Azerbaijan: Israel’s secret staging ground

Mark Perry writes: In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled “Azerbaijan’s discreet symbiosis with Israel.” The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country’s relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: “nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran’s northern border and, according to several high-level sources I’ve spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the “submerged” aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance — the security cooperation between the two countries — is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, 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, “and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.”

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel’s military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf — but one that could include the Caucasus. The burgeoning Israel-Azerbaijan relationship has also become a flashpoint in both countries’ relationship with Turkey, a regional heavyweight that fears the economic and political fallout of a war with Iran. Turkey’s most senior government officials have raised their concerns with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with the Azeris, the sources said.

The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, 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. During a recent visit to Tehran, however, Azerbaijan’s defense 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 defense 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.

“We’re watching what Iran does closely,” one of the U.S. sources, an intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a prospective Israeli attack confirmed. “But we’re now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we’re not happy about it.” [Continue reading…]

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Op-ed: Israel’s plan to attack Iran put on hold until next year at the earliest

Articles in Haaretz quite often blur the lines between reporting, analysis, and commentary. Amir Oren provides the following interpretation of the facts, concluding that Israel will not launch an attack on Iran this year. Who knows whether his is the definitive interpretation?

News that the IDF just cancelled Passover vacation provides yet a new element of uncertainty, though the one thing about which we can remain certain is Israel’s continuing desire to perpetuate a high level of uncertainty about its intentions.

Amir Oren writes: At 8:58 P.M. on Tuesday, Israel’s 2012 war against Iran came to a quiet end. The capricious plans for a huge aerial attack were returned to the deep recesses of safes and hearts. The war may not have been canceled but it has certainly been postponed. For a while, at least, we can sound the all clear: It won’t happen this year. Until further notice, Israel Air Force Flight 007 will not be taking off.

According to a war simulation conducted by the U.S. Central Command, the Iranians could kill 200 Americans with a single missile response to an Israeli attack. An investigative committee would not spare any admiral or general, minister or president. The meaning of this U.S. scenario is that the blood of these 200 would be on Israel’s head.

The moment the public dispute over whether to attack Iran is put in those terms, Israel has no real option to attack in contravention of American declarations and warnings.

That’s the negative side. The complementary positive side was presented this week, on Tuesday evening. At 8:20, Pentagon spokesman George Little announced that the Defense Department would be seeking more money to help Israel fund the Iron Dome antimissile defense system.

Noting that support for Israel’s security was a top priority for U.S. President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Little said that, given the Iron Dome system’s success in intercepting 80 percent of the rockets fired from Gaza this month, the Defense Department “intends to request an appropriate level of funding to support such acquisitions, based on Israeli requirements and production capacity.”

Thirty-eight minutes after that, Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly thanked both Panetta and himself (“The decision was the result of contacts between the Defense Ministry and the Pentagon” ).

Israelis may be the world champions of chutzpah, but even biting the hand that feeds you has its limits when the bitten hand is liable to hit back. When Barak thanked the Obama administration “for helping strengthen Israel’s security,” he was abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without permission before the U.S. presidential elections in November.

For all intents and purposes, it was an announcement that this war was being postponed until at least the spring of 2013.

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After military strike, Iran probably could rebuild most centrifuge workshops within six months

Bloomberg reports: Iran’s “workshops” for making nuclear centrifuges and components for the devices are widely dispersed and hidden, adding to the difficulties of a potential military strike by Israel, according to a new report by U.S. congressional researchers.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. is certain of the locations of all such facilities, analysts at the Congressional Research Service wrote in the report obtained today. The analysts cited interviews with current and former U.S. government officials familiar with the issue who weren’t identified.

Israel’s capability to halt or set back Iran’s nuclear program through a military strike has been central to the debate over whether Israel should undertake such a mission alone. While President Barack Obama has urged more time for economic sanctions to work, Israeli officials led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak say it may soon be too late to prevent Iran from developing the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.

The possibility of dispersed facilities complicates any assessment of a potential raid’s success, making it “unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,” the report found.

A U.S. official said in April 2011 that there “could be lots of workshops’ in Iran,” the authors said. Last month, a former U.S. government official with “direct experience” in the issue told the researchers that “Iran’s centrifuge production is widely distributed and that the number of workshops has probably multiplied ‘many times’ since 2005 because of an increase in Iranian contractors and subcontractors working on the program.”

“An attack that left Iran’s conversion and centrifuge production facilities intact would considerably reduce” the time Iran would need to resume its nuclear work, said the congressional researchers led by Jim Zanotti, a Middle Eastern affairs specialist. He wrote the report with analysts Kenneth Katzman, Jeremiah Gertler and Steven Hildreth.

Israel, the U.S. and European allies say they are concerned that Iran may begin trying to produce the highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is intended solely to generate power and for medical research. Centrifuges spin at high speeds to separate uranium isotopes.

Michael Hayden, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in January “that neither the U.S. nor Israel knows the location of all key Iranian nuclear-related facilities,” according to the congressional researchers.

Assessments vary on how much impact a military attack would have on Iran’s centrifuge facilities. An executive branch official who wasn’t named told the research service last month that Iran doesn’t have enough spare centrifuges or components to install new devices immediately, the authors wrote. A former official said the same day that Iran probably could rebuild or replicate most centrifuge workshops within six months, the researchers said.

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Palestinians forge new strategies of resistance

Ben White writes: A one-state solution in Palestine/Israel is a subject being increasingly discussed and debated. One way in which the conversation has emerged is through an analysis of the current situation as a de facto one state, a regime which privileges Jews above Palestinians (the latter being granted or denied different rights according to geography and legal status).

This challenges the orthodoxy that makes a clean distinction between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In doing so, it not only provides a framework for interpreting various policies, but also counters the fragmentation of Palestinians over the decades into “Israeli Arabs”, “West Bank” or “Gaza” Palestinians, Jerusalemites – and of course, refugees.

But apart from this discursive “reintegration”, as the apartheid regime has been consolidated irrespective of the “Green Line”, a new generation of Palestinian activists is breaking down old divisions imposed by Israel and forging new connections and strategies of resistance.

Lana Khaskia is an activist from Haifa. Last October, she worked alongside other comrades to organise a hunger strike in support of Palestinian prisoners. The action went under the name “Hungry for Freedom”, a slogan Lana says covers “many demands that can be summarised in one demand: ending Zionist colonialism in all of historic Palestine”. [Continue reading…]

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Hot, crowded, and running out of fuel: Earth of 2050 a scary place

Ars Technica reports: A new report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development paints a grim picture of the world in 2050 based on current global trends. It predicts a world population of 9.2 billion people, generating a global GDP four times the size of today’s, requiring 80 percent more energy. And with a worldwide energy mix still 85 percent reliant on fossil fuels by that time, it will be coal, oil, and gas that make up most of the difference, the OECD predicts.

Should that prove the case, and without new policy, the report warns the result will be the “locking in” of global warming, with a rise of as much as 6° C (about 10.8° F) predicted by the end of the century. Combined with other knock-on effects of population growth on biodiversity, water and health; the report asserts that the ensuing environmental degradation will result in consequences “that could endanger two centuries of rising living standards.”
[…]
The report predicts that, as a direct result of increased energy consumption, there will be a 70-percent increase in energy-oriented carbon dioxide emissions, and an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 50 percent. This would correlate to a rise in global average temperature between 3° C and 6° C above preindustrial levels.

Air pollution will overtake contaminated water and lack of sanitation as the prime cause of premature mortality across the globe, potentially rising to 3.6 million deaths per year—mostly in China and India. Death rates caused by ground-level ozone among OECD countries are projected to be among the world’s highest, thanks in part to the aging, urbanized populations.

But population growth has more direct effects upon the environment. The world’s natural resources are set to undergo unprecedented strain. Water demand is projected to grow by 55 percent by 2050 (including a 400-percent rise in manufacturing water demand), when 40 percent of the global population will live in “water-stressed” areas. The report identifies groundwater depletion as the greatest threat to both agricultural and urban water supplies. Nutrient-pollution of water sources is projected to further deplete aquatic biodiversity. And though the number of people with access to an “improved” water source should increase, the report projects that by 2050, 1.4 billion people will be without basic sanitation.

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Video: James Baker on Syria

“We don’t know these people…” has become a much-used line in recent months, and it’s true. But it needs to be put in perspective.

One of the reasons U.S. governments have such a long history of backing dictatorships is because it provides Washington with the illusion that it’s sufficient to know what’s happening in Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or wherever, through its ties to an individual or small group of individuals. Americans so often like to reduce foreign relations to personal relations and think that if those relations are with leaders perceived as loyal friends, then the U.S. can remain largely ignorant about the countries and populations they control.

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Why most Israelis don’t give a damn about the Palestinians

Noam Sheizaf points out that Israelis are not divided between those who support the two-state solution versus those who favor annexing the West Bank. What most Israelis prefer rather than any of the alternatives is the status quo — a situation in which Palestinians are deprived of human rights.

For some reason, people find it hard to accept that the current situation is desirable for Israelis. It certainly isn’t optimal, but considering the alternatives, it is probably the best.

It’s enough to come on a week’s visit to Israel to understand the appeal of the status quo. Despite occasional outbreaks of violence in the south and north, Israelis enjoy stability, prosperity and a general sense of security. According to the theory of “convincing Israelis to abandon the West Bank,” this was supposed to be the right moment for concessions, but the exact opposite is true: When things are going so well, it would be totally irrational to move in any other direction, either by annexing the West Bank or by leaving it.

Israelis understand that instinctively, regardless of what they say in polls on the desired solution to the conflict. Actually, even in polls, when faced with the option of maintaining the status quo, Israelis are likely to prefer it to the two-state solution. A Palestinian state becomes the preferable option only when presented on its own (“do you support/oppose…”) or when it is compared to annexing the West Bank.

See for example question 6 of the January 2012 Peace Index: A clear Jewish majority (57.3 percent) agrees with the following statement:

… even long-term continued rule in the territories will not prevent Israel from remaining a Jewish and democratic state.

This result is consistent with previous polls, I was told. In a panel I attended at Tel Aviv University, Prof. Ephraim Yaar, who runs the peace index, explained that Israelis’ political choices are irrational, since they don’t elect leaders that reflect their support for the two-state solution. But his own polls prove the opposite: that Israelis actually support the status-quo, and choose their leaders accordingly. The record-breaking support for Prime Minister Netanyahu, a man whose entire political history is a tale of maintaining the diplomatic status quo, can be easily explained in this framework, and so can the collapse of the parliamentary peace camp. There is not one Knesset party that has leaving the West Bank as the single most important issue on its agenda today – mainly because everyone knows that the public prefers the current state of affairs. So maybe it’s time to stop blaming the settlers alone.

But aren’t Israelis concerned about the long run? Well, when making political choices, most people don’t pay much attention to the long run, and politicians are even more likely to be focused on the immediate impact of their decisions. Anyway, the “unsustainable” occupation is proving itself to be pretty sustainable thus far. In the last decade, and especially since the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005– a move that was initiated, as Sharon himself said, in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank– Israel has been able to resist international pressure at a relatively low cost and maintain control over the territories it captured in 1967, while suffering the lowest number of casualties than at any other time. Never in its history has the gap – military, economic and in terms of international support – between Israel and its neighbors been so wide. The status-quo might not be perfect, but from the point of view of the average Israeli – not to mention that of his elected official – it represents the best alternative.

In other words, the major problem right now is that an inherently immoral order represents the most desirable political option for Israelis. All the left’s effort to demonstrate the problems the occupation creates – like the burden on the state budget – won’t help, since political choices are made based on alternative options, and right now the alternatives are more expensive, more painful, and more dangerous.

It should be noted that the status quo will remain the best option regardless of developments on the Palestinian side. Even if the Palestinians in the occupied territories recognize Israel as a Jewish state or vote Hamas out of office – even if they all join the Likud – from an Israeli cost/benefit perspective, keeping things as they are will remain preferable to the alternatives of either pulling out of the West Bank or to annexing it.

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U.S. Navy program to study how troops use intuition

The New York Times reports: The United States Navy has started a program to investigate how members of the military can be trained to improve their “sixth sense,” or intuitive ability, during combat and other missions.

The idea for the project comes in large part from the testimony of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who have reported an unexplained feeling of danger just before they encountered an enemy attack or ran into an improvised explosive device, Navy scientists said.

“Research in human pattern recognition and decision-making suggest that there is a ‘sixth sense’ through which humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them,” the Office of Naval Research said in an announcement late last month. The scientists managing the program — which the the naval research office is calling “revolutionary” — commonly refer to this mysterious perception as feeling one’s “Spidey sense” tingling, after the intuitive power of Spiderman.

“Evidence is accumulating that this capability, known as intuition or intuitive decision making, enables the rapid detection of patterns in ambiguous, uncertain and time restricted information contexts,” the office said, citing numerous peer-reviewed studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

The program, called Enhancing Intuitive Decision Making Through Implicit Learning, will be making available $3.85 million over four years to researchers who want to investigate how intuition works. Initial proposals are due April 15, and executives at more than a dozen companies specializing in fields like logistics, software and artificial intelligence have so far expressed interest in applying for the money.

It’s a sad fact that when the U.S. government weighs up the merits of ways to creatively invest tax dollars, the surest way of ensuring backing for unusual research is to show that it could improve America’s war-fighting capabilities.

What would add an interesting dimension to this study on intuition would be if it was made into a cross-cultural study examining differences in intuitive faculties between fighters operating overseas and those defending their home turf.

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Syria forces ‘storm rebel town despite peace pledge’

AFP reports: Syrian forces on Wednesday stormed a rebel bastion despite President Bashar al-Assad’s reported acceptance of Kofi Annan’s peace plan and an opposition plea that tanks be withdrawn, monitors said.

The assault came as China urged Syria’s government and opposition to honour commitments to halt armed conflict and Arab foreign ministers were thrashing out a resolution on Syria to be debated at a landmark Arab League summit in Baghdad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian forces backed by tanks swept into the central town of Qalaat al-Madiq and nearby villages early on Wednesday after a siege lasting more than two weeks.

The Britain-based monitoring group said the troops entered the town, in Hama province, just after dawn following a 17-day barrage of shelling and heavy gunfire to root out rebels.

It added however that the army was not in full control of the town.

“Heavy clashes between regime forces and armed rebels are preventing the army from advancing,” the Observatory said. “Intense gunfire and explosions can be heard in nearby villages.”

Abu Ghazi, a local activist reached by Skype, told AFP in Beirut that members of the rebel Free Syrian Army had withdrawn from the area because of the regular army’s superior firepower.

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Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 1: Our one last chance to preserve the Bill of Rights

Charles Hugh Smith writes: This Congress and President Obama have shredded the Bill of Rights. We have one last chance to restore the Founding Fathers’ bastion against a rogue Central State: the Bill of Rights.

“Everything that Richard Nixon did to me, for which he faced impeachment and prosecution, which led to his resignation, is now legal under the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).” Daniel Ellsberg. Can Congress legalize tyranny by passing a law that says it can? Can Congress shred the Bill of Rights by passing a law that says it can? Well, Congress has passed such a law, and President Obama–the most effective Trojan Horse president in American history, a plutocrat dressed as a “progressive”– rushed to sign it on New Years Eve 2011 when nobody was looking.

This is not a partisan issue, though various flaks and toadies are attempting to make it so. Here is how the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes the NDAA:Indefinite Detention, Endless Worldwide War and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

He signed it. We’ll fight it. President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. The dangerous new law can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.

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Barghouti calls for Palestinian ‘large-scale popular resistance’

Reuters reports: From his cell in an Israeli prison, one of the Palestinians’ most revered figures Marwan Barghouti called on Monday for a new wave of civil resistance in their decades-long quest for statehood and for severing all ties with Israel.

Barghouti is a leading figure in the Fatah movement, who was seen as a driving force behind the Palestinians’ last intifada launched in late 2000.

“The launch of large-scale popular resistance at this stage serves the cause of our people,” Barghouti said in a statement commemorating the tenth year of his imprisonment by Israel.

“Stop marketing the illusion that there is a possibility of ending the occupation and achieving a state through negotiations after this vision has failed miserably,” he said in a message read to a crowd of supporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Despite his multiple life sentences on charges of orchestrating lethal attacks and suicide bombings, Barghouti is viewed as a potential successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is also Fatah’s leader.

The call to action comes at a combustible period in the West Bank as economic malaise, moribund diplomacy, and simmering popular discontent bode ill for any peaceful breakthroughs.

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