Israel Pressures US on Syria: After this week’s meetings in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been pressing U.S. officials not to send Robert Ford, the recently nominated ambassador to Damascus.
Dubai Accuses Israel on Assassination: Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim says he has DNA evidence from one of the assassins and fingerprints from the crime scene. He urged Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, to “be a man” and admit that Israel stands behind last month’s killing of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
UN Repeats Call for Call War Inquiries: On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a new resolution, by 98-7 (including the US and Israel) with 31 abstentions and 50 absent, calling on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to investigate the 2008/9 Gaza War with inquiries that are “independent, credible and in conformity with international standards“.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview to Haaretz’s Ari Shavit. He said that the Palestinian Authority is giving signals of lifting pre-conditions to start negotiations. Asked about public criticism against the Cabinet initiative to launch a restoration program of historical sites in Israel, including locations in the West Bank, he defended the programme on the grounds of security:
The dominant global culture is endangering the cultures of smaller nations. Our problem is particularly acute. We are living in this country because we are linked to it; we were exiled, and we have returned. There’s no people that needs to deepen its roots in its land more than we do. That is why I believe national security doesn’t only depend on military and economic might, but also on enhancing the young generation’s knowledge of our past, and strengthening its connection to our land.
Netanyahu announced on Sunday that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem (all in the West Bank) would both be added to the list of national heritage sites that the government plans to promote. He said that the rightist religious party Shas persuaded him add the two sites to the list and added:
Our existence depends not only on the IDF or our economic resilience – it is anchored in…the national sentiment that we will bestow upon the coming generations and in our ability to justify our connection to the land.
Following an unproductive Russia visit, a high-ranking Israeli delegation is to leave at the end of the month for Beijing. Both officials will not only talk about the increasing financial cooperation between two countries but also the request for sanctions on Tehran. Haaretz underlines that Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have not visited China and held no significant talks with Chinese officials on the Iranian issue but have always held meetings with the rest of the 5+1 camp (Russia, USA, Germany, UK, France).
Pressing Israel on Dubai Assassination: Following the use of French, British, German and Irish passports by the suspected assassins of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, European states demanded further clarifications from Israel. Israeli diplomatic opinion is split, with some worrying about the image of Israel whilst others think the crisis will vanish soon. “At this stage, there is no evidence linking Israel to the incident, and if that continues, the affair will subside quickly,” one senior Israeli official predicted.
Interpol published wanted notices and images on Thursday of the 11 people in the suspected hit squad. Dubai Police Chief Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Interpol to seek the arrest of Meir Dagan, urging it to issue a “red notice against the head of Mossad.”
Hamas said the two Palestinians arrested in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh are former members of the rival Fatah movement’s security forces, with links to Fatah’s senior security official Mohammed Dahlan. Haaretz also says that the two Palestinians were at one time members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in Gaza, but only after Hamas took over the Strip in June 2007. Dahlan and Fatah deny the charges.
Israel FM Lieberman “Ambiguity” on Dubai Assassination: Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not deny Israeli involvement in the killing of Hamas’s Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel but said that Israel has a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters and there was no proof Mossad was behind the assassination. Lieberman said, “The Mossad was not behind the assassination of Mahmoud el- Mabhouh, but rather [it is] a foreign organization that is trying to frame Israel.”
Netanyahu “No Iran War”: Following a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — in response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s accusation that Israel was “planning a spring or summer war” — said, “Israel is not planning any sort of war.”
According to State Department official Jeff Feltman, as quoted by the London-based Al-Hayat daily newspaper, Washington is concerned that the continued flow of arms to Hezbollah could prompt a war between Israel and Lebanon. Feltman said “many reports” describing the quantity and types of weapons being smuggled to the organization are proof of the failure of United Nations Resolution 1701, which put an end to the conflict in 2006 and demanded a weapons-free south Lebanon.
Hezbollah is in the Lebanese government and is developing a military force under the government.
These weapons are without doubt aimed at Israeli civilians. It is the responsibility of the Lebanese government to prevent attacks against Israel and its citizens.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Press TV has declared that a secret meeting took between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, and Israeli officials on 28 January, in which Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Peled said that another confrontation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah was almost inevitable.
2240 GMT: Balatarin Lives (for Real). An update and possible correction on our earlier story (1914 GMT) about the fate of Balatarin, the Iranian news portal. The site is back up, and some Iranian activists are saying that the supposed “successor” Agah Tarin was actually a regime attempt at imitation.
2000 GMT: An Iranian activist reports that journalist Nasrin Vaziri has been released after 23 days in prison.
1950 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz reports that Ali Reza Beheshti, Mir Hossein Mousavi’s chief advisor, has suffered a heart attack in detention. It adds, however, that Beheshti has contacted his family and said that he is now better.
1914 GMT: Balatarin Lives. Balatarin, an Iranian website similar to the Digg or NewsVine portals, has been an important news source during the post-election crisis but was knocked off-line recently. Now a successor, Agah Tarin, has appeared.
1910 GMT: Mohsen Safai Farahani, recently sentenced to six years in prison, will be released today on bail of $700.000 $ for five days during the appeal against the verdict.
1900 GMT: The Battle Against Ahmadinejad. For all of our attention to the manoeuvres around the Supreme Leader’s speech, this may be the most important news on the in-fighting in the establishment. An unnamed influential member of the hardliners who supports the Government declares that Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai “is out”.
Enduring America’s Mr Smith, who has first-hand sources and knowledge of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, the physicist killed yesterday in the explosion of a booby-trapped motorcycle, assesses the consequences of the murder:
The murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi adds yet another mystery to the litany of violence, unexplained circumstances, and unpredictable twists that Iran has been witnessing since June 12.
Ali-Mohammadi was a mild-mannered academic who, like most of his colleagues, quietly supported reformist leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the run-up to the presidential vote and who became more vocal in its aftermath. However, his association with physics — he was among the very first scholars to emerge from the Islamic Republic’s universities with a Ph.D., made it easy for state media to link him to the nuclear field and for Western news organisations and Israeli analysts to quickly claim he was active in the nuclear programme of Iran. Read the rest of this entry »
Israel Pressures US on Syria: After this week’s meetings in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been pressing U.S. officials not to send Robert Ford, the recently nominated ambassador to Damascus.
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