Netanyahu draws Israel’s red line for Iran amid secret discussion with US on a spring attack

DEBKAfile Special Report

Addressing the UN General Assembly Thursday, Sept. 27  Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu graphically depicted Israel’s red line for Iran. He held up a simple diagram showing that Iran had covered 70 percent of the distance to a nuclear bomb and must be stopped before it reached the critical stage next spring or early summer.

He stressed that it is getting late, very late to stop a nuclear Iran.

The best way, he said, is to lay down a clear red line on the most vulnerable element of its nuclear program: uranium enrichment. “I believe that if faced with a clear and credible red line, Iran will back down and may even disband its nuclear program,” he said.  Red lines prevent wars, don’t start them and in fact deterred Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel and the US are in discussion over this issue, said Netanyahu. “I’m sure we can forge a way forward together.

He went on to accuse Iran of spreading terrorist networks in two dozen countries and turning Lebanon and Gaza into terror strongholds. Hoping a nuclear-armed Iran will bring stability is like hoping a nuclear al Qaeda will bring peace, the prime minister remarked.

debkafile quotes some Washington sources as disclosing that the White House and Israel emissaries have come to an understanding that Israel will hold back from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites before the US election in November, while a special team led set up by President Barack Obama completes a new paper setting out the end game for Iran.

He put the team to work after concluding that negotiations with Iran had exhausted their usefulness and placed at its head Gary Samore, top presidential adviser on nuclear proliferation.

Netanyahu’s citing of late spring, early summer 2013, as the critical point on Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb appears to confirm that he has agreed to delay military action against Iran in negotiations with the White House. Our sources report that the prime minister was represented in those talks by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and National Security Adviser Yakov Amidror.

According to another view, which is current in Washington’s intelligence community, Israel was finally persuaded by fresh intelligence presented by the Obama administration which showed that Israeli estimates were overly pessimistic in judging the timeline for Iran’s nuclear facilities to be buried in “immunity zones.” That time line extended to spring 2013, leaving Israel five to six months up to April-May for ordering a military operation against those sites.

However, we have learned, Israeli intelligence circles dispute their American colleagues’ estimate as “interesting” but inaccurate.  Netanyahu in his speech confirmed that Washington and Jerusalem were constantly exchanging views and evaluations on the state of Iran’s nuclear program.

He also made the point that while intelligence services, American and Israeli alike, had remarkable aptitudes, their estimates on Iran were not foolproof.

If Damascus falls, Israel and its gas fields feared threatened

DEBKAfile  Exclusive Report

Syrian military forces were gathered in Tuesday, July 17, to save Damascus.

Tanks and armored vehicles were positioned in strength in the capital’s center and around government buildings. However, the noise and fury of battle in the Syrian capital Tuesday, July 17, were produced, debkafile’s military sources report, by six battalions of Bashar Assad’s loyal Allawite militia in clashes with the rebels who captured the two southern suburbs of Meidan and Tadmon Monday. They are trying to pound the enemy into extinction before its forces reach central Damascus.

The two beleaguered districts are home to a quarter of the capital’s 1.8 million inhabitants.

The Syrian general staff has withdrawn its command headquarters to a well-fortified complex on Shuhada Street in the capital’s center.

If Damascus falls and Assad is cornered, the entire region stands in peril of wider repercussions, because neither he nor Tehran will take defeat lying down.

debkafile’s military sources report their campaign will be paced and scaled according to the momentum of the Syrian rebels’ advance on Bashar Assad’s door-step, which could be drawn out and bloody.

On the Iranian-Hizballah list are Middle East oil installations as well as Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi and Jordanian strategic targets.

Saturday, the Cypriot police captured a Hizballah terrorist before he could blow up an Israeli El Al flight and tourist buses in Limassol.

Tehran is feared to be focusing on the Mediterranean island as part of a plot to set Israel’s Mediterranean gas field Tamar on fire. The field is 80 kilometers west of Haifa
It would be a spectacular curtain-raiser for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for strikes against Gulf oil installations.

Navy Commander, Maj. Gen. Ram Rothberg called last week for an extra five warships and submarines to safeguard Israel’s burgeoning gas fields at the cost of a billion dollars.

The Syrian ruler has stoked up the menace by moving out of storage missiles and shells armed with mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and cyanide stockpiled for years.

They are on operational readiness at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo and, according to Nawaf Fares,
Syrian ex-ambassador to Iraq who defected to the opposition, may already have been used against rebel concentrations.

The longer the battle for Damascus goes on, the greater the danger that the Syrian ruler will release his poison-tipped missiles against Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

Putin warns of worsening Syria conflict

By Anna Smolchenko / AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday of an "extremely dangerous" situation in Syria and emerging signs of a civil war but rejected a military intervention as he met with European leaders.

Amid mounting pressure for Moscow to drop its resistance to tougher UN action on Syria, Putin met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and had arrived in Paris for talks with newly elected French President Francois Hollande.

In Berlin, Putin appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone, warning of the escalating danger from the Syrian conflict and refraining from openly backing President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Today we are seeing emerging elements of civil war," Putin said after arriving in Berlin from Belarus. "It is extremely dangerous."

But he also continued to defy calls for tougher UN action to stop the violence, warning at a joint press conference with Merkel: "You cannot do anything by force and expect an immediate effect."

And he hit back at suggestions Moscow was supplying weapons for use in the internal conflict, after the United States condemned Russian arms deliveries to Syria as "reprehensible".

"As far as arms supplies are concerned, Russia does not supply the weapons that could be used in a civil conflict," Putin told reporters, as he continued his first foreign tour since returning to the Kremlin.

Putin's brief trips to Berlin and Paris came amid mounting outrage in the West against Assad's regime after a massacre of 108 people, including women and children, in the town of Houla last week.

UN rights chief Navi Pillay said the massacre could be a crime against humanity.

In Moscow the foreign ministry blamed the Houla massacre on foreign assistance to Syrian rebels, including arms deliveries and mercenary training.

"The tragedy in Houla showed what can be the outcome of financial aid and smuggling of modern weapons to rebels, recruitment of foreign mercenaries and flirting with various sorts of extremists," the ministry said in a statement.

Putin said Russia, Germany and their partners would do their utmost to stop the violence from escalating and help UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who has brokered a peace plan for Syria, achieve "positive results".

"We both made clear that we are pushing for a political solution, that the Annan plan can be a starting point but that everything must be done in the United Nations Security Council to implement this plan," Merkel said.

Putin said Moscow was not taking sides in the deadly strife rocking Syria, where the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 13,000 people have been killed since Assad's regime launched a brutal crackdown on the opposition in March last year.

"There is a need to find a convergence of these interests and have them sit down at a negotiating table. That's the direction we are going to work in."

Merkel earlier greeted Putin with military honours as demonstrators waving Syrian flags shouted and whistled outside.

Putin was to hold a one-on-one meeting and dinner with Hollande, who has refused to rule out foreign military intervention as long as it is carried out with UN backing, followed by a press conference.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said Syria was on the verge of a civil war and risked collapsing into sectarian strife after meeting members of the Syrian opposition based in Istanbul.

Germany, France, Britain, the United States and other Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats in protest at the slaughter in Houla.

Syria allies China and Russia, which have both blocked previous attempts at the UN Security Council to condemn Damascus, joined other council members on Sunday in backing a statement condemning the Houla killings.

But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday warned that Russia's policy of propping up the Assad regime could contribute to a civil war and even lead to a wider proxy war because of Iran's support for Damascus.

And she claimed Friday that Russia had continued to supply arms to the Assad regime, raising "serious concerns" in the United States.

"We know there has been a very consistent arms trade, even during the past year, coming from Russia to Syria. We also believe the continuous supply of arms from Russia has strengthened the Assad regime," Clinton told a news conference in Oslo.

Amnesty International demanded that Putin immediately stop Russian weapons deliveries to Syria, while Human Rights Watch called on Putin to make human rights a priority at home and abroad.