Elisabeth Bumiller’s article in the New York Times outlining the way Israel plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, was summarily dismissed by military affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari He intimated that Ms Bumiller’s piece was little more than amateur dabbling in a field she is unfamiliar with. Under the heading “Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets” Bumiller NYT’s national affairs correspondent described the logistic difficulties involved in such an attack. She based her article on interviews with a retired US air force general, a former Pentagon official and a former CIA director. All assume that Israel will try to destroy the Iranian targets by deploying its F15 and F16 fighter bombers in a massive assault on the Iranian nuclear sites. This simplistic frontal attack scenario ignores all other possibilities. Perhaps the only redeeming part of the article was a paragraph admitting that there is a dearth of information regarding the IDF’s capabilities and operative plans. “Still, a top defense official cautioned in an interview last week that ‘we don’t have perfect visibility’ into Israel’s arsenal, let alone its military calculations. His views were echoed by Anthony H. Cordesman, an influential military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ‘There are a lot of unknowns, there are a lot of potential risks, but Israel may know that those risks aren’t that serious,’ he said.” Dr. Ronen Bergman, a highly respected military affairs journalist and author has improved that visibility. In a lead article he wrote for Yediot Ahronot's weekend magazine dedicated to the Jericho project Bergman broke a major taboo. Admittedly, he was careful to qualify just about every claim he made with the standard censorship evading phrase "according to foreign/western sources," but the mere mention of the code name “Jericho” was a major departure from accepted news media etiquette. Of course anyone can surf Wikipedia references relating to Israel’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and discover that for the past fifty years Israel in conjunction with three other nations has designed and developed a series of ballistic missiles. Nevertheless, a shroud of mystery surrounds the Jericho project. Hitherto the only reference to it was found in external sources. Israel has never officially confirmed or denied its existence. A vapour trail seen careering across the sky south of Tel Aviv early one morning in November last year aroused no special interest. After all, the nearby Palmahim air force base is used for test launching of rocket defence systems. A brief statement released by an IDF spokesman the same day mentioned the testing of a new missile engine but provided no technical details. Later references to the event in the Israeli news media quoted foreign news sources without identifying the particular "projectile." Unfettered by Israeli security censorship a column in the Irish Times described how Israel had conducted a successful launch of the Jericho-3 intercontinental ballistic missile. The report in the Irish Times wasn't groundbreaking news. In the past, both foreign news media and defence industries publications have mentioned the Jericho missile project and the specific Jericho-3 model too. However, Ronen Bergman’s follow-through tracing the development of the Jericho missile from its very inception in the early 1960s till the recent test launching, revealed hitherto unknown details and hinted that Israel has more than one operative plan for dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat. In his article Bergman relates to an early cooperation with France in the 1960s that produced the first prototype missile dubbed Jericho 1. This early version had a range of 500km and was capable of carrying a 750kg warhead. This joint venture came to an end after the Six Day War when France imposed an embargo on arms sales to Israel. Notwithstanding this setback development work continued with the help of another partner. In his timeline of the Jericho saga Bergman introduced an unprecedented "parading" of the missiles in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. He quotes the very reliable Jane's Defence Weekly and claims that the much needed US arms airlift was impeded by an intentionally slow implementation. He says the missiles were taken from their hangers/silos and given an "airing" for the sake of the US reconnaissance satellites. The Americans understood the message and the arms deliveries continued. At a later stage in the war, according to the same source, the Russians stationed support forces in the Nile Delta region. A repeat performance of the open air show took place, this time for the sake of Russian reconnaissance satellites. The message Israel wanted to convey was, "We have gone crazy, get the hell out of here." On that occasion too the gambit worked. The Russians packed up and left.
After 1973 Israel explored other possibilities for further research and development in its missile programme and approached two potential partners, each separately, namely Iran and South Africa. At that time South Africa was ruled by a white majority government pursuing an Apartheid policy so Israel preferred dealing with Iran. As we recall Iran was still under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It has been argued that Israel sought a joint venture based on the reasoning that it could offer a foreign partner its acquired expertise and experience in the field of missile technology and the prospective partner would provide the money, resources and a lot of empty space where the products could be tested without nosey neighbours knowing what it was doing. The negotiations led to a joint venture with Iran aimed at producing a two-stage missile capable of reaching targets 1,700 km away. A prototype dubbed the Jericho-2 was produced and tested A more advanced version, the Jericho-3 designed to have a range of 4,500 km was planned for development at a later stage. Details of the joint venture were discovered in documents found in the U.S embassy when it was seized following the return of the Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini to Iran after the fall of the Shah.
At the end of 1978 when demonstrations in support of Khomeini spread throughout Iran the Israelis saw the writing on the wall and decided to pack up and go home.
In some ways the South African option was more convenient than the joint venture with Iran. There was no cause to suspect that technical details would be passed on to one of Israel’s enemies. Details of the joint initiative appeared in a number of publications recently, some of them in limited editions. It’s interesting to speculate why this information is coming to light now and not immediately after the collapse of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Ronen Bergman says that when the Israel – South African joint venture ended shortly before the collapse of the South African apartheid government, the Israelis requested that all documents relating to the two nation cooperation be destroyed. It appears that copies of these documents were filed in the government archives and only recently were they made available to researchers. Two years ago Sasha Polakow-Suransky senior editor at Foreign Affairs published a book titled “The Unspoken Alliance “ describing Israel’s relationship with Apartheid South Africa. The author’s source material was gleaned mainly from the South African archives.
At this juncture I want to pause and consider some of the moral ramifications of the links Israel forged with two unsavoury regimes - Mohammad Pahlavi’s autocratic government and the much despised South African Apartheid government. For that matter why did Israel invest large sums of money and enormous efforts in its ballistic missile venture? Well, existential dangers concerned us just as much in the 1960s as they do now. Israel had to prepare for every contingency. If that meant making a Faustian bargain, where the devil is Pahlevi's Iran or Apartheid South Africa, our leaders at the time thought it was prudent to do so because it was the only choice they had. Today, Israel bashers like the Guardian and to a lesser extent Sasha Polakow-Suransky and others are exploiting yellowing pages from archived minutes to malign Israel. In a review of Polakow-Suransky's book The London Review of Books related to the Israel-South African weapons cooperation. "When it comes to choosing our friends,' the president of the Israeli-South Africa Chamber of Commerce said in 1983', 'we haven’t got too many friends we can afford to antagonise. Pariahs can’t be choosers.' That seems to have been the fundamental basis of the relationship between them." Defence analysts and layman alike have questioned the wisdom of the open debate being conducted in the Israeli news media and the halls of government regarding the need for an Israeli preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. It appears the Iranian leadership finds it very disconcerting. In fact Mohammad Hejazi the deputy head of the Islamic Republic's armed forces has threatened to preempt our preemptive strike, namely beating us to the punch. "Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran's national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions," he said on Tuesday. These threats and counter-threats have created an atmosphere of brinkmanship. The Israeli logic seems to be that the perceived existential danger is real. We are preparing for every contingency. If as a result of our sabre rattling the US and the EU impose more stringent sanctions on Iran, namely, really crippling sanctions, then so be it. The Iranian threat to preempt our preemptive attack threat indicates that they are really concerned.
I don't know why our defence establishment chose the name Jericho for its ballistic missile programme. Jericho is a very unimpressive aggregation of dusty Palestinian residential neighbourhoods adjacent to an old Ottoman administrative centre, The nearby archaeological site is the Jericho of old. It is the lowest permanently inhabited site on earth. It is also believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
The town is best remembered for the biblical account of how Joshua and his original "big band" brought the walls down with their trumpet playing. We tend to overlook the espionage provided by Rahab a local harlot. Another example of doing "whatever it takes" to achieve the end.
Have a good weekend.
Beni 23rd of February, 2012
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