From left: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for a picture in Tehran. Iran has agreed to ship the bulk of its low enriched uranium abroad in a nuclear fuel swap deal backed by Turkey and Brazil but treated cautiously by European powers seeking new sanctions against Tehran. (AFP/Atta Kenare)

“A nuclear-armed Iran would blunt Israel’s military autonomy, a wargame involving former Israeli generals and diplomats has concluded, though some players predicted Tehran would also exercise restraint,” says a new report by Reuters this morning. “Sunday’s event at a campus north of Tel Aviv followed other high-profile Iran simulations in Israel and the United States in recent months. But it broke new ground by assuming the existence of what both countries have pledged to prevent: an Iranian bomb.  ‘Iranian deterrence proved dizzyingly effective,’ Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a retired air force commander who played the Israeli defence minister, said in his summary of the 20-team meeting. Though the wargame saw Iran declaring itself a nuclear power in 2011, the ensuing confrontations were by proxy, in Lebanon. In one, emboldened Hezbollah guerrillas fired missiles at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv. That was followed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence findings that Iran had slipped radioactive materials to its Lebanese cohort, to assemble a crude device. Neither move drew Israeli attacks, though Ben-Eliahu said his delegation had received discreet encouragement from Arab rivals of Iran to ‘go all the way’ in retaliating. Instead, Israel conferred with the United States, which publicly supported its ally’s ‘right to self-defence’ and mobilised military reinforcements for the region while quietly insisting the Israelis stand down to give crisis talks a chance. ‘As far as the United States was concerned, Israel was trigger-happy. It sought to use the Hezbollah (missile) attack as justification for what the United States was told would be an all-out war,’ said Dan Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv who played President Barack Obama…..” [To read the rest of the article, please click here]

• Russia to sell jets, air defense systems to Syria
• NYT: Iran strikes deal with Turkey — “Iran announced an agreement on Monday to ship some of its nuclear fuel to Turkey in a deal that could offer a short-term solution to its ongoing nuclear standoff with the West, or prove to be a tactic aimed at derailing efforts to bring new sanctions against Tehran.”
• Iran step could boost ability to enrich uranium, diplomats say
• Washington Post: Iranian cleric wants creation of ‘Greater Iran’ —  A radical cleric called Saturday for the creation of a “Greater Iran” that would rule over the entire Middle East and Central Asia, in an event that he said would herald the coming of Islam’s expected messiah, [the Twelfth Imam]

————————————-