Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Jewish settler numbers up again.  According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Jewish population in the West Bank increased by 4.9% in 2010, considerably above the country’s overall population growth rate of 1.9%.  The total number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank reached 311,110 in 2010, up from 296,700 in 2009.  This represents 4.1% of Israel’s total population of 7,695,100.  It does not include Jews living in East Jerusalem.

*** Iran’s nuclear progress.  The latest intelligence assessment is that Iran will gain nuclear weapons in 2015.  It has mastered the fuel-enrichment stage of its nuclear programme, enriching uranium to 20%.  It is thought to be stockpiling low-enriched uranium that can later be reprocessed and enriched to the required 90%.

In June, the director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, announced that Iran plans to install the first cascade of a new generation of centrifuges at the Fordo enrichment facility, located near Qom.  He said that the production of uranium enriched to a purity level of 20% will be moved from Natanz to the Fordo enrichment facility, and that Iran is to triple the production of 20% enriched uranium during 2011.  The significance of this move is that the Fordo facility is excavated from a mountain and, according to comments made by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in 2009, is invulnerable to conventional air attacks.

Meanwhile, speaking on 2 October at a conference in support of the Palestinian intifada held in Tehran, Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad reiterated his uncompromising hostility to Israel.  He said: “Some people may have in mind to say: well we’ll give them [the Jews] a little corner [of Palestine].  They can live in that corner.  It is as if, in a person’s body, a cancerous tumour has spread.  It is like the doctor saying: ‘Well, we’ll take out part of it, allow part of it to remain’.  The characteristic of a cancerous tumour is to spread and invade.  If even a single Zionist cell remains in the land of Palestine it would be a danger and a threat to the entire region.”

*** Pakistan president spells it out.  In a 2 October interview, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed a point this service has been making, namely that Pakistan’s determined resistance to US pressure over the Haqqani network and other matters is being driven by the US’s planned departure from Afghanistan.  He said: “As the United States plans to remove its ground forces from Afghanistan and once again leave our region, we are attempting to prepare for post-withdrawl realities...Whoever comes or goes, it is our coming generation that will face the firestorm.  We have to live in the neighbourhood.  So why is it unreasonable for us to be concerned abbout the immediate and long-term situation of our Western border?  History will not foregive us if we do not take responsibility.”