Can the U.S. stop Israel from attacking its neighbors? Sen. John Kerry thinks the Israeli government wouldn't bomb Iran without American approval.
Kerry's actual remarks are a little more caveated than the Ha'aretz headline suggests, but my interpretation is that he doesn't think Israel will attack Iran unless Obama admits diplomacy has failed and gives Netanyahu the green light.
James Rainey, the Los Angeles Times' media critic, waded into the month-old controversy over New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner yesterday, concluding that Bronner should be allowed to remain in his post, despite his son volunteering to join Israel's army, the Israel Defense Forces.
In his piece, Rainey argues that Bronner is a skilled reporter who should be judged on the content of his journalism, not on potential biases and internal thought processes that nobody besides Bronner himself can fully understand.
Rainey makes a good case for judging journalists by their work, but he also sidesteps the most powerful arguments against Bronner's remaining.
In the department of "things that should have been done a long time ago," the U.S. State Department has finally lifted its Syria travel warning.
I was never entirely clear on why Syria fell under a travel warning in the first place: The State Department's warning (which has since been removed from the Internet) never referenced any specific threats -- just some ominous language about "large-scale demonstrations" in Damascus, and the fact that Hamas and Hizballah have offices in the country. It always struck me as a product of politics, not legitimate security concerns.
In any event, glad to see it has been lifted. The State Department's full announcement is after the jump.
Not because I'm a huge fan of his or anything. But Nasrallah gave a speech today -- delivered, as usual, via giant video screens in south Beirut -- and much of the reporting on his talk is woefully out of context. Yedioth Ahronoth, for example, headlines its story Nasrallah threatens to attack Ben-Gurion Airport. The Jerusalem Post goes with Nasrallah warns TA will be targeted in next conflict.
These headlines are factually correct -- but they ignore the fact that Nasrallah's speech (عربي) was largely defensive.
Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri's supporters descended on Beirut's Martyrs Square to mark the fifth anniversary of his father's assassination -- even though nobody is quite sure whether the younger Hariri's March 14 alliance has a future.
The rally, in the shadow of the Mohammed al-Amin mosque, has become an annual event in Beirut in the five years since Rafiq Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb. Television news reports say the crowd was smaller than in previous years -- but it still numbered in the tens of thousands.
Joel Rubin, back from Israel after attending the Herzliya Conference, has a thoughtful essay about contemporary Israeli politics posted on Democracy Arsenal.
Rubin argues that most Israelis hate the policies enacted by their right-wing leaders -- but they also continue to overwhelmingly support those same leaders, because they're fearful for their security. It's a trade-off between short-term and long-term interests, in other words.
Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri made some remarks about Hizballah in an interview with the BBC that are getting a lot of attention in the Israeli press.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project has some new polling data out from a survey of the Muslim world -- except it's not really new: These are the previously-unreleased results of a survey conducted in May and June of last year.
Remember that nine-month lag as you read the poll. It's great to have public opinion data on Hizballah and Hassan Nasrallah, but the polling in Lebanon ended on June 3 -- before the Lebanese election! So it doesn't account for March 14's victory, the months-long cabinet-making process that followed, Hizballah's new manifesto, the Syrian-Saudi reconciliation, etc.
And some of the poll's findings are just downright unbelievable. So let's take a look, shall we?
Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, delivered his annual "threat assessment" to Congress (pdf) this afternoon.
The 70-word executive summary -- from the Middle East/South Asia sections, at least: Al-Qaeda and its offshoots still want to attack the U.S. (big surprise); Hizballah does not want to attack the U.S. (more on that to come); Iran wants "the option" to develop a nuclear weapon (note the cautious wording); Iraq is hopeful, and its challenges are mainly political and economic; Afghanistan will be a tough slog; Pakistan still hasn't figured out counterinsurgency.
The Obama administration announced over the weekend that it's speeding up the deployment of missile defense systems in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The White House leaked the news through David Sanger of The New York Times and Joby Warrick of the Washington Post -- two of its favorite conduits for leaking news related to Iran.
The administration didn't put a timetable on the deployments, and it insisted the new weapons are purely defensive in nature.
As I wrote Tuesday night, I don't think another Israel-Hizballah war is imminent: Both sides are preparing for a war, but neither wants to start one. That said: If another war does start, it will almost certainly involve Syria.
Israeli and Arab media have been abuzz for months with stories of Syrian involvement in Hizballah. We mentioned a few of them on Tuesday: The report in Qatar's Al-Watan that Syria pledged to support Hizballah, and the recent rumors that Syria has mobilized thousands of reservists.
The headlines from Israel and the Arab world over the last few weeks seem to suggest that another Israel-Hizballah war is just around the corner. Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Jan. 6 that Syrian officials were worried about Israeli maneuvers along the Blue Line; the Syrian government pledged to attack Israel if it invaded Lebanon. On Friday, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported (عربي) that Syria had mobilized army reservists.
The Israeli military did in fact conduct exercises along the border, and deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon warned on Sunday that Hizballah is stockpiling missiles north of the Litani River.
The Jerusalem Post reported today that Jordanian intelligence is investigating Iranian involvement in last week's Dead Sea Highway bombing. The article -- by Jonathan Spyer, an Israeli researcher -- builds its case mostly on insinuation.
Spyer reminds readers, for instance, that Iarn has previously attacked Israeli targets in third countries -- the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, for example. This is true, but it's also not proof of Iranian involvement in Jordan. Same goes for last summer's revelation that a Hizballah cell was operating in Egypt.
Here's something you don't see very often: Al-Ahram, the state-run Egyptian newspaper, published an article yesterday (عربي) praising Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli Mossad.
The slightly bizarre article -- written by Ashraf Abu al-Hawl, the former head of Al-Ahram's Gaza bureau -- calls Dagan the "Superman" of Israel. It commends him for working to undermine Iran's nuclear program, and for opposing Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Syrian government.
Three people were injured today in a bombing in Kfar Fila, a Lebanese town about 15km southeast of Sidon.
Lebanese news sources aren't saying much about the blast so far. Al-Manar, the Hizballah-run television station, says the blast happened outside a house (عربي) owned by Hussein Hamdan. Lebanese security forces are investigating the explosion.
The Israeli government wants to convince the rest of the world not to send weapons to the Lebanese army:
According to government sources, the position Israel is trying to impress on countries that support Lebanon is that the Lebanese army and Hizbullah are virtually indistinguishable. As such, Israel is calling on countries that provide military aid to Lebanon to rethink the matter.
U.S. officials already have this concern, as we reported last month: They're worried about weapons falling into Hizballah's hands, and reluctant to bring Lebanon closer to any kind of parity with Israel (not that their armies are on anything close to an equal footing right now).
Nonetheless: While this might produce short-term gains for Israel, ultimately, the Jewish state needs a stronger Lebanese army. There's no way to disarm Hizballah, or incorporate it into the LAF, until the latter is stronger than the former.
A mysterious bombing killed three people last night, including two Hamas members, in a Hizballah-controlled suburb of south Beirut.
Hamas hasn't identified the victims; nobody has claimed responsibility yet, and officials from Hamas, Hizballah, and the Lebanese security forces say it's too early to identify a culprit. Authorities can't even say whether the bomb was hidden in a car or a building, though An-Nahar reports that it was a car bomb hidden in a garage.
Saad Hariri is back in Beirut after his 23-hour jaunt to Damascus to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. It was his first official contact with Syria since his father's assassination in 2005 -- and while it produced no concrete results, many Lebanese are hailing the visit as an important step towards reconciliation with Syria.
The question, particularly for supporters of Hariri's March 14 movement, is whether the two countries will reengage as equals -- or, as one Lebanese columnist put it, whether their relationship will be "as brothers, or as parent and son."
Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri is in Damascus today for talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Hariri landed a few hours ago; he was met by a presidential envoy and then motorcaded to Tishreen Palace, the presidential residence, for a meeting with Assad.
The Associated Press reports that Hariri was "greeted warmly" at the palace. He will attend a dinner banquet hosted by Assad, and the two men will hold several meetings over the course of Hariri's two-day visit to Syria.
Hariri has had no official contact with the Syrian government since 2005, when his father, Rafiq al-Hariri, was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut.
A couple of news items in the past two days demonstrate the ways in which technology and mathematics are increasingly playing a role in 21st century warfare and, incidentally, how some reporting might misunderstand some technical - but important - details. Today, the Wall Street Journal broke a story about how insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have "hacked" into U.S. Predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf technology and "intercepted live video feeds" from the Predators' cameras.
Only, I don't see how that's actually possible. The three-member WSJ reporting team led by Siobhan Gorman only mentions one program, the Russian-made SkyGrabber, and although their wording suggests other software might be in play, SkyGrabber doesn't seem capable of intercepting and relaying live video feeds.
