There’s not a lot of red meat for U.S. hawks in the Pentagon’s latest congressionally-mandated report on Iran’s military power. Greg Thielmann notes that the report repeats that Iran has not yet made the decision to build nuclear weapons and makes it clear that Iranian progress towards an ICBM which could justify spending billions on boondoggle missile defense plans is frozen in place while it concentrates on improving it’s short and medium range arsenals.
However Jeffrey Lewis believes the report holds a significant chunk of flesh for Israeli hawks contains a significant sentence that shouldn’t be ignored (see comments for reason for this edit – SH):
the report contains the most direct official confirmation that Iran has sold ballistic missiles to Hezbollah. In my opinion, this ought to be the lede:
In close cooperation with Syria, Iran has provided Lebanese Hizballah with increasingly sophisticated weapons, including a wide array of missiles and rockets that allow Hizballah to launch weapons from deeper in Lebanon or to strike Israel.
I haven’t seen such a clear a statement in an official document. US officials have been willing to say that Iran transferred missiles to Syria, but have been much more careful to avoid confirming the transfer to a non-state actor like Hezbollah. That is, in part, because some Israeli officials have described the transfer of ballistic missiles to Hezbollah as the sort of thing that would earn a body an airstrike.
Perhaps the word ”œmissiles” in the phrase ”œmissiles and rockets” means something other than Scuds and Fateh-110s. If so, I’d be interested to hear what that might be.
The phrase could well refer to guided weapons rather than unguided ones – anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles such as those used by Hezboullah against invading Israeli forces in 2006 – but I agree with Jeffrey that Congresscritters and journalists should be seeking clarification of this statement.
IDF Intelligence has been messaging on this for a while now. There’s a liberal sprinkling of mentions through the recent Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War [cue ominous music] by Yaakov Katz and Yoaz Hendel which dropped a little while ago. Apparently the Scud transfer is mentioned in the wikileaks corpus – haven’t chased it down, but that’s the story.
One thing to add – most of the mentions are in the context of Syria rather than Iran, though it is very hard to disentangle the two when it comes to transfers to Hez.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Perhaps you did not mean it this way, but the phrase “significant chunk of flesh for Israeli hawks†in your post is certain to evoke Shakespeare’s depiction of Shylock, the Jewish money-lender, in “The Merchant of Venice†for any educated reader. (It is Shylock, drawing on anti-semitic stereotypes, who insists on a “pound of flesh.â€) A lot of people, myself included, find Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock difficult. (I love the Bard, but lets just say I am glad that social views have progressed from the late 16th century.)
I am certainly not making any judgement about your intent, not least because there is a robust debate about whether Shakespeare intended to play to his crowd’s prejudices or undermining them, but I would be remiss if I did not mention that the phrase itself causes me some discomfort, is almost certain to be interpreted by anti-semites as a friendly gesture, and distracts from your reasonable observation that Congress should seek clarification as to whether Iran has transferred missiles to Hezbollah.
Most important, I am unhappy about having my own words paraphrased in this way. I would never write a sentence like that. I also don’t believe it accurately reflects the main point of my post, which is to observe that the report appears to confirm the USG believed Iran, through Syria, transferred ballistic missiles, to Hezbollah.
This description could include stones, bricks and fireworks.
To be actionable it should be very specific: types, quantities and delivery dates.
I suspect current views on bankers, whatever persuasion, have regressed to that of the 16th century or earlier.
Now of course, Bankers just take the house, having marketed extensively, and suborned fraud (liars loans), to convince one that the purchase of an over expensive home was absolutely necessary, lest they become priced so high that one could never afford to own any home.
Such an honorable profession.
I simply was trying, clumsily, to extend the “raw meat for hawks” metaphor.
I assumed it was just the “red meat” metaphor, but you wouldn’t believe the anti-semitic comments that I get on my blog following any post on Israel, Iran, etc. (C-SPAN seems to attract them as callers.)
I try not to feed the trolls. Thanks for changing it.