'' WAR WILL HAPPEN ''

• Published: 22/09/2012 at 06:43 PM
• Online news:

    An Israeli war on Iran "will eventually happen" but the Jewish state will be destroyed as a result, according to the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

 

    The comments published on Saturday were the first in which Iran has acknowledged the probability of open armed conflict. "War will happen but it is not certain where and when," Brig Gen Mohammad Ali Jafari said, according to the ISNA and Fars news agencies. "The shameful and cancerous tumour that is Israel is seeking war against us, but it is not known when that war will happen. They now consider war as the only way to confront us, but they are so stupid that their (US) masters should stop them," he said. "If they begin (aggression), it will spell their destruction and will be the end of the story," he said. "This (war) will eventually happen as the (Islamic) revolution is moving rapidly towards its goals, and they cannot tolerate this. And finally, they will impose a war situation."

    The comments were the first time Iran has acknowledged the probability of open armed conflict with Israel. Previously, it has dismissed such a scenario as bluff on the part of Israel's leaders.

    Tensions, though, have risen significantly in recent weeks, with Israel threatening to unleash air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Israel believes Iran's nuclear programme to be aimed at developing an atomic weapons capability that would menace its own existence, and its current status as the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power. Iran insists its programme is exclusively for peaceful, civilian ends, but it is locked in a deepening standoff with the UN nuclear watchdog and the UN Security Council over the issue.

    Jafari said that, "even if they (the Israelis) act rationally, this incident will happen." He added: "Everyone knows that they cannot confront the power of the Islamic republic ... But there is no guarantee of rationality, and it is possible that they will go crazy" and attack. He said a war with Israel would contrast with Iran's last war, the 1980-1988 conflict with Iraq that was characterised by invasion and counter-invasion by massed ground troops. "We should use the experience of the sacred defence (during the Iran-Iraq war) to prepare for the future war, because its nature will be very different from the previous war," he said. Fars quoted Jafari as saying that "we are putting all of our efforts into boosting our (military) capability so that if an aggression occurs we can defend ourselves and those who need our help." He added: "We have become more serious in the face of the threats of the enemy against our country."

    Jafari's abrupt public recognition of the seriousness of the Israeli threat came against the backdrop of military deployments by Iran, Israel and the Jewish state's ally, Washington. Iran has held several war games this year, including one pointedly showing its abilities to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf to oil tanker traffic should it be attacked. In an annual military parade on Friday, it also displayed several of its missiles, including ballistic weapons capable of striking Israel.
 
    Israel on Wednesday staged a surprise drill on the country's northern border with Syria, Iran's beleaguered ally. Next month it is to hold missile defence exercises with US forces. The United States, meanwhile, is leading 30-nation navy manoeuvres in the Gulf and has deployed a squadron of its top-end F-22 Raptor fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.

Iran at the brink

The Washington Post
 Posted September 2, 2012 at midnight

Four months ago, the Obama administration radiated optimism that a deal could be struck curbing the most dangerous parts of Iran's nuclear program. What's followed has been a dismal summer. Not only has Iran not agreed to stop its production of higher-enriched uranium, but it has increased its stockpile by 30 percent since May, according to a new report by international inspectors. Not only has it rejected proposals from the United States and five partners that it close an underground production facility near the city of Qom, but it has doubled the number of centrifuges installed there.

Rather than negotiate with the international coalition — the last formal talks were in June — Tehran this week is hosting a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement at which it is defiantly reasserting its right to uranium enrichment, despite multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering it to stop. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon's Hezbollah have targeted Israeli diplomats and tourists in half a dozen countries.

What's particularly striking about Iran's behavior is that the nation's leaders seem to ignore the possibility that it will provoke Israel into launching a military strike on the nuclear facilities in the coming weeks. Perhaps supreme leader Ali Khamenei doesn't take the Israeli threat seriously, though clearly he should; perhaps he might welcome such an attack as a way to rally domestic and international support, bust out of tightening economic sanctions and justify a unqualified race for a bomb.

Whatever the case, Iran's behavior has pushed the Obama administration into an awkward position. Most U.S. diplomacy now appears to be directed at persuading Israel to hold off on a strike at least until next year, though that could mean allowing Iran's nuclear capabilities to advance to the point where only U.S. military action would be effective. Last week, the White House, anticipating the new report by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, insisted there was still "time and space" for diplomacy.
That's probably correct. Despite its advances, Iran still is at least a year or two away from a bomb. It is making only slow progress, at best, on constructing the more advanced centrifuges and missiles it would need to complete an arsenal. Israel and the United States agree that the supreme leader has not yet made a decision to pursue a bomb, and U.S. officials say any such "breakout" move would probably be detected. Meanwhile, the regime is likely to grow steadily weaker, especially if its closest ally, the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, is overthrown.

Tehran's refusal to negotiate seriously and its continuing buildup of nuclear capacity is nevertheless steadily increasing the danger that the Middle East will be engulfed by a new war — one that could interrupt oil supplies, damage the global economy and exacerbate the sectarian conflict already under way in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. An optimistic view would be that Iran is playing a familiar game of brinkmanship. If so, there may not be much more time to step back.