Israel sabotaging Iranian nuclear facilities says Egyptian media

An Egyptian daily newspaper has published an article praising Israel for preventing Iran from completing its proposed nuclear facilities.

The article claims the Israeli intelligence service Mossad has carried out assassinations and acts of sabotage in recent years to prevent the facilities being completed.

The daily newspaper Al-Ahram, in its Saturday edition, says Mossad chief Meir Dagan has led the charge against Iran, and without him the Islamic Republic's nuclear plants would have been completed years ago.

"Over the past seven years, he has worked in silence, away from the media," the op-ed article says. "He has dealt painful blows to the Iranian nuclear program, he is the Superman of the Jewish state."

The Egyptian newspaper cited assassinations, inciting of opposition protests, the carrying out of acts to embarrass Iran's leaders, and covert attacks against nuclear facilities, among the list of achievements by the Mossad chief.

The article also lauds Dagan for his, "many bold victories," against Syria, Hezbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and praises the Israeli intelligence service's wisdom for not admitting its involvement in the various acts it orchestrated.

Malaysia Sun

Mossad took minister: Iran

TEHRAN: An Iranian former deputy defence minister who has been missing for nearly three years was abducted by Israeli agents and was now being held in Israel, several Iranian news websites reported yesterday.

Ali Reza Asgari, a retired general who served in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, disappeared while on a private trip to Turkey in December, 2006. In March of this year, a former German Defence Ministry official said Mr Asgari had defected and was providing information to the West on Iran's nuclear program. Iranian officials and Mr Asgari's family have claimed that he was abducted.

One of yesterday's web reports, on a site called Alef, said German and British intelligence services assisted Israeli agents in abducting Mr Asgari and taking him to Israel.

The site, www.alef.ir, is close to a conservative Iranian law-maker.

"On the basis of a two-year investigation carried out by concerned bodies, Asgari was abducted by foreign intelligence services and is being held in a Zionist prison," the site reported, apparently referring to an Iranian intelligence probe into the matter.

"Asgari was abducted with the co-operation of Mossad as well as German and British intelligence services and was finally taken to Israel," the news report said.

Israel's Foreign Ministry refused to comment.

Hans Ruehle, a former chief of the planning staff of the German Defence Ministry, wrote in a Swiss newspaper in March that Mr Asgari told the West that Iran was financing North Korean steps to transform Syria into a nuclear weapons power, leading to an Israeli air-strike that targeted a site in Syria on September 6, 2007.

The US claims the site was a nearly finished nuclear reactor, but Syria denies that and says the facility was an unused military installation. Mr Ruehle said Mr Asgari, who was instrumental in establishing the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, "changed sides" and provided information to the West on Iran's own nuclear program.

The US and its European allies, as well as Israel, suspect Iran is intent on using a civilian nuclear program as a cover for developing nuclear weapons. Iranian officials have said Mr Asgari was not linked to Iran's nuclear program, but Western media reports have said he has co-operated with US intelligence and is considered a "high value" defector. Mr Asgari arrived in Turkey on December 7, 2006, and disappeared on December 9.

The Australian

Intelligence Summit

Debka is reporting here about a meeting between the senior intelligence officers of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Mossad, Egyptian Intelligence and hosted by the Jordanians.

This is a rather extraordinary gathering to say the least.

Our sources add that the unpublicized get-together took place just a few days before Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US president Barak Obama conversed at the White House Monday, Nov. 9.

They therefore had its conclusions before them when they talked. Two days later, Netanyahu passed input from the intelligence summit to French president Nicolas Sarkozy when he stopped over in Paris.

It was the first time Israel had taken part in a secret meeting of Middle East intelligence chiefs whose purpose was to coordinate their steps. (Emphasis mine.)

Please read the entire article.

Analysis. This is not a very good sign.

I will freely admit that Debka cries wolf a lot. Given the backgrounds of the people who are Debka, that is totally understandable. I am the same way because my background besides being an F-4 Weapons Systems Officer and a few other things is plans and intelligence.

It is our job to present our best analysis of enemy capabilities and intentions to the commander. By design we present the worst case scenario.

I consider it to be very telling that the countries who form the “Western Front” against Iranian expansion by proxy have finally gotten together at least at the senior intelligence level.

Were the senior planners there also? I don’t know and we probably never will. But I would strongly suspect that the DIA contingent included at least one planner.

I cannot say for sure that these five countries plus Saudi Arabia are ready to sit together and create defensive plans for the time when the Syrians and Hezbollah go south. They are probably close.

The Saudis are a key country. They are exposed to Iran on both sides. They have Jordan to protect them on the north. But they are vulnerable in the south as the Yemeni insurgency shows.

Their eastern front is wide open from the Persian Gulf as are the fronts of the rest of the GCC countries. The Saudis also have another problem. They are substantially more than pissed at the machinations of Shiite Iran. They are only a little less than apoplectic about having a Shiite Iraq. Note the earlier post regarding Iraq’s attempt to cause the UN to investigate terrorists coming from both Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The other big key that the Saudis have is their airspace. With the recent turn of Turkey to the Dark Side that route to Iran is closed as is presumably the Iraq route. That leaves the Saudi route. In any case, the Saudi AWACS can watch every flight in the area for a long distance. They would know immediately if a large formation of Israeli aircraft took off and headed east.

As the intelligence meeting probably figured out, any viable attack on Iran must be synergistic.

Each country, including the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Countries has particular capabilities that by themselves provide some minimum measure of defense. Together they complement each other and make a credible attack and defense force at least from the air. The ground forces would require reinforcement from Egypt to present a credible invasion force aimed at Syria.

I expect that meetings such as these will continue on a regular basis and will soon openly include planners and senior commanders. Then it gets serious.

Source: World Threats

Israel's Secret War on Hezbollah

Iran's proxy army in Lebanon will think twice before launching another round of missile attacks.

By RONEN BERGMAN

On Monday, a secret Hezbollah munitions bunker in South Lebanon blew up under mysterious circumstances, injuring a senior official in the organization.

This is the second such incident in recent months. The first occurred on July 14, when an explosion destroyed a major Hezbollah munitions dump in the South Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim.

Hezbollah immediately pointed fingers at the Mossad. Whether or not Israel was to blame, the explosion caused Hezbollah considerable discomfort by proving that it was in flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which forbids stockpiling weapons south of the Litani River.

The U.N. issued a strongly worded rebuke and sent representatives to investigate. But their efforts were thwarted by Hezbollah fighters, who, with the assistance of Lebanese troops, prevented the foreigners from examining the site. This caused further embarrassment to Lebanon, as it exposed the army's lack of neutrality and the active aid that it extends to Hezbollah.

The episode also led to heightened tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border. The specter of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah looms as large today as it has at any time since the end of the Lebanon war in August 2006. Yet senior military officers in Israel's Northern Command are confident that the embarrassing outcome of the last round will not be repeated.

"By all means, let the Hezbollah try," one officer told me two weeks ago when I asked if he was concerned about the possibility of warfare. "The welcome party that we are preparing for them is one that they will remember for a very long time." That sentiment is shared by many of his colleagues.

The recent explosions have highlighted the weakened geopolitical status of Hezbollah, a diminishment which no one could have foreseen at the end of the last war. In 2006, on both sides of the border—and elsewhere in the Middle East—Hezbollah was seen as having triumphed.

Not only was it able to withstand the vastly superior invading Israeli force, but it also inflicted heavy military casualties and brought civilian life in northern Israel to a standstill with its rockets. At the end of the war, a commission of inquiry was set up in Israel to investigate the military and political failure. A number of senior army officers resigned, and Israel's deterrence power was seen as having sustained a severe blow.

If the 2006 war underlined the military might of Hezbollah—a repeat, in a sense, of Hezbollah's success in driving out the Israeli occupying forces from South Lebanon in May 2000—it also forced Israel to include Hezbollah in any assessment of possible responses to an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear installations.

As part of its combat doctrine, which eschews reliance on reinforcements and resupply, Hezbollah has stockpiled its weapons throughout Lebanon, but particularly near the Israeli border.

According to current Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has an arsenal of 40,000 rockets, including Iranian-made Zelzal, Fajr-3, Fajr-5, and 122 mm rockets (some of which have cluster warheads) and Syrian-made 302 mm rockets. Some of its rockets can reach greater Tel Aviv. Hezbollah also has a number of highly advanced weapons systems, including antiaircraft missiles, that constitute a threat to Israeli combat aircraft.

But all is not rosy for Hezbollah. After the war, considerable dissatisfaction with the organization was voiced inside Lebanon. Many blamed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for Israel's retaliatory bombardments that caused widespread damage.

Nasrallah stated that had he known Israel would respond as forcefully as it did, he would have thought twice before ordering the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers—the act that sparked the conflict.

Read more here,,,,

Source: WSJ Online

Mr. Bergman, a correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of the "The Secret War With Iran" (Free Press, 2008).

Alan M. Dershowitz: Ex-President For Sale

Jimmy Carter is making more money selling integrity than peanuts.

I have known Jimmy Carter for more than 30 years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a hand written letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice.

I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign.

Shortly thereafter, my former student Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election.

When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my name was among those given out. I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East.

Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that the was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights.

Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia , had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity.

When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, an d kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it.How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source.

Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School Rachael Lea Fish -- showed me the facts.

They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up - a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable."

(They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not. Read more here ...

Source: MidEast Truth
H/T: GH

Jimmy Carter
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award

Report: Saudis Give Israel Green Light For Attack On Iran

By: Michael van der Galien

If this report is correct, calling it an interesting development would be the understatement of the century:

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that “Riyadh certainly approves” of Israel’s use of Saudi airspace.

Perceptive readers have undoubtedly noticed I called the report “important” but not “shocking.” The reason? It’s not. Although Saudi Arabia pretends Israel to be its main enemy for domestic purposes, the royal family knows full well that the real danger for its rule comes from Iran.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are archenemies. Iran is ruled by Shiite extremists, Saudi Arabia by Sunni extremists. They consider each other ‘traitors.’ Both want to replace each others ideology – Saudi Arabia wants to spread its Wahabbi extremism, Iran its Shiite extremism through the region and eventually the world. They basically have the same radical agenda and consider themselves to be the only ‘real muslims’ in the world.

It isn’t exactly surprising therefore that the Saudis want Israel to do its dirty work. It can give quiet, secret permission for an Israeli strike yet publicly condemn Jerusalem for its “aggression.” It’s a game the Saudis have played for years, if not decades.

The West and Israel are wise to get Sunni countries that support / tolerate strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities to voice their support in public. If they do not, the latter will continue to do what they have done for years now, thereby radicalizing their peoples and turning them even more against the West than they already are.

Source: PoliGazette