Posted on 11/09/2013 8:55:28 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on November 20 during a brief visit to Russia, the Kremlin announced Tuesday.
In September, Russia raised a brief alarm in the Middle East after apparently detecting a joint Israel and US missile launch test in the Mediterranean.
Israel’s Defense Ministry confirmed that it carried out a successful trial involving a new type of Sparrow target missile, which was meant to test Israel’s missile tracking capabilities.
Russia had reported that two ballistic objects had been fired from the central Mediterranean to the eastern coast of the sea at 10:16 a.m. Moscow time, which is an hour ahead of Israel.
Netanyahu and Putin last met for emergency talks at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in mid-May to discuss the situation in Syria, amid concerns that Moscow could soon provide Damascus with a cutting-edge missile defense system.
At the time, Moscow’s overriding message to Netanyahu was one of restraint, urging political, rather than military, means of resolving the almost-three-year conflict. While Putin and Netanyahu acknowledged that the ongoing violence in Syria is detrimental to the entire region, the Russian president said that the only way to resolve the crisis was “the soonest end to armed conflict and the beginning of political settlement,” Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.
Netanyahu, however, said that the volatile situation in the Middle East requires action to improve security.
Russia has continued to ship weapons to Syria, despite the civil war there, but it has, so far, refrained from providing Damascus with the S-300s, a powerful weapon that has a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles), can intercept fighter jets and cruise missiles, and the capability to track down and strike multiple targets simultaneously with lethal efficiency.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
I don't think there is a non-nuclear munition that can do the job. Iranians built their nuclear plants under tall mountains. One could strike some exits, but not all of them - and they would be cleared soon. There would be no damage to the plant itself. Besides, nobody knows where the manufactured nuclear materials for the bomb are at any given time. Probably they are not at the plant anymore. One could assemble the bomb in a shed, or in a cave, or on a ship, or in an apartment in some city. If Iranians are serious, all the non-nuclear components are ready, and assembled, and tested. Perhaps it's only a matter of inserting the nuclear core, running diagnostics, and closing the lid.
Israel's best bet at this time is to negotiate. Putin is not particularly interested in Iran getting the bomb. But what can be done, outside of a sudden regime change in Iran, to stop that? Any military action will only prompt Mullahs to use what they have made by this time. Just one bomb will destroy one city, but it will also contaminate most of Israel. It's a small country.
The way to take down the Iranian threat is an EMP strike or strikes on the Iranians. If nothing electrical in Iran works, they are rendered deaf, dumb, and blind in seconds. No electronic media, communications, no pumps to move oil or water, no ground transport besides animals — a nightmare for Iran. Iran would descend into chaos.
EMP does not have to have a nuclear event to trigger the pulse, it can be done with conventional explosives. From Wikipedia on EMP:
“Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP)
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) is a weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse without use of nuclear technology. Devices that can achieve this objective include a large low-inductance capacitor bank discharged into a single-loop antenna, a microwave generator and an explosively pumped flux compression generator.
To achieve the frequency characteristics of the pulse needed for optimal coupling into the target, wave-shaping circuits and/or microwave generators are added between the pulse source and the antenna. Vircators are vacuum tubes that are particularly suitable for microwave conversion of high-energy pulses.
NNEMP generators can be carried as a payload of bombs, cruise missiles (such as the CHAMP missile) and drones, with diminished mechanical, thermal and ionizing radiation effects, but without the political consequences of deploying nuclear weapons.
The range of NNEMP weapons (non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse bombs) is much less than nuclear EMP. Nearly all NNEMP devices used as weapons require chemical explosives as their initial energy source, producing only one millionth the energy of nuclear explosives of similar weight.
The electromagnetic pulse from NNEMP weapons must come from within the weapon, while nuclear weapons generate EMP as a secondary effect. These facts limit the range of NNEMP weapons, but allow finer target discrimination.
The effect of small e-bombs has proven to be sufficient for certain terrorist or military operations. Examples of such operations include the destruction of electronic control systems critical to the operation of many ground vehicles and aircraft.”
Hope they come to terms. bho is irrelevant.
“Their main topics of discussion will be, in order, Pooty’s supplying of missiles to Syria; and the Israeli-Cypriote natural gas / petroleum development and the route of that pipeline to the EU.”
Your analysis is spot on. When Israel’s Leviathon natural gas field comes on line, it will shake up Middle East alignments. For those who don’t know, Noble Energy out of Texas will play a major role in developing the site. Russia would like a piece of the action in order to protect its interests. Incidentally, Cyprus is sitting on 38.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that would make the Cyprus the wealthiest country in the EU. Interesting times are ahead.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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This Natural Gas Find Could Completely Change the World As We Know It (Israel-Cyprus)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3087119/posts
This seems to be having an impact on Turkish behavior:
Turkey’s Zorlu Energy ‘in talks on Israeli gas’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3086308/posts
OTOH:
Turkish military ‘trying to provoke an incident’ with Israelis in Mediterranean
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3085815/posts
Turkey revealed Israeli spy ring to Iran-report
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3080136/posts
The Russians are counting on keeping the various nationalities and sectarian groups pointing their weapons (so far, conventional only) at each other instead of at Russia, which isn’t that far off what the US does, or for that matter, what China does when necessary. India’s emergence as a great power and Pakistan’s steady disintegration means that what happens in Iran in particular has more importance to both Russia and China, and also in India.
And what happens in Pakistan is of great concern in Iran, which is a patchwork of different ethnic groups, just as Pakistan and most of Middle East and moslem world is and has been for some time now. Reconsolidation of Afghanistan and Pakistan into as many as a dozen new states will probably be a done deal in less than a generation.
The metal ores in Africa (whatever petroleum is there is largely already in development) are the current big play, and Russia has been out of play in Africa for some years; China’s in Sudan and here and there trying to get a toe in elsewhere, mostly in the rest of the Horn; the big player is Iran, and this is a great danger to us.
Zero doesn’t work for us.
Exactly correct. Whoever is pulling Barry's strings — Valerie Jarrett or George Soros or whoever — they want to destroy the United States and its people.
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