This dispatch contains items on recent developments concerning Iran and the Iranian proxy militia Hizbullah.

GCC WOULD SUPPORT U.S. STRIKE ON IRAN

The six Gulf Cooperation Council states would support a U.S. strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, according to a new report by the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “Teheran has to finally realize that if push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab Gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S.,” the report said.

The report cited Iran’s military buildup in the Gulf and its refusal to negotiate the seizure of two small islands from the United Arab Emirates.

BERNARD LEWIS: NO EARTHLY DETERRENCE AGAINST IRANIAN REGIME

Prof. Bernard Lewis, of Princeton University, the world’s leading expert on Islam, told the IDC Herzliya security conference last week that Iranian president “Ahmadinejad truly believes in the apocalyptic message he is bringing. This makes him very dangerous. [The Cold War philosophy of] Mutual Assured Destruction, [which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other,] would not apply to Ahmadinejad’s Iran,” said Lewis. “It is not a deterrent, but an inducement to him.”

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES TALK TOUGH ON IRAN

Several declared and potential U.S. Presidential hopefuls spoke out strongly against Iran’s nuclear program at the IDC Herzliya security conference (which I attended) last week.

Republicans Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and John McCain, and Democrat John Edwards, all pledged in no uncertain terms that they would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and potential contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, said, “Iran must be stopped, Iran can be stopped, and Iran will be stopped.” He also called for economic sanctions on Iran that are “at least as severe” as those imposed on South Africa during its apartheid era. He compared the challenge posed by Iran and militant Islam to the great threats of the 20th century – fascism and totalitarian communism. He also recommended that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be brought before an international court and tried for threatening genocide.

Gingrich said Israel faced the most serious threat to its existence since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But many in Israel and the United States do not fully appreciate the nature, size and scope of the Iranian threat, he said.

McCain, the presidential front-runner, said he supported exploring a strengthening of ties between Israel and NATO as a means of easing Israel’s insecurity. “Military action is not our preference. It remains, as it always must, a last option,” McCain said. But he added, “There is only one thing worse than a military solution, and that is a nuclear armed Iran.”

Edwards, the only Democratic presidential candidate to address the conference, similarly called for tougher sanctions on Iran and held out the threat of military force, but he broke with the others by suggesting that Washington open a dialogue with Iran. He added that stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons “is the greatest challenge of our generation.”

RAFSANJANI: IRAN SHOULD GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR PROGRAM

Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview with the British newspaper, The Guardian, last Friday that his country should give up its nuclear program in order to avoid the risk of a confrontation with the United States or Israel and the collapse of the Islamic regime.

He said he was trying to persuade the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in state matters, that further negotiations are essential to avoid a potentially disastrous conflict with the U.S. or Israel.

ISRAEL “DRAFTING A STRATEGY TO JOIN NATO”

In an effort to establish more effective deterrence in the face of Iran’s race to obtain nuclear weapons, Israeli government ministries are, for the first time, working on drafting a position paper that will include a strategy for turning Israel into a full-fledged member of NATO.

The paper is being drafted by an interministerial committee made up of representatives from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and headed by the National Security Council. It plans to complete its paper by the end of February and present it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for approval.

At the Herzliya conference last week, former Spanish prime minister Jose Aznar said that “Israel, Australia and Japan should be asked to join NATO as soon as possible.” Aznar said that NATO needed to change its focus to counter the growing threat of global terrorism.

He added that Israel joining NATO would help deter Iran. (For more on this, see this article, in which I am quoted on this matter: www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3355577,00.html)

But the editor and publisher of German weekly paper Die Zeit, Josef Joffe, (who is also a subscriber to this email list) said he believed joining NATO would restrict Israel militarily. He said that NATO would likely make such restrictions a requirement for membership. “With that in mind, why would Israel want to join NATO?” he asked.

“From a technical perspective, Israel would make a wonderful partner for NATO. It would beat anything the Europeans could field. But from a rational perspective, would NATO leaders want to fight Israel’s wars? What NATO country wants to put its soldiers in Israel?”

HIZBULLAH OFFICIALLY OPENS AN IRAQI WING

The following two items were translated from Arabic especially for this email list:

The Saudi daily al-Watan reported that Hizbullah has strengthened its official presence in Iraq, by opening three offices in the center and north of the country under the name “The Iraqi Hizbullah”. According to the newspaper, Iraqi political sources say that the offices were opened in the al-Nassiriyah, Diyala and al-Najaf provinces. The newspaper says there is a wide basis of support and popularity in Iraq for the Lebanese Hizbullah following their “victory” over Israel, and their having previously trained Iraqi militias (as detailed in the past on this email list/website).

The Iraqi Hizbullah, ends the report, is led by Hassan al-Sari, the Iraqi Minister of State, and is one of the strongest groups that make up the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim. It centers its activity in the northern provinces of the country.

[1] Source: www.al-Watan.com.sa/daily/2007-01-18/first_page/first_page03.htm
[2] For a map of the global reach of Hizbullah (now a bit out of date, but still worth looking at), please visit – www.intelligence.org.il/sp/hizbullah/hizbu_ag.doc
[3] Al-Watan is a leading reformist newspaper in Saudi Arabia. It received some notoriety when its editor, Jamal Kashoggi, was fired for speaking out against the country’s hardline Islamist clerics because they refused to denounce the May 2003 Riyadh compound bombings.
[4] Hizbullah in Iraq’s website, which has been located by this email list/website, and appears to still be under construction as not all the parts work yet, is: www.algalibon.com. According to the site, Hizbullah now has offices in all six provinces of Iraq.

DIPLOMATIC SOURCES: IRANIAN SPIES KILLED FORMER EGYPTIAN AMBASSADOR IN IRAQ

Yesterday’s edition (Sunday, 28 January 2007) of al-Watan, reported the following:

“Diplomatic sources from the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram have revealed that Iranian intelligence was behind the killing of Ihab al-Sherif, Egypt’s former ambassador to Iraq. Sharif had been appointed ambassador to Iraq, and arrived on June 1, 2005. He was kidnapped five weeks later on July 3. His abductors killed him four days after he was seized.

“In light of this, the diplomatic sources said, the Egyptian, Jordanian and Gulf States would be even more supportive of the new American plan to send more troops to Iraq, which they said was justified. They pointed out that the Egyptian support of the plan did not arise out of a vacuum. It would help rescue Muslims, who are our brothers, and victims of ethnic cleansing, particularly in Baghdad, at the hands of armed militias.”

IDF DESTROYS TWO HIZBULLAH BUNKERS WITHIN ISRAELI TERRITORY

The Israel Defense Forces destroyed two Hizbullah bunkers on Friday. The bunkers had been located within internationally-recognized Israeli territory. One of the bunkers was discovered during the war with Hizbullah terrorists last summer in southern Lebanon, according to Ha’aretz. The other was discovered last Wednesday while soldiers were searching the Katamon Valley close to the border with Lebanon.

The two connected bunkers had been used by Hizbullah as a forward base for its attacks. Inside the bunkers Israel found food, shovels and other equipment. The bunkers were detonated in a controlled environment by IDF engineering forces. The goal of the search operation, said the IDF, was to prevent Hizbullah terrorists from returning to posts they manned before the recent war.

LEBANESE ARMY HESITATES AGAINST HIZBULLAH

Lebanese security forces have acknowledged that they have been slow in confronting Hizbullah’s efforts to paralyze the country. Officials acknowledged that Lebanese Army troops and security forces responded inadequately to Hizbullah’s latest anti-government campaign. They said Lebanese troops, many of them Shi’ites, ignored orders to prevent Hizbullah from blocking roads and services.

“There was either collusion [between Hizbullah and the security forces], dawdling or unclear decisions,” Lebanese Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis said.

The assessment came amid rising violence between anti- and pro-government factions in Lebanon. On Wednesday, dozens of people were injured in gun battles in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city. On Thursday, riots between Sunni and Shi’ites in south Beirut left four dead and 152 injured, and prompted the Lebanese army to impose an overnight curfew for the first time in a decade. The Iranian-backed Hizbullah is seeking to bring down the pro-Western government.

Hizbullah supporters held up images of their leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and burned those of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination in 2005 triggered Lebanon’s latest political turmoil.

IDF: OLMERT GOVT. WON’T LET US STOP HIZBULLAH FROM REARMING

Israel’s political echelon has “tied the IDF’s hands” and is preventing military operations that could stop Hizbullah from rearming and gaining strength ahead of a possible new round of violence this summer, a high-ranking IDF officer told The Jerusalem Post on condition of anonymity.

According to the officer, the IDF is not responsible for the lack of action against Hizbullah – which Israeli intelligence says is receiving almost daily arms shipments from Syria – and the Israeli cabinet has decided the military should refrain from initiating operations to thwart the smuggling. The IDF believes that Hizbullah has restored its strength to the level it was at before last summer’s war.

Separately, Director of IDF Strategic Planning Brig.-Gen. Udi Dekel has said that Hizbullah was busy rearming, receiving “nonstop” weapons shipments from Syria. This was the first time a high-ranking IDF officer has publicly confirmed that Damascus is shipping weapons to Hizbullah. The weapons originated in Iran, he said.

MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL AID FOR LEBANON

At last Thursday’s international donors conference in Paris, billions of dollars in cash and loans were pledged to Lebanon. The United States has promised to triple its aid to some $770 million, France will give $650m, and the European Union itself will give $520m. Some 35 nations made pledges totaling $7.6 billion.

Saudi Arabia headed the list of donors with a promise of $1.1 billion. Of the American pledge of $770 million, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said $250 million will be “liquid cash assistance” and the rest will fund “projects.”

The UAE promised $300 million and the Arab Investment Bank $250 million. The Islamic Development Bank offered $250 million. Most European countries pledged to make generous individual contributions in addition to their EU donations.

The families of kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev asked French President Jacques Chirac to work with the donor countries to ensure that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 is implemented in full, and not just the clauses regarding rebuilding Lebanon. In a letter timed to coincide with the Paris opening of the conference, the families wrote: “We support the transfer of financial aid to rebuild Lebanon as agreed under 1701, but the same resolution also requires the immediate unconditional release of our sons... Our sons have been held in inhuman conditions by Hizbullah in overt violation of international law and the Geneva Convention for more than six months. We call on the donor nations: Don’t forget the part that calls for Udi and Eldad’s release.”

U.S. TROOPS AUTHORIZED TO KILL IRANIAN OPERATIVES IN IRAQ

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Teheran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, counterterrorism officials have told the Washington Post.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The “catch and release” policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran while intimidating its emissaries.

Now senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran’s regional influence grows and U.S. efforts to isolate Teheran appear to be failing. Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq.

NETANYAHU ASKS U.S. PENSION FUNDS TO QUIT IRAN

Israel’s Likud opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu has asked one of the biggest U.S. pension funds to pull money out of companies doing business with Iran because of fears over Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

“This allows you to use economic pressure that might obviate the need to use different measures,” former prime minister Netanyahu told reporters. Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill and Michael Travaglini, executive director of the state’s $46 billion pension fund, said they would consider the request. Representatives of Rhode Island and New Hampshire, which have smaller pension funds, also attended the meeting.

Netanyahu was also due to meet with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose state’s Public Employees’ Retirement System, Calpers, manages the world’s biggest pension fund with $225 billion.

In the past, Massachusetts divested from South Africa and Northern Ireland over social and political issues.

***

I attach six news reports about Iran below.

-- Tom Gross