New Delhi's Israeli Embassy Car Bombing: Is Iran Behind the Blast?

Sajjad Hussain / AFP / Getty Images

Investigators inspect the scene of the car bombing near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Feb. 13, 2012.

 Global Spin/
“We would be talking in a different tone if it had happened 20 minutes later and her kids were in the car,” a senior Israeli intelligence official told TIME on Monday, commenting on the bomb attack in New Delhi that injured an Israeli diplomat. An eyewitness claimed to have seen a man aboard a motorbike pull up alongside the car carrying Tali Koren Yeshova, 42, and attach an explosive device whose detonation injured Yeshova, her driver, and two bystanders. Yeshova, who had been en route to pick up her children in the Indian capital, has been hospitalized with spinal and liver injuries and is reported to be in “critical but stable” condition. Soon after the blast, which took place around 3 p.m., Israel blamed Iran for the attack, as well as a foiled attempt on the same day to attach a hand-grenade to an Israeli embassy vehicle in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

(PHOTOS: A bomb explodes near New Delhi’s Israeli embassy.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem that “Iran stands behind the bombers.” Israeli embassies around the world has been on high alert Sunday, the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mugniyah, former military commander of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi’ite Hizballah organization.

Iranian officials denied the allegation, while India’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna condemned the attack vowed to investigate.

Israeli officials believe the latest attacks are related to a series of as many as ten failed attempts, including one in Thailand and one in Azerbaijan in recent weeks. And they suspect Hizballah, perhaps operating through local proxies, as being the perpetrators.

If Monday’s attacks were related to the Mughniyeh anniversary, Israeli sources said, they highlight just how difficult it has been for Hizballah to replace a mastermind whose resume allegedly included spectacular track bombings of U.S. and French embassies in Beirut in 1983, attacks on the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Argentina in 1994 and the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which together claimed hundreds of lives. By comparison, Monday’s attacks appear to have been relatively unimpressive, even amateurish in the case of the Georgian attempt.

Earlier in the evening, Indian television channels showed a burning car around 300 meters away from the Israel embassy in Delhi, which is in a high security zone in the country’s capital, with the Indian Prime Minister’s residence only 500 meters away. Later in the evening, however, the scene at the Israeli Embassy on the six-lane, tree-lined Aurangzeb Road was calm. Three or four security personnel stood around making sure the rush hour traffic moved quickly. The gates to the embassy were closed but not barricaded and floodlights lit up the compound from the inside. The windows facing the street were lit, a sign of the alarm of the embassy officials inside.

David Goldfarb, the spokesman for Israel’s Delhi embassy, said Yeshova’s car was close to the building on Aurangzeb Road when the explosion went off. Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson of India’s Ministry of External Affairs told TIME that Indian officials are working closely with the Israelis. Officials of the central forensic laboratory were seen collecting evidence at the blast site on Monday evening.

India now finds itself caught in the geo-political mire between Israel and Iran, two countries that both share friendly relations with New Delhi. The coming few weeks will be a test for Indian diplomacy as well as its security establishment. It’s unclear whether Hizballah is gaining a foothold in the country, which has suffered no terrorist attack since a blast at Delhi’s High Court last September. In the grisly 2008 assault on buildings in ritzy south Mumbai, conducted by Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a prominent Jewish center was targeted. This is the first prominent attack on a foreign government property in India since the January 2002 attack on the American Center in Kolkata. Monday’s blast has brought the spotlight back on the vulnerability of diplomatic missions in the country. India is not taking any chances and has strengthened its security apparatus across the country to prevent a repeat of Monday’s incident.

—with reporting by Elliot Hannon/New Delhi

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/02/13/is-iran-behind-a-new-delhi-attack-on-an-israeli-diplomat/#ixzz1mICcbWx0

US officials: Israel uses terror group to kill Iran nuke scientists

Richard Engel and Robert Windrem

NBC News

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.

ROCK CENTER EXCLUSIVE

The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980.

The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

The Iranians have no doubt who is responsible – Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, known by various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More >>

Israel: Iran's nuclear arms program is complete, its missiles can reach US

DEBKAfile Special Report

Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi

Iran has completed the development of a nuclear weapon and is only waiting for a sign from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to start assembling its first nuclear bomb, said Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi on Thursday, February 2. By the end of 2012 or early 2013 Iran may have a single nuclear bomb, he said, but by 2015 the figure would jump to four or five. Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon: None of Iran's nuclear installations are immune from attack. Read more >>

Americans talk about an Israeli strike on Iran, but prepare own offensive

DEBKAfile/

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been outspoken about a possible Israeli offensive being launched against Iran from April, but has not leveled about massive US war preparations. The question is no longer if armed hostilities are afoot, but when. Tehran too is gearing up with a new three-week "exercise" and calling allies to the flag, including Syria. There, the appalling bloodbath has reached a scale – 350 Saturday, Feb. 4 alone – which potentially rivals nuclear Iran as the trigger for a Middle East confrontation. Read more >>

The Point of No Return: 3 Reasons Israel will attack Iran

For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold. 
The Atlantic/ By Jeffrey Goldberg

 

Alex Williamson

It is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is also possible that Iran’s reform-minded Green Movement will somehow replace the mullah-led regime, or at least discover the means to temper the regime’s ideological extremism. It is possible, as well, that “foiling operations” conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers—programs designed to subvert the Iranian nuclear effort through sabotage and, on occasion, the carefully engineered disappearances of nuclear scientists—will have hindered Iran’s progress in some significant way. It is also possible that President Obama, who has said on more than a few occasions that he finds the prospect of a nuclear Iran “unacceptable,” will order a military strike against the country’s main weapons and uranium-enrichment facilities.

But none of these things—least of all the notion that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will soon order the American military into action against Iran—seems, at this moment, terribly likely. What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)

In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

More >>

Israeli official implies strike on Iran nukes program is near

By Joshua Mitnick

TEL AVIV  — Tensions between Israel and Iran are on the rise after a group of top Israeli leaders engaged in a round of saber-rattling on Thursday and Iran’s Supreme Leader answered on Friday with a pledge to "remove" Israel.

Speaking at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center's annual conference, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak compared the current standoff with Iran to the "fateful" period before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt.

At the same conference, Israel’s military intelligence chief, Aviv Kochavi said that Iran had enough nuclear material to make four bombs, and could construct a missile within three years. Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon warned that "an unconventional country can’t be allowed to have a nonconventional weapon" and that "a nuclear Iran would be the nightmare of the West."

Even though Israeli leaders have been heartened by international sanctions targeting Iran's nuclear program, which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes only,  the chorus of warnings from Israel reflect growing anxiety among some leaders that Iran may still obtain a nuclear bomb.

"The temperature is rising in Israel," says Meir Javedanfar, an Iran analyst in Tel Aviv. He says that if the defense minister sees the current period as similar to the run-up to the [1967] Six-Day War, "that gives credibility to those who think Israel is going to launch an attack."

Israeli strike would be 'a gift' for Iran, says dissident Amid the rising anxiety, an Iranian dissident who lives in exile in the US, came to the Jewish state this week to warn leaders here that a preemptive strike on Iran would be counterproductive.

Amir Abbas Fakhravar, whose visit got significant attention in the Israeli media, says that Israelis are right to take the threat of a nuclear Iran seriously. But he says he is telling Israeli leaders – among them officials at the Foreign ministry – that harsh economic sanctions like the oil embargo adopted by Europe have the potential to weaken the regime. An Israeli attack, on the other hand, would strengthen it.

Advertise | AdChoices

"This will be the worst scenario. It will be a gift from God for [embattled Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," he says. "After a limited military attack, they can act as a victim, go around the world, and get support and legitimacy from other little countries."

Mr. Fakhravar predicts that absent a strike economic sanctions will eventually bring down the Islamic regime and lead to a new government that would not seek nuclear weapons.

Fakhravar says that he spent five years in Iranian jails and was tortured for participating in student riots against the regime in 1999. He then fled in 2006 with the help of former US defense official Richard Perle. Reports in the US have questioned his credentials as an opposition leader. He was brought to Israel by an Israeli consulting group linked to Israel's opposition Kadima party, in cooperation with the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Netanyahu compares Iran to Nazi Germany But while Fakhravar's credibility may be questioned, his view on Iran is shared by numerous Israeli security chiefs who have publicly cast doubt about the effectiveness of an Israeli strike, and warned about widespread damage from a regional war. Among them is former Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Israeli leaders, however, remain skeptical that sanctions would stop Iran’s government gaining such a capability.

Comparing Iran’s regime to Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it is Israel’s right to act to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran issues warning to U.S., Israel

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Panetta report fuels concerns that Israel will attack Iran

Jacquelyn Martin / Pool via Getty Images

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks with reporters Thursday in Brussels, Belgium, after the conclusion of a day of meetings with fellow NATO defense officials.

By Robert Windrem
NBC News/

Concerns that Israel will attack Iran in an attempt to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons escalated Thursday when the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a “strong likelihood” that Tel Aviv will launch such an offensive in April, May or June. 

Panetta, who is attending a NATO meeting in Brussels, did not dispute the report by Post Op/Ed columnist David Ignatius. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More >>

The New Egypt: We Will Never Recognize Israel

FrontPageMag/ by Joseph Klein

The Islamists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, are poised to take control of the newly elected Egyptian parliament. As they consolidate their power internally, the Muslim Brotherhood-led Islamists will likely turn Egypt into a hotbed of jihadism against anything non-Muslim, taking direct aim at the Jewish state of Israel.

Last winter, as the Egyptian people were rising up against President Hosni Mubarak, Muhammad Ghannem, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam:

The people should be prepared for war against Israel. The Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.

Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Dr Rashad Bayoumi started off 2012 with a belligerent interview published in the Arabic daily al-Hayat, in which he insisted that his organization will not recognize Israel “under any circumstance.” Bayoumi added that “we do not recognize Israel at all. [Israel is] an occupying criminal enemy.”

Bayoumi’s declaration came less than a week after the Muslim Brotherhood, which gave birth to Hamas, hosted Hamas’s Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh with a warm welcome at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Cairo area headquarters. This was Haniyeh’s first trip outside of Gaza since Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007. He milked every ounce of anti-Israel propaganda that he could from the visit. As quoted by Egypt’s state news agency MENA, Haniyeh declared:

Our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohammed Badei, who greeted Haniyeh, engaged in a mutual admiration session with Haniyeh during their meeting. Badei went so far as to extol the Muslim Brotherhood offspring Hamas for now serving as its parent’s role model.

During a joint press conference, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas leaders had this chummy exchange:  More >>

Iran starts building a nuclear weapon: US and Israel tighten cooperation

DEBKAfile/

Iran has embarked on "activities related to possible weaponization," said American sources Thursday, Dec. 22, thereby crossing the Obama administration's red line. This accounts for the dramatic reversal of the US administration's wait-and-see policy on attacking Iran, as articulated this week by Leon Panetta and top US soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey. debkafile reports the US and Israeli are now in sync on action against Iran and have tightened cooperation.More >>

Israel-Iran: La Guerra que Occidente debe evitar

Los halcones de Israel pueden estar muy cerca de desatar una guerra a gran escala con Irán. El pasado lunes 28 de noviembre, las fuerzas de operaciones especiales israelitas mas como conocidas como la "Mano de Dios", hicieron estallar una parte de la instalación nuclear iraní  de Isfahan.

 

En otro incidente, una explosion en Teheran provoca la muerte de un general irani.

De acuerdo con el Times de Londres, Dan Meridor, ministro de inteligencia israeli, implicitament asumio la responsabilidad con los hechos: "Hay países que imponen sanciones económicas y hay países que actúan de otra manera para hacer frente a la amenaza nuclear iraní."
     

Por su parte el mayor general Giora Eiland, ex director de la seguridad nacional de Israel, declaro a la radio del Ejército de Israel que la explosión Isfahan no fue un accidente: "No hay muchas coincidencias, y cuando hay tantos eventos es probable que haya algún tipo de mano que guía, aunque tal vez es la mano de Dios"

 Otro ex funcionario de inteligencia israelí, menciona al menos dos otras explosiones que habrian neutralizado bases de lanzamiento del misil de alcance medio Shahab-3.

La respuesta "oficial" de Iran llego en la forma del ataque de los estudiantes extremistas a la embajada del Reino Unido en Teheran.  No hay ojo por ojo no por deseos de venganza de los halcones y la jerarquia eclesiastica, sino por imposibilidad de ejecutarla en proporcion a la incursion israeli. No es prudencia o sabidura politica sino impotencia que inflama las llamas de una guerra casi inevitable por parte de los protagonistas principales.

Al margen de las altisonantes declaraciones de los halcones israelies, el pequeno pero poderoso enclave judio en el corazon del medio oriente islamico, no puede actuar a gran escala en solitario. 

 

Ahora mismo los estados mayores politico-militares de un Occidente envuelto en la mayor crisis economica desde la gran recesion [en un escenario optimista] deben estar evaluando cuidadosamente pero  con toda celeridad los impactos que sufririan si una guerra de estas caracteristicas llegara a desatarse.

Considerando solo la variante energetica [a lo que habria que anadir la reaccion del mundo arabe y musulman no solo de la region y el rol que China y Rusia adoptarian ante la conflagracion] de unas economias donde precios de $150 dolares el barril de crudo, provocan una recesion inmediata en sus maltrechas economias, la disminucion de la oferta diaria en el mercado mundial petrolero estimada en mas de 10 millones de barriles como resultado del conflicto, lanzaria los precios por encima de la barrera de los $200 dolares.

Enfrentados a movimientos sociales si bien poco organizados pero desestabilizadores como el Occupy Movement en muchas de las principales metropolis, huelgas de mas de dos millones de trabajadores publicos en el Reino Unido, una Zona Euro en crisis estructural cronica que amenaza su desintegracion, mientras su poblacion volcada en las plazas rechaza la aplicacion de los programas de austeridad previstos y una Union Europea que acaba de ser apuntalada por los bancos centrales occidentales para atenuar los negativos impactos en sus respectivos mercados, no es un escenario alentador para apoyar una incursion israeli en gran escala contra Iran.

On Collision Course: Israel, Iran And US

Eurasia Review By: Richard Silverstein

Is a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities possible as a result of the dramatically increasing and unstable relationship among Iran, Israel and the U.S.?  What does this mean for them, for us, for the rest of the world?  Two outstanding speakers will address this complex issue at Seattle’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral on Friday, December 2nd at 7:30PM.

USC Chemical Engineering Prof. Muhammad Sahimi, who has written extensively on Iranian politics and that country’s nuclear program will join Richard Silverstein, writer of the progressive political blog, Tikun Olam for this discussion of these critical and complex issues.  These will include the current program of covert black ops like the Iranian missile base explosion last week, cyberwarfare in the form of Stuxnet, economic sanctions and whether they can work, and whether Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.  If so, what can/should the world do about it, if anything? More >

1000 Naked Israelis Strip to Save the Dead Sea

Karin Kloosterman

 

Spencer Tunick’s naked shoot at the Dead Sea in Israel: yes, some women even got covered in Dead Sea mud.

Cloaked in secrecy, they wouldn’t know the location until they got into the bus. While politics in the Middle East seems to overshadow environmental issues, some passionate Israelis decided to be a part of history, and photographer Spencer Tunick’s dream of his latest “Naked Sea” installation, at the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.

The nude models aged 18 to 77 met early Saturday morning, according to one participant, calling it both exhilarating and strangely natural to be part of one of the latest Tunick projects. Tunick who comes from a religious Jewish family in New York has done about 75 naked installations in cities around the world. This one was about environmental awareness and freedom in the Middle East. The Dead Sea is rapidly sinking due to water shortages from one end in the north as the Jordan River runs dry, and greedy chemical companies from Israel and Jordan on the south side. More >

Israel: Iran closer to atom bomb than thought

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the full extent of Iran's nuclear program was not reflected in a recent U.N. report, which said that Tehran appeared to have worked on designing an atomic bomb. 

"Iran is closer to getting an (atomic) bomb than is thought," Netanyahu said in remarks to cabinet ministers, quoted by an official from his office.

"Only things that could be proven were written (in the U.N. report), but in reality there are many other things that we see," Netanyahu said, according to the official.

The Israeli leader did not specify what additional information he had about Iran's nuclear program during his cabinet's discussion on the report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released last week. More >

Egypt-Israel Gas Pipeline Explosion

SAUDIS make it $1,000,000 for every kidnapped Israeli soldier

barenakedislam

Prince Khaled bin Talal adds $900,000 to Saudi cleric’s $100,000 reward for whomever abducts Israeli soldier in order to be exchanged for Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons.

YNET NEWS  (H/T Robin H) In an interview with Saudi TV, bin Talal stressed that his offer was in response to a similar offer made by a Saudi cleric who earlier this week said he would give $100,000 to anyone who would kidnap an Israeli soldier.

“Al-Qarni offered $100,000 to whoever abducts (an Israeli soldier) and I say to him – I sympathize with you and am offering $900,000 to put the figure at $1 million,” he said. Prince Khaled is the third son of Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi King’s brother.

Deputy Hamas Politburo Chief, Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk declared Friday that the Shalit deal has strengthened the movement and that Gilad Shalit was an important pawn in Hamas hands. “The pawn has served its purpose. There is no doubt that the high number of prisoners released has strengthened the movement’s position in Palestinian society as well as future trust in Hamas,” Marzouk said in an interview with the London-published al-Hayat newspaper.

And though he recognized that the prisoner swap deal with Israel increased Hamas’ political prestige, Abu Marzouk noted that Hamas did not abduct Shalit in order to keep him as a pawn and stressed that Shalit’s kidnapping was only meant to do one thing: Lead to the release of prisoners. “From the start Hamas separated the political aspect of the issue.”

Remembering Shelley Wolochow, murdered by Palestinian terrorist

Why Israel's Deals With the Devils?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read >

Quantum Levitation: What the Palestinian can't do

Prisoner Swap Between Israel, Hamas Moves Ahead