Huge gusts of words

Over the years columnist Roger Cohen has been both praised and taken to task by critics and fellow journalists. Following two visits he made to Iran in 2009 Cohen wrote a series of articles in the New York Times expressing opposition to military action against Iran and encouraging negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic. He also remarked that Iranian Jews were well treated, and said the Jewish community was "living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility." At that time Jonathan S. Tobin Executive editor of Commentary wrote, "Yet for all of his experience in the field, Cohen’s accounts of his journey made it seem more like a trip to a latter-day version of Omar Khayyam’s Persia than to the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." Tobin’s criticism conjured up ghosts of another era, “Cohen’s work inevitably invokes memories of Times journalists who have served in the past as apologists for other tyrants—principally Walter Duranty, the paper’s Moscow bureau chief from 1922 to 1936, who helped tamp down American outrage about the regime of Josef Stalin. Duranty’s work whitewashed the Communists and Stalin.”

In the interviews he conducted in Iran Cohen paid an Iranian agency for the services of a translator. It transpired that he was manipulated by the Farsi translator and carefully monitored and manoeuvred by the Iranian government. His depiction of Jewish life in Iran sparked criticism from columnists and activists, notably Jeffrey Goldberg of the The Atlantic Monthly. In an effort to counter the criticism Cohen accepted an invitation to meet with selected members of Los Angeles's Iranian Jewish and Bahai communities at Sinai Temple. After the meeting Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple said, "Increasingly I came to believe that Iran was not Cohen's sole concern; he wanted it as a stick with which to beat Israel over Gaza, whose incursion he wrote left him ashamed." Cohen opposed Operation Cast Lead, labelling it "wretchedly named — and disastrous". He accused Israelis of the "slaying of hundreds of Palestinian children" in the campaign. In a column he wrote a few days before the meeting in Los Angeles, Cohen said that he had "never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions." I recall commenting in my weekly newsletter that Roger Cohen’s opinion on Operation Cast Lead was based mostly on Hamas propaganda. I wrote, “Cohen criticises the demonisation of the Iranian regime and the ostracising of Hezbollah and Hamas." He wrote, "The equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel ever-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.”

Regarding the same “mellowing,” I mentioned that a year prior to Cohen’s reassurances about Iran and its subcontractors Hezbollah and Hamas Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Hamas hardliner Nizar Rayyan. “Goldberg asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (truce) with Israel, Rayyan responded, ‘The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don't need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel. Israel is impossibility. It is an offense against God.’

Well, as of late January 2009 Nizar Rayyan joined his maker, courtesy of the IDF.”

Last week Roger Cohen wrote again about Iran. His column in the New York Times entitled "The False Debate" appears to be an attempt to regain acceptance as a legitimate observer of the Iran dilemma. Cohen's opening remarks are meant in part to settle the score with Jeffrey Goldberg. He points out that Goldberg predicted Israel would attack Iran in the spring of 2011. He went on to say,"This month, after Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama, he wrote for Bloomberg that Obama’s words — 'I have Israel’s back' — meant something but not 'enough to stop Netanyahu.' ” Goldberg amended his opinion in a follow-up article for Bloomberg arguing that 'Netanyahu could be bluffing.' All the Israel prime minister was really deploying was “huge gusts of words infused with drama and portents of catastrophe.' ”

Cohen sagaciously called the opinion shift "The Goldberg Variations." However, the Iran debate is a very fluid discourse. Predictions do not always materialise and adamant rock-firm opinions sometimes become outmoded. Nevertheless, Cohen says, Jeffrey Goldberg is a journalist who has interviewed both Netanyahu and Obama on Iran. His opinion is worthy of serious note.

Cohen proffers an interim observation, "On the other hand, it seems to me evident that if Iran ever did move out of its comfort zone (which is dilatory opacity), throw out the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors monitoring its uranium enrichment, combine the elements of its nuclear and ballistic research, and rush for a bomb, it would face assault from Israel and the United States together. Neither can permit such a decisive shift in the Middle East strategic equation. Obama means it when he says containment of a nuclear Iran is not an option. "

He rehashes the national pride motivation to explain Iran's nuclear programme. "My sense of Iran’s psychology, based on five weeks spent there on two visits in 2009 and close observation since, includes these elements. The nuclear program is the modern-day equivalent of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh’s nationalization of the oil industry — an affirmation of Persian pride against the tutelage of the West and one it is determined will not end with a humiliation like Mossadegh’s overthrow in the British-American orchestrated coup of 1953.

It is a push for regional influence, a protest against double standards (nuclear-armed Israel, Pakistan and India), a nationalist cornerstone for a tired revolutionary regime and a calculated hedge — the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 'the guardian of the Revolution' and so must balance assertion with preservation, hence the brinkmanship that keeps Iran just short of steps that, it calculates, would trigger war."

"Is there a way out of the impasse?" Cohen asks," Perhaps not: Khamenei is a Brezhnevian figure with a locked-in world view of America as the Great Satan. But perhaps yes, if real concessions are made by both sides and the nuclear issue is not taken in isolation. "

His concluding remarks hint that the Iranian regime is looking for a face-saving way out of the present impasse. "The fundamental question the West must answer is how to satisfy Iran’s pride and usher it from historical grievance while capping its enrichment at a low, vigorously inspected level far from weapons grade (I can see no solution that does not allow some enrichment.) The fundamental question for the Islamic Republic is whether it can open itself to the West while preserving its system, a risk China took 40 years ago and won.

All the rest is no more than “huge gusts of words.”

At this juncture I think it's pertinent to quote directly from Goldberg's article in Bloomberg, "I’m talking about the belief, advanced to me by a former senior Israeli military official, and echoed by other non-insane people, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is bluffing: He has never had any intention of launching air and missile strikes against Iran's nuclear program, and is working behind the scenes with Obama to stop Iran through sanctions.

In this interpretation, what Netanyahu has been doing -- for the past 15 years, in and out of office -- is creating conditions in which U.S., Western and Arab leaders believe that they must deny Iran its dream of nuclear weapons or else suffer the chaotic fallout of a precipitous, paranoia-driven Israeli attack……. For at least the past two years, experts have argued that an Israeli strike is highly likely, yet it hasn’t happened.

Another attraction has to do with the personality of the man himself: Netanyahu is much better at talking than doing. Despite his reputation in some circles as a trigger-happy extremist, Netanyahu has, when compared with his recent predecessors, only sparingly used force against foes such as Hezbollah and Hamas……. The former Israeli military official I spoke with in Tel Aviv suggested three possible explanations for Netanyahu’s lack of action: 1) He is paralyzed and won’t act, no matter what he believes the threat to be; 2) He fears he would risk a serious rupture in his country’s alliance with the U.S. if he attacked Iran unilaterally; and 3) It’s all part of a game, one he has tacitly engineered with Obama.

I remain fairly confident that Netanyahu means it when he says that Israel would strike Iran to prevent it from going nuclear, but this third option is an interesting one, mainly because the game -- a sustained Israeli bluff -- would seem to be working so well."

Conspiracy theories sell well in Israel, so the Netanyahu - Obama tête-à-tête is quite believable. Goldberg says,. "When I asked Obama if he and Netanyahu are friends, he said, in essence, 'Well, we’re all so busy with our jobs.' It certainly seems clear from the outside that the two men don’t have a trusting relationship.

Is that observation enough to discard the "former Israeli military official's" tacitly engineered bluff theory?

What do we think? What does the rank and file Israeli think about attacking Iran?

A poll, conducted by Professor. Camil Fuchs for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, showed that 65 percent of respondents agreed with the claim that the price Israel would have to pay for living with the threat of an Iranian bomb would be greater than the price it would pay for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Only 26 percent disagreed with this claim, with nine percent saying they weren't sure.

The poll questioned 505 Jewish Israelis, representing five different populations: secular, traditional, religious, ultra-Orthodox and Russian immigrants. When breaking down the response into sectors, 72 percent of the religious Zionist respondents agreed with the statement, compared to 65-66 percent of the secular and traditional respondents. Men were also more likely to support the statement than women, with 73 percent of the men questioned preferring an attack on Iran, as opposed to 56 percent of the women.

When he was asked to comment on a report that Israel might use an airfield close to Azerbaijan’s border with Iran to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Azerbaijan's defence 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 defence 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.

Notwithstanding the minister's assurance Foreign Policy Magazine published an article entitled "Israel's Secret Staging Ground" claiming that U.S. officials believe Israel has gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan. The articles traces a painstaking development of close relations based on common interests between Azerbaijan and Israel Since 1994 Israel has been investing money and time in cultivating good relations between the two countries .

According to the author of the article, Mark Perry, “Obama administration officials now believe that the hidden aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance -- the security cooperation between the two countries -- is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran….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." Perry says, ”The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defence Forces, and the Mossad, 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.” …” 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. "

"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.

Defence 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, so being allowed access to Azeri airfields would be crucial.’ " Another nameless U.S military source told Perry, " 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.” ….”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 toa study published by Ilya Bourtman in the Middle East Journal.”…

I’m sure someone in Tehran reads Foreign Policy Magazine. Even if the Azerbaijan Connection is no more than a red herring it serves to escalate fears of an imminent attack. Perry says, ” Israeli officials downplay their military cooperation with Baku, pointing out that Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim nations that makes Israelis feel welcome. Former Israel Minister of Health, Dr. Ephraim Sneh told an Azeri magazine in July 2010 ‘I think that in the Caucasian region, Azerbaijan is an icon of progress and modernity,’ .

Many would beg to differ with that description. The retired American diplomat quoted by Perry said. “Sneh's claim is laughable; Azerbaijan is a thuggish family-run ‘kleptocracy’ and one of the most corrupt regimes in the world."

Well you can’t always pick and choose your friends.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 29^th of March, 2012.

Building bridges and busting bunkers.

Eilat our southernmost resort town also offers the tourist a number of out of town attractions. Evrona a salt harvesting installation just north of the town is one of them. Evrona has historical associations; however the evaporation pools are a fairly recent innovation. They form part of a commercial salt extraction plant set up in 1990. Sea water from the Eilat bay area is pumped and piped 10 km to the pools. The first stage of the production involves progressive evaporation and salt concentration. The brine coming out of the Evrona pools is three times as concentrated as sea water. It is then pumped back through an underground pipe to pools situated further south, near Eilat.. When the salt concentration reaches 30% it starts to crystalise. The salt is further processed to remove impurities and the water is drained from the pools and piped back to the sea. The Evrona pools would have remained a part of a seemingly unremarkable industrial plant were it not for the flamingos. It appears that soon after the salt plant began operating a bevy of flamingos discovered the pools and opted to include them in the itinerary of their traditional migration route. The flamingos at Evrona are without a doubt an impressive addition to the landscape. However, they are only a small tangential part of the great migration from Africa to points further east.

Lake Urmia, a salt lake in northwestern Iran is one of the preferred flamingo destinations.

You probably think this preamble describing salt pans and flamingos is just a roundabout way of introducing the Iran dilemma.

Well you’re wrong; it's a "red herring" thrown in to distract you This week the Iranian connection is far more circuitous.

Visitors to the Beit Shean national park, whether they are wandering around on their own or viewing the archaeological site with a tour guide usually miss the Roman arched bridge across the Harod stream by the town's northern entrance.

The lower part of the piers on which the bridge's arch rests are made of concrete! Not a simple burnt lime and sand aggregate, but a mix that contains an exact proportion of Pozzolana.

Pozzolana is a fine, sandy volcanic ash and in this case it was probably mined in Italy. It’s a siliceous and aluminous material which reacts with slaked lime in the presence of water. This forms compounds possessing cementitious properties at room temperature. Furthermore the aggregate possesses a unique property; it sets underwater, making it ideal for building river bridges. The Roman engineer and architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, better known as Vitruvius was a prolific writer and is best known for the fifteen volumes he wrote on Roman architecture. In one of his books he devoted a whole chapter to concrete. The Romans perfected the use of concrete, revolutionising the construction industry in the ancient world. Many of the concrete structures they built have survived the ravages of time, the elements and in some places major earthquakes. Roman engineers were the first, and until the industrial revolution, the only ones to construct bridges with concrete.

Few people, however, would think of concrete as a dual-purpose technology. But it can be. One country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).

Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.

Once again we encounter the old familiar confrontation. The assailant develops powerful weapons to penetrate his enemy's defences.

Once, besieged towns and fortresses had to contend with the adversary's battering rams and efforts to undermine the walls protecting them. Today the contest is between thick layers of UHPC and bunker busting bombs.

In a recent feasibility assessment defence secretary Leon Panetta admitted that US’s new bunker-busting bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator needs an upgrade to take on the deepest Iranian bunkers. But even that may not be enough to breach the concrete protecting the Iranian underground nuclear facilities at Fordo near Qom.

The Iranian UHPC like regular concrete is based on a sand and cement aggregate. In addition quantities of powdered quartz and various reinforcing metals and fibres are combined with it to produce an extremely impregnable product.

It would appear that the Iranians are sitting pretty with their centrifuges snugly tucked under a thick UHPC shield at the bottom of a mountain. Despite doubts about the penetrating effectiveness of available bunker busting bombs Israel Military Industries (IMI) has produced an upgrade of a standard middleweight U.S. bunker busting bomb. According to Defence News, "The improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon is the latest in a series of operational upgrades." The 500-pound upgrade known as the MPR-500 is a laser-guided projectile that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without disintegrating.

One of the drawbacks with bunker busting bombs is the weight factor. America's most formidable bunker buster, the GBU57, capable of penetrating 61 metres of reinforced concrete, weighs 14 tons and is more than 6 metres long. Due to size and weight limitations only B2 and B52 bombers can carry the giant bunker buster. The much lighter MPR-500 is a projectile bomb and doesn't rely on gravity for accelerated delivery.

So far most military analysts estimate that a successful attack on Iran would set back its nuclear programme by 1 to 6 years.

Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker reporting in the New York Times this week claimed that a recently played out U.S. War Game concluded that an Israeli strike against Iran would be perilous. The participants in the exercise could have saved time and energy. Ever since the military option was first placed "on the table" detractors have pointed out the negative repercussions of any attack on the Iranian nuclear installations.

US and Israeli decision makers have no doubt made damage assessments. They have considered whether setting back Iran's nuclear programme temporarily justifies incurring the damage of an Iranian counter attack.

The Israeli government has clearly indicated that if it is faced with an existential threat it will launch a preemptive attack on Iran.

News media critics have taken Israeli sabre rattling to task claiming that ratcheting up belligerent rhetoric is tantamount to "brinkmanship."

On the other hand Michael Singh managing director of The Washington Institute says that threatening to attack Iran has an intrinsic value.

Reviewing the effectiveness of the sanctions imposed on Iran, Singh says,

"So will these new, robust sanctions be the means by which the United States finally achieves its goals of compelling Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium and enter into serious talks aimed at quelling international concerns over Tehran's nuclear activities? Despite Iran's on-again, off-again talks with the so-called P5+1 powers -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as Germany -- the United States currently seems unlikely to meet these goals. It is not merely the toughness of sanctions or the sincerity of American overtures that will determine the outcome of U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, success depends on whether key allies -- notably China and Israel -- deem supporting the U.S. approach to advance their national interests, and whether Iran sees continuing its confrontational policies as potentially disastrous to its own."…

“The current U.S. strategy is therefore incomplete. To achieve its goals, the United States must clearly articulate what its red lines are in terms of Iranian behavior and credibly threaten Iran with military action should it cross those lines.” Concludes Singh.

In an articled entitled “The Iranian Decision on the Production of Nuclear Weapons” published today in Insight by the National Institute for Security Studies at Tel Aviv University,
Dr. Ephraim Asculai highlights some unknown aspects of the Iranian nuclear programme.

“It is generally assumed that Iran has all the necessary components for an implosion nuclear explosive device. At the same time, the status of fitting the nuclear explosive device on to a missile warhead is uncertain. Finally, the Iranian government has not given the go ahead for enriching uranium beyond 20 percent at its declared and inspected facilities.

This last statement is undisputed by both US and Israeli intelligence agencies and the respective governments. What, then, is the source of the apparent disagreement between them?

The first disputed issue is technical in nature: can the Iranians produce a workable nuclear explosive device. According to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iran stopped work on the development of this system in 2003, and it is uncertain whether it restarted this work. On the other hand, it may have an old Pakistani workable design, and it may have restarted the project after 2007. The New York Times reported on March 18, 2012 that some US assessments are that there is a high probability that Iran has not restarted this project.

Herein lies the big difference in the estimates of the situation. While there is little doubt that the Iranians can, if the technicians receive the order to do so, quite quickly produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for the first core of a nuclear explosive device, the US thinks that there would still be enough time to do something about it, since it would discover this in time. The same NYT article, however, also outlines US difficulties in gathering intelligence in Iran, so that there are some doubts about the efficacy of timely intelligence gathering and the wisdom of depending on the timely warning that would be given by the intelligence agencies. If the intelligence is encountering so many difficulties, how can one be sure of the intelligence-based estimates?”

Well that should set your mind at rest. Our immediate worries are far more tangible. Our youngest daughter Anat is flying to Brazil tomorrow. Like many parents we worry too much and tend to be over-protective. Hopefully she will find a travelling companion during her 2-3 month backpacking tour of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay.

On Saturday we too will go on tour, but only in our neck of the woods.

First we will go to see the wild lupines near the Arab village close by. After that we will drive along the Gilboa scenic route to see the wild poppies and the purple Gilboa Irises.

Have a good weekend..

Beni 22^nd of March, 2012

Surviving fine.

The news snippet headline was intentionally misleading - " Israelis are on their way to conquer Barcelona." Scrolling down the page I realised our intentions weren’t belligerent at all, at the most they were an expression of an aggressive business attitude. Instead of loading our bunker buster bombs and flying off to Iran, hordes of Israeli hi-tech entrepreneurs from a hundred Israeli communications companies flew west to participate in the Mobile World Congress exhibition held in Barcelona last week. The exhibition attracts leaders of the global industry. Tens of thousands of mobile network operators, policy makers and executives of the world's communication companies attended the event. It provides an opportunity to examine the industry's recent innovations and trends.

A few weeks ago nine Israeli aviation companies brought their wares to the Singapore Airshow. In its review of the airshow Jane's Defence Weekly focused attention on the Israeli pavilion and published an interview with Joseph Ackerman CEO of a leading Israeli defence electronics company, Elbit Systems In the interview Ackerman explained that Elbit manufactures and sells both standard off-the-shelf products and variant models adapted to meet specific customer requirements.. The company's business philosophy shared by other Israeli defence industries has been described as a gentle aggressive approach. Seemingly a contradiction in terms, it is much like the business belligerency of the Israeli exhibitors at the Barcelona MWC.

Belligerency aside, business or other kinds, this week I really wanted to write about Purim in Israel and how it is celebrated here at Ein Harod.

However, there was only one show in town, namely the AIPAC Conference held in Washington and I couldn't ignore it. More than 13000 people attended the opening session of this year’s conference.

Guest speakers included President Barack Obama, President of Israel Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. I doubt if many people really believed the conference would really help resolve the differences between Obama and Netanyahu regarding the way to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat .

Purim customs include bringing gifts to friends and neighbours, usually the triangular shaped pastry known as Hamantaschen (Haman's Ears). Ahead of the conference Netanyahu met with the President in the White House. As fitting the occasion and the Purim festival our Prime Minister gave the President a special gift copy of the Book of Esther. Netanyahu reminded the President of the existential threat recounted in that biblical text and its relevancy today. Later on during his address at the AIPAC conference Netanyahu spoke of the threat the Jewish people faced in 1944. The focus on that year was not wasted on Obama, he surely knew about the claim that the allied forces should have bombed Auschwitz in 1944. Author Michael Berenbaum has argued that it is not only a historical question, but "a moral question emblematic of the Allied response to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust ". During his second visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in 2008, President George W. Bush said "We should have bombed it." A number of historians have noted that this argument has no basis and that the idea of bombing Auschwitz or the rail lines leading to it is to a very large extent a post-war invention. The matter came to light in the late 1970s when aerial reconnaissance films, which had never been developed or seen by anybody during the war, were found by CIA analysts to show that U.S. bombers had flown over Auschwitz.-Birkenau on their way to and from bombing other targets. Nevertheless the Holocaust factor is central to Netanyahu's weltanschauung.

“A little more conversation” was how the Economist summed up three hours of sombre private discussion between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House. The “bottom line” of the piece in the Economist also related to existential threats and survival. "The very purpose of the Jewish state," Mr Netanyahu declared in the Oval Office, "is to restore to the Jewish people control over our destiny. And that is why my supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate." The Economist goes on to ask, “Posturing? Tactics? Or the cri de coeur of an Israeli leader weighed down by the tragedies of Jewish history? The guessing game goes on.”

Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with President Obama published last week in the Atlantic was probably the most significant event leading up to the Netanyahu – Obama encounter in Washington. Goldberg asked Obama, "Is it possible that the prime minister of Israel has over-learned the lessons of the Holocaust?" Obama cautiously side-stepped the question replying that he was sure the lesson of the Holocaust weighs on Netanyahu. Commenting on the interview journalist James Fallows said," This is a crucial question, but one that is best asked by someone, like Goldberg, whose support for the welfare of Israel and the idea of Zionism is not in doubt. Obama dealt with it well."

Fallows concluded, "The most positive way to describe US-Israeli relations is that they are close allies and partners. The more realpolitik description is that Israel is fundamentally dependent on long-term U.S. support and good will. In these circumstances it is graceless, to put it mildly, for the Israeli prime minister to take such a preemptory and borderline contemptuous tone toward the American president, while his de facto allies at the Emergency Committee for Israel launch a similarly dismissive and borderline insulting ad campaign about the president. Netanyahu is hardly being a chessmaster here; it is hard to imagine the leader of any other American ally assuming there would be no repercussions for behaving this way. Let us hope that the upcoming meeting and AIPAC session have a more respectful, partnerlike, and sober tone." The consensus in Israel is that very little has improved.

An editorial in the New York Times this week posed a critical question," What if sanctions and diplomacy are not enough?

President Obama has long said that all options are on the table. In recent days his language has become more pointed — urged on, undoubtedly, by Israel’s threats to act alone."

In his column in the New York Times this week Thomas L. Friedman said,

"The question of whether Israel has the need and the right to pre-emptively attack Iran as it develops a nuclear potential is one of the most hotly contested issues on the world stage today. It is also an issue fraught with danger for Israel and American Jews, neither of whom want to be accused of dragging America into a war, especially one that could weaken an already frail world economy." Friedman sums up, "It is important politically, because this decision about whether to attack Iran is coinciding with the U.S. election. The last thing Israel or American friends of Israel — Jewish and Christian — want is to give their enemies a chance to claim that Israel is using its political clout to embroil America in a war that is not in its interest."

Yediot Ahronot military affairs commentator Ron Ben Yishai asked, “ What should we do when Iran crosses the ‘red line,’ that is, the point where Israel and the US would agree that Iran's progress requires an Israeli or American military strike of any kind or a combination of the two. President Obama told AIPAC that the US won't tolerate a situation where Iran possesses nuclear weapons. However, Israel says defining the red line this way would in fact enable the Iranians to become a nuclear power. While Tehran won't possess a nuclear warhead or atomic bomb, it would be able to produce a nuclear device at any given moment. “

If this happens, Ben Yishai claims, Iran's leadership would merely have to decide to go ahead and within six months at most it could produce a nuclear weapon. “As opposed to uranium enrichment, the development of the actual weapon can be hidden relatively easily, and hence the Americans would not even know about it, as was the case when Pakistan, India and North Korea became nuclear powers.

Hence, Israel demands that the American ‘red line’ would be defined as ‘nuclear capability,’ that is, Iran's shift to producing 90% enriched uranium, or a large quantity of 20% enriched uranium. Netanyahu also made it clear to Obama that Israel's red line is the stage when the new, underground enrichment facility at Fordow approaches full capacity.”

Another NYT columnist, David E. Sanger wrote in a similar vein, ”While American intelligence agencies famously misjudged that Saddam Hussein was advancing on a bomb project when he had none, they also have a long record of missing signs that countries were getting very close to a bomb. They missed the timing of the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, to President Harry S. Truman’s outrage. They also got the timing wrong on China in the 1960s, India in the ’70s and Pakistan in the ’80s. To this day, even after North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, no one is sure whether the country’s engineers actually know how to make and deliver a real, working bomb.

The Israelis cite this sorry record to suggest that the Americans are overstating their capabilities. ‘The Israeli view is that because they have less capability to deal with Iran, they have less time to allow this to go on,’ one senior American official said. ‘They think that because we have more capability, we have more time.’”

Der Spiegel also related to the time factor, but in the sense of a time fuse.

In a lead article - Tehran's Last Chance - Israel, Iran and the Battle for the Bomb the paper said, “Twelve hours is also an agonizingly long time for politicians, acting under the pressure of an ultimatum, to prevent a war that would mean the inevitable deaths of large numbers of people.

In 1914, the German Reich gave the Russians 12 hours to stop mobilizing their troops. In 1956, the French and the British gave then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser the same amount of time to withdraw his troops from the Suez Canal, which he had just nationalized, and allow Israel to use the waterway again. A war ensued in both cases, partly because those who had threatened to use military force knew that it would hardly be possible to comply with their demands so quickly. In other words, they wanted the situation to escalate.

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would apparently also involve a 12-hour lead time. According to intelligence sources in Tel Aviv, Israeli politicians told Martin Dempsey, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Israeli leadership intends to give the White House only half a day's notice once it has decided to proceed with a military strike. In other words, Israel wants to be sure of two things: on the one hand, that US President Barack Obama is not taken completely by surprise by a possible attack, and on the other that he is not in a position to seriously question his ally's decision and undermine it with diplomatic efforts.

Is this how a country should treat its most important ally? Is this the way it should pressure the very power on whose goodwill it depends?”

Apparently Steve Clemons Washington editor at large for The Atlantic and editor in chief of Atlantic Live, favours containment. Relating to the Goldberg interview he wrote, “But what Obama seems not to understand in the well-meaning description of his attempted Iran strategy is that he is actually creating a railroad track to disaster. He conveys in the interview a disinterest in containment, suggesting that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon changes the world and triggers a rampant and dangerous proliferation in an unstable part of the global neighborhood.
Not all nuclear bombs are the same. Israel's 200 plus thermonuclear warheads are not simple fission devices and have a destructive capacity that could seriously end Iran as a functioning state. Iran, even if it were to produce a nuclear warhead tomorrow, would have none of the destructive capacity that Israel could rain down on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Anthony Cordesman, David Albright and others have done extremely important and useful, admittedly Stangelovian analyses of what a back-and-forth firing exchange of nuclear weapons would mean for both states. As Cordesman told me recently, Israel would survive fine -- Iran would be devastated.”

Next week my wife and I will holidaying in Eilat so I doubt if I will be able to post my weekly letter.

Let’s hope we will still be around in two weeks time.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 8^th of March, 2012.

ThThe best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley

The Israel-Iran confrontation ended this week, not with the anticipated bang but an ignominious whimper! Without firing a single shot the Iranians trounced Israel. As you have probably guessed I'm referring to the showdown in Hollywood between two nominees for the best foreign language film award. The judges awarded the Oscar to the Iranian film "A Separation." The director and cast of the Israeli film "Footnote," the other main contender for the Oscar, returned home empty handed and a little disappointed. In this neck of the woods our neighbours attach a lot of importance to honour. Honour, both in its family and national manifestations is tied to long standing traditions and can't be ignored. However, sometimes face-saving events compensate for perceived affronts. In the case of Iran, our very existence here, our tiny enclave in the area they consider to be exclusively Islamic, is an insufferable affront. The day after our Oscar awards drubbing someone expressed a naïve hope that maybe the Iranian success in Hollywood will help defuse the war rhetoric and help Iran reconsider its nuclear plans. . Not surprisingly the response was an announcement on the Iranian national TV channel hailing the victory of Iran over the Zionist regime in Hollywood. The announcement in itself was quite a compromise. Many Iranian conservatives disapproved of the themes expressed in their award winning film which depicts domestic turmoil, gender inequality, and tells of the desire of many Iranians to leave the country.

Last week the Economist dedicated considerable space to the Iran dilemma. A lead article in that paper reiterated an opinion already expressed by many intelligence agencies, namely that, "The probability of an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme has been increasing. But the chances of it ending the country’s nuclear ambitions are low." The Economist describes the attack route Israel will probably choose and the weapons it will use in its attempt to demolish the Iranian nuclear facilities. The author explains why Israel is tempted to strike now. "Iran’s decreasing vulnerability is not the only reason for thinking that, after talking about it for many years, Israel might actually be about to strike. It has been building up its in-air refuelling capacity, and thus its ability to get a lot of planes over targets well inside Iran. And the Arab spring has reduced Iran’s scope for retaliation. The plight of the beleaguered Assad regime in Syria removes Iran’s only significant Arab ally from the fray. A year ago both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza might have been relied on to rain missiles on Israeli targets after a strike against Iran. Now Hamas is realigning itself away from Iran and towards Egypt, and the situation in Syria means that Hezbollah cannot be certain that, if it fires at Israel, its Iranian-supplied arsenal will be replenished."

The Economist believes Israel’s main attack force would consist of two dozen F-15Is and 100 F-16Is, variants of American fighter bombers that have been adapted for long-range missions, along with tankers for aerial refuelling, perhaps supplemented by armed drones and submarine-launched cruise missiles. The planes’ most likely route would be over Jordan and then Iraq, which has almost no air defences. Iran is defended, but mainly by Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles of a kind the IAF has dealt with before. Iran has fighter aircraft, too, but the IAF isn’t too concerned about them. According to a number of news media sources WikiLeaks has released an email exchange between employees of Stratfor, the US-based global intelligence company, which reveals that Israel and Russia made a deal to swap access codes for unmanned aerial vehicles that Israel sold to Georgia, and in return, Russia gave Israel the codes for Tor-M1 missile defence systems that Russia sold to Iran. Such an attack would be a far more complex undertaking than the Israeli strikes against Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria’s reactor near al-Kibar in 2007. Permit me a brief digression concerning the attack on the Osirak reactor Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance": subtitled “The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States," claims that a senior Israeli official met with a representative of the Khomeini regime in France one month prior to the Israeli attack at Osirak. The source of the assertion is Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli government employee. At the alleged meeting, the Iranians explained details of their 1980 attack on the site, and agreed to let Israeli planes land at an Iranian airfield in Tabriz if an emergency arose during the attack. Ari Ben-Menashe’s is a controversial figure. Time Magazine has called him a "spinner of tangled yarns." Maybe his story has an element of truth in it. What can I say? "The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war." Despite the meticulous preparations and fine honing of logistic capabilities some observers think the targets are too far away and one target in particular, the Fordow underground facility is too impregnable. A comment that brings to mind "Operation Market Garden" During WW2. When Field Marshal Montgomery outlined the plan to capture the bridge at Arnhem. The doubting Thomas in Montgomery's planning team, Lt. General Frederick "Boy" Browning said, “I think we might be going a bridge too far.” A remark chosen by historian Cornelius Ryan for the title of his book "A bridge too far," which in turn was used for the script of a film by the same name The Economist quotes Austin Long, an academic who used to work for the RAND Corporation, who argues that, "If every one of the F-15Is aimed the GBU-28 it was carrying, along with both its GBU-27s (laser-guided "bunker busting" bombs), at a single point, there would be a 35-90% chance of over half the weapons arriving at just the right place and at least one bomb would penetrate the facility. So if carried through with impeccable precision an attack on Fordow would have a reasonable chance of inflicting a bomb’s worth of damage." Cognisant of the IAF's precision bombing record Long reasons that the Iranians will probably clear away the debris and repair their installations. However if Israel continues targeting Iran's technical leadership in civilian research centres and universities the substantial nuclear know-how that Iran has gained over the past decades would be seriously impaired. Some observers believe that if the USAF carried out the attack with newer heavier bunker busting bombs the Iranian nuclear programme would be set back five to ten years. An IAF attack using the lighter 5000 lb. GBU-28 bombs would delay the programme by three or four years. The Washington Post quoted unnamed U.S. officials who claim that U.S. military planners are increasingly confident that sustained attacks with the Air Force's 30,000-pound (13,608 kilograms) "bunker-buster" bombs could put Iran's deeply buried uranium-enrichment plant at Fordow out of commission. The time factor is an additional consideration. Ehud Barak is sure time is running out. Once the centrifuges in Furdow are spinning at full capacity the Iranians will be safe inside the so-called “zone of immunity” well before any bombs are built. Not all Israeli intelligence and security experts agree with Barak. Some think that the time may already have passed when Israel on its own could carry out such a strike; others reject the idea that Fordow is a uniquely difficult target. Many of their American counterparts see a focus on Fordow as too narrow. There are less well defended facilities that are also critical to Iranian nuclear ambitions: sites that make centrifuges and missiles, for example. Shifting the focus to Prime Minister Netanyahu the Economist says, "Although Mr. Netanyahu is a more cautious character than some suppose, it would be a mistake to think he is bluffing when he says privately that on his watch Iran will not be allowed to take an irreversible step towards the possession of nuclear weapons."…" But it worries that the consequences of an attack on Iran, whether by Israel or America, are unpredictable and scary: oil prices would rocket—at least for a while—endangering the economic recovery; allies in the Gulf already shaken by the Arab spring could be further destabilised; jihadist terrorism could be re-energised." Weighing up the pros and cons of bombing Iran the Economist said, “Nobody should welcome the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. But bombing the place is not the answer That does not mean the world should just let Iran get the bomb. The government will soon be starved of revenues, because of an oil embargo. Sanctions are biting, the financial system is increasingly isolated and the currency has plunged in value. Proponents of an attack argue that military humiliation would finish the regime off. But it is as likely to rally Iranians around their leaders. Meanwhile, political change is sweeping across the Middle East. The regime in Tehran is divided and it has lost the faith of its people. Eventually, popular resistance will spring up as it did in 2009. A new regime brought about by the Iranians themselves is more likely to renounce the bomb than one that has just witnessed an American assault. Is there a danger that Iran will get a nuclear weapon before that happens?” Disregarding Barak's " zone of immunity" the Americans estimate they still have time to explore diplomatic alternatives and employ more stringent sanctions before they adopt the attack option. They believe they still have time to vacillate : "And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea." Perhaps they are right. If North Korea doesn't renege on its announcement to suspend its nuclear activities and ballistic missiles production in return for food aid from the U.S. the repercussions of this move could affect Iran. Four days before Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington, U.S Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz told reporters the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict. Bloomberg quoted Pentagon officials who said, “Military options being prepared start with providing aerial refueling for Israeli planes and include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.” The Globes financial daily citing a survey conducted by the Washington-based Brookings Institute said,“ Most Israelis oppose a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities if it doesn't have U.S. support. Only 19 percent of Israelis support their country striking Iran without U.S. backing.” A cold spell with rain and some snow is predicted for the weekend. Snow has fallen in the Mt Hermon area and the Golan Heights. According to our meteorologists snow will fall in Jerusalem tomorrow. Maybe this weekend we will visit friends in the north and see some of the snow. Our long range plans include preparations for Purim, Pesach and considering options for the summer holidays. Attacking Iran right now seems quite surreal. Have a good weekend. Beni 1st of March, 2012.