[Mb-civic] FW: The rise of the Islamist axis

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 11:19:30 -0400
Subject: The rise of the Islamist axis

TOWNHALL

The rise of the Islamist axis

By Caroline B. Glick

Apr 8, 2006

On Monday, Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that part of Ukraine's
Soviet-era nuclear arsenal may well have found its way to Iran. With the
breakup of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians agreed to transfer the Soviet
nuclear arsenal that remained in Ukraine after its independence to Russia.
According to Novaya Gazeta, some 250 nuclear warheads never made it to
Russia and are thought to have been sent to Iran instead. The report further
noted that the warheads will remain operational until 2010.

Responding to the report, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, Russia's deputy defense
minister and the chief of General Staff said, "Russia's General Staff has no
information about whether Ukraine has given 250 nuclear warheads to Iran or
not."

It is impossible to assess the accuracy of the report. The Ukrainian
government has dismissed its allegations. Russia may well have invented the
story to shift media attention away from the growing awareness that Russian
support for Teheran, Damascus and Hamas effectively places it in the enemy
camp in the US-led war against global jihad.

But whether this particular report is true or false, there is no doubt that
the danger to Israel and the rest of the Western world emanating from Iran
and its allies is growing by the day. In recent testimony before the US
Congress, John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence, said that the
danger that Teheran "will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to
integrate it with ballistic missiles that Iran already possesses" is a cause
"for immediate concern."

Also this week, as the Web site Regimechangeiran noted, the American Foreign
Policy Council published a report quoting Western intelligence sources
asserting that Iran is in the process of assembling intermediate range
ballistic missiles with a range of 4,500 km. The extended range will enable
Iran to hit almost all of Western Europe with nuclear warheads. The sources
further maintained that Iran is already in possession of at least one
nuclear bomb.

EVEN IF both Negroponte's testimony and the council's report are perceived
by some as alarmist, this week Iran itself continued to make every effort to
convince the world that assessments like these are grossly understated. Iran
conducted an enormous naval exercise called "Great Prophet" in the Persian
Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Almost every day of the exercise Iranian forces
demonstrated new radar-evading ballistic missile systems. While Western
defense establishments have had tepid responses to Iran's show of force, the
regime built on its provocations Wednesday when the supreme commander of its
Revolutionary Guards, Maj.-Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, issued a thinly veiled
threat to close the Straits of Hormuz - the narrow waterway through which 40
percent of the world's oil passes.

Iran's recent financial maneuverings also indicate general preparations for
global war. The Swiss newspaper Der Bund reported the Iranian regime
recently withdrew $31 billion of its gold reserves and foreign exchange from
European financial institutions. Additionally, this week Iran renewed its
gasoline rationing for the general public.

While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's poisonous and apocalyptic rhetoric has
caused the Western world to step away from him, Teheran is far from
isolated. To the contrary, today it perceives itself and is perceived by
others as the leader of a regional Islamist axis.

In February Canada's Globe and Mail published a report in which Hussein Hajj
Hassan, a Hizbullah member of the Lebanese parliament, declared that on
January 20 the Islamist axis was formally cemented in Damascus. The parley
which brought about the entente was led by Ahmadinejad and attended by axis
members Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah,
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdullah Shalah and
the commanders of PLO breakaway front groups. Iraqi Shi'ite terror chief
Muqtada al-Sadr also pledged his allegiance to the axis. The jihad summit
took place five days before the Palestinian elections and on the same day a
suicide bomb exploded in Tel Aviv.

Damascus's response to the establishment of the axis and to Hamas's
electoral victory has been dramatic and disturbing. It has harshly curbed
all liberal political opposition to the Ba'athist regime. Voices of such
dissent were empowered by the firm international position taken against
Syria during the UN investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese
prime minister Rafik Hariri last year. Today many opponents of the regime
are in prison. At the same time, Assad's Alewite minority regime, that has
been radically secular since its establishment in the 1960s, is beginning to
open up to Islamist forces.

Michael Slackman, the New York Times correspondent in Damascus, reported the
change in the general atmosphere on Wednesday. He explained that current
situation reflects "at least in part a growing sense of confidence because
of shifts in the Middle East in recent months, especially the Hamas victory
in Palestinian elections, political paralysis in Lebanon and the intense
difficulties facing the United States in trying to stabilize Iraq and stymie
Iran's drive toward nuclear power." So in a nutshell, members of the Islamic
axis believe that they are on the march and that America and Israel are on
the retreat.

Although not present at the January jihad powwow in Damascus, al-Qaida is
intimately engaged in this Iran-led Islamist alliance. Britain's Sunday
Mirror reported that today al-Qaida forces operate within Iran's
Revolutionary Guards units in Iraq. Both the IDF and Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas admitted last month that al-Qaida units are operating
in Gaza. Also last month, Israel announced the arrest of two Palestinians
from Judea and Samaria who were planning to carry out attacks on Israel for
al-Qaida. Lebanon's government has also acknowledged a growing al-Qaida
presence in largely Palestinian enclaves. Al-Qaida has carried out attacks
against both Jordan and Israel from Jordan and against both Israel and Egypt
from its entrenched bases in the Sinai. Its commander in Iraq, Iranian ally
Abu Musab Zarqawi, has made it clear that al-Qaida has now made attacking
Israel one of its top priorities.

This week, the Daily Telegraph reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guard
forces now control Hizbullah's posts along the border with northern Israel
and are developing an advanced intelligence gathering network for spying on
Israel. A senior IDF commander told the paper that Hizbullah posts built and
fortified by the Iranians just meters away from the international border are
"now Iran's frontline with Israel. The Iranians are using Hizbullah to spy
on us so that they can collect information for future attacks. And there is
very little we can do about it."

No doubt in an attempt to do something about it, this week Northern Command
conducted an enormous exercise which, according to the IDF Spokesman's
Office, tested "deployment of regular and reserve forces to the front,
establishment of bridgeheads, airlift of forces and supplies from the rear
to the front, deployment of forces on various missions, the operation of
logistics centers in the field and the provision of varied operational
responses to the activities of terrorist organizations on the Lebanese
front." By prominently posting a detailed report of the exercise on its
official Web site, the IDF was clearly attempting to signal Iran that Israel
is prepared for whatever awaits us.

Unfortunately - with all due respect to the IDF - Israel's enemies, who know
that the IDF is wholly subordinate to the political leadership, no longer
take its signals seriously. From Gaza to Teheran our enemies are acutely
aware of the weakness of our political leadership and its unwillingness to
contend with them. Today, the policy of the government is to take no account
of any events occurring beyond our indefensible pre-Six Day War boundaries
and to defame anyone who suggests they bear examination.

FOR MORE than two years, the Israeli government and media have told the
public that no matter how our enemies threaten us, they can do us no harm
because America is protecting us. Protected by America, Israelis are told
that we have no reason to fear the consequences of IDF retreats and the
transfer of vacated lands to Hamas.

Sadly, this promise is largely untrue. The Bush administration today is
bogged down in a swamp of strategic paralysis and political distress that
prevent it from designing clear policies regarding the war against global
jihad.

American policy towards the Palestinians is case in point: One day the Bush
administration announces that it is cutting its ties with the Hamas-led
Palestinian Authority and the next day it demands that Israel keep the
borders with Gaza open and promises to find a way to give direct aid to the
Palestinians that somehow will not strengthen Hamas.

As to Syria, the stubborn stance the administration maintained towards
Damascus during the months of Detlev Mehlis's investigation of Hariri's
murder has been replaced by no stance. Aside from finger pointing at
Damascus, Washington offers no plan for ending Syrian support for terrorists
in Lebanon, the PA and Iraq.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal noted that during her weekend pit stop
in Baghdad, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came down publicly
against Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's bid to maintain his position in
the next government. Rice and her British counterpart, Jack Straw, announced
their governments' support for Finance Minister Adel Adul Mahdi, who serves
as the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which
is known to have strong relations with Teheran.

Rice's heavy-handed interference with Iraq's democratic processes goes hand
in hand with the administration's decision to open direct negotiations with
Iran for the first time since the Khomeini revolution in 1979. On Saturday,
direct US-Iranian negotiations on the stabilization of Iraq are scheduled to
begin. And as if the Bush administration's decision to legitimize Iran's
destabilizing position as a power broker in Iraq weren't enough, on Tuesday
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with Rice in Washington
and urged her to open a direct dialogue with Iran on its nuclear weapons
program.

All of these recent developments demonstrate that the members of the
Iran-led Islamist axis are actively pursuing and indeed progressing in their
quest to encircle Israel and entrap the US. This they accomplish - both
separately and together - while Israel and the US insist on doing everything
they can to prevent any possibility of effectively meeting the rising
threats. There is no doubt that the political leadership of at least one of
these states has to snap out of its policy fog immediately. Our enemies have
no consideration for our desire to ignore them.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for
Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and the deputy managing editor of The
Jerusalem Post, where this article first appeared.

Copyright © 2006 Caroline B. Glick
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URL: http://www.townhall.com/print/print_story.php?sid=193033&loc=/opinion/c
olumns/CarolineGlick/2006/04/08/193033.html


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