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THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR END-GAME APPROACHES: WILL TEHRAN TERRORISM SPARK U.S.-ISRAEL ATTACK?

“Iran, which is behind these attacks, is the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world. The Israeli government and its security forces will continue to work together with local security services against these terrorist actions.”—Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, blaming Iran for today’s dual attacks against Israeli diplomatic missions in New Delhi, India and Tbilisi, Georgia, and confirming Israel will “use a strong arm” against international terrorism emanating from Tehran. (Jerusalem Post, February 13.)

ATTACKS TARGET ISRAELI EMBASSIES IN GEORGIA, INDIA
Yaakov Katz

Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2012

…Two seemingly coordinated attacks were launched on Monday against Israeli embassies overseas. In the first attack, the wife of the Israeli embassy’s chief security officer was injured when a bomb exploded in her car in New Delhi, India. The woman succeeded in driving to the Israeli embassy where she was evacuated to a nearby hospital. She was reported to be in moderate condition.…

In the second attack, an embassy staffer in Tbilisi, Georgia discovered a bomb underneath his car as he was driving to the embassy. The staffer…heard something during the drive, pulled over to the side of the road, noticed the bomb and called local authorities. The bomb was dismantled before exploding.

Israeli security authorities raised the level of alert worldwide following the attacks. Security officials said that it was possible that the attacks were connected to the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah military chief Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in Damascus on February 12, 2008.

Diplomats worldwide have been ordered to check in and citizens currently overseas have been asked to do the same.… Security at embassies is being boosted by local police and military forces and Israel was considering the possibility of sending reinforcements from Israel.…

Iran and Hezbollah have tried a number of times in recent years to avenge Mughniyeh’s assassination.… Attacks were recently thwarted in Azerbaijan and in Thailand. Other attempts have included a plan to shoot down an Israeli airliner over Turkey with shoulder-to-air missiles and a plan to attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai.…

Last month, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz warned Hezbollah not to test Israel’s resolve by perpetrating a terror attack against an Israeli target overseas. “We are witnessing efforts by Hezbollah and other hostile elements to perpetrate a brutal terror attack far from Israel,” Gantz said at the time. “I recommend to everyone not to test our resolve.…”

It is still premature to determine what Israel’s response will be following the attacks…but the question of whether it should respond or not is currently hanging in the air.…

WARNING IRAN AGAINST HITTING ‘SOFT’ AMERICAN TARGETS
Alan M. Dershowitz

Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2012

The Iranian government has now made crystal clear that it is at war not only with Israel and Zionism but with Jewish communities throughout the world. As Iran’s Rafah news website—identified with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—threatened last month, Iran plans to “take the war beyond the borders of Iran, and beyond the borders of the region.” And last week an Iranian News Agency headline declared that “Israeli people must be annihilated.”

These and other recent threats have, according to news reports, led Israeli and American authorities to believe that Iran is preparing attacks against Israeli embassies and consulates world-wide, as well as against Jewish houses of prayer, schools, community centers, restaurants and other soft targets.

If this were to happen, it would not be the first time that Iranian agents have bombed or attacked Israeli and Jewish targets in distant countries. Back in 1992, Iranian agents blew up the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, many of whom were children. The Argentine government conducted a thorough criminal investigation and indicted several Iranian officials, but those officials were well beyond the reach of Argentine legal authorities and remain at liberty.

The U.S. government should deem any Iranian attack against Israeli or Jewish soft targets in America to be an armed military attack on the U.S.—to which the U.S. will retaliate militarily at a time and place of its choosing. Washington should not treat such an attack as the Argentine authorities did, merely as a criminal act.

Under international law, an attack on an embassy is an attack both on the embassy’s country and on the country in which the embassy is located. And under the charter of the United Nations, an attack against a nation’s citizens on its territory is an act of armed aggression that justifies retaliatory military action.

An attack on an American synagogue is no different than an attack on the World Trade Center or on American aviation. We correctly regarded those attacks as acts of war committed by al Qaeda and facilitated by the government of Afghanistan, and we responded militarily. All American citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation, are equally entitled to the protection of the American military.

U.S. retaliation could take the form of military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Though such action might be pre-emptive in its intention, it would be reactive as a matter of international law, since it would be in response to an armed attack by Iran. It wouldn’t require Security Council approval, since Article 51 of the U.N. Charter explicitly preserves the right of member nations to respond to any armed attack.

This is not to argue against such an attack if Iran decides not to go after soft American targets. It may become necessary for our military to target Iranian nuclear facilities if economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts do not succeed and if the Iranian government decides to cross red lines by militarizing its nuclear program and placing it in deep underground bunkers. But the legal justification for such an attack would be somewhat different. It would be predominantly pre-emptive or preventive, though it would have reactive elements as well, since Iran has armed our enemies in Iraq and caused the death of many American soldiers.

If Israel were compelled to act alone against Iran’s nuclear program, it too would be reacting as well as pre-empting, since Iran has effectively declared war against the Jewish state and its people. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently confirmed Iran’s role as Hezbollah’s active partner in its war against Israel, claiming that it “could not have been victorious” in its 2006 war without the military support of Tehran. Iran’s ongoing support for Hezbollah and Hamas, coupled with its direct participation in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, constitute sufficient casus belli to justify a reactive Israeli military strike against the Iranian nuclear program.

The best outcome, of course, would be to deter Iran from both foreign aggression and domestic nuclearization by making the costs too high, even for the most zealous or adventurous Iranian leaders. But for deterrence to succeed, where sanctions and other tactics appear to be failing, the threat of military action must be credible. Right now it is not, because Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other administration officials are sending mixed signals, not only with regard to the U.S. but also with regard to Israel.

The administration must speak with an unambiguous and credible voice that leaves no doubt in the minds of Iranian leaders that America won’t tolerate attacks on our citizens or a nuclear-armed Iran. As George Washington wisely counseled in his second inaugural address, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

IRAN 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0
Victor Davis Hanson

National Review, February 9, 2012

On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a “reset” policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration’s inability to finesse “soft power” had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy.

After all, the widely quoted but highly politicized 2007 National Intelligence Estimate claimed that Iran had ceased work on a bomb in 2003 and would not have a weapon for the foreseeable future. That flawed analysis fueled another popular talking point: that the Bush-Cheney warmongers were looking for more phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iran of the sort that had led them into Iraq.

In contrast, Obama proclaimed himself to be a more sophisticated sort of president. His left-wing politics, post-racial appeal, and his father’s Muslim heritage supposedly might win over the heretofore needlessly alienated Iranians—and most others in the Middle East as well. At no point did candidate Obama stop to consider that the Iranians could view his loud politicking and opportunistic criticism of Bush’s hostility toward Iran—identical to standard U.S. bipartisan policy under at least the four prior presidents—as weakness to be manipulated rather than magnanimity to be appreciated.

After Obama took office in 2009, we had a new Iran 2.0 policy implemented on a variety of fronts. We courted Vladimir Putin by canceling an Eastern European anti-ballistic-missile project in hopes that the Russians would help stop Iranian proliferation. We scheduled face-to-face talks with the Iranians. We did not press initially for economic sanctions of Iranian exports and imports. We largely ignored Iranian terrorists who were killing Americans in Iraq.

The Obama administration kept quiet in the spring of 2009 when a million Iranians hit the streets to protest their cruel authoritarian regime. It seemed to apologize for the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Mohammed Mossadegh. It reopened our embassy in Syria, Iran’s closest ally in the Middle East. It jawboned Israel, Iran’s worst enemy in the Middle East.

The result of Obama’s Iran 2.0 policy? Failure on every front. The Iranians sped up work on the bomb. They snubbed every deadline we issued. They increased weapons shipments to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. The Russians aided rather than blocked Iranian nuclear efforts. More recently, the Iranians plotted to kill a Saudi diplomat in the United States. They issued warnings to the Sunni Arab Gulf kingdoms and tried to stir up their Shiite populations. They turned to Afghanistan and helped supply Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. They forged an anti-American alliance in Latin America with Hugo Chavez. They are boasting about closing the Strait of Hormuz and warning allies of Israel of possible retaliation.

Jimmy Carter’s reset foreign policy crashed in 1980 with the Communists entering Afghanistan and Central America, and with American hostages taken in Iran, and so was followed by a suddenly tough new Carter Doctrine. Likewise the Obama administration is now forced to reset its policy.

With Obama’s new Iran 3.0, we are flip-flopping and now ratcheting up sanctions. We are announcing the dispatch of additional warships to the Persian Gulf. We are lobbying the United Nations for tougher resolutions against Iran and freezing Iranian assets in the U.S.… In other words, after demagoguing the old Iranian 1.0 containment strategy, the Obama administration is now trying to play 3.0 catch-up after its own failed 2.0 appeasement policy.…

The likely result of this schizophrenia will probably be an Obama 4.0 Iran policy—in other words, a big war in the Persian Gulf.

(HOW) SHOULD ISRAEL BOMB IRAN?
Bret Stephens

Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2012

Can Israel attack Iran? If it can, will it? If it will, when? If when, how? And what happens after that?

[Earlier this month] with Matt Lauer, President Obama said “I don’t think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do.” That didn’t square with the view of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who’s been reported as saying he expects an Israeli attack this spring. Nor does it square with public warnings from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the Iranians would soon enter a “zone of immunity” from foreign military attack if nothing is done to stop them.

Yes, these war drums have been beaten before. But this time it’s different. Diplomacy has run its course: Even U.N. diplomats now say Iran uses negotiations as a tactic to buy time. The sanctions are too late: Israel can’t afford to wait a year or two to see if Europe’s embargo on Iranian oil or the administration’s squeeze on Iran’s financial institutions will alter Tehran’s nuclear calculations. Covert action—computer bugs, assassinations, explosions—may have slowed Iran’s progress, but plainly not by enough.…

Two additional points. Washington and Jerusalem are at last operating from a common timetable—Iran is within a year of getting to the point when it will be able to assemble a bomb essentially at will. And speaking of timetables, Jerusalem knows that Mr. Obama will be hard-pressed to oppose an Israeli strike—the way Dwight Eisenhower did during the Suez crisis—before election day. A re-elected President Obama is a different story.

That means that from here until November the U.S. traffic light has gone from red to yellow. And Israelis aren’t exactly famous for stopping at yellow lights. But can they do it?

There’s a mountain of nonsense exaggerating Israel’s military capabilities: Israel does not, for instance, operate giant drones capable of refueling jet fighters in midair. At the same time, there’s an equally tall mountain of nonsense saying that Israel is powerless to do significant damage to Iran’s nuclear-weapons complex, as if the Islamic Republic were the second coming of the USSR. In fact, Iran is a Third World country that can’t even protect its own scientists in the heart of Tehran. It has a decrepit air force, antiquated air defenses, a vulnerable electrical grid, exposed nuclear sites (the uranium conversion plant at Esfahan, the heavy water facility at Arak, the reactor at Bushehr), and a vulnerable energy infrastructure on which its economy is utterly dependent. Even its deeply buried targets can be destroyed. It’s all a question of time, tonnage and precision.

The bottom line is that a strike on Iran that sets its nuclear ambitions back by several years is at the outer periphery of Israel’s military capability, but still within it.…

What happens on the day after? Israelis estimate that between Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran itself, there are some 200,000 missiles and rockets pointed in their direction. They could start falling before the first sortie of Israeli jets returned to base. Israel’s civil defenses have been materially improved in recent years. But the country would still have to anticipate that missile and rocket barrages would overwhelm its defenses, causing hundreds of civilian casualties. Israel would also have to be prepared to go to war in Lebanon, Gaza and even Syria if Iran calls on the aid of its allies.

Put simply, an Israeli strike on Iran would not just be a larger-scale reprise of the attacks that took out Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007. On the contrary: If it goes well it would look somewhat like the Six Day War of 1967, and if it goes poorly like the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Nobody should think we’re talking about a cakewalk.

So: Should Israel do it? If the U.S. has no serious intention to go beyond sanctions, Israel’s only alternative to action is to accept a nuclear Iran and then stand by as the rest of its neighbors acquire nuclear weapons of their own. That scenario is the probable end of Israel.… [And] destroying Iran’s nuclear sites will be a short-lived victory if it isn’t matched to the broader goal of ending the regime.

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