Greetings once again from thirty-something thousand feet. This time I'm on my way to... Philadelphia (sorry Philly fans - not staying very long and not planning to leave the airport).
Remember President Hussein Obama's and Hillary Clinton's non-existent 'Asia re-pivot' from the first term? Michael Rubin argues that it's Israel that ought to be re-pivoting toward Asia and away from the Jew-hating Europeans.
Israel has long considered itself almost a European country; the
European immigration that marked early Zionism shaped that character,
even if geography and immigration from Turkey, Iran, India, and the Arab
world also bestowed Israel with a Middle Eastern character. Indeed, Tel
Aviv is much like Alexandria and Beirut once were, and like Istanbul
still is, at least for the time being: a veritable mixing grounds of
east and west.
For too long, however, Israel has if not ignored Asia than put it on
the backburner. Sure, there was been sporadic outreach to China, but
this was both half-hearted and misguided: When it comes to the Middle
East, Beijing is the ultimate realist. Immediate commercial concerns
means everything, broader principle mean little if anything.
India—the world’s largest democracy—was largely hostile to the Jewish
state for the same reason it was hostile to the United States. Indian
nationalist diplomat Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon coined the term
‘non-alignment’ in a 1953 United Nations speech, and the following year
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, co-founded the
Non-Aligned Movement. In theory, it sought a third path separate from
the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States but
in practice it was marked by disproportionate hostility to the West.
Non-alignment, a fondness for socialism, and a suffocating
bureaucracy hostile both to direct foreign investment and free market
enterprises long restrained India’s economic potential. While India
still has a way to go, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to bring
India’s economy, political culture, and foreign into the 21st
century. He recognizes how much India and Israel have in common. They
are both democracies in a region where democracies otherwise have not
thrived. And Islamist radicals target them both. In the case of both,
land disputes — be they have Jerusalem and its environs in Israel’s
case, or the Kashmir in India’s — are only an excuse for a far more
murderous agenda.
Earlier this year, Modi announced that he would become the first Indian leader to visit Israel. Among tech-savvy Indians, the twitter hashtag #IndiaWithIsrael is trending. Nor does it seem that Modi’s looming visit will be the end-all and be-all of warming ties. As COMMENTARY readers know, the UN Human Rights Council has long been a cesspool of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias. Consider these statistics
of cumulative Council condemnations from its founding in 2006 to the
present: Israel has been condemned more than 60 times, yet slave-holding
Mauritania, blogger-whipping Saudi Arabia, journalist-repressing
Turkey, freedom-extinguishing China, migrant worker-killing Qatar, and
expansionist Russia have faced no condemnation. Condemning Israel has
become a knee-jerk reaction around the world and, for decades, it has
been India’s position as well. But on Friday, July 3, India shocked
the Council by abstaining on its condemnation of Israeli actions in
last year’s Gaza War. Now an abstention isn’t the same as a vote
against, but clearly India-Israel relations are on the upswing, or could
be if Israeli leaders are willing to work hard to cultivate them.
But India is not alone. The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)
has long sought to cultivate ties between Israel and other Southeast
Asian countries—Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and
even Malaysia. The momentum is promising, as have been the results
considering the relatively small scale. If Israel made a concerted
effort to cultivate these ties, they might find a much more receptive
audience than in past years. Not only would this create a strategic
buffer, but it might also correct the narrative that all Muslims embrace
the radical, anti-peace positions put forward by more rejectionist Arab
states and European and American proponents of the Boycott, Divestment,
and Sanctions (BDS) movement. After all, Indonesia is the largest
Muslim country on earth by population, and India the second largest,
even though it is not even majority Muslim.
Such diplomacy need not be an either-or scenario, but just as
Washington navel-gazes and forgets that the United States and the
targets of our interest are not alone in the sandbox, so, too, do
Europeans forget that they are not the world’s moral barometer or the
doyens of the elite club with which everyone wants favor. Not only is
Southeast Asia booming as many of its countries largely abandon ruinous
socialist practices and authoritarianism, but many now also face the
same Islamist terror threat which Israel has been confronting for
decades.
By the way, found out yesterday that someone we know - an American married to a Spaniard living in France for more than 20 years - is immigrating to Israel this summer with her family. Last Jew out of Europe should please shut the lights of decency, human rights and intellectual achievement. Europe's brain drain is exactly what it deserves.
In India, local agencies told ministers a bomb attack which badly injured the wife of the Israeli military attaché in New Delhi in February was the work of an Iranian "security entity". Their conclusions have not previously been made public and Indian officials have made significant efforts to avoid blaming Tehran, an ally and oil supplier.
The governments of Georgia and Thailand, which both uncovered bomb plots on the day of the Delhi attack, have also not officially blamed Iran.
European intelligence officials told the Guardian they now found it difficult to judge Tehran's "risk calculus".
"Until recently it was possible to see why they were doing what they have been doing," one intelligence official said. "Now it has become very unpredictable. It's very hard to see the logic behind [the February bombings], other than perhaps demonstrate an ability to cause problems in the event of war or a desire for revenge of some kind."
You mean Iran might not be a rational actor that can be trusted not to use nuclear weapons if they have them. What a shock!
Police evidence, witness statements and court documents seen by the Guardian, plus interviews with local and international law enforcement and security officials, indicate that the attempted triple-bombing on 13 and 14 February was conducted by a well co-ordinated network of about a dozen Iranians and prepared over at least 10 months.
The evidence includes the identification of at least 10 Iranians allegedly involved in the plots, money transfers to key individuals from Iran, the use of Iranian phone connections and the flight following the attacks of conspirators to Iran.
"The question is not was this Iran-backed or Iran-organised but who in Iran was running all this," said one western security official.
The first elements of the plot were put in place in April 2011 when at least five Iranians who have been implicated in the attacks travelled to Thailand and India, apparently on reconnaissance missions, investigators say. Their journeys came around four months after a spike in tension between Iran, Israel and the west following the killing in Tehran of Majid Shahriari, a nuclear scientist, by a bomb stuck to his vehicle by a motorcyclist.
Houshang Afshar Irani has been identified by Indian police as the man who attached a magnetic charge to the car of the wife of the Israeli defence attaché in Delhi. Copies of his passport show he first visited the city in April 2011 for 10 days before returning on 29 January this year. At 11.30pm on 13 February, almost seven hours after reaching the Indian capital's main airport 75 minutes after the bomb attack, he flew to Malaysia and then on to Tehran via Dubai.
Analysis by Indian investigators of the type of explosive used in Delhi reveal it to be a variant of TNT. The shell of the bomb was manufactured outside India and magnetic strips used to attach the device to the car in Delhi were identical to those recovered in Bangkok and Tbilisi.
The attack in Bangkok involved at least five people, all Iranians. One, a 31-year-old woman identified as Leila Rohani, visited Thailand twice in 2012 and rented the house off the central Sukhumvit Road that was partly destroyed when 28-year-old Saeed Moradi, also Iranian, appears to have prematurely detonated a device. Moradi, who suffered serious injuries, was arrested. From Bangkok, Rohani travelled to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Tehran, investigators have found.
A second alleged conspirator was detained at the airport, also en route for Tehran. This man, Sedaghatzadeh Masoud, 31, is believed to be the overall co-ordinator of the international operation. Masoud is in custody in Malaysia, pending possible extradition to Thailand.
As in Delhi, a reconnaissance trip also appears to have been conducted in Thailand in April 2011. Members of the cell were pictured with bar girls in the sleazy resort of Pattaya days before the blast.
Read the whole thing. The world is not safe from Iran. Will anyone wake up in time to do something about it?
Iran and Hezbullah targeted diplomats in 7 countries over 13 months... and Jews
The Washington Post has connected the dots between attempts on the lives of diplomats - American and Middle Eastern, including Israelis - in seven countries over 13 months. According to the report, Iran and Hezbullah are behind all of them (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The targets have included two Saudi officials, a half-dozen Israelis and — in the Azerbaijan case — several Americans, the officials say.
In recent weeks, investigators working in four countries have amassed new evidence tying the disparate assassination attempts to one another and linking all of them to either Iran-backed Hezbollah militants or operatives based inside Iran, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials. An official report last month summarizing the evidence cited phone records, forensic tests, coordinated travel arrangements and even cellphone SIM cards purchased in Iran and used by several of the would-be assailants, said two officials who have seen the six-page document.
Strikingly, the officials noted, the attempts halted abruptly in early spring, at a time when Iran began to shift its tone after weeks of bellicose anti-Western rhetoric and threats to shut down vital shipping lanes. In March, Iranian officials formally accepted a proposal to resume negotiations with six world powers on proposals to curb its nuclear program.
“There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to calm things down ahead of the talks,” said a Western diplomat briefed on the assassination plots, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence. “What happens if the talks fail — that’s anyone’s guess.”
...
The most recent threat came to light after a foreign spy agency intercepted electronic messages that appeared to describe plans to move weapons and explosives from Iran into Azerbaijan. Some of the messages were traced to an Azerbaijani national named Balagardash Dashdev, a man with an extensive criminal background and, according to a Middle East investigator involved in the case, deep ties to a network of intelligence operatives and militant groups based inside Iran.
Working from inside Iran, officials said, Dashdev in late October began coordinating the shipment of explosives, weapons and cash to Azerbaijani contacts, including relatives and former criminal associates. As U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence deepened their surveillance, they began to discern what the Middle Eastern investigator described as a “jumble of overlapping plans,” some specifically aimed at Azerbaijan’s small Jewish community and others targeting diplomats and foreign-owned businesses in Baku, the country’s sprawling capital on the Caspian Sea.
During the late fall and early winter, the weapons were smuggled into the country along with at least 10 Iranian nationals recruited to help carry out the plot, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said.
The Azerbaijani participants had been paid a cash advance and were beginning to conduct surveillance on a list of targets — including a Jewish elementary school, a U.S.-owned fast-food restaurant, an oil company office and “other objects in Baku,” according to a brief statement issued by the Azerbaijani government after a series of raids in which about two dozen alleged accomplices were arrested between January and early March.
The Obama administration acknowledged in March that the U.S. Embassy may have been among the intended targets. But in the months since then, the suspects under questioning revealed extensive details about the “other objects in Baku” that had been on the target list, confirming that the would-be assassins intended to go beyond attacks on buildings.
“They were going after individuals,” said the former State Department official who worked closely with the embassy in Baku. “They had names [of employees]. And they were interested in family members, too.”
The alleged plot leader, Dashdev, would tell investigators that the planned attacks were intended as revenge for the deaths of the Iranian nuclear scientists, attacks that Iran has publicly linked to Israel and the United States. Iran vehemently denied involvement in any assassination plot inside Azerbaijan, and the Iranian Embassy in Baku suggested in a statement that the plot was fiction.
The Obama administration is attempting to tiptoe between the raindrops on this one. They are trying not to accuse the Iranians. But the truth should be told. Iran is behind much of the terrorism in the world. And it's time for the West to do something about it.
Remember how OJ Simpson said that he was going to find the 'real killers' of his ex-wife and father-in-law? Well, despite the fact that Thai authorities caught three Iranians red-handed last week, Iran now says that it will cooperate with Thailand to find the 'real terrorists.'
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran was willing to assist in identifying "the culprits behind the Thailand explosions and introduce them to the international community as a gesture of good will," IRNA reported Wednesday.
Mehmanparast denied claims Iran was involved in the attack, saying "they are all fabricated and false and are parts of a scenario prepared by US and Zionist officials."
...
"The Zionist regime is trying to compensate for the pressure it is under in light of the Islamic awakening in the region, which is rooted in Iran," he said, adding that the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists was another part of the "(Zionist) scenario."
Last week Mehmanparast said Israel blamed Iran for the attack to try and harm "the friendly and historic relations" between the Islamic Republic and Thailand.
Thailand's police suspect a terror cell of six Iranians was behind the botched attempt to kill the Israeli ambassador in Bangkok.
Iranian bombers hid five bombs in $27 radios in Thailand
Sorry about the much-longer-than-expected break this morning. I went to the Mount of Olives to visit the grave of a friend's daughter on her yahrtzeit (anniversary of the date of death) and the traffic was much worse than expected.
Exclusive photos of one undetonated bomb, obtained by ABC News, show the inside of the radio packed with tiny ball bearings and six magnets. Bomb experts say the magnets indicate the bomb was designed to be stuck to the side of a vehicle.
A surveillance photo of one of the alleged hit squad members, identified as an Iranian national named Saeid Moradi, shows him holding a radio in each hand.
According to authorities, a bomb exploded in the Bangkok house where Moradi and two other Iranians had been staying. After the blast, Moradi attempted to hail a cab. When the driver refused to pick him up, he allegedly threw a bomb, injuring four bystanders.
When police approached, Moradi allegedly threw another bomb, but lost both of his legs when it bounced back and exploded near him, according to Thai authorities. He was arrested following the incident and remains in custody in Thailand.
After the attack, police say they discovered two unexploded bombs in the house where Moradi and the other Iranians had been staying, including the one shown in the photos.
Israeli authorities and US bomb experts say that the bombs found in Thailand were remarkably similar to the ones used in Georgia and India earlier last week.
It is believed that the bombs were either slipped through airport security or sent in a diplomatic pouch from Iran.
That sounds like an act of war to me. In 1982, Operation Peace for Galilee was started after the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov z"l, then Israel's ambassador to London. Could it happen again? The epic failure of all three Iranian attacks last week may have saved Iran (or Lebanon) from a war with Israel.
Bumbling Iranian bombers cavorted with Thai prostitutes before it all blew up
Remember pictures came out after 9/11 of the terrorists out on the town with prostitutes? Well, look at this:
The three bungling Iranian bombers detained in Bangkok after they accidentally set off their explosives cavorted with prostitutes at a beach resort days before the botched attacks.
A photograph has emerged of the trio cosying up to sex workers, surrounded by hookah-pipes and drinks, in a bar in the notoriously sleazy city of Pattaya.
The revelation comes as it emerged police are now hunting for two more suspects, including a possible bomb expert, they think helped the trio as they set about targeting Israeli diplomats.
A Thai official said on Wednesday that three bombing attempts that were perpetrated by Iranian nationals in the Asian nation on Tuesday all targeted Israeli diplomats.
"These three Iranian men are an assassination team and their targets were Israeli diplomats including the ambassador," a senior Thai intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Their plan was to attach bombs to diplomats' cars."
Iran, which has already denied responsibility for the Delhi and Tbilisi incidents, said it had no link to the Bangkok blasts and blamed what it called "elements linked with the (Israeli) Zionist regime".
Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast "rejected the accusations by the Zionist regime of implication (of Iran) and accused that regime of trying to harm the friendly and historic relations between Iran and Thailand," according to the Iranian state television website.
Thai bomb squad experts were called out to the Sukhumvit Road area in the east of the city in response to an apparently unintended blast at a house rented by an Iranian, after which three men were seen fleeing, authorities said.
...
Explosives and magnets were later found inside the partially destroyed house, police said.
Individuals appeared to be the target of the botched plot as the devices were not powerful enough to cause large-scale damage, said Thailand's National Security Council chief Wichean Potephosree.
"Yesterday's incident was caused by current international tensions in world politics," he told a news conference.
"It's happening not only in Thailand but also elsewhere. Thailand's weak point is that we are an open country to help our economy so I urge all Thais to be vigilant and inform the authorities if they see anything suspicious."
Bangkok has been on the watch for a terror attack since police last month charged a Lebanese man suspected of planning a strike, following a US warning that tourist areas might be targeted.
Sounds like the Iranians are much less experienced bombers than Hamas - thank God.
5 injured in 3 bomb blasts in Thailand, perpetrators Iranian, targets Israeli
Four people and one terrorist were injured in three separate bomb blasts in Thailand on Tuesday. The terrorist was an Iranian who blew his legs off. The other two terrorists were caught and arrested.
Let's go to the videotape and then I'll have more.
Two suspects have been arrested, and police were in pursuit of three additional suspects. The first arrest is an Iranian man who was hospitalized Bangkok when a bomb he was carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off. The second is 42-year-old Mohammad Hazai, who was arrested at the airport just before boarding a flight to Malaysia.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday said that the series of bomb blasts that struck Thailand was part of an attempted terrorist attack perpetrated by Iran.
Shortly before the blast that wounded the Iranian bomber there had been an explosion in a house the man was renting in the Ekamai area of central Bangkok, and shortly afterward, another blast on a nearby road. Five people were injured in the explosions.
"The attempted terror attack in Thailand proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to operate in the ways of terror and the latest attacks are an example of that," Barak said while on a state visit to Singapore. The incident came one day after near simultaneous attacks on Israeli embassies in India and Georgia.
I have two more videos for you.
Let's go to the videotape.
And let's go to the videotape. Parental discretion advised on this one.
In Thailand, Israelis save drowning Iranians who flee
I blew the picture up because I figured that a lot of you might like to see a beach at this time of year.
The picture is from Koh Samui, Thailand, where last week, 27-year old Nimrod Machani was visiting his 60-year old father Shimshon, who rents surfboats to tourists. YNet picks up the story from there.
Last week the father-son team went out on their daily rowing course. "The weather here is tropical," Shimshon explained. "Things can change in a second. And indeed, on the way back, the weather changed all at once. The winds got stronger and the waves grew tall."
Suddenly, they noticed two swimmers who were crying out for help. "Their Kayak had overturned in the storm and was swept away, they were left alone in the water," said Shimshon. "They didn't have much of a chance."
The two lifeguards rowed towards the drowning men. "When we reached them they were already at the point of exhaustion," nimrod noted. " "We loaded them on to the surf boat and kept rowing towards the shore, a kilometer away."
For 45 minutes the two battled against the winds and the waves with the swimmers on board. "When they came around and started talking among themselves I noticed they were speaking in Persian. I was born in Iran and speak the language. I told them in Persian: 'Don't be scared, you're in good hands," Shimshon recalls.
When they reached the shore the two, who introduced themselves as Mundar and Ali, hugged and kissed their rescuers and thanked them.
"When we told them we're Israelis they just got up and fled," Nimrod noted.
They'd rather have died? Maybe they just remembered what happened to this guy.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
