LCCC ENGLISH
DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
December 10/07
Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 3,1-12. In those days
John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea
(and) saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"It was of him that
the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: "A voice of one crying out in the
desert, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.'"John wore
clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food
was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole
region around the Jordan were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their
sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he
said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming
wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.
And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I
tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does
not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after
me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you
with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will
clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he
will burn with unquenchable fire."
Releases.
Reports & Opinions
Plan A and Plan B-/By:Walid
Choucair/Dar Al-Hayat-December 09/07
NIE failure: It is about the Missiles not the
Fissile..By Walid Phares. December 09/08
Symposium: The Mullahs’ “Vice List”.By:
Jamie Glazov. FrontPage.December 09/07
Stupid Intelligence-By:
Alan M. Dershowitz. FrontPage. December 09/07
Iran's Nuclear Deceptions-By:
Kenneth R. Timmerman. FromtPage. 09/07
Latest News Reports From
Miscellaneous Sources for December 09/07
Bkirki Urges Aoun to Accept Compromise on Suleiman's Election-Naharnet
Amendment Petition
Submitted to Berri-Naharnet
Amal Optimistic Over
Presidency-Naharnet
Lebanon stuck in political stalemate amid power struggle-Xinhua
MK Sa'id Nafa to be grilled over visit to Syria made without ...Jerusalem
Post
Syria sees isolation fading after Annapolis-Reuters
Geagea Predicts New
Alliances After Presidential Election-Naharnet
Iran Facilitates
Constitutional Amendment to Elect Gen. Suleiman President-Naharnet
Feltman: Berri Wants an
End to Vacuum-Naharnet
Gates: Iran, not Israel,
Destabilizes Lebanon-Naharnet
UN Chief Urges Syria's Assad Not to Interfere in Lebanon
Vote-Bloomberg
Syria's Assad reshuffles his cabinet: report-AFP
U.S. intel report on Iran was political:
Bolton-Reuters
Iran Assessment Creates an Israeli Headache-
Time.com
Iran's nuclear know-how unimpeded-The
Christian Science Monitor
Gates says Iran seeks to cause chaos
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
MANAMA, Bahrain - Pentagon chief Robert Gates lashed out at Iran on Saturday for
seeking to cause chaos "everywhere you turn" regardless of the blood spilled and
said its neighbors must demand that Tehran renounce any intention of pursuing
nuclear weapons.
At the same time, the defense secretary endorsed the idea of setting up an
independent consortium that, under controlled circumstances, would give
countries access to uranium enrichment for civil or development purposes. That
process can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or a weapon.
"We ought to be thinking creatively about how the international community could
provide such a thing," Gates said at a global security conference marked by the
abrupt pullout of Iranian officials.
In his speech, Gates appealed to Persian Gulf nations to support penalties
designed to force Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Those nations, he
said, also should demand that Iran "openly affirm that it does not intend to
develop nuclear weapons in the future."
Iran says its program is aimed at using nuclear reactors to generate
electricity. Tehran has rebuffed U.S. demands that it cease enrichment, saying
it has a right to do so under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Speaking to a divided group of national leaders and security officials, Gates
said Gulf countries must pressure Iran to come clean about its nuclear
activities. He said Iran delivers arms to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan,
continues to develop long-range missiles that could carry weapons of mass
destruction, and supports Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant organizations.
Members of the audience challenged his rebukes of Tehran, evidence of the divide
among Arab nations over the Bush administration's tough stance. Asked if the
U.S. would be willing to talk with Iran, Gates said the behavior of Iran's
current leadership "has not given one confidence that a dialogue would be
productive."
"Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos,
no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents — Christians,
Jews and Muslims alike," Gates said in his address at the event organized by the
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a
threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country
in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of
the ballistic missiles Iran is developing," he said.
A U.S. intelligence estimate released last week concluded that Iran actually had
stopped atomic weapons development in 2003. That was in stark contrast to a 2005
estimate that said Tehran was continuing its weapons development.
The principal deputy director of national intelligence for the U.S. released an
unsolicited statement Saturday defending the latest assessment. "The task of the
intelligence community is to produce objective, ground truth analysis. We feel
confident in our tradecraft and resulting analysis in this estimate," Donald M.
Kerr said.
Iran's president hailed the new finding as a "declaration of victory" for his
country. President Bush said last week the latest conclusion would not lead him
to discard the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran. Nor, he
said, would the United States change its policy of trying to isolate Iran
diplomatically and seek to impose penalties.
"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they
have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said after the
estimate was released. In October, he had said people "interested in avoiding
World War III" should help work to prevent Iran from gaining such information.
His administration has acknowledged that the report may make it harder to build
international support to persuade Iran to give up its enrichment program. Gates
said in Bahrain the analysis "has annoyed a number of our good friends, it has
confused a lot of people around the world in terms of what we are trying to
accomplish."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday in Belgium that the U.S. would
not relent in pushing for new penalties against Iran, a position endorsed by
NATO and other European allies. Russia ignored such talk.
At the security conference, Gates urged Gulf states to back steps that would
force Iran to suspend enrichment and to demand that Iran "openly affirm that it
does not intend to develop nuclear weapons in the future."
In a complex region where partnerships do not come easy, Gates said the
countries need to pull together and develop regional air and missile defense
systems. He also said Gulf nations should cast aside their sectarian differences
and support the struggling new government in Iraq.
"The progress is real. But it is also fragile," he said. "The Iraqi government
must use this breathing space bought with the blood of American, Coalition and
Iraqi troops to pass critical legislation."
Gates ended his speech with a grim warning against underestimating the United
States.
Some countries, he said, "may believe our resolve has been corroded by the
challenges we face at home and abroad. This would be a grave misconception."
Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and the former Soviet Union all made
that miscalculation, Gates said. "All paid the price. All are on the ash heap of
history."
Absi is
in Syria and Fatah al Isalm is in Gaza
Saturday, 8 December, 2007
Beirut - According to intelligence reports based on Al-Qaida website Fatah al
Islam has relocated to Gaza in Palestine . The same report also states that
Shaker al -Absi, the fugitive leader of Fatah al Islam who has escaped from the
Nahr- el Bared Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon, following the final
assault by the Lebanese army is now in Syria with his wife. Fatah al Islam
fought the Lebanese army for 106 days . At the end of the battle the Lebanese
army declared victory and Fatah al Islam militants were disbanded. Many of them
are now in Lebanese jails but some were able to escape.
U.S. intel report on Iran was political: Bolton 2
BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence services were seeking to influence
political policy-making with their assessment Iran had halted its nuclear arms
program in 2003, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said.
Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton Saturday as saying the aim of the U.S.
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), contradicting his and President George W.
Bush's own oft-stated position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on
Iran.
"This is politics disguised as intelligence," Bolton was quoted as saying in an
article appearing in next week's edition.
Bolton described the NIE, released Monday, as a "quasi-putsch" by the agencies,
Der Spiegel said.
The NIE said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago but was
continuing to develop the technical means that could be applied to producing
weapons. This contradicted the oft-stated position of President Bush that Iran
is actively trying to develop an atomic weapon.
In Washington, a senior official at the office of the Director of National
Intelligence, defended the NIE and said intelligence agencies were confident in
their analysis.
"National Intelligence Estimates contain the coordinated judgments of the
intelligence community regarding the likely course of future events and the
implications for U.S. policy," said Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Donald Kerr.
"The task of the intelligence community is to produce objective, ground truth
analysis," he said in a statement. "We feel confident in our analytic tradecraft
and resulting analysis in this estimate."
The hawkish Bolton has long criticized Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the
Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for refusing to
declare that there was hard evidence Tehran was trying to develop nuclear
weapons.
ElBaradei said the new NIE "somewhat vindicated" Iran, which has always denied
allegations it was secretly trying to build atom bombs.
Earlier this year Bolton said: "Regime change or the use of force are the only
available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if
they want it."
U.S. intelligence has shouldered much of the blame for the Bush administration's
unfounded allegations that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had revived his
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, the official justification
for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
**(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; additional reporting by Deborah Charles in
Washington; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Lebanon gets a taste of Evil
Saturday, 8 December, 2007
By Andrew Lee Butters
The Axis of Evil stand-up comedy team passed through Beirut this week, just in
time to coincide with the political farce playing out in Lebanon's parliament,
which is still unable to agree upon a candidate to for the presidency, empty
since last month.
"Who need's a president?" said Maz, an Iranian-American, as he mocked the jaded
Lebanese audience. "You've got the sea. You've got the mountains. You've got
Miss Lebanon! A president would just mess things up. Tonight we party!"
Axis of Evil, made of three Americans of Middle Eastern descent, is known in the
States for playing with the often paranoid stereotypes that Americans have about
Arabs and Muslims. Ahmed Ahmed, the MC, bemoans the fact that he has such a hard
time at airport security because a well-known terrorist shares the same name.
But then he wonders how pissed off the the other Ahmed must be when people think
he's a comedian and ask him to tell a joke. "I'm a terrorist, goddamit!"
The group's Middle Eastern tour is also getting a lot of laughs out of local
foibles. Some of the funnier ones I remember include: "When Arabs hook up they
never say 'Your place or mine?' They say, 'Where are your parents, and how big
is your car?'" Or on how an Arab version of the TV game show "The Price Is
Right!" should be called, "This Price Is Not Right!" Or how everyone in Jordan
had already seen the Axis of Evil DVD when the group doesn't have a distributor
in Jordan. "It's the Middle Eastern distribution system," said Ahmed Ahmed, who
is Egyptian-American. "One person buys it, and everyone else copies it."
The team is hoping that by supporting emerging Middle Eastern stand-up acts, and
by heaping scorn equally on all sects and creeds, they'll do their part for
peace in the region. "Is there any religious group that doesn't actually think
it's superior to everyone else," said Aron, the Palestinian-American. "'No, were
not the Chosen People, but we do come highly recommended.'"Source: Time Middle East Blog
Iran Assessment Creates an Israeli Headache
By TIM MCGIRK/JERUSALEM
Fri Dec 7, 2:00 AM ET
Israeli officials were shocked and disappointed by the U.S. intelligence
agencies' report downgrading the risk of Iran building nuclear weapons. That's
because not only do some of the key conclusions of the latest National
Intelligence Estimate undercut some of Israel's own assessments, they also seem
to dim the likelihood of the U.S. taking military action against Iran's nuclear
facilities - a step the Israelis had been quietly urging the White House should
sanctions fail to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program. With the new U.S.
assessment, one Israeli cabinet official told TIME, "It looks like this ends the
military option against Iran for now. Israel won't attack alone. Iran's
facilities are too many and spread too far apart."
At the Annapolis peace talks last month, the Israeli team - Prime MInister Ehud
Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak - didn't
have high expectations for making headway on the Palestinian issue, but they
were confident of pressing their case on Iran to a receptive White House.
Instead, Barak was taken aside by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and told
that new intelligence persuaded the Americans that Iran wasn't such a big threat
after all.
The Israelis politely disagreed. As Barak later told Israeli Army Radio, "It
seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear
program, but as far as we know it has probably since revived it." He added: "We
are talking about a specific track connected with their weapons building
program, to which the American [intelligence] connection, and maybe that of
others, was severed." The Israeli defense minister implied that the new U.S.
assessment was "made in an environment of high uncertainty."
Israeli intelligence sources told Time that for the past five years, Mossad,
Israel's equivalent of the CIA, had made spying on Iran its top priority, and
that its assessment is that Iran would be weapons-ready by 2009.
Israeli officials believe their intelligence services are privy to all the
information on Iran gathered by their American counterparts, and vice versa. "We
stand naked in front of each other, hiding nothing," claimed one Israeli
intelligence officer, adding that the two nations' spy agencies often work in
tandem to avoid any overlap. Israelis believe the U.S. has reached different
conclusions from the same information because it does not feel the threat of
Iran's missiles as acutely as Israel does.
Ephraim Halevy, ex-chief of Mossad and now an academic, tells TIME that what
hasn't changed, is that the view - reiterated in the NIE - that Iran is "capable
of producing a nuclear weapon." He adds, "You put that together with Iran's
devious ways and evasive tactics with the U.N. atomic inspectors, and you have a
very real threat." Dr. Ephraim Kam, Deputy Director of the Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, concurs. "Even if it's true that Iran
has shut down its military nuclear program, it can start it up at any time," he
says.
Israeli intelligence officials plan to ask Washington for clarifications about
the NIE report. "It has many inner contradictions," says one cabinet official
involved in intelligence matters. Israeli officials don't want to disagree too
openly or publicly with the Americans, but they also don't want world opinion to
dismiss the threat of Iran becoming a nuclear power. Foreign Minister Livni has
instructed Israeli embassies to maintain a focus on the menace that she says
Iran poses to Israel and the West.
For Israel, Iran remains enemy Number 1. As the cabinet official put it, " It's
not as if Iran has become Switzerland, only making chocolate. The Iranians still
have missiles that can hit us, and they still support Hezballah and Hamas, and
they are still calling for the destruction of Israel." That's why Washington's
new assessment of Iran's capabilities and intentions is unlikely to reassure
those responsible for Israel's security.
Stupid
Intelligence
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 07, 2007
The recent national intelligence estimate that concluded that Iran halted its
nuclear weapons program in 2003 is just about the stupidest intelligence
assessment I have ever read. It falls hook, line and sinker for a transparent
bait and switch tactic employed not only by Iran, but by several other nuclear
powers in the past.
The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ
above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making
nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop technology directly
related to military use. That is what the United States did when it developed
the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. The second track is to develop
nuclear technology for civilian use and then to use the civilian technology for
military purposes.
What every intelligence agency knows is that the most difficult part of
developing weapons corresponds precisely to the second track, namely civilian
use. In other words, it is relatively simple to move from track 2 to track 1 in
a short period of time. As Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin, both experts on
nuclear arms control, put it in a New York Times Op Ed on December 6, 2007:
“During the past year, a period when Iran’s weapons program was supposedly
halted, the government has been busy installing some 3,000 gas centrifuges at
its plant at Natanz. These machines could, if operated continuously for about a
year, create enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a bomb. In addition,
they have no plausible purpose in Iran’s civilian nuclear effort. All of Iran’s
needs for enriched uranium for its energy programs are covered by a contract
with Russia.
“Iran is also building a heavy water reactor at its research center at Arak.
This reactor is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of
little use in an energy program like Iran’s, which does not use plutonium for
reactor fuel. India, Israel and Pakistan have all built similar reactors—all
with the purpose of fueling nuclear weapons. And why, by the way, does Iran even
want a nuclear energy program, when it is sitting on an enormous pool of oil
that is now skyrocketing in value? And why is Iran developing long-range Shahab
missiles, which make no military sense without nuclear warheads to put on them?
“…the halting of its secret enrichment and weapon design efforts in 2003 proves
only that Iran made a tactical move. It suspended work that, if discovered,
would unambiguously reveal intent to build a weapon. It has continued other
work, crucial to the ability to make a bomb, that it can pass off as having
civilian applications.”
Duh! What then can explain so obvious an intelligence gaffe. One explanation
could lie in the old saw that “military intelligence is to intelligence as
military music is to music”. But I simply don’t believe that our intelligence
agencies are populated by the kind of nincompoops who would fall for so obvious
an Iranian ploy. The more likely explanation is that there is an agenda hiding
in the report. What then might that agenda be? To find a hidden agenda one
should always look for the beneficiaries. Who wins from this deeply flawed
report? Well, certainly Iran does, but it is unlikely that Iranian interests
could drive any American agenda. Lincy and Milhollin surmise that: “We should be
suspicious of any document that suddenly gives the Bush administration a pass on
a big national security problem it won’t solve during its remaining year in
office. Is the administration just washing its hands of the intractable Iranian
nuclear issue by saying, ‘[i]f we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke?’”
My own view is that the authors of the report were fighting the last war. No,
not the war in Iraq, but rather what they believe was Vice President Cheney’s
efforts to go to war with Iran. This report surely takes the wind out of those
sails. But that was last year’s unfought war. Nobody in Washington has seriously
considered attacking Iran since Condolleezza Rice and Robert Gates replaced
Cheney as the foreign policy power behind the throne.
Whatever the agenda and whatever the motive this report may well go down in
history as one of the most dangerous, misguided and counterproductive
intelligence assessments in history. It may well encourage the Iranians to move
even more quickly in developing nuclear weapons. If the report is correct in
arguing that the only way of discouraging Iran from developing nuclear weapons
is to maintain international pressure, then the authors of the report must
surely know that they have single-handedly reduced any incentive by the
international community to keep the pressure up.
If Neville Chamberlain weren’t long dead I would wonder whether he had a hand in
writing this “peace in our time” intelligence fiasco.
I wish the intelligence assessment were correct. So does most of the media,
which accepted its naïve conclusion with uncritical enthusiasm. The world would
be a far safer place if Iran had indeed ended its efforts to develop deliverable
nuclear weapons. But wishing for a desirable outcome does not make it so.
Pretending that a desirable outcome is happening, when the best information
indicates that it’s not, only encourages the worst outcome.
The authors of this perverse report, which is influencing policy so immediately
and negatively, will have much to answer for if their assessment results in a
reduction of pressure on Iran—which is the only nation actually to threaten to
use nuclear weapons to attack its enemies—to stop its obvious march toward
becoming the world’s most dangerous nuclear military power.
“Misestimating
the Iranian Nuclear Strategy”
NIE failure: It is about the Missiles not the Fissile..
By Walid Phares (bio)
The end product of this top US evaluation of the Khomeinist menace is not so
different, unfortunately, from previous assessments in the 1990s which dismissed
– or evenThe release to the US Congress of the NIE Iranian threat report has
unleashed a wave of discussions streaming directly into the debate about the war
on terror. From there, obviously, the ripple effects of the findings – plus
their politicization - are feeding the critics of the War in Iraq; but more
importantly, impacting both the friends and the foes of the United States,
including principally the Iranian regime.
Basically, Americans and their allies are faced with a new assertion, created by
this intelligence estimate, that the decision makers in Tehran had already
abandoned their nuclear military strategy as of 2003; and hence, the US and its
coalition would be at fault if it engaged in any military action against targets
inside Iran. Specifically, due to American intelligence conclusions, the public
- both domestic and international - are being led to believe that in the fall of
2003, the Iranian leadership had decided to stop its process of building an
atomic weapon; and that further, today, in the fall of 2007, there isn’t an
Iranian nuclear threat to America, to the region and to the international
community.
Thus, logically, as a conglomeration of various interests is using the NIE
findings as tacit approval for shielding the Iranian regime, Washington naively
has trapped itself with the product of the best of the best in its national
intelligence apparatus. Every word now used by this writer will be put to the
task of demonstrating to my readers that, if anything, this NIE Report has
revealed a major systemic problem with United States national security analysis;
and that further, America’s ability to understand and detect threats against
itself has been compromised.
ignored - the threat posed by our other foes: Jihadists, Salafists in general,
and al Qaeda in particular. This NIE report is drawing significant debates at
critical times; but the most serious conclusion I would make about its findings
is that the systemic crisis, about which the 9/11 Commission warned the US
Government and public, is still alive and evolving.
Here are talking points to demonstrate why the message of the report is flawed;
how it is being used against US national security interests; and what the
consequences will be of this derailment in threat analysis.
1. The NIE findings based their final conclusion - that the Iranian regime had
abandoned its nuclear strategy - on information obtained from Iranian officials
who stated they’d stopped their nuclear program in the fall of 2003. So, our
best senior analysts’ conclusions are based on statements made by Iranian regime
cadre known for their deceptive tactics. The document insisted that the findings
didn’t attempt to analyze the Iranian regime’s intention but instead were meant
merely to assert that Tehran is changing attitude; but yet the key assumptions
made by the NIE bosses used the statements of the regime, not the intentions
behind these statements, to construct conclusions about a course of action. That
would be the equivalent of considering the statements of Adolf Hitler as true
when he assured Britain and France that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was the
end of his Nazi program in 1938.
My counter argument is that stopping a single production process of a nuclear
weapon is not equivalent to putting an end to a strategic policy of obtaining
such arms. A real change in Iranian strategy would be indicated only if the
office of Ayatollah Khamenei and the central powers of his regime openly would
state that they have abandoned the pursuit of military nuclear power. That has
not happened; and worse, the opposite has been happening. The ruling elite have
been increasingly boasting about their intention to achieve nuclear parity and
their right to obtain these weapons and even to use them.
Note well: the NIE’s referral to the 2003 decision by the Khatemi Government to
halt its previous method of obtaining the nukes is not the equivalent of
Mohammar Qaddafi’s strategic choice to abandon the pursuit of WMDs, or the South
African and Ukrainian choice to de-proliferate, as examples.
2. The NIE architects chose not to inform policy makers and the public about the
wider context in which that specific 2003 decision was made, or about the
subsequent steps in the Iranian nuclear strategy. Such selectiveness crippled
the political conclusion of the document. Not to analyze why a foe halted a
process, while he resumed many other processes to obtain even greater results,
derails US analysis of the enemy’s global strategies.
Indeed the real story is that the Iranian regime reconfigured its previous
nuclear strategy - gradual build up – because by the end of the summer 2003,
with “hostile forces” (the US-led coalition) deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq,
they knew if they didn’t alter the pursuit of that initial route, they could
expect a lethal reaction. Since the US strategic intentions weren’t clear in the
eyes of the Iranian strategists, they acted as if Washington and its allies were
moving forward to disarm Iran’s regime. The Khatemi Government, preferring to
avoid an unbalanced confrontation, decided to suspend the open build-up of
nuclear power, because it simply concluded that the US would be able to strike
them from two borders. Hence, the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) seized the
nuclear program and reconverted it in the underground. Thus, the global strategy
wasn’t halted, but an alternative strategy was begun.
3.In 2004, a US election year, the deep American divide over the War in Iraq was
perceived by the Iranian hardliners as an aid to re-launch the rapid-pace
nuclear race. Ironically, it was the efforts of the so called “antiwar” movement
within the United States that encouraged the Jihadists of Iran to reignite the
military nuclear program. By early 2005 Ahmadinejad was brought to power, and
greater Syro-Iranian backing of terror in Iraq was employed to weaken the
hostile forces to the west of Iran. From an Iranian perspective, one of the
“insurgency’s” goals was to give Tehran the time and the ability to run faster
towards deploying the nuclear weapons-to-be.
4. The NIE failed to see and explain that the 2003 decision was a change of
strategy not a halt to a strategy; for the Ahmadinejad plan was to ensnare the
US in Iraq so that it couldn’t destroy the process of Iran’s shifting the
balance of power in its crucial early stages. Tragically, what was missed in
Washington is that Tehran was building the missiles before completing the
fissile. While attention was focused on the uranium enrichment process, the
Pasdaran were setting up the delivery system, i.e., the actual threat system.
The bomb part of the Iranian nuclear strategy was the last stage, while the
missiles were the most urgent to acquire first. Strategically it makes sense,
because if the Iranians had produced a weapon, it could have been taken out via
airpower without the risk of a second strike (since the delivery system would
have been absent). But if the missiles were obtained before, the world couldn’t
intervene preemptively against them. And when the bombs were ready (through
assembly or purchase) they would be locked on the rockets. At that particular
time, unilateral strikes against the Iranian weapons would run the risk of
Iranian missile counter attacks against the free world.
Tehran played it very wisely and outmaneuvered its enemies in the West; it got
away with the missiles, which are now advanced and deployed. Hence all that the
Khomeinists need to achieve by the end of 2007, as their delivery systems are
developed, is a conclusion in Washington that will deter it from acting against
the nukes, the fusion centers, the launching ramps and other types of
deployment. This NIE report has paved the way for that decision.
By cleverly convincing the American intelligence community and the public that
Tehran had already abandoned the whole nuclear strategy in 2003, Iran has
delegitimized America’s ability to act against the missiles. Hence the field is
wide open for the secret nuclear program to accelerate, as the delivery system
is being completed. By the time America discovers it has been duped, the nukes
will be sitting on top of the missiles. All the Jihadi strategic planners had to
do was to use America’s political systems against itself. Hence, because the NIE
analysts failed to provide the global context of the Iranian strategy and have
been pressing for a political agenda over national security priorities, Iran’s
Khomeinists are winning, regardless of who will occupy the White House in
January 2008.
Our next President will be faced with security crises by far more dramatic and
formidable than any challenges we’ve witnessed since 9/11: Iranian missiles with
Jihadi bombs aimed at two thirds of the world.
**Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation
for Democracy. He is the author of the War of Ideas. Phares@walidphares.com
Plan A and Plan B
Walid Choucair
Al-Hayat - 09/12/07//
There is no doubt that the recent decision by the Lebanese majority March 14 to
nominate army general Michel Sleiman for the presidency took the opposition and
its regional allies, Syria and Iran, by surprise. Opposition forces did not
state a position for days afterwards, at a time when many hoped that it would
recognize the step as a compromise by March 14 and would welcome it accordingly,
instead of harboring suspicions, stalling and asking foreign powers questions.
Given previous statements by many in the opposition that they would accept such
an arrangement and by even more who themselves nominated Sleiman before the
majority's acceptance of his candidacy, Hizbullah and Amal's silence in the face
of majority's willingness to put aside its reservations about amending the
constitution was an opportunity to assimilate the surprise and decide on the
next moves to make.
It is no secret to Lebanese moderates that Damascus strove for a presidential
vacuum, and that the leader of the Future Movement MP Saad Hariri's decision to
nominate General Suleiman was aimed primarily, among other things, at filling
this vacuum as fast as possible. For Damascus, a vacuum is effectively an
extension of Lahoud's term in that it keeps Lebanon's institutions paralyzed and
its politics stalemated. It also prompts foreign powers to seek Syria's help in
exchange for securing its interests in Lebanon, the wider Middle East or its
international relations. Iran is doing the same, holding on tightly to its
assets in Lebanon and taking serious measures to ensure they are preserved. At
the end of the day, a vacuum grants Syria a role in determining the next
president and allowing him to come to power, whoever he may be.
The bare minimum was reaching a vacuum, if only for a day. For France's contact
with Damscus, amid European and American negotiations, produced the desired
result... In an elaborate attempt to secure the extension of Lahoud's reign in
the form of a vacuum, Hizbullah made an offer to Hariri that they knew he would
refuse, and he in turn made them an offer to avoid a vacuum that they could not
refuse. The maneuvering by Syria's allies was inevitable. Many of them saw the
majority as having suffered a major blow by accepting Suleiman - an acceptance
they attribued to a US-Syrian rapprochement and an American abandonment of March
14. These opposition members are thus employing a tool they blasted the majority
for using, accusing them of treason for their links to Washington.
The opposition's insistence on preconditions for amending the constitution to
allow for Suleiman's election is an attempt to capitalize as much as possible on
the vacuum before exiting from it. It also stems from Hizbullah's and Syria's
atttempt to 'renominate' Suleiman such that he is the choice of the opposition
alone - not that of Hariri, the majority or its foreign supporters. Thus,
Suleiman must be made to recognize his debt to Hizbullah and Syria, since they
are ostensibly the only ones who can end the vacuum - not the majority in its
agreeing to amend the constitution, nor Egypt or Saudi Arabia for supporting its
position. The majority's resorting to Suleiman succeeded in shortening the
period of a vacuum to a matter of days instead of weeks, or weeks instead of
months. Yet it has not been shortened as much as the majority hoped. The
opposition, in its efforts to extend the vacuum, is now directing its energies
at shifting the vacuum to the cabinet by obstructing the naming of a prime
minister. This is the aim of its current demands. The aim is to weaken the
majority with a series of steps, the most prominent being the prevention of
Fouad Siniora's continued premiership in light of the failed attempts to
overthrow him over the past year and a half.
Plan A consists of securing a prime minister from outside of Al Mustaqbal and
Saad Hariri, because the priority is to deprive Hariri of the country's
prominent Sunni Muslim seat of power and weaken him in the lead up to the
parliamentary elections of 2009.
As for Plan B, it involves setting conditions for the formation of the
government should it fall under Hariri's leadership, in order to stall his
achievements - if not guarantee his outright failure. The idea if to force him
to compromise with Syria as head of a toothless government in order to help us
forget its role in killing his father... and hopefully undermine Hariri's
popularity as a result