Syrian-Israeli war of words via Putin edges into Syrian-Hizballah war of attrition.

End Of Days News

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Netanyahu ended their three-hour meeting in Sochi Tuesday, May 14, at loggerheads on Syria. In fact, Putin warned his guest that Israel and its army, the IDF, were heading for war with Syria in which Russia might well be involved – and not just through the advanced S-300 anti-air missiles supplied to the Assad government. The case Netanyahu and Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi put before Putin and Russian foreign intelligence chief, SVR Director Mikhail Fradkov, fell on deaf ears.
They found the Russian leader further infuriated by the docking that day at Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat of the USS Kearsarge, carrying 1,800 marines and a consignment of 20 V-22 Osprey helicopters which US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had promised to supply to Israel during his April visit.
Putin viewed the stationing of US forces in the Gulf of Aqaba just two hours away the Israeli-Syrian border for repelling Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah aggression against Israel or Jordan – signaled by the Kearsage’s arrival - as an act of bad faith by Washington. On the one hand, they want us to cooperate for an international conference to end the bloodshed in Syria, while on the other, they deploy military forces, he complained to Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister countered with a warning that Israel would continue to strike advanced weapons in Syria that were destined for Hizballah. And if President Bashar Assad hit back for Israel’s May 5 bombardment of weapons stores on Mount Qassioun near Damascus, Israel would intensify its bombardments of Syrian military targets and weapons until Assad was left to fight off rebel assaults empty-handed.
Putin rejected this threat as implausible.
Neither Putin nor Netanyahu put all their cards on the table, but the conversation ended with the Russian leader fully confident that his capabilities for safeguarding Assad were greater than Israel’s ability to destroy him.

In the end, Netanyahu and his party arrived home Tuesday evening with a bad feeling. They were certain that Moscow had given Assad the green light to go through with his threat to make the Syrian Golan and the Horan of southern Syria “a front for resistance” – i.e. the platforms for embarking on a war of attrition against northern Israel with the help of a flow of advanced weapons to Hizballah.
The Syrian ruler is strongly encouraged to adopt this path by Tehran. Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has embraced it. And the radical Palestinian leader, Ahmed Jibril, head of the Assad-satellite Popular Front-General Command, has eagerly offered his services.

And indeed, Wednesday, the day after Netanyahu’s trip to Sochi, Jibril’s group let loose with mortar fire on the Israeli Mt. Hermon ski site, firing from a Syrian army position.

Israeli military sources confirmed later that these were no stray shells from a Syrian-army-rebel battle as in former cases, but a deliberate attack. In Jerusalem, it was taken as a direct consequence of Moscow’s account to Assad of the conversation between the Russian and Israeli leaders. They concluded that Assad took it for granted that he was now at liberty to go on the offensive against Israel.
Wednesday night, Netanyahu’s office reacted to this deterioration with a swift and strong warning.
Israeli media were informed bluntly that if the Assad chose to retaliate for Israel’s air strikes, he would be removed from power.
That same night, “a senior Israeli official” contacted The New York Times with a more detailed warning quoted by the paper: "If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate."

Within hours, early Thursday morning, May 16, Jerusalem had its answer from Damascus.

Read More: http://www.debka.com/article/22970/Syrian-Israeli-war-of-words-via-Putin-edges-into-Syrian-Hizballah-war-of-attrition-

White House to Congress: Assad has used chemical weapons. Israeli jets down Hizballah drone opposite Haifa

End Of Days News

In a remarkable reversal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Abdu Dhabi Thursday afternoon, April 25, that the US intelligence community believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its own people, determining with "varying degrees of confidence" that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces have used the nerve agent sarin against civilians and forces fighting to remove Assad from power.

The White House is informing Congress about the chemical weapons use now, Hagel said, hours after he voiced reservations about the assessment Tuesday by senior Israeli military intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Itai Brun that the Assad regime had begun to practice chemical warfare.

Earlier Thursday, Israel Air Force F-16 warplanes downed a Hizballah drone 8 kilometers out at sea from the big port of Haifa. It flew south from the direction of Lebanon. Witnesses on Haifa’s Mt. Carmel watched the smoke trails of the Israeli jets and heard exploding rockets.

Israeli Navy ships are out searching for debris in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Israeli army spokesman issued a statement: An attempt by an unmanned aerial vehicle to enter Israel’s air space was thwarted. The UAV was identified flying from the north past the coast of southern Lebanon and continuing south. It was tracked continuously until it was downed by Israeli fighter planes and attack helicopters.

They went into action after the drone was identified as not coming from a friendly source. The Air Force gave the order to shoot it down.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “We take an extremely grave view of this attempt to violate our borders and will continue to guard them and keep our citizens safe.” He added, “We are watching events in Syria and Lebanon with extreme concern. Syria is breaking up and Lebanon is unstable. Both places pose not inconsiderable perils to Israel – two emanating directly from Syria. The first is the possible transfer of sophisticated weaponry to terrorist organizations and the second, attempts by terrorists to break through our borders and attack our towns and villages. Israel stands ready to counteract any threats from Syria or Lebanon by sea, air and land.”

Read More: http://www.debka.com/article/22924/White-House-to-Congress-Assad-has-used-chemical-weapons-Israeli-jets-down-Hizballah-drone-opposite-Haifa

US withdrawal from Europe-based missile shield will impact Israel’s defense

End Of Days News


Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday, Feb. 10 echoed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rejection of direct talks with the US four days ago which he said were on the grounds that they “would solve nothing” because, "You are holding a gun against Iran.”

Ahmadinejad added is own rider to this dismissal: “God willing, soon Iran’s satellite will be located in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, next to others from four or five advanced powers and it will relay a message of peace and fidelity to the world,” he said.

The boast that Iran would soon be the world’s sixth space power came two weeks after Tehran claimed to have put a monkey in orbit around earth, although it did not report bringing back to earth either the space capsule or the monkey.

Indeed, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, pouring a healthy dose of skepticism on the very existence of the project, commented: “The Iranians said they sent a monkey, but the monkey they showed later seemed to have different facial features.”

Tehran is again caught wandering at ease through its favorite terrain between fact, hyperbole and fiction about its achievements, whether in space or its nuclear program.

In recent weeks, reelected Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed he wants a broad government coalition for the critical objective of preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The question is how does he propose to achieve this when tough US and European sanctions have not just failed to stop Iran in its tracks but accelerated its nuclear progress. Iran is now estimated to be within four months of a nuclear bomb capacity from the moment a decision is taken to build one.

Those months are critical: On February 25 the five UN Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany sit down with Iran in Kazakhstan for a fresh round of negotiations. Former rounds in this format led nowhere and no breakthrough is expected this time either beyond, at best, a date for a continuation.

On March 20, President Barack Obama arrives in Israel for the first foreign trip of his second term. The purpose of his visit is plain, except to Netanyahu’s domestic rivals: Facing a 50 percent cutback in military spending, the Obama administration cannot credibly threaten to go to war against a recalcitrant Iran. But the US president may still wave the Israeli military option in Tehran’s face.

Not that the ayatollahs are likely to be impressed. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have both dismissed talks with Washington "with a gun" at their head, meaning that they are not scared of the Israeli gun the Americans are putting to their heads.

In fact, the Islamic rulers of Tehran are reported by debkafile’s intelligence and Iranian sources to be fully confident that they are home and dry as a nuclear power after a secret US Pentagon research study was leaked that “casts doubt on whether the multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe” (originally by the Bush administration) “can ever protect the US from Iranian missiles as intended.”

Clearly the missile shield against Iran, which aroused ire in Moscow, looks like falling under the defense budget axe.

The missile shield in Europe was also designed to defend Israel and Turkey against Iranian ballistic missile attack. Leaving it unfinished because of “flaws” exposes both those countries to such attack.

President Obama will no doubt tell Netanyahu that the system for intercepting medium-range Iranian missiles is to be scrapped. However, he will have to take into account that if the Iranians do finally manage to put a capsule in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, they will be able to fire a ballistic missile at any point on earth as well, including the United States. Even if they did fail to put a primate in space, they will keep on trying and advancing until they get there.

http://www.debka.com/article/22754/US-withdrawal-from-Europe-based-missile-shield-will-impact-Israel

Netanyahu: Iran, Hizbullah Waging Global Terror Campaign

End Of Days News

 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke on Wednesday evening with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and thanked him for his country's thorough and professional investigation into the terrorist bombing in Burgas last July.

Netanyahu told Borissov, "The findings of the investigation are clear and prove that Hizbullah was responsible for the atrocity in Burgas. This is an additional indication that Iran, through its proxies, is conducting a global terrorist campaign that crosses borders and continents.

“I hope that the Europeans will draw the necessary conclusions regarding the true character of Hizbullah after this criminal attack on European soil against an EU member state,” he added.

On Tuesday, Bulgaria officially blamed Hizbullah for the Burgas terror attack, in which five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a tourist bus.

Netanyahu released a statement Tuesday after Bulgaria officially blamed Hizbullah for the attack, in which he called on the international community to recognize Hizbullah as a terrorist organization.

Shortly after the Burgas bombing, the EU decided not to list Hizbullah as a terrorist group, but EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Tuesday that there is “a need for reflection over the outcome of the investigation.”

Hizbullah, meanwhile, accused Israel on Wednesday of waging an “international campaign” against it.

Naim Kassem, the terror group’s second in command, slammed the “international campaign of intimidation waged by Israel against Hizbullah,” adding that it is “ever improving its equipment and training” in order to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state.

“[T]hese charges will change nothing,” he said, referring to the Bulgarian investigation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday urged Europe to cut off funding to the Hizbullah terror group in the wake of its responsibility for the Burgas attack.

"We strongly urge other governments around the world -- and particularly our partners in Europe -- to take immediate action to crack down on Hizbullah," Kerry said.

"We need to send an unequivocal message to this terrorist group that it can no longer engage in despicable actions with impunity," he added.

Hizbullah has been on a U.S. terror blacklist since 1995 after a series of anti-American attacks, including the bombing of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s.

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164981#.UROXqJuOvTp



Likud loses ground over Netanyahu’s fuzzy security messages

 

 

Likud’s chief asset, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, may also be said to be its chief liability. While unchallenged as preferred prime minister in every opinion poll 17 days before Israel’s general election, his party – the joint Likud-Yisrael Beitenu ticket – is on a downward slide (34) from its first 47-seat rating.

Netanyahu’s secretiveness and ambiguity on security and peace, issues which in the last reckoning determine the outcome of Israeli elections and fate of its politicians, are leaving his party unarmed against savage opposition tactics and dividing his own camp.
While keeping his undoubted achievements in these fields under his hat, his mistakes and shortcomings are hard to miss.
Five months ago, Netanyahu was perceived as suddenly backing off plans to attack Iran’s nuclear program, after declaring for years that a nuclear-armed Iran was the most dangerous threat facing Israel. What happened was that on Sept. 5, he abruptly closed a meeting of the security-diplomatic cabinet on Iran without explanation, except for throwing in their faces that no forum competent to make policy on Iran was safe from press leaks.
For most of the country, Netanyahu lost points by failing to go through with this long-held resolve. His cartoon presentation of Israel’s “red lines” at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 27 did not change that perception. He spoke of postponing until “late spring or early summer” an action vital to Israel’s security - apparently in deference to Washington and out of consideration for Barack Obama’s campaign for reelection.
Then, after months of silence, on Thursday Jan. 3, the prime minister stood up before a gathering of Israel’s envoys in world capitals to inform them, “Iran is still our No. 1 threat. I have set out our red line and Iran has not yet crossed it. Our commitment was and is to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Those words had the same ring as sentiments heard from the US president. Common to both is their distance from the facts.
In recent months, Iran has developed a strategy for sidestepping “red lines” on quantities of 20-percent enriched uranium by periodically announcing the suspension of the process or the diversion of stocks to “medical research.”
This strategy passed unchallenged although it should have been for four reasons:

1. The amounts of fissile material claimed by Tehran are unverifiable by Israeli or Western intelligence - or even the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
2. The interminable wrangling between Iran and the world powers over amounts of medium-grade enriched uranium deemed sufficient for a bomb is no longer relevant because Tehran's consent to “negotiations” with world powers has bought Iran time to acquire the knowhow for assembling nuclear weapons and making them operational. A few kilos of enriched uranium lacking here or there are easily obtainable, either by domestic production or foreign acquisitions. Netanyahu’s graphic red lines, effective at the time, have been overtaken by events.
3. And his five-month silence has persuaded Iran’s rulers that they no longer need fear an Israeli military strike on their nuclear sites.
4. Iran has used those months free of international harassment and Israeli thunder for giant steps toward developing plutonium-based weapons. Netanyahu’s boast that he placed the Iranian nuclear menace at the forefront of the world's platform has had its downside: As the preamble to lay the ground for a proactive military policy, it was effective; however the gap between rhetoric and inaction has harmed Israel’s credibility and damaged its strategic deterrence.

The same credibility gap is marked on the question of Syria’s chemical weapons and Hizballah. Prime Minister Netanyahu, his ministers and diplomats, have repeatedly pledged Israel would take steps to prevent unconventional weapons reaching terrorist hands, including the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah often declares his rockets can reach every corner of Israel - “from Kiryat Shemone to Eilat!”
A year ago, in January 2012, a number of Western and Arab sources confirmed that Syrian ruler Bashar Assad had transferred a portion of his chemical weapons arsenal to Hizballah strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley and Hizballah units had trained in their use.
Last month, the Defense Ministry’s political coordinator, Amos Gilad, firmly asserted that Syria’s chemical weapons were “under control.” But this did not amount to a denial that those unconventional weapons had come under the joint logistical control of Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
It is possible that Netanyahu has opted in some to degree to follow Obama’s lead on security matters with regard to Iran, Syria and Hizballah and Hamas. Even then, he needs to do a better job of offering consistency to the Israeli voter. Instead, he offers silence or, at best, hazy, general messages that perplex the voter and keeps his own party in turmoil.
On the one hand, he incurred popular resentment for keeping 50,000 army reservists hanging around for nothing in the November anti-terror Gaza operation. But on the other, his government and party are not cashing in on the credit for the weeks of total calm on the Gaza front since Nov. 21 – the first time Hamas has honored a ceasefire in a decade.
Neither is he coming clean on the three additional advantages gained by working with Obama and his collaborators, Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, to negotiate that ceasefire. They could give his party's election campaign a badly needed shot in the arm.
One is the improvement in relations with Turkey’s Erdogan government after years of acrimony. It came out of Israel’s consent to support the US president's venture to combine those three nations - plus the Palestinian Hamas - into a new pro-American Sunni Muslim axis. Netanyahu agreed to modify Israel's attitude on Hamas in a gamble for the prizes of rapprochement with Ankara and the stabilization of ties with Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt.

Reading this map, the Palestinian Authority, under its Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, is stirring up unrest on the West Bank as a reminder to Washington and Jerusalem of his existence.

Although when he met the ambassadors in Jerusalem, Netanyahu spoke of the danger of Hamas seizing control of the West Bank like the Gaza Strip in 2007, this was contradicted by his decision to step back from vanquishing Hamas in the November operation. And last week, he opened the Gaza crossing points to supplies of building materials for the first time in six years as well as cash.

The prime minister has a long way to go to bring his right-of-center party around to a policy that embraces Hamas – even though it would help stave off opposition accusations that Israel is diplomatically isolated. Although he has invested considerable effort in thawing the iced-over peace process with the Palestinians, he is constrained from placing this squarely on the party platform because it would not gain a consensus.
All the opinion polls, show that, contrary to left-of-center opposition rhetoric, a majority of Israelis don't trust the Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas, as partners for negotiations or for peaceful coexistence. Neither do most Israelis subscribe to the international condemnation of Netanyahu’s policy of strengthening Jerusalem and the settlement blocs on the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The Israeli voter tends to judge every step taken by the government in terms of his and his family's personal and financial security.
By keeping the voter in the dark, he is hurting the electoral prospects of hiss Likud-Israel Beitenu as a party. And by aligning too closely with Obama on Iran and the Middle East, he is causing the more extreme factions of his party to cross the lines to the religious nationalist Habayit Hayehudi and its new leader, Naftali Bennett. There, they find a clearly-articulated platform calling for independent Israeli stances on the core issues of security, peace with the Palestinians, borders and Jewish settlements.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the left-of-center opposition parties accuse Netanyahu and Lieberman of extreme right-wing pro-war policies that threaten the country with disaster. Their campaign is turning increasingly savage and personalized rather than issue-oriented. Even though the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu alliance is declining in the Polls (down ten seats to 34 in the 120-member Knesset since November), its rivals are battering their heads against the solid support Binyamin Netanyahu enjoys (43+ percent) as favorite for prime minister.
The contrast between the declining popularity of Netanyahu’s party and his leadership rating is striking.
The Likud bloc is followed by Shelly Yacimovitch’s Labor (16 seats), Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi (14), ultra-religious Shas and the new Yesh Atid (Future) – 11 each; Hatenua founded by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni come next with 10 seats.
Friday night, Jan. 4, Livni publicly exhorted Labor and Future leaders to join forces for building a front to prevent Netanyahu from forming the next government after the Jan. 22 election. Pundits estimate that if Hatnua, Labor and Future leaders do manage to forge a common platform, they can count on around 40 Knesset seats compared with the right-of-center bloc’s 51. However, the multiplicity of Israeli parties means that no single grouping has ever achieved a parliamentary majority without coalition partners. This situation makes for extreme mobility between the various blocs when the time comes to build a government.

 

http://debka.com/article/22660/Likud-loses-ground-over-Netanyahu’s-fuzzy-security-messages