IDF soldiers injured in Gaza operation

From JPost, 1 Nov 2013, by Yaakov Lappin:

Explosion injures five soldiers working to destroy tunnel; bomb planted by Hamas on Gaza side of tunnel.            

An IDF drill that was digging into a Hamas attack tunnel to destroy it on Thursday night triggered a bomb planted inside, leading to the injury of five soldiers, a senior IDF source said Friday.
Hamas planted the bomb - made up of explosives and diesel fuel - on the Gazan side of the tunnel in early October, a few days after the IDF exposed the 1.7 kilometer-long structure, according to the IDF's assessment.
The explosive was intended to kill, maim, or facilitate the kidnapping of soldiers that Hamas expected the IDF to send into the Gazan side of the tunnel to destroy it, the IDF believes.
Instead, the army chose to destroy the tunnel from overground, sending a task force composed of the Yahalom elite Combat Engineering Corps unit, Golani infantry brigade soldiers, and units from the 401st Armored Brigade over the security fence, a hundred meters into Gaza, to carry out the job.
"The drill set off the bomb, creating shock waves, which injured the soldiers. We would never send our soldiers into the tunnel before mapping it out with dogs and robots first. We didn't reach that stage in the operation," the senior army source said.
"The blast injured six soldiers and commanders; one seriously and the remainder lightly. No one is in a life-threatening condition," he added. One of the wounded was a team commander overseeing demolition work. Five of the soldiers were air lifted to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
"Despite the injuries, we continued the mission until its completion," the source said. The IDF inserted new commanders to replace the wounded, and oversaw the completion of the drilling operation.
Just after the drill set off Hamas's bomb, the IDF identified a terrorist cell spying on the army's activities from a distance of just over a kilometer away, in Gaza's Khan Younis district.
The cell included one man armed with an anti-tank missile launcher and a second who acted as a lookout. An Israeli tank fired a shell in their direction, killing one terrorist and seriously injuring a second.
The IDF then lowered an enormous 2,800 kilogram bomb into the drilling site, 90 meters inside Gaza, and detonated it, leading to the tunnel's collapse. shortly before 11 p.m. on Thursday night.
Hours later, at approximately 5 a.m. on Friday, an Israel Air Force jet struck the tunnel's shaft in Gaza, which was located 1700 meters from the border, hidden under a Palestinian hothouse.
The missile strike also killed three senior Hamas commanders who were in the vicinity. The commanders were situated underground in a parallel tunnel that was linked to the tunnel hit by the IAF.
The men were high-ranking experts in tunnel warfare from Hamas's Khan Younis Division. One was also a rockets expert.
"Last night, we acted offensively in regards to the terror tunnel we exposed," the source said. "We believe that as soon as Hamas saw that we uncovered its tunnel, it planted the explosive. We prepared for this possibility. We will investigate this incident - I'm sure we will learn from it," he added.
The IDF's aim, he continued, is to turn Hamas's advantage in tunnel warfare into a disadvantage.
"Hamas thought its tunnel was a secret. We showed it we have the ability to expose it... and we helped Hamas understand that their tunnels can go from hideouts to graves."
"We're investing a lot into combating tunnels and exposing them, including the introduction of new technologies for this," he added.
The IDF believes that Hamas will not respond to the recent incidents, due to Israeli deterrence, and its growing economic troubles and regional isolation. "I don't see any preparations by Hamas to act," the source said.
He described the successful demolition of the tunnel as an impressive achievement that was completed despite "disruptions to the chain of command."
"Last night, we found that despite the shortage of diesel fuel for Gaza's power plant, Hamas is diverting the fuel to create bombs, just as it used Israeli concrete sent into Gaza for the civilian construction sector to build the terror tunnel," the source said.
The IDF has placed Iron Dome air defense batteries around southern communities in preparations for the possibility of an escalation. But following an evaluation held on Friday morning, it decided to instruct civilians in the south to proceed as normal.

Book Review: "Financing the Flames...of Confrontation and Terrorism in Israel."

From a Speros News Book Review, 30 October 2013, by Martin Barillas:

"Financing the Flames: How Tax-Exempt and Public Money Fuel a Culture of Confrontation and Terrorism in Israel." by Edwin Black.
Dialog Press, 2013. 262 pp.

Buy the book at Amazon here.

 

...Edwin Black, a New York Times bestselling international investigative author, has spent a good part of his life’s work explaining human rights abuses ...  

 

... there can be no understanding of the current Middle East madness, spilling out over the entire world, without appreciating ...a cabal of parties who fancy themselves doing “good.”

 

This ...is the subject of Black’s most recent work, Financing the Flames: How Tax-Exempt and Public Money Fuel a Culture of Confrontation and Terrorism in Israel. 
"The unhappy intersection of big inhumanity and big money finds its most ironic dynamic in philanthropic abuse" Black writes in the introduction.  

 

 

The book reads like a novel, beginning with the wedding of a 15th-generation sabra – a Jew who is native to his ancestral lands rather than transplanted from elsewhere.  Through the dramatic events of this particular young man, the reader is introduced to the Goldstone Mission report, a document based on “information provided by Israeli nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) avowedly devoted to human rights…” that “was later recanted as being based on false and incomplete information.” (p 10)

 

However, the report had accused Israeli soldiers of widespread war crimes, so before its recantation, it caused enormous damage to both the military and to the individual soldiers involved.  

The NGO most significantly behind the Goldstone Mission report is the New Israel Fund (NIF).  

 

NIF describes itself as an “agent of change” in Israel, promulgating the distinctly American vision of equality amid religious and ethnic plurality.  Its money comes from donors around the world, as much as $37 million annually, much of that from the United States, and provides “seed” funding to thousands of Israeli social-action organizations and creating a progressive network across Israel.

 

It is not a “direct action” charity but a vehicle of “empowerment” to help, it says, “marginalized Israelis to organize and speak for themselves and achieve recognition and results in the corridors of power…We are a funder with a point of view…We are an advocacy organization that takes on the toughest issues; builds coalitions; incubates new approaches, programs, and projects for social change; and serves as the acknowledged leader of progressive civil society in Israel.” (p 25-6) 

 

 (Edwin Black taking notes in Israel)

 

Black praises some of NIF’s efforts but is quick to add that it has a political agenda funded by foreigners.
In recent years the New Israel Fund (NIF) has been “funding groups that directly or indirectly advocate for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, known as the BDS movement, which seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist in every forum worldwide.” (p 27)

The Goldstone Mission report, with its unmerited attack against the Israel Defense Forces – using American tax-enabled money – appears to have been an example.  An orchestrated campaign of provoking Israeli soldiers coupled with selectively edited propaganda materials is another (chapters 5-7).  Deliberate efforts are made by a small but highly effective American group, not to resolve conflict, but to exacerbate it (chapter 8).  Black looks closely at these foreign groups funding the NIF and at least one is quite familiar: the Ford Foundation, that in just one year, 2000 -2001, gave more than $35 million to some 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations and whose network of activities is ridiculously complicated (ch 4) 

 

NIF is, above all, a lobbyist – or, where that is too sensitive a term, an “advocate for policy change” – that, in the words of one Israeli legislator, is “using American money to affect our internal political affairs.” The fuller record of NIF lobbying braggadocio runs off the edge of the legal pad,” Black writes. “The topics cover a range of issues from military benefits for veterans to involvement in the method of terrorist interrogations by security agencies…. the NIF has recently told its supporters that it was responsible for influencing some five hundred different laws and legal initiatives.” (p 169) Nor is this work confined to Israel: “And we do advocate outside Israel for changes in Israeli society that may impact Jewish communities elsewhere. (p 172) 

 

The meat of this book lies in the twists and turns of accusations levelled by the various parties.

• Is the military being hamstrung by impossible humanitarian considerations that are in no matched by the rabidly zealous suicide bombers or enemy tacticians who use innocent citizenry to shield their movements?  
• Are Jewish groups from outside Israel “funding anti-Israeli agitation and fueling war crime tribunals,” while “terrorists [are] waging war on Israeli children with impunity, and the soldiers who save the day [are] threatened with trial and discouraged from shooting, themselves being shot to death?”  

(p 52-53)

Black believes the answer to both questions is, “yes.”  

 

A particularly egregious situation is the payment of “salaries” to convicted Arab Palestinian prisoners of Israel who have committed acts of “resistance.”  The “salary” increases according to the seriousness of the act, measured by the length of the prison sentence.  The beneficiary of this “salary – in later usage termed “social welfare” – is determined by the prisoner.  

 

From where does the money to pay these “salaries” come?  Not from the Palestinian national economy “but from donor countries paying billions in financial aid to the Palestinian Authority.” (p 192)  After 9-11, the United States, no longer sent direct financial aid but ways were still found, as late as 2006, to get hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into their hands via various UN agencies. 

 

And then, there’s the banking system.
“A superhighway of money goes directly from Israel’s greatest adversaries into a vast interchange where it comingles with dollars, shekels, Euros, and yen from the finest financial nameplates and charitable funds in the world.” (p 198)
Millions are poured into the support of the families of jihadist “martyrs,” filtered through special funds administered by the Islamic Development Bank.  

 

It doesn’t end there, though:
“Ironically, some of the same Israel-based recipients who receive American tax-subsidized grants from the New Israel Fund have been selected for support by the most influential sovereign Arab and Islamic charitable organizations representing national treasuries committed to erasing the existence of Israel.” (p 200)
Any demand by a nation that its financial aid be used for peaceful projects and not terrorist salaries has been dismissed as “donor filth.” 

 

Black ends his Introduction to the book by saying, “Many people know how this saga [of conflict in the Middle East] began, but no one knows how this saga will end. For the Israelis, the resilient ethos embedded in their existence is encapsulated in their national anthem. That song is called Hatikva. In Hebrew, it means ‘the hope’.”...

Buy the book at Amazon here.

Anti-Semitism in Australia?

From JPost, 29 Oct 2013, by ARSEN OSTROVSKY* :
           

Brawl in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Screenshot Sky News

           

Last Friday, a Jewish family of five was walking home after Shabbat services and dinner in Bondi, in the heart of the famous beachside suburb in Sydney, Australia, when they were viciously assaulted by a gang of youths in one of the most horrific anti-Semitic attacks in Australia in memory.

Although police investigations are ongoing, three of the attackers have already been arrested, with police confirming they were part of a group of eight mainly Pacific Islander youths, who had no connection to Islam. The victims, which included a couple in their 60s, have now all been released from hospital, although each sustained serious injuries, including bleeding of the brain and a fractured skull.

News of the incident has now reverberated around the world, with many commentators quick to say it is no longer safe to be a Jew in Australia or that Down Under is quickly turning into the next Europe.

So, allow me please to dispel some of these theories.

As horrific and unquestionably anti-Semitic as this was, it was an isolated and spontaneous act committed by a group of thugs with criminal histories.

The attack in Bondi was not the beginning of a pogrom and Australia is not in danger of turning into Europe, where a recent survey showed that a quarter of European Jews are afraid to openly identify as Jewish for fear of anti-Semitism.

Australia always has been ...an incredibly open, diverse, peaceful and tolerant society, and importantly, one of the safest places in the world to be Jewish.

....What is perhaps most important to note is the reaction following the incident, which has received immediate and unequivocal wall-to-wall political condemnation, including from the highest echelons of federal and state government, social and community leaders, the media and from different faith groups, including from the Muslim community.

The police have already caught three of the attackers and expect to apprehend the remaining few shortly.

It is also important acknowledge the brave individuals, including the security guards from a nearby bar, who ran to help the victims, and a taxi driver who stopped to apprehend one of the attackers. As Peter Wertheim, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the umbrella organization for the Australian Jewish community, noted, “the brave and selfless actions of these bystanders is a much more accurate reflection of the attitude of Australians to their Jewish fellow citizens, than the hate-filled violence of the group who allegedly attacked the family.”

...Though famous for its open, laid back and tolerant lifestyle, Australia is not perfect and a degree of racism, and anti-Semitism, does exist.

The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Movement continues to demonize Israel and Jews, students on some campuses will incur verbal anti-Semitic attacks (most frequently from the far Left) and sporadic graffiti and vandalism attacks still occur...

The rise in social media is also offering a new large-scale platform for today’s bigots.


...One of the reasons there has been such a spike in anti-Semitism across Europe is because the political and social leadership failed to act when the warning signs first appeared.

Today, they are playing catch up, and some may say, are even too late.

While anti-Semitism will always exist no matter where, the Australian response of zero tolerance, education and unequivocal political and social condemnation ought to be an example to all those fighting this oldest and most enduring forms of hatred.

*The author is director of research at The Israeli-Jewish Congress. Originally from Australia, he was also active in the Sydney Jewish community, including serving as a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

Iran will continue uranium enrichment and chanting "death to America"

From Times of Israel, 28 Oct, 3013, by Elhannan Miller:

President of the Iranian Parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi waits for the start of a press conference in Madrid, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 (photo credit: AP/Sergio Barrenechea)

Iran will not suspend its uranium enrichment nor will it stop the custom of chanting “death to America” in public gatherings, a senior Iranian politician said.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the foreign policy and national security committee in the Iranian parliament, told members of the engineers’ association that uranium enrichment is a “red line” in nuclear negotiations, adding that the suspension of enrichment in the past by Iran’s reformist government will never repeat itself.        

“The gloom that surrounded the nuclear facilities at the time is over,” Boroujerdi was quoted by Iran’s Arabic-language news channel Al-Alam as saying Saturday. “Today Iran can take new decisions.”

Earlier this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif denied reports that Iran had agreed to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and allow full monitoring of the underground enrichment facility at Fordo, which is to become a research facility.

Boroujerdi adamantly denied reports on the closure of Fordo.

“Fordo is one of Iran’s red lines and will certainly not be closed. It has been designed constructed to withstand the most severe threats,” he said. “If the Israeli entity wishes to act foolishly [by attacking it] it will certainly fail, because the Fordo installation is heavily fortified and cannot be struck.”

Israel is insisting that Iran completely suspend the enrichment of uranium, garnering a demand last week by US Secretary of State John Kerry that Iran prove “undeniably” that it is pursuing a peaceful nuclear program.

In his speech, the Iranian official also referred to reports that the traditional chant “death to America” will no longer be used, saying the opposite was true; and the slogan will be used even more than before...

Iran is propping ip Assad

Report: Over 60,000 Iranians Fighting Alongside Assad Forces (AKI-Italy)
    There are more than 60,000 Iranians fighting alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Assad, opposition leader Ahmad Jarba claimed on Oct. 22.
    For this reason Iran should not attend Syrian peace talks dubbed Geneva II scheduled to take place next month, Jarba told Arab and Western foreign ministers in London.
    "Assad's regime would already have fallen were it not for the Iranian presence in Syria," Jarba claimed.   

---

Iran's Secret Night Flights to Arm Syria's Assad Revealed - Phil Sands (The National-Abu Dhabi)
    Iran provides military support to Syrian President Assad by way of regular clandestine flights between Tehran and Damascus.
    "There are private flights every week, sometimes three a week, and they are controlled by an Iranian officer in Damascus," a Syrian official said.
    "Everyone must follow this [Iranian] man's orders. We have been told he is the second most important man in Syria and that we are to do as he says without question," said the official.
    "We know the flights are being organized by the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard."
    Another Syrian said at least some of the Iranian aircraft had been seen transporting fighters to help regime forces battle rebels.

Israel Air Force Plans for 10-Fold Increase in Rate of Bombs-on-Target

From Defence News, 27 Oct 2013, by BARBARA OPALL-ROME:

Israeli F-15 fighter jets are refueled by a Boeing 707 during an air show over the Negev desert, near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, on June 28, 2012. Israel Air Force leaders plan a major revamp in how the service operates. (Agence France-Presse)

RAMAT DAVID AIR BASE, ISRAEL — The Israel Air Force (IAF) is revamping headquarters staff, planning procedures and air operations to support a 10-fold increase in the number of targets it can detect and destroy, the Air Force’s chief of air operations said.

... Brig. Gen. Amikam Norkin said the institutional revamp — the service’s first since the 1973 Yom Kippur War — aims to shorten the duration of future wars while reducing demand for manoeuvring
 ground forces through massive, persistent and punishing use of precision air power.

More than a year in the making and slated for phased implementation in the coming months, the changes are driven by IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel and his Expanding Attack Capacity (EAC) program.

Officers here say the program affects all aspects of air operations, from the orders received from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) General Staff to the pilot in the cockpit and maintenance crews tasked with turnaround time.

It also involves wholesale changes in mission planning, resource management, bomb damage assessment and the way the IAF coordinates movements with western coalition forces that may be operating in the region.

But perhaps the biggest driver of EAC, experts here say, is significant improvements in so-called sensor-to-shooter capabilities. By mating persistent intelligence collection with precision weapons, the IAF expects to generate an exponential number of new, time-sensitive targets during each day of future fights.

Once implemented, traditional waves of air attack should give way to an express train of precision strikes, allowing “first circle” enemies such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza-based Hamas little time to recover from the initial shock and awe of previous campaigns.

“We’re focusing on the entire system across the full distance,” Norkin said. “The RPMs [rotations per minute] of this engine must be much higher to support a huge surge in the quantity of targets we detect and destroy each and every day of a future campaign.”

In an Oct. 21 interview at this IAF hub in northern Israel, Norkin noted that the 1,500 targets attacked in Israel’s November 2012, eight-day Pillar of Defense operation in Gaza doubled the number of targets attacked in the 34-day 2006 Lebanon War.

“In Pillar of Defense, our daily attack capacity was twice that of Lebanon, despite the fact that [Gaza] was a much smaller area and more densely populated,” Norkin said. “Now, when we talk about the northern area of operations, we’re aspiring for an order of magnitude expansion — maybe more — in the number of targets to be destroyed every day.”

Despite IAF sensor-to-shooter capabilities demonstrated by its destruction of 120-some rocket launchers in the last Lebanon war, Norkin said the IDF realizes it can no longer waste time and assets going after individual launchers. “We all understand that rockets will continue to fall here until the last day of war. A residual capacity to launch will remain with the enemy,” he said.

Under the new concept, Israel will focus on “hurting the enemy where it hurts the most,” Norkin said, referring to leadership, commanders and significant war-fighting assets.
“We won’t be able to push the enemy to the point where he can no longer shoot rockets and missiles. Therefore we need to push him to the point where he doesn’t want to shoot his rockets and missiles,” the IAF officer said...

Expediting the Endgame

Israeli officers and defense experts said the IAF revamp is an essential element in IDF strategy for expediting the diplomatic endgame through maximum destruction of enemy assets and minimal harm to uninvolved civilians.

“As soon as war breaks out, the hourglass is overturned,” Lt. Gen. Benjamin Gantz, IDF chief of staff, said of Israel’s race to achieve optimum operational gain while preserving domestic and international support prior to a brokered cease-fire.

With Hezbollah and Hamas vowed to Israel’s destruction and unwilling to entertain any type of negotiated peace, officers here insist their only option is to prolong periods of relative quiet between the inevitable outbreak of future wars.
As such, IDF strategy demands inflicting as much pain as possible through high-intensity combat and rapid battlefield gains to deter the next round of fighting once a cease-fire takes effect.

In an address this month at Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Gantz cited the “blurring of definitions between terrorist and civilian,” particularly in the context of Lebanon-based Hezbollah, “where the living room and the missile room is in the same house.”

Future wars, Gantz said, will be “transparent” and subject to round-the-clock media coverage and international scrutiny. “Every irregularity of the IDF will be accompanied by attempts to delegitimize Israel.”

While commanders across all sectors and services must be ready “to activate maximum assets with ultimate force,” Gantz flagged a preference, when possible, for precision, standoff operations.

As the officer in charge of last November’s standoff campaign against Gaza-launched rockets, Gantz delivered significant results through standoff strikes without having to embark on broad-based incursion.

More than 20,000 active-duty and reserve forces were poised at the border for the real prospect of a manoeuvring ground war. But after eight days of punishing precision strikes, Israeli political leaders were convinced Hamas had been sufficiently deterred and accepted the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that ended the fight.

Assaf Agmon, a brigadier general in the IAF reserve and director of Israel’s Fisher Institute for Strategic Air and Space Studies, warned against mistaking Pillar of Defense as a template for future wars that may require ground manoeuvring to support initial gains from standoff attack.

Nevertheless, he said operational efficiencies expected from the EAC effort should, in many scenarios, “lessen the likelihood, or at least diminish the duration,” of a costly and diplomatically damaging ground war.

“Air power assumes enormous added value in our defensive concept and in all Western cultures that are less tolerant of the heavy casualties that come from big manoeuvring ground wars,” Norkin said. “It’s hard to stop the lethality of tanks once they start to move. In contrast, air power can be controlled in a very calibrated, surgical manner. It’s like a thermostat that you can direct as hard or as soft as needed or turned off entirely when it’s time to stop.”...

Iran may be month from a bomb

From USA TODAY, October 25, 2013, by Oren Dowell:

Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by one of the USA's top nuclear experts.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, second left, gives a speech during an annual military parade in Tehran, Iran, Sept, 22, 2013.(Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi, AP)

...The new assessment comes as the White House invited Senate staffers to a briefing on negotiations with Iran as it is trying to persuade Congress not to go ahead with a bill to stiffen sanctions against Iran.

"Shortening breakout times have implications for any negotiation with Iran," stated the report by the Institute for Science and International Security. "An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further."
David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said the estimate means that Iran would have to eliminate more than half of its 19,000 centrifuges to extend the time it would take to build a bomb to six months.
The Obama administration has said Iran is probably a year away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.
Bernadette Meehan, an NSC spokeswoman for President Obama's National Security Council, said the intelligence community maintains "a number of assessments" regarding potential time frames for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon or a testable nuclear device.hi
"We continue to closely monitor the Iranian nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium," Meehan said.
World powers are seeking an agreement "that ultimately resolves all of the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program," she said. "The ultimate goal is a comprehensive agreement that is credible, transparent, and verifiable."
In the report, Albright said negotiations with Iran should focus on so-called "breakout" times, or the time required to convert low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade.
Albright, who has testified before Congress, said the negotiators should try to find ways to lengthen the breakout times and shorten the time that inspectors could detect breakout. ISIS' analysis is based on the latest Iranian and United Nations reports on Iran's centrifuge equipment for producing nuclear fuel and its nuclear fuel stockpiles.
Iran's stockpile of medium-enriched uranium has nearly doubled in a year's time and its number of centrifuges has expanded from 12,000 in 2012 to 19,000 today.
Sen. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican whose Senate Banking Committee is considering legislation to tighten Iran sanctions, said the report shows that Iran is expanding its nuclear capabilities under the cover of negotiations.
"The Senate should move forward immediately with a new round of sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring an undetectable breakout capability," he said.
The White House has said new sanctions legislation should wait while current negotiations — scheduled to resume officially in Geneva next month — are moving forward.
The White House said Thursday it will continue consulting with Congress "so that any congressional action is aligned with our negotiating strategy as we move forward," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for President Obama's National Security Council.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said his country has no interest in nuclear weapons but that producing nuclear fuel is Iran's right. His foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has said Iran will not ship its nuclear stockpile to a third country.
However, Iran has blocked international inspectors from some suspected nuclear facilities to verify they are being used for peaceful purposes, access required under international agreements it has signed.
United Nations inspectors have found evidence of a weapons program in violation of Iran's commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented crippling economic sanctions on Iran to sway it to take steps to assure the world it is not developing a bomb.
Israel, which sees an Iranian nuclear bomb as a threat to its very existence, has said it will take military action to prevent Iran from getting a bomb.
ISIS estimated in October 2012 that Iran could produce enough highly-enriched uranium for a bomb within two to four months. The new estimate is based on an analysis of the latest reports by Iran and the the IAEA.
ISIS considered various scenarios, including if Iran decided to build a covert enrichment plant like it has under a mountain in Fordow, near the city of Qom, that was designed for optimal efficiency and minimal time to enrich enough uranium for bomb making. Such a facility built with current Iranian technology could produce enough material for a bomb in a week, according to the ISIS report.
"If they did that and they were caught it would be a smoking gun of a nuclear weapons program," Albright said.
If Iran moves ahead with installation of its more efficient, second generation centrifuges, it would be able to produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb with so few of them, between 2,000 and 3,300 centrifuges, that they could fit in a small warehouse, Albright said.

One state, two states, three states, four...?

The League of Nations “Mandate for Palestine” irrevocably establishes the legal right of Jews to settle anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It was conferred on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920; it was finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries, and became operational on September 29, 1923. The League's Trust was transferred to the UN, and that legal right is intact.

Furthermore, after a century of defensive wars, as Professor, Judge Schwebel, wrote in "What Weight to Conquest":
"(a) a state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are... necessary to its self-defense;
"(b) as a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defense;
"(c) Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.
"... as between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt."

So we should stop looking for some final solution to the problem. Just manage it. Stay in iron-clad control of the entire area to the Jordan River. Annex all vacant land there. Where enemies of the state in that area reside there, let them have their local autonomy or whatever they damn-well want as long as they leave us alone.

...and let time do its work. May the Moshiach come: bim'hera, b'yamenu...