Saturday Headlines:

U.S. Drones Flying Over Syria To Monitor Crackdown

The United States is flying unmanned reconnaissance planes over Syria to monitor the regime's escalating crackdown on dissent, U.S. defense officials told NBC television on Saturday.

The drones are being used to gather evidence on the Syrian security forces' violence against pro-democracy protesters that can be used to "make a case for a widespread international response," the U.S.-based broadcaster quoted the unnamed officials as saying.

Western officials fear that Iranian military presence along with Russian aid could turn Syria into a center of international friction much worse than the struggle inside Syria. They fear that the control over actions in Syria will be taken over by a Russian-Iranian "partnership" which would exclude the European Union and Turkey and that U.S. involvement could be too late and inefficient.

Iran Sanctions Will Fail: Military Action Likely

...there is a strong current of opinion within the administration – including in the Pentagon and the state department – that believes sanctions are doomed to fail, and that their principal use now is in delaying Israeli military action, as well as reassuring Europe that an attack will only come after other means have been tested.

Iran's increasingly belligerent moves – such as the botched attempts, laid at Tehran's door, to attack Israeli diplomats in Thailand, India and Georgia – are compounding the sense that Iran is far from ready to negotiate.

"It's not that the Israelis believe the Iranians are on the brink of a bomb. It's that the Israelis may fear that the Iranian programme is on the brink of becoming out of reach of an Israeli military strike, which means it creates a 'now-or-never' moment," he said.

There is a school of thought – a suspicion, even – within the administration that Netanyahu might consider the height of the US election campaign the ideal time to attack Iran. With a hawkish Republican candidate ever ready to accuse him of weakness, Obama's room to pressure or oppose Netanyahu would be more limited than after the election.

"One theory is that Netanyahu and Barak may calculate that if Obama doesn't support an Israeli strike, he's unlikely to punish Israel for taking unilateral action in a contested election year," said Kahl. "Doing something before the US gives the Israelis a bit more freedom of manoeuvre."

Sirens Ring As Grad Explodes Near Beersheba

A Grad-type rocket was launched in the direction of the Negev's largest city, Beersheba, on Saturday, triggering air raid sirens. Two additional rockets exploded in fields in the farming districts of the western Negev. All of the attacks failed to cause injuries or damages.

The upsurge in rockets began on Friday evening, when Palestinians fired projectiles into southern Israel, setting off sirens in Ashkelon.

Rocket Hits South Of Ashkelon

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded south of Ashkelon on Friday. The Color Red alert sounded across the city. A short while later, a Qassam rocket exploded in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council.

Four Qassam rockets were fired from Gaza on Wednesday, hitting the western Negev. No injuries or damage were caused. It was the most significant barrage perpetrated in recent weeks.

Later Wednesday, the Palestinians reported that IAF helicopters fired at open areas in the Gaza Strip. The IDF said the fire was directed at specific targets, and came in response to the rocket fire.

Crisis In U.S.-Israel Relations Over Nuclear Talks With Iran

In the last 24 hours, the approach of international talks with Iran on its nuclear program has escalated already high tensions over the issue between the Obama administration and the Israeli government

US President Barack Obama decided to send his US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to an urgent visit to Israel Saturday, Feb. 18, for three days of talks “on regional issues including Syria and Iran.”
This unusually long trip by a top White House official over the weekend is a measure of the crisis in relations.

Netanyahu has said he feels cheated. By its actions the Obama administration leaves Israel with no recourse other than to grapple with the Iranian menace on its own, he has said, and be less sensitive to Washington’s wishes.

A bipartisan group of concerned US senators warned President Obama Friday that they would strongly oppose any proposal in talks with Iran that would allow it to continue uranium enrichment activities.

Two Iranian warships sailed through Suez Canal to Mediterranean Friday on their way to Syria. Israel called their mission a provocation.
Wednesday, Netanyahu blasted Iran – and indirectly Washington– when he said in Cyprus that sanctions “haven’t worked” and that for a regime which attacks diplomats to have nuclear weapons “is something of enormous concern for the United States and for Israel.”

Alert: Agenda 21 To Gel Into Global Mid 2013

You are witnessing a plan that is taking place all across the United States NOW. It has many names but it’s the same plan. UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development: Sustainable Cities Strategy. It is a regional plan that creates unelected boards of elected officials who are engaged in erasing the boundaries between cities, counties, and states.

What are these plans called? Your government is using similar names for all of these plans and they are all the same: Regional. They are being rolled out NOW. The adoption date is MID-2013. ALL OVER THE US.

All plans include Smart Growth–high density housing with restrictions on personal space and car usage. All plans support high speed trains–the building block of Mega-Regions. All plans give power to regional transportation and planning boards (MPOs and COGs) through federal and state fund disbursements. In all plans housing and transportation are now linked. In all plans population projections are hugely inflated. All plans will go forward as planned. This is a planning revolution.

Here are just a few plans around the country using the word “VISION” a UN Agenda 21 buzz word. Other plan names use variants on the sustainability jargon. There are thousands of these plans and they all have a goal of transformation–a jargon term for destruction.

• One Valley One Vision (you’ll find this in Santa Clarita Valley, CA; Montana; and Dona Ana County / Las Cruces, New Mexico
• Nine Counties, One Vision (Tennessee)
• One Region One Vision (New York, and Indiana)
• Our Florida Our Visio
• One Bay Area (SF Bay Area–9 counties)
• Six Towns One Vision (Lycoming County)
• Five Counties One Vision (Minnesota)
• Four States One Vision (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas)

Logistics Of An Israeli Strike On Iran: An Informed View from Germany

Rühle is highly confident that Israel could knock out Iran’s nuclear program for a decade or more with about 25 of its 87 F-15 fighter-bombers and a smaller number of its F-16s. Each of the F-15s would carry two of the GBU-28 bunker busters, with the F-16s armed with smaller bombs. Rühle writes

Available guidance systems, the German expert adds, are quite adequate to guide the bunker-busters to their goal in this fashion. Only a few bombs, he adds, would be required to destroy all the centrifuges; spinning at 1,500 revolutions per second, these instruments turn into grenades when destabilized. With a few hits, all the centrifuges would be destroyed beyond repair.

Fordow, by contrast, is a harder target, with about 3,000 centrifuges under 70 meters of rock. Even the U.S., Rühle says, does not have bunker-busters that can penetrate that far. The deployment of special forces is a more likely option. The other targets (the light- and heavy-water reactors) are far softer, and F-16s with lighter munitions would suffice.

Parchin is the “bottleneck” through which all nuclear materials must pass, the weapons production facility where warheads are designed and tested. “How many bombs would be required to destroy Parchin,” Rühle says, “is a matter of speculation.”

Most importantly, Rühle believes that it would take Iran a decade to restore its capabilities — with the exception of Isfahan — unless special forces could inflict more damage from the ground than was possible from the air. There are risks, of course: the Russians might have secretly given Iran more advanced surface-to-air missiles; refueling might be interdicted along a route that overflies potentially hostile countries; and Iran’s proxies (Syria, Hizbollah, Hamas) might retaliate. Nonetheless, he concludes that Israel could lastingly disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.