Israel Update for December 2011

David Dolan

The already tense Middle East raced closer to a major conflict in December as news reports said Iran is probably on the brink of building a nuclear warhead. This news came after Iran intercepted an American intelligence spy drone that was reportedly gathering real time intelligence information on Iran's burgeoning nuclear facilities. In Washington, the US Defense Secretary declared that the Obama Administration might be forced to take military action to halt Iran's nuclear weapons programme. Israeli officials continued to warn that they would have little choice but to launch an attack upon the extremist Iranian regime's nuclear production facilities if no one else-meaning the United States and/or possibly Great Britain or France-takes military action to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Saudi Arabian leaders held urgent consultations with their regional Arab counterparts as the race toward a new Middle East conflict gained steam.

Near the end of the month, Iranian leaders threatened once again to halt all oil shipments out of the Straight of Hormuz, even though this would further harm Iran's own weak economy. The oil rich country ships most of its crude by sea via the strategic outlet, much of it headed to China. The Straight of Hormuz is bordered on the north by Iran and on the south by the United Arab Emirates. The United States said that the threatened Iranian closure would be "intolerable" and warned Tehran that it would provoke an international military response. Iran held major war exercises near the Persian Gulf outlet in late December, prompting the United States to send an aircraft carrier and its support ships into the area. Iranian leaders characterized the action as a deliberate attempt to ratchet up tensions in the region-as if Iran's militant moves and war threats were not what prompted the relatively timid Obama Administration to react in such an unusually strong fashion.

Meanwhile copious amounts of blood continued to run onto the streets of Iran's closest regional ally, Syria, as the uprising there became more pronounced during December. This came as the Arab League tried to calm the situation by sending monitors to help insure that more Syrian Sunni Muslim protestors were not slaughtered by the brutal Assad regime. However the move did not halt the deadly bloodshed. The number of defectors from Syrian army and police forces continued to grow during the month, producing an upsurge in highly organized armed assaults upon the regime's security forces led by some of the former military and police commanders. Syrian opposition leaders said a major massacre took place in the middle of December when Syrian army forces opened fire at close range on around 70 Syrian army deserters in the northwestern province of Idlib, killing all of them.

Russian leaders faced charges of vote fraud at home while reinforcing their military protection of the embattled Syrian Assad family regime. Arab news reports said that Moscow sent advanced shore to sea missiles to Damascus to fend off a possible NATO naval attack along Syria's western Mediterranean coast. A Russian naval strike force was also stationed off of the Syrian coast in what analysts said was a clear message to officials in Washington, London and Paris not to intervene in the Syrian crisis. This came as the Kremlin shipped some three million protective gas masks to Syria, which were reportedly distributed mainly to loyal members and supporters of the barbaric Syrian regime. Israeli analysts said the ominous move might indicate that besieged Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his cronies are prepared to deploy such non-conventional weapons against any foreign forces trying to halt the internal bloodshed that left tens of thousands of Syrians either dead or wounded during 2011. Soon after the gas masks arrived at Damascus international airport, the Syrian Vice President flew to Moscow to hold urgent consultations with Russian governmental leaders.

Israeli media reports said NATO member Turkey's armed forces were placed on a full war footing during the month. This came as senior American officials held urgent consultation with their Turkish counterparts over the deteriorating regional situation. Meanwhile press reports revealed that controversial Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is undergoing medical treatment for cancer, although it is not thought to be life threatening at this point. Despite the rift in diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey provoked by Edogan's nearly endless verbal blasts against the Jewish state in recent years, indications are growing that the pro-western Turkish military will stand with Israel and its allies if any military attack is launched against Iran's nuclear facilities, especially if such dramatic action directly involves the United States.

Israeli leaders and the general public have been discussing the growing role that the Middle East crisis has been playing in the prolonged American Republican Party presidential race. In particular, controversial comments by Texas Congressman Ron Paul saying that Iran's nuclear ambitions pose no threat to Israel and the world made headlines in Israel. A later statement by a former top aid to the Republican candidate maintaining that Congressman Paul is anti-semitic and wants to see Israel erased from the regional map were naturally widely reported in Israel as well. The prospect that America's next president might be a practicing Mormon has also gained attention in Israel. The powerful and wealthy Salt Lake-based religious group runs an extension college campus located just above Jerusalem's ancient walled Old City.

Nuclear Bomb On The Way?

Israeli media outlets reported the third week of December that an unnamed senior American official had told their Israeli counterparts that they have obtained hard evidence that Iran has embarked on what were termed "activities related to possible nuclear weaponization." If so, this would be crossing the important red line that the Obama administration has publicly laid down as impassable for the Shiite Islamic regime, which frequently vows to destroy Israel. The unidentified US official reportedly added that the "activities" could leave Iran with a nuclear warhead in a relatively short period of time. Media reports have quoted Israeli intelligence agents as predicting that such a bomb could be ready for deployment sometime later this year.

The ominous media reports about a possible pending nuclear weapon in Iranian hands came as new American Secretary of State Leon Panetta said that the US may be forced to take military action if Iran actually begins producing nuclear weapons. "If they proceed, and we get intelligence that they're proceeding in developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps are necessary to stop it," Panetta said in a televised interview he gave to CBS News. The comments-the clearest yet by a high level US government official indicating that the Americans themselves might be forced to react militarily to such a development-were subsequently reinforced by the Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, indicating that the American military establishment is ready to take action against Iran if that dramatic move is deemed necessary by the Obama administration.

Citing intelligence reports, Secretary of Defense Panetta added that, "it would be some time in around a year" when the Iranian regime would be technically able to build a nuclear weapon. However, he issued a caveat by echoing some Israeli officials who have suggested it might be possible for Iran to construct such a weapon in far less time. Panetta admitted that was a possibility, saying the potential timeline might depend on whether or not Iran has an unknown hidden nuclear facility located somewhere in the country, as some Israeli leaders say they suspect is indeed the case. Officials at the Pentagon later clarified that the US would quickly know if a final decision to build a bomb had been taken by the Iranian regime since international nuclear inspectors who regularly visit the Shiite Muslim country would detect that its centrifuges were enriching uranium up to weapons-grade levels.

Iran Captures US Spy Drone

American government officials reluctantly admitted in early December that Iran had taken possession of a highly sophisticated US stealth drone aircraft that was apparently in the middle of an information gathering flight over Iranian territory when it was intercepted. The US initially claimed that the drone had fallen into Iranian hands due to a "technical malfunction" on board. However according to an Iranian engineer who was interviewed by the American Christian Science Monitor newspaper later in the month, Iran was able to hack into the spy drone's GPS navigational system in order to redirect it to land at an Iranian air base. If so (and most experts said this was probably the case), an electronic interception would be an extremely serious development that demonstrated Iran might be a more formidable opponent than previously anticipated if a full blown war develops as a result of any attack upon Iran's nuclear facilities.

Known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, the pilot-less aircraft was subsequently closely inspected by Iranian officials. US defense experts said it was highly likely that Iran will share whatever information it gleans from the inspections with its Chinese allies, and possibly also with Russia as well. The Sentinel drones have been heavily deployed in recent years in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq, which is now empty of US ground forces after the last American soldiers were pulled out in December.

According to the report relayed by the Iranian engineer, Iranian specialists somehow figured out that the RQ-170 Sentinels weakest point is its GPS. They apparently acquired this vital information by examining previously downed American drones in September. "By putting noise (i.e. jamming) on the communications, you force the bird into auto-pilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," the engineer told the American newspaper. He maintained that the Iranian scientific team then simply programmed the drone to "land on its own where they wanted it to." American defense experts said the Pentagon has known since 2003 that the GPS system on the high flying drones is vulnerable to outside manipulation. The intercepted Sentinel's base was reportedly in next door Afghanistan. Earlier last year, an entire fleet of drones was infected by a computer virus, while two years ago, live drone video transmissions to American ground communications stations were successfully intercepted by Iraqi insurgents.