Iran escalates threats, vows to shower Israel with 'Shahab' missiles - http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-escalates-threats-vows-to-shower-Israel-with-Shahab-missiles-388587
Senior Iranian military officials on Thursday continued to threaten "crushing responses" against Israel for the death of a top Revolutionary Guards officer in an airstrike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights earlier this week.
The attack also killed senior Hezbollah operatives, among them the son of the late arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh.
Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the second-in-command in the Revolutionary Guards, told Iranian state media on Thursday that his troops are capable of firing Shahab-3 missiles on Israel.
"[Israel] should be waiting for crushing responses," Salami is quoted as saying.
The Iranian officer said that the Golan attack was an attempt to "change the balance of power in Syria" and help "the takfirist," a reference to the Islamist elements working to topple the government of Tehran's key ally, President Bashar Assad.
"[The Golan strike] was the reflection of numerous defeats that both Americans and Israelis have suffered in their current strategies," he said.
"They have seen IRGC's reactions before, and [therefore] they are worried, and they will witness destructive thunderbolts in practice," he said.
The death of an Iranian general on the Golan gave US Senators' Iran sanctions bills military muscle -http://www.debka.com/article/24356/The-death-of-an-Iranian-general-on-the-Golan-gave-US-Senators'-Iran-sanctions-bills-military-muscle
It is hard to believe that the White House was caught by surprise over House leader John Boehner's unusual invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address Congress on Feb. 11. After all, prior arrangements must have kept the Israeli embassy in Washington busy for weeks in a city, whose life blood is kept flowing by the mining and trading of information and secrets about friends and rivals alike.
All the same, it suited the four parties involved in this extraordinary event - Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the White House and Netanyahu - to pretend they were taken aback on Wednesday, Jan. 21 by the Speaker's announcement of the prime minister's coming address on "the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life."
He accused President Barack Obama of "papering over" these threats over in his State of the Union speech a few hours earlier.
The White House said the invitation breached "typical protocol" but the administration would reserve judgment until they heard from Netanyahu about his plans.
The assumed air of astonishment greeting the invitation added an element of drama to the event. It also had the effect of further polarizing the camps for and against the Obama administration's insistence on banking solely on diplomacy for containing Iran's nuclear program.
Inevitable showdown
Obama and Netanyahu, who could never stand each other, have been at loggerheads for most of the six years of the former's presidency over what is widely seen as the dead-end US Middle East policies he pursued in most major arenas such as Iraq, Yemen and Libya, the futile US air strikes against marching Islamist State soldiers, the unending Syrian conflict and the Palestinian issue.
The showdown building up for years between them may now be at hand. It will catch Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry fully engaged in a desperate pursuit of a comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the Six-World-Powers group. This deal could then be presented as an unquestioned success of Obama's Middle East policies - indeed the only one.
Together with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohamed Zarif, US officials have roughed out a draft accord. But most American nuclear experts and Israel's top political and military leaders view this paper as a bad agreement, because it would leave Tehran with the freedom and resources to jump back from low-grade enrichment to full-dress production of a nuclear bomb and missiles when international and economic circumstances were more convenient.
But Obama and Kerry are counting on the ayatollahs holding their horses until the end of 2016, when the US administration changes hands. The Iranian nuclear deal's inevitable breakdown would then land squarely on the shoulders of the next president and secretary of state taking over in Washington, while Obama would have formally honored his commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Khamenei between two compulsions
But this plan faces an outsize impediment: Rouhani and Zarif are holding back from putting pen to paper because of the strong objections posed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards military chiefs.
Earlier this month, the issue reached boiling point in Tehran, debkafile's Iranian sources report: The Guards threatened to unseat Khamenei by a military coup if he let Rouhani and Zarif sign the draft into a comprehensive, binding nuclear accord.
Khamenei, never lost for a devious maneuver, began weaving between the two compulsions - American demands for more concessions to finalize the deal and demands by hardliners at home not to give way. The move he made was to throw a bone in the form of an offer to cut down on the number of centrifuges used in uranium enrichment.
Obama and Kerry hailed this as a breakthrough toward a deal, although the experts dismissed it as meaningless.
Obama propositions Netanyahu
On this basis, Obama phoned Netanyahu Monday night, Jan. 13, to ask him for Israel's support for the evolving comprehensive nuclear accord with Iran.
In return, he offered closer US cooperation in various areas of interest to Israel, such as the Palestinian issue, if the prime minister would withhold or cool his support for US Senate sanctions legislation:
The Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez seek to enact new sanctions on Iran if nuclear negotiations fail to meet their June 30 deadline for an accord.
Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- supported by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain -- is pushing for legislation which does not contain sanctions but would require a Senate vote on any pact that is agreed upon in Geneva.
Netanyahu rejected Obama's proposition.
The US President was therefore adamant in his State of the Union references to the Iranian nuclear issue: "New sanctions on Iran would all but guarantee that diplomacy fails, heightening the prospects of war." He said.: "Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies - including Israel - while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict."
Obama did not elaborate on the parties who would take part in this hypothetical conflict, or explain why he limited himself to only two extreme scenarios - either a deal with Iran or tighter sanctions that would precipitate war.
Israel takes direct aim at Iran
It was no accident that two days before this speech, Obama had his answer from Israel. Sunday, Jan. 19, Israeli Air Force drones struck an Iranian-Hezbollah military convoy near the Syrian Golan town of Quneitra. Six Iranian officers were killed, led by Gen. Mohamad Ali Allah Dadi, as well as the same number of high-ranking Hezbollah operatives.
This was a dual threat: Israel would not stand by if Iranian and Hezbollah forces moved into the Syrian Golan right up against its frontier. But in the wider context, Binyamin Netanyahu was signaling Obama in Washington and Khamenei in Tehran, that he no longer had any qualms about striking Iranian military targets if the two rulers failed to forge a workable, credible accord for keeping nuclear weapons out of Iranian hands.
The Israeli action added military muscle to the US Senate legislation on Iran - in the face of Obama's reluctance to embrace tactics he believes would be disincentives for Khamenei to play ball on the ongoing multilateral nuclear diplomatic track in Geneva.
It also explains why John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress on Feb. 11.
However, until then, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and even Israel may not stand idle. And the Obama administration may also decide to round up its assets in a bid to spoil the prime minister's run for re-election on March 17.
Iran and Hezbollah - http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Iran-and-Hezbollah-388267
Israel's northern front is heating up and this presents a threat to Israel's security.
But imagine what sort of threat would be faced by the Jewish state - and a number of Sunni states in the region - if the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis were augmented by an Islamic Republic in possession of nuclear weapons? According to foreign media sources, Israel is responsible for a helicopter attack midday Sunday in the Syrian province of Quneitra that killed six Shi'ite terrorists.
Iranian Col. Ali Reza al-Tabatabai, commander of the Radwan force of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, was among those killed. The Radwan force, a special operations unit, is responsible for planning attacks against Israel. Others killed in the operation were a high-ranking Hezbollah officer and Jihad Mughniyeh, son of former Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh.
This is not the first time Israel has reportedly attacked Iranian and Hezbollah targets. Usually, these strikes are aimed at preventing the transfer of arms - particularly long-range missiles that compromise Israeli security - from Iran to Hezbollah via Syria.
Sunday's attack was different from others in a few ways.
First, it targeted specific individuals who were either high-ranking commanders or, in the case of Mughniyeh, had added value as a high-profile name.
Second, the attack involved more risk on the part of Israel.
Hezbollah and Iran will find it much harder to simply ignore the killing of these military leaders. It would be seen as a sign of weakness in the eyes of both supporters and rivals if they fail to retaliate.
Israeli decision-makers must have known this, but nevertheless decided to go through with the attack anyway based on the assumption that Hezbollah and Iran are too preoccupied on a number of fronts to launch a significant retaliatory response.
Besides being bogged down in Syria's civil war (an estimated 3,000-4,000 Hezbollah troops are fighting in Syria out of a standing army of about 10,000 full-time fighters) Hezbollah is involved in an protracted war with takfiris or extremist Sunni jihadists like those aligned with the al-Nusra Front or Islamic State.
Hezbollah is also wary of endangering its political standing within Lebanon by instigating an escalation of hostilities with Israel which is liable to deteriorate into a rerun of the 2006 Second Lebanon War that resulted in the destruction of Lebanon.
Iran, which is expending troops, weapons, cash and resources to prop up Bashar al-Assad in Syria, has no interest in seeing Hezbollah, an important ally, diverting much-needed troops from Syria to the border with Israel.
Nevertheless, after Sunday's attack Hezbollah and Iran now have a stronger motivation to retaliate in a way that has less of a chance of sparking a full-fledged conflagration.
One option might be a terrorist attack directed at Jews in the Diaspora, like the one carried by Hezbollah in Burgas, Bulgaria, in July 2012.
But the flare-up in the North should be seen as a harbinger of a much more serious challenge to Israel's security and to Middle East stability - Iran becoming a nuclear power.
Imagine that the sword-rattling speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that aired Friday on Lebanon TV was backed up by an Iranian patron with an atomic bomb.
Nasrallah bragged about Hezbollah's ability to strike every inch of Israel with advanced, long-distance rockets that were not in its possession back in 2006. What if these missiles were placed under Iran's nuclear umbrella? Iran with a nuclear-weapon capability would radically change Israel's military calculations. Operations like the one carried out on Sunday would have to be reconsidered in light of a whole new set of dangers. Even if Iran never used a nuclear weapon, the very fact that it had one would transform its international status.
Even a country like North Korea, that has a tiny, failed economy and a starved population, gains the attention of the world solely because it has a nuclear weapon. In the case of Iran, not only would possessing nuclear arms mean power - it would mean the empowerment of madmen like Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people, and Nasrallah, who dragged Lebanon into a pointless war with Israel.
Israel's reputed air strike in Syria and the potential for fallout is a diversion from the real challenge: preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
Iran Promises 'Crushing Response' to Israeli Strike - Adam Kredo - http://freebeacon.com/national-security/fmr-israeli-general-iran-hezbollah-planning-joint-invasion-of-israel/
Strike killed six Iranian agents, five Hezbollah members
Iran on Monday promised that Hezbollah would deliver "crushing response" to the Israeli attack over the weekend, which killed six Iranian agents, including a top-level commander, and five Hezbollah members.
"The experience of the past shows that the resistance current will give a crushing response to the Zionist regime's terrorist moves with revolutionary determination and in due time and place," Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), was quoted as saying.
The Israeli strike came just days after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that the terror group was preparing for a war in Israel's northern Galilee region.
It also occurred just a week after Iranian military leaders announced that they are operating missile sites in Syria, which potentially include a nuclear facility.
Senior Iranian and Hezbollah commanders were likely planning a sophisticated invasion of Israel's northern border in the weeks before they were killed by an Israeli airstrike over the weekend, according to Major General Eyal Ben Reuven, the former deputy head of the Israeli Defense Forces Northern Command.
The accuracy of Israel's strike and the high-level nature of those Iranian and Hezbollah commanders killed indicates planning for a militant incursion into Israel's northern region, according to Reuven, who said the airstrike shows a "very high level of intelligence" on Israel's part.
The high-level nature of the Iranian and Hezbollah operatives targeted by Israel suggests that an attack on Israel was imminent, according to Reuven, who handled top intelligence in the region during his time serving in the IDF.
"If the highest level of Hezbollah commanders were in the Golan Heights and the high level of Iranians, it means that their idea, [what] they're planning could be a kind of operation, an act against Israel on a high level," Reuven said during a conference call Monday organized by the Israel Project (TIP). "It's significant, the high level of this meeting, of this reconnaissance of the Iranians and Hezbollah."
"It says something about what they plan, what kind of operation they planned," he added. "If Israel has intelligence that says there is a kind of operation on the way to act against Israel, I think Israel would have a legitimate [reason] to do all we can to prevent it."
The strike that killed these 11 militants was "very, very professional," according to Reuven, and would require "very, very high level intelligence" and "very accurate" targeting information.
Iran quickly confirmed that one of its top commanders had been killed in the strike, according to Farsi language reports.
Multiple state-controlled Iranian news agencies confirmed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi had been killed by "a military helicopter of the Zionist regime during a visit to the 'Quneitra' region of Syria."
"As a result of this crime, this heroic general along with several members of Hezbollah reached martyrdom," the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) wrote in a Persian language report independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Allahdadi had been sent to Syria by top Iranian commanders "so that he could combat the Zionist regime in Lebanon and Syria," according to the Iranian media.
The IRGC official press organ also confirmed the death in a statement published by Iranian news outlets.
"Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was of the brave, devoted, and wise commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps whose effective contributions during the Holy Defense (the Iran-Iraq War) and after during his Commanding of the Al-Ghadir IRGC unit of Yazd province will always be enduring and inspiring to the generation of today and tomorrow of the Islamic nation," read the IRGC communiqué also issued in Farsi.
The IRGC claimed that Allahdadi was in Syria to help embattled leader Bashar al-Assad combat "terrorists" there.
Allahdadi also helped in "neutralizing the atrocities and conspiracies [of] this Zionist-terrorist sedition in Syria's geography," according to the IRGC.
The IRGC went on to lash out at Israel for "violating the airspace of the country of Syria" and accused the Jewish state of emboldening terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State (IS), which is battling against Assad.
Israel's actions against Iran and Syria are being "planned" along with "the cooperation [of] the heads of the White House and the occupying regime of Quds [Jerusalem]," the IRGC said in its statement.
Information about the other Iranians killed remains minimal at this point. Conflicting reports have emerged about whether the top militant killed, Abu Ali Tabatabai, was officially working on behalf of Iran or Hezbollah.
Tabatabai had been linked to Iran's Al Radwan Special Operations Units, which is known to conduct combat operations, according to TIP.
"His presence would have suggested, and probably indicates, operations aimed at overrunning Israeli border towns," TIP reported in an email to reporters.
The Hezbollah members killed include Mohammed Issa, a senior Hezbollah figure closely tied to Iran, and Jihad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's leading figure in the Golan Heights area near Israel's border with Syria.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and researcher for FDD, told the Free Beacon that Iran is expected to boost its presence in Syria and increase its support for Hezbollah.
"Given Iran's heightened resolve and dedication to keeping Assad in power, we can expect the Islamic Republic to continue, if not deepen its commitment to the Assad regime and Hezbollah by way of such mercenaries," he said.
Taleblu also noted that Iran continues to blame the rise of IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) on America and Israel.
"The notion contained in the IRGC's communiqué in the aftermath of the death of Commander Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, that the Islamic State (or DAESH, in Persian and Arabic) is linked to Israel and the U.S. is a common one promoted by the Islamic Republic's hardline political elite and regime media," he explained.
"Beyond narrative, this false linkage underscores an analytical shortcoming, Iran's military and political class have failed to attribute agency to the Islamic State, be it in Syria or Iraq, and by claiming they are Western agents, misread and misdiagnosed the violent sectarian milieu that was growing in Iraq and Syria before the group's emergence last summer," he said.
Russia signs military cooperation deal with Iran - http://news.yahoo.com/russia-signs-military-cooperation-deal-iran-151246839.html
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signed a military cooperation deal with Iran on Tuesday that his Iranian counterpart touted as a joint response to US "interference".
Shoigu is the most senior Russian military official to visit Tehran since 2002, according to Iranian media, and the agreement comes with both countries facing Western sanctions.
The deal provides for joint exercises and military training, as well as "cooperation in peacekeeping, maintaining regional and international security and stability, and fighting against separatism and extremism," the Iranian defense ministry website said.
Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan told state television that Iran and Russia had a "shared analysis of US global strategy, its interference in regional and international affairs and the need to cooperate in the struggle against the interference of foreign forces in the region."
Russia has long been Iran's principal foreign arms supplier but their ties took a major hit in 2010 when Moscow cancelled a contract to deliver advanced S-300 ground to air missiles, citing UN sanctions imposed over Tehran's nuclear program.
Iran demanded $4 billion in compensation for the cancellation of the $800 million order.
"The two countries have also decided to settle the S-300s problem," the Iranian defense ministry said on Tuesday without elaborating.
As Russia has been hit by Western sanctions over its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, it has stepped up its economic ties with Iran in the past year.
The two governments are also both allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his nearly four-year-old conflict with Western-backed rebels.
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