Is the World Safer Today?

There are politicians that argue that today the world is a safer place. Sorry – but I’m just not buying it.

The disastrous “Iran Nuke Deal”

January 16, 2016 will go down in infamy as the day that a humiliated United States lost any last vestige of respect and credibility in the Middle East. As Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post: “Iran shed almost four decades of rogue-state status and was declared a citizen of good standing of the international community, open to trade, investment and diplomacy…without giving up, or even promising to change, its policy of subversion and aggression… without having forfeited its status as the world's greatest purveyor of terrorism…Overnight, it went not just from pariah to player, but from pariah to dominant regional power, flush with $100 billion in unfrozen assets and virtually free of international sanctions…”

Not to mention the fact that Iran now has a clear pathway to developing and stockpiling nuclear weapons within a few short years...or much less if they cheat.  

Are Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran on the Brink of War?

The execution of Saudi Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Baqer al-Nimr and the subsequent attacks of Iranian rioters on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and consulate in Mashhad, caused unprecedented damage to the relations between the two countries.  Saudi Arabia cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran, together with other Arab-Muslim countries including Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and the Comoro Islands. The UAE lowered the status of its diplomatic relations and the governments of Qatar and Kuwait recalled their ambassadors for consultation. Jordan joined the protest against Iran, but retained diplomatic relations.

Iran threatened revenge and warned that the end of the Saudi regime was close. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened the Saudis with "divine retribution" against the heads of the regime.

But is war eminent? It’s possible though most analysts doubt it. One reason is that the Saudis and most Middle East countries believe that because of the watered down conditions of the “Nuke Deal”, Iran is still in the same the 2-6 week nuclear “breakout” stage it was this time last year. That’s why Saudi Foreign Minister Adel

Al-Jubeir flew to Pakistan last week not only to get assurances that the only Sunni Muslim nuclear country will provide assistance to repel Iranian aggression, but also possibly to get 2 or 3 off-the-shelf nukes.  

Israel: Knife, gun and car ramming terrorist attacks continue.

Despite the cold and wintry weather, in recent days there has been an uptick of terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens and security forces. Here are just a few:

•  Two terrorists stabbed two women on Monday (1/25) afternoon at a grocery store in the settlement of Beit Horon in the West Bank. A security guard shot and killed both of the attackers.
• Security forces found three home-made bombs in the vicinity of the store, apparently planted there by the terrorists, and a bomb squad was called to the scene to neutralize them.
• The Shin Bet, in cooperation with the IDF, recently arrested 18-year-old Palestinian twin sisters Diana and Nadia Hawilah, following a search of their house that revealed weapons including pipe bombs, fertilizers used for making explosives, as well as a knife and Hamas headbands.  According to the investigation, Diana bought the chemicals found in her home, watched online video tutorials to learn how to build explosive devices, and intended to use them against Israelis.
• A 13-year-old Palestinian girl tried to stab a civilian security guard at the entrance to the settlement of Anathoth in the West Bank's Binyamin region on Saturday morning. The security guard shot and killed her before she was able to hurt him. 

There were many more attacks, including a 14 year old boy who stabbed and killed a mother of 6 after seeing a program on Palestinian TV, inciting everyone to kill Jews.

There are politicians that argue that today the world is a safer place.  Like I said above…I’m just not buying it!

2015 Ended Bad - 2016 Started Worse!

At the end of 2015, the Middle East was in a relatively predictable, ongoing routine of high tension rhetoric with sporadic "low-flame" outbreaks of violence:

 

Syria - the Sunni - Shiite civil war (aka: "The Saudi-Iranian-Russian-American-Turkish proxy war") went on with no end in sight:  

• Assad's Alawite forces, as well as ISIS and Turkey, continued to intentionally bomb civilian targets, while ISIS accelerated its barbaric ethnic cleansing of Christian, Kurdish, Druze and Yazidi villages in areas under its control. All this caused the growing flow of Syrian refugees into Jordan, Turkey and Europe to continue unabated. 
• The shrinking American led coalition kept up somewhat effective air strikes on suspected ISIS targets, while the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to recruit, train and support "moderate" anti-Assad Sunni rebels.
• Pro-Assad Russia continued expanding its military presence in Syria, while launching effective missile strikes from the air, ground and sea against anti-Assad Sunni rebel forces (including ISIS and the groups the U.S. is supporting) that threaten Assad's Alawite regime and Russia's regional interests.
• Iranian ground forces were deployed in Syria to help Russia and Hezbollah defend Assad's regime, and to protect Iran's over 100,000 long and medium range missiles deployed in Syria and Lebanon, but most  were pulled out after suffering heavy casualties.
• Israel, in coordination with both the U.S. and Russia, from time to time bombed targets in Syria to prevent the transfer of missiles and heavy military weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. One targeted attack killed several Hezbollah militants including convicted child-killer Samir Kuntar.

Egypt - continued its war against ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups in Sinai, while relentlessly arresting and prosecuting Muslim Brotherhood leaders and organizations (including Hamas) throughout the country...ignoring U.S. requests to let them go.  

 

In the region, the centuries old bloody religious conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran was, with the exception of the proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, more verbal than combative. This was mainly because last year the Saudis believed the "crystal clear" presidential promise that the U.S.will never let their mortal enemy, Iran, acquire nuclear weapons.

 

In Israel, 2015 ended with the almost daily tragic routine of "knife and car-ramming" terrorist attacks. Tragic because they usually ended with the victims being wounded or killed (22 killed, 283 wounded at the end of 2015) and the terrorists, most of them Palestinian teenagers, being killed, wounded or detained (142 killed, 90 of them attackers, 3000+ wounded and 2400+ detained).

 

So how did 2016 start worse than 2015 ended?

In just the first 7 days of 2016:

 

Syria: Hezbollah terrorists attacked IDF soldiers patrolling inside Israel on the foothills of Mt. Dov, on the Golan Heights. Israel fired rockets and artillery shells at nearby Hezbollah positions.

 

But even before this incident tension along the Northern border was rising. When military intelligence confirmed recently that Iran and Hezbollah are planning rocket and infiltration attacks against Northern Israel from Syrian controlled areas of the Golan Heights, the IDF and local authorities started preparing for another Lebanon War.   

 

The Region - as details of the watered down, unenforceable and as yet unsigned JCPOA, the so-called "Iran Nuclear Agreement", came out, the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab Gulf States felt betrayed by the P5+1 negotiators...and especially the U.S.

 

Statements by Iranian leaders, including the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, made it clear that Iran would neither sign the agreement nor fulfill its obligations to it. The "robust and invasive anytime, anywhere" inspection regime of Iranian facilities by the IAEA, as promised by the U.S. last year, became a laughable self-inspection by the Iranians with no foreigners present.

 

In an obvious move to provoke Iran, the Saudi royal court ordered the execution of a convicted influential Shiite cleric, together with 46 mostly Sunni dissidents and terrorists.  

 

Iranian demonstrators, encouraged by their leaders, took to the streets, broke into the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and set fire to parts of it. The Saudis responded by cutting diplomatic relations with Iran, and ordering Iranian diplomats and citizens to leave the kingdom.

 

While full scale war is not foreseen at the moment, it's not beyond the realm of possibility. But with no movement yet on the JCPOA, nor any effective international inspection mechanism in place, Iran is still exactly as it was one year ago - having the ability and intent to "break out" with a nuclear warhead within 4-6 weeks, if it doesn't have one already.

 

Which is why on Sunday Pakistan, a Sunni Arab country with nuclear weapons, promised the Saudis "any assistance necessary" to repel or respond to an Iranian attack.

 

Israel - The year started with more knife and car terrorist attacks, but also with an alarming escalation:

On January 1, Nashat Melhem, a 29-year-old Israeli Arab, opened fire on a crowded bar in a lively area of Tel Aviv. A manager of the bar and a customer were killed. He then killed a taxi driver, also an Israeli Arab. After a week on the run, he was found by the Shin Bet and police in his home village in the North. When they tried to arrest him he fired at them and was killed.

 

And this was only the first week of 2016...!

 

Maybe we're seeing the last remnants of really bad policies from 2015.

 

Maybe world leaders have finally figured out what is going on, and what to do about it.

 

David Ben Gurion always said:"In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles."   

 

With that thought, let's realistically hope that maybe 2016 will actually be better than 2015!

My Crystal Ball for 2016

During the days before the New Year, journalists and pundits have a tendency to languish nostalgically on summaries of events and trends of the outgoing year. Who did what, who said what, who married (or divorced), who was successful, who failed, who rose to stardom, who descended into oblivion, who's political fortunes shined this year, and whose were humiliatingly tarnished.

In world affairs, we're seeing "expert" end-of-year analysis about which of the four "super-powers": U.S., Russia, China or Iran has more worldwide respect, allies and influence.

Don't worry - I have no intention of boring you with a walk down memory lane and facts that you already know or can easily look up.

 

Besides, though some good things happened this year, I really don't feel like revisiting the international and political blunders (both Israeli and American!) of 2015.

 

There is good reason that on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, we say: "Tichleh shana vekileloteha, tachel shana uvirchoteha" ("May a year with its curses end, may a year with its blessings begin"). In Arabic they say: "Il faht maht" ("what is past is dead").

 

So, dusting off my usually reliable crystal ball, let's leave 2015 in the rear-view window, and see what twists and turns the beginning of 2016 may have in store for Israel and the region...          

 

The "Knife Intifada" will continue, despite Israel's ongoing upgrading of prevention, threat-neutralization and deterrence policies. 

Recent polls show a growing support for this "national resistance" among Palestinian youth and young adults, mainly in the West Bank, as the result of non-stop incitement and pseudo-religious "justification", together with daily media glorification of the so-called "martyrs" by prominent Arab and Palestinian leaders from President Abu Mazen and his ruling Fatah faction, through Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, ISIS and others.

 

The naive potential terrorists are not only promised all the benefits of "martyrdom", but also a glorified eternal place of honor in a pantheon of "national heroes" whose death brought about the "Liberation" of Palestine. Both are very persuasive motivators.

 

While this low-intensity war is not an existential threat to Israel, the "optics" and International public relations will continue to fuel anti-Israel and "one-state" movements worldwide.

 

A new Lebanon war?  After the targeted extermination last week of convicted murderer and terrorist, Samir Kuntar, together with other senior Hezbollah militants, Hassan Nasrallah, the organization's leader, threatened Israel with a painful retaliation, both "in and out of the country".

 

In response, the head of the IDF, Lt. Gen Gadi Eisenkot stated unequivocally that Nasrallah and Hezbollah would be making a big mistake if they perpetrated a lethal terror attack, either in Israel or anywhere in the world, to avenge Kuntar's elimination.

 

Will a Hezbollah response to Kuntar's death trigger another Israel-Lebanon war within the next few months? That's certainly possible and the IDF is more than prepared.

 

However Western sources claim that several Lebanese political factions are pressuring Nasrallah not to launch a revenge attack, since Israel will retaliate with devastating force against Lebanon.

 

Even Iran, Hezbollah's patron, is telling Nasrallah to avoid a conflict with Israel right now, since it would cause huge damage to the current efforts to preserve Bashar Assad's Alawite/Shiite government in Syria, and to Hezbollah and Iran's influence and infrastructure in Lebanon.

 

Will Hezbollah do something really stupid? The next few days, or weeks will tell.

 

War with ISIS? Last On Saturday ISIS released a recorded message, supposedly by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In it he said: "We are getting closer to you day by day, do not think that we have forgotten about you...God caused the Jews of the world to gather in Israel, and the war against them has become easy...It is the obligation of every Muslim to carry out Jihad. Jews, you will not enjoy in (sic) Palestine. God has gathered you in Palestine so that the Mujaheddin (militants that engage in Jihad) can reach you soon and you will hide by the rock and the tree. Palestine will be your graveyard".

According to Israeli sources, ISIS has been planning attacks against Israel for some time. Covert and overt IDF, GSS (Shin Bet) and Mossad operations, both alone and/or in cooperation with the US, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, other Arab countries and Turkey, have so far effectively thwarted those plans. As result the one country al-Baghdadi fears is Israel.

 

In a taunt to the US and Russia, Baghdadi added: "Be confident that God will grant victory to those who worship him, and hear the good news that our state is doing well. The more intense the war against it, the purer it becomes and the tougher it gets."

 

Based on the methodology of the recent ISIS attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, it would be prudent to assume that al-Baghdadi's words were not just intended to threaten Israel, but very possibly also to "activate" already embedded, trained and equipped sleeper cells or "lone wolf" terrorists in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. 

 

I'm confident that Israel's highly experienced defense and security services are on top of this. However, we should always remember that in security, there is never "100%". 

 

There is more in my crystal ball regarding Israel, America and the Middle East in the first half of 2016...but I have to recharge it now.

 

As for the second half of 2016 - I agree with the wise Jedi Master Yoda who once observed: "Always in motion the future is...difficult to see."

 

Happy New Year, and may "The Force" be with us all in 2016...we're going to need it!