SWI NEWS: Saturday, March 6, 2010 20 Adar, 5770
‘Iran developing massive launch site’
Talkbacks (12)
The new launcher, constructed near an existing rocket base in the Semnan province east of Teheran, is visible in satellite imagery, according to the report.
The defense intelligence group said the appearance of the launcher suggests assistance from North Korea, also that it may be intended to launch the Simorgh, a long-range missile unveiled in early February and officially intended to be used as a space-launch vehicle (SLV).
Both the missile and the launch pad, which according to Jane’s is large enough to accommodate it, point to cooperation from Pyongyang; SLV’s can be converted to be used as long-range ballistic missiles for military purposes.
Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center, Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, said shortly after the unveiling of the Simorgh that the rocket is worrisome development since the missile could one day be adapted into an ICBM, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
After analyzing images of the missile, Inbar said that it appeared to currently be powered by liquid fuel, but could one day be configured to work with a solid fuel propellant, a technology that the Iranians have already begun using in their Sajil ballistic missile, which has a range of around 2,500 km.
‘This is a major technological breakthrough and could mean that the Iranians are on their way to obtaining an ICBM,’ he said.
Israel and other Western countries suspect that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful.
In August 2009, President Shimon Peres told his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev during a visit to Moscow “The fact that Iran is investing billions of dollars in the development of long-range missiles, in parallel to its nuclear project, is clear indication of its intent.”
The president said there would be no point for any country to develop missiles capable of reaching targets so far and then loading them with conventional warheads. Evoking Holocaust imagery during the meeting with Medvedev, Peres likened an Iranian nuclear bomb to a “flying death camp.”
Yaakov Katz contributed to this report
UN worried by Temple Mount clashes
Israel has crossed every red line and made prospects for peace even dimmer in clashing with Muslim worshipers on the Temple Mount, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement released Friday evening.
Abbas said Israeli security forces, which he termed the “occupation army,” were “provoking” members of other faiths in a way that could “set off a religious war in the region.” He warned that “Israeli escapades” in east Jerusalem would have repercussions not just in the city and the Middle East, but also in Muslim world.
The PA president urged the US and the international community to intervene and stop tensions from escalating further.The PA president urged the US and the international community to intervene and stop tensions from escalating further.
Syria also condemned what it termed Israel’s “desecration of Arab and Islamic sanctities” in Jerusalem on Friday, adding its voice to those opposing indirect negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
“The desecration … comes at a time when the majority of the Arab League Council’s memebers adopted the indirect Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” read a statement released by the Syrian Foreign Ministry and quoted by SANA. It further noted that the clashes serve as “extra evidence on Israel’s non-seriousness about peace … and a proof of the Israeli anti-peace policy that aims at liquidating the Palestinian cause.”
Echoing Abbas’s earlier statement, Damascus called Friday’s incident a “blatant provocation to the feeling of hundreds of millions of Muslims.”
Eighteen policemen were lightly wounded in their attempt to restore order on the Temple Mount after Arab youths emerging from Friday prayers started hurling rocks down onto those worshiping at the Western Wall.
Having restored calm by use of stun grenades, and following helpful intervention by other Muslim worshipers to defuse the clash, police eventually withdrew in coordination with the Waqf to allow older worshipers to leave the Temple Mount.
Eight of the injured policemen were hospitalized in light condition. Five suspects were arrested during the riots.
Ron Krumer, a spokesman for Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, confirmed an Arab woman was wounded in the head by a rubber bullet and hospitalized in serious condition. Palestinian medics reported 13 injuries.
Police denied using rubber bullets to disperse the riot.
Najeh Btirat, a Waqf official, said the clash followed a mosque sermon on the issue.
“The Friday sermon focused on the Islamic sites that are being targeted by Israel and the need to preserve them,” he said. About 300 young men threw stones at police after prayers, he said.
Rock-throwing then spilled over into Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter. Police deployed stun grenades, restoring calm.
Throughout the afternoon, stun grenades fired by security forces could be heard exploding in the Muslim Quarter. The faces and bloodshot eyes of Arab medics, who could be seen running through the alleyways, clearly reflected the usage of tear gas. Crowds were milling around waiting for something to happen.
In the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud, some 20 Arab youths threw rocks at security forces. They were later dispersed. Clashes also broke out at the entrance to Issawiya, near the French Hill.
From the , across the valley, smoke could be seen rising up from Ras el-Amud as the young men throwing rocks at police set garbage on fire.
Skirmishes also broke out to the south, in the West Bank city of Hebron, after Friday prayers but no serious injuries were reported. A group of about 100 Palestinians protested outside the holy site known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque.
Last Sunday, Jerusalem’s Old City erupted in violence as clashes between Arab rioters and security forces broke out on the Temple Mount and spread into the alleyways of the Muslim Quarter and the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud. Four policemen were wounded and upwards of a dozen Muslim protesters were reportedly hurt during the clashes.
The repeated clashes in Jerusalem follow Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announcement incorporating the Cave of the Patriarch’s in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem onto Israel’s list of national heritage sites.
Meanwhile on Friday afternoon, some 250 Palestinians and left-wing activists clashed with security forces in violent protests in the Ramallah area.
No one was wounded in the demonstrations in the villages of Na’alin, Bil’in and Dir Nizam.
Tamim to Dagan: We can break into your office
05/03/2010 20:18
6 dead in W. Bank car crash
Talkbacks (6)
The incident occurred early Friday evening on Highway 60, near the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
Apparently, the Palestinian car had a flat tire, causing it to divert from its course
Five of the Palestinians were at first reported to be critically injured, but were subesequently pronounced dead at the scene. The sixth was seriously injured in the accident and succumbed to his wounds at the Ramallah hospital.
The four IDF soldiers who were inside the Hummer sustained light injuries and were transferred to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.
Police were investigating the incident, and the highway was blocked to traffic
Israel’s Shadow War against a Nuclear Iran
January 18, 2007. Ardeshir Hassanpour, a nuclear physicist with extensive knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program is found dead in his apartment.
Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with the private intelligence firm Stratfor, believes the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind his assassination.
“Hassanpour was someone that we deemed as critical to the program and would have been a likely target of an intelligence service like the Israeli Mossad,” Bhalla said.
A month later in February. Ali Reza Asgari, a top general in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, disappears while on a trip to Istanbul, Turkey. Some believe that he defected to the United States.
Iran’s Nuclear Sphinx
Meir Javedanfar is an Iranian-Israeli political analyst living in Tel Aviv. He’s the author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran.
“Ali Reza Asgari provided important information about Iran’s nuclear program, especially about Iran’s cooperation with Syria,” Javedanfar said.
According to a former German Defense Ministry official, Asgari revealed details about Iran’s financing of a covert nuclear arms program at the al-Kibar facility in Syria. The intel was passed on to the Israelis.
On the morning of September 6, 2007, seven months after Asgari’s defection, Israeli F-15 fighter bombers dropped 22 rockets on the al-Kibar complex.
“This is another example of Israel trying to undercut each and every one of Iran’s levers that it holds through militant proxies like Hamas, like Hezbollah, as well as within Iran itself,” Bhalla said.
Then in June 2009, Shahram Amiri, another scientist working for Iran’s nuclear agency went missing while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Iran accuses the Saudis of kidnapping and turning him over to the United States.
It was shortly after Amiri’s disappearance that the U.S. became aware of a secret nuclear facility near the Iranian city of Qom.
Israel’s Shadow War
Alex Vatakan is an Iranian specialist working for Jane’s Intelligence.
“Could it be a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not,” Vatakan said. “But the fact is that these defections are a huge value to the Western intelligence community.”
It’s all part of what analysts say is Israel’s attempt to decapitate Iran’s nuclear program, overtly and covertly.
“And that really shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Bhalla said. “Israel doesn’t have a whole lot of good options in trying to undermine the Iranian nuclear program. Trying to get military strike on its own is extremely difficult for Israel.”
“So for the moment Israel engages in a shadow war against the Iranian rulers and their militant proxies across the Middle East.”
“It’s about the assassination of people working for the Iranian government in the Palestinian Authority, it’s about the assassination of Hezbollah people with links to Iran,” Javedanfar said. “It’s about the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.”
Psychological Warfare
And the psychological warfare continues. On Tuesday morning, January 12, 2010, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear physics professor, was on his way to work when a motorcycle parked outside his home in Tehran exploded killing him instantly.
Eight days later on January 20, some 760 miles away from Tehran, a 27-member plus hit team walks into this luxury hotel in Dubai and assassinates 49-year-old Mahmoud al-Mahbouh. Mr.al-Mahbouh was a senior Hamas leader allegedly involved in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Both incidents have been blamed on the Israeli secret service.
“What we know for sure is that there’s a psychological war being waged against the Iranian nuclear program where the death of a scientist, even if it were of natural causes, is made into something mysterious in order to create fear among Iran’s nuclear scientists,” Javedanfar said.
High Level Defections
And the current political turmoil in Iran is only adding to fears in Tehran of additional high-level defections.
“We are seeing people from different paths of life in Iran either leaving the country or staying within the country but leaving the state machinery in opposition to the policies being pursued by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other hardline figures in that country,” Vatakan said.
Those policies are forcing the United States and other countries to consider tough new sanctions against Iran. The question now is whether covert or overt actions can stop the Iranians from going nuclear.
Terrorist shooting on road recently opened to Palestinians
(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldier Raviv Roth was unpleasantly surprised recently when he was asked not to enter an Arab-owned Haifa restaurant because he was in uniform. Roth said a waitress at Azad restaurant told him, “We don’t serve soldiers here.”
A spokesman for the restaurant said that Roth was not expelled, but rather was asked to return in civilian clothing. “We simply don’t want to have people come in wearing any kind of uniform,” he said.
Azad worker Fida Qiwan accused Roth of being unreasonable. “We asked him to leave politely. He didn’t take it very well,” she told the Hebrew-language daily Maariv. “But last week a young woman came here in uniform and we told her to leave. She went home, changed her clothes, and came back. Why make a fuss? This is a place that just wants to make money and give people a place to relax and enjoy themselves.”
Customers in uniform make other patrons “uneasy,” Qiwan said.
Following the incident, Facebook users started a group calling to boycott Azad over its policy of refusing service to customers in uniform. Thousands of people have joined the group.
Haifa city officials who looked into the incident found that Azad restaurant had been operating without a permit. The restaurant was issued a closure order, which will go into effect in April. The closure order has no connection to Roth’s complaint.
Two Israeli Missile Ships Pass Through Suez Canal
(IsraelNN.com) Two missile ships belonging to the Israeli Navy passed through the Suez Canal sometime during the last few weeks, according to reports on several internet sites. In the past, the passage of Israeli warships southward through the canal, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, has been interpreted as preparation for a possible attack against Iran.
The IDF spokesman said in response to IsraelNationalNews’s inquiry regarding the reports that the IDF does not usually comment on military movements.
Two Israeli warships passed through the Suez Canal on July 14 last year in what was seen as an unusual show of cooperation between Egypt and Israel. The Hanit and the Eilat, both Sa’ar-5 class Navy torpedo boats, traveled from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, allegedly to beef up Israel’s military presence there.
One week earlier, an Israel Navy Dolphin-class submarine also traveled through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and back, escorted by Egyptian navy vessels. It was the first such drill for the German-made secret vessel, defense sources said.
Israeli navy vessels usually travel around the Horn of Africa in order to reach the Red Sea. The voyages in July were seen as a message from Israel and Egypt to Iran, which continues its nuclear program and threats against Israel in spite of United Nations sanctions.
Palestinian Arab terrorists fired several rounds from their automatic rifles at an Israeli army post on Highway 443 north of Jerusalem on Wednesday. There were no injuries in the attack.
Israeli soldiers combed the area, but the attackers were able to successfully flee to nearby Palestinian-controlled areas.
Highway 443 was only recently opened to Palestinian traffic, against the firm protests of Jews living in the area and Jerusalem residents who use the highway on a daily basis to reach their jobs in Tel Aviv.
In December Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that it could no longer keep the road closed to Palestinian Arabs for fear of appearing racist. The road was originally opened to all traffic, but was closed to Palestinians in 2000 following a series of shooting attacks against Israeli motorists
Haifa Restaurant Bans Soldiers in Uniform
The international community demonstrated this week that it is not only the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem that it opposes, but rather any sovereign action at all by Israel in the city, including projects to benefit the capital’s Arab residents.
Many Arab residents of Jerusalem complain that they are neglected by the municipality when it comes to neighborhood upkeep and investment. So Mayor Nir Barkat this week had planned to officially announce a new project for the Silwan neighborhood on the southern edge of the Old City.
Silwan, known to Jews as the City of David, is an impoverished, mostly Arab neighborhood. In order to reclaim the area’s historic glory, Barkat had wanted to tear down one of its poorer neighborhoods and construct a new park with luxury apartment buildings surrounding it. The current residents of the area were to be temporarily housed elsewhere and moved back into the new apartments upon their completion.
But the Palestinian Authority took the plan as an opportunity to attack Israel, completely ignoring the fact that its primary aim was to benefit the local Arab residents.
“There is no way the Palestinians can accept the demolishing of houses in Jerusalem and the continuation of building settlements for the Jewish settlers,” Palestinian cabinet minister Mohammed Ishtayeh told reporters on Tuesday.
In typical fashion, the UN took the side of the Palestinians, and demanded that Israel halt Barkat’s “concerning” project.
“We’re trying to reduce tensions at the current time, not exacerbate them. Whatever the intentions behind such a project, Israel needs to understand that demolishing Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem demolishes confidence among Palestinians and frankly, also internationally,” read a statement released by the UN Special Coordinator’s Office for the Mideast Peace Process.
The pressure resulted in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoning Barkat on Tuesday to request that he postpone the official launch of the project. The call came just hours before the mayor had scheduled to hold a press conference to announce the project.
The Obama Administration expressed relief later in the day that Barkat had halted what it, too, for some reason viewed as a dangerous initiative.
Barkat told reporters that he is confident the Arab residents of Silwan will all sign on the project, giving him the backing he needs to finally rehabilitate this history-rich section of Jerusalem.
