The Distraction

Iran using Gaza to distract us all from a bigger plan.

Arvi's comment on the story below from JP.

Glick's punt made towards the end of this article is that this Gazan
war, incited by Iran, is a distraction. From what? From their designs
on becoming the ideological capital of the world, what else.

Extract: "...unless something changes, Iran will have passed the
nuclear threshold by the end of 2009 and will become a nuclear power
no later than 2011. The report is notable because it is based entirely
on open-sourced material whose accuracy has been acknowledged by the
Iranian regime. "

Worth considering. Not that anyone can do anything about it. It
seems even the good loyal Christians of the whole West have been so
bewitched by their egotistical and paranoic teachers during the late
20th century, as to the probable conspiratorial dynamics of the New
World Order, that they have taken their eyes off the ones who are
planning it all and steadily bringing it to pass in full view of
everybody.



Our World: Iran's Gazan diversion?

Jan. 5, 2009
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST


Since the IDF commenced its ground operations in Gaza on Saturday
night, I have been hungrily eyeing my hat.

On Friday I argued that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is following
the same defeatist strategy in Gaza today that the Olmert-Livni-Peretz
government followed in Lebanon two and a half years ago. In 2006, the
government supported a cease-fire that empowered outside actors - in
that case the UN and Europe - to enforce an arms embargo against
Hizbullah and to act as Israel's surrogate in preventing Hizbullah
from reasserting control over South Lebanon.

In the event, as government critics like myself warned at the time,
these outside actors have done nothing of the sort. The European
commanded UNIFIL force in Lebanon has instead acted as a shield
defending Hizbullah from Israel. Under UNIFIL's blind eye, Iran and
Syria have tripled the size of Hizbullah's pre-war missile arsenal.
And Hizbullah has taken full control over some 130 villages along the
border.




In a similar fashion, today the government is insisting on the
establishment of an international monitoring force, comprised perhaps
of Egyptian, Israeli, Fatah-affiliated Palestinian, American and
European officials that will monitor Gaza's border with Egypt and
somehow prevent weapons smuggling. Like the cease-fire deal in
Lebanon, this plan does not foresee the toppling of the Hamas regime
in Gaza or the destruction of its military capacity. It ignores the
fact that similar, already existing, theoretically friendly monitoring
forces - like the US-commanded Multi-National Force Observers in the
Sinai - have done nothing to prevent or even keep tabs on weapons
transfers to Hamas.

STILL, IN spite of the government's continued diplomatic incompetence,
there are reasons to think that Israel may emerge the perceived victor
in the current campaign against Hamas (and I will be forced to eat my
hat). The first is that Gaza is relatively easier to control as a
battle space than Lebanon. Unlike the situation in Lebanon, IDF forces
in Gaza have the ability to isolate Hamas from all outside assistance.
The IDF's current siege of Gaza City, its control over northern Gaza,
its naval quarantine of the coast and its bombardment and isolation of
the border zone with Egypt could cause Hamas to sue for a cease-fire
on less than victorious terms.

Indeed, this may already be happening. Hamas's leaders are reportedly
hiding in hospitals - cynically using the sick as human shields. And
on Monday morning, Hamas's leadership in Damascus sent representatives
to their new arch-enemy Egypt to begin discussing cease-fire terms.
Taken together, these moves could indicate that Hamas is collapsing.
But they could also indicate that Hamas is opting to fight another day
while assuming that Israel will agree to let it do so.





THE SECOND reason that it is possible that Hamas may be defeated is
because much to everyone's surprise, Iran may have decided to let
Hamas lose.

Here it is important to note that the war today, like the war in 2006,
is a war between Israel and Iran. Like Hizbullah, Hamas is an Iranian
proxy. And just as was the case in 2006, Iran was instrumental in
inciting the current war.

Iran prepared Hamas for this war. It used Hamas's six-month cease-fire
with Israel to double both the range and the size of Hamas's missile
arsenal. It trained Hamas's 20,000-man army for this war. And as the
six months drew to a close, Iran incited Hamas to attack.

So too, in 2006, Iran incited Hamas to attack Israel. That war, now
known as the Second Lebanon War, was actually a two-front war that
began in Gaza. Ordered by Iran, it was Hamas that started the war when
its forces (together with allied forces in Fatah), attacked the IDF
position at Kerem Shalom on June 25, 2006 and kidnapped Cpl. Gilad
Schalit. Israel fought a limited war against Iran's Palestinian
proxies in Gaza for 17 days before the country's attention moved to
the North after Hizbullah attacked an IDF position along the border
and abducted Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Israel's leaders today warn against a possible Hizbullah attack. In
the North, municipalities are readying bomb shelters and air raid
sirens ahead of such a possibility. Most of the IDF reservists called
up over the weekend are being sent to the North ahead of a possible
Hizbullah attack.

But in contrast to the situation in 2006, today Iran seems to have
little interest in expanding the war and so saving Hamas from military
defeat and humiliation. Speaking on Hizbullah's Al Manar television
network on Sunday, Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran's National Security
Council, its chief nuclear negotiator and a close advisor to Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei, essentially told Hamas that it is on its own.

In his words, "We believe that the great popular solidarity with the
Palestinian people as expressed all over the world should reflect on
the will of the Arab and Islamic countries and other countries that
have an independent will so that these will move in a concerted,
cooperative, and cohesive manner to draft a collective initiative that
can achieve two main things as an inevitable first step. These are
putting an immediate end to aggression and second breaking the siege
and quickly securing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza." In other
words, Iran's response to its great enemy's the war against its proxy
is to suggest forming a commission.




There are many possible explanations for Iran's actions. First there
is the fact that war is an expensive proposition and Iran today is in
trouble on that score. In the summer of 2006, oil cost nearly $80 a
barrel. Today it is being traded at $46 a barrel. Iran revised its
2009 budget downward on Monday based on the assumption that oil will
average $37 a barrel in 2009.

Over the past several months, Iran has been begging OPEC to cut back
supply quotas to jack up the price of oil. But, perhaps in the
interest of weakening Iran, Saudi Arabia has consistently refused
Iran's requests. To date, OPEC's cutbacks in supply have been far too
small to offset the decrease in demand. And the loss of billions in
oil revenues may simply have priced Iran out of running a two-front
terror war.

Then too, Washington-based Iran expert Michael Ledeen from the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies argued on Monday in his blog at
Pajamas Media website that Iran's apparent decision to sit this war
out may well be the result of the regime's weakness. Its recent
crackdown on dissidents - with the execution of nine people on
Christmas Day - and the unleashing of regime supporters in riots
against the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, Turkish and French embassies
as well as the home of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi lends
to the conclusion that the regime is worried about its own survival.
As Ledeen notes Teheran may view another expensive terror war as a
spark which could incite a popular revolution or simply destabilize
the country ahead of June's scheduled presidential elections.

THERE IS also the possibility that Iran simply miscalculated. It
believed that ahead of Israel's February 10 elections, the lame-duck
Olmert-Livni-Barak government, which was already traumatized by the
2006 war, would opt not to fight. This would have been a reasonable
assumption.

Read the rest:

caroline@carolineglick.com

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167266396&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull


Copyright 1995- 2009 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/


h/t: Arvi