What Peres Will Tell Obama
Another Sign Israel Will Attack
Iran's Nuclear Facilities
Iran And The Military Option
And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. (Daniel 12:1)
May 03, 2009
Israel Matzav
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/
What Peres Will Tell Obama
President Shimon Peres and opposition leader Tzipora Livni are headed to the United States, where they will each address the AIPAC convention, which opens on Monday in Washington, and where Peres will meet with President Obama. "The government is currently undergoing a policy review and we need to wait until it's complete," Peres told Army Radio. "I will update Obama on the developments, but the main thing that unfortunately cannot be ignored is Iran, which is trying to gain control of the region." Curiously, JPost left out one little detail that was reported on Israel Radio this morning. According to Israel Radio, Peres will tell Obama that Netanyahu really will attack Iran if necessary to stop it from attaining nuclear weapons. Maybe Obama can let Ahmadinejad know that in his next video message another sign the attack on Iran is coming.
Aircraft Of The Israeli Air Force
Had Recently Conducted Exercises In The Air Refueling
Between Israel And Gibraltar
Here's another sign that Israel is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities: France's L'Express is reporting that Israeli aircraft practiced refueling in mid-air recently. Here's the translation of the L'Express report: Aircraft of the Israeli air force had recently conducted exercises in the air refueling between Israel and Gibraltar. The magnitude -3,800 kilometers of this field maneuvers confirms that the IDF is preparing concrete preparations for air strikes on Iran if Tehran continues to refuse to negotiate with the international community on the nuclear issue. Something tells me that Iran's agreeing to 'negotiate' isn't going to be enough to stop this attack from coming.
Haaretz, YNet and Arutz Sheva have all picked up on this report. Haaretz connects it to the story in the Times of London two weeks ago that indicated that Israel is preparing to be able to attack Iran within a matter of hours of a government decision to do so. Defense Minister Barak's office denied that story, but I suspect there is more truth to the story than to its denial. YNet connected the story to both the Times of London story as well as to last summer's story about the IAF carrying out maneuvers over Greece, a story that has not been denied. In that exercise, the IAF practiced against the Russian S-300 radar that it fears will be supplied to Iran. But Arutz Sheva points out the most important thing about this story: The distance to Gibraltar (in one direction) is 3,800 kilometers (2,361 miles) and the IAF did that distance round trip.
The exercise to Greece last summer was 900 miles in each direction - a distance that would approximate the distance to Iran if Israel were granted rights to overfly Iraq. The mission carried out in Sudan in January was a similar distance. But flying to Gibraltar is a much greater distance than anything Israel has undertaken before. And while I have not done the numbers, I would bet that 2,361 miles is about the distance from the Palmahim Air Force base to Iran if the IAF has to get there without flying over Jordan or Iraq. And now the IAF has proven that it can get there and back.
Anti-Missile System Operators Doing Extra Reserve Duty
Anti-missile system operators doing extra reserve duty. JPost reports that the operators of the Arrow and Patriot anti-missile systems are doing extra reserve duty these days and that a massive exercise will be held with the US military 'later this year.' Due to an apparent typographical error in the article, it is not clear how much reserve duty they normally do, but the anti-missile system operators have been called up once a week for the last year to practice different intercept scenarios. The scenarios that are drilled include the firing of large barrages at Israel from different countries at once, and the need for the operator to decide which missile to intercept first and at what stage of its flight. "There are difficult dilemmas that the operators face when it comes to missile defense," the officer said.
Last month, the IAF held its 17th test of the Arrow 2 interceptor, shooting down a missile mimicking an Iranian Shihab ballistic missile. Later this year, the IAF will hold an unprecedented and massive exercise with the US military to jointly test three different ballistic missile defense systems, including the Israeli-made Arrow and the American THAAD and Aegis, which will be brought specially to Israel for the exercise. The high-powered American X-Band radar, deployed in the Negev Desert in late 2008 as a farewell gift from former President George W. Bush, participated in the recent Arrow test and tracked the incoming target. Military sources said that it was capable of providing "several minutes" of warning from when a missile is launched from Iran and until it is supposed to land in Israel. Thank you again George W. Bush. To get the x-band out of this administration, we'd likely have to sacrifice our first-born children (or three neighborhoods in Jerusalem).
Obama and former Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates left a lot of people in Israel longing for Donald Rumsefeld when he warned us - yet again - not to take military action against Iran. Use of the military option to force Iran to halt its nuclear program would only yield temporary and ineffective results, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. Sanctions would make more sense, he said. Gates said a military attack on Iran would merely send the country's nuclear program further underground. Instead, the United States and its allies must convince Teheran that its nuclear ambitions would spark an arms race that would leave the Islamic republic less secure. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US should work with its allies on tougher international sanctions.
Gates also said America should pursue partnerships with Russia on missile defense programs in the region to further isolate Iran and to give it economic and diplomatic reasons to abandon its nuclear interests voluntarily. Sanctions - as we have seen for the last six years - don't work at all. Partly because there are an awful lot of countries that aren't willing to abide by them, and partly because the sanctions that might be most effective (like cutting off refined petroleum products) aren't even being tried. As for an attack 'merely' sending Iran's nuclear program 'further underground' - Personally, I would be happy for anything that slows Iran's nuclear program, even if it 'only' delays it by 3-5 years to allow the West to get its act together and put a stop to it. Gates was following up on the Obama administration's refusal to even put a timetable on its 'negotiations' with Iran. Speaking to foreign journalists, White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said, "It's not appropriate at this time to be trying to establish timetables, but rather seeing how the engagement can move forward."
The US was not looking for "talk for the sake of talk," but "there are opportunities there for us to engage with the Iranian government," he said. I feel like I woke up in the middle of a nightmare. So does our deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon: Ayalon noted that "for the past four years, it is the continuing Iranian violation, the ongoing process of weaponization, that has prevented the Europeans from beginning a dialogue with Iran." Similarly, senior defense officials have warned in recent days that Iran would exploit such a dialogue and could not be trusted to stop its nuclear program. With the need for an Israeli strike against Iran looking clearer day be day, there is only one party that can issue credible threats against Israel making such a strike: The United States. The upshot is that, barring military action by Israel (or a miracle), Iran will get the bomb, and sooner rather than later. What then? For some time now, many pundits with the ear of the Obama administration have finally recognized that neither carrots nor sticks nor any combination of the two can work.
But instead of going on to support military action, they have fallen back on the position that we can “live with” a nuclear Iran. In line with the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), they soothingly tell us, the mullahs can be deterred by the fear of retaliation much as the far more heavily armed Soviets and Chinese were deterred during the cold war. They also say that Ahmadinejad—who in his fanaticism admittedly sounds as though he can hardly wait to use nuclear weapons against Israel—neither runs the regime nor speaks for it. What they forget to mention, however, is that Ahmadinejad could never have issued his threats without permission from the Ayatollah Khamenei, who does run the regime, and who has himself described Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must and will be excised. Besides, even Ahmadinejad’s predecessor as president and the current Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, known far and wide as a “moderate,” has declared that his country would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation: If the day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
If this is the position of even a reputed Iranian moderate, how could Israel depend upon MAD to keep the mullahs from launching a first strike? For consider: if the Iranians were to get the bomb, the Israelis would be presented with an almost irresistible incentive to beat them to the punch with a preemptive strike—and so, understanding this, would Tehran. Either way, a nuclear exchange would become, if not inevitable, terrifyingly likely, and God alone knows how far the destruction would then spread. Measured against this horrendous possibility, even the worst imaginable consequences of taking military action before the mullahs get the bomb would amount to chump change.
But to say it again, with American military action ruled out, the only hope is that such action—which could at the very least head off the otherwise virtually certain prospect of a nuclear war—will be taken by Israel. Forget about the Palestinian and Syrian “tracks,” if there is a threat to Israel coming from Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the United States, he will follow through on his Vice President’s declaration that the Israelis would be “ill-advised” to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves. Maybe the Obama administration will live with a nuclear Iran. Israel won't.
U.S. Sending Missiles To Arab States
Concern Over Potential Israel-Iran Conflict Cited
May 02, 2009
U.S. sending missiles to Arab states
Concern over potential Israel-Iran conflict cited
JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
WorldNetDaily
The United States quietly is providing advanced Patriot missile systems and other defensive technologies to Arab countries in the Persian Gulf in anticipation of any retaliatory response from Iran should Israel launch a military strike against its nuclear facilities, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The U.S. is in the process now of either providing or upgrading existing Patriot missile defense systems in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. For that matter, it also is assisting Israel in upgrading its existing Patriot batteries and providing technology to assist in the Arrow Two, an indigenous Israeli anti-missile system. The assistance continues despite the Obama administration's opposition to any such Israeli attack on Iran.
Israel has let it be known that it intends to attack Iran's nuclear facilities if the U.S. doesn't, or if ongoing negotiations targeting Iran's nuclear program fail. Israel had also made it clear that such negotiations should "quickly" achieve results to avoid Israeli action. In a recent interview with Atlantic Monthly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel "will attack" Iran should the U.S. fail to quickly halt Tehran's nuclear program. "The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons," Netanyahu declared. If the U.S. were to fail to halt Iran's nuclear initiative quickly, he added, Israel would be "forced" to attack that country's nuclear facilities.
Other Israeli experts say that Netanyahu has made up his mind to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, despite U.S. intelligence reports that say Israel may have upwards of 200 nuclear devices of its own, with a delivery capability to match. It also is their assessment that diplomacy and sanctions will do nothing to halt the Iranian program, and the "only way to stop Iran's nuclear program will be by force, which only Israel is motivated to apply," one analyst said. Why would there be concern among Arab countries of an Iranian counter-attack to include them should Israel attack Iran? There are a number of reasons. Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, are concerned over recent Iranian statements that one of its members, Bahrain, is considered an Iranian province.
In addition to Bahrain, GCC members are Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain also is home to the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Although critical of Israel during the recent Israeli bombings of Hamas in the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip earlier this year, the Sunni GCC members not only are concerned about Shiite Iran's support for Sunni Hamas but are critical of Iran's nuclear development program. They are wary that it is a cover for the development of nuclear weapons. The development has prompted Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz recently to suggest that the Saudi Kingdom will acquire nuclear weapons to counter any similar Iranian capability. A recent report from the Dubai, UAE based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis said that with Nayef as a crown prince or possible king of Saudi Arabia to succeed his half brother King Abdullah, a "Saudi nuclear weapon will not be far off."
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death (Revelation 12:7-11).
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