Group Says Iran Is 'Not a Crisis'
16 August Los Angeles Times - Group Says Iran Is 'Not a Crisis' by Peter Spiegel.
(SWC Note: While most certainly connected to and meant to influence the mid-term congressional elections, this story is presented here for discussion...)
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Seeking to counter the White House's depiction of its Middle East policies as crucial to the prevention of terrorist attacks at home, 21 former generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter tomorrow arguing that the administration's "hard line" has actually undermined U.S. security...
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, one of the letter's signers and a former military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s, said the group was particularly concerned about administration policies toward Iran, believing them to be a possible prelude to a military attack on suspected nuclear sites in that country.
Gard said the signatories — who included retired Marine Corps Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, head of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994, and Morton H. Halperin, a senior State Department and National Security Council official during the Clinton administration — did not believe that Iran had the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon in the immediate future and would push the administration to open negotiations with Tehran on the issue.
"It's not a crisis," Gard said in a telephone interview. "To call the Iranian situation a 'crisis' connotes you have to do something right now, like bomb them." ...
Israel Plans for War with Iran and Syria
23 August Los Angeles Times commentary - Israel Should Hit Syria First by Max Boot.
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"We are walking with open eyes into our next war."
The pessimism of a senior Israeli official who made that comment on Aug. 13 was striking because he had just finished telling a group of security analysts brought to Israel by the American Jewish Committee that the United Nations-brokered cease-fire had achieved many of Israel's goals. But he had no illusions that this would represent anything more than a temporary halt in the fight between Israel and the Quartet of Evil seeking to dominate the Middle East — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah.
The war wasn't a total loss for Israel. But it was far from a victory. Hezbollah lost more than 500 fighters as well as most of its medium- and long-range missiles and its bunker network in southern Lebanon, while inflicting scant damage on Israel. Israeli intelligence analysts are convinced that Tehran isn't happy about this turn of events because it was holding Hezbollah's rockets in reserve for a possible retaliatory strike if Israel or the U.S. hit Iran's nuclear weapons complex.
But rockets are easily replaced, and Iran and Syria will now undertake a massive effort to make good Hezbollah's losses, and then some...
Israel had managed to defeat the terrorists' previous wonder-weapon, the suicide bomber, by walling off the Gaza Strip and West Bank. But a fence won't stop missiles. Israel will now be loath to retreat any further from the West Bank. Hamas, for its part, will have strong incentive to stockpile rockets in its Gaza redoubt and launch a "third intifada," as suggested by a columnist in the Hamas newspaper Al Risala.
Israel had hoped that this conflict would reestablish its deterrence, but, if anything, the unsatisfactory outcome will only embolden its enemies. The problem is that wars of attrition against fanatical jihadists who do not fear death and who hide among civilians negate to some extent the Israeli Defense Forces' superior firepower. Additionally, Iran, the ultimate source of terrorist money and arms, is too far away for effective Israeli retaliation.
Syria, however, is a weak link in the quartet.
Syria's importance as an advance base for Iran — the two countries concluded a formal alliance on June 16 — cannot be exaggerated. It is the go-between for most of the munitions flowing to Hezbollah. It is the sanctuary of Hamas honcho Khaled Meshaal. It is also, according to Israeli intelligence sources, the home of a new Iranian-Syrian intelligence center that tracks Israeli military movements and relays that information to terrorist proxies...
History suggests that only force, or the threat of force, can win substantial concessions from Syria. In 1998, Turkey threatened military action unless Syria stopped supporting Kurdish terrorists. Damascus promptly complied. Israel may have no choice but to follow the Turkish example...