Knicks · O.T. War in the middle East... (page 30)
colorfl1 @ 8/19/2006 11:00 PM
New York Times
August 20, 2006
Israel Committed to Block Arms and Kill Nasrallah
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 — Despite a cease-fire agreement, Israel intends to do its best to keep Iran and Syria from rearming Hezbollah and to kill the militia’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, says a senior Israeli commander.
International commitments to exclude the Hezbollah militia from southern Lebanon and to disarm it already seem hollow, said the commander, who had a well-placed view of the war and its planning and has extensive experience in Lebanon.
The officer would only speak on the condition of anonymity in an interview on Friday. But, speaking one day before commandos carried out a raid that Israeli officials said was to disrupt arms shipments for Hezbollah from Syria and Iran, he was explicit that Israel would continue to seek out and block any such attempts. He also emphasized that, despite criticism from the Israeli public and even troops of the performance of the Army and government, he considered the threat and the fighting ability of Hezbollah to have been severely diminished.
Furthermore, he made it clear that Sheik Nasrallah remained a target as the leader of a group that Israel and the United States have labeled terrorist. “There’s only one solution for him,” he said. At another point, he said simply, “This man must die.”
Mr. Nasrallah is regarded as a hero in much of the Muslim world. The pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, Émile Lahoud, praised him and Hezbollah this week for what he called their victory over Israel.
Israel and the United States, however, view Hezbollah as a tool of non-Arab Iran, which created it, and of Syria, which supports and helps to supply it, rather than being loyal to Lebanon and its multireligious government.
Israel, the officer said, views Hezbollah as “Iran’s western front’’ and, regardless of how poorly the new United Nations forces may perform, he argued, Israel will benefit from new international support for the extension of Lebanese sovereignty to the Israeli border, made most visible in the deployment of the Lebanese Army.
“I don’t care about the capability of the Lebanese Army,” he said. “What is more important, and here I’m not speaking for the Israeli government, is the understanding that the Lebanese government took control of southern Lebanon. Now we can deal with them as a country and a government, and speak and compromise. This is the huge change this operation created.”
Hezbollah, he said, is no longer just Israel’s problem, and “the world understands that we are helping to stop the influence of Iran,” at least in the longer term.
The army was planning on 15 days of air war before any ground forces were considered, he said. “We didn’t want to do any ground assault and thought we could create the conditions for a cease-fire without a major ground assault.”
But the army miscalculated, and Hezbollah did not break. The air force failed to kill Sheik Nasrallah or to destroy the Hezbollah leadership. The army was also surprised, he said, by the sheer numbers of the advanced antitank missiles Hezbollah possessed, including Russian Metis-M and Kornet missiles that were sold to Syria and passed on to Hezbollah, he said, and which caused most of Israel’s military casualties.
The United Nations was also “too soft and too late” in negotiating a cease-fire, and Israel then felt it had to act to stop the short-range Katyusha rockets that the army and the government knew, he insisted, could not be stopped with air power alone. “We tried to postpone it until we had no other choice,” the officer said.
The army asked the government for a five-day ground operation to reach the Litani River and was ready on Monday, Aug. 7, the commander said. “The government asked us to wait because of the negotiations, and we waited Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday,” he said. Only then, when the negotiations at the United Nations were going against Israel, did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz order the expanded ground operation, which had only been approved by the cabinet on Aug. 9.
In the end, the army had two days of fighting, not five, before the cease-fire took effect last Monday at 8 a.m.
Israelis have been extremely critical of Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz and, to some degree, the army leadership. Israelis overwhelmingly supported the decision to go to war against Hezbollah after its cross-border raid on July 12, when it captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight people.
But the war dragged on, the government seemed indecisive and Hezbollah was fighting well. Israelis felt there was too much reliance on air power, the ground war was too long delayed and then too modest, and the cease-fire agreement did not even secure the soldiers’ release or guarantee the disarming of Hezbollah.
The lifeline of the three-month-old government appears shortened, and the future of the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, is uncertain.
Still, the Israeli Army feels it fought well within the limits set for it, and the commander insisted that the Israelis won every battle with Hezbollah, despite its good training and equipment and the underground tunnels, barracks and command posts it constructed with Iranian help.
“We believe it was important to stop the war with Hezbollah understanding that we can beat them anywhere, any time, and we did that,” he said. “I believe it will change the situation for a long time.”
Israelis are spoiled by the 1967 and 1973 wars, he said, but there is no decisive victory against terrorism. In Washington, too, he said, “I believe the military and security professionals understand what we did, and they are not disappointed.”
The Israeli Army scored two important achievements, he confirmed. First, good intelligence allowed it to knock out up to 80 percent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range missile launchers in the first two days of the air war, preventing Sheik Nasrallah from firing a longer-range Iranian Zelzal missile on Tel Aviv.
More important, Israel was able to destroy launchers within 45 seconds to a minute after they were used, which no other army in the world can do with regularity, he said. Employing drones, radar, precision weapons and artillery, Israel could track a launching and bomb it.
But it could not do that with the thousands of short-range Katyusha rockets. They are small and easily portable, can be fired from buildings or simple metal tripods or even fired with a simple timer.
There are other tactical lessons, the commander said: more armor plating underneath tanks, better supplies, more money to be spent on reserves and training.
“But in the long run, if we see Hezbollah rearming itself and running southern Lebanon, I believe the next round is coming.”
After all, “this is the Middle East,” the officer said. “One war ends, and the next one is already at the door.”
August 20, 2006
Israel Committed to Block Arms and Kill Nasrallah
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 — Despite a cease-fire agreement, Israel intends to do its best to keep Iran and Syria from rearming Hezbollah and to kill the militia’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, says a senior Israeli commander.
International commitments to exclude the Hezbollah militia from southern Lebanon and to disarm it already seem hollow, said the commander, who had a well-placed view of the war and its planning and has extensive experience in Lebanon.
The officer would only speak on the condition of anonymity in an interview on Friday. But, speaking one day before commandos carried out a raid that Israeli officials said was to disrupt arms shipments for Hezbollah from Syria and Iran, he was explicit that Israel would continue to seek out and block any such attempts. He also emphasized that, despite criticism from the Israeli public and even troops of the performance of the Army and government, he considered the threat and the fighting ability of Hezbollah to have been severely diminished.
Furthermore, he made it clear that Sheik Nasrallah remained a target as the leader of a group that Israel and the United States have labeled terrorist. “There’s only one solution for him,” he said. At another point, he said simply, “This man must die.”
Mr. Nasrallah is regarded as a hero in much of the Muslim world. The pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, Émile Lahoud, praised him and Hezbollah this week for what he called their victory over Israel.
Israel and the United States, however, view Hezbollah as a tool of non-Arab Iran, which created it, and of Syria, which supports and helps to supply it, rather than being loyal to Lebanon and its multireligious government.
Israel, the officer said, views Hezbollah as “Iran’s western front’’ and, regardless of how poorly the new United Nations forces may perform, he argued, Israel will benefit from new international support for the extension of Lebanese sovereignty to the Israeli border, made most visible in the deployment of the Lebanese Army.
“I don’t care about the capability of the Lebanese Army,” he said. “What is more important, and here I’m not speaking for the Israeli government, is the understanding that the Lebanese government took control of southern Lebanon. Now we can deal with them as a country and a government, and speak and compromise. This is the huge change this operation created.”
Hezbollah, he said, is no longer just Israel’s problem, and “the world understands that we are helping to stop the influence of Iran,” at least in the longer term.
The army was planning on 15 days of air war before any ground forces were considered, he said. “We didn’t want to do any ground assault and thought we could create the conditions for a cease-fire without a major ground assault.”
But the army miscalculated, and Hezbollah did not break. The air force failed to kill Sheik Nasrallah or to destroy the Hezbollah leadership. The army was also surprised, he said, by the sheer numbers of the advanced antitank missiles Hezbollah possessed, including Russian Metis-M and Kornet missiles that were sold to Syria and passed on to Hezbollah, he said, and which caused most of Israel’s military casualties.
The United Nations was also “too soft and too late” in negotiating a cease-fire, and Israel then felt it had to act to stop the short-range Katyusha rockets that the army and the government knew, he insisted, could not be stopped with air power alone. “We tried to postpone it until we had no other choice,” the officer said.
The army asked the government for a five-day ground operation to reach the Litani River and was ready on Monday, Aug. 7, the commander said. “The government asked us to wait because of the negotiations, and we waited Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday,” he said. Only then, when the negotiations at the United Nations were going against Israel, did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz order the expanded ground operation, which had only been approved by the cabinet on Aug. 9.
In the end, the army had two days of fighting, not five, before the cease-fire took effect last Monday at 8 a.m.
Israelis have been extremely critical of Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz and, to some degree, the army leadership. Israelis overwhelmingly supported the decision to go to war against Hezbollah after its cross-border raid on July 12, when it captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight people.
But the war dragged on, the government seemed indecisive and Hezbollah was fighting well. Israelis felt there was too much reliance on air power, the ground war was too long delayed and then too modest, and the cease-fire agreement did not even secure the soldiers’ release or guarantee the disarming of Hezbollah.
The lifeline of the three-month-old government appears shortened, and the future of the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, is uncertain.
Still, the Israeli Army feels it fought well within the limits set for it, and the commander insisted that the Israelis won every battle with Hezbollah, despite its good training and equipment and the underground tunnels, barracks and command posts it constructed with Iranian help.
“We believe it was important to stop the war with Hezbollah understanding that we can beat them anywhere, any time, and we did that,” he said. “I believe it will change the situation for a long time.”
Israelis are spoiled by the 1967 and 1973 wars, he said, but there is no decisive victory against terrorism. In Washington, too, he said, “I believe the military and security professionals understand what we did, and they are not disappointed.”
The Israeli Army scored two important achievements, he confirmed. First, good intelligence allowed it to knock out up to 80 percent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range missile launchers in the first two days of the air war, preventing Sheik Nasrallah from firing a longer-range Iranian Zelzal missile on Tel Aviv.
More important, Israel was able to destroy launchers within 45 seconds to a minute after they were used, which no other army in the world can do with regularity, he said. Employing drones, radar, precision weapons and artillery, Israel could track a launching and bomb it.
But it could not do that with the thousands of short-range Katyusha rockets. They are small and easily portable, can be fired from buildings or simple metal tripods or even fired with a simple timer.
There are other tactical lessons, the commander said: more armor plating underneath tanks, better supplies, more money to be spent on reserves and training.
“But in the long run, if we see Hezbollah rearming itself and running southern Lebanon, I believe the next round is coming.”
After all, “this is the Middle East,” the officer said. “One war ends, and the next one is already at the door.”
colorfl1 @ 8/19/2006 11:02 PM
New York Times
August 20, 2006
Iranian Shells Land in Kurdish Villages in Northern Iraq, Killing 2
By EDWARD WONG and YEREVAN ADHAM
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.
The shells have been aimed at an area around Qandil Mountain, known as a base for militant Kurdish opposition groups seeking independence from Turkey and Iran, said the official, Mustafa Sayed Qadir, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs the eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A lot of homes have been damaged and livestock killed,” he said. A shepherd was wounded Saturday, and two women were among the three people wounded on previous days, he added.
The government of Iraq is aware of the shelling, which has taken place occasionally in recent months, but has not taken an official position, he said.
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He has at times had a close relationship with Iran, especially when he sought Iranian support in the 1990’s against rival Kurdish leaders and Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Talabani is also aware of the Iranian government’s poor treatment of its Kurdish minority. Iranian officials could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
Iran and Turkey have sizeable Kurdish populations that live in mountainous areas bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the two countries have stepped up warnings to Kurdish militant groups, perhaps fearing that they might have enough of a haven in Iraqi Kurdistan to inject new vigor into independence movements in Iran and Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is autonomous from the rest of Iraq and is home to most of this country’s five million Kurds.
It is unclear what weaponry or troops Iran has amassed along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
American officials have accused Iran of supporting Hezbollah in its recent battle against Israel. This month, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iran had been pushing small Shiite militias to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
An American military spokesman said some Shiite militias had been training in Iran and had received weapons from individuals or groups in that country. However, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the military had not found any evidence that the Iranian government was involved.
In Baghdad on Saturday, thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on a shrine in the northern part of the capital for an annual procession, walking a route secured by police officers as a citywide ban on driving emptied the streets in an effort to prevent sectarian attacks and panic.
At least three Shiites were found dead in Baghdad, shot in the head, according to hospital officials. But the Interior Ministry could not confirm whether they were pilgrims.
Elsewhere in Iraq, battles continued to rage. An American soldier died from wounds suffered during fighting in Anbar Province, the American military said in a statement. An Iraqi police patrol was ambushed by sniper fire in Mosul, killing a policeman and wounding another, the police said.
In a series of gun battles in and around Baquba, at least six people were killed. A civilian died from stray gunfire after an attack on an Iraqi police checkpoint in a western suburb; nearby, gunmen killed two professors from Diyala University.
Damien Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
August 20, 2006
Iranian Shells Land in Kurdish Villages in Northern Iraq, Killing 2
By EDWARD WONG and YEREVAN ADHAM
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.
The shells have been aimed at an area around Qandil Mountain, known as a base for militant Kurdish opposition groups seeking independence from Turkey and Iran, said the official, Mustafa Sayed Qadir, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs the eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A lot of homes have been damaged and livestock killed,” he said. A shepherd was wounded Saturday, and two women were among the three people wounded on previous days, he added.
The government of Iraq is aware of the shelling, which has taken place occasionally in recent months, but has not taken an official position, he said.
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He has at times had a close relationship with Iran, especially when he sought Iranian support in the 1990’s against rival Kurdish leaders and Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Talabani is also aware of the Iranian government’s poor treatment of its Kurdish minority. Iranian officials could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
Iran and Turkey have sizeable Kurdish populations that live in mountainous areas bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the two countries have stepped up warnings to Kurdish militant groups, perhaps fearing that they might have enough of a haven in Iraqi Kurdistan to inject new vigor into independence movements in Iran and Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is autonomous from the rest of Iraq and is home to most of this country’s five million Kurds.
It is unclear what weaponry or troops Iran has amassed along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
American officials have accused Iran of supporting Hezbollah in its recent battle against Israel. This month, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iran had been pushing small Shiite militias to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
An American military spokesman said some Shiite militias had been training in Iran and had received weapons from individuals or groups in that country. However, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the military had not found any evidence that the Iranian government was involved.
In Baghdad on Saturday, thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on a shrine in the northern part of the capital for an annual procession, walking a route secured by police officers as a citywide ban on driving emptied the streets in an effort to prevent sectarian attacks and panic.
At least three Shiites were found dead in Baghdad, shot in the head, according to hospital officials. But the Interior Ministry could not confirm whether they were pilgrims.
Elsewhere in Iraq, battles continued to rage. An American soldier died from wounds suffered during fighting in Anbar Province, the American military said in a statement. An Iraqi police patrol was ambushed by sniper fire in Mosul, killing a policeman and wounding another, the police said.
In a series of gun battles in and around Baquba, at least six people were killed. A civilian died from stray gunfire after an attack on an Iraqi police checkpoint in a western suburb; nearby, gunmen killed two professors from Diyala University.
Damien Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
Rich @ 8/20/2006 12:16 AM
Like it or not (and I find it distasteful on some level), the best way to diffuse the rising power of the Shias (which Bush aided by toppling Saddam leading up to the Shia domination of Iraq) is to find a way to have a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 2:09 AM
Posted by Rich:
Like it or not (and I find it distasteful on some level), the best way to diffuse the rising power of the Shias (which Bush aided by toppling Saddam leading up to the Shia domination of Iraq) is to find a way to have a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
the Shia extreemists will assassinate any Palstinian political figure who signs away an inch of land in a peace treaty with Israel. The Palastinian regime is not looking for peace...
simrud @ 8/20/2006 11:34 AM
Well, what do peace treaties with the Arabs do for Israel? So for nothing. I guess relations with Egypt and Jordan have been civil, but what has pulling out of Gaza and Lebanon accomplished?
As for the rising power of the Shiites, I say let it burn. A bloody split in the muslim world is only beneficial for Israel. Let them get busy wacking each other. I for one would not mind seeing a Sauid led Sunni coalition engulfed in an allout war against Iran and its Iraqi and Lebanese militas.
It would cause the price of oil to skyrocket ofcousre, but that will only force the inudstry to swich to envirnomentally better options, whare are out there, they are just not fiancially viable yet.
All the people scared of a big middle east war due to oil prices need to realize that an almost free-market economy whould be able to adjust. We already swithced from coal to oil once, and that was w/out any government help to anybody.
As for the rising power of the Shiites, I say let it burn. A bloody split in the muslim world is only beneficial for Israel. Let them get busy wacking each other. I for one would not mind seeing a Sauid led Sunni coalition engulfed in an allout war against Iran and its Iraqi and Lebanese militas.
It would cause the price of oil to skyrocket ofcousre, but that will only force the inudstry to swich to envirnomentally better options, whare are out there, they are just not fiancially viable yet.
All the people scared of a big middle east war due to oil prices need to realize that an almost free-market economy whould be able to adjust. We already swithced from coal to oil once, and that was w/out any government help to anybody.
simrud @ 8/20/2006 11:45 AM
Iranian Shells Land in Kurdish Villages in Northern Iraq, Killing 2
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.
The shells have been aimed at an area around Qandil Mountain, known as a base for militant Kurdish opposition groups seeking independence from Turkey and Iran, said the official, Mustafa Sayed Qadir, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs the eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A lot of homes have been damaged and livestock killed,” he said. A shepherd was wounded Saturday, and two women were among the three people wounded on previous days, he added.
The government of Iraq is aware of the shelling, which has taken place occasionally in recent months, but has not taken an official position, he said.
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He has at times had a close relationship with Iran, especially when he sought Iranian support in the 1990’s against rival Kurdish leaders and Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Talabani is also aware of the Iranian government’s poor treatment of its Kurdish minority. Iranian officials could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
Iran and Turkey have sizeable Kurdish populations that live in mountainous areas bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the two countries have stepped up warnings to Kurdish militant groups, perhaps fearing that they might have enough of a haven in Iraqi Kurdistan to inject new vigor into independence movements in Iran and Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is autonomous from the rest of Iraq and is home to most of this country’s five million Kurds.
It is unclear what weaponry or troops Iran has amassed along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
American officials have accused Iran of supporting Hezbollah in its recent battle against Israel. This month, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iran had been pushing small Shiite militias to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
An American military spokesman said some Shiite militias had been training in Iran and had received weapons from individuals or groups in that country. However, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the military had not found any evidence that the Iranian government was involved.
In Baghdad on Saturday, thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on a shrine in the northern part of the capital for an annual procession, walking a route secured by police officers as a citywide ban on driving emptied the streets in an effort to prevent sectarian attacks and panic.
At least three Shiites were found dead in Baghdad, shot in the head, according to hospital officials. But the Interior Ministry could not confirm whether they were pilgrims.
Elsewhere in Iraq, battles continued to rage. An American soldier died from wounds suffered during fighting in Anbar Province, the American military said in a statement. An Iraqi police patrol was ambushed by sniper fire in Mosul, killing a policeman and wounding another, the police said.
In a series of gun battles in and around Baquba, at least six people were killed. A civilian died from stray gunfire after an attack on an Iraqi police checkpoint in a western suburb; nearby, gunmen killed two professors from Diyala University.
Damien Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.
The shells have been aimed at an area around Qandil Mountain, known as a base for militant Kurdish opposition groups seeking independence from Turkey and Iran, said the official, Mustafa Sayed Qadir, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs the eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A lot of homes have been damaged and livestock killed,” he said. A shepherd was wounded Saturday, and two women were among the three people wounded on previous days, he added.
The government of Iraq is aware of the shelling, which has taken place occasionally in recent months, but has not taken an official position, he said.
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He has at times had a close relationship with Iran, especially when he sought Iranian support in the 1990’s against rival Kurdish leaders and Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Talabani is also aware of the Iranian government’s poor treatment of its Kurdish minority. Iranian officials could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
Iran and Turkey have sizeable Kurdish populations that live in mountainous areas bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the two countries have stepped up warnings to Kurdish militant groups, perhaps fearing that they might have enough of a haven in Iraqi Kurdistan to inject new vigor into independence movements in Iran and Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is autonomous from the rest of Iraq and is home to most of this country’s five million Kurds.
It is unclear what weaponry or troops Iran has amassed along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
American officials have accused Iran of supporting Hezbollah in its recent battle against Israel. This month, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iran had been pushing small Shiite militias to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
An American military spokesman said some Shiite militias had been training in Iran and had received weapons from individuals or groups in that country. However, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the military had not found any evidence that the Iranian government was involved.
In Baghdad on Saturday, thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on a shrine in the northern part of the capital for an annual procession, walking a route secured by police officers as a citywide ban on driving emptied the streets in an effort to prevent sectarian attacks and panic.
At least three Shiites were found dead in Baghdad, shot in the head, according to hospital officials. But the Interior Ministry could not confirm whether they were pilgrims.
Elsewhere in Iraq, battles continued to rage. An American soldier died from wounds suffered during fighting in Anbar Province, the American military said in a statement. An Iraqi police patrol was ambushed by sniper fire in Mosul, killing a policeman and wounding another, the police said.
In a series of gun battles in and around Baquba, at least six people were killed. A civilian died from stray gunfire after an attack on an Iraqi police checkpoint in a western suburb; nearby, gunmen killed two professors from Diyala University.
Damien Cave contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
simrud @ 8/20/2006 11:47 AM
If I was Israel or US for that matter, I would heavily invest into an independent Kurdistan. The best way to end all Iranian nuclear spending is to envolve them in a costly war with a resergent Kurdish force.
The only problem is Turkey, but I wonder if some agreement could be worke out between Kurds and Turks along the lines of Kurds dencouning claims to Turkish territory and Turkey recognizing their claims to Iran, Iraq, and Syrian territory in turn.
The only problem is Turkey, but I wonder if some agreement could be worke out between Kurds and Turks along the lines of Kurds dencouning claims to Turkish territory and Turkey recognizing their claims to Iran, Iraq, and Syrian territory in turn.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 11:53 AM
Last update - 21:47 19/08/2006
Israel says France not keeping promise on troop commitment
By Haaretz Service and Agencies
Officials in Jerusalem expressed disappointment at what they view as French backtracking on an earlier commitment to send thousands of soldiers to take part in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
Foreign Ministry sources said Jerusalem expects France to "come to its senses and abide by its word," adding that the UN force should be a robust one which would be authorized to act in order to enforce the terms of the cease-fire.
President George W. Bush said on Friday he hopes France will send more troops to a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon after it said it would deploy only 200 soldiers.
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"France has said they'd send some troops. We hope they send more. There's been different signals coming out of France. Yesterday they had a statement, today they had a statement," Bush told reporters at the presidential retreat of Camp David.
France already has some 200 troops attached to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon and the new detachment will come from an engineering regiment that will focus on transport and building projects.
Bush has said the United States will help the force with logistical support but not troops because they could become a lightning rod.
In his remarks to reporters on Friday, he noted that the United States has worked closely with France in the United Nations on bringing about a cease-fire in Lebanon.
"We're working with France, France is a friend, France is an ally, France has got a great stake in the future of Lebanon. President Chirac has made it very clear that he believes that democracy in Lebanon is very important," Bush said.
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Friday defended France's decision to send just 200 additional troops to reinforce the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, and stressed that the force needs a clear mandate to operate effectively.
France, which currently leads the UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon, said Thursday it was doubling its contingent to 400 troops. Many of the new troops are to set off for the Middle East on Sunday.
The size of France's contribution was a disappointment to some at the United Nations who had expected more French soldiers, though it did not dissuade countries from pledging a total of 3,500 troops for the expanded force during a meeting Thursday in New York.
"I can't let it be said or implied that France is not doing its duty in the Lebanese crisis," Alliot-Marie told French radio RTL in an interview.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry reiterated Friday that France could always send additional troops at a later stage.
"Depending on the ongoing discussions, we will decide on the way in which we participate in the reinforced UNIFIL in the long term," spokesman Denis Simonneau told reporters.
The defense minister noted that France was willing to continue leading the force as it expands from the current 2,000 troops to as many as 15,000.
Israel says France not keeping promise on troop commitment
By Haaretz Service and Agencies
Officials in Jerusalem expressed disappointment at what they view as French backtracking on an earlier commitment to send thousands of soldiers to take part in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
Foreign Ministry sources said Jerusalem expects France to "come to its senses and abide by its word," adding that the UN force should be a robust one which would be authorized to act in order to enforce the terms of the cease-fire.
President George W. Bush said on Friday he hopes France will send more troops to a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon after it said it would deploy only 200 soldiers.
Advertisement
"France has said they'd send some troops. We hope they send more. There's been different signals coming out of France. Yesterday they had a statement, today they had a statement," Bush told reporters at the presidential retreat of Camp David.
France already has some 200 troops attached to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon and the new detachment will come from an engineering regiment that will focus on transport and building projects.
Bush has said the United States will help the force with logistical support but not troops because they could become a lightning rod.
In his remarks to reporters on Friday, he noted that the United States has worked closely with France in the United Nations on bringing about a cease-fire in Lebanon.
"We're working with France, France is a friend, France is an ally, France has got a great stake in the future of Lebanon. President Chirac has made it very clear that he believes that democracy in Lebanon is very important," Bush said.
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Friday defended France's decision to send just 200 additional troops to reinforce the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, and stressed that the force needs a clear mandate to operate effectively.
France, which currently leads the UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon, said Thursday it was doubling its contingent to 400 troops. Many of the new troops are to set off for the Middle East on Sunday.
The size of France's contribution was a disappointment to some at the United Nations who had expected more French soldiers, though it did not dissuade countries from pledging a total of 3,500 troops for the expanded force during a meeting Thursday in New York.
"I can't let it be said or implied that France is not doing its duty in the Lebanese crisis," Alliot-Marie told French radio RTL in an interview.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry reiterated Friday that France could always send additional troops at a later stage.
"Depending on the ongoing discussions, we will decide on the way in which we participate in the reinforced UNIFIL in the long term," spokesman Denis Simonneau told reporters.
The defense minister noted that France was willing to continue leading the force as it expands from the current 2,000 troops to as many as 15,000.
Silverfuel @ 8/20/2006 1:22 PM
Posted by simrud:This could be done. Turkey could be allowed into the European Union at that cott. It would be costly but I dont think it would be fatal to the existence of the EU.
The only problem is Turkey, but I wonder if some agreement could be worke out between Kurds and Turks along the lines of Kurds dencouning claims to Turkish territory and Turkey recognizing their claims to Iran, Iraq, and Syrian territory in turn.
simrud @ 8/20/2006 1:33 PM
I like the idea about Turkey being allowed into EU. That would def be good for all sides.
I don't know if EU is iterested though, they don't really care for Israel, Turkey, or Kurds. There would need to be some kind of insentive to benefit EU in the deal.
I don't know if EU is iterested though, they don't really care for Israel, Turkey, or Kurds. There would need to be some kind of insentive to benefit EU in the deal.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 8:48 PM
NYT...
While the Israeli military is normally quick to trumpet its triumphs — sometimes even providing videos of the raids through eerie green night-vision lenses — scant details of Saturday’s commando raid near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek were disclosed.
Israel said the raid was directed against weapons smuggling and argued that its actions were not a violation of the United Nations cease-fire, which calls for an end to rearming of Hezbollah.
An official statement released by the Israeli Army said “the goals of the operation were achieved in full.”
The military sent members of its most elite unit, Sayeret Matkal, on the raid in a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley. A lieutenant colonel was killed and two fellow soldiers wounded.
In Israel, the widespread presumption is that the mission was considered highly important, and the Israeli news media was filled with speculation, but few concrete details today.
Some news reports said the target might have been a high-ranking Hezbollah leader that Israel sought to seize or kill. The operation took place near the Lebanese village of Boudai, the home of Sheik Muhammad Yazbeck, a senior Hezbollah leader.
While the Israeli military is normally quick to trumpet its triumphs — sometimes even providing videos of the raids through eerie green night-vision lenses — scant details of Saturday’s commando raid near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek were disclosed.
Israel said the raid was directed against weapons smuggling and argued that its actions were not a violation of the United Nations cease-fire, which calls for an end to rearming of Hezbollah.
An official statement released by the Israeli Army said “the goals of the operation were achieved in full.”
The military sent members of its most elite unit, Sayeret Matkal, on the raid in a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley. A lieutenant colonel was killed and two fellow soldiers wounded.
In Israel, the widespread presumption is that the mission was considered highly important, and the Israeli news media was filled with speculation, but few concrete details today.
Some news reports said the target might have been a high-ranking Hezbollah leader that Israel sought to seize or kill. The operation took place near the Lebanese village of Boudai, the home of Sheik Muhammad Yazbeck, a senior Hezbollah leader.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 8:52 PM
Hezbollah Reportedly Had British Goggles
The Associated Press
Aug 20 8:18 PM US/Eastern
LONDON
Britain said Monday that it is investigating a report that Israeli soldiers found British-made night-vision goggles in a Hezbollah hideout.
"The Israeli Defense Forces have told us that they have found some night-vision equipment in southern Lebanon that they believe to have been manufactured in Britain," a British Foreign Office spokesman said Monday on condition of anonymity because agency rules do not allow him to speak for attribution.
"We are seeking further details of the equipment to investigate whether it is British and, if so, by whom it was made and to whom it was sold," the spokesman said.
The Times newspaper reported Monday that Israeli officials believe the goggles may be from a consignment sold to Iran by Britain in 2003.
The sale was intended to bolster Iranian efforts to combat heroin smuggling across the Afghan border as part of the United Nations Drugs Control Program, the newspaper claimed.
The Foreign Office spokesman said it was not yet clear if the items were part of the batch sent to Iran in 2003.
Israeli officials said Friday that they had sent a senior delegation to Moscow to complain that Russian-made anti-tank missiles were used by Hezbollah guerrillas in their 34-day conflict with Israeli forces in Lebanon.
Israeli officials say that Iran and Syria passed the arms to Hezbollah after buying them from Russia.
Russia denied the claim.
The Associated Press
Aug 20 8:18 PM US/Eastern
LONDON
Britain said Monday that it is investigating a report that Israeli soldiers found British-made night-vision goggles in a Hezbollah hideout.
"The Israeli Defense Forces have told us that they have found some night-vision equipment in southern Lebanon that they believe to have been manufactured in Britain," a British Foreign Office spokesman said Monday on condition of anonymity because agency rules do not allow him to speak for attribution.
"We are seeking further details of the equipment to investigate whether it is British and, if so, by whom it was made and to whom it was sold," the spokesman said.
The Times newspaper reported Monday that Israeli officials believe the goggles may be from a consignment sold to Iran by Britain in 2003.
The sale was intended to bolster Iranian efforts to combat heroin smuggling across the Afghan border as part of the United Nations Drugs Control Program, the newspaper claimed.
The Foreign Office spokesman said it was not yet clear if the items were part of the batch sent to Iran in 2003.
Israeli officials said Friday that they had sent a senior delegation to Moscow to complain that Russian-made anti-tank missiles were used by Hezbollah guerrillas in their 34-day conflict with Israeli forces in Lebanon.
Israeli officials say that Iran and Syria passed the arms to Hezbollah after buying them from Russia.
Russia denied the claim.
BRIGGS @ 8/20/2006 9:08 PM
Posted by Rich:
Like it or not (and I find it distasteful on some level), the best way to diffuse the rising power of the Shias (which Bush aided by toppling Saddam leading up to the Shia domination of Iraq) is to find a way to have a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
People have to realize that Iran wants to pump Israel full of missiles and the realism [unfortunately] is who takes out who first.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 9:20 PM
Arab foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Egypt, and Arab League Deputy Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Heli said they would discuss setting up a fund to rebuild Lebanon, which lost an estimated 15,000 apartments, 140 bridges and other structures.
Diplomats said Arab governments wanted to counter the flood of Iranian money that is believed to be financing the Hezbollah handouts.
Iran, which is not an Arab nation, denied that Sunday. "Hezbollah is a legitimate body in Lebanon; they have their own economic resources and popular support there," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in Tehran.
Diplomats said Arab governments wanted to counter the flood of Iranian money that is believed to be financing the Hezbollah handouts.
Iran, which is not an Arab nation, denied that Sunday. "Hezbollah is a legitimate body in Lebanon; they have their own economic resources and popular support there," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in Tehran.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 9:25 PM
Hezbollah fighters fill raided town
CNN
Townspeople joined militia members to repel Israeli forces
BOUDAI, Lebanon (AP) -- Jumpy Hezbollah fighters flooded Boudai on Sunday, brandishing Kalashnikovs and stopping, searching and questioning outsiders the day after the town fought off an Israeli commando raid with a 90-minute shootout.
Israeli forces tried to penetrate the Hezbollah town about 3 a.m. Saturday, swooping in on helicopters deep into the Bekaa Valley 60 miles from the Israeli border. The Israeli military later said the commandos were trying to interdict Iranian weapons being smuggled to guerrillas from Syria.
Residents who would speak to a reporter speculated that the Israelis were really trying to capture Sheik Mohammed Yazbeck, a member of Hezbollah's highest decision-making body, the Shura Council, who hails from Boudai.
"The came here for Yazbeck," said 41-year-old Mustafa Ayoub who lives in Saaydeh, the next town south. "He's from here, but he's not here now. It's possible Yazbeck was here. But I don't know. It's very difficult to know these things."
Boudai, which sits in the foothills of the Mount Lebanon range, has a spectacular view across the Bekaa Valley toward Baalbeck, the birthplace of Hezbollah, and the Anti-Lebanon range that divides Lebanon from Syria.
Wheat fields were partially harvested, sheep and goats grazed in the stubble. Fields of tobacco stretched into the distance, the big leaves waving in the breeze.
Every telephone pole in the town of 8,000 was flying a yellow Hezbollah flag, and windows were plastered with posters of the militant group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The main street was lined with alms boxes requesting donations for widows.
The Israelis landed their commandos, a jeep and a Humvee on a hill outside town, then drove toward the village center, witnesses said.
"I think that when Hezbollah confronted them, they changed their route. They were trying to go to a school -- a government school -- but they couldn't make it, so they drove through here," said Arabic teacher Fawzi Chamas, 50, pointing to wheat and tobacco fields.
The apparent target was a school rumored to be owned by Yazbeck. But the newly built facility -- with a locked gate and dirt still piled around it from construction -- bore a yellow sign outside and no Hezbollah flags: "Boudai School. Owner: The Republic of Lebanon."
About 10 Hezbollah fighters initially confronted the Israelis, but some 300 townspeople heard the roar of helicopters, grabbed their guns and joined the fight.
"All the sky seemed like a cloud of planes, and all -- not only Hezbollah -- fought. All the people in the village brought their guns to fight. Fifteen year-old boys brought guns," said Suzanne Mazloun, 22, wife of Boudai's mayor, Suleiman Chamas.
Realizing they were outgunned, the Israelis swerved into tobacco and wheat fields nearby and were picked up by helicopters.
Israel said one special forces officer was killed and two soldiers were injured, one seriously.
"They left lots of blood, bandages and syringes," said Mohammed Kanan, 36, pointing to a wheat field, where wads of tissues and white bandages were stained with what appeared to be blood.
In the town center, the Husseini Community Center lay in rubble, hit by an Israeli strike in the first week of the war. Dozens of Hezbollah sympathizers gathered Sunday nearby, on the third day of mourning for Hezbollah fighter Mohammed Ahmed Asef, who was buried here.
Speculation was that Yazbeck had been in Boudai for that funeral.
Hezbollah gunmen, skittish about a visiting reporter, stopped her car on three occasions, demanding identification and searching the vehicle.
At one point visitors were detained for 30 minutes during a flurry of phone calls among the gunmen. In the end, they were ordered to leave the area.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 9:28 PM
Iran tests short-range missile
Tehran rejects preconditions for nuclear talks
Sunday, August 20, 2006; Posted: 9:00 p.m. EDT (01:00 GMT)
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Days before a U.N. deadline to accept limits on its nuclear program or face possible sanctions, Iran's armed forces tested surface-to-surface missiles Sunday in the second stage of war games near its border with Iraq.
The war games occurred as Iran again rejected any preconditions for further talks on giving up its uranium-enrichment program, which it says is meant for peaceful purposes.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes setting preconditions for negotiations will tighten the atmosphere for the two sides to reach a solution," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
"Why do they believe that the two parties should not negotiate in an open atmosphere?"
The U.N. Security Council has given Iran until the end of August to freeze its enrichment program or possibly face economic sanctions. Iran has said its response to incentives intended to persuade its leaders to accept strictures on its nuclear program would be ready by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Iran's military launched the first stage of a planned series of war games on Saturday. The exercises will be conducted in 16 provinces in southern, southwestern and western parts of the country during the coming days, IRNA reported.
Brig. Gen. Kiumars Heidari, a military spokesman, told the IRNA that Iranian forces test-fired Iranian-made Saeqeh (Thunderbolt) missiles and surface-to-water missiles in southwestern Khuzestan Province, which adjoins Iraq.
Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The new tests, in the wake of the Lebanon-Hezbollah fighting, seemed certain to create new tensions with the West. (Full story)
Iran's state-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.
State-run TV showed video of 10 missiles being launched from mobile launching pads, The Associated Press reported.
Iran has said it is developing its nuclear technology for a civilian power program. But the United States and some European countries have accused Iranian leaders of working towards joining the exclusive club of countries that have nuclear weapons.
"If the Europeans' attitude is rational, the package of incentives can settle problems," Asefi said. "The package has still ambiguities and questions which should be answered."
He said Iran would cooperate with the nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and he predicted that the Europeans would not allow sanctions to be imposed on the oil-exporting nation. Such a move would result in EU countries "burning their bridges," he said.
"If other countries refrain from cooperating with Iran, they will sustain more damage," he said.
But Emily Lawrimore, a spokeswoman for the same White House that once branded Iran -- along with Iraq and North Korea -- members of the "axis of evil," said Sunday that the show of military force "serves to remind us of the dangers of its [Iran's] nuclear ambitions.
"Iran sits at the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism; we know that Iran is producing and developing delivery systems that could threaten our friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe and eventually the United States itself," she said. "As the president has noted, Iran faces a clear choice."
The statement carried echoes of pronouncements from Washington in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where about 130,000 U.S. troops are still battling a persistent insurgency and trying to quell a wave of sectarian violence.
In this case, however, Lawrimore said that if Iran failed to comply with the Security Council's mandate, "We will move quickly at the United Nations to impose sanctions," she said.
But Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, speaker of Iran's Parliament, accused the United States of interfering in the affairs of other countries.
"The U.S. meddles in national affairs of other countries sometimes in the form of coup d'etat and sometimes under pretext of campaign against terrorism," he told the Parliament -- or Majlis -- on the 53rd anniversary anniversary of a U.S.- and British-sponsored coup d'etat that brought pro-Western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power.
"The U.S. has always raised a pretext for its interference. It meddled in Iraqi domestic affairs under a pretext to establish democracy and freedom in that country and the international campaign against terrorism," he said.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tehran rejects preconditions for nuclear talks
Sunday, August 20, 2006; Posted: 9:00 p.m. EDT (01:00 GMT)
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Days before a U.N. deadline to accept limits on its nuclear program or face possible sanctions, Iran's armed forces tested surface-to-surface missiles Sunday in the second stage of war games near its border with Iraq.
The war games occurred as Iran again rejected any preconditions for further talks on giving up its uranium-enrichment program, which it says is meant for peaceful purposes.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes setting preconditions for negotiations will tighten the atmosphere for the two sides to reach a solution," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
"Why do they believe that the two parties should not negotiate in an open atmosphere?"
The U.N. Security Council has given Iran until the end of August to freeze its enrichment program or possibly face economic sanctions. Iran has said its response to incentives intended to persuade its leaders to accept strictures on its nuclear program would be ready by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Iran's military launched the first stage of a planned series of war games on Saturday. The exercises will be conducted in 16 provinces in southern, southwestern and western parts of the country during the coming days, IRNA reported.
Brig. Gen. Kiumars Heidari, a military spokesman, told the IRNA that Iranian forces test-fired Iranian-made Saeqeh (Thunderbolt) missiles and surface-to-water missiles in southwestern Khuzestan Province, which adjoins Iraq.
Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The new tests, in the wake of the Lebanon-Hezbollah fighting, seemed certain to create new tensions with the West. (Full story)
Iran's state-run television said the missile was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries.
State-run TV showed video of 10 missiles being launched from mobile launching pads, The Associated Press reported.
Iran has said it is developing its nuclear technology for a civilian power program. But the United States and some European countries have accused Iranian leaders of working towards joining the exclusive club of countries that have nuclear weapons.
"If the Europeans' attitude is rational, the package of incentives can settle problems," Asefi said. "The package has still ambiguities and questions which should be answered."
He said Iran would cooperate with the nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and he predicted that the Europeans would not allow sanctions to be imposed on the oil-exporting nation. Such a move would result in EU countries "burning their bridges," he said.
"If other countries refrain from cooperating with Iran, they will sustain more damage," he said.
But Emily Lawrimore, a spokeswoman for the same White House that once branded Iran -- along with Iraq and North Korea -- members of the "axis of evil," said Sunday that the show of military force "serves to remind us of the dangers of its [Iran's] nuclear ambitions.
"Iran sits at the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism; we know that Iran is producing and developing delivery systems that could threaten our friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe and eventually the United States itself," she said. "As the president has noted, Iran faces a clear choice."
The statement carried echoes of pronouncements from Washington in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where about 130,000 U.S. troops are still battling a persistent insurgency and trying to quell a wave of sectarian violence.
In this case, however, Lawrimore said that if Iran failed to comply with the Security Council's mandate, "We will move quickly at the United Nations to impose sanctions," she said.
But Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, speaker of Iran's Parliament, accused the United States of interfering in the affairs of other countries.
"The U.S. meddles in national affairs of other countries sometimes in the form of coup d'etat and sometimes under pretext of campaign against terrorism," he told the Parliament -- or Majlis -- on the 53rd anniversary anniversary of a U.S.- and British-sponsored coup d'etat that brought pro-Western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power.
"The U.S. has always raised a pretext for its interference. It meddled in Iraqi domestic affairs under a pretext to establish democracy and freedom in that country and the international campaign against terrorism," he said.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 10:26 PM
Olmert asks Italy to lead UN force
Sun Aug 20, 2006 6:39 PM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called for Italy to lead a U.N. peacekeeping force for Lebanon, his office said in a statement on Sunday.
The call was made in a telephone conversation between Olmert and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and indicated Italy's chances of leading the force had increased following France's apparent reluctance to commit more than 200 additional troops to Lebanon.
"It is important that Italy should lead the international force and send troops to also oversee the Lebanon-Syria border crossings," the statement said.
The U.N. is trying to assemble a 15,000-strong international force in southern Lebanon, to keep the peace alongside a similar sized Lebanese contingent.
Olmert told his cabinet on Sunday that the U.N. force should not include troops from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel, an official in his office said.
The Italian government has not specified how many troops it is prepared to contribute, but officials in Rome say the figure could be up to 3,000, making it one of the biggest contributors.
Italy's Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said in a written statement on Friday that "eventually our country could assume the responsibility of leading the operation".
Prodi's office said on Sunday he discussed the force in separate telephone conversations with Olmert and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Both men told Prodi they appreciated that Italy was ready "to assume a role of primary importance" in the mission.
A Lebanese government source said further talks were needed.
"They (Italy) have a positive readiness and are more enthusiastic than other parties but the discussions need more calls with the Italians and the French," the source said.
France called on Sunday for a European Union meeting in the next few days to co-ordinate what member countries plan to do about the U.N. force.
Lebanese political sources confirmed the figure of 3,000 Italian soldiers was mentioned by Prodi, adding the Lebanese cabinet would meet on Monday and welcome the Italian initiative.
The statement from Olmert's office said he saw Italy's contribution to the force as "vital to the implementation of (U.N.) Security Council resolution 1701 and it will be an important contribution to peace and stability in the Middle East."
The U.N.-brokered ceasefire ending a 34-day war between Israel and the Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon came into effect last Monday.
Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed during the conflict, in which villages in southern Lebanon and Beirut suburbs were damaged by Israeli air strikes, and northern Israel was shut down by Hizbollah rockets fired across the border.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Sun Aug 20, 2006 6:39 PM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called for Italy to lead a U.N. peacekeeping force for Lebanon, his office said in a statement on Sunday.
The call was made in a telephone conversation between Olmert and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and indicated Italy's chances of leading the force had increased following France's apparent reluctance to commit more than 200 additional troops to Lebanon.
"It is important that Italy should lead the international force and send troops to also oversee the Lebanon-Syria border crossings," the statement said.
The U.N. is trying to assemble a 15,000-strong international force in southern Lebanon, to keep the peace alongside a similar sized Lebanese contingent.
Olmert told his cabinet on Sunday that the U.N. force should not include troops from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel, an official in his office said.
The Italian government has not specified how many troops it is prepared to contribute, but officials in Rome say the figure could be up to 3,000, making it one of the biggest contributors.
Italy's Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said in a written statement on Friday that "eventually our country could assume the responsibility of leading the operation".
Prodi's office said on Sunday he discussed the force in separate telephone conversations with Olmert and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Both men told Prodi they appreciated that Italy was ready "to assume a role of primary importance" in the mission.
A Lebanese government source said further talks were needed.
"They (Italy) have a positive readiness and are more enthusiastic than other parties but the discussions need more calls with the Italians and the French," the source said.
France called on Sunday for a European Union meeting in the next few days to co-ordinate what member countries plan to do about the U.N. force.
Lebanese political sources confirmed the figure of 3,000 Italian soldiers was mentioned by Prodi, adding the Lebanese cabinet would meet on Monday and welcome the Italian initiative.
The statement from Olmert's office said he saw Italy's contribution to the force as "vital to the implementation of (U.N.) Security Council resolution 1701 and it will be an important contribution to peace and stability in the Middle East."
The U.N.-brokered ceasefire ending a 34-day war between Israel and the Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon came into effect last Monday.
Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed during the conflict, in which villages in southern Lebanon and Beirut suburbs were damaged by Israeli air strikes, and northern Israel was shut down by Hizbollah rockets fired across the border.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
colorfl1 @ 8/20/2006 10:29 PM
Arabs to UN: Give Sudan more time on Darfur
Sun Aug 20, 2006 2:42 PM ET
CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab governments on Sunday asked the U.N. Security Council to postpone a meeting on Darfur and give the Sudanese government more time to explain its plan to restore order in the troubled region.
After a one-day meeting in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers also backed an extension of the mandate of the African Union peace force in Darfur until the end of the year.
The United States and Britain have introduced a resolution in the Security Council that would deploy up to 17,000 troops and 3,000 police in the western Sudanese region, despite opposition from the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Junior diplomats have started negotiations on the draft, drawn up by Britain, and will resume work on Tuesday.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told the meeting, at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, that the diplomatic activity at the United Nations was "tendentious" and Arab countries should support Sudan's plan instead.
Under the Sudanese plan, the Khartoum government would send 10,500 new government troops to Darfur. The rights group Human Rights Watch says the plan would violate a peace deal and was just a way to avert the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.
The African Union has about 7,000 soldiers struggling to halt violence in Darfur but the trouble has worsened since the government and rebels signed a peace deal in May.
The United States and its allies have argued that the African Union forces do not have the manpower, resources or financial means to keep the peace there.
A resolution passed by the Arab League council of foreign ministers said: "(The council) asks the Security Council to give the Sudanese government more time to implement its plan to improve conditions and preserve security in Darfur, which it presented to the United Nations on August 2."
It added: "It calls for the postponement of the U.N. Security Council meeting which is due to take place next week in New York...to allow time for consultation and coordination between regional organizations on the role of AU forces in Darfur."
The resolution did not specifically mention the new proposals by the United States and Britain, which reflect frustration with the Sudanese government's refusal to approve a U.N. role in Darfur peacekeeping.
However, it called on Arab countries to fulfil a promise, made at a summit in Khartoum in March, to finance the African Union peace operation in Darfur for six months from Oct 1. The operation has been costing about $17 million a month.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Sun Aug 20, 2006 2:42 PM ET
CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab governments on Sunday asked the U.N. Security Council to postpone a meeting on Darfur and give the Sudanese government more time to explain its plan to restore order in the troubled region.
After a one-day meeting in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers also backed an extension of the mandate of the African Union peace force in Darfur until the end of the year.
The United States and Britain have introduced a resolution in the Security Council that would deploy up to 17,000 troops and 3,000 police in the western Sudanese region, despite opposition from the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Junior diplomats have started negotiations on the draft, drawn up by Britain, and will resume work on Tuesday.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told the meeting, at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, that the diplomatic activity at the United Nations was "tendentious" and Arab countries should support Sudan's plan instead.
Under the Sudanese plan, the Khartoum government would send 10,500 new government troops to Darfur. The rights group Human Rights Watch says the plan would violate a peace deal and was just a way to avert the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.
The African Union has about 7,000 soldiers struggling to halt violence in Darfur but the trouble has worsened since the government and rebels signed a peace deal in May.
The United States and its allies have argued that the African Union forces do not have the manpower, resources or financial means to keep the peace there.
A resolution passed by the Arab League council of foreign ministers said: "(The council) asks the Security Council to give the Sudanese government more time to implement its plan to improve conditions and preserve security in Darfur, which it presented to the United Nations on August 2."
It added: "It calls for the postponement of the U.N. Security Council meeting which is due to take place next week in New York...to allow time for consultation and coordination between regional organizations on the role of AU forces in Darfur."
The resolution did not specifically mention the new proposals by the United States and Britain, which reflect frustration with the Sudanese government's refusal to approve a U.N. role in Darfur peacekeeping.
However, it called on Arab countries to fulfil a promise, made at a summit in Khartoum in March, to finance the African Union peace operation in Darfur for six months from Oct 1. The operation has been costing about $17 million a month.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
simrud @ 8/20/2006 10:36 PM
Ah, so they are trying to buy more time for the Janjawis Araba militas to rape and murder more Animist and Christian tribes. Wonderfull. And the world just seats and does nothing, after all who cares about a bunch of Africans. Sickening.
colorfl1 @ 8/21/2006 9:40 AM
Olmert: Syria most aggressive member of the axis of evil
jpost.com staff and ap, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 21, 2006
Syria is the "single most aggressive member of the axis of evil," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday, ruling out a resumption of negotiations with Damascus at this time.
"I am the last person who will say I want to negotiate with Syria," Olmert said in unusually harsh comments. In a visit to northern Israel, Olmert noted that rockets that hit the town in 34 days of Israel-Hizbullah fighting came from Syria.
According to the prime minister, "When Syria stops supporting terrorism, when it stops giving missiles to terror organizations, then we will be happy to negotiate with them."
His comments were made hours after Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said that he was in favor of withdrawing from the Golan Heights in return for true peace with Syria.
The former head of the Shin Bet told Army Radio, "We have paid similar territorial concessions in the past when we signed peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt."
"Any diplomatic initiative is preferred over war, whether in Syria or Lebanon," Dichter said. "With regards to Lebanon, conditions are even more welcoming than they are with Syria. Lebanon can today begin talks with Israel without the Syrians."
According to the minister, "Talks with Syria are legitimate. If there is someone to talk to on the other side, we should talk. Israel can initiate this or turn to a third party."
In response, Olmert said, "I recommend not to get carried away with any false hopes."
"We are not going into any adventure when terror is on their side," Olmert said of Syria. "We're not going into any negotiations until basic steps are taken which can be the basis for any negotiations."
Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal said there was "no significance" to talk of peace with Israel as long as it does not withdraw from all territory in conquered in 1967. He stressed that Syria would accept the Arab peace initiative only after an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.
Dichter's comments also elicited a flurry of responses from MKs - among them MK Effi Eitam (NU/NRP), a Golan resident, who protested that "withdrawing from the Golan Heights will only endanger the security of Israel."
"Syria associates itself with the evil axis of Hizbullah and Iran, and its goal is to destroy Israel," Eitam said, and declared that Syria "cannot be a partner for discussion."
Fellow NU/NRP MK Aryeh Eldad claimed that "by the same logic, Dichter will certainly suggest we give the Galilee to Iran if they would be so kind as to shoot 4,000 rockets at us. Whoever doesn't understand that the equation 'land for peace' never worked and has only brought about more bloodshed, would do better not to give advice on security matters."
Meretz MK Ran Cohen, however, supported Dichter's calls for negotiations with Syria, demanding that the government "discuss immediately the initiation of negotiations with Syria and Lebanon for peace agreements."
He added, "We must not sit and wait for the next war. A [peace] agreement in exchange for giving back the Golan would disconnect Syria from Iran and disarm Hizbullah."
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that the time was not right to resume negotiations with Syria, arguing that Israel was too busy trying to deal with Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Peres said he believes it's unlikely Syrian President Bashar Assad was even contemplating a return to negotiations. "The Syrians, if they are serious (about peace talks), should come and say 'we are interested in holding negotiations,'" Peres said. "I don't see Assad doing this."
Last week Syrian President Bashar Assad warned Israel that peace was not the only way to achieve Syrian goals, referring to the territory Israel captured from Syria during the Six-Day-War, the Golan Heights.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz suggested the possibility of negotiations last week when he said the conflict with Hizbullah may have created a new opportunity for renewed dialogue with Syria.
jpost.com staff and ap, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 21, 2006
Syria is the "single most aggressive member of the axis of evil," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday, ruling out a resumption of negotiations with Damascus at this time.
"I am the last person who will say I want to negotiate with Syria," Olmert said in unusually harsh comments. In a visit to northern Israel, Olmert noted that rockets that hit the town in 34 days of Israel-Hizbullah fighting came from Syria.
According to the prime minister, "When Syria stops supporting terrorism, when it stops giving missiles to terror organizations, then we will be happy to negotiate with them."
His comments were made hours after Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said that he was in favor of withdrawing from the Golan Heights in return for true peace with Syria.
The former head of the Shin Bet told Army Radio, "We have paid similar territorial concessions in the past when we signed peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt."
"Any diplomatic initiative is preferred over war, whether in Syria or Lebanon," Dichter said. "With regards to Lebanon, conditions are even more welcoming than they are with Syria. Lebanon can today begin talks with Israel without the Syrians."
According to the minister, "Talks with Syria are legitimate. If there is someone to talk to on the other side, we should talk. Israel can initiate this or turn to a third party."
In response, Olmert said, "I recommend not to get carried away with any false hopes."
"We are not going into any adventure when terror is on their side," Olmert said of Syria. "We're not going into any negotiations until basic steps are taken which can be the basis for any negotiations."
Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal said there was "no significance" to talk of peace with Israel as long as it does not withdraw from all territory in conquered in 1967. He stressed that Syria would accept the Arab peace initiative only after an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.
Dichter's comments also elicited a flurry of responses from MKs - among them MK Effi Eitam (NU/NRP), a Golan resident, who protested that "withdrawing from the Golan Heights will only endanger the security of Israel."
"Syria associates itself with the evil axis of Hizbullah and Iran, and its goal is to destroy Israel," Eitam said, and declared that Syria "cannot be a partner for discussion."
Fellow NU/NRP MK Aryeh Eldad claimed that "by the same logic, Dichter will certainly suggest we give the Galilee to Iran if they would be so kind as to shoot 4,000 rockets at us. Whoever doesn't understand that the equation 'land for peace' never worked and has only brought about more bloodshed, would do better not to give advice on security matters."
Meretz MK Ran Cohen, however, supported Dichter's calls for negotiations with Syria, demanding that the government "discuss immediately the initiation of negotiations with Syria and Lebanon for peace agreements."
He added, "We must not sit and wait for the next war. A [peace] agreement in exchange for giving back the Golan would disconnect Syria from Iran and disarm Hizbullah."
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that the time was not right to resume negotiations with Syria, arguing that Israel was too busy trying to deal with Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Peres said he believes it's unlikely Syrian President Bashar Assad was even contemplating a return to negotiations. "The Syrians, if they are serious (about peace talks), should come and say 'we are interested in holding negotiations,'" Peres said. "I don't see Assad doing this."
Last week Syrian President Bashar Assad warned Israel that peace was not the only way to achieve Syrian goals, referring to the territory Israel captured from Syria during the Six-Day-War, the Golan Heights.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz suggested the possibility of negotiations last week when he said the conflict with Hizbullah may have created a new opportunity for renewed dialogue with Syria.
PresIke @ 8/21/2006 8:18 PM
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060821fa_fact
The New Yorker
FACT
Annals of National Security
Watching Lebanon
by Seymour Hersh
Washington's Interests in Israel's War
Issue of 2006-08-21
Posted 2006-08-14
In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.”
Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat—a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a “legal state.” Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.
According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.”
The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”
Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel’s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, “Prior to Hezbollah’s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were.” A Pentagon spokesman said, “The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program,” and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.
The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.
“The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,” the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ ” The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.
“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”
A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.” (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)
According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”—Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. “If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”
Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers’ kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. “Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two,” the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.
The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. “They’ve been sniping at each other,” he said. “Either side could have pointed to some incident and said ‘We have to go to war with these guys’—because they were already at war.”
David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. “We did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us.” There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah “was pressing to go on the attack,” Siegel said. “Hezbollah attacks every two or three months,” but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.
In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. “The neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah,” Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha’aretz, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. “By provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity.”
“We were facing a dilemma,” an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “had to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response—to really take on Hezbollah once and for all.” Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.
The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel’s perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army’s signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.
One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. “Hamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code,” the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that “they got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population.” The conclusion, he said, was “ ‘Let’s go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.’ ” The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be “a full-scale response.” In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 “picked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to ‘warm up’ the north.” In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz “as seeming to be weak,” in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said “he thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past.”
Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.
The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)
The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)
Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, “in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior coördination with the United States.” He was troubled by one issue—the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. “For the life of me, I’ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily,” he said. “We usually go through long analyses.”
The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.
In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. “Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model,” the government consultant said. “The Israelis told Condi Rice, ‘You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days.’ ”
There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: “If it’s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective—it was not about killing people.” Clark noted in a 2001 book, “Waging Modern War,” that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, “In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground.”
Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, “Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.” (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)
Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top—at the insistence of the White House—and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,” he said. “It’s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.’s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out,” he said. “Cheney had a strong hand in this.”
The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition—including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. “But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney’s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states “in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative.”
The surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”
Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”
In the White House, especially in the Vice-President’s office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. “They are telling Israel that it’s time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure.”
Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country’s leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. “The problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes,” Siegel told me. “The only way to resolve this is ground operations—which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn’t work.” Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz’s deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. “There is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it,” the consultant said. “If Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn’t stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We’re no longer playing by the same rules.”
A European intelligence officer told me, “The Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?” The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group’s ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.
A high-level American military planner told me, “We have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we’ve talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure.” There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to anticipate the unintended consequences,” he told me. “Will we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you’re up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You’re not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case.”
There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, “Every negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah—anti-ship and anti-tank missiles—and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran’s new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble.”
Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled “The Shia Revival,” also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington’s ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer—to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. “Military action cannot bring about the desired political result,” Nasr said. The popularity of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Nasr said, “you may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah—the rock star of the Arab street.”
Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration’s most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.
Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that “there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.” He added, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.”
A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. “He is angry and worried about his troops” in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, “and he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq.” Rumsfeld’s concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war’s implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war’s impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, “there is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what’s taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it’s a difficult and delicate situation.”
The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, “Rummy is on the team. He’d love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations.” The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being “delighted that Israel is our stalking horse.”
There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately “agitating” inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria—so far, without much success. Last week, the Times reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as “trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties” within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and “conservatives in the government,” including Cheney and Abrams, “who were pushing for strong American support for Israel.”
The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice’s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. “She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.”
Bush’s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair’s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has “gone out on a particular limb on this”—especially by accepting Bush’s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “Blair stands alone on this,” the former diplomat said. “He knows he’s a lame duck who’s on the way out, but he buys it”—the Bush policy. “He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.” The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, “when the Iranians”—under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment—“will say no.”
Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals—to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”
The New Yorker
FACT
Annals of National Security
Watching Lebanon
by Seymour Hersh
Washington's Interests in Israel's War
Issue of 2006-08-21
Posted 2006-08-14
In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.”
Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat—a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a “legal state.” Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.
According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.”
The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”
Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel’s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, “Prior to Hezbollah’s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were.” A Pentagon spokesman said, “The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program,” and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.
The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.
“The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,” the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ ” The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.
“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”
A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.” (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)
According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”—Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. “If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”
Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers’ kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. “Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two,” the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.
The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. “They’ve been sniping at each other,” he said. “Either side could have pointed to some incident and said ‘We have to go to war with these guys’—because they were already at war.”
David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. “We did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us.” There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah “was pressing to go on the attack,” Siegel said. “Hezbollah attacks every two or three months,” but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.
In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. “The neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah,” Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha’aretz, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. “By provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity.”
“We were facing a dilemma,” an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “had to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response—to really take on Hezbollah once and for all.” Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.
The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel’s perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army’s signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.
One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. “Hamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code,” the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that “they got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population.” The conclusion, he said, was “ ‘Let’s go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.’ ” The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be “a full-scale response.” In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 “picked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to ‘warm up’ the north.” In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz “as seeming to be weak,” in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said “he thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past.”
Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.
The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)
The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)
Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, “in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior coördination with the United States.” He was troubled by one issue—the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. “For the life of me, I’ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily,” he said. “We usually go through long analyses.”
The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.
In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. “Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model,” the government consultant said. “The Israelis told Condi Rice, ‘You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days.’ ”
There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: “If it’s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective—it was not about killing people.” Clark noted in a 2001 book, “Waging Modern War,” that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, “In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground.”
Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, “Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.” (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)
Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top—at the insistence of the White House—and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,” he said. “It’s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.’s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out,” he said. “Cheney had a strong hand in this.”
The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition—including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. “But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney’s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states “in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative.”
The surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”
Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”
In the White House, especially in the Vice-President’s office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. “They are telling Israel that it’s time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure.”
Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country’s leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. “The problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes,” Siegel told me. “The only way to resolve this is ground operations—which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn’t work.” Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz’s deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. “There is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it,” the consultant said. “If Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn’t stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We’re no longer playing by the same rules.”
A European intelligence officer told me, “The Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?” The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group’s ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.
A high-level American military planner told me, “We have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we’ve talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure.” There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to anticipate the unintended consequences,” he told me. “Will we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you’re up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You’re not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case.”
There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, “Every negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah—anti-ship and anti-tank missiles—and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran’s new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble.”
Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled “The Shia Revival,” also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington’s ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer—to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. “Military action cannot bring about the desired political result,” Nasr said. The popularity of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Nasr said, “you may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah—the rock star of the Arab street.”
Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration’s most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.
Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that “there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.” He added, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.”
A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. “He is angry and worried about his troops” in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, “and he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq.” Rumsfeld’s concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war’s implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war’s impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, “there is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what’s taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it’s a difficult and delicate situation.”
The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, “Rummy is on the team. He’d love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations.” The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being “delighted that Israel is our stalking horse.”
There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately “agitating” inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria—so far, without much success. Last week, the Times reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as “trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties” within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and “conservatives in the government,” including Cheney and Abrams, “who were pushing for strong American support for Israel.”
The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice’s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. “She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.”
Bush’s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair’s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has “gone out on a particular limb on this”—especially by accepting Bush’s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “Blair stands alone on this,” the former diplomat said. “He knows he’s a lame duck who’s on the way out, but he buys it”—the Bush policy. “He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.” The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, “when the Iranians”—under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment—“will say no.”
Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals—to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”
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