ISRAEL: MILITARY: AFTER GENEVA, ISRAEL CONFRONTS COMBINED A) HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH ROCKETS & B) IRANIAN NUCLEAR MISSLES. RESPONSE? PRO-ACTIVE PRE-EMPTION

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A Raid on Iran?: Uri Sadot, Weekly Standard, Dec. 30, 2013 — As world powers debate what a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran should look like, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to maintain that Israel is not bound by the interim agreement that the P5+1 and Iran struck in Geneva on November 24.

Military Force Only Remaining Option to Stop Iranian Nukes: Morton A. Klein & Dr. Daniel Mandel, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, 2013 — The interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran is a disaster.

Untangling Synergies: Israel's Order of Battle: Louis René Beres, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 18, 2013 —  Whatever else might divide them, all Palestinian factions readily come together on at least one common understanding. This narrow but significant point of coalescence is unhidden. In essence, it reveals a conspicuously ritualized hatred of Israel.

The Shorter, More Intensive Conflicts of the Future: Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, Nov. 1, 2013— The next battles between Israel and any of the terrorist organizations on its borders will likely be very different from the Second Lebanon War in 2006 against Hezbollah, and the 2008-9 and 2012 operations against Hamas in Gaza.

On Topic Links

Arm Thyself!: Ariel Harkham, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17, 2013

Iran’s S-300 Missile’s 1,240 Mile Range War Dance: Igal Zuravicky, Jewish Press, Dec. 15., 2013

Israel Gets Ready For 'Short, Sharp War' Against Hezbollah: UPI, Dec. 19, 2013

The Secret of the Wonder Weapon That Israel Will Show Off to Obama: Karl Vick, Time, Mar. 19, 2013

A RAID ON IRAN?                                                       

Uri Sadot

 Weekly Standard, Dec. 30, 2013

As world powers debate what a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran should look like, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to maintain that Israel is not bound by the interim agreement that the P5+1 and Iran struck in Geneva on November 24. Israel, says Netanyahu, “has the right and the obligation to defend itself.” One question then is whether Netanyahu actually intends to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. The other question, no less important, is whether Israel could really pull it off.

American analysts are divided on Israel’s ability to take effective military action. However, history shows that Israel’s military capabilities are typically underestimated. The Israel Defense Forces keep finding creative ways to deceive and cripple their targets by leveraging their qualitative advantages in manners that confound not only skeptical observers but also, and more important, Israel’s enemies. Military triumphs like the Six-Day War of June 1967 and the 1976 raid on Entebbe that freed 101 hostages are popular Israeli lore for good reason—these “miraculous” victories were the result of assiduously planned, rehearsed, and well-executed military operations based on the elements of surprise, deception, and innovation, core tenets of Israeli military thinking. Inscribed on one of the walls of the IDF’s officer training academy is the verse from Proverbs 24:6: “For by clever deception thou shalt wage war.” And this has been the principle driving almost all of Israel’s most successful campaigns, like the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, the 1982 Beka’a Valley air battle, and the 2007 raid on Syria’s plutonium reactor, all of which were thought improbable, if not impossible, until Israel made them reality.

And yet in spite of Israel’s record, some American experts remain skeptical about Israel’s ability to do anything about Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Even the most optimistic assessments argue that Israel can only delay the inevitable. As a September 2012 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies contends: “Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two.” An attack, it continued, “would be complex and high risk in the operational level and would lack any assurances of a high mission success rate.” Equally cautious is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who argued that while “Israel has the capability to strike Iran and to delay the production or the capability of Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons status,” such a strike would only delay the program “for a couple of years.” The most pessimistic American assessments contend that Israel is all but neutered. Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden, for instance, said that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program are beyond Israel’s capacity.

Part of the reason that Israeli and American assessments diverge is the difference in the two countries’ recent military histories and political cultures. While the American debate often touches on the limits of military power and its ability to secure U.S. interests around the globe, the Israeli debate is narrower, befitting the role of a regional actor rather than a superpower, and focuses solely on Israel’s ability to provide for the security of its citizens at home. That is to say, even if Israel and the United States saw Iran and its nuclear arms program in exactly the same light, there would still be a cultural gap. Accordingly, an accurate understanding of how Israelis see their own recent military history provides an important insight into how Israel’s elected leaders and military officials view the IDF’s abilities regarding Iran. Any account of surprise and deception as key elements in Israeli military history has to start with the aerial attack that earned Israel total air supremacy over its adversaries in the June 1967 war. Facing the combined Arab armies, most prominently those of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel’s Air Force was outnumbered by a ratio of 3 planes to 1. Nonetheless, at the very outset of the war, the IAF dispatched its jets at a time when Egyptian pilots were known to be having breakfast. Israeli pilots targeted the enemy’s warplanes on their runways, and in two subsequent waves of sorties, destroyed the remainder of the Egyptian Air Force, as well as Jordan’s and most of Syria’s. Within six hours, over 400 Arab planes, virtually all of the enemy’s aircraft, were in flames, with Israel losing only 19 planes. Israel’s sweeping military victory over the next six days was due to its intimate familiarity with its enemy’s operational routines—and to deception. For instance, just before the actual attack was launched, a squad of four Israeli training jets took off, with their radio signature mimicking the activity of multiple squadrons on a training run. Because all of Israel’s 190 planes were committed to the operation, those four planes were used to make the Egyptians believe that the IAF was simply training as usual. The IAF’s stunning success was the result not only of intelligence and piloting but also of initiative and creativity, ingredients that are nearly impossible to factor into standard predictive models.

The 1981 raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak is another example of Israel’s ability to pull off operations that others think it can’t. The success caught experts by surprise because every assessment calculated that the target was out of the flight range of Israel’s newly arrived F-16s. The former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Israel Bill Brown recounted that on the day after the attack, “I went in with our defense attaché, Air Force Colonel Pete Hoag, to get a briefing from the chief of Israeli military intelligence. He laid out how they had accomplished this mission. .  .  . Hoag kept zeroing in on whether they had refueled the strike aircraft en route, because headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Washington wanted to know, among other things, how in the world the Israelis had refueled these F-16s. The chief of Israeli military intelligence kept saying: ‘We didn’t refuel.’ For several weeks headquarters USAF refused to believe that the Israelis could accomplish this mission without refueling.” Washington later learned that Israel’s success came from simple and creative field improvisations. First, the pilots topped off their fuel tanks on the tarmac, with burners running, only moments before takeoff. Then, en route, they jettisoned their nondetachable fuel drop tanks to reduce air friction and optimize gas usage. Both these innovations involved some degree of risk, as they contravened safety protocols. However, they gave the Israeli jets the extra mileage needed to safely reach Baghdad and return, and also to gain the element of surprise by extending their reach beyond what the tables and charts that guided thinking in Washington and elsewhere had assumed possible…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link –ed.]

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MILITARY FORCE ONLY REMAINING OPTION TO STOP IRANIAN NUKES

Morton A. Klein & Dr. Daniel Mandel

Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, 2013

The interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran is a disaster. US President Barack Obama has said that this deal dramatically reduces the likelihood of war. Ironically, it increases it. It certainly dramatically increases the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. The Geneva interim agreement permits Iran to retain intact all the essential elements of its nuclear weapons program: Continued construction of its Arak plutonium plant; Continued uranium enrichment to 5% (which, with 18,000 centrifuges, can enable swift enrichment to weapons-grade level, allowing Iran to become a break-out nuclear state in a matter of months);  Its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programs (which, according to US intelligence, will enable Iran to strike the US itself by 2015); its enriched uranium stocks (Iran being simply required to reduce them to an oxide which can be restored in weeks to weapons-grade uranium). The interim agreement also grants Iran substantial sanctions relief totaling some $20 billion; not the $6-7 billion originally forecast by the Administration.

Thus, the P5+1 opted for an interim agreement which lets Iran off the sanctions hook. If we could not obtain a final agreement with Iran that terminates its nuclear weapons program when international sanctions are at their height, how likely are we to obtain a final agreement that accomplishes that, now that sanctions have been relaxed? This is a regime whose leadership has stated frequently that it intends to destroy Israel. The notion that this is a fallacy stemming from repeated mistranslations has been debunked by an authoritative study by the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. Indeed, during the Geneva negotiations, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking before a mass rally in which militiamen were chanting ‘Death to America,’ obscenely declared that “Zionist officials cannot be called humans …The Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation.” Worse, Tehran probably cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons, because, as the doyen of scholars of Islam, Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton Bernard Lewis, noted years ago, “MAD, mutual assured destruction … will not work with a religious fanatic. For him, mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement.” Indeed, the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, did declare, “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah … I say, let this land [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” Destroying Israel is central to its vision of Islamic triumph.

What could have been done? Continuing and increasing sanctions alone might have induced Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Intent on obtaining nuclear weapons and becoming a regional superpower, Tehran might have yielded nonetheless on the nuclear issue if the preservation of the regime –– and thus its ability to advance the radical Shia Islamist cause that animates it –– was endangered. We cannot be certain, but Tehran’s yielding, rather than risking a run to the bomb, was a possibility. However, now that sanctions have been relaxed, Tehran will refuse to sign them away. When that happens, contrary to President Obama's contention that the deal leaves us ‘no worse off,’ we will find that the tough sanctions that we abandoned in Geneva cannot be reinstated, let alone strengthened. Indeed, this is the end of the sanctions regime. But even assuming that the sanctions regime does not break down, it takes time for new contracts to be halted. Even if, with hard work and good luck, certain sanctions are reinstated, it would take many months for this to occur and many more months for them to take their toll on Tehran.

In other words, at best, we have lost a year –– if not two or three –– to bring the regime around to the hard choice of abandoning its nuclear weapons program. Given Iran’s ability to become a ‘break-out’ nuclear power in a matter of mere months, we no longer have a year to spare. Perhaps a credible threat of US military action even now might suffice: the only time Iran halted its nuclear program was during 2003-5, when the US-led coalition dismantled Saddam Hussein’s regime. This was also the time that Libya voluntarily relinquished its nuclear program. This clearly demonstrated US willingness to use force produced results. It will, however, be extremely hard now for President Obama to credibly threaten military action: if he failed to honor his red line and take military action when Syria actually murdered thousands with chemical weapons, Iran is unlikely to take seriously any red line he might lay down now on building nuclear weapons. Yet he should do so without delay. But even if he does, there is now probably no way Iran can be prevented from going nuclear, except through military action.

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UNTANGLING SYNERGIES: ISRAEL'S ORDER OF BATTLE                                                                                           

Louis René Beres

Jerusalem Post, Dec. 18, 2013

Whatever else might divide them, all Palestinian factions readily come together on at least one common understanding. This narrow but significant point of coalescence is unhidden. In essence, it reveals a conspicuously ritualized hatred of Israel. Lying latent underneath this relentless loathing lies a far older and more primal hatred of "The Jews." Palestinian opposition to Israel has never really been about land. Certainly, it has never been about an "occupation." The PLO was founded in 1964, three years before there were any "Israel occupied territories." What exactly were the Palestinians trying to "liberate" during those years? The answer is quickly ascertainable. Palestinian war against Israel and the Jews has always been about God, and about presumptively indispensable and derivative assurances of immortality.

Last year, the UN General Assembly easily elevated the Palestinian Authority (PA) to status of a "nonmember observer state." Soon, the PA and also Hamas, whether newly united or still fractionated, will urge international movement toward full Palestinian statehood. What should we then expect from a sovereign Palestine? One could argue optimistically that this 23rd Arab state would share a condition of more-or-less mutual vulnerability with Israel, and that it could be expected to adhere closely to commendable policies of cooperation and coexistence. Alternatively, however, one might expect competing Palestinian factions to fashion crosscutting alignments with different states and terror groups in the Islamic world. Then, newly endowed with tangible geopolitical assets against a now further-diminished Israel, Palestine could launch substantially advanced rockets against the Jewish State.

In tandem, there would be renewed suicide attacks upon defenseless civilians – "heroic" Palestinian assaults on Israeli elementary schools, buses, restaurants, and hospitals. For the Palestinians, whether Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah (Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades), there will be irresistibly new opportunities to become a Shahid. What could possibly be better or more promising? In response, Israel would need to rely even more upon its multi-layered active defenses. As long as the incoming rockets from Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon (Hezbollah) were to remain conventional, "leakage" from the Iron Dome and possibly David's Sling (aka Magic Wand), might still be "acceptable." But once these rockets were carefully fitted with chemical and/or biological materials, such leakage would quickly prove unacceptable.

A serious and predictable threat posed by Palestine would involve the new state's virulent collaboration with Iran. Although unrecognized and unacknowledged, the still-developing Iranian nuclear threat is strategically and tactically related to Palestinian statehood. In short order, after all, these two seemingly discrete threats could become intersecting, mutually reinforcing, and even "synergistic." In more narrowly military parlance, the Iranian hazard would then become a distinctive "force-multiplier." Should Iran proceed to full nuclear military status, an outcome which now seems unstoppable (absolutely nothing meaningful was changed with the November P5+1 Interim Agreement), it could plan, in the future, to fire advanced nuclear ballistic missiles against Israeli cities. Operationally, such an attack could be launched in more-or-less managed coordination with certain non-nuclear rocket attacks, fired simultaneously, from Gaza, the West Bank, and/or southern Lebanon.  To meet vital security objectives, Israel's primary ballistic missile defense system, the Arrow, would require a literally 100% reliability of interception against incoming Iranian missiles. Achieving such a level of perfect reliability, however, would be technically impossible.

The core security problem facing Israel is one of critical "synergies" or "force multipliers." Working together against the Jewish State, Palestine, Iran, and assorted other enemies could ultimately pose a cumulative hazard that is effectively larger than the sum of its parts. In odd anticipation of this formidable prospect, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues to speak approvingly of a Palestinian state that would somehow be "demilitarized." Any such expectation is at best naive. Whatever else it may have agreed to in its pre-state incarnation, any newly sovereign state is entitled to "self-defense." Under international law, moreover, this right is fundamental, immutable, and "inherent." To cite more fully authoritative terminology from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), it is "peremptory." Acknowledging the limits of its very best active defenses, Israel will need to update and refine its basic strategies of deterrence. Simultaneously, Israel's leaders will have to accept that certain of its existential enemies might not always conform to the criteria of rationality in world politics. In such improbable but still conceivable circumstances,  Jihadist adversaries in Palestine, Iran, and/or Lebanon might refuse to back away from any contemplated aggressions against Israel. These enemies could even exhibit such refusals in anticipation of a devastating Israeli reprisal.

What should be done? Israel must promptly take appropriate steps to assure that (1) it does not become the object of non-conventional aggressions, and (2) it can successfully avoid all forms of non-conventional conflict, both with adversary states and with sub-state foes. To accomplish this objective, it must strive to retain recognizably far-reaching conventional superiority in weapons and manpower, and complete sovereign control over the Jordan Valley.  Above all, Israel must avoid the irremediable mistake that was made earlier, in 2005, when the IDF pulled out of the Philadelphia Corridor. Then, Hamas was immediately able to exploit the resultant anarchy, between the southern end of Gaza, and the Sinai

Such retentions could reduce the overall likelihood of ever actually having to enter into a chemical, biological, or nuclear exchange. Correspondingly, Israel should begin to move incrementally beyond its longstanding and increasingly perilous posture of "deliberate nuclear ambiguity." By shifting toward selective and partial kinds of "nuclear disclosure" – by taking its "bomb" out of the "basement," in certain meticulously calibrated and visible phases – Israel could better ensure that its several cooperating adversaries would remain suitably subject to Israeli nuclear deterrence…

To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link –ed.]

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THE SHORTER, MORE INTENSIVE CONFLICTS OF THE FUTURE                                                                                             

Avi Issacharoff                                                                                             The Times of Israel, Nov. 1, 2013

The next battles between Israel and any of the terrorist organizations on its borders will likely be very different from the Second Lebanon War in 2006 against Hezbollah, and the 2008-9 and 2012 operations against Hamas in Gaza. For years, Hezbollah, followed by Hamas, employed a military strategy that involved firing missiles at Israel for as long as possible in order to wear it down. The Second Lebanon War lasted 34 days; Operation Cast Lead five years ago went on for three weeks. And the rockets were still falling when the cease-fires took hold. But the statements now being made by Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, the discovery of the sophisticated Hamas tunnel under the border into Israel last month, and the immense stores of missiles in the possession of both organizations, combine to indicate that both Hezbollah and Hamas are taking a new approach toward future confrontations with Israel. Their new strategy, indeed, is similar to the Israeli policy — which favors a powerful initial strike that shocks the enemy, causing it to seek a cease-fire as quickly as possible.

To start with the good news, neither organization seems to have any intention of confronting Israel right now. Squeezed by both Israel and Egypt, Hamas is preoccupied with actually governing Gaza, while Hezbollah is up to its neck in the Syrian civil war and preserving its power in Lebanon. The very fact that Hamas and Hezbollah are governing entities has made them somewhat more hesitant to enter drawn-out war with Israel, which would not only damage their own military capabilities (due to Israel’s military and intelligence superiority), but also weaken their hold on Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, and endanger their political survival after the battles subside. This partly explains the hypothesis that come the day, it will be in Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ best interests to end any military confrontations as rapidly as possible — while causing maximum damage to Israeli targets. Indications of this mindset can be found in an interview given by Ibrahim al-Amin, a leading Hezbollah spokesperson, who told the Al-Akhbar newspaper in July 2012 about Hezbollah planning. “We can expect to see that just as Israel launches an initial powerful strike, the opposition will launch a no less powerful initial attack…  And we can imagine dozens, if not hundreds of military, political, civilian and strategic targets in Israel coming under a precise, crippling missile attack lasting only several minutes”. Grandiose rhetoric notwithstanding, Al-Amin’s description sounds nothing like the modus operandi of steadily shooting missiles and rockets at Israel in order to slowly wear down its defenses — the tactic that Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah delineated after the Second Lebanon War.

Something else to consider is Nasrallah’s announcement this year that his organization has obtained particularly precise missiles that can cause tens of thousands of casualties when aimed at carefully selected targets in Israel. Hezbollah has indeed increased its efforts not only to boost the number of missiles and rockets in its possession, but also to acquire higher-quality weapons with longer ranges, larger warheads and enhanced precision and destruction capabilities. Intermittently, according to foreign reports, Israel has targeted missile convoys en route to Hezbollah, but the Shiite terror group’s endless rearmament continues nonetheless. Hezbollah now holds an estimated 100,000 short-range rockets, 5,000-6,000 medium-range rockets and several hundred long-range rockets. Last year’s Operation Pillar of Defense saw Hamas fire rockets that hit Rishon Lezion and targeted Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and it has worked relentlessly to replenish its stockpiles and improve its capacity since then. All this means that, in any future confrontation, if Hezbollah or Hamas manage to make use of their arsenals, Israel could come under heavy, concentrated rocket fire, and central Israel will find itself emphatically on the frontline. Israel’s Iron Dome and other defense systems will be tested with unprecedented intensity.

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Arm Thyself!: Ariel Harkham, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17, 2013

Iran’s S-300 Missile’s 1,240 Mile Range War Dance: Igal Zuravicky, Jewish Press, Dec. 15., 2013

Israel Gets Ready For 'Short, Sharp War' Against Hezbollah: UPI, Dec. 19, 2013

The Secret of the Wonder Weapon That Israel Will Show Off to Obama: Karl Vick, Time, Mar. 19, 2013

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