Secret Talks During Secret War On Iran's Nukes
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While
secret war between Israel and Iran has been going on already years with
assassinations, Stuxnet and other cyberwar projects, war games,
military demonstrations etc its pleasure to find out that secret
diplomacy has also been implemented. The delegations from Israel and
Iran led by senior officials had secret talks during a nuclear
non-proliferation meeting in Brussels this week.
Secret talks
70 buses rode the streets of TelAviv carrying message for peace.
According an article
in The Guardian a historic conference bringing Iran and Israel together
with Arab states to discuss a ban on nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons in the Middle East is scheduled to take place in Helsinki in
December, it has emerged. The Finnish organisers of the UN-backed bid to
establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction are said to be
cautiously optimistic that the conference will go ahead despite high
tensions in the Gulf. The Finnish team has held about 70 meetings with
officials in the region and made repeated trips to Israel and Iran since
the veteran diplomat Jaakko Laajava was appointed "facilitator" of the
consensus in October. So far, none of the countries invited to Helsinki
has turned the invitation down. A
media blackout was imposed on the discussions but according some leaks
in contrast with the saber rattling of both sides’ leaders the event
went in a businesslike manner without denunciations and empty rhetoric
at the conference.
On 5th November 2012, Israeli daily YNet
reported that Barack Obama’s senior advisor, Valerie Bowman Jarrett, is
secretly assisting the U.S. administration to communicate with the
representatives of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Last
month, The New York Times
reported that the US government is engaged in secret talks with Iran
aimed at establishing a direct line of communication once the US
presidential elections are over.On the brink of war
"Deterrence worked with the Soviets, because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose survival, but militant jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists. There were no Soviet suicide bombers. Yet Iran produces hordes of them." (Benjamin Netanyahu)PM Netanyahu and Iran red line in UN
In
August 2012, Iran converted some 38 per cent of its uranium enriched to
20 per cent into fuel rods for its civilian research reactor. This move
somewhat postponed the critical moment after which Israel would
evaluate that Iran has enough uranium to produce a nuclear weapon.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak estimates that Israel ‘postpones’ nuclear
Iran red line by ‘8 to 10 months’.
While
military strike still is a serious thread the secret war has been going
on the whole time. From Israeli side well known actions are
assassinations of some key figures in Iran's nuclear program, Stuxnet
and some strange blasts and explosions in Iran's nuclear facilities.
This
secret war has been recently also spreading. According to intelligence
officials, Iran’s security services have concluded that Azerbaijan, its
Muslim neighbor to the north, has been enlisted by Israel in a campaign
of cyber attacks, assassinations and detailed military planning aimed at
destabilizing and ultimately destroying Tehran’s nuclear program.This
doubt has launched an Iranian counter espionage offensive to destabilize
the government of President Ilham Aliev and cast a suspicion also on
ethnic Azeris living mostly along the northern border and in Tehran.
Azeris are Iran’s largest minority group (some 16 % of population).
Iranian officials have publicly blamed these attacks on the Mossad,
Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. But US officials say Iran has
recently concluded that the assassinations and other acts of sabotage
has been orchestrated with the help of Azerbaijan. Last January,
apparently after the debate on the Azeri issue ended among Iran’s
regime, Tehran’s own intelligence service authorized attacks against the
Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and other Jewish targets in Baku, the
Azeri capital. reports that Israeli officials have been assessing Azeri
airbases as refueling zones for its warplanes should a strike against
Iran be ordered. (BTW this kind of cooperation with Saudi Arabia I
earlier reported in my article Saudi-Israeli cooperation for attacking Iran )On
Aug. 15, a cyber-attack hit Saudi oil giant Aramco with devastating
results, 30,000 computer workstations were rendered useless and had to
be replaced. A few days later in Qatar, a similar virus attacked the
RasGas natural-gas company, a joint venture between Exxon Mobil and the
state-owned Qatar Petroleum, which operates the world’s largest
natural-gas field. Hizbullah followed up the cyberattack with a drone
mission on 6th Oct. 2012. An Iranian-built surveillance drone dubbed
Ayoub flew from Lebanon into southern Israel before being shot down by
the Israeli air force. Officials from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Force told the Al Arabiya newspaper that the target was the Israeli
nuclear reactor at Dimona, the centerpiece of Israel’s nuclear program. 
In my earlier article I conclude some aspects related to Israeli strike to Iran Nukes as follows:War
games are a puzzle not only with tactical alternatives, timing, more or
less accurate intelligence and means available but also with known and
un-known risks. There is also some other risks than Iran’s counter
strike such as Air strike would not eliminate the knowledge about how to build a nuclear weapon that Iran already has. Bombing would pass those nuclear sites that foreign intelligence services do not know about. Attack
could create unneeded tensions between US and China and Russia, who are
needed to successfully resolve this issue via non-military means Israel
might have best available missile defense. However the capacity can not
absorb 40.000 missiles by Hizbollah in short period of time and some %
will cause serious damage. The bottom line
Of
course its is unrealistic to wait that there would be a Middle East ban
on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in near future. However
from my point of view even discussing the possibility between Iran and
Israel at the anticipated Helsinki event would be giant progress and
will give hope that a non military development might be possible.