La paix au Moyen Orient

rafi a écrit:

Humiliation? Non une vraie et belle opération pour distraire du but principal. Tenter d'éloigner la Turquie des négociations entre la Syrie et Israel, un tant soit peu que le mot négociation veuille encore dire quelque chose avec Liebermann aux affaires étrangères, et mettre Barak (et le parti travailliste) dans l'embarras. Maintenant qui tombera, ou pas, dans le panneau?

RED BISHOP a écrit:

Ouh la quelque chose se prépare...

Michael Knights - The Washington Institute a écrit:

A Missile Defense “Manhattan Project” in the Middle East

One of the fruits of Arab-Israeli normalization should be more robust U.S.-led missile defense collaboration between states that face the greatest threat from Iran.

On December 15, Moshe Patel, head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, publicly signaled that his agency was interested in working with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, building on the existing U.S.-Israeli cooperation in the missile defense sector. These states share an obvious community of interest: all of them are threatened by Iran’s fast-developing missile, rocket, and drone forces.

This community—which could in time be expanded to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other states—gives the incoming Biden administration an opportunity to build stronger regional coalitions and point U.S. allies and partners toward defensive containment of Iran, as opposed to costly and destructive debacles like the Yemen war. Just as Washington drew allies together in the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons in 1942-1946, it should focus a similar collective effort on countering theater ballistic missiles, rockets, and drones—first in the Middle East, but with obvious applicability to great power competition against China, North Korea, and Russia. The urgent need for greater defensive capability was demonstrated in Baghdad on December 20, when the U.S. embassy was targeted with twenty-one rockets, the largest salvo against an American facility since 2010.

Defining the Shared Threat

A quick review of recent military events underlines why a leap-ahead development in defense systems has become so crucial:

United States. In the last year, three Americans have been killed in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias, and nearly a hundred suffered brain injuries when Iran fired ballistic missiles at al-Asad Air Base in retaliation for the U.S. targeted killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In the latter case, the United States did not have enough Patriot missile interceptors to cover all bases worldwide and had not allocated a battery at al-Asad, underlining the fact that today’s missile defense systems are very expensive and thus scarce. The situation has created numerous other problems for the U.S. military. For instance, because critical hubs such as the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar are exposed to some degree, CENTCOM has had to transfer all U.S. command-and-control functions as far back as Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. Moreover, to intercept even cheap tactical rockets of the type used in the December 20 attack, U.S. forces have had to fire long bursts of large-caliber explosive bullets over a partner nation’s capital city, at substantial risk and with only partial success. If larger rocket salvoes are launched in the future, such defenses would be quickly overwhelmed. The need for a directed-energy (i.e., laser) counter-rocket system is becoming increasingly urgent.

Israel. The shadow of 120,000-150,000 unguided and precision rockets has long hung over Israel from the north, operated by Iranian ally Lebanese Hezbollah. In addition, Iran can now launch missile and drone attacks against Israel from Syria, Iraq, and its own territory. Another potential front emerged on November 23, when Iran’s Houthi partners in Yemen threatened to launch missiles against Eilat in south Israel.

UAE. Since 2017, the Houthis have repeatedly threatened to strike the UAE, and they followed through on those warnings with a long-range drone attack at Abu Dhabi International Airport in July 2018. Iran has threatened the Emirates directly as well, and could theoretically shower the country with a huge assortment of missiles, shorter-range drones, and long-range tactical rockets. Likewise, when Emirati forces were deployed in Yemen, they were constantly under fire from Houthi drones and precision rockets, most notoriously when around fifty troops were killed in a September 2015 base attack.

Saudi Arabia. Since 2015, the kingdom has been forced to evacuate many small towns along its southern border due to Iran-aided Houthi missile and drone attacks. In 2017, the rebels began launching medium-range Iranian ballistic missiles and drones at Riyadh and the economic hub of Yanbu; more recently, they targeted Jeddah on November 23, the same day they verbally threatened Israel. To the north, Iran launched drones and cruise missiles into Saudi Arabia twice in 2019, from both Iraq and its own territory (including the major attack on the world’s largest oil processing plant at Abqaiq).

Fruits of Collaborative Development

The current cost of exchange between Iran and its enemies is unsustainable—today’s most capable U.S. and Israeli interceptor systems, the Patriot and David’s Sling, cost around $2-4 million per shot, while the price of each Iranian missile, rocket, or drone is typically tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at most. To make matters worse, Tehran’s threat network now poses a multidirectional challenge to U.S. bases and partners, with launches potentially emanating from Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and even ships or submarines. The safety of civilian air traffic is also increasingly at risk, as Iran’s accidental January 2020 shootdown of a Ukrainian airliner showed.

If missile defense does not become cheaper, safer, and more effective, then the United States and its regional partners may soon lose the ability to put up a meaningful defense against Iran—let alone broader global threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. This could lead to many negative developments: costly and failed efforts at unilateral missile defense improvements; forced U.S. withdrawal from important deterrent points of presence; regional states kowtowing to Tehran; and a tendency toward offensive options and nonconventional weapons in dealing with Iranian threats.

The solution is to pool resources—starting in the Middle East, which faces the most immediate missile threat. Israel has an operational, multi-tiered missile defense system and extensive practical experience operating parts of it (e.g., the Iron Dome system, with around 2,000 claimed intercepts). Gulf Arab partners are well-positioned to surveil launch areas in Iran and Yemen that Israel cannot easily monitor. Saudi Arabia and the UAE also have ample experience coping with modern missile and drone threats after five years of attacks in and from Yemen. Despite their recent economic challenges, these states are still quite wealthy and could offset some of the $3-4 billion in missile defense research and development costs that the United States undertakes each year. They could also contribute sensors to a regional early warning system.

Implications for U.S. Policy

llective work on missile defense needs to speed up and, in the longer term, get cheaper for American taxpayers. The United States has spent $40 billion on R&D since 1999, nearly double the $23 billion in today’s money that the Manhattan Project cost, but without the same game-changing results. New threats are proliferating rapidly, such as hypersonic glide weapons that may be able to travel as fast as Mach 5. New defensive opportunities are also cresting, such as recently tested and field-deployed high-energy lasers and high-power microwave systems that could eventually reduce the per-shot cost of missile defense to as little as $10, while greatly increasing the number of shots available. At this crucial time in the development cycle, however, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s budget is poised to decrease by 12 percent, from $10.5 billion in 2020 to a $9.2 billion request for 2021. As the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments noted nearly ten years ago, the greatest barrier to fielding directed-energy defense systems is not immaturity of the associated technologies, but shortfalls in the initial funding required to make missile defense far cheaper down the road.

To address these issues, the Biden administration should take the following steps as soon as it is practicable:

* Intensify missile defense research with Israel. To make up for its interceptor shortfall, the United States purchased two Israeli Iron Dome low-altitude air defense batteries earlier this year, but cybersecurity and interoperability issues slowed their arrival. The U.S. military has also considered using Stunner missiles from the David’s Sling system in Patriot batteries. To further these and other missile defense projects, the Biden administration should do what it can to facilitate the stalled United States-Israel Directed Energy Cooperation Act (H.R. 6725).

* Get regional partners talking about missile defense. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization should create a talking shop for American, Israeli, Emirati, and Bahraini authorities to begin sketching out opportunities for cooperation. Saudi Arabia could be asked to join as an observer, along with NATO allies and Asian powers such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. As with atomic research, codebreaking, and other fields in the past, smaller U.S. allies could make critical contributions in specialized fields like artificial intelligence, battle management, robotics, and laser technologies (Japan and South Korea may have already helped Middle Eastern states revitalize their stalled work on shared sensor networks).

* Convince the Saudis to focus on defensive arms. Washington should encourage Riyadh to give up new purchases of offensive weapons and thus speed up the end of its involvement in the Yemen conflict, instead pouring its resources into a shared missile defense effort. Jake Sullivan and other key members of the Biden national security team have noted that boosting Saudi missile defenses might move the kingdom away from not only the Yemen war, but also any quest for nuclear weapons.

* Work on synergies and cost savings. To protect the U.S. homeland from small numbers of nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles fired by rogue nations, the United States has sought to focus more resources on combating hypersonic weapons and developing very high altitude and “boost phase” destruction of long-range missiles, mainly using expensive interceptor missiles and megawatt-scale lasers. Meanwhile, America’s regional partners have an urgent need for similar low-altitude defenses against the possibility that shorter-range drones and rockets could be used to swarm cities in Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia—a threat shared by U.S. bases in the vicinity of Iran, China, North Korea, or Russia. Washington should therefore leverage these partners’ strong interest in resourcing promising but underfunded U.S. research on theater-level systems involving technologies such as 100-600 kilowatt lasers, high-power microwaves, and hypervelocity powder guns.

Citation :

Rocket Attack Hits US Base in Iraqi Kurdistan; Casualties Reported

14 - 17 minutes

Security forces gather following a rocket attack in Erbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on Feb. 15, 2021.

Security forces gather following a rocket attack in Erbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on Feb. 15, 2021. SAFIN HAMED/AFP via Getty Images

February 15, 2021 05:22 PM ET

Middle East
Iraq
Terrorism

ERBIL, Iraq — A rocket attack on a U.S. base in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan killed one civilian contractor and injured one U.S. service member, as well as injuring five other contractors.

Four of the injured contractors were American, according to a U.S. defense official. The contractor who was killed was not an American citizen, according to multiple defense officials. At least one local civilian was killed in the attack, which also struck a nearby residential neighborhood, according to local media reports.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, which took place at roughly 10:00 p.m. local time, shaking the nearby Erbil airport.

A group called Saraya Awliya al-Dam took immediate responsibility, claiming to have fired 24 rockets in the attack. The self-styled group is widely seen as a front for Iran-linked militia in Iraq, in particular Kataib Hezbollah, the group that killed multiple Americans in two attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq in 2019 and 2020.

“I condemn in the strongest terms tonight’s rocket attacks on Erbil. I urge all Kurdistanis to remain calm,” Kurdistan Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said in a tweet. “I’ve instructed security services to start a full investigation and spoke with [Iraqi Prime Minister Kadhimi] on ways to cooperate and identify the outlaws behind this terror attack.”

If the attack is confirmed to be the work of Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq, it will almost certainly further complicate newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden’s efforts to renegotiate an updated version of the so-called Iran nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump exited in 2018. Biden administration and Iraninan officials have said that they will not restart negotiations until the other side blinks: Iran has said it will not return to the table until Washington eases stiff economic sanctions, and Washington has said it will not move until Tehran comes back into compliance with the original deal.

In the meantime, U.S. military leaders remain deeply concerned about the risk to U.S. forces from Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-aligned militia groups. How much direct command-and-control Tehran exerts over a given operation remains a matter of dispute, but the group is “generally responsive” to Tehran, Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander in the region, said in an interview last month.

“They have significant military capabilities,” McKenzie said. “In the last several years, Iran has imported significant combat power into Iraq, and into Syria as well, that could be employed by Kataib Hezbollah.”

There are “a variety of front organizations that are associated with them that they use to try to control or hide the contribution back to Kataib as well, when they choose to strike,” he said.

In a small surprise (Type is not unexpected, but it seems that cells moved launchers reasonably close to the target, 7km was claimed), the rockets used to hit #Erbil seem to be the Haseb/Falaq-1/Fadjr-1 107mm artillery rockets made by Iran.#Kurdistan https://t.co/m1z1AvaRjq pic.twitter.com/2qKGhD7c2q

— Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ (@CalibreObscura) February 15, 2021

BEN CASPIT - Al-Monitor a écrit:

Bennett’s government at work to expand Abraham Accords

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his Cabinet are hard at work to upgrade the Abraham Accords for normalization, and extend them to more countries in the region.

The normalization agreements reached August 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan were achieved under the former Israeli government and the former US administration. Since then, leadership has changed in both Israel and the United States. But are the Abraham Accords of last year about to expand soon, despite the change of governments? Are additional Arab and/or Muslim states in the Middle East or on its periphery mulling whether to join in?

Judging by the buzz in the Israeli corridors of power, the answer is “yes.” Apparently, other countries are on the fence, one foot there, one foot here, trying to decide in which direction to jump. Are we seeing a maturation of the normalization process and the future expansion of the circle of peace around Israel, or simply a nonbinding flirtation with few prospects? Hard to say at this point.

On Sept. 15, Israel marked the first anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords in Washington, the diamond in the crown of thrones placed on the head of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the waning days of his rule. His successor, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who had not referred explicitly to these agreements until now, mentioned them in his Sept. 27 speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting. Shortly after Bennett’s return from New York, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid flew off on a historic visit to Bahrain, where he met with the king and top leaders Sept. 30.

Behind closed doors, intensive work is underway to upgrade the agreements or bring additional partners on board. Bennett issued the first hint of this under-the-radar activity on the UN podium. After referring to the “Abraham Accords that normalized our relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco,” he added, “more is to come.” He did not elaborate, but prompted a wave of rumors.

Israeli diplomatic sources say these rumors are grounded in facts. Israel is conducting extensive contacts, including top-level talks, with several additional states, but these are in a real bind. On the one hand, they are looking on with envy as bilateral trade between Israel and the UAE surges and as Israel bestows intelligence information and tools on its new partners (albeit somewhat stingily). On the other hand, public opinion in those states does not always support rapprochement with Israel, and along with the prolonged and seemingly hopeless stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations does not augur well for a positive answer.

Earlier this month, the Institute for National Security Studies think tank (INSS) held a conference to discuss the agreements, with the participation of former Israel Defense Forces Chief Gadi Eisenkot, former national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Freij and other senior figures. Addressing the conference, Freij offered another hint of these unfolding developments, stating that some states in the region are still sitting on the fence and waiting to see what the agreements yield. Freij said these states are interested in ascertaining that the agreements do not serve one side only. “If we succeed in anchoring these agreements and taking advantage of the positive momentum, many countries now on the fence will lean in our direction,” he noted.

This is exactly what Lapid was doing on his Bahrain visit. The indecision shared by these states in the region does not relate only to the economic-military fruit of such a rapprochement or to the festering Palestinian problem. Other issues, far more strategic in nature, also project on their thinking. These matters have to do with two other countries — one in the region, the other not. Iran is obviously the elephant in the room. The United States is in second place. The first is deepening its entrenchment in the Middle East, accelerating its progress toward military nuclear capacity and storming other bastions in a bid to expand its influence. The second is abandoning the region and leaving its rulers to face the Iranian threat on their own.

Israel thus remains the only powerful anchor. It is not going anywhere and is keeping Shiite progress in check. Eisenkot, currently a senior research fellow at the INSS, said the Abraham Accords are being reenforced by two highly significant events: the adversarial Iranian position and its rush to obtain advanced nuclear capacity, and the US pullout from Afghanistan, which signals a smaller US role in the Middle East and does not bode well.

According to Eisenkot, these developments point to a poorer, more polarized Middle East, which will perhaps interest the world less and less, especially given the decline in global dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Given this state of affairs, he believes many states in the region will seek to create a significant center of gravity allowing them to leverage their power and balance Iran’s influence. This center of gravity would rely mainly on Israel’s capabilities and its links with the United States.

The US administration is well aware of this development and its implications. The damage wrought by the panicked Afghanistan withdrawal to US prestige, its image and its deterrence is still fresh in the minds of President Joe Biden and his staff — the more so after Senate testimony this week by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley who called the move a “strategic failure.” The Americans are therefore encouraging this trend, which dates back to President Donald Trump’s administration, and urging Arab and Muslim states to normalize ties with “little America,” i.e., Israel, which American friends often dub “our largest aircraft carrier.” This is all that’s left to do.

Can Israel under Bennett and Lapid leverage this situation and expand the circle of peace and normalization around it? That is unclear, but it is investing considerable efforts in the task. An additional state or two, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Tunisia joining the circle of peace would greatly bolster Bennett’s shaky domestic standing and provide Lapid with substantial credit. Nonetheless, as all the regional actors know, Middle East upheavals could sentence this progress to an ignominious burial without advance warning. A significant wave of violence in the West Bank or another clash with the Gaza Strip (the next round is forecast to be far more violent than previous ones) could remove the issue from the agenda. All that remains is to do what the Middle East does the most: wait, hope and see.