Today, once again, we see Iran's growing influence in the epicenter, and ultimately, underlying everything we see from Iran, is the desire to destroy Israel:
Lebanon is supplying the armed forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with explosives, a Lebanese MP has charged.
Lebanon’s Future bloc MP Khaled Daher revealed at a news conference Saturday that trucks have been carrying tons of explosives across the country’s eastern border to Syria for months.
“About two days ago, two trucks loaded with dozens of tons of explosives crossed the Masna’a Lebanese-Syrian border crossing in the eastern Beka'a valley, and this has been happening since May 2012,” Daher said, according to the National News Agency.
“The problem is that it is happening with the knowledge of the LAP and army intelligence, as if it were a simple matter.” The opposition lawmaker showeddocuments sent to LAF command to prove his claims.
The Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization, which has a sizeable representation in the nation's parliament and cabinet, has set up guerrilla bases on both sides of the Lebanon-Syria border, and has sent its fighters to bolster the efforts of the loyalist troops supporting Assad's regime against opposition forces in Syria's savage civil war. Like the Assad regime, Hizbullah is patronized by Iran, which lavishly funds, equips and trains the terrorist organization.
Iran’s leaders are therefore quite frank about the state of their nuclear program: the components of a nuclear weapon have been procured - defying Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu red lines - but Tehran has not yet crossed the threshold to assemble it - although this could be done modularly.
Iranian scientists attended the latest North Korean atomic test. Six days later, the Sunday Times repeated the story, naming Mohsen Fakhrizade-Mahabadi, the senior Iranian scientist of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as the official present. Our Iranian sources strongly doubt that Mahabadi was there because he is too afraid of kidnapping or assassination to ever leave Iran.
We also revealed how the Iranian-North Korean nuclear partnership worked and the division of clandestine labor between them. Their arrangement – to which Washington and Jerusalem prefer to turn a blind eye –assigns to Iran the development of small nuclear warheads for delivery by missiles and to North Korea the development of ballistic missiles able to land a warhead at any point on the planet.
The two governments work smoothly in tandem, regularly pooling the data obtained from advances in their respective programs.
After registering these menacing strides, officials in Jerusalem were dismayed to learn that instead of planning to cut them short, US President Barack’s Obama’s circle in Washington was studying a bizarre plan for the opposite objective.
It surfaced in an article published Tuesday, Feb. 12, by Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a veteran American diplomat who is influential in the framing of Obama’s Iranian policy.
This what he wrote: “In years past, he (Khamenei) issued a fatwa condemning nuclear weapons. Washington could take advantage of this fact by drafting a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the fatwa. This could be a small step toward boosting Khamenei’s international profile while simultaneously pressuring Iran to follow its own religious decree.”
Instead of dismantling these rogue nuclear programs, Pickering was proposing to legitimize Iran’s possession of a nuclear bomb capacity that only stopped one step short of assembling a bomb.
For the Shiite republic, UN endorsement as a nuclear power would be an epic triumph with ramifications for many years to come on its standing and the shape of the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
This fatwa has always been dismissed until now as a piece of propaganda designed to disguise the military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and support Tehran’s claim that it was purely for peaceful use and research.
The stratagem floating around the White house for buttering up Khamenei and granting his edict international legitimacy just weeks before President Obama’s March 20 visit to Jerusalem is causing consternation among his Israeli hosts. It is a worrying pointer to the direction in which his Iran policy is heading.
The stratagem floating around the White house for buttering up Khamenei and granting his edict international legitimacy just weeks before President Obama’s March 20 visit to Jerusalem is causing consternation among his Israeli hosts. It is a worrying pointer to the direction in which his Iran policy is heading.
The Pentagon announced 10 days ago that it was cutting its aircraft carrier presence in the Persian Gulf region from two carriers to one, with a saving of hundreds of millions of dollars. The decision came as Washington struggles to find a way to avoid sharp automatic spending cuts set to strike the Pentagon and domestic programs next month. The US has maintained two aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf for most of the last two years, amid escalating tensions with Iran, as part of a US show of force in the region.
top American Jewish leader on Sunday criticized the Obama administration for cutting its aircraft carrier presence in the Persian Gulf region from two carriers to one. He said the move sent entirely the wrong message to Iran about America’s commitment to keep all options, including the military option, on the table in the struggle to thwart Tehran’s nuclear drive.
“I’m personally very disturbed by the withdrawal [of one of the US's two aircraft carriers] from the Persian Gulf, the Arab Gulf, because of the message it sends to the Iranians,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the long-time executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization, in unusually critical comments. “We have to think about how the Iranians perceive it.”
Hoenlein said he well understood that budgetary pressures may have necessitated the move, but feared that it would be “interpreted by the Iranians as a diminution of our commitment that all options are on the table, which is the only thing that will bring them — if anything will — to a reasonable stance” as regards their nuclear program.
Hoenlein, speaking to The Times of Israel toward the end of a lengthy visit to Israel during which he and his colleagues met with Israel’s key leadership, said he was one of those who considers this year to be the decisive year as regards Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
As he put it, “2013 will determine if it’s Iran with a bomb or we bomb Iran… Unless there is a magic formula with increased sanctions or other means which I cannot foresee, this is the year of decision.”
He said he considered North Korea’s recent nuclear test to be “another line crossed — because whatever North Korea does is with Iran and for Iran.”
Asked which it would be — Iran with a bomb, or military action against Iran — Hoenlein answered indirectly: “One of the things people talk about is the cost of action,” he said. “It is indeed very complicated and I don’t dismiss the dangers. But if you calculate the cost of inaction, you’ll find it will be much greater.”
Asked who might carry out any such action, Hoenlein again answered indirectly, noting that President Barack Obama is “further away [from Iran] and has greater fire power,” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is closer, and faces greater danger, including “the danger of Iran activating Hezbollah and others.”
“I understand the complexity of it,” noted Hoenlein, a highly experienced Jewish leader who has held his position since 1986. “It’s all very well yelling slogans about bombing Iran. You have to think about the ramifications.”
Also see:
'No Coalition Talks Between Likud, Jewish Home'
It's Not Easy Being Red And Green
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