Nazila Fathi reports: Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi has a lot on her mind these days. She’s spent her life working for the defense of human rights in her home country of Iran, but the reformists she sympathizes with are on the defensive, reeling from years of harsh repression. For the past three years she’s been living in virtual exile in an undisclosed location in Western Europe, unable to return home without fear of arrest. The government has seized her property (including her Nobel Prize medal) and subjected her family members to harassment and detention. Now she spends her days traveling the world, fighting to draw attention to the abuses of human rights by the government in Tehran. “I feel it’s my duty to help bring the voices of activists, and my comrades who are in prison, to the world,” she says.

But now she has something even more serious to worry about: What if Israel launches a military strike against Iran? What if the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program escalates out of control and spreads across the region?

The Israeli media have warned in recent weeks that a military attack may be imminent, since a presumed window allowing Israel to strike at Iran’s nuclear program may close soon. The Israeli government claims that Iran’s quest to continue with its nuclear program poses a serious threat, especially now that Iran seems to have expedited its efforts to enrich uranium — a key stop on the path to building a nuclear bomb. The Iranian regime has maintained a hostile position toward Israel since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Iran contends that its nuclear program is peaceful, intended solely for power generation to bolster up a beleaguered economy. In any case, analysts have warned that a military strike is unlikely to halt the program and may only delay it for a few years. Iran has sheltered its nuclear facilities deep underground to protect from any possible military strikes, and has vowed that it would retaliate harshly if it comes under attack.

But Ebadi points to another problem. War with Israel, she says, may rescue the Iranian regime at a time when it is extremely unpopular at home and is clinging to power with an iron fist. “It is the only thing that can save the regime,” she said. “A war will stir nationalistic feelings and rally the people behind the government to defend the country. It will be catastrophic for the [Iranian] people, the country, and the region, but it will save Iran’s rulers.” [Continue reading…]

At Open Democracy, Trita Parsi writes: There are three ways war between US and Iran can begin: through a deliberate decision by either Washington, Tehran or Tel Aviv; through a naval incident in the Persian Gulf that escalates out of control; or through the gradual elimination of all other policy options – the dead end path to war.

Of these three, it is the last one that is most worrisome and likely.

The Obama administration is not seeking war with Iran. Obama’s push back against the Netanyahu Government’s campaign for war with Iran and the harsh statements from the US military against such reckless adventurism demonstrates this lack of desire for war.

While neoconservative elements within the US foreign policy elite may differ, they remain dangerous but are in minority. A very timely report published by the Iran Project last week showed that the center of the US foreign policy establishment not only opposes war, it views it as a grave mistake.

The report was signed by close to 30 prominent foreign policy hands in Washington, including former National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, president of the Ploughshares Foundation Joe Cirincione, and former chairman of the Federal Reserve bank, Paul Volcker. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Supporters of a designated Iranian terrorist organisation have won a long struggle to see it unbanned in the US after pouring millions of dollars into an unprecedented campaign of political donations, hiring Washington lobby groups and payments to former top administration officials.

A Guardian investigation, drawing partly on data researched by the Centre for Responsive Politics, a group tracking the impact of money in US politics, has identified a steady flow of funds from key Iranian American organisations and their leaders into the campaign to have the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran removed from the list of terrorist organisations.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is expected to notify Congress that the MEK will be removed from the terrorism list in the coming days.

The campaign to bury the MEK’s bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.

Prominent among the members of Congress who have received fund is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee. She has accepted at least $20,000 in donations from Iranian American groups or their leaders to her political campaign fund.

Other recipients include Congressman Bob Filner, who was twice flown to address pro-MEK events in France and has pushed resolutions resolutions in the House of Representatives calling for the group to be unbanned. More than $14,000 in expenses for Filner’s Paris trips were met by the head of an Iranian American group who also paid close to $1m to a Washington lobby firm working to get the MEK unbanned.

A Texas Congressman, Ted Poe, received thousands of dollars in donations from the head of a pro-MEK group in his state at a time when he was a regular speaker on behalf of its unbanning at events across the US, describing the organisation as the ticket to regime change in Iran.

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, has also received the backing of individuals and groups that support the unbanning of the MEK. Rogers has been among the strongest supporters in Congress of delisting the group, sponsoring resolutions and pressing other members of Congress to support the cause.

A leading advocate of unbanning the MEK and chairman of the foreign affairs committee’s oversight subcommittee, congressman Dana Rohrabacher, has received thousands of dollars in donations from supporters of the banned group this year alone. [Continue reading…]

National Security Network reports: Today a senior group of bipartisan security experts at the highest levels – retired Cabinet secretaries, diplomats, military leaders and intelligence specialists – released a comprehensive study on the potential costs and benefits of a military strike on Iran. The group issues a sober warning that “a foundation for clear thinking about the potential use of force against Iran” is lacking in the public discussion to date. Signatories include Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard L. Armitage, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Chuck Hagel, Gen .Anthony C. Zinni, Leslie H. Gelb, Lee H. Hamilton, Ellen Laipson, Adm. William Fallon, Amb. Thomas R. Pickering, Amb. William Luers, and others. Other analysts have recently sounded the same alarm. While the Iran Project report explicitly does not make policy recommendations, CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman concludes in his recent study, “The best way out is successful negotiations.”

A military strike likely to delay, not prevent a weapon – while also increasing Iran’s motivation to attain a bomb. The Iran Project report finds, “U.S. policy statements indicate that the objective of military action against Iran would be to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. … a military action involving aerial strikes, cyber attacks, covert operations, and special operations forces would destroy or severely damage many of Iran’s physical facilities and stockpiles. But in our judgment, complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely; and Iran would still retain the scientific capacity and the experience to start its nuclear program again if it chose to do so.” The group echoes conclusions of Israeli and U.S. intelligence by concluding, “We believe that extended military strikes by the U.S. alone or in concert with Israel could delay Iran’s ability to build a bomb by up to four years—if the military operation is carried out to near perfection, with all aircraft, missiles, and bombs working to maximum effect. A military strike by Israel alone, with its more limited military capacity, could delay Iran’s ability to build a bomb for up to two years. The distinction between preventing and delaying Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon would be a critical one, when considering the objectives of war.”

The Iran Project signatories add, “we believe that military action probably would reduce the possibility of reaching a more permanent political resolution of concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, we believe that a U.S. attack on Iran would increase Iran’s motivation to build a bomb, because 1) the Iranian leadership would become more convinced than ever that regime change is the goal of U.S. policy, and 2) building a bomb would be seen as a way to inhibit future attacks and redress the humiliation of being attacked.” [Continue reading…]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tony Karon writes: Benjamin Netanyahu‘s frustration with the Obama Administration’s handling of the Iran nuclear issue is unlikely to be assuaged any time soon, with the Israeli daily Haaretz alleging on Tuesday that the White House has “declined” the Israeli Prime Minister’s request for a meeting during the U.N. General Assembly session in New York later this month. The White House immediately denied the report, with national security spokesman Tommy Vietor explaining that Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in New York after Obama leaves. “They’re simply not in the city at the same time,” Vietor wrote in an email. “But the President and PM are in frequent contact and the PM will meet with other senior officials, including Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton, during his visit.” Vietor later emailed: “Contrary to previous press reports, there was never any request for a meeting between the Prime Minister and President in Washington, nor was this request ever denied.” But Israeli media, encouraged by unnamed Israeli officials, are interpreting the decision as a snub – in a week where Netanyahu has made no secret of his exasperation with the Obama Administration.

The Prime Minister on Tuesday fired a thinly-disguised broadside against the Administration, telling reporters in Jerusalem, “Those in the international community who refuse to put a red line before Iran don’t have the moral right to place a red light before Israel.” That was in response to Washington’s rebuff of the Israeli leader’s demand that the U.S. publicly declare a “red line” for Iran’s nuclear work, that if crossed, would trigger a U.S. military response. The Israelis have also demanded that the U.S. set a deadline for Iran to comply with Western demands. But all of Israel’s key Western allies have delivered stern warnings against a go-it-alone military strike, which is also opposed by Israel’s military and security chiefs, as well as by a majority of its polled public. Unable to bend the Administration into accepting his terms and timeline, then, Netanyahu is reduced to playing Cassandra.

Clinton drew Israeli ire when she set out the Administration’s position on Iran in an interview, on Monday, with Bloomberg TV. “We’re not setting deadlines,” she said. “We’re watching very carefully about what they do, because it’s always been more about their actions. We’re convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good faith negotiation.” But Netanyahu was having none of it, claiming that “as of now, we can clearly say that diplomacy and sanctions have not worked. They have hit the Iranian economy, but they haven’t stopped the Iranian nuclear project.”

Netanyahu is certainly correct that the pain of sanctions has not stopped Iran from continuing its nuclear work in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, nor has it prompted Tehran to concede to Western demands at the negotiating table. At the same time, however, the U.S. assessment is that while Iran continues to accumulate nuclear infrastructure that would give it the capability to build a weapon, Tehran has not yet decided to build a bomb. (Many analysts suspect Iran’s current goal is the “nuclear latency” enjoyed by countries such as Japan, which could build nuclear weapons in a matter of months should they deem it strategically necessary to do so.) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CBS on Tuesday that if Iran took the strategic decision, right now, it would need “a little more than a year” to build a bomb. “We think we will have the opportunity, once we know that they’ve made that decision, [to] take the action necessary to stop them,” Panetta said. And it’s at an Iranian move to weaponize nuclear material that the Obama Administration has drawn its own red line. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had reiterated on Monday, “The line is the President is committed to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and he will use every tool in the arsenal of American power to achieve that goal.”

The real problem for Netanyahu, is not that Obama hasn’t stated a red line; it’s that Obama’s red line is not the same as Israel’s red line. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: Tensions between Israel and the United States over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program bubbled to the surface Monday, as Washington rebuffed calls for it to declare “red lines.”

Both Washington and Israel say they are determined to stop Iran developing nuclear arms, but Iran continues to defy international pressure, and there are increasing signs of disagreement over tactics and timetables.

US President Barack Obama has made preventing weapons proliferation the centerpiece of his foreign policy, and has pledged that the United States will prevent Iran joining the nuclear club.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who regards the alleged Iranian bomb program as an existential threat to his country, fears Tehran may be on the brink of nuclear “break-out capacity.”

This is the point at which Iran will be able to credibly imply that it has enough weapons knowhow and highly enriched nuclear fuel to be able to quickly assemble a viable device if needed.

This in turn would vastly increase Tehran’s ability to deter Israeli and or Western military intervention — particularly if the Islamic regime has the time to disperse its equipment or protect it in deeper bomb-proof bunkers.

So, on Monday, Netanyahu took to the airwaves to urge Washington to declare “red lines” for Iranian behavior which, if crossed, could trigger immediate tough international action such as US-led air strikes.

“Iran will not stop unless it sees clear determination by the democratic countries of the world, and a clear red line,” the Israeli premier told Canadian public broadcaster CBC.

US officials have urged Israel not to take unilateral action, while arguing there is still mileage in UN-backed talks designed to persuade Iran to comply with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

They are also keen to push the timetable for any eventual strike beyond November 6, the date of the US presidential election.

But the State Department distanced Washington from the Israeli stance, which would be seen by many as locking the United States and Iran into a logic of confrontation that could quickly escalate into military action.

“The American people know that the president has said unequivocally he will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

“So, you know, we are absolutely firm about the president’s commitment here, but it is not useful to be parsing it, to be setting deadlines one way or the other, red lines,” she said, promising “intensive consultations with Israel.”

Juan Cole writes: In his acceptance speech in Charlotte, N.C., President Barack Obama said, “The Iranian government must face a world that stays united against its nuclear ambitions.” It wasn’t much noted in the Western press, but in fact the recent Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Tehran last month delivered a slap in the face to the Israeli-American financial and commercial war on Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. The 120 countries of the movement, representing some two-thirds of United Nations member states and 55 percent of the world’s population, refused to boycott Iran. More, they upheld Iran’s right to pursue nuclear-powered electricity. But given that the U.S. and Europe constitute half of the world’s gross domestic product and maintain its most powerful standing armies, does the meeting’s symbolic gesture really matter?

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon defied severe pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and attended the Tehran summit. Some reports suggested that Ban went because he was annoyed by the vehemence of the Israeli government. India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not only insisted on attending but brought a big delegation of businessmen with him looking for deals with Iran. For the first time since 1979, an Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, flew to Tehran, signaling an end to Cairo’s decades of obsequiousness toward the U.S.

The final communiqué upheld Iran’s right to pursue the enrichment of uranium for energy purposes and rejected the United States’ boycotts and sanctions on Iran. It further warned that any attack on nuclear facilities would be illegal under international law and a violation of basic human rights. It stressed Palestinian rights, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return home to what is now Israel. In other words, the Non-Aligned Movement document contained the opposite of everything Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton say on each of these points. [Continue reading…]

Bill Keller, columnist and former executive editor for the New York Times, writes: [T]here are serious, thoughtful people who are willing to contemplate a nuclear Iran, kept in check by the time-tested assurance of retaliatory destruction. If the U.S. arsenal deterred the Soviet Union for decades of cold war and now keeps North Korea’s nukes in their silos, if India and Pakistan have kept each other in a nuclear stalemate, why would Iran not be similarly deterred by the certainty that using nuclear weapons would bring a hellish reprisal?

Anyone who has a glib answer to this problem isn’t taking the subject seriously. Personally, I’ve tended to duck it, taking refuge in the hope that the tightening vise of international pressure — and a few cyberattacks — would make Iran relent and spare us the hard choice. But that could be wishful thinking. So I’ve spent some time reading and questioning, trying to report my way to an opinion.

Let’s assume, for starters, that Iran’s theocrats are determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Western analysts say there is no evidence yet that the supreme leader has made that decision. But if you ruled a country surrounded by unfriendly neighbors — Persians among the Arabs, Shiites among the Sunnis — a country with a grand sense of self-esteem, a tendency to paranoia and five nuclear powers nearby, wouldn’t you want the security of your own nuclear arsenal?

Let’s assume further that diplomacy, sanctions and computer viruses may not dissuade the regime from its nuclear ambitions. So far, these measures seem to have slowed the nuclear program and bought some time, but Iran’s stockpiles of enriched fuel have grown in size and concentration despite everything a disapproving world has thrown at them so far. So, then what?

A pre-emptive bombing campaign against Iran’s uranium factories would almost certainly require major U.S. participation to be effective, and would not be neat. Beyond the immediate casualties, it would carry grave costs: outraged Iranians rallying behind this regime that is now deservedly unpopular; Iran or its surrogates lashing out against American and Israeli targets in a long-term, low-intensity campaign of retaliation; a scorching hatred of America on the newly empowered Arab street, generating new recruits for Al Qaeda and its ilk; an untimely oil shock to a fragile world economy; an unraveling of the united front Obama has assembled to isolate Iran. All that, and a redoubled determination by Iran’s leaders to do the one thing that would prevent a future attack: rebuild the nuclear assembly line, only this time faster and deeper underground. There is a pretty broad consensus that, short of a full-scale invasion and occupation of Iran, a preventive attack would not end the nuclear program, only postpone it for a few years.

Now imagine that Iran succeeds in making its way into the nuclear club.

Despite the incendiary rhetoric, it is hard to believe the aim of an Iranian nuclear program is the extermination of Israel. The regime in Iran is brutal, mendacious and meddlesome, and given to spraying gobbets of Hitleresque bile at the Jewish state. But Israel is a nuclear power, backed by a bigger nuclear power. Before an Iranian mushroom cloud had bloomed to its full height over Tel Aviv, a flock of reciprocal nukes would be on the way to incinerate Iran. Iran may encourage fanatic chumps to carry out suicide missions, but there is not the slightest reason to believe the mullahs themselves are suicidal.

The more common arguments against tolerating a nuclear Iran are these:

First, that possession of a nuclear shield would embolden Iran to step up its interference in the region, either directly or through surrogates like Hezbollah. This is probably true. But as James Dobbins, a former diplomat who heads security studies for the RAND Corporation, told me, the subversive menace of a nuclear Iran has to be weighed against the lethal rage of an Iran that had been the victim of an unprovoked attack.

A second worry is that a Persian Bomb would set off a regional nuclear arms race. This is probably an exaggerated fear. A nuclear program is not cheap or easy. In other parts of the world, the proliferation virus has not been as contagious as you might have feared. So the Saudis, who regard Iran as a viper state, might be tempted buy a bomb from Pakistan, which is not a pleasant thought. But Egypt (broke), Turkey (a NATO member) and the others have strong reasons not to join the race.

Most worrisome, I think, is the danger that a crisis between Israel and Iran would escalate out of control. Given the history of mistrust and the absence of communication, some war planner on one side or the other might guess that a nuclear attack was imminent, and decide to go first.

“You would have a very unstable deterrent environment between Israel and Iran, simply because these are two states that tend to view each other in existential terms,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iranian-American Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, who is not an advocate of containment. Against this fear, history suggests that nuclear weapons make even aggressive countries more cautious. Before their first nuclear tests, India and Pakistan fought three serious conventional wars. Since getting their nukes they have bristled at each other across a long, heavily armed border, but no dispute has risen to an outright war.

At the end of this theoretical exercise, we have two awful choices with unpredictable consequences. After immersing myself in the expert thinking on both sides, I think that, forced to choose, I would swallow hard and take the risks of a nuclear Iran over the gamble of a pre-emptive war.

Chris Zambelis writes: The machinations surrounding Iran’s nuclear program continue to dominate international headlines. A closer look at the atmospherics in play indicates the presence of a web of competing narratives that seek to delineate the threats Iran allegedly poses to its neighbors and global security.

The boilerplate rhetoric out of Washington and US media regarding Iran is well known. But sorting through the cacophony of public threats of war, psychological operations, and propaganda broadcast by Israel and Saudi Arabia – Iran’s primary regional adversaries – is equally crucial toward understanding the geopolitics surrounding the Iranian nuclear question and, in a broader sense, Iran’s place in the region.

Alongside the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia have taken the lead in articulating a litany of purported threats emanating from the Islamic Republic. On May 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated the long-standing position held by Israel that views Iran as an existential threat: “Iran wants to destroy Israel and it is developing nuclear weapons to fulfill that goal.”

Relying on a sectarian discourse, Saudi Arabia has also defined its fears of Iran in existential terms. A special series published by the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah just days before the Kingdom dispatched its security forces to Bahrain to suppress democratic opposition protests led largely by Bahrain’s oppressed Shi’ite majority reflects Riyadh’s deep-seated antipathy for the Iran. The inflammatory title of the series, “Safavid Iran’s plans for the destruction of the Gulf States”, is of particular importance. The reference to Iran’s Safavid legacy draws attention to the Persian Empire’s adoption of Shi’ite Islam as its official religion. By highlighting Iran’s Shi’ite character, Saudi Arabia is able to define the perceived threat from the republic in territorial as well as ideological and theological terms.

Paradoxically, Israel and Saudi Arabia are officially enemies. Yet they appear to be acting in lockstep – almost in a perfect symbiosis – when it comes to undermining and attacking Iran and painting it as a threat to regional and world peace. A sampling of the collective responses of both countries to matters related to Iran and other areas of mutual concern, such as the course of the uprisings in the Arab world, suggests that the Israeli-Saudi interface represents more than a temporary pact of convenience. Indeed, the convergence of their interests over Iran constitutes an unspoken strategic alliance that runs deeper than either side cares to admit. [Continue reading…]

Tony Karon writes: After a summer of stoking media speculation that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before Americans go to the polls in November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak appear to be dialing things down. Netanyahu on Monday repeated his new message that war can be avoided, at least for now, if the U.S. is willing to publicly declare a clear “red line” that, if crossed by Iran, would trigger a U.S. military response. Since President Barack Obama last spring clearly stated that he would order military action if Iran moved to build a nuclear weapon, there would be nothing new in reiterating such a position — except, perhaps, that it could be spun, together with a series of largely symbolic gestures reportedly being weighed by the Obama Administration to placate the Israelis, as a enough of a concession to allow Netanyahu and Barak to clamber down from the limb on which their war talk has left them. It has been nothing short of astonishing, in fact, how isolated on the Iran issue Israel’s saber-rattlers-in-chief have become over the summer, not least among Israel’s own defense and security establishment. [Update: Netanyahu’s troubles in sustaining his case for war appeared to deepen, Wednesday, with reports that he’d abruptly canceled a meeting of his security cabinet after some of the contents of its briefings by Israeli intelligence agencies were leaked to the Israeli media, which reported that Israeli intelligence saw no cause for alarm beyond ongoing concern over the findings of last week’s IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear work — a conclusion that undermined the Prime Minister’s more alarmist assessments of Iranian progress.]

Netanyahu and Barak’s bellicosity has ignited a remarkable degree of opposition among Israel’s defense and security chiefs, who are reportedly unanimous in opposing an attack on Iran at this stage. Not only that, the public outpouring of opposition to a military strike among recently retired senior Israeli military men and security chiefs has included an unprecedented barrage of attacks on the strategic competence and even the mental stability of Netanyahu and Barak. Describing a recent public interview given by Gen. Uri Sagi, a respected senior IDF officer who served under Barak, analyst Shai Feldman notes:

“Sagi questioned, for the first time publicly, whether Israel can rely on the judgment and mental stability of its current leaders to guide it in time of war. Listing a number of past strategic errors made by Barak and hinting at Netanyahu’s ascribed tendency to traverse rapidly between euphoria and panic, Sagi expressed grave doubts whether Israel’s current leaders can take the pressures and stress entailed in managing a major military confrontation.”

Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, in April, accused Netanyahu and Barak of harboring “messianic feelings,” and questioned their competence to lead Israel into a confrontation. Even opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, the former military chief of staff who served in a unity government as Netanyahu’s deputy from May to July and who opposes attacking Iran, told Army Radio that he found Netanyahu “confused, stressed out and unfocused” when the two men met last week. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Star reports: Hezbollah said Monday it would never resort to the use of chemical weapons in any future war with Israel but said its present arsenal was enough to deal a severe blow to the Jewish state.

The head of the Lebanese resistance group also warned that U.S. military bases in the region could be targeted by Iran if Israel launched an attack on the Islamic Republic.

“We don’t have chemical weapons and we don’t need to use them … because [Israel] has factories and locations that are in the reach of our rockets,” Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, said in a rare face-to-face interview with Almayadeen television.

He said it was religiously unacceptable for his group to use chemical weapons.

Several reports emerged over the past year of U.S. and Israeli concerns of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile falling in to the hands of the Lebanese resistance group.

Nasrallah, who said in August his group could wrack havoc should Israel launch an assault of Lebanon, reiterated his threat, saying even a first strike that wiped out many of the group’s missile sites would still leave enough rockets to harm hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

“We don’t have a mighty power but we have a power that is effective. The available power today can represent a powerful deterrent force,” the leader of Hezbollah said.

He also reiterated how the missiles his group enjoyed possessed advanced targeting and range capabilities.

“The rockets of the Islamic resistance can strike at any target in occupied Palestine [Israel] that you can think of,” Nasrallah said.

He also said the capabilities of his group should not be undermined and that the resistance remained on alert for any possible confrontation.

“Since 2000 until today, there is a perception that Hezbollah is preoccupied and there are a thousand issues that it has to deal with. However, we have a big team, the resistance’s team, which is not involved in domestic affairs but works day and night on training, arming, planning, and is concerned with keeping itself prepared [for any eventuality],” he said.

Asked about repercussions on the party as a result of the Syria crisis, Nasrallah said: “We are comfortable, reassured and confident, based on an objective view of what is going on in the world in terms of economic conditions, the changes … in Syria, Lebanon and North Africa.”

“We have a very optimistic view of the future,” he added.

Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda write: Watching the conflict between Iran and Israel escalate, it’s hard not to draw analogies and lessons from history. Indeed, Netanyahu’s thinking in this regard is very much anchored in the past: “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany”, time and again he has warned. Such analogs provide leaders with a quick and handy “user manual”: a way to sell a desired policy path and provide a platform for action.

Yet as mental shortcuts, analogs could easily lead to unwanted outcomes. Crucial decisions, like going to war, could be based on paying attention to the wrong lessons, or making a false comparison between two different situations. Indeed, it is neither 1938 (Iran is far from having a bomb or a delivery system) nor is Iran Nazi Germany (Iran’s military budget is fraction of that of Israel and the US). Claiming so, however, leaves no room for any response save military force.

Recently, another historical episode, the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been gaining traction. Just as the US, the analogy goes, faced the intolerable choice of either attacking Cuba or allowing Soviet nuclear weapons in its own backyard, so too Israel/US must decide between attacking Iran or allowing it to become nuclear.

General Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, former Israeli Air Force Chief, has stated that the current situation is following the Cuban Missile Crisis model in at least two respects: sanction imposed on Iran are similar to the naval blockade imposed on Cuba, and military threats by Israel (and the US) are akin to the Kennedy administration flexing its muscles and putting the armed forces on high alert.

Ben-Eliyahu also noted that the successful resolution of the conflict rested on a third pillar: a secret channel of communication between the parties that allowed the Russians to back down. It’s unknown, albeit doubtful, if Israel and Iran have established such channels of communications. [Continue reading…]

Part One — Gareth Porter reports: New Delhi police officials have released hundreds of pages of documents from their investigation into the Feb. 13 bombing of an Israeli Embassy car. The documents aimed to show that a well-known Indian Muslim journalist aided an Iranian conspiracy to plan and carry out the bombing.

But a review by IPS of the evidence filed in the case suggests that the Indian journalist accused in the case has been framed by the police, at least in part to implicate the Iranians in the terror plot.

The “charge sheet” on the embassy car bombing filed by the “Special Cell” (SC) of the Delhi police July 31 claims Indian journalist Syed Mohommed Ahmad Kazmi confessed to helping officials from Iran plan the bombing plot in return for payments totalling 5,500 U.S. dollars.

It also says that a moped used for reconnaissance by the Iranian said to have carried out the bombing was found in Kazmi’s residence and that forensic bomb-making evidence was discovered in the hotel room of that same Iranian.

But an analysis of the documentation included in the filing reveals that the evidence is highly questionable.
The SC has a long history of cases against alleged terrorists that were rejected by the court as involving framing people and planting false evidence. [Continue reading…]

Part Two: The “Special Cell” of the Delhi police has identified an Iranian, Houshang Afghan Irani, as the man it believes carried out the Feb. 13 car bombing at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi that injured the wife of an embassy official. The police believe three other Iranians were also involved in the plot.

But major questions about the integrity of evidence put forward to prove the existence of an Iranian bomb plot cast doubt on that claim, which is the centrepiece of the Israeli accusation that Iran has been waging a campaign of terrorism against Israelis in as many as 20 countries.

Only Indian journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmad Kazmi has been officially charged in the case, and even the treatment of Irani and the other Iranians as suspects depends very heavily on “disclosure statements” supposedly made by Kazmi but denounced by the journalist as police fabrications.

Although the Special Cell (SC) also claims to have forensic evidence of Irani’s link to the bombing, the evidence appears to be tainted by improper police procedures.

A central problem for the SC case is that it has no eyewitness testimony for its contention that Irani planted the bomb on the Israeli embassy car. [Continue reading…]

Part Three: The Delhi Police Special Cell, which has accused an Indian journalist and four Iranians of conspiring to bomb an Israeli embassy car in Delhi Feb. 13, has a long history of planting evidence on those it has accused and of obtaining false confessions, according to court records now cited by critics of the police unit.

The Special Cell (SC) was organised in 1986 to investigate terrorism and major crimes, but it has been given such wide latitude in its operations that it has violated legal norms with complete impunity, critics say.

But the unit’s efforts to frame those it accuses have been so obvious – often employing the same tactics over and over again – that a significant majority of its cases have been rejected by judges in recent years.

Of the 174 individuals against whom the SC has brought charges from 2006 through 2011, 119 of them – nearly 70 percent – have been acquitted, according to official figures obtained under India’s Right to Information Act by activist Gopal Prasad.

The SC response to that development has been to leak false confessions and evidence to the news media in a largely unsuccessful effort to sway judges. [Continue reading…]

(Update below)

Time reports: Seven months ago, Israel and the United States postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October, and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official tells TIME.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members, and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot anti-missile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to discuss specifics of the reduced deployment, noting that planning for the exercise was classified. But in an e-mailed statement, Commander Wendy L. Snyder emphasized that the Israeli military has been kept informed of the changes. “Throughout all the planning and coordination, we’ve been lock-step with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and will continue to do so,” Snyder said.

U.S. commanders privately revealed the scaling back to their Israeli counterparts more than two months ago. The official explanation was budget restrictions. But the American retreat coincided with growing tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations on Israel’s persistent threats to launch an airstrike on Iran. [Continue reading…]

Update — Laura Rozen reports: Late last year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to cancel the exercise, which was originally scheduled to take place this past spring, defense sources previously told Al-Monitor. Panetta agreed to the request only if the exercise was rescheduled, not canceled entirely. So the Pentagon was deeply annoyed when Israeli officials left the false impression that the US was responsible for the war game being postponed. “It was Barak,” a US official told me.

Update: The Pentagon disputed the interpretation offered by Time for the scaled back exercise in a statement late Friday afternoon, noting Austere Challenge-12 will still represent “the largest ever ballistic missile defense exercise” between the United States and Israel.

“The exercise was originally scheduled for May, however at the request of the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli Defense Forces, the exercise was moved to late Fall of this year,” Ltn. Col. Wesley P. Miller IV, a Defense Department spokesman, told journalists in a statement sent out late Friday afternoon, several hours after guidance had been sought on the Time report. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: An Israeli attack on Iran would delay but probably not stop its nuclear programme, the most senior US military officer has claimed. General Martin Dempsey reinforced Washington’s opposition to unilateral Israel military action as he made clear that US military chiefs were equally wary of getting ensnared in Syria.

In common with Nato’s supreme commander, US admiral James Stavridis, who wrote about Afghanistan for the Guardian on Thursday, Dempsey put a brave face on the situation there. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was speaking to journalists in London, where he attended the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games as head of the US delegation.

Distancing himself from any Israeli plan to bomb Iran, Dempsey said such an attack would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear programme”.

He added: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

Dempsey said he did not know Iran’s nuclear intentions, as intelligence did not reveal intentions. What was clear, he said, was that the “international coalition” applying pressure on Iran “could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely”. Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, and they should be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.