Highly potent interview from a top Israeli intelligence leader, Amos Yadlin, president of Israel's Institute of National Security Studies (INSS). The headline says it all. Very worthy read. -R.O.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115313/amos-yadlin-iran-strike-why-israel-needs-act-soon
Jerusalem Post - September 6, 2013
ABC News: US is planning an aerial strike in addition to a salvo of Tomahawk missiles from Navy destroyers; New York Times: Obama ordered expansion of list of targets following reports Assad moved troops, equipment.
Despite statements from both US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry that a US-led strike on Syria would be a "limited and tailored" military attack, ABC News reported on Thursday that the strike planned by Obama's national security team is "significantly larger" than most have anticipated.
According to ABC News, in additional to a salvo of 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from four Navy destroyers stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, the US is also planning an aerial campaign that is expected to last two days.
This campaign potentially includes an aerial bombardment of missiles and long range bombs from US-based B-2 stealth bombers that carry satellite-guided bombs, B-52 bombers, that can carry air-launched cruise missiles and Qatar-based B-1s that carry long-range, air-to-surface missiles, both ABC News and The New York Times reported.
"This military strike will do more damage to [Syrian President Bashar] Assad's forces in 48 hours than the Syrian rebels have done in two years," a national security official told ABC News.
Meanwhile, Obama has directed the Pentagon to expand the list of potential targets in Syria following reports Assad's forces have moved troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons in anticipation of the US-led strike against them, the Times reported on Thursday.
In order to degrade Assad's ability to use chemical weapons, the list of 50 or so major sites has to be expected, officials told the Times.
Targets include military units that have stored and prepared the chemical weapons, as well as headquarters who ordered the attacks and units who carried them out. Other targets include rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, the Times quotes military officials as saying.
US military chief of staff Martin Dempsey said targets would also include equipment used to protect the chemicals - air defenses, long-range missiles and rockets.
The attack would not target the chemical stockpiles in fear that doing so could cause catastrophe.
Price tag
In Washington, US lawmakers questioned the possible price tag of a military operation in Syria.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told Congress on Wednesday the military operation is expected to cost "tens of millions" of dollars, according to AFP.
This estimate is based on the assumption the military intervention in Syria would only last a few days.
A single Tomahawk missile costs $1.5 million, while keeping some ships in the area would cost millions more, Navy chief Admiral Jonathan Greenert said on Thursday, but those numbers are "not extraordinary at this point."
In addition to the four destroyers the US Navy currently has stationed in the Mediterranean, aircraft carrier Nimitz and accompanying warships are ready at the Red Sea in case they are needed.
The carrier strike group costs up to $40 million a week if the aircraft on board are engaged in combat-related flights, while routine operations cost $25 million a week, Greenert said.
These are critical insights into a tense state of affairs. With Syria on the mainstream news media's front burner, the Iranian nuclear crisis has been left to simmer. But with newly elected Iranian President Rouhani set to take office in Iran, the world's focus will soon shift back to Iran's covert nuclear weapons program and all of its perilous implications for global stability. The following comments from Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird are worth reading, as they implicitly represent the perceptions of the Israeli government. The question is whether U.S. President Obama is feeling the same way. - R.O.
Canadian Foreign Minister: Iran has just “2 or 3 months” to change course, diplomatic process “nearing the end.”
- Flash Traffic Blog - June 25, 2013
By: Joel C. Rosenberg
(Jerusalem, Israel) – After having just been in Ottawa meeting with Canadian Members of Parliament to discuss Israel and Middle East issues, I’ve now been in Israel for ten days of meetings and preparations for our upcoming Joshua Fund tour and Epicenter Conference. I was encouraged to read this morning that the Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird was recently in town to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli and Palestinian officials. His comments on the Iran threat were worth noting because he indicated a concrete time frame by which Iran needs to show it has ended its nuclear program or other action — decisive action — needs to be taken. Coming from the most pro-Israel government on the planet, this was encouraging. My hope is that the Foreign Minister was also laying the groundwork for a state visit by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but there was no public report of this.
”Canada’s foreign minister has warned Iran that it has only two to three months to prove to the West that it seeks a negotiated resolution to the crisis over its rogue nuclear program,” reports the Times of Israel “The diplomatic process is ‘nearing the end,’ John Baird said in an interview with The Times of Israel, though he declined to say what consequences that could bring.”
“He added that the election to the Iranian presidency of Hasan Rouhani, seen by many as a relative moderate, does not justify any further Western patience, since Rouhani, as Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, ‘doesn’t need to have any time to read up on the files,’” reported the Times. “Baird was speaking exclusively to The Times of Israel last week during a visit to Jerusalem, where he represented Canada’s government at Shimon Peres’s Facing Tomorrow presidential conference, and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also went to Jordan during the trip, and held talks in Ramallah with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA officials.”
Other key points from the article:
- If incoming president Rouhani “wants me to say something kind or generous, he’s going to have to solicit that by his actions, not by any perceived notion of being a reformer,” Baird said, adding, “These people don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.”
- Asked whether diplomacy had run its course, Baird said, “There’s always a reason to wait another two or three months… If they want to prove the naysayers wrong, they can make meaningful progress with the P5+1. I’m pessimistic on that but I hope to be proven wrong.”
- The diplomatic process, he went on, “is nearing the end, and should have been nearing the end in my judgment. If Iran wants to seek out concrete, meaningful solutions to this, they have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world in the coming weeks that they’ll do that… And you have someone [in Rouhani, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator] who doesn’t need to have any time to read up on the files. This person does not need anytime to be briefed up.”
- And if at the end of two or three months there isn’t some kind of concrete progress? Then, said Baird, “I think fair and reasonable people will have shown that they have taken every reasonable measure, every diplomatic measure, to try to successfully bring this to a conclusion.”
And then comes the time for intervention? “I’ll just leave it at that,” the minister said.
June 25, 2013
