The grandfather of the 16-year-old American-Yemeni boy who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen last year is suing 4 US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Former CIA Director David Petraeus, over his son and grandson’s deaths.
The father of the Colorado-born Abdulrahman al Awlaki’s was an al [...]]]>
The grandfather of the 16-year-old American-Yemeni boy who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen last year is suing 4 US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Former CIA Director David Petraeus, over his son and grandson’s deaths.
The father of the Colorado-born Abdulrahman al Awlaki’s was an al Qaeda leader. Rights groups and reporters have argued that the boy was extrajudicially killed for his father’s actions. The fact that he was an American civilian killed by the US military in a country with which Washington is not at war also raised legal and ethical questions.
But Americans appear to favor drone strikes over all. A February 2012 Washington Post/ABC poll says 83 percent of Americans support drone strikes and 79 percent approve even when US citizens are targeted. Interestingly, Americans appear far less supportive of drone technology used for domestic law enforcement targeting citizens.
]]>The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima examines the question of what constitutes war if the trigger point originates in cyberspace:
Deciding what amounts to an act of war is more a political judgment than a military or legal one. International law avoids the phrase in favor of “armed attack” and “use of force.” [...]]]>
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima examines the question of what constitutes war if the trigger point originates in cyberspace:
Deciding what amounts to an act of war is more a political judgment than a military or legal one. International law avoids the phrase in favor of “armed attack” and “use of force.” Retired Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has often said that an act of war “is in the eye of the beholder.”
As Cartwright has pointed out, the United States didn’t go to war with North Korea after it sank a South Korean warship in 2010, nor with Iran after the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized in 1979. Would we want to start a war over a virus that causes a power blackout? And if not, what other actions might the government contemplate?
The government has defined an armed attack in cyberspace as one that results in death, injury or significant destruction, as Harold Koh, the State Department’s chief legal adviser, recently put it. Here’s the rule of thumb, as Koh stated it: “If the physical consequences of a cyberattack work the kind of physical damage that dropping a bomb or firing a missile would, that cyberattack should equally be considered a use of force.” If an attack reaches those levels, then a nation has a right to act in self-defense.
Columbia Law School professor Matthew Waxman elaborates on the legal and policy dimensions at the Lawfare blog. Demonstrating attribution and the need for self-defence will be a multi-dimensional, complicated process, he writes:
As to the last questions, whatever certainty about the perpetrator is necessary to satisfy internally the legal self-defense question, a state will also need to explain and justify its military response externally, to domestic and international audiences – and those exercises may look very different. A state may not be willing to disclose publicly some of the intelligence information and analysis used to satisfy its internal legal analysis (I’m assuming that the attribution of a major cyber-attack could involve a combination of sophisticated digital forensics, human intelligence, reliance on circumstantial evidence and reasoning, and other means). Even if it chooses to disclose intelligence, that information might be unintelligible or unpersuasive to skeptical outside audiences. And the threshold of certainty necessary to win support from allies and partners may be higher (or perhaps in some cases lower) than that needed to satisfy legal requirements.
In terms of evolving international law in this area, the challenges of demonstrating attribution – besides just assessing it internally – will make it especially difficult to develop consensus legal appraisal of self-defensive actions against cyber-attacks, because so many of the key facts about the attack will be contested, secret, or difficult to observe.
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Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to the Middle East last week included reassuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in person, that the U.S. was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — the U.S.’s “red line” on Iran. Panetta reiterated the U.S.’s position, essentially point by point, at [...]]]>
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to the Middle East last week included reassuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in person, that the U.S. was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — the U.S.’s “red line” on Iran. Panetta reiterated the U.S.’s position, essentially point by point, at a Pentagon Joint Press Conference with the Japanese Minister of Defense on August 3: “Bottom line is that we have common cause with them with regards to Iran. Our positions are similar. We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said in response to a question about the likelihood of an Israeli attack against Iran.
When Panetta says that the U.S. and Israeli positions are “similar”, he is acknowledging that they’re not the same, a significant detail considering the growing pressure from Israel and various U.S.-based hawkish Israel advocacy groups and pundits aimed at reforming the U.S.’s policy.
The Israeli “red line” on Iran, at least according to public Israeli statements, is Iran’s acquirement of nuclear weapon building “capability” or Iran crossing into a so-called “zone of immunity” where it can create a nuclear weapon at Fordow, the underground uranium enrichment facility that’s impenetrable by Israeli air strikes. (The Israeli position is confusing according to Colin Kahl and other experts who argue that you can’t bomb knowledge and the Iranians already have nuclear weapon know-how.) Importantly, as the Iranians themselves insist — and U.S. and Israeli defense and intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) reports confirm — the Iranians have not yet made a decision to build a weapon.
Israeli frustration and impatience with the U.S.’s persistent Iran policy may explain why some “Israeli officials” are allowing their press to report statements that hardly seem diplomatic (one might even say appear antagonistic) about their important ally. Just yesterday the English version of Ynetnews reported that
Senior officials on Sunday leveled severe criticism against the US, declaring that the American position on a date for a military strike against Iran was a “wretched red line.”
“The US’ stance is pushing the Iranians to become a country at the brink (of nuclear capability),” explained sources well versed in the nuclear issue. “The Americans are de facto allowing the Iranians to continue to enrich uranium and become a country at the brink. We are not prepared to allow that (to happen).”
Meanwhile, according to an August 3 Haaretz post, Netanyahu is getting very agitated over public scrutiny regarding his plans for Iran — chest-thumping, table-banging mad. But that may be part of a ploy:
Others present at the meeting, however, pointed out that Netanyahu’s comments seemed to be part of the “psychological warfare” campaign that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are conducting, in order to pressure the U.S. into attacking Iran itself.
At one point during the meeting, a participant asked Netanyahu what he thinks could possibly happen the day after an Israeli strike on Iran. According to one of the meeting’s participants, the question angered Netanyahu. “If an investigative committee is formed, I’ll go and say that I, I am responsible,” said Netanyahu, as he pounded the table, and his chest, with his fist.
The fuming Netanyahu didn’t stop there. “I’ve had enough of this atmosphere,” he said. “It’s also felt in other discussions [on Iran], people keep showing me presentations prepared as if for an investigative committee. I’ve told them to stop with these presentations, stop speaking on protocol, and get to the point,” said Netanyahu.
]]>Netanyahu made it clear to those present that he prefers that the U.S. “do the work,” though he admits that the U.S. is not prepared to pursue a military option at this point.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan have both made waves over the past months with statements asserting that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could only delay, not destroy, the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Speaking in Tel Aviv last week, Michèle [...]]]>
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan have both made waves over the past months with statements asserting that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could only delay, not destroy, the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Speaking in Tel Aviv last week, Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Obama administration’s undersecretary of defense for policy, emphasized that while the U.S. has a real and viable set of military options against Iran, an Israeli unilateral strike would be unproductive and any military action “would put time on the clock, but it wouldn’t solve the problem in any meaningful way.”
Flournoy’s comments were delivered at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) on May 29 and 30 and appeared to attempt to both alleviate Israeli concerns that the U.S. was insufficiently committed to preventing a nuclear armed Iran and dissuade Israel from launching its own unilateral strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Having sat in the Pentagon, I can assure you of the quality of the work that has been done. [...] The military option for the president is real,” said Flournoy. “Barack Obama is a president that says what he means and does what he says. [...] I can assure you we do not have a policy of containment.”
Flournoy, who left the Pentagon in February and advises the Obama re-election campaign, warned that Israeli military action would ultimately prove counterproductive to Israeli and U.S. interests, telling the audience:
If Israel would launch an attack prematurely, it would undermine the ability of the international community to come together in the critical long-term campaign. It would ultimately hurt our goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
That warning was amplified by former Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill who told the INSS audience, “If there were attacks on the American homeland [in response to an Israeli attack on Iran], how many Americans might think that Israel dragged us into a war and now shopping malls were being blown up?”
A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.
]]>On Thursday Barak told an Israeli radio show that he was pleased with the “change of emphasis” expressed by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta when he made controversial comments about Iran’s nuclear program on CBS News. (The Pentagon later [...]]]>
On Thursday Barak told an Israeli radio show that he was pleased with the “change of emphasis” expressed by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta when he made controversial comments about Iran’s nuclear program on CBS News. (The Pentagon later said that some of Panetta’s statements were made “hypothetically“):
“The change of emphasis … is a very important development, because it makes clear a fact that was already known to us from closed-door (discussions),” Barak told Israel Radio. “It makes clear to Iran that it faces a real dilemma.”
He also repudiated an accusation by neoconservatives and hawks that Obama has been “appeasing” Iran:
“You may not like what he does (but) you discern a man who is capable and ready to undertake the fiercest of political risks to his survival, in order to make good on what he believes in,” said Barak, who met Obama in Washington last week.
“We are asked, sometimes, whether Obama is really a soft appeaser. To that, I say: ‘Go ask Osama bin Laden.’”
In November Barak rejected claims made by U.S.-based Israel advocates that the Obama administration is anti-Israel:
I am saying very clearly that this administration in regard to Israel’s security–and we are traditionally supported by each and every American president in our generation–but under this administration we went even further into a clear, deep, deep commitment to the security of Israel. And beyond.
The endorsements are meant to prop up President Obama’s re-election campaign.
]]>- Pelley: So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?
Panetta: It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less. But one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel.
Pelley: So that they can develop a weapon even more quickly…
Panetta: On a faster track….
Today a pentagon spokesperson told the AFP that Panetta’s comments were made “hypothetically” and that he was not suggesting that there was new intelligence pointing to secret facilities.
The ISIS’s David Albright said Panetta’s public speculations were “not helpful” in the absence of evidence and “definitely misleading.” He added that there was “low probability” that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within a year without detection by inspectors and a military response.
Hawkish commentary aside, there is no concrete evidence to prove that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon or intends to. In fact, the most damning aspect of the latest IAEA report about Iran is its suggestion that the country is leaning towards “breakout capability”. This corresponds with U.S. intelligence assessments and means there’s still time to pursue diplomatic engagement with Iran.
Panetta’s “red line” comment also landed him a top spot on the front page of AIPAC’s website today. He appeared to suggest to Pelley that the U.S. was not only keeping the military option open, but that it would support Israel by taking “whatever steps necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. (As Joe Cirincione notes, he stopped just short of saying military force would be used):
- Panetta: Well, we share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us and that’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.
Pelley: You just said if we have to do it we will come and do it. What is it?
Panetta: If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.
Pelley: Including military steps?
Panetta: There are no options off the table.
A disclaimer-like mention at the end of the transcript notes that Panetta told CBS News that “while Iran needs a year or less to assemble a weapon, he has no indication yet that the Iranians have made the decision to go ahead.”
Panetta did not take the opportunity to reiterate comments he made earlier this month about the calamity of a US war with Iran. The secretary told an audience at the pro-Israel Saban Center that an attack would “not destroy” Iran’s ability to produce weapons, would cause major “backlash” against the US along with “severe” economic consequences, strengthen the regime, and “could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.”
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