Former IDF intelligence head: Iran has all necessary tools to produce bomb
(JNS.org) Iran could have its first atomic bomb within four to six months if the regime in Tehran took the decision to go ahead and make a bomb, former IDF Director of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin said on Monday.
Speaking at a press conference at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, a national security think tank which he heads, Yadlin said that Israeli’s decision “whether to bomb or to live with an Iranian bomb” will come up at the end of summer this year.
“In the past few years Iran has completed all of the necessary stages it needs to break out to a nuclear weapon,” Yadlin said, according to Israel Hayom. “They have all the tools they need to produce a nuclear weapon once they decide to do so. The main reason they haven’t constructed a bomb yet is that their breakout period is still too long. They want to be able to break out within a shorter time frame. They don’t have sufficient numbers of the right centrifuges to break out sooner. The Iranians currently have over 10,000 centrifuges in two locations and it is quite possible they will make the decision to break out in 2013. This will necessitate an American and Israeli operation.”
Iranian official: Israel will regret attack on Syria
(JNS.org) A top Iranian official visiting Damascus on Monday said Israel will regret its “latest aggression” on Syria and that the entire Muslim world should be ready to defend the Syrian people, Israel Hayom reported.
Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, also said Iran supports any initiative for dialogue between President Bashar Assad and his opponents to end the civil war in Syria, but insisted that any talks be held in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Jalili spoke to reporters at a news conference in Damascus at the end of a three-day visit to Syria.
“Just as it regretted its aggressions after the 33-day, 22-day and eight-day wars, today the Zionist entity will regret the aggression it launched against Syria,” Jalili said, referring to past wars between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
IAF fighter jets reportedly struck a site near the Syrian capital, Damascus, last week, targeting what U.S. officials said were ground-to-air missiles apparently heading for Hezbollah.
Syria said the strike targeted a military research facility and vowed retaliation, but has so far refrained from any response.
Barak on reported airstrike on Syria: ‘When we say something we mean it’
(JNS.org) Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicated that Israel was behind the last week’s reported Israel airstrike on Syria.
“I cannot add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago,” Barak told a security conference in Munich on Sunday, Reuters reported.
“But I keep telling frankly that we said, and that is another proof that when we say something we mean it. We say that we don’t think it should be allowable to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon,” he said.
Barak’s comments were the first by an Israeli official since the strike last week.
Meanwhile, in an interview on Israel’s Channel 2, Major General (res.) Amos Yadlin, former Head of Military Intelligence, and Ronny Daniel, Channel 2’s military analyst, unofficially agreed with the details revealed by McClatchy News that confirmed Israeli involvement in the strike, Israel National News reported.
In a report published Jan. 31 by McClatchy News, Israeli officials told the news service that Israeli aircraft had destroyed a Syrian military convoy carrying the advanced Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles preparing to leave the Jamarya military base, which sits less than 5 miles from the Lebanese border.
Furthermore, U.S. officials said the strike hit both the research center and the convoy of anti-aircraft missiles, the Associated Press reported. Additionally, Time Magazine reported that Israel had received a “green light” from the U.S. on the attack. In recent weeks, U.S. and Israeli officials have expressed concern over Syria’s vast weapons arsenal falling into the wrong hands as the civil war drags on.
Meanwhile, Syrian state-run TV broadcasted footage of the damage at Jamarya, blaming Israel for the wreckage. Syrian officials, backed by Iranian support, have vowed revenge for the strike.
UJA-Federation receives $1 million grant to assist Jewish families affected by Sandy
(JNS.org) The UJA-Federation of New York has been awarded a $1 million grant from the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation to assist Jewish families affected by Hurricane Sandy.
“In the immediate aftermath of the storm, UJA-Federation reached out to day schools, agencies, and synagogues to assess need and offer our support. Together, we responded to immediate need and committed to the long-term recovery effort,” John S. Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, said in a statement.
The grant will help Jewish families by providing educational assistance such as tuition/enrollment subsidies for Jewish day schools and Jewish summer camps.
“Long after news coverage dissipates and much of the philanthropic funding ceases, families need assistance to return to a sense of normalcy,” said Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation.
“For Jewish families, this often means financial assistance to afford tuition to Jewish day schools and Jewish camp enrollment,” he added.
Research has shown that Jewish education through day schools and summer camps helps Jews to build long-term connections to the larger Jewish community.
The Jim Joseph Foundation, founded in 2006, has distributed more than $270 million to the cause of Jewish learning.
UK paper apologies for anti-Semitic cartoon
(JNS.org) The UK’s Sunday Times newspaper has issued an apology for the anti-Semitic cartoon featuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it published last week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“It is one thing to attack and caricature a leader — and it is as legitimate to attack Israeli leaders in cartoons as anyone else. But it is another thing to reflect in a caricature, even unintentionally, historical iconography that is persecutory or anti-Semitic,” the paper wrote on its editorial page.
The paper added that it “abhors anti-Semitism and racism of any type.”
The cartoon was entitled “Israeli elections—will cementing peace continue?” and featured a large-nosed Netanyahu laying bricks over bleeding Palestinians.
A spokesperson from the Sunday Times had at first said the cartoon was not anti-Semitic, but Rupert Murdoch, whose multinational mass media organization, News Corporation, owns the paper, called the cartoon “grotesque” and called on the paper to apologize.
Clinton, on last day as Secretary of State, warns of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah pact
(JNS.org) On Hillary Rodham Clinton’s last day as the U.S. Secretary of State Feb. 1, the former First Lady and U.S. senator from New York warned that a large Middle East conflict could erupt if Syria’s civil war continues and if Iran continues to get involved in the violence. The conflict could engulf other regional nations, including Israel, she said.
Former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was sworn in Feb. 1 to take over for Clinton.
“I’ve done what was possible to do,” Clinton told reporters on her last day, according to the Associated Press. “The worst kind of predictions about what could happen internally and spilling over the borders of Syria are certainly within the realm of the possible now,” she said.
Clinton also spoke to reporters a day earlier in the wake of Syrian threats to retaliate for an alleged Israeli airstrike of a military research facility and nearby trucks containing Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.
Save for an oblique comment by Defense Minister Ehud Barak (see story above), Israeli officials are neither confirming nor denying the strike, and Clinton did not directly reference it, only blaming Iran of assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s violent quenching of rebel forces.
“The Iranians are all in for Assad, and there is very little room for any kind of dialogue with them,” Clinton said. She added that Hezbollah, who is assumed to be the intended recipient of the SA-17s targeted in the Israeli strike, is also a background culprit in the Syrian violence, as is the Russian government.
“The Russians are not passive bystanders in their support for Assad. They have been much more active,” Clinton said.
Senators seek to halt U.S. arms sales to Egypt
(JNS.org) Two Republican U.S. senators are aiming to stop America’s sale of weapons to Egypt.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–KY) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) each introduced legislation prohibiting the sale of F-16 aircraft, tanks and other advanced weapons to Egypt, whose president, Mohamed Morsi, comes from the historically anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood party.
“I think it is a blunder of the first proportion to send sophisticated weapons to a country that allowed a mob to attack our embassy and to burn our flag… I find it objectionable to send weapons, F-16s and tanks, to a company that allowed a mob chanting ‘death to America’ to threaten our American diplomats,” Paul said in the Senate.
Although Inhofe initially voted against Paul’s amendment on the grounds that it is too costly for the U.S. defense budget to ban these sales completely, he then introduced his own bill to suspend sales until Egypt shows a commitment to a peaceful relationship with Israel, for securing U.S. embassies and consulates, and for respecting minority parties, The Hill reported.
“For decades, the U.S. has had a good relationship with Egypt, training their troops and working together to maintain peace and stability in the region… Under Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, this relationship has come to a halt. We need to continue to support the Egyptian military, which Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have currently distanced themselves from. Egypt’s military is our friend—Morsi is our enemy,” Inhofe said, according to Israel National News.
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