Comments on News and Reads 8/21
Gilad to ‘Post’: Israel not interested in new Cast Lead
Denies reports of crisis with Egypt, says ‘ties are strong,' Israel would consider request to insert more troops into Sinai.
FP: An example of how Israel signals weakness and invites attacks: why is it necessary to reveal that it won’t take certain actions, even if does not intend to? (see also next). And evidence of lack of strategic thinking: what happens with all the troops flowing into Sinai when a hostile government takes over in Egypt and takes Israeli weakness signals at face value?
Barak: IDF won't tolerate rocket attacks from Gaza
Defense minister says third Iron Dome battery to be installed within weeks, states that gov't would allow Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.
FP: Don’t you like the consistency of Israel’s big mouth leaders? Won’t tolerate, but no new Cast Lead. I’m sure that deters further attacks.
And the Egyptian military are clearly proving that they are worthy of sufficient trust to allow them to flood Sinai with troops (see next).
Aharonovitch: Rocket attacks on South will continue
Public security minister says citizens should act accordingly; Deputy PM: Gov't mulling possibility of ground invasion in Gaza.
FP: Government to southern Israelis: resign yourselves to rockets. More consistency and deterrence. I bet it won't say the same to Tel-Avivians when the rockets start reaching them.
Jordan warns: Escalation in Gaza threatens entire region
Jordanian minister's comments come as Hamas, Arab League approach int'l bodies to stop "Israeli offensive" in Strip.
FP: The logical conclusion of Israel’s strategy of relying on appeasing the West: the West increasingly appeases the Arabs by restricting Israel ability to defend itself, even when subject to atrocities.
Nations Race to Defuse Crisis Between Egypt and Israel
By removing Mr. Mubarak’s authoritarian but dependably loyal government, the revolution has stripped away a bulwark of Israel’s position in the region, unleashing the Egyptian public’s pent-up anger at Israel over its treatment of the
Palestinians at a time when a transitional government is scrambling to maintain its own legitimacy in the streets.
Mohamed Bassiouni, a former Egyptian ambassador to Israel, called the episode a lesson to Israel about the new politics of a more democratic Egypt, where the ruling military council and aspiring political candidates are eager to stay in step.
“It is very important, because you see public opinion in Egypt,” Mr. Bassiouni said.
He added: “The Egyptians do not accept what has happened, and it means that Israel should take care. If they continue their behavior toward the Palestinians and the peace process, it means that the situation will escalate more.”
The responsibility for the recent attack in southern Israel belongs to Hamas, which employs various terrorist wings and provides them with sanctuary in its territory, including those that identify with al-Qaeda, like Jaish al-Islam. At the root of this policy are both tactical and strategic considerations. The combined attack that the Popular Resistance Committees conducted along the Egyptian-Israeli border was intended to cause mass casualties among Israeli civilians and perhaps was supposed to involve the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Moreover, Hamas hopes to escalate the confrontation with Israel in order to influence the direction of the popular revolts in the Arab world and direct them to the issue of Palestine. Hamas sees the “Arab Spring” as an enormous opportunity to recruit the Arab masses against the pragmatic Arab regimes in order to force them to adopt a more anti-Israel policy. The operation in southern Israel sets the stage for a broad-based military escalation in Gaza during the month of Ramadan that could create shockwaves across the Arab world, where leaders are already having a difficult time dealing with the popular revolts of recent months.
This Hamas policy replicates that of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood stresses the need to exploit the “Arab Spring” for mobilizing the masses to overthrow the Arab regimes as the first step towards liberating Palestine. After the fall of Mubarak, coordination between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has grown. Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, was just in Cairo meeting with the head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi’. In summary, the “Arab Spring” could become for Israel a “Security Autumn,” as the skies darken due to regional developments.
FP: Predictable and something for which neither Israel nor a waning West seem to have a strategy, short of either ignoring or appeasing.
Lee Smith: Assad's End
Calling on Assad to leave, then, required a shift in administration thinking that is not yet complete. Certain passages in the president’s statement suggest that its author is still agonizing over the decision. “The United States,” said President Obama, “cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria. It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders, and we have heard their strong desire that there not be foreign intervention in their movement.”
The White House does not need to broadcast that American military power is limited at present. There are no longer more than 100,000 U.S. combat troops across the Syrian border in Iraq to present the sort of credible threat to the Assad regime that forced him to withdraw his troops from Lebanon in April 2005. No one understands more clearly than Assad that, with commitments in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Obama administration is unlikely to deploy American soldiers to stop Syrian security forces from killing Syrian civilians. Still, if you advertise that you cannot and will not use force, you are stripping yourself of a tool that is especially useful when dealing with a state that sponsors terrorism to advance its policy goals.
After all, it was former Syrian defense minister Mustafa Tlass who is alleged to have said, “When we negotiate we put our gun on the table.” By declaring that it has left its gun at home, the White House has weakened its hand immeasurably. Obama has adopted a Syria policy with ambitious goals while abjuring means that didn’t have to be taken off the table explicitly—and that might still, in a limited way, be useful.
…
Assad is not about to go quietly. Energy sanctions will weaken the regime, hindering its ability to pay the security forces going about their bloody work, and persuading the merchant middle class that its interests may no longer be aligned with Assad’s. But sanctions are unlikely to break the regime’s back. Assad will fight, and so will his Iranian allies, whose 30-year investment in Hezbollah may depend on the survival of the regime in Damascus that arms Iran’s Lebanese asset.
So the administration should prepare for the worst. The attacks last week in Israel near the Sinai border may well be a sign of events to come. Those operations were organized out of Gaza, with the support—at least tacit and perhaps active—of Iran’s proxy Hamas. In time, Syria and Iran and their clients in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere may hit closer to home by targeting direct American interests and U.S. military and diplomatic personnel. If it is a matter of defending and protecting American interests against Syria and Iran, will the administration still refrain from forcing Assad out?
FP: I fear that the time has come when even explicit threats by the US are no longer credible. The Middle East is like the animal kingdom: weakness invites attacks (see next).
David P. Goldman: The Bill for our Iranian Blunder
In the past I have outraged some of my conservative friends by insisting that nation-building in Iraq was a dreadful idea, for two reasons. The first is that it wasted American lives, treasure, and political capital (it certainly helped elect the odious Barack Obama) on a Quixotic commitment to social engineering; the second (and more important) is that it made American forces de facto hostages of Iran, and blocked us from confronting our most urgent enemy. Unpopular as this view was in some parts of the conservative spectrum, it was shared by many senior American officers.
Now Iran feels emboldened to make its move in Iraq. We hear today from
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iranian-backed militias present the most dangerous security threat for Iraq, outpacing al-Qaida-linked terrorists who have been blamed for the spike in violence there, a senior U.S. military officer said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Shiite militias — together they have several thousand insurgents — are working to keep the Baghdad government weak and isolated. Decisions on the number of types of attacks launched by the three main militia groups, he said, are made inside Iran, including through their ties with the powerful Quds force.
The escalating threat underscores the dangers as the U.S. prepares to pull its troops out by the end of the year. Iraqi officials are discussing whether they want to have some American forces stay in the country past that deadline.
What are we to do about Iran? Our dithering has made the problem much more difficult.
What I understand from well-informed US military sources is that after years of digging its nuclear program into mountainsides, Iran has little fear from surgical strikes, either from Israel or the US. The hardware of its nuclear weapons program is buried too deep, and too dispersed, to be knocked out from the air. To stop the Iranian nuclear program now would require a broader program of destroying Iranian command and control, which means in effect knocking out the Iranian government. My view is that we should have done this yesterday. But it is hard to imagine the Obama administration taking preemptive action against any Muslim country. That means the worst is yet to come.
As America reduces its troop presence in Iraq, I am told, American troops still will be hostage to Iranian-backed terrorism, and all the more vulnerable, because they remain deployed where they can be attacked in ever smaller numbers.
FP: As I always said: Iraq was a major strategic blunder.
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