Courcy's Intelligence Brief - 22 February 2012

Items

• Israel edging ever closer to an attack on Iran

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  Two weeks ago we pointed to “further strong indications” that Israel is preparing for a military strike against Iran.  Last week we reported on how Israeli hawks had seized upon the failed terrorist attacks, allegedly of Iranian origins, against Israeli targets in Georgia, India, and Thailand, as proof that the fear of an overwhelming Iranian retaliation to an Israeli strike was exaggerated.  Now, in the past week, our sources in Jerusalem have been pointing to an increasing preparedness on the part of the Israeli government to challenge US pressure not to attack.  As a consequence, it is not surprising that the upcoming meeting between President Barack Obama and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on 5 March is being seen as a pivotal moment. 

  That Obama and Netanyahu dislike each other is common knowledge.  More important, though, is the substance of the growing rift on policy.  It is not just over what to do about Iran, and when, but also about the US administration’s apparent unconcern about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Sunni Middle East and about its willingness to treat with extremist organizations such Hamas and the Taleban.

  Netanyahu believes that, on current US policies, Israel will soon face a nuclear armed Iran at the same time as being surrounded by increasingly hostile Arab neighbours and Turkey.  The Israelis say it would be impossible to think of a more alarming prospect.  Improving ties with Cyprus, Greece, and Bulgaria hardly compensates for the loss of Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.

  The Obama administration feels that it has no option but to support the Arab Spring (except it seems in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) even if the outcome is far from desirable, and in truth it probably does have little option.  Trying to keep Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in power would have been a fruitless exercise faced with the strength of the currents running against him, and supporting President Bashar al-Assad in Syria would only serve to bolster Iran at a time when it is Iran that is by far the most pressing problem.  Equally, if it is to pull out of Afghanistan, then talking to the Taleban is inevitable as the Taleban’s power cannot be wished away.

  When Obama meets Netanyahu on 5 March, he will try to persuade the Israeli prime minister that sanctions and international isolation will eventually bring Tehran into line, if only Israel will be patient.  He will also argue that Turkey is a loyal Nato ally, and thus no problem, and that Egypt will be kept in line because of its ongoing need for American aid.  Besides, when the talking gets to the tough bits, Obama will argue that Israel cannot go it alone against Iran for two reasons: firstly because it does not have the capabilities to guarantee success in stopping or seriously retarding Iran’s nuclear programme; and, secondly, because it is not in Israel’s interests to fall out with the United States.

  But from all that we are hearing from Jerusalem, neither Obama’s pleadings nor his threats will persuade Netanyahu to back down.  Further suggestions that Israel is preparing to go it alone, if the US refuses to authorize a strike, emerged from the just-ended three-day visit to Jerusalem by US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.  Following a meeting with Donilon, Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak told members of his Atzmaut faction that Israel and the US were “two sovereign countries, each one responsible in the final analysis for the decisions it takes and about its future”. 

  The not-so-subliminal message was that Israel would act on its own if necessary.  By contrast, on 20 February General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a television interview that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be “destabilizing” and that such a move wouldn’t be “prudent at this point”.

  It is true that Netanyahu is not only under intense US pressure not to act precipitously but also faces powerful opposition within Israel to an attack on Iran.  But, against this, we know that Netanyahu views it as his mission in life to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.  And now there is increasing evidence that the hawks are gaining ground.

  It has been interesting, for instance, to see what seem to be efforts by Israeli hawks to undermine the opposition of former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, one of the most high-profile and outspoken opponents of a strike against Iran.  In particular, there have been well-placed reminders that powerful elements within Mossad argued that the 1981 strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor would be a pointless exercise because Saddam Hussein would only rebuild it.

  The recent New York Times analysis suggesting that the Israeli air force did not have the capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities has also been robustly countered by the hawks.  There is a strong belief that the Israeli air force can mount a successful attack, and its extraordinary track record is cited as evidence, including the destruction of Egyptian and Syrian air forces and airfields at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1976 Entebbe raid, the bombing of PLO headquarters in Tunisia in 1985, the bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981, and the 2007 attack on Syria’s al-Kibar nuclear facility.  None of these are comparable in complexity to the task faced in Iran, and none entailed such risks of retaliation, but they do boost Israeli confidence and the case of those arguing for a military strike.

  It is also worth noting that former defence minister Moshe Arens wrote in Haaretz this week that “there are only two countries in the world with the military capability to carry out an effective strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.  They are the US and Israel.”  Again, the clear implication is that Israel can act on its own. 

  Interestingly, Arens also in part blamed the US for the present position, pointing to the 2007 release of US intelligence assessments saying that Iran had halted its drive towards building a nuclear weapon in 2003.  Arens said that this assessment “brought about a relaxation in the international effort to halt Iran’s atomic bomb project”.

  The continuing deterioration in Israel’s general strategic position is also being invoked by the hawks, and in the past week they can point to the new Egyptian regime once again allowing Iranian warships through the Suez Canal (on 16 February), something that never happened under President Mubarak but has now happened twice since the revolution.

  On the Turkish front, on 17 February, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey would never allow Israel to benefit from intelligence gathered by Nato radar systems based in Turkey.  He said: “We will never allow any third country to use any Nato facility.  Our position will be even more clear if it is particularly Israel.”  There had been reports that the US and Israel had conducted an anti-missile test using intelligence from a Nato radar system based in eastern Turkey.

  All this makes for a very fraught meeting between Obama and Netanyahu on 5 March.  The indications are that Netanyahu will be exceedingly – perhaps excessively – demanding in what he would require in return to hold off from attacking Iran until after the US presidential election in November.  Given the fraught and distrustful nature of the relationship between the Israeli prime minister and the American president, it seems unlikely that he will get what he wants (or perhaps even believe what he is offered). 

  In short, the developments of the past week have further reinforced our conclusion of last week, namely that it increasingly seems that the only way in which a war with Iran can be avoided is if Iran “demonstrably and quickly backs down on its nuclear ambitions”.  What Netanyahu will tell Obama is that the US’s efforts at preventing war need to be directed at Tehran not at Jerusalem, which is not a message that is likely to improve their already testy relationship.  JdeC.

• Putin bases re-election and economy on rearmament

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  Ahead of the 4 March Russian presidential election, which since the popular protests following the December legislative elections is no longer seen as a pure formality, Vladimir Putin has now published six manifesto articles in six different national newspapers on six successive Mondays.  Of these, we would judge the article on national defence and the armed forces published this Monday (20 February) in the government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta as the most important.  It is important in political terms – playing the patriotic/nationalist card – and it is important in what it says about where Putin sees Russia’s place in the world.

  The six manifesto articles published by Putin are: an article outlining what he sees as the main challenges facing Russia, published in Izvestiya on 16 January; an article on ethnic relations in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 23 January; an article on economic policy in Vedomosti on 30 January; an article on the development of democratic institutions in Kommersant on 6 February; an article on social and demographic policy in Komsomolskaya Pravda on 13 February; and now an article on the Russian armed forces in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on 20 February.  Sources in Moscow say that it is an important signal that the sixth article, on the armed forces and national security, appeared in a national-level newspaper run by the government.  It was intended, they say, as a signal that this is where Putin’s priority lies for his renewed presidency.

  While it is necessary to be cautious about opinion polls showing Putin comfortably winning the presidential election in the first round, there are indications that the choice of national security as his primary focus is well-judged given that he clearly cannot win hearts and minds or votes on his record of democratic development.  For instance, an opinion poll conducted by the Levada Centre and published on 21 February shows the proportion of voters who consider Russia faces a real military threat increasing from 47% in 2010 to 55% in 2012.  According to this poll, the number of people seeing no threat has decreased from 42% two years ago to 36%.

  Other indicators of increasing suspicion of the West, a key theme of Putin’s, is the drop in the number of Russians who hold a generally positive view of the United States from 60% to 44% since the beginning of 2011.  Those with a negative perception of the US has increased from 28% to 40%.  This would appear to vindicate Putin’s strong and ongoing criticism of Nato’s actions in Libya and its plans for missile defence in Europe.

  Putin’s 21 February article on the armed forces started with a further appeal to Russian fear of the West.  In his very first paragraph, he wrote: “It is no coincidence that today we are already hearing voices saying that...national sovereignty should not extend to resources of global significance...”  He added: “There must not be even such hypothetical possibilities with respect to Russia.  This means we must not tempt anyone by being weak.”

  Further tapping into Russian paranoia, which we have highlighted previously as a feature of the Putin/Medvedev regime, Putin warned about the danger of “artificially fuelled and managed chaos”, and he claimed to detect “deliberate attempts to provoke such conflicts in the immediate vicinity of the borders of Russia and our allies”.  He added, harking back once again to Nato’s actions in Libya: “We can see how basic principles of international law have been devalued and destroyed.” 

  As interesting, perhaps, as this reconfirmation of Russian suspicion of the West is the fact that Putin clearly sees Russia’s armed forces and its defence industry as the key to Russia’s rejuvenation.  He starts by saying: “We have adopted and are implementing unprecedented programmes to develop the armed forces.”  He talks about “large-scale comprehensive reequipping of the army and navy” and he talks about strengthening the country’s “unified air and space defence system”.  This will include the delivery “in the coming decade” of more than 400 modern ground- and sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, 8 strategic missile submarines, around 20 multi-role submarines, more than 50 surface warships, around 100 military satellites, more than 600 modern aircraft, including fifth-generation fighters, more than 1,000 helicopters, 28 S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, 38 Vityaz surface-to-air missile systems, 10 Iskander-M systems, more than 2,300 modern tanks, around 2,000 self-propelled artillery systems and cannon, and more than 17,000 military vehicles.  According to Putin, by 2020 more than 70% of the weapons in service will be new models.

  Perhaps most interesting of all, however, is the fact that Putin devoted more than a third of the article to the upgrading of Russia’s defence industry – and the reason for this is clearly not just military but because he sees this as the best means for rejuvenating the entire Russian economy.  He describes the defence-industry complex as “our pride”, but he admits that in the past 30 years it has “missed several cycles of modernization”.

  Stating his objectives as clearly as he possibly could, Putin says: “The enormous resources invested in updating the defence-industry complex and rearming the army should serve as the motor for the modernization of the entire economy.”

  For Putin, the updating of the defence-industry complex will be the means by which a whole range of diverse sectors of the economy will be rejuvenated, including metallurgy, machine building, the chemical industry, electronics, IT and telecommunications.

  One paragraph in particular will be noted by Western counter-intelligence agencies.  It is where Putin deals with the purchasing of military equipment from abroad.  He begins by saying there is a fundamental difference between buying abroad “in order to abandon your own” and buying abroad in order “to have your own”.  He adds: “I am convinced that no ‘pinpoint’ purchasing of military hardware and equipment can be a substitute for the production of our own types of armaments, it can only serve as the basis for obtaining technologies and knowledge [our emphasis added].”

  At one point in his article, Putin declared:  “There cannot be ‘too much patriotism’...”  He meant it, and that will surely be the theme of his renewed presidency.

• Risk alerts

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  *** Lining up behind Nabil al-Araby for Egyptian president.  It was reported last week that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) had agreed on Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby as their preferred ‘accord’ candidate for Egypt’s presidency.  The news caused something of a stir when it was reported that al-Araby was being pushed forward by outside interests, particularly Arab Gulf states who might be using financial incentives to get their way.  But if al-Araby does indeed emerge as the preferred candidate, it would be as well to remember the upset felt in Egypt when he was removed from his post as Egypt’s first post-revolution foreign minister and appointed to the Arab League.  This was widely seen as a evidencing Western pressure to water down Egypt’s post-revolution foreign policy.

  The key point about al-Araby’s short tenure as Egyptian foreign minister was the way in which he quickly re-oriented Egyptian foreign policy back towards a traditional Egyptian one of seeking Arab leadership - and the strong approval this received both within Egypt and the wider Arab world.  In one of his first moves as foreign minister, on 28 April, al-Araby announced that the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza would be reopened on a permanent basis.  Six weeks later, on 12 June, he also said that “Iran is not an enemy of Egypt”, but he added that the decision to resume diplomatic relations will be left to the new Egyptian parliament, thereby neatly sidestepping US objections.

  *** Another signal from Hezbollah’s Nasrallah.  In last week’s issue we looked at remarks made on 7 February by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in which he said “Iran does not command us”.  This was being taken in Israel as a sign that Hezbollah was running scared and would not launch a retaliatory attack in response to an Israeli strike against Iran.  Now, in a televised speech on 16 February, Nasrallah has denied a Hezbollah role in the attempted attacks against Israeli targets in Georgia, India, and Thailand.  Admittedly he wrapped up his denial in bravado, saying it would be “humiliating for Hezbollah to take revenge for its great jihadist leader [Imad Mughniyeh] through killing ordinary Israeli people”, but Israeli intelligence analysts believe it is another signal from Nasrallah that he does not want to get involved in the looming confrontation between Israel and Iran - or at least that is how the hawks are interpreting it.

  *** More Russian concerns.  On 21 February, the secretary-general of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolay Bordyuzha, said that the creation of a US anti-drug unit in Kazakhstan “pursues nothing but purely political goals”.  He said that the initiative “involves the creation of special units with the participation of US intelligence in the territories of CSTO member states”.