According to the NY Times the United States is prepared to declare the Quds unit of Iran’s Revolutionary guards a terrorist organization.

The administration also plans to accuse the entire Revolutionary Guard Corps of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, the officials said. While the United States has long labeled Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, the decision to single out the Guard reflects increased frustration in the administration with the slow pace of diplomatic negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Both designations will put into play unilateral sanctions intended to impede the Revolutionary Guard and those who do business with it. This is the first time that the United States has taken such steps against the armed forces of any sovereign government. The action against the Revolutionary Guard, first reported by The Washington Post, would set in motion a series of automatic sanctions that would make it easier for the United States to block financial accounts and other assets controlled by the Guard. In particular, the action would freeze any assets the Guard has in the United States, although it is unlikely that the Guard maintains much in the way of assets in American banks or other institutions.

The article reports that this step became necessary because of Russian and Chinese efforts against taking diplomatic action against Iran. (Remember Israel was supposed to rely on international diplomatic efforts to rein in Syria instead of attacking its nuclear site.) More background at the Washington Post:

The overall impact, according to U.S. officials, will be to make a pariah of the most critical parts of Iran’s military and its defense and commercial industries. The Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, will be designated separately as a supporter of terrorism under Executive Order 13224, which Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding, U.S. officials said. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorism. The Quds Force — “Quds” is Arabic for Jerusalem — is estimated to number up to 15,000 and runs Tehran’s covert activities throughout the Middle East, including arms, aid and training for groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. U.S. officials say that it has provided the high-tech bombs capable of penetrating armored vehicles and the roadside explosives that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. forces in Iraq. Although Iran’s suspected weapons programs have been a longtime problem for the United States, the Quds Force’s operations in Iraq have become a bigger immediate challenge. “The Quds Force controls the policy for Iraq,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said earlier this month. “There should be no confusion about that.”

Then there’s this (via memeorandum)

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran. The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP. … So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran’s flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried. “You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”

The article goes on to question whether the United States would include an item so obvious as a threat to Iran’s nuclear program when doing so would warn Iran? I’m not sure if it’s significant if the administration loses the element of surprise. Perhaps it’s another part of the administration’s effort to put pressure on Iran to curtail its nuclear program and not an immediate threat to Iran. Taken with the Israeli raid on Syria’s - Iran’s ally - nascent nuclear program the administration might be sending a message to Iran with this spending request.

And then there’s the matter of Iran’s proxy Syria, which, according to a UN report is continuing its foreign adventures.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report Wednesday strongly suggesting that Syria has helped smuggle weapons to the Shiite movement Hezbollah and other armed groups, and that it sponsored Islamic militants involved in a military confrontation with the Lebanese army earlier this year. The report also cites Israeli assertions that Hezbollah has rebuilt its fighting capacity to a level not seen since its 2006 war with Israel. The 17-page assessment portrays Lebanon as a country facing threats to its survival not only from Syria but also from an array of armed groups linked to Islamic extremists and pro-Syria opposition parties. It says that a series of targeted killings of Lebanese lawmakers, including the September assassination of Antoine Ghanem, is gradually eroding the government’s thin majority in the Lebanese parliament. “The pattern of political assassinations in Lebanon strongly suggests a concerted effort aimed at undermining the democratic institutions of Lebanon,” according to the report, which was written by Ban’s special envoy on Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen.

(Nice of Larsen doing something useful for a change.) In the articles about the Revolutionary Guards both the Times and the Post talk about the growing tension between the two countries. For example the Times writes:

The announcement also intensifies the strained relations between the two countries.

This reduces what’s going on to a dispute. But what’s going on is more disturbing than that. Iran and its allies through a variety of means are seeking to expand their influence regionally and internationally. Their intentions are not benign. In an effort to stem that tide, the United States has tried to engage Iran diplomatically, but Russian and China have, for their own reasons, sabotaged those efforts. Now the United States is stepping up the diplomatic pressure. Will it have an effect? Will other countries come around or will they keep making excuses?

2002 is playing played out all over again. We’re told to trust the diplomatic process as a tyrant builds his strength. At what point do we have to stop looking the other way?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There’s a fascinating story about a daring Israeli commando raid 35 years ago in the Jerusalem Post.

The Sabena plane had been hijacked by Black September, a PLO splinter group, after leaving Vienna, where it had stopped on a flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv. Levy was ordered to fly the plane to Tel Aviv, where the gunmen offered to free the passengers in exchange for 100 Arab prisoners held by Israel. At the airport, commandos deflated the aircraft’s tires, and then, posing as maintenance staff, they burst onto the plane and rescued the hostages after a brief gun fight. Two male hijackers were killed and their two female companions were captured.

At the end of the ordeal, the pilot, Levy, placed his cap on the head of one of the commandos who stormed the plane but didn’t remember which one. When he returned without his cap, Sabena made him pay for a new one! Well that commando has finally returned the cap.

On Sunday, it was finally returned to his family by a former commando. A beaming Eliezer Sacks, 55, came to the offices of The Jerusalem Post to hand the cap over to Levy’s daughter, editorial assistant Linda Lipschitz. He also gave Lipschitz a letter for her 85-year-old father, who lives in England. “I want to apologize for the long time - 35 years - that I forgot to give your hat back,” Sacks told Levy in the letter written in English. “I hope the hat will find its way back to your head, and more important, find you in good health.”

And who else was involved in the raid?

Led by Ehud Barak (now defense minister and Labor chairman), they included current Likud Party Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, Danny Yatom, currently a Labor MK; and Uzi Dayan, now Tafnit party chairman.

(Netanyahu was wounded in the raid.) It would be nice if they could get their acts together in Knesset as well as they did during that daring rescue mission.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, via good services of Ynet, dropped today a huge Valium tablet on the unsuspecting citizens of Israel. The pill is titled Nuclear bomb won’t destroy Israel.

I am not sure whether I understand all motives of that strange performance that, to my taste, has all the attributes of a staged one. One of the motives is clear - to preempt a possible panic toward the time (if and when) when Iran declares itself to be a proud owner of a military quality nuclear device or two. I don’t even attempt to make a guess about the other reasons.

In any case, and with due respect to the professor whose awesome CV is available here, I can safely say that his optimistic outlook is a lot of hooey.

To start with - the predicted number of immediate casualties. Even if we base our outlook on a “10– 20 kiloton bomb, such as the type that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (to be a nitpicker, the bombs used in these two cases were of two different types), a cursory glance at the relevant data shows that (Nagasaki):

The death toll within a distance of one kilometer from the hypocenter was 96.7% among people who suffered burns, 96.9% among people who suffered other external injuries, and 94.1% among people who suffered no apparent injuries.

In simple words, almost everyone within the one kilometer radius will be killed immediately, with descending casualty percentages as the distance grows. Taking 20,00 as an (optimistic) figure for the 500 meter circle Mr Ben-Israel mentioned, we get the predicted death toll of 80,000 with about half of that number again immediately killed outside of this circle. Which brings us to 120,000, still a fairly optimistic estimate, taking into account the 140,000 death toll in Hiroshima: its urban profile is closer to that of Tel-Aviv than Nagasaki, and more than 60% of its 225,000 citizens died (Tel-Aviv population is over 380,000).

Of course, there are too many factors (such as the winds at the time of the bombing) to make a precise estimate of the consequences of the explosion (mainly the fallout), but the horrible numbers are difficult to argue with.

But this is not all.

The explosion victims that will survive the explosion itself to die later of related reasons will create an insoluble burden on a country of Israel’s size. No country of this size is equipped to take care of tens of thousands of injured and dying.

The destruction of Tel-Aviv may not have a crippling effect on the IDF ability, including that of a counterstrike. However, the economic impact of the Tel-Aviv destruction will be too great to ignore and crippling indeed, not to mention the immediate damage to communications and transport infrastructure…

It is impossible to ignore the impact of such a horrible event on the nation’s morale. In a community so tightly knit as the Israeli one, the horrible death of 120,000 will be a devastating shock, and I am not at all sure that, aside of an immediate act of revenge, the nation will ever recover from it.

So, with all due respect, that Valium pill is rejected, professor.

Update:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

It smells to me as a trend now: is somebody trying to lull us?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

As we mentioned last month, the Waqf is systematically destroying priceless Jewish artifacts on the Temple Mount, with the permission of the Olmert government. The Israeli Antiquities Authority does have some archaeologists on site to watch the destruction being done with heavy machinery and to possibly retrieve bits and pieces of what doesn’t get crushed by the Muslims.

A couple of days ago, in an earthshaking find, some artifacts from the First Temple period were discovered:

The artifacts, which date to the First Jewish Temple period—the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.—were found by employees of the Waqf Muslim religious trust doing maintenance work, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported.

The artifacts may be the first physical evidence of human activity at the Temple Mount—also known as Solomon’s Temple—in that time.

Jerusalem’s district archaeologist Yuval Baruch is supervising the Muslim maintenance project.

Baruch and Sy Gitin, director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Ronny Reich of Haifa University, and Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, concluded that the finds might help reconstruct the dimensions and boundaries of the Temple Mount during the First Temple Period.

The findings include animal bones; ceramic bowl rims, bases, and body sherds; the base of a juglet used to pour oil; the handle of a small juglet; and the rim of a storage jar, according to the IAA.

The bowl sherds were decorated with wheel burnishing lines characteristic of the First Temple Period.

In addition, a piece of a whitewashed, handmade object was found. It may have been used to decorate a larger object or may have been the leg of an animal figurine.
“This is the first time we have shards from the Temple Mount with a [uniform] date,” Haifa University’s Reich told National Geographic News.

The find “most certainly” indicates the presence of people in the temple during the late eighth century and seventh century B.C., he said.

“From an archaeological standpoint, this is the first time this has happened,” Reich said.

“You can say that this was written in the Bible—but the Bible is a text and texts can be played around with. This is physical evidence.”

As one would expect, the Muslims who completely deny that Jews ever lived in ancient Jerusalem - the same ones who deliberately destroy all evidence of Judaism on the Temple Mount - are strongly denying that these finds mean anything. Here’s an autotranslation of an Arabic article from Al-Hayat al-Jadida:

Astonished Sheikh Mohammad Hussein General Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian imam and the Al-Aqsa mosque, yesterday, allegations of Israeli occupation authorities and the so-called alleged Temple Mount during excavations carried out by the Waqf Islamic before the close of the extension the electricity cables in the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The Mufti statements issued several months ago on the effects of Israel and which claimed to have found remnants of dust effects in which the Waqf Islamic factions in 1999 outside the Al-Aqsa mosque.

He said: that these allegations are lies and fabrications denying the existence of any implications for the structure of the alleged yards in the Al-Aqsa mosque or the mosque or close to, adding that this earth that the Waqf Islamic factions are superficial and external back to the Ottoman era and not from the Old Testament as they claim.

The Sheikh Hussein that the city of Jerusalem had been many times for demolition and landfill because of earthquakes in Palestine throughout history, so the soil is excavated in recent times have been of the effects they are talking about nothing.

He added that the occupation authorities claimed each time she found the alleged effects of the structure and mean it behind interference in the affairs of Al-Aqsa mosque and the withdrawal of Endowments and the transfer of powers to the conflict and is impeding the restoration.

The discourse and spending excavations carried out by the occupation authorities since 1967 on the Al-Aqsa mosque and the bottom of walls, occupation authorities warned of the consequences of interference in its affairs.

He appealed to all international bodies and organizations to intervene to stop these practices against the Palestinian holy sites, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, also called the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference to move soon to stop the campaign Althudi of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque.

If chutzpah wasn’t a Yiddish word, it would have to be invented in Arabic. In the same breath where he claims that there are no problems with excavating directly on the Temple Mount, he calls on the world to condemn Israeli excavations far away from the Al Aqsa Mosque - excavations that are being done with utmost care.

The Mufti’s casual dismissal of any finds as being from the Ottoman period - and any sixth-rate archaeologist can easily tell the difference between pottery from the 7th century BCE and pottery from 2400 years later - shows how he is, in the most simple terms, a liar. But his embrace of the destruction of Jewish artifacts while calling on Israel to stop their own work is breathtakingly hypocritical.

Of course, when his purpose is to establish Islamic supremacy and deny any Jewish history in Jerusalem, then his statements are quite consistent, if still as dishonest as can be. Making up fairy tales about Mohammed’s flying horse being tied for a couple of hours to the Kotel, which is a story made up entirely by the Grand Mufti in the 1920s in order to get the Jews away from the Western Wall, proves to anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty that the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is exaggerated specifically in order to de-legitimize Judaism itself.

It is a scandal that the West places equal weight on the liars.