Is it 1981 all over again? Might the Israeli bombing of a Syrian nuclear facility last month have had something to do with Iran's "cooperation" in Iraq?

BAGHDAD - Iran appears to be honoring an informal pledge to halt the smuggling of explosives and other weapons into Iraq, contributing to a drop of bombings by nearly a half since March, a senior US general said yesterday.

"We have not seen any recent evidence that weapons continue to come across the border into Iraq," Major General James Simmons said. "We believe that the initiatives and the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up."
Some other factors could include the US bipartisan measure to label Iran's Al Quds Revolutionary Guards force as a terrorist group.

But resource drains in a cold war, which is what we're in with Iran, works both ways. Perhaps the bottom line is that Petraeus' surge has worked enough to dissuade Iran from pouring resources into fighting Iraq. Iran's economy isn't exactly rocking right now. They have their own problems rationing gasoline and keeping their population in line. It's harder for autocracies to stay stable then it is for democracies. It requires far more resources and energy. Maybe Iran's meddling in Iraq has peaked.

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Petraeus, proliferation, syria

[NY Sun] A report by Secretary-General Ban links a Qaeda-affiliated group in Lebanon to Syrian intelligence.

The information, included in a report released yesterday, is based largely on a letter to Mr. Ban written by Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon. The letter draws upon information gathered during the interrogation of captured leaders of a group known as Fatah al-Islam, and from data found in a Palestinian Arab refugee camp in northern Lebanon, Nahr el-Bared, where the group mounted a rebellion against Lebanon's government in the summer.
To this Thomas Smith explains the relevance of the Syrian "war room," or council of "Syrian intelligence operatives in Lebanon, elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (also in Lebanon), and Lebanon-based Hezbollah," all under the domain of legendary Islamic terrorist leader Imad Fayez Mugniyah, whom according to Stratfor:

Notorious Hezbollah leader Imad Fayez Mugniyah has been tasked by the Iranian government to organize cells of Shiite operatives in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to carry out attacks in the event of war against Iran, a source reported Oct. 25. Without any guarantees that potential negotiations with the United States over Iraq would result in a comprehensive agreement, Iran needs a variety of levers to demonstrate to its Arab neighbors that cooperating in a U.S. attack against Iran comes with risks.

Labels: al qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, Islamic extremism, syria

You gotta admire the Israelis. They identify a threat and they act.

They don't cry to the U.N. They don't demand sanctions. They don't ask for permission from the Security Council. They don't try to triangulate France or China. They don't wring their hands and wonder if a potential response might not poll well with the "world community." They don't subscribe to John Kerry's "world test." They act.

After 5 months of surveillance, they identify that the terrorist-sponsoring, Lebanon-occupying, illiberal regime of Syria is importing nuclear material from North Korea... and they bomb that site.

What is Syria going to do? Conventionally attack Israel? Fat chance. Perhaps attack them by proxy via Hezbollah or another terrorist group? Well, they do that anyway, so for Israel, what's the difference? Won't the world villify them, call them war-mongers? Again, that already occurs anyway. So Israel loses nothing. The difference is that if you're going to be smeared for protecting your country, you better damn sure protect your country.

[UK Times] Results are forthcoming." The official story that the target comprised weapons destined for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, appeared to be crumbling in the face of widespread scepticism.

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from "secret suppliers", and added that there were a "number of foreign technicians" in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied: "There are North Korean people there. There's no question about that." He said a network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, could be involved.

But why would nuclear material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

Alternatively, could it be hiding equipment for North Korea, enabling Kim Jong-il to pretend to be giving up his nuclear programme in exchange for economic aid? Or was the material bound for Iran, as some authorities in America suggest?

According to Israeli sources, preparations for the attack had been going on since late spring, when Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, presented Olmert with evidence that Syria was seeking to buy a nuclear device from North Korea.

The Israeli spy chief apparently feared such a device could eventually be installed on North-Korean-made Scud-C missiles.

"This was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel," said an Israeli source. "We've known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel can't live with a nuclear warhead."

An expert on the Middle East, who has spoken to Israeli participants in the raid, told yesterday's Washington Post that the timing of the raid on September 6 appeared to be linked to the arrival three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean material labelled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.

The target was identified as a northern Syrian facility that purported to be an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river. Israel had been monitoring it for some time, concerned that it was being used to extract uranium from phosphates.

According to an Israeli air force source, the Israeli satellite Ofek 7, launched in June, was diverted from Iran to Syria. It sent out high-quality images of a northeastern area every 90 minutes, making it easy for air force specialists to spot the facility.

Early in the summer Ehud Barak, the defence minister, had given the order to double Israeli forces on its Golan Heights border with Syria in anticipation of possible retaliation by Damascus in the event of air strikes.

Sergei Kirpichenko, the Russian ambassador to Syria, warned President Bashar al-Assad last month that Israel was planning an attack, but suggested the target was the Golan Heights.

Israeli military intelligence sources claim Syrian special forces moved towards the Israeli outpost of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights. Tension rose, but nobody knew why.

At this point, Barak feared events could spiral out of control. The decision was taken to reduce the number of Israeli troops on the Golan Heights and tell Damascus the tension was over. Syria relaxed its guard shortly before the Israeli Defence Forces struck.

Only three Israeli cabinet ministers are said to have been in the know: Olmert, Barak and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister. America was also consulted. According to Israeli sources, American air force codes were given to the Israeli air force attaché in Washington to ensure Israel's F15Is would not mistakenly attack their US counterparts.

Once the mission was under way, Israel imposed draconian military censorship and no news of the operation emerged until Syria complained that Israeli aircraft had violated its airspace. Syria claimed its air defences had engaged the planes, forcing them to drop fuel tanks to lighten their loads as they fled.

But intelligence sources suggested it was a highly successful Israeli raid on nuclear material supplied by North Korea.

Labels: Iran, Israel, North Korea, proliferation, syria

[Mark Steyn] American victory in the Cold War looks inevitable in hindsight. It didn't seem that way in the Seventies. And, as Iran reminds us, the enduring legacy of the retreat from Vietnam was the emboldening of other enemies. The forces loosed in the Middle East bedevil to this day, in Iran, and in Lebanon, which Syria invaded shortly after the fall of Saigon and after its dictator had sneeringly told Henry Kissinger, "You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel."[emphasis gn]

President Assad understood something that too many Americans didn't. Then as now, the anti-war debate is conducted as if it's only about the place you're fighting in: Vietnam is a quagmire, Iraq is a quagmire, so get out of the quagmire. Wrong. The "Vietnam war" was about Vietnam, if you had the misfortune to live in Saigon.

But if you lived in Damascus and Moscow and Havana, the Vietnam war was about America: American credibility, American purpose, American will. For our enemies today, it still is. Osama bin Laden made a bet – that, notwithstanding the T-shirt slogan, "These Colors Do Run": They ran from Vietnam, and they ran from the helicopters in the desert, and from Lebanon and Somalia – and they will run from Iraq and Afghanistan, because that is the nature of a soft, plump ersatz-superpower that coils up in the fetal position if you prick its toe. Even Republicans like Sen. John Warner seem peculiarly anxious to confirm the bin Laden characterization.
How prophetic! Indeed we are waivering on Taiwanese independence and pulling away from Israel, as predicted.

Twenty years before Osama bin Laden coined it, Assad knew America was definately not the strong horse. What's sad about that is the reason is simply because we no longer choose it. Cultures aren't killed. Rather, they commit suicide.

Labels: defending liberty, syria, war on terror

Columnist Michael Ledeen asks if we be in a regional war, why not act like it?

Ledeen finds it curious that there has been no reaction to a recent speech in which Bush plays his hand and reiterates that he considers the war in Iraq to be just a piece of a regional effort to counter aggressive actions by Iran and Syria. Namely, he called out Iran for arming Iraqi insurgents with IEDs and using Hezbollah to quash democracy in Lebanon. Bush called out Syria for its support to Islamic Jihad and Hamas and allowing terrorists to pass into Iraq.

In short, the president sees that it is a regional war, as it has been from the beginning, just as our enemies in Damascus and Tehran publicly told us it would be, even before a single American soldier set foot in Iraq. The two biggest causes of casualties in Iraq are non-indigenous: suicide bombers and constantly improving explosive devices deployed in and alongside roads. Eighty to ninety percent of all suicide bombers are foreigners (mostly Saudis who are trained in Syria), not Iraqis, and the explosives have long been known to be of Iranian design to contain Iranian components, and often constructed in Iran (see the latest intelligence news about al Qaeda reconstituting in Iran).

... It follows that victory in this war requires the defeat of both the terrorists on the ground and the state sponsors, just as President Bush vowed shortly after 9/11, when he said we would not distinguish between the terrorists and the states that provided them with the wherewithal for their actions. Yet the president does not instruct his people to move against the Assads and the mullahs. Quite the contrary, in fact. Military officers have long been instructed to "take it easy" against Iranian forces and surrogates in Iraq, even though the leash has been loosened in recent months. And as Senator Lieberman has so bravely insisted, it is a mistake to permit such forces and surrogates safe haven in Iran and Syria, from which they are free to move against us and the brave Iraqi people. We should attack the terrorist training camps, and the manufacturing facilities for the terror bombs, which, by the way, are also deployed regionally. The first exemplars of the new generation of such bombs were used against Israelis in Gaza and then again in Lebanon.

Attacks against the terrorists are fully justifiable; they would be acts of legitimate self-defense. But they are the least we should be doing. The president constantly says that freedom is our most lethal weapon against the terror masters, and he is right. But then he permits himself to be gulled by those in his administration who shrink from the consequences of our announced policy, and promise him that diplomacy and a gradually escalating set of sanctions will bring the terror masters to heel. That human history knows no case where this strategy has succeeded is somehow not sufficient to show them the errors of their ways, which is a tribute to their hubris and their inability to see the world plain.

... Big wars require big strategies, and we do not have one. Yet. I believe the country would support one if the case were made clearly and honestly. Taking the war to our enemies in Damascus and Tehran does not require troops on the ground or bombs from the air, except in the limited cases of terrorist training camps and weapons factories. It requires, above all, two things: support for the democratic forces in Syria and Iran, and the will to confront our enemies. That will can be easily expressed, but no president has had the coherence and courage to do that. Iran has been at war with us for nearly thirty years, but no president has ever said we want an end to the terror regime in Tehran.

Labels: foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, syria, terrorism, war on terror

Boy, you know you've screwed up when even the Washinton Post editors - whom hardly could be accused of being cheerleaders for the Bush presidency - label you as a schmuck.

Pratfall in Damascus
Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy

Thursday, April 5, 2007; A16

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. What's more, she added, Mr. Assad was ready to "resume the peace process" as well. Having announced this seeming diplomatic breakthrough, Ms. Pelosi suggested that her Kissingerian shuttle diplomacy was just getting started. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria," she said.

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. "What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration -- rightly or wrongly -- has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

Labels: folly, foreign policy, pelosi, syria