In this issue:

Why Should Israel Sacrifice Itself for the Sake of World War III?

Opposition: Netanyahu Is 'Playing with the Fires of Hell'

Obama Using Planted Intelligence in War Threats Against Iran

War Frenzy Heats Up Against Syria Again

From Volume 38, Issue 44 of EIR Online, Published November 11, 2011
Southwest Asia News Digest

Why Should Israel Sacrifice Itself for the Sake of World War III?

Nov. 3 (EIRNS)—There is an intense battle between Israeli military and intelligence institutions and the Netanyahu government over the latter's decision to go war against Iran. Lyndon LaRouche said today, that this Israeli discussion is very useful as long as it's not limited to that, but is rather correctly understood as one current expression of the British Empire's difficulties in getting World War III going.

The most recent escalation of this battle occurred when the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot devoted the lead of its Nov. 4 edition to a feature by columnist Nahum Barnea, which reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak had reached a decision to attack Iran, over the opposition of the heads of the intelligence and security services and the military.

Barnea and other Israelis have said that the current heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, and the current Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Force, all oppose such an attack, as did their three predecessors. But the current leadership is younger and less confident—the question is whether they will be able to override Netanyahu, as their predecessors did. Indeed, former Mossad head Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who have long made their opposition public, have been accused of being the source of the leak from the Cabinet. Ma'ariv reported that Netanyahu has started an investigation of the leak. In response to a threat of indictment, Dagan said, "Let them indict me."

The track of a British-directed Israeli attack on Iran, in which Obama will join by secret pre-arrangement, is only one part of the British mechanism for triggering World War III in the "new Balkans" of greater Southwest Asia. Another part includes the Libya conquest and massacres; the third leg is regime-change in Syria.

Opposition: Netanyahu Is 'Playing with the Fires of Hell'

Nov. 7 (EIRNS)—"Israel is playing with the fires of hell," in planning war against Iran, writes Gideon Levy, in the Nov. 7 Ha'aretz. "Insanity, not logic, guides Israel's leadership. The men's men who are threatening Iran now are the real cowards' cowards. The brave ones are in fact those who are trying to thwart the insanity, from former Mossad chief Meir Dagan to Interior Minister Eli Yishai."

"The danger of Iran using a nuclear weapon is nil, and yet Israel is playing with the fires of hell."

Levy says that not only is the Netanyahu government insane about Iran, but also on every other foreign policy and security matter, including: "continued construction in the territories, ... the war that the government of Israel has declared on the Palestinian Authority, without considering what will come instead ... continuing to imprison Marwan Barghouti ... Operation Cast Lead, which damaged Israel much more than it benefited it...."

The opposition continues to surface daily inside Israel against British puppet Netanyahu's insanity that threatens to destroy Israel for the British Empire. Knesset member Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the former head of the Israeli Defense Forces, has denounced the actions by Netanyahu's Cabinet to go for war against Iran, and Likud hawks Benny Begin (son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin) and Dan Meridor, are supporting the statements against the Iran war by the former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Mossad chiefs, reported David Remnick in the New Yorker, Nov. 6.

But the biggest indictment of Netanyahu came from former Israeli Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy in Ha'aretz on Nov. 4, when he wrote that the Jewish fundamentalist right is a bigger threat than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran is not an existential threat to Israel.

"Ultra-Orthodox radicalization [among Jews] poses a bigger threat than Ahmadinejad," Halevy said, according to Ynet, the website of Yedioth Ahronoth. "The State of Israel cannot be destroyed. An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years."

By contrast, he said the growing ultra-Orthodox Jewish Haredi sect "poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad," adding that "the ultra-Orthodox extremism has darkened our lives," referring to the Nov. 4, 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an ultra-right-wing Israeli.

The article appeared on the 16th anniversary of the Rabin assassination.

Obama Using Planted Intelligence in War Threats Against Iran

Nov. 7 (EIRNS)—The intelligence that President Obama is using to justify his war threats against Iran, as at the closing press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, at the G20 meeting in Cannes, was planted on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It was not a finding of the IAEA inspectors, but consists of reports provided by countries that are members of the IAEA, such as Israel, Britain, and the United States, that are trying to start a war. Such third-party reports do not even have to be included in the IAEA report. In fact, in 2009, then-IAEA chief Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei blasted Israeli leaders for accusing him of covering up the Iran nuclear weapons program, when he treated Israeli intelligence with reservations.

Knowing this game very well, on Nov. 5, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters in Tehran that the IAEA "intelligence" on Iran's program was a "fabrication" that had been alleged earlier, and which Iran had already answered in a 117-page report entitled "Alleged Studies." Iran knows what is in the coming IAEA report because it had been given a copy earlier, and offered a chance to "refute" the charges, which Iran refused. At the press conference, Salehi compared Obama's threats against Iran to what the Bush/Cheney regime did against Iraq. "The Americans raised documents like this in the past: the Niger scandal," Salehi said, referring to the Niger yellow-cake uranium forgery.

EIR has confirmed that the 117-page report referred to by Salehi has been in the possession of the IAEA for years, and has never been made public. Moreover, allegations appearing in the press that the IAEA will provide "satellite photos" showing that Tehran "has built a large steel container that can be used to carry out tests with high explosives found in atomic weapons," is an unconfirmed report from an unnamed "third party" country. The satellite photos will not even be provided to the member countries of the IAEA.

War Frenzy Heats Up Against Syria Again

Nov. 6 (EIRNS)—Provocations by numerous armed British intelligence assets in Syria are being used to ignite the British Empire's war to bring down President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. On Nov. 6, an emergency Arab League meeting (with no date set) was called for, because of fighting in the city of Homs, where about 20 people have died. It is impossible to tell how many of the dead are Syrian government forces who were killed by armed insurgents, whose numbers have been put at anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000, including Kurdish guerrillas and Saudi-backed Salafis.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani warned, if Syria doesn't "meet its commitments" to the Arab League agreement, made last week, then the Arab League will hold a ministerial meeting that will "take the necessary decisions."

On Nov. 5, Ambassador Youssef Ahmad, the Syrian envoy to the Arab League in Cairo, appeared on Syrian TV and accused the U.S. of supporting armed insurgents inside the country. Ahmad called the Arab League warnings one-sided, and said the League had not taken "notice of the flagrant U.S. incitement of the armed terrorist groups not to hand over their weapons and benefit from the amnesty," offered by President Assad, reported the London Guardian.

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