by Yoav Zitun | Ynetnews.com | October 28, 2011
In response to Yedioth Ahronoth article claiming Netanyahu, Barak seemingly pushing for military action against Iran, policy and political-military affairs director stresses importance of prioritizing Iran threat.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are extremely concerned by the Iranian threat, and Defense Ministry Director of Policy and Political-Military Affairs Amos Gilad believes the matter must be a top priority.
"You need to know what issues to prioritize. In my opinion – it's the Iranian front," he told students at the Ashkelon College. His statements were made in response to a Yedioth Ahronoth article claiming that Netanyahu and Barak were seemingly pushing for action against Iran.
According to Gilad, Netanyahu "was the first who heard of Iran's forecasted move on the nuclear missile path and he sees it as a massive threat. The defense minister understands the depth of the threat as well."
Iranian missile test. Photo: EPA
According to a Nahum Barnea article in Yedioth Ahronoth, published on Friday, the heads of the armed forces – Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo, Military Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi and Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen share the opinion of their predecessors and are opposed to taking action against Iran at this time.
Former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan had previously stated that a strike against Iran was "a foolish idea" and warned against the disastrous consequences that would follow such action – an all out regional war.
Gilad believes that "Israel's main threat is Iran" and warned against complacency: "We have experience with Israel arrogance when it comes to foreign statements. Khamenei said that there was no room for Israel; He said Iran needs to be treated like an empire equal in power to superpowers like the US. That motivation drives Iran to develop ballistic capabilities."
Gilad noted that while in 1999-2000 Iran did not have even one missile that could reach Israel, today Tehran has hundreds of missiles capable of crossing a 1,500 kilometer radius within 10 minutes, as well as missile that can carry nuclear warheads.
"At the moment, there is no immediate nuclear threat, but there is definitely a great deal of motivation and determination for it," he stressed. Until now, he noted, the Iranians were enriching uranium. "Today the status is that they are at the starting point – they have uranium, they have the knowledge but they don't create (missiles) because of media publicity which is not initiated by them."
'Major game changer'
According to Gilad, the attempt to develop secret nuclear sites within Iran failed because the locations were published.
The Shihab missile on show. Photo: AFP
The good news, said Gilad, was that "the whole world is against the Iranians, the sanctions are effective, but it doesn't change Iran's strategic direction or their motivation. Iran is determined to obtain nuclear weapons and that is a major threat to Israel. If they achieve their goal it would be major game changer".
Asked about the timeframe of the Iranian threat, Gilad answered: "The balance of power changed the moment the Iranians decide to pursue it." As for the question of whether Israel should attack Iran, Gilad noted that "all options remained open."
Gilad then spoke about the Arab Spring and stressed the strategic importance of the peace treaty with Egypt. "It has a huge significance security wise," he said, adding: "This is the first time where there is a situation in which elections are being held in Egypt in 30 days and we don't know who will rise to power and how it will affect our relations with them."
The policy and political-military affairs director made it clear that the Arab Spring poses many threats to Israel. "The question is what will happen on the day after, in Egypt the results of the first elections are still unclear.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4140625,00.html
Help Wanted: A National Security President
by *Frank Gaffney, Jr. | CenterForSecurityPolicy.org | November 7, 2011
Until recently, most politicians, pundits and others among the so-called "smart people" insisted that Election 2012 was all about jobs, jobs, jobs. The more broad-minded contended that the related issues of the lousy economy and the imperatives of deficit reduction might also feature. But that was all the mattered, especially in the presidential contest.
Then, GOP candidate Herman Cain - a successful businessman who has risen in the polls in no small measure on the strength of his claim to have actually created jobs - gave an interview in which he seemed unaware that Communist China has the bomb.
Without skipping a beat, the elites denounced him as unfit to serve on the grounds that a man who was not proficient in national security and foreign policy matters could never become president. The jobs-jobs-jobs leitmotif gave way, at least for a time, to a new theme: the White House is no place for on-the-job-training about the nation's defense.
How quickly they forget. What Barack Obama knew about U.S. security policy before he became president amounted to little more than the anti-colonialist sentiments of his father and the virulently anti-American agitation of PLO flak Rashid Khalidi, terrorist William Ayers, revolutionary Saul Alinsky and radical pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Unfortunately, despite the on-the-job foreign and defense policy training Mr. Obama has, in fact, received during his time in office over the past nearly three years, he still seems largely clueless about U.S. security interests - and what it takes to safeguard them. Consider the following sample of his myriad, unforced errors:
President Obama has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to imposing worldwide - including in the United States - the totalitarian Islamic doctrine known as shariah. His policies have helped bring the Brotherhood to power in North Africa and are legitimating its various fronts inside this country and otherwise facilitating their efforts to penetrate the U.S. government and dominate the American Muslim community.
Mr. Obama is effectively surrendering Iraq to Iran by removing all U.S. forces from the former for purely domestic political reasons and without regard for the consequences in the Middle East, and possibly beyond.
The Obama administration appears to be hell-bent on doing the same with respect to Afghanistan. The latest news is that U.S. official have not only begun negotiations with the Taliban. They have begun a dialogue as well with what is, if possible, an even more dangerous, despicable and irreconcilable adversary: the Haqqani network, based in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama's much-touted "reset" of relations with Russia has been shown to be a Potemkin exercise, with the end of the pretense that Washington had a more friendly and reliable partner in President Dmitry Medvedev giving way to the reality that the unremittingly hostile and authoritarian Vladimir Putin has been calling the shots all along - and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Team Obama's massive investment (financial and political) in the United Nations has also proven a bust. Its willingness to diminish the U.S. role to more-or-less that of any other nation, while insisting on continuing to pick up more than a fifth of the organization's tab has reduced America not just to a paper tiger but a patsy, to boot. Meanwhile, the 57-member bloc known as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is increasingly calling the shots, with help from the Russians and Chinese who can be relied upon to block anything remotely useful to us.
Matters are made vastly worse by President Obama's decisions to hollow out the United States military. As he memorably put it, "the nice thing about the defense budget is that it's so big, it's so huge, that a 1 percent reduction is the equivalent of the education budget." That sort of attitude has resulted in at least $460 billion worth of cuts in defense spending to date.
The associated damage is likely to be compounded by further reductions at the hands of the congressional supercommittee or, failing acceptance of its recommendations by the full Congress, via a meat-ax known as "sequestration." The latter would impose a further roughly $600 billion across-the-board reduction in Pentagon spending. The Obama administration's own civilian and uniformed defense leaders have warned that the effects of such a one-two punch would be catastrophic.
Should expertise on national security and foreign policy be a prerequisite for the presidency? The answer obviously must be a resounding "Yes" - especially in a world as dangerous as ours. Have we had it over the past nearly three years? The answer is equally resoundingly, "No."
We have to insist on a level of competence in the defense and foreign policy portfolio of our elected national leaders. In that connection, it is heartening that twoof the upcoming debates between Republican presidential candidates - one on November 12th at Wofford College in South Carolina and one sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and CNN in Washington on November 22nd - will focus on national security-related topics.
While the liquidations of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and a number of other high-profile terrorists on President Obama's watch are welcome, those accomplishments are, regrettably, more than offset by his serious failings like those noted above. The American people deserve, and need, a competent Commander-in-Chief. And they had better insist on getting one.
*Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.
Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18861.xml
Posted at 11:40 PM in Africa/Nigeria/Sudan, AntiSemitism/Jew-Hatred, Asia, Books/Journals/Magazines/Maps, CAIR/HAMAS/Hezbollah/Muslim/Islamic Organizations/UN, China, Commentary/Opinion/Editorial, Current Affairs, Education and/or Campus, Europe/Spain/Germany/France, History, Images, Iran, Islam and Contemporary Issues, Islam and History, Islamic Doctrine: Koran, Hadiths, etc, Israel, Judaism, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood aka Ikhwan, Politics/Ideologies, Sharia Compliant Financing/Sharia, The United States, Web/Tech/Weblogs/Internet | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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