Showing posts with label Yochanan Visser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yochanan Visser. Show all posts

Thursday, December 6, 2018

How Israel and the US are Working to Contain Iran - Yochanan Visser ISRAEL TODAY

ANALYSIS: How Israel and the US are Working to Contain Iran

Wednesday, December 05, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser  ISRAEL TODAY
On Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces launched operation ‘Northern Shield’ on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon.
The operation is meant to destroy a number of Hezbollah attack tunnels which have been built in recent years as preparation for a future offensive against Israel which Hezbollah believes would end in the occupation of the northern Galilee.
IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the tunnels had already penetrated Israeli territory but emphasized they were not yet “operationally ready” and therefore posed "no immediate threat to Israel".
The operation against Hezbollah was launched hours after Prime Minister and Defense Minister Benyamin Netanyahu met US Secretary of Defense Mike Pompeo in Brussels, Belgium where he discussed “a list of developments in the region” with the Secretary.
One of these developments is Iran’s increasing belligerent activity in Lebanon where it has built underground missile facilities which manufacture guided ballistic missiles.
The Iranians are now also supplying Hezbollah with weapons by using planes which fly directly to Beirut National Airport in Lebanon. The carrier uses civilian aircraft and is controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps which has apparently decided to change the supply routes to Hezbollah.
Before taking off from Ben Gurion National Airport, Netanyahu made clear Israel and The United States were now working in tandem to contain Iran’s “aggression”.
We are in continuous contact with our American friends, I will discuss with Mike Pompeo a list of developments in our region, and (actions) we are taking together to halt the aggression of Iran and its proxies in the North. We will of course also discuss other issues,” the Israeli PM told reporters.
On his visit to Brussels, where Pompeo attended a NATO defense ministers meeting, Netanyahu was accompanied by Mossad head Yossi Cohen and Meir Ben Shabbat the director of Israel’s National Security Council.
The Israeli leader has been warning against the growing Iranian threat to Israel for a long time and risked the fall of his government when he refused to launch a ground operation against the Iranian-backed Palestinian terror groups in Gaza after they pounded Israel with 460 missiles within two days three weeks ago.
When he faced harsh criticism over his decision not to invade Gaza the Israeli PM and DM made clear he had intelligence he could not share with the citizens and even with politicians.
After the resignation of Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman Netanyahu told the public in Israel that the Jewish State was in a complex security situation which demanded “very difficult decisions”.
“On the issue of security, I have made difficult decisions, some of them very difficult, and I bear full responsibility. And when such decisions are made, they deal with matters of life and death. In matters that sometimes even touch upon the very existence of the state,” the Prime Minister said at the time while emphasizing that the Israel military was “in the middle of a campaign.
Three weeks later, it has become clear that Netanyahu looks at the overall picture of Israel’s difficult security situation and prefers to contain the growing Iranian threat via smart and sophisticated military operations which could prevent a multiple-front-war with Iran and its proxies.
For this reason, Israel is working with the Trump Administration which has shifted its focus from battling ISIS toward containing Iran in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
It is reasonable to believe that Netanyahu asked Pompeo to use his leverage over the Lebanese government to contain Hezbollah on the eve of Operation Northern Shield in order to prevent another war with the Iranian-backed Shiite terror organization.
Another indication the Israeli leader doesn’t want a war with Hezbollah currently is that he apparently ordered the IDF not to use explosives to destroy the attack tunnels underneath the Israeli border. The Israeli army is using heavy drill equipment instead.
Operation Northern Shield comes a few days after the Israeli military launched unprecedented missile strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah related targets in Syria.
Late Thursday evening last week, the IDF used surface-to-surface missiles and LORA long-distance artillery shells to destroy 15 Iranian and Hezbollah military targets in Syria among them the headquarters of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps in Al-Kiswah south of Damascus.
The missile offensive lasted for 70 minutes and was answered by the launch of one rocket which fell in open territory on the Israeli Golan Heights.
By using missiles instead of aircraft the Israeli military indicated it has changed tactics in Syria now that the Russians have supplied the S-300 anti-aircraft missile shield to the Syrian army.
The US military, meanwhile, has started battling the Iranians and its proxies in east and north Syria as well as northern Iraq by using proxies as well.
The Americans are training and equipping 30.000 men of the Syrian Democratic Forces who will confront the Quds Force and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in northern and eastern Syria while the U.S. uses local Iraqi Sunni militias against the Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi umbrella organization of predominantly Shiite militias in northern Iraq.
After his meeting with Netanyahu Pompeo emphasized the importance of restoring America’s deterrence vis a vis Iran and its allies.
“We are accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to restore deterrence,” Pompeo said after condemning Iran for a new test with a ballistic long-range missile which can carry multiple warheads last weekend.
Iran recently supplied ballistic missiles to Hashd al-Shaabi militias which can reach Tel Aviv and which are now stationed on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. This is the same mountain from where Saddam Hussein lobbed Scud missiles at Israel during the First Gulf War.
PHOTO: Heavy machinery (R) work on the border between Israel and Lebanon near Metulla, northern Israel, on December 4, 2018. Photo by Basel Awidat/Flash90
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

ANALYSIS: Iran and Israel Preparing for Multi-Front War - Yochanan Visser Israel today

ANALYSIS: Iran and Israel Preparing for Multi-Front War

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser  Israel today
Iranian leaders stepped up their war of words against Israel and the United States over the weekend while new information shows both the Israel Defense Forces and the Islamic Republic are actively preparing for a multi-front war in Israel.
The new war of words started when Iran’s so-called moderate president Hassan Rouhani toldparticipants in an Islamic conference that Israel was a “cancerous tumor” and “a fake regime” founded by Western nations.
While calling upon the Islamic world to establish a “joint force” that could win the “battle against criminals”  Rouhani claimed Israel had killed and displaced the (non-existing) “historic nation of Palestine.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu responded to Rouhani’s belligerent rhetoric by warning Iran that Israel knows how to defend itself against the “murderous Iranian regime”.
His statement drew a prolonged response by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who on Sunday claimed “the Zionist regime is clearly weaker than 10 and 20 years ago,” while bragging Hezbollah and Hamas had won the wars in 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014 and in 2018 during what he called “the two-day war”.
On Monday, Khamenei again used his Twitter account to blast the United States and Israel.
The Iranian dictator wished Israel and the U.S. “to hell” and predicted the victory of “the resistance”.
“ To hell with the U.S. and Zionist regime for threatening the Iranian nation. Their threats and atrocities have so far failed and will continue to fail; the sanctions will also be defeated by the grace of resistance,” Kkamenei’s tweet stated.
Rouhani’s remarks drew the condemnation of both the U.S. and the European Union (EU) which saidin a statement that the Iranian president’s remarks “were totally unacceptable” while reassuring Israel that the 28-nation bloc would remain fundamentally committed to the security of the Jewish state.
The EU also seemed to admit for the first time that Iran is a real threat to Middle Eastern countries and Israel in particular when it said that there are “current and emerging threats in the region.”
New information indeed underscores the scope of Iran’s threat to stability in the Middle East and to the existence of the State of Israel.
The Syrian news site Zamanalwsl keeps track of Iran’s belligerent activities in Syria and on Tuesday reported that the Iranians together with the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad are reconstructing military facilities which had been destroyed by the Israeli air force (IAF).
One of these facilities is the headquarters of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps near the international airport of Damascus.
The Iranian regime is spending a huge amount of money in Syria where it has established a 80,000 member strong Shiite brigade which aims to ‘liberate’ the Israeli Golan Heights.
According to various sources the Mullah’s spent between $15 and $20 billion annually in Syria in order to realize their dream of a Shiite crescent and to achieve their ultimate goal: the annihilation of Israel.
The Islamist regime in Tehran is also heavily involved in a project that aims to change the demographic situation along the border with Israel where until recently Sunni rebel groups were controlling the region.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported on Sunday that the Assad regime has issued Syrian citizenship to hundreds of thousands  Iranians and foreign Shiite fighters who fought alongside with the Syrian army during the prolonged offensive which restored Assad’s control over two-thirds of the country.
These Iranians, most of them members of the Quds Force, as well as Shiite fighters and their families are settled in the houses of displaced Sunni Syrians who were deported to the predominantly Sunni province Idlib in northern Syria under so-called reconciliation deals. 
Those who wished to remain in their hometowns are now one by one murdered by the Syrian regime the news site Syria Direct reported from Daraa.
The silent ethnic cleansing in southern Syria “contravenes the understandings reached between Israel and Russia this year, according to which the Iranian and Shi'ite forces must withdraw from southern Syria. The issuance of identity cards to these fighters may be aimed at enabling them to stay there, ostensibly without violating the understandings,” according to MEMRI.
There’s more.
Hezbollah, which became an integral part of the Syrian military in the beginning of 2017, is currently building scores of military facilities and training camps near the border with Lebanon.
The facilities also house members of the Iranian Quds Force which is commanded by Qassem Soleimani the man who oversaw virtually every major battle in Iraq and Syria in recent years.
Hossein Salami the deputy commander of the IRGC openly admits that the Quds Force together with the so-called Basij militia, a division of the IRGC which had been operating in Iran only until now, are heavily involved in Syria and other Arab countries where Iran tries to expand the Islamic Revolution.
'Today, the branches of the strong tree of Basij are empowered in the Islamic countries, defeating the sinister goals of the US, Israel and al-Saud,' Salami told members of the IRGC in Tehran on Sunday. 
The IRGC commander also claimed that Iran has become so powerful that it has the ability to “chase the enemy, if necessary, and inflict an unforgettable defeat on it.”
As for the southern front in Israel, there too Iran continues its military build-up.
 As we reported earlier this month, Iran was most likely behind the one-day war in southern Israel which started when Hamas took a page out of Hezbollah’s playbook for wars and targeted an Israeli bus with a Kornet anti-tank missile.
The attack on the bus, which had unloaded a group of 50 IDF soldiers minutes before it exploded, was followed by an unprecedented missile offensive against civilian targets in southern Israel.
The Hebrew language news site Walla in Israel now reported that ISIS-branch Wilayat Sinai had intercepted a new shipment of Iranian Kornet anti-tank missiles and other GPS guided weaponry bound for Gaza.
Wilayat Sinai refuses to hand over the weapons to Hamas and could use them in the continuing battle against the Egyptian army or against the IDF in the future.
The Israeli army is now conducting a massive drill in preparation for a multi-front war according to  reports in the Israeli media on Sunday while the US military is reportedly building up a large mainly Kurdish proxy force which will be used to curb Iran’s presence in Syria.
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Sunday, September 30, 2018

ANALYSIS: New Revelations Prove Netanyahu Right on Iran's Nuclear Program - Yochanan Visser ISRAEL TODAY

ANALYSIS: New Revelations Prove Netanyahu Right on Iran's Nuclear Program

Sunday, September 30, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser  ISRAEL TODAY
On Friday, Iran responded to the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave during the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City in which he revealed Iran has another never disclosed nuclear site in its capital Tehran.
Netanyahu said a secret nuclear warehouse inside Tehran contained 300 tons of nuclear-related material and demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) immediately examined the evidence Israel has in its possession.
The Israeli PM also said Iran had recently spread 15 kilograms of radioactive material around Tehran last month to in an effort to hide its activities in the facility.
When Israel shared this information with the IAEA recently the nuclear watchdog did nothing according to an unnamed Israel official who spoke with TV Channel 10 in the country.
The Mossad, Israel’s Spy Agency, knows exactly what is stored in the facility the official said just like it knew what was in the secret nuclear archive in Tehran where Israel stole Iran’s nuclear secrets on January 31 this year.
Iran now says Netanyahu’s claims were “baseless and ridiculous” according to Bahran Qassemi, the spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Javad Zariff, Iran’s Foreign Minister called Netanyahu’s presentation at the UNGA “an arts and craft show” meant to obfuscate Israel has his own secret nuclear secret and undeclared actual atomic arsenal a reference to what Israel calls its life insurance.
Israel’s estimated sixty-five to eighty-five warheads, according to a Rand Corporation study are meant as the ultimate defensive weapon in case the country is threatened with annihilation, however.
Israel has, furthermore, repeatedly promised it would never be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Iran, on the other hand, is aggressively exporting the Islamic Revolution to other parts of the Middle East and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
The Islamic Republic is not only using words to threaten Israel with destruction but is actively working on the annihilation of the Jewish state which it calls a cancer tumor which must be removed.
In addition, Iran is causing mayhem in several Arab countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon which was the first Arab country to become an Iranian satellite state.
Netanyahu’s revelations at the UNGA followed recent information about how Iran continues to deceive the world about its nuclear weapons program which is still in place until this very day despite the 2015 landmark-nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and six world powers.
This was revealed by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, the writer of the 2009 book “The Secret War with Iran”, in a Hebrew language article which was published on September 7.
In the article, which was based on original Iranian documents, Bergman revealed that the material the Mossad seized during the daring raid in Tehran earlier this year clearly showed that Iran has never stopped working on the development of a nuclear weapon.
Officially the Islamic Republic stopped its nuclear weapons program dubbed ‘AMAD’ in 2003 when the US army invaded Iraq in March 2003 and the regime in Tehran thought it would be next in line.
Bergman wrote that the Mossad had observed the warehouse in Tehran for more than one year and knew exactly what was stored there.
When a team of dozens of Mossad agents broke into the facility they knew which of the 32 giants safes contained the most relevant information about the AMAD project and its secret successor ‘project Sfand’.
The Sfand project, which was headed by nuclear scientist Fakhri Zada, was started in the fall of 2003.
Zada received a letter from Abassi-Duwani, another Iranian nuclear expert, who advised Zada to publish the parts of the atomic project that were peaceful in character in order to deceive the international community.
Abassi-Dawani wrote that neutron research should be kept secret because it would reveal that Iran continued research for the development of a nuclear weapon.
The Mossad also seized a letter written by then-Iranian Defense Minister Simhani which stated that Sfand would include: project Serab 1, a facility for an underground test with an atomic bomb and Serab 2 and 3, facilities for the production and integration of a nuclear warhead for the Shihab 3 ballistic missile.
The leaders of the Sfand project, which was a direct result of a decision by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei, also decided to deny the IAEA access to military facilities where Iran was conducting work on its nuclear weapons program.
For this reason, Iran initially denied IAEA inspectors access to the military base near Parchin where the Islamic Republic was suspected of having conducted tests with detonators for nuclear warheads in special tubes.
When the IAEA was finally granted access to Parchin the Iranians had removed virtually all evidence their nuclear activities there.
Bergman now published so-called selfies of Iranian nuclear scientists standing next to two different kinds of test chambers for the detonators at Parchin.
“Presumably none of the photographers imagined that his pictures would ever reach Israel," Bergman wrote, adding that the photos he had seen proved beyond doubt that Iran had lied about the military dimensions of its nuclear program.
The Mossad material also proved Iran had lied about equipment for neutron research which it said was not in its possession and about its possession of a sophisticated camera that could capture the moment of the chain reaction that leads to the detonation of an atomic bomb.
The 55,000 pages and 182 disks stolen by the Mossad contained further evidence that Iran was actually developing a nuclear weapon in underground bunkers and with equipment that the Islamic Republic had always claimed was not in its possession.
“The bottom line of the material is clear and sharp and indisputable: it is a mega-scam in which senior Iranian officials and hundreds of people participated for years," Bergman wrote.
"For two decades Iran denied that it had a military nuclear project. But the contents of the safes brought to Israel tell a different, completely opposite, and undeniable story: For years, Iran has been conducting a covert nuclear project aimed at producing five nuclear bombs," he asserted.
Both Bergman, who has contacts within the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services, and the Israeli government are convinced the Sfand project continued after the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, in 2016.
Iran’s mega-scam started in 1987 when Khamenei, during a secret meeting of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran ordered the development of a nuclear weapon because of “external threats.”
“The little we can do to stand up to this danger is to make our enemies aware that we can defend ourselves. Accordingly, any step we take here will serve the defense of our nation and your revolution. With this aim in mind, you must work hard and fast,” Khamenei said at the time.
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