems contracted with Georgia's Tbilisi Aerospace Manufacturing to upgrade the Soviet SU-25 Scorpion, a close air-support fighter, and one of its first customers was Azerbaijan. More recently, Israel's Elta Systems has cooperated with Azerbaijan in building the TecSar reconnaissance satellite system and, in 2009, the two countries began negotiations over Azeri production of the Namer infantry fighting vehicle.


Israeli firms "built and guard the fence around Baku's international airport, monitor and help protect Azerbaijan's energy infrastructure, and even provide security for Azerbaijan's president on foreign visits," according to a study published by Ilya Bourtman in the Middle East Journal. Bourtman noted that Azerbaijan shares intelligence data on Iran with Israel, while Murinson raised the possibility that Israelis have set up electronic listening stations along Azerbaijan's Iranian border.

Israeli officials downplay their military cooperation with Baku, pointing out that Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim nations that makes Israelis feel welcome. "I think that in the Caucasian region, Azerbaijan is an icon of progress and modernity," Sneh told an Azeri magazine in July 2010.

Many would beg to differ with that description. Sneh's claim "is laughable," the retired American diplomat said. "Azerbaijan is a thuggish family-run kleptocracy and one of the most corrupt regimes in the world." The U.S. embassy in Baku has also been scathing: A 2009 State Department cable described Aliyev, the son of the country's longtime ruler and former KGB general Heydar Aliyev, as a "mafia-like" figure, comparable to "Godfather" characters Sonny and Michael Corleone. On domestic issues in particular, the cable warned that Aliyev's policies had become "increasingly authoritarian and hostile to diversity of political views."

But the U.S. military is less concerned with Israel's business interests in Baku, which are well-known, than it is with how and if Israel will employ its influence in Azerbaijan, should its leaders decide to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The cable goes on to confirm that Israel is focused on Azerbaijan as a military ally -- "Israel's main goal is to preserve Azerbaijan as an ally against Iran, a platform for reconnaissance of that country and as a market for military hardware."

It is precisely what is not known about the relationship that keeps U.S. military planners up at night. One former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as "just too chancy, politically." However, he didn't rule out Israel's use of Azeri airfields to mount what he calls "follow-on or recovery operations." He then added: "Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It's extremely dangerous."

One of the senior U.S. military officers familiar with U.S. war plans is not as circumspect. "We are studying every option, every variable, and every factor in a possible Israeli strike," he told me. Does that include Israel's use of Azerbaijan as a platform from which to launch a strike -- or to recover Israeli aircraft following one? There was only a moment's hesitation. "I think I've answered the question," he said.








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03/28/2012

'Global March to Jerusalem':
Israel's borders on high alert as huge protests loom

By Lawahez Jabari, NBC News Producer
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_new...s-borders-on-high-alert-as-huge-protests-loom​

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian organizers are calling for massive demonstrations on Friday to mark Land Day, an annual event that commemorates the killing of six Arabs who were protesting Israeli land policies on March 30, 1976.

Tens of thousands are expected to participate in what organizers have billed a "Global March to Jerusalem." The plan is to have protesters from neighboring countries march up to the Israeli border to "demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and to protect Jerusalem," according to organizers.

The future status of Jerusalem is at the heart of the Palestinian movement and is the theme for the global Land Day. East Jerusalem is regarded as the likely capital of a future Palestinian state.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian activist, explained some of the reasoning for the march to NBC News during a recent interview in Ramallah.

"In light of the total failure of the peace talks, and given the Israeli destruction of the last potential two-state solution through settlement activities, we realize nothing will change unless we change the balance of power," said Barghouti. He added that organizers are trying to achieve that through this "non-violent peaceful resistance."

For many Palestinians, Land Day is an annual opportunity to demonstrate that Palestinians inside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza are united and share common goals.

This year will mark 36 years since Israel’s practice of expropriating Arab land to build Jewish settlements provoked protests by Arab residents in the Galilee and Negev. In addition to the six people who were killed, over 100 wounded during the ensuing violence. Since then Palestinians have commemorated March 30 as Land Day and have turned the day into a general protest against what they see as discriminatory practices by the Israeli government. So it seemed an appropriate date for activists to hold their march.

"The Global March to Jerusalem represents three things," said Barghouti. "First of all, the unity of the Palestinian people, and their struggle to achieve freedom and end occupation, for Palestinians in and out of Palestine; second, it affirms the centrality of the issues of land and Jerusalem to achieving Palestinian freedom; and third, it provides international solidarity with the Palestinian cause."

'Absolutely peaceful'

The organizers plan to send convoys of vehicles to approach Israel's borders simultaneously from four neighboring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. According to organizers, more than 600 institutions from 64 states have been involved in planning the march. Protests are also planned outside Israeli embassies in Europe and Arab countries. Organizers say they are hoping for 1 million people to demonstrate in various protests all over the world.

"The event is meant to be a non-violent protest that will include parliament members, citizens and religious figures from all over the world – including Jews, Israelis will also protest with us," Saied Yaqin, one of the march organizers, told NBC News.

Organizers of the march insist the protests will be orderly.

"This march is absolutely peaceful and non-violent, and we will try everything possible to prevent violence," Barghouti said. "Of course, if they use violence against us, the world should protest. But the march is absolutely peaceful and nobody will try to provoke violence."

But Israeli Defense Forces aren’t taking any chances.

A statement released by the IDF said they are "prepared for any eventuality and will do whatever is necessary to protect Israeli borders and residents."

Israel has also issued a stern warning to Arab countries and Palestinians to refrain from approaching the border.

Soldiers along the border have been instructed to be on high alert and they will reportedly have crowd-dispersal means at the ready and will also deploy marksmen. According to a Haaretz report, a so-called "skunk" device is being prepared that sprays a harsh-smelling substance at demonstrators.





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The Flying Dutchman said:

Organizers of the march insist the protests will be orderly.

"This march is absolutely peaceful and non-violent, and we will try everything possible to prevent violence," Barghouti said. "Of course, if they use violence against us, the world should protest. But the march is absolutely peaceful and nobody will try to provoke violence."

Click to expand...

Yeah, they'll 'try'. Sure they will. Just like they 'try' not to launch rockets constantly into Israel. All those vehicles approaching the borders at once. Not hard to hide AK's and mortars. I'm guessing if this comes to fruition that many IDF personnel will have itchy trigger fingers with that much pressure bearing down on them.

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Thursday March. 29, 2012

Israeli forces prepare for Arab 'Land Day' protests

The Associated Press
Date: Thursday Mar. 29, 2012 12:03 PM ET
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120329/israel-military-arab-protests-120329/​

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities say thousands of security forces are making final preparations for a series of Arab protests expected Friday in Israel and along its borders with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab countries.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says security was heightened on Thursday afternoon. Various police units were moved to different parts of the country.

The Israeli military is also stepping up its preparations. It says it is ready for "any eventuality" and will do "whatever is necessary" to protect the country's borders.

Israeli Arabs and Palestinians on Friday are marking "Land Day," an annual protest against what they say is discriminatory Israeli land policy.

Supporters in neighbouring Arab countries also plan protests in solidarity.


Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120329/israel-military-arab-protests-120329/#ixzz1qWWorECF



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Israel sees new advantage in
Iron Dome anti-missile system

By Sheera Frenkel / McClatchy Washington Bureau
Thursday, March 29, 2012 - Added 2 minutes ago
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/in...w_advantage_in_iron_dome_anti-missile_system/​

ASHKELON, Israel - Israel’s newest weapon sits squarely along the border of this southern Israeli town. The Iron Dome, a rocket interception system built by Israel, guards many of the cities that lie within the range of rockets fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The system, considered among the most advanced in the world, fires a missile to intercept incoming rockets after it gauges whether a rocket will fall in an area where it can cause damage. It is, according to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a "game changer."

When violence flared along the Israel-Gaza border earlier this month, the effectiveness of the Iron Dome was tested, and Israeli officials couldn’t have been more pleased.

Of the approximately 250 rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza, 166 entered Israel’s airspace, officials said. Of those, 74 would have struck civilian areas or buildings. The Iron Dome system intercepted 56 before they could land, a success rate of 75 percent. Israeli officials argue, however, that the Iron Dome also identified rockets that were headed for open areas, such as fields, and let them land harmlessly. Factoring those in, Israeli military officials argue that only 18 of the 166 landed anywhere on target, giving the system a success rate of nearly 90 percent.

Israeli military officers and politicians said the success of the system gave Israel "diplomatic maneuverability" that it didn’t have previously.

Israel Defense Forces chief Benny Gantz described the Iron Dome’s impact as a "serious and historical military change."

Gantz said the ability to protect Israeli population centers from rocket attacks removed one of the key factors that the military had always seen as a limitation on its operations: what the likelihood was of reprisals.

Now, Gantz added, the Israeli military can operate relatively undeterred without concern about rocket attacks. The barrage of rockets earlier this month was triggered by the targeted killing in a drone strike of Zuhair al-Qaissi, a senior member of the Popular Resistance Committee, an umbrella group that includes militants from various Palestinian factions.

Iron Dome is just the beginning, Gantz said. While it focuses on smaller rockets with a relatively short range, such as those from the Gaza Strip, Israel is installing other systems that are intended to stop larger missiles, fired from farther away.

David’s Sling, a system built in conjunction with the U.S. military, is designed to intercept medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles, such as those possessed by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Another system, the Arrow, also developed with the United States, would intercept ballistic missiles fired from hundreds of miles away.

Israeli military officials said they hoped the systems would deter militants from firing rockets.

"If they know we have the ability to stop their rockets from hitting their targets, they might abandon this method," said one Israel Defense Forces officer, who spoke to reporters recently on the condition of anonymity. "In the long run we can hope for this."

Already though, the impact on Israeli residents of the south has been felt. Writing in The Jerusalem Post, military analyst Yaakov Katz said that, "Israel’s political leadership is under less pressure from the public that is under the rocket fire. As a result, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak feel a need to escalate the operation."

Meira Cohanim, a 56-year-old resident of Ashkelon, said she felt comforted that the military was trying to intercept missiles from Gaza, even if the system wasn’t 100 percent effective.

"Before, you had this feeling that the rockets were just pounding away," she said. "And they would land wherever they did and your home was hit or it wasn’t. Now there is a feeling that something might be changing; we might be protected."

Iron Dome, she said, might give the Israel Defense Forces more leeway to operate in Gaza, but she hoped that it wouldn’t mean another war.

"The people in Gaza don’t have Iron Dome or even bomb shelters. I know some people here think it’s good for us to attack them, but there are innocents and children there, too," she said. "I hope Iron Dome brings peace, not one-sided war."







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Those who fervently believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim generally practice their furtive religion in obscure recesses of the Internet. Once in a while, they’ll surface in public to remind the news media that no amount of evidence can undermine their convictions.

In October 2008, at a town hall meeting in Minnesota for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a woman called Obama “an Arab.” McCain responded, incongruously enough, that Obama was, in fact, “a decent family man” and not an Arab at all. In an echo of this, a woman recently stood up at a town hall in Florida and began a question for Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum by asserting that the president “is an avowed Muslim.” The audience cheered, and Santorum didn’t bother to correct her.

Though they belong to a largely underground cult, the members of the Obama-is-Muslim congregation number as many as one third of all Republicans. Arecent poll found that only 14% percent of Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi believe that the president is Christian.

These true believers treat their scraps of evidence like holy relics: the president’s middle name, his grandfather’s religion, a widely circulated photo of Obama in a turban. They occasionally traffic in outright fabrications: that he attended a radical madrasa in Indonesia as a child or that he put his hand on the Qur’an to be sworn in as president. An even more apocalyptic subset believes Obama to be nothing short of the anti-Christ.


By and large, however, this cult doesn’t attract mainstream support from the larger church of Obama haters. Indeed, these more orthodox faithful have carefully shifted the debate from Obama being Muslim to Obama acting Muslim. Evangelical pundits, presidential candidates, and the right-wing media have all ramped up their attacks on the president for, as Baptist preacher Franklin Graham put it recently on MSNBC, “giving Islam a pass.”

The conservative mainstream still calls the president’s religious beliefs into question, but they stop just short of accusing him of apostasy and concealment. What they consider safe is the assertion that Obama is acting as if he were Muslim. In this way, Republican mandarins are cleverly channeling a conspiracy theory into a policy position.

There is a whiff of desperation in all this. After all, it’s not an easy time for the GOP. The economy shows modest signs of improvement. The Republican presidential candidates are still engaged in a fratricidal primary. By expanding counterterrorism operations and killing Osama bin Laden, the president has effectively removed national security from the list of Republican talking points.

One story, however, still ties together so many narrative threads for conservatives. Charges that the president is a socialist or a Nazi or an elitist supporter of college education certainly push some buttons. But the single surefire way of grabbing the attention of the media and the public -- as well as appealing to the instincts of the Republican base -- is to assert, however indirectly, that Barack Obama is a Manchurian candidate sent from the Islamic world.

Obama and the Muslim World

A succession of Republican candidates have attempted to run to the right of party favorite Mitt Romney by asserting that only a true conservative can defeat Obama in November. Most of them boasted of the same powerful backer. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum all declared that God asked them to run for higher office. Together with Newt Gingrich, they have deployed various methods of appealing to their constituencies, but none is more potent than religion.

Rick Santorum, a Catholic and the favorite of the evangelical community, has been particularly adept at using his soapbox as a pulpit. The president subscribes to a “phony theology,” Santorum has claimed, “not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.” Although he occasionally asserts that “Obama’s personal faith is none of my concern,” he nonetheless speaks of the president’s attempt to “impose values on people of faith”-- implying that the president is certainly no member of that community.

In his attacks on the president’s spirituality, Santorum is cleverly attacking Mitt Romney’s Mormonism as well (a theology also based on text other than the Bible). At the same time, the suggestion that Obama is somehow “other” operates as a code word for “Black” in a race in which race goes largely unmentioned.

It’s an odd set of charges. Obama, after all, did everything possible during his first presidential campaign to foreground his Christianity. He was repeatedly seen praying in churches and assiduously avoided mosques. He never made a campaign appearance with a prominent Muslim. He talked about his “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ.

The day after he clinched the Democratic Party nomination in 2008, he gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in which he reaffirmed that he was “a true friend of Israel.” Although he would occasionally mention his Muslim relatives and the time he spent in Indonesia as a child, he generally did whatever he could to emphasize only two out of the three major monotheisms.

As president, Obama has certainly “reached out” to the Muslim world. In Cairo, in June 2009, he spoke of seeking “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”

That new beginning, however, has yet to come. At home, for example, the Obama administration provided federal funds that the New York City Police Department then used to expand its surveillance of Muslim American neighborhoods. (Even the CIA was involved in this “human mapping” project.) The FBI has spent the Obama years rounding up suspected Muslim terrorists in operations that flirt dangerously with entrapment. The administration has expanded the no-fly list, though because the list is secret it’s difficult to know whether Muslim-Americans are specifically profiled. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that they are.

The administration’s record internationally is even more disappointing. The conduct of U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- the night raids, massacres (including the recent murders of 16 Afghan villagers), and the Qur’an burnings -- have enraged local Muslims. Obama has expanded the CIA’s drone air campaign by a considerable margin in the Pakistani borderlands. Civilian casualties, overwhelmingly Muslim, continue to occur there and in other “overseas contingency operations” as U.S. Special Operations Forces have dramatically expanded their activities in the Muslim world.

Despite right-wing charges, Obama has maintained a tight relationship with Israel and the Israeli leadership. As former New Republiceditor Peter Beinart concludes, “The story of Obama’s relationship to [Prime Minister] Netanyahu and his American Jewish allies is, fundamentally, a story of acquiescence.”

It’s no surprise, then, that surveys in six Middle East countries taken just before and two months after the Cairo speech in 2009, the Brookings Institution and Zogby International discoveredthat the number of respondents optimistic about the president’s approach to the region had suffered a dramatic drop: from 51% to 16%. A 2011 Pew poll found that U.S. favorability ratings had continued their slide in Jordan (to 13%), Pakistan (12%), and Turkey (10%).

And yet, perversely, the hard right in the U.S. maintains that the Obama administration has behaved in quite the opposite manner. “There’s something sick about an administration which is so pro-Islamic that it can’t even tell the truth about the people who are trying to kill us,” Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich typically said while campaigning in Georgia.

Pro-Islamic? That’s news to the Islamic world.

But it’s nothing new to the world of the U.S. right wing, which portrays Obama as anti-Israel and weak in the face of Islamic terrorism. At best, the president emerges from these attacks as a booster of Islam; at worst, he is the leader of a genuine fifth column.

Although the administration’s policy on Iran is virtually indistinguishable from those of his Republican challengers, they have presented him as an appeaser. The president who “surged” in Afghanistan somehow becomes, through the magic of election-year sloganeering, a pacifist patsy. Although Obama never endorsed the location of the “Ground Zero mosque,” his opponents have suggested that he did. Although he was slow to withdraw support from U.S. allies in the Middle East like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia, Republican candidates have accused the president of practically campaigning on behalf of the Islamist parties that have grown in influence as a result of the Arab Spring.

Barack Obama, the right wing has discovered, does not have to be Muslim to convince American voters that he has a suspect, even foreign, agenda. They have instead established a much lower evidentiary standard: he only has to actMuslim.

For this, they don’t need a birth certificate. All they need are allegations, however spurious, that the president is in league with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Arab Spring jihadists, and anti-Israel forces at home. This more subtle but no less ugly Islamophobia has already insinuated itself into the 2012 elections in a potentially more damaging way than did the overt disparagement of Obama’s religious bona fides back in 2008.

The Upcoming Elections

The 2010 midterm elections witnessed a sharp uptick in anti-Islamic sentiment. In addition to the concocted “Ground Zero mosque” controversy, Florida preacher Terry Jones threatened to burn the Qur’an in front of the world’s cameras; a group called Stop Islamization of America bought anti-Islamic ads on buses in major cities; and a movement to pass anti-Sharia legislation at a state level began in Oklahoma. In response to this brushfire of hatred, Timemagazine devoted a cover story to Islamophobia that year. On the right at least, Islam seemed on the way to becoming a litmus test in the way communism was during the Cold War.

Two years later, the hysteria seems to have subsided. The Islamophobes haven’t gone into hiding. They tried to organize an advertising boycott of the TV show All-American Muslim; they campaigned against halal meats. But these efforts didn’t get much traction.

Meanwhile, Park51-- the real name of the cultural center inaccurately dubbed the “Ground Zero mosque” -- opened in its original Park Street location with an exhibition by a Jewish photographer. Terry Jones is pursuing a quixotic bid for the presidency far from the media spotlight. Time has returned several times to the topic of Islamophobia, particularly after Anders Breivik’s bombing and shooting rampage in Norway in July 2011, but with none of the intensity of the summer of 2010. The anti-Sharia campaign has passed legislation in several states, and laws are pending in more than a dozen more. But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Oklahoma anti-Sharia statute unconstitutional, and the anti-Sharia crowd has been unable to provide a single piece of evidence that Islamic law poses any challenge to the U.S. legal system.

Don’t be fooled, though, by the relative quiet. It’s still early in the election cycle. The Republicans, arrayed in a circular firing squad, have been largely focusing their attacks on each other. The last man standing will marshal his resources to challenge Obama. In the unlikely event that Rick Santorum emerges as the Republican candidate, religion will be central to his attack on Obama and the Democrats.

Mitt Romney has a more ambivalent relationship to religion as a wedge issue, given the level of discomfort that many American have toward Mormonism. But there are no Mormon countries to which Romney can be accused of owing primary allegiance. It will be safe, in other words, to challenge Obama for acting rather than being Muslim, for deferring to the Muslim world much as anti-Catholic voters in 1960 imagined John F. Kennedy to be taking his orders directly from the Pope.

Romney is already lining up his ducks, welcoming onto his team Islam critic Walid Phares and attack ad specialist Larry McCarthy (who did an distortion-laden spot on the “Ground Zero mosque” back in 2010). After securing the nomination, Romney will simultaneously appeal to the center and shore up support among evangelicals. The message that Obama is weak, anti-Israel, and appeases Islamic movements and countries could catch the attention of both constituencies.

A disconnect between accusation and reality hardly matters in American politics these days. Obama the “socialist” somehow manages to work hand in hand with Wall Street financiers. Obama the “Nazi” courts AIPAC. Obama the “peacenik” has been very much a war president. And Obama the “Muslim” gets a big thumbs-down from the Muslim world.

The president makes a lousy Muslim Manchurian candidate, for he has disappointed his imagined Muslim handlers at virtually every turn. In an election in which racist slogans are off the table, however, the Islamophobic accusation of “acting Muslim” remains a politically acceptable chauvinism. Given the deep anti-Islamic currents in American culture, such accusations might unfortunately prove effective as well.






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Israel’s Secret Staging Ground

U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases
in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?

BY MARK PERRY |MARCH 28, 2012
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/28/israel_s_secret_staging_ground​

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled "Azerbaijan's discreet symbiosis with Israel." The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country's relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: "nine-tenths of it is below the surface."

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran's northern border and, according to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance -- the security cooperation between the two countries -- is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf -- but one that could include the Caucasus. The burgeoning Israel-Azerbaijan relationship has also become a flashpoint in both countries' relationship with Turkey, a regional heavyweight that fears the economic and political fallout of a war with Iran. Turkey's most senior government officials have raised their concerns with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with the Azeris, the sources said.

The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, were all contacted for comment on this story but did not respond.

The Azeri embassy to the United States also did not respond to requests for information regarding Azerbaijan's security agreements with Israel. During a recent visit to Tehran, however, Azerbaijan's defense minister publicly ruled out the use of Azerbaijan for a strike on Iran. "The Republic of Azerbaijan, like always in the past, will never permit any country to take advantage of its land, or air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we consider our brother and friend country," he said.

But even if his government makes good on that promise, it could still provide Israel with essential support. A U.S. military intelligence officer noted that Azeri defense minister did not explicitly bar Israeli bombers from landing in the country after a strike. Nor did he rule out the basing of Israeli search-and-rescue units in the country. Proffering such landing rights -- and mounting search and rescue operations closer to Iran -- would make an Israeli attack on Iran easier.

"We're watching what Iran does closely," one of the U.S. sources, an intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a prospective Israeli attack confirmed. "But we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it."

Israel's deepening relationship with the Baku government was cemented in February by a $1.6 billion arms agreement that provides Azerbaijan with sophisticated drones and missile-defense systems. At the same time, Baku's ties with Tehran have frayed: Iran presented a note to Azerbaijan's ambassador last month claiming that Baku has supported Israeli-trained assassination squads targeting Iranian scientists, an accusation the Azeri government called "a slander." In February, a member of Yeni Azerbadzhan -- the ruling party -- called on the government to change the country's name to "North Azerbaijan," implicitly suggesting that the 16 million Azeris who live in northern Iran ("South Azerbaijan") are in need of liberation.

And this month, Baku announced that 22 people had been arrested for spying on behalf of Iran, charging they had been tasked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to "commit terrorist acts against the U.S., Israeli, and other Western states' embassies." The allegations prompted multiple angry denials from the Iranian government.


It's clear why the Israelis prize their ties to Azerbaijan -- and why the Iranians are infuriated by them. The Azeri military has four abandoned, Soviet-era airfields that would potentially be available to the Israelis, as well as four airbases for their own aircraft, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance 2011.

The U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials told me they believe that Israel has gained access to these airbases through a series of quiet political and military understandings. "I doubt that there's actually anything in writing," added a senior retired American diplomat who spent his career in the region. "But I don't think there's any doubt -- if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they'd probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades."

The prospect of Israel using Azerbaijan's airfields for an Iranian attack first became public in December 2006, when retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira angrily denounced the George W. Bush administration's lack of action on the Iranian nuclear program. "For our part," he wrote in a widely cited commentary, "we should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran." The "coordination" that Tira spoke of is now a reality, the U.S. sources told me.

Access to such airfields is important for Israel, because it would mean that Israeli F-15I and F-16I fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight during a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but could simply continue north and land in Azerbaijan. Defense analyst David Isenberg describes the ability to use Azeri airfields as "a significant asset" to any Israel strike, calculating that the 2,200-mile trip from Israel to Iran and back again would stretch Israel's warplanes to their limits. "Even if they added extra fuel tanks, they'd be running on fumes," Isenberg told me, "so being allowed access to Azeri airfields would be crucial."

Former CENTCOM commander Gen. Joe Hoar simplified Israel's calculations: "They save themselves 800 miles of fuel," he told me in a recent telephone interview. "That doesn't guarantee that Israel will attack Iran, but it certainly makes it more doable."

Using airbases in Azerbaijan would ensure that Israel would not have to rely on its modest fleet of air refuelers or on its refueling expertise, which a senior U.S. military intelligence officer described as "pretty minimal." Military planners have monitored Israeli refueling exercises, he added, and are not impressed. "They're just not very good at it."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who conducted a study for a think tank affiliated with the Swedish Ministry of Defense of likely Israeli attack scenarios in March 2010, said that Israel is capable of using its fleet of F-15I and F-16I warplanes in a strike on Iran without refueling after the initial top-off over Israel. "It's not weight that's a problem," he said, "but the numbers of weapons that are mounted on each aircraft." Put simply, the more distance a fighter-bomber is required to travel, the more fuel it will need and the fewer weapons it can carry. Shortening the distance adds firepower, and enhances the chances for a successful strike.

"The problem is the F-15s," Gardiner said, "who would go in as fighters to protect the F-16 bombers and stay over the target." In the likely event that Iran scrambled its fighters to intercept the Israeli jets, he continued, the F-15s would be used to engage them. "Those F-15s would burn up fuel over the target, and would need to land."

Could they land in Azerbaijan? "Well, it would have to be low profile, because of political sensitivities, so that means it would have to be outside of Baku and it would have to be highly developed." Azerbaijan has such a place: the Sitalcay airstrip, which is located just over 40 miles northwest of Baku and 340 miles from the Iranian border. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sitalcay's two tarmacs and the adjacent facilities were used by a squadron of Soviet Sukhoi SU-25 jets -- perfect for Israeli fighters and bombers. "Well then," Gardiner said, after the site was described to him, "that would be the place."

Even if Israeli jets did not land in Azerbaijan, access to Azeri airfields holds a number of advantages for the Israel Defense Forces. The airfields not only have facilities to service fighter-bombers, but a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said that Israel would likely base helicopter rescue units there in the days just prior to a strike for possible search and rescue missions.


This officer pointed to a July 2010 joint Israeli-Romanian exercise that tested Israeli air capabilities in mountainous areas -- like those the Israeli Air Force would face during a bombing mission against Iranian nuclear facilities that the Iranians have buried deep into mountainsides. U.S. military officers watched the exercises closely, not least because they objected to the large number of Israeli fighters operating from airbases of a NATO-member country, but also because 100 Israeli fighters overflew Greece as a part of a simulation of an attack on Iran. The Israelis eventually curtailed their Romanian military activities when the United States expressed discomfort with practicing the bombing of Iran from a NATO country, according to this senior military intelligence officer.

This same senior U.S. military intelligence officer speculated that the search and rescue component of those operations will be transferred to Azerbaijan -- "if they haven't been already." He added that Israel could also use Azerbaijan as a base for Israeli drones, either as part of a follow-on attack against Iran, or to mount aerial assessment missions in an attack's aftermath.

Azerbaijan clearly profits from its deepening relationship with Israel. The Jewish state is the second largest customer for Azeri oil - shipped through the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline -- and its military trade allows Azerbaijan to upgrade its military after the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) slapped it with an arms embargo after its six-year undeclared war with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Finally, modernizing the Azeri military sends a clear signal to Iran that interference in Azerbaijan could be costly.

"Azerbaijan has worries of its own," said Alexander Murinson, an Israeli-American scholar who wrote in an influential monograph on Israeli-Azeri ties for Tel Aviv's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "The Baku government has expelled Iranians preaching in their mosques, broken up pro-Iranian terrorist groups, and countered Iranian propaganda efforts among its population."

The deepening Azeri-Israeli relationship has also escalated Israel's dispute with Turkey, which began when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship destined for Gaza in May 2010, killing nine Turkish citizens. When Turkey demanded an apology, Israel not only refused, it abruptly canceled a $150 million contract to develop and manufacture drones with the Turkish military -- then entered negotiations with Azerbaijan to jointly manufacture 60 Israeli drones of varying types. The $1.6 billion arms agreement between Israel and Azerbaijan also left Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "sputtering in rage," according to a retired U.S. diplomat.

The centerpiece of the recent arms deal is Azerbaijan's acquisition of Israeli drones, which has only heightened Turkish anxieties further. In November 2011, the Turkish government retrieved the wreckage of an Israeli "Heron" drone in the Mediterranean, south of the city of Adana -- well inside its maritime borders. Erdogan's government believed the drone's flight had originated in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and demanded that Israel provide an explanation, but got none. "They lied; they told us the drone didn't belong to them," a former Turkish official told me last month. "But it had their markings."

Israel began cultivating strong relations with Baku in 1994, when Israeli telecommunications firm Bezeq bought a large share of the nationally controlled telephone operating system. By 1995, Azerbaijan's marketplace was awash with Israeli goods: "Strauss ice cream, cell phones produced by Motorola's Israeli division, Maccabee beer, and other Israeli imports are ubiquitous," an Israeli reporter wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

In March 1996, then-Health Minister Ephraim Sneh became the first senior Israeli official to visit Baku -- but not the last. Benjamin Netanyahu made the trip in 1997, a high-level Knesset delegation in 1998, Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in 2007, Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2009, and Lieberman again, as foreign minister, this last February. Accompanying Peres on his visit to Baku was Avi Leumi, the CEO of Israel's Aeronautics Defense Systems and a former Mossad official who paved the way for the drone agreement.

U.S. intelligence officials began to take Israel's courtship of Azerbaijan seriously in 2001, one of the senior U.S. military intelligence officers said. In 2001, Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems contracted with Georgia's Tbilisi Aerospace Manufacturing to upgrade the Soviet SU-25 Scorpion, a close air-support fighter, and one of its first customers was Azerbaijan. More recently, Israel's Elta Systems has cooperated with Azerbaijan in building the TecSar reconnaissance satellite system and, in 2009, the two countries began negotiations over Azeri production of the Namer infantry fighting vehicle.


Israeli firms "built and guard the fence around Baku's international airport, monitor and help protect Azerbaijan's energy infrastructure, and even provide security for Azerbaijan's president on foreign visits," according to a study published by Ilya Bourtman in the Middle East Journal. Bourtman noted that Azerbaijan shares intelligence data on Iran with Israel, while Murinson raised the possibility that Israelis have set up electronic listening stations along Azerbaijan's Iranian border.

Israeli officials downplay their military cooperation with Baku, pointing out that Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim nations that makes Israelis feel welcome. "I think that in the Caucasian region, Azerbaijan is an icon of progress and modernity," Sneh told an Azeri magazine in July 2010.

Many would beg to differ with that description. Sneh's claim "is laughable," the retired American diplomat said. "Azerbaijan is a thuggish family-run kleptocracy and one of the most corrupt regimes in the world." The U.S. embassy in Baku has also been scathing: A 2009 State Department cable described Aliyev, the son of the country's longtime ruler and former KGB general Heydar Aliyev, as a "mafia-like" figure, comparable to "Godfather" characters Sonny and Michael Corleone. On domestic issues in particular, the cable warned that Aliyev's policies had become "increasingly authoritarian and hostile to diversity of political views."

But the U.S. military is less concerned with Israel's business interests in Baku, which are well-known, than it is with how and if Israel will employ its influence in Azerbaijan, should its leaders decide to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The cable goes on to confirm that Israel is focused on Azerbaijan as a military ally -- "Israel's main goal is to preserve Azerbaijan as an ally against Iran, a platform for reconnaissance of that country and as a market for military hardware."

It is precisely what is not known about the relationship that keeps U.S. military planners up at night. One former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as "just too chancy, politically." However, he didn't rule out Israel's use of Azeri airfields to mount what he calls "follow-on or recovery operations." He then added: "Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It's extremely dangerous."

One of the senior U.S. military officers familiar with U.S. war plans is not as circumspect. "We are studying every option, every variable, and every factor in a possible Israeli strike," he told me. Does that include Israel's use of Azerbaijan as a platform from which to launch a strike -- or to recover Israeli aircraft following one? There was only a moment's hesitation. "I think I've answered the question," he said.







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March 29th, 2012
12:00 PM ET

U.S. moving minesweepers to waters near Iran

By Barbara Starr
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/29/u-s-moving-minesweepers-to-waters-near-iran/​

Four Navy minesweepers will be on their way to the Persian Gulf within weeks as part of an effort to boost American military capability in the region amid rising tensions with Iran, a Navy official says.

The minesweepers will be loaded onto cargo ships leaving the United States in late April, according to the Navy official.

The deployments were publicly confirmed by Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, earlier this month in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"We are moving four more mine sweeps to the theater," he said. "That'll make eight. We are moving airborne mine countermeasure helicopters. That'll take us to eight in theater. And ... those, working with the British mine sweeps there, which we exercise with frequently, sets us up a little bit there."

Each of the ships - the USS Sentry (MCM 3), USS Devastator (MCM 6), USS Pioneer (MCM 9) and USS Warrior (MCM 10) - carries a crew of about 60. All are equipped to detect and neutralize mines.

The Navy this month also sent to the region four additional MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters, which also have the capability to locate and destroy mines.

The additional deployments are part of an effort by Gen. James Mattis, head of the U.S. Central Command, to beef up the American military presence in the region in the face of Iranian threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States has long believed that if Iran tried to shut the strait down it would begin by seeding the waters with mines, which would keep both commercial and military shipping from operating. The Navy is increasingly concerned about Iran's use of undersea mines, which may be tethered to the sea floor and are difficult to detect.

New detection and destruction technologies including lasers are being developed but have yet to be deployed.

So far, Mattis has not requested additional aircraft carrier deployments, but several military officials say the effort is to keep two carrier groups in the region as much as possible. None of the officials would speak on the record due the sensitivity of discussing military deployments to the region.

The Navy is also finishing up refitting the USS Ponce (LPD-15) as a floating staging base. It's expected to also be sent to the region in the next few months, manned by a military and civilian crew. It will provide refueling, resupply and maintenance operations for minesweepers, aircraft and patrol craft at sea in the region.





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Reports Israel at the gates
of Iran slammed by Baku

Published: 29 March, 2012, 19:22
http://rt.com/news/azerbaijan-israel-iran-speculations-775/​

Baku has denied reports that an agreement has been reached between Azerbaijan and Israel, granting the latter air base access for potential strikes on Iran. A spokesman from the Azeri defense ministry said the claims are “absurd and groundless”.

*Senior official in Azerbaijan’s Presidential Administration Ali Gasanov called the reports a provocation. He told journalists that “certain international organizations and media structures under their control are intentionally increasing tensions around Iran” in order to worsen relations between his country and Iran.


Gasanov also reiterated “that there will be no actions against Iran… from the territory of Azerbaijan" – and that they won’t allow such speculation to damage ties between Baku and Tehran.


These statements come on the back of a Foreign Policy report that claimed cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel was "heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran".

The article also suggested that access to Azerbaijani airfields near the Iranian border could give Israeli fighter planes logistical advantages in carrying out attacks on research facilities in Iran – whom Tel Aviv accuses of developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has vehemently denied the accusations, maintaining that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. But Israel has been chomping at the bit to strike the Islamic Republic, and egging on key ally USA to join in. Many suggest that this is because Israel fears it may soon lose its window to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. Washington, on the other hand, is pressuring Tel Aviv to hold off on what it considers would be a premature and dangerous attack on Iran, arguing that economic sanctions require time to take hold.





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Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.debka.com/article/21868/

Kuala Lumpur seizes suitcases of counterfeit US dollars traced to Iran
DEBKAfile Special Report March 28, 2012, 6:19 PM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran counterfeit currency Malaysia US intelligence China
Fake dollar bills

Two suitcases crammed with counterfeit $100 bills were seized in Kuala Lumpur this week from two Iranian traders who flew in to the Malaysian capital on direct flights from Tehran. One contained 153,000 forged dollars and the second 203,000. The traders claimed they were issued the bills by tellers at the Iranian central bank CBI to finance their business transactions and had no notion they had not been dealt genuine greenbacks.

debkafile’s sources report that alert local businessmen spotted the fake currency despite its quality workmanship when they used it to pay for their purchases.

According to a Malaysian source, the bills were finely printed on special paper. The initial investigation identified the paper as made in China especially for use in printing currency and a supply recently reached Iran.

Malaysian authorities have not identified the Iranian traders who were taken in custody except by their initials – H.M. and A. G.

Kuala Lumpur finds itself in the middle of an international scandal developing around the affair and involving the US, China and Iran. The Iranian embassy is leaning hard on the government to keep it hushed up, threatening to cut off commercial ties if the story is made public, or if the two traders are forced to stay in the country until the legal proceedings take their course.

Tehran fears the embarrassment attending disclosure of its suspected traffic in counterfeit US currency as the April 13 date approaches for important nuclear negotiations with the six world powers. Iran would find itself badly compromised on world financial markets on top of the difficulties it already faces as a result of the tough international financial sanctions clamped down by America and Europe.

debkafile’s intelligence sources disclose that American undercover agents are in Malaysia trying to get hold of some of the fake bills on order to have them tested in their US laboratories for clues to their provenance. They could then be compared with other forged $100 bills seized last year in several Middle Eastern countries.

Comparison with fake bills impounded recently in Iraq, for example, or in the Persian Gulf countries, might shed light on dark corners of Iran’s industry for the counterfeiting and circulation of American dollars and establish whether it is run by criminal mafias or clandestine elements tied to the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Chinese secret agents have also arrived to track the paper’s trail to Iran The special paper used for the dollar bills seized in Kuala Lumpur is exported from China only under special license.

Evidence that the Islamic regime of Iran was responsible for the wholesale forgery of the emblematic American dollar would have harsh consequences. Washington would not pull its punches and would convince a widening circle of world governments to step up sanctions against Tehran for the crime of undermining international currency.

Since the international money transfer firm SWIFT severed its ties with most of Iran’s banks, the traders have had to travel abroad in person carrying suitcases full of cash for contracting their business operations.

Five months ago, Western intelligence circles issued a warning that Iran would try and overcome the shortage of available foreign currency reserves caused by sanctions by printing counterfeit $100 bills.

In 2010, when US forces were still present in Iraq, they captured several million American dollars suspected to have been forged in Iran and smuggled into Iraq.

In 2010, the US Federal Reserve Board had a new $100 bill designed to defeat counterfeiters. Its release was delayed by printing defects.

I don't have an easy feeling about this land protest on Friday on Israel's borders. Too many opportunities for trigger events to kick off a war. The organizers can claim peaceful intent but anyone with an intelligence level above 60 knows even if the organizers are sincere in that outcome they do NOT have that kind of control over all the factions that will be participating. Israel is the dry tinder and there will be convoys of vehicles from four directions carrying matches but we are told that nothing will happen. These are people who condemn Israel when she protects herself from incoming rockets and then claim they (the terrorists) are the victims when Israel comes after their leadership. If they do provoke Israel tomorrow, they will play the same story and claim they are the victims. It will be a miracle if nothing happens.

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*Fox news just had the ex-ambassador to the UN on; and the guy was saying that "Our intelligence alphabets" openly "Outted" Israel's shared intel about them having a "deal" w/Azerbaijan to use it's air bases to attack Iran! This was done, to discourage Israel from striking Iran!!!

In more plainer words folks! Our government has intentionally "Ratted Israel out!" May the Lord have mercy upon US.

Iran War Watch:
Azerbaijan Airbases and the Israel Military

By Asawin Suebsaeng
Thu Mar. 29, 2012 10:33 AM PDT
Allocer/Wikimedia Commons
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/iran-war-watch-azerbaijan-airbases-israel-airstrike​

Are the United States and Iran on a collision course over the Middle Eastern country's controversial nuclear program? We'll be posting the latest news on Iran-war fever—the intel, the media frenzy, the rhetoric.

Senior US intelligence officials say that the Israeli military has recently gained access to airbases in the Republic of Azerbaijan, an independent Turkic state on Iran's northern border.

Foreign Policy's Mark Perry, who broke the story, explains what it means for the Israeli-Iranian standoff:


[A]ccording to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance—the security cooperation between the two countries—is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran...[F]our senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners...must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf—but one that could include the Caucasus.

[...]

It is precisely what is not known about the relationship that keeps U.S. military planners up at night. One former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as "just too chancy, politically." However, he didn't rule out Israel's use of Azeri airfields to mount what he calls "follow-on or recovery operations." He then added: "Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It's extremely dangerous."

In case you're curious, here's what an airbase in Azerbaijan looks like:



The Azerbaijani government flat-out denied the FP report on Thursday. Teymur Abdullayev, a spokesman for the country's defense ministry, called the allegations "absurd and groundless," and another senior official in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, vowed that "there will be no actions against Iran...from the territory of Azerbaijan."

Despite Baku's denials, this story will undoubtedly damage the already fraught relationship between Azerbaijan and its neighbor to the south. The Iranian government openly disapproves of Azerbaijan's friendly relations with Israel—the two countries' partnership includes over a billion dollars worth of arms shipments to Azerbaijan from the Jewish state—and Iranian authorities have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan of colluding with Israeli spies and assassins. Police in Azerbaijan this month arrested 22 terror suspects who were supposedly receiving marching orders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Meanwhile, Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz doesn't buy the speculation of an Israeli airstrike being launched out of an Azeri airbase:


[A] cursory glance at a map hardly bears it out. A range of American military experts claim that Azeri airfields would be invaluable for Israel as it would solve some of the fuel/range issues of a 2000+ km strike, they fail to address the problem of where the Israeli warplanes can fly to once they have refueled in Azerbaijan. There is no friendly route to fly back to Israel, except over Iranian or Turkish territory, hardly appealing alternatives once an attack has already been carried out and both countries will be on highest alert...Other uses proposed in the FP feature, using Azeri fields just in the case of emergency landings or using them to base search-and-rescue helicopters or reconnaissance drones, makes more sense.





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Israel cannot trust the current administration, I'm sure that's not lost on them, and hasn't been for some time. Whatever information they shared, they knew in advance, perhaps counted on, it being leaked. If Iran didn't know this already, they do for sure now. I don't think Israel welcomes war, they would prefer a peaceful resolution. Leaking this information informs all the little people that they mean business if something isn't done about Iran. The west isn't very good at chess, and Obama's actions are predictable. Israel knows her enemies and how to use their moves to her advantage.

Some thing's up. Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has done something that hasn't been done in many years. He has cancelled ALL leaves for Passover.

Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has ordered all IDF units to cancel their traditional Passover breaks so that they can operate in full capacity over the upcoming holiday, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday.

The implication of the decision is that for the first time in many years, all IDF units will maintain their regular operations and remain on full alert throughout the holiday.

As result of the unexpected decision, thousands of soldiers at various IDF headquarters and bases will have to report for duty as usual in order to allow their units to operate with no interruption.

IDF officials dismissed suggestions that the decision is related to operational circumstances or preparations for military maneuvers. The army said Chief of Staff Gantz made the call after asserting that he does not accept the notion of an army-wide Passover vacation.

However, IDF soldiers who received the news Tuesday could not be convinced that the timing of the decision was arbitrary.

Notably, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere on Tuesday said that after meeting Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak, he was more concerned about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran.

Over the years, an army-wide break during Passover became a tradition followed by all major military units, including the Air Force, Navy and intelligence corps. The IDF's headquarters in Tel Aviv is also traditionally deserted during the holiday.

But as noted, the longtime tradition will be broken this year, as soldiers will have to divide their vacation days among themselves in order to ensure that their units maintain their full capacity to operate if needed.

Source
Every military man will tell you that if you want rumors to run rampant you cancel all leaves. I could speculate for hours on this but I won't. I'll let you, my truth seekers to put 2+2 together. I hope it equals 4

http://findalismonkeyinthemiddle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/idf-cancelling-all-passover-leaves.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4209387,00.html