Are we at the end of our tether?

1981, following the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak, Prime Minister Menachem Begin defined a policy known later as the Begin Doctrine: "On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel." Since then every Israeli prime minister has endorsed that doctrine.                                                                                                                                                                  A case in point was the attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007. On Sunday evening "Channel 10's documentary programme "Real Faces" presented a comprehensive account of the attack, referred to by the code name "Operation Orchard." Syria has never admitted the existence of the reactor and Israel has never admitted or denied attacking the “non-existent” reactor. Consequently, when he spoke of the attack the documentary's producer, investigative reporter Amnon Levi was careful to add the phrase- "According to foreign sources."  Notwithstanding the Israeli and Syrian reluctance to relate to the attack on the al-Kibar nuclear facility, the IAEA has officially confirmed that the site was a nuclear reactor.

It appears that the existence of the al-Kibar facility was a closely kept secret known to only a few of Bashar al Assad's confidants. As a result the construction of the reactor progressed  undetected.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph  Syria was working with North Korea and Iran on the nuclear facility. Iran had funnelled $1 billion to the project, and planned on using the  reactor to replace Iranian facilities if it failed  to complete its uranium enrichment programme.

Three years ago Der Spiegel told how despite Assad's efforts to conceal the reactor it was eventually discovered. In the spring of 2004, the American National Security Agency (NSA) detected a suspiciously high number of telephone calls between Syria and North Korea, with a noticeably busy line of communication between the North Korean capital Pyongyang and a place in the northern Syrian desert called al - Kibar. The NSA dossier was sent to Israeli military  intelligence, which in turn "flagged"  the al-Kibar facility for close surveillance.                                                                                                                         In late 2006, Israeli military intelligence decided to ask the British for their opinion. Almost by coincidence,  as a Mossad delegation arrived in London, a senior Syrian government official checked into an exclusive hotel in  Kensington.  He was under Mossad surveillance and turned out to be incredibly careless. He left  his laptop in his hotel room when he went shopping. The Mossad agents "paid him a visit" while he was out, copied the contents of his laptop and compensated him by enhancing it with a "Trojan horse" tracking device designed to monitor his activities.                                                                                                      The pilfered files revealed that Syria, aided by North Korea, was building a nuclear reactor that could produce an atomic bomb.                                                                                       Elliot Abrams  who served at that time as deputy national security advisor in the  White House was interviewed for  the channel 10 documentary. He related how the complete intelligence material from both Israeli and US sources was presented to President George W. Bush. Abrams said, “We took it all to the president – covert options, military options, diplomatic options – and he chose  the wrong option.” The option Bush chose, some six weeks before the Israeli attack, was the one preferred by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice: Make the existence of the facility public and then go to the IAEA and UN and build an international consensus to get the Syrians to close it.
Abrams said he thought the idea was “absurd” and that Syrian President Bashar Assad would defy  the IAEA and do nothing.

According to Abrams, Ehud Olmert intimated that if the US wouldn’t bomb the al-Kabir facility Israel would.
Abrams added another reason for bombing the al-Kabir facility. He said that his preferred option was for Israel to attack the site in order to restore the IDF's deterrence capability following the Second Lebanon War.                                                                                   However, Vice President Dick Cheney argued for the US to bomb the facility itself in order to rebuild America’s deterrence capability.

Cheney, in his memoirs - My Time, wrote that not only would a US strike demonstrate America’s seriousness concerning nonproliferation, “it would enhance our credibility in that part of the world, taking us back to where we were in 2003, after we had taken down the Taliban, taken down

Saddam’s regime, and gotten Gaddafi to turn over his nuclear program.”
Throughout the documentary Amnon Levi compared the situation in 2007 with the present Iranian dilemma confronting Israel. The differences are obvious. In 2007  only one minister in the cabinet opposed the decision to bomb al-Kibar. Admittedly Ehud Barak opposed the plan initially, but later joined the majority. The entire intelligence community was in favour of attacking the Syrian site. Al-Kibar is closer to Israel and was much easier to attack than Iran’s dispersed nuclear facilities. In addition, the Furdow facility is situated deep underground .
One thing we have in common with our neighbours is the tendency to dwell on yesterday’s battles. Invariably the Arab narrative differs considerably from our version. Lately, however some Lebanese journalists have dared to portray battle narratives that differ little from our accounts.
A few days ago Lebanese member of parliament Basem Shabb, a member of the parliamentary committee on defence wrote a scathing criticism of Hezbollah in the Daily Star, Lebanon. He attacked the terrorist group’s claim to be Lebanon’s reliable defence organisation.

“The question then remains whether Hezbollah’s firepower offers any real deterrence capability.” Surveying the anti-aircraft defences that the party is believed to have, he says they can be dismissed as ineffective against the advanced electronic countermeasures of the Israeli air force.  In support of this claim he cites the al-Kibar attack    “When the Israelis attacked a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, Syrian air defences, which are far more advanced than Hezbollah’s, did not react.” Shabb goes on to list the weapons in Hezbollah’s arsenal arguing how ineffective they are against Israel’s newest defence systems and provides a frank analysis of Lebanon’s exaggerated reliance on Hezbollah.

“It is Hezbollah’s rocket and missile force, numbering in the tens of thousands, that constitutes the bulk of the party’s firepower. While a smaller number of medium- and long-range missiles such as the Fajr-5, Fateh-110, and Scud variants are stationed north of the Litani River, the short-range Katyusha 122mm and others are south of the river, many in fixed positions in close proximity to civilian areas.                                                                                                                                    The short-range rockets continued to be launched throughout the 2006 war, with 250 fired on the last day. Though more than 4,000 such missiles were fired, less than 500 actually hit vital targets. Even though the small-sized warheads caused little overall damage, Israeli analysts agree that Israel’s inability to defend against them represented one of the prime failures of the war.

Hezbollah, in turn, considered it a triumph, and rightly so, that it was able to keep firing until the very end, defying Israel’s massive artillery and aerial bombardment. However, against this we must examine the fate of the party’s medium- and long-range missiles. Many were destroyed on the ground early in the war. Since then, Israel’s missile defence systems have significantly improved, with the introduction of the latest generation of Patriot PAC3 and Arrow II missile systems.

Israel’s unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance capability, as well as its manned aircraft capability and improved anti-missile defences, could minimize Hezbollah’s long-range missile threat. In fact, Israeli analysts today seem more concerned with Hezbollah’s short-range rocket threat.

Even though anti-missile systems such as the Iron Dome have been effective in Gaza, it is unlikely that such a system could neutralize volleys of hundreds of short-range rockets. That is why Israeli strategists have argued that a rapid and massive Israeli invasion of areas south of the Litani would be needed to end the short-range rocket threat, thereby avoiding repeating the failures of 2006. This would inevitably lead to extensive casualties and devastation of villages, not to mention the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, which Israel has declared a legitimate target should hostilities arise.

Hezbollah is well aware of this, and has indicated through intermediaries that it would not initiate hostilities along the southern border. Active resistance for the liberation of Lebanese territory is a thing of the past. However, a cataclysmic scenario may be triggered by Iran, Hezbollah’s patron. As far as Iran is concerned, its regional interests and considerations take precedence. Instead, they constitute an excuse and an instigation for a destructive Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Iran’s control of Hezbollah’s arsenal magnifies the danger. Hezbollah has no credible means of defending Lebanon’s infrastructure, territorial waters or airspace. The deterrence value of the party’s weapon systems is vastly overrated, exposing Lebanon to massive retaliation. The current situation presents a disaster in the waiting”
Another frank Lebanese exposé  appeared this week in  the New York Times . Hanin Ghaddar, editor of NOW Lebanon said, in an  op-ed  article “Something fundamental has changed: the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, long Syria’s powerful proxy in Lebanon, has become a wounded beast. And it is walking a very thin line between protecting its assets and aiding a crumbling regime next door. “ …..”Assad may not yet realize that he is a dead man walking, but Hezbollah does. That does not mean, however, that the party will change its stance on Syria as the Palestinian militant group Hamas has done. If it did, it would lose its supply lines from Iran. So Hezbollah’s main objective is to avoid a full explosion before the [Lebanese] parliamentary elections. After all, an election victory would allow Hezbollah to maintain its political control over Lebanon democratically, without having to resort to arms. Tehran would also prefer to avoid any war that would force Hezbollah to get involved — namely, a war with Israel. That could lead to the party’s losing both its weapons and its supporters. “

This week New York Times columnist Thomas. L. Friedman took to task Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi for attending the Nonaligned Movement’s summit meeting in Tehran. However, Middle East affairs analyst Smadar Peri interpreted Moris's visit to Tehran differently. She claims Morsi was a reluctant participant in the summit. “If it were up to him, the Egyptian president would have remained in Cairo rather than scrap the 33-year-old boycott, which began when Egypt closed its embassy in Tehran.”

In the meantime Ahmed Ahmadinejad is enjoying an important, but temporary publicity victory.

The Egyptian president's visit to China after the stopover in Tehran aroused comment as well as considerable speculation.

One evaluation written jointly by David Schenker (  the Washington Institute) and Christina Lin (the Johns Hopkins University Center for Transatlantic Relations), highlighted the following points:

"No doubt, Morsi's effort to recalibrate Egypt's foreign policy orientation away from the West is not without problems. Beijing is not altruistic, so investment will be more likely than loans or grants. And should Cairo need credit, it will probably have to raise it from the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, which will have onerous requirements, and will be none too pleased with Egypt's move toward Tehran.
If Morsi gets his way, improved bilateral ties to Beijing will embolden, if not enable, Cairo to downgrade Egypt's ties to Washington. Of course, with the Muslim Brotherhood at the helm -- and with increased domestic repression and unmitigated hostility toward Israel -- this trajectory was perhaps inevitable. But Egypt's shift toward China further complicates the relationship with the U.S. and U.S. policy making in the Middle East. Alas, based on Morsi's new foreign policy tack, Cairo's transformed relations with Beijing promise to be just one of a litany of U.S. concerns with Egypt."
Amos Yadlin  was one of the eight pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak  in 1981. He served for more than 40 years in the IDF as a fighter pilot and went on to become deputy commander of the air force. In 2006 he was appointed head of Military Intelligence, a post he held until his retirement at the end of 2010. During his tenure in MI Israel bombed the al-Kibar reactor. Today he is the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. In an interview given to Israel Today Amos Yadlin was asked if  diplomacy and sanctions failed to stop Iran’s determined efforts to attain nuclear capability  can we rely on the US to stop Iran? He  said, “My deep feeling is that America will act against Iran, not so much because of Israel, but because of real, genuine American national interests.”

Have a good weekend

Beni                            30^th of August,   2012.