ISRAEL AND HEZBOLLAH, ROUND 2?

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- Whether Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe Israel off the map is still contested, even by anti-mullah Iranian Americans. But that he wants to wipe out the Jewish state, there can be no doubt. As he completes his visits to every Iranian town, the collection of his pronunciamentos is edifying reading.

Culled from a wide variety of sources, ranging from the London Daily Telegraph, to the Suddeutsche Zeitung Online, to France's Le Monde and Liberation, Ahmadinejad spells out the target and the strategy:

-- This regime (Israel) will one day disappear.
-- The Zionist regime is a rotten tree that will be blown away by one storm.
-- The countdown for the destruction of Israel has begun.
-- Zionists are the personification of Satan.
-- In the case of any unwise move by the fake regime of Israel, Iran's response will be so destructive and quick that the regime will regret its move forever.
-- The West invented the myth of the massacre of the Jews (in World War II) and placed it above Allah, religions and prophets.

Ahmadinejad's strategic recipe:

-- We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world.
-- The wave of the Islamist revolution will soon reach the entire world.
-- Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance pf the 12th Imam, the Mahdi (a 5-year-old boy who vanished 1,100 years ago and who will lead the world into an era of peace and prosperity, but not before the planet is convulsed by death and destruction).
-- Soon Islam will become the dominating force in the world, occupying first place in the number of followers among all other religions.
-- Is there a craft more beautiful, more sublime, more divine, than the craft of giving yourself to martyrdom and becoming holy? Do not doubt Allah will prevail, and Islam will conquer mountaintops of the entire world.
-- Iran can recruit hundreds of suicide bombers a day. Suicide is an invincible weapon. Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future.
-- The will to commit suicide is one of the best ways of life.
-- By the grace of Allah we will be a nuclear power and Iran does not give a damn about (IAEA) demands (to freeze enrichment of nuclear fuel).
-- Iran does not give a damn about resolutions.
-- The Islamic Republic of Iran has the capacity to quickly become a world superpower.
-- Iran's enemies know your courage, faith and commitment to Islam and ... Iran has created a powerful army that can powerfully defend the political borders and the integrity of the Iranian nation and cut off the hand of any aggressor and place the sign of disgrace on their forehead.
-- In parallel to the official political war there is a hidden war going on and the Islamic states should benefit from their economic potential to cut off the hands of the enemies.

Addressing a conference devoted to "The World Without Zionism," Ahmadinejad said, "To those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible."

Hyperbole, gigantism, overkill, huckstering, hocus-pocus, all of the above. But intelligence mounts daily of Iranian efforts to undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan and U.N. efforts to stem the violence in Lebanon (six U.N. peacekeepers were killed by a roadside IED).

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's report said, "It is widely believed in Lebanon, including by the government, that the strengthening of Palestinian outposts could not have taken place without the tacit knowledge and support of the Syrian government."

Ban also noted Israel's claim that "the transfer of sophisticated weapons by Syria and Iran across the Lebanese-Syrian border, including long-range rockets (with a range of 250 miles) ... (and) anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, occurs on a weekly basis."

Israel also says Hezbollah "armed elements are constructing new facilities in the Bekaa valley, including command and control centers, rocket launching capabilities and conducting military training exercises."

There is little doubt Israel and Hezbollah are suiting up for a resumption of last summer's 34-day war in which the Israel Defense Force came off second best due to poor political and military leadership. Hezbollah is also shorthand for Syria and Iran. Tehran supplies the equipment and the funding. Syria acts as the transmission belt and is generously compensated.

Damascus has evidently concluded that an Israeli offensive across the Golan Heights is in the offing. For the first time in 40 years, Syria dismantled military checkpoints on the road to Kuneitra on its side of the Golan. Foreign journalists were barred from covering Israeli maneuvers on the Heights. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the IDF was conducting military maneuvers -- and nothing more.

One of the more plausible scenarios has Israel preparing for a drive into Syria across the Golan Heights, and then fighting a "decisive" battle with the Syrian army on the road to Damascus, followed by a left "hook" into Lebanon to execute an outflanking attack on Hezbollah.

That could also be a strategically propitious moment for U.S. action against Iran. It remains to be seen whether the key players in President George W. Bush's National Security Council would agree an opportunity is at hand to dust off an Air Force and Navy contingency plan to take out Iran's 23 nuclear facilities.

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Israel to ready public for 'all-out war'

Israelis would rather be alive, and hated by other nations, than loved, but dead. Excerpts from JP:

With Iran racing toward nuclear power and IDF preparations for the possibility of a conflict with Syria and Hizbullah in high gear, the Home Front Command plans to launch a publicity campaign to prepare the public for war.
Within a few weeks it intends to inform the public about what people need to do in the event of attack.
The campaign was not connected to a specific event or threat but was meant to brace the public for war in general, senior IDF officers said.
"Our job is to prepare for an all-out war," Col. Hilik Sofer, head of the Home Front Command Population Division, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday. "We prepare for a wide range of possibilities since it doesn't make a difference where the threat comes from."
Several weeks ago, the Home Front Command distributed pamphlets in Netivot and Ashkelon explaining how to behave during a Kassam attack. Both cities are within 15 kilometers of the Gaza Strip

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Consequences of Legitimizing Tyrants via Glorious Talks!

[...]Three weeks have passed, so it's fair to ask: Has there been any positive change in Syrian behavior -- any return gesture of goodwill, however slight?Mr. al-Bunni might offer the best answer -- if he could.

On Tuesday, one of Mr. Assad's judges sentenced him to five years in prison. His "crimes" were to speak out about the torture and persecution of regime opponents, to found the Syrian Human Rights Association and to sign the "Damascus Declaration," a pro-democracy manifesto.

Similarly, in his recent piece, Lee Smith wrote the following:

Another source explains that Syrian activists believe Pelosi's trip gave the Asad regime much needed breathing room. "Whether there is a real connection or not, political dissidents note that Anwar al-Bunni was sentenced to five years in prison in the wake of Pelosi's visit."Another opposition figure, Muhammad Ma'moun Homsi, a former Syrian MP who was imprisoned for five years beginning in 2001, and who has now fled Syria, revealed that he had sent a letter to Pelosi asking her not to come to Damascus. In an interview on an Arabic-language website, Homsi added that the idea of engaging such regimes is "a very dangerous proposition cause next will be a call to engage terrorist organizations."

Since that article came out, the regime seized Homsi's assets, stripping his family of its home ownership, in order to pressure him and his family. That happened the same day Rice met with Syria's FM at the Iraq conference in Egypt.The latest news came today, when dissident Kamal Labwani, who was arrested in 2005 for meeting with State Department and White House officials to call for democratic and human rights reforms in Syria, was sentenced to life in prison, commuted to 12 years with labor. (And the NYT never questioned the Syrians' bull when they said they sentenced a suspected al-Qaeda member for 3 years!)This is what you get when you engage Syria: intransigence in foreign policy (a euphemism for the regime's policy of sponsoring terror and destabilizing its neighbors), and wanton brutality domestically, against brave civic and human rights activists.I'll end with the words of the Post's editorial: "The danger of offering 'friendship' and 'hope' to a ruler such as Mr. Assad is that it will be interpreted as acquiescence by the United States to the policies of dictatorship."

Reprinted from Across the Bay

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Lebanon: Tehran Turning up the heat in Lebanon!

Tehran's turbaned terrorists also turned up the heat in Lebanon. Amid reports that Iranian proxy Hezbollah was preparing for a summer war with Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a fiery speech suggesting a determination to take power in Lebanon even if it leads to a new civil war. (Nasrallah is now a looming influence in Syria. The secular Baathist dictatorship, as part of an attempt to appease an Islamist revival sweeping the country, has promoted his visage in banners, posters, and tee-shirts.)

Cartoon from Shirin from Lebanon

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The Culture of Denial

China Confidential has learned that the left-leaning Speaker of the House was actually advised to adopt the ugly symbol of submission to backwardness and terrorism during her visit to Syria by our own State Department, despite the Bush administration's public criticism of her outrageous "fact-finding" mission.

Reason: in the name of democracy, ascendant appeasement advocates at State wanted to signal a supposed faction of so-called moderate Syrian Islamists that the United States is sympathetic to their struggle against the secular Syrian regime.

An Islamist revival is sweeping Syria and threatening Baath Party rule, and the US, incredibly, seems to think that this is a good thing. More than five-and-a-half years after the Islamist attacks of 9/11, America's dumbbell diplomats--led by the duplicitous Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice--still believe they can ride the Islamist tiger, in keeping with decades of covert and overt backing for rightwing political Islam dating to US support for the Muslim Brothers of Egypt during the time of Nasser.

The cynical bipartisan policy, which blew back in our faces on 9/11, has not been discredited; rather, it has been revamped. The old Cold War rationale of supporting Islamism to counter Soviet expansion and influence and suspect Arab nationalism and pseudo-socialism has been replaced with the cockeyed concept that the only realistic alternative to clerical-fascist Islamism is "democratic Islamism"--an oxymoron only an intellectual, or US diplomat, could concoct and embrace.

Back to Syria. The Islamist threat to decades of secular dictatorship is largely a result of the regime's unsuccessful efforts to accommodate Islam itself. After crushing the Muslim Brothers in the early 1980s with great ferocity, the Baathists built hundreds of mosques throughout the country and encouraged people to practice pious but non-militant Islam. The policy backfired: Islamist preachers took over the mosques, and banned Islamist books were published and distributed widely.

Another military solution seems unlikely. Instead, the regime continues to promote moderate Islam, while aligning itself with Islamist Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Meanwhile, headscarves have proliferated, even in the most upscale Damascus neighborhoods. Read more

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