China Confidential
Friday, January 02, 2009
Iran Holds Back Knowing Israel Could Go Nuclear
Foreign Confidential....
Regarding the Israel onslaught on Gaza, while Iran has been bellicose when it comes to defending its Palestinian proxy, Hamas, with words, Iran has also held back from threatening direct military action on the group's behalf.
Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, has also been restrained in its response to the Israeli air raids (and preparations for a ground offensive that could start within hours).
What gives?
China Confidential analysts speculate that Israel has sent a back-channel message to Iran: stay out of it. Involvement could be catastrophic; Israel will not hesitate to use any and all weapons--including nuclear weapons--if its main population centers are attacked.
But the situation could change quickly. Iran is hurtling toward a major nuclear breakthrough, which, if not stopped, will allow the missile-mad, clerical fascist regime to manufacture nuclear bombs and warheads.
The iranian plot to destroy Israel--this year--calls for coordinated missile barrages under cover of an Iranian nuclear shield in tandem with an Israeli Arab uprising and a tsunami of Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism.
Iran's apocalyptic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is playing with fire--nuclear fire.
The rest of the world, understandably preoccupied with the global economic crisis, has no idea....
On Hamas and Iran's Grand Design to Destroy Israel
Foreign Confidential....
To the rest of the world, it may seem like a contest between Palestinians manufacturing homemade rockets to provoke the mighty Israeli Defense Force into a "disproportionate" response. But in reality it's part of Iran's grand design to destroy Israel.
Amid the Qassam rocket barrage launched against Israeli border towns, a Grad rocket landed near Gan Yavne in south Israel. What's significant is that the target was an area that is just a 15-minute highway ride from Tel Aviv.
The rocket was fired from just outside the Egyptian embassy in central Gaza — meaning that if the same rocket had been launched from northern Gaza, it technically could have reached outside Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
The BM-21 Grad is a truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher used by the former Soviet Union that fires 122 mm rockets. Hamas is known to possess 122 mm Katyusha rockets, which have a range of about 18 miles, and has fired improved 122 mm Katyushas, with a range of up to 30 miles. These were used by Hezbollah to bombard northern Israel in the summer of 2006.
As we've noted, much of Hamas' imported weaponry, and the expertise with which it now produces the rockets it uses to bombard Israeli border towns and villages, comes from Iran. High on Israel's target list were tunnels used to smuggle increasingly sophisticated weaponry through Egypt into Gaza.
An Egyptian intelligence official told World Net Daily that he believes Hamas may have rockets that can reach Israel's nuclear plant in Dimona, which is about 40 miles from the Egypt-Gaza border and 20 miles east of Beersheba, a town of 186,000 that soon could be well within rocket range.
The official said Hamas may be saving larger, 220 mm rockets that, with a range in the vicinity of 44 miles, would put both Dimona and Tel Aviv within range.
Hezbollah's Syrian-made 220 mm version was stuffed with 40,000 ball bearings packed into a warhead containing 88 pounds of explosives. The bearings are expelled at lethal velocity when the missile hits its target. Anyone within a 50-yard radius will be seriously wounded or maimed.
The irony here is all the concerns about Israel, in the face of Western dawdling, going ahead on its own to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. It still may be a question of when, not if — especially in the face of another round of Iranian-supported missile barrages on Israel.
Israeli officials say Hamas has also acquired dozens of Iranian-made 240 mm Fajr-3 missiles with a range of 26 miles. Israel's nightmare is that without decisive action the entirety of Israel could be within range of Iranian-supplied missiles, either in the hands of Hezbollah to the north or Hamas to the south.
Abu Abdullah, considered one of the top commanders of Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, has promised to send the Israelis "surprises." Meanwhile, the Israelis sent Hamas a few surprises. Five of Abu Abdullah's direct cousins were eliminated during airstrikes that no longer spare private homes of Hamas leaders or mosques used as armories.
Late Thursday, IAF aircraft struck a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, one being used as a terror hub by the Hamas terror organization. The mosque had served as a storehouse for a large number of Grad missiles, Qassam rockets and additional weaponry. The strike set off a series of secondary explosions and a large fire caused by the ammunitions stockpiled inside the mosque.
Israel has had enough with both Iran and its proxies. President-elect Obama has his plate full. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night," he said while visiting the border town of Sderot last summer, "I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that.
"And I would expect Israelis to do the right thing."
They are.
-IBD
Oil Rises on Gaza, Ukraine News
Commodities Confidential....
Bloomberg reports crude oil rose today, capping the biggest weekly gain since 1986, as the conflict in Gaza increased concern that Middle East supplies would be cut and Russia curbed natural- gas shipments to Ukraine.
Crude oil for February delivery rose $1.74, or 3.9 percent, to $46.34 a barrel at 2:52 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since Dec. 11. Prices climbed 23 percent this week, the most since August 1986. Oil prices tumbled 27 percent in the week ended Dec. 19, the biggest decline since trading began in 1983.
Oil fell 54 percent last year, the first annual drop since 2001 when crude slipped 26 percent, and the biggest loss since trading started.
OAO Gazprom boosted gas supplies to Europe through Belarus, avoiding Ukrainian pipelines. Talks between the two sides on the price of gas deliveries to Ukraine for 2009 and transit fees for Russian gas to Europe through the country broke down on Dec. 31, and Gazprom cut supplies of the fuel to Ukraine yesterday.
Oil may rebound this year to average $60 a barrel as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries makes record production cuts to counter the deepest economic slump since World War II, according to the median of estimates by 33 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. That would be a 29 percent gain from today’s price.
OPEC will cut daily shipments of crude oil by 1 percent in the four weeks to Jan. 17 as the group enacts supply reductions, according to industry consultant Oil Movements. Members will load 23.75 million barrels a day in the period, down from 24 million in the four weeks ended Dec. 20, the Halifax, England-based company that tracks oil shipments said.
Brent crude oil for February settlement climbed $1.32, or 2.9 percent, to settle at $46.91 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange.
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