Israel may feel need to strike Syria again

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli air attack staged in Syria this week may be a sign of things to come.

Israeli military officials appear to have concluded that the risks of attacking Syria are worth taking when compared to the dangers of allowing sophisticated weapons to reach Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

With Syrian President Bashar Assad's grip on power weakening,Israeli officials fear he could soon lose control over his substantial arsenal of chemical and advanced weapons, which could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other hostile groups. These concerns, combined with Hezbollah's own domestic problems, mean further military action could be likely.

Tzachi Hanegbi, an incoming lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party and a former chairman of parliament's influential foreign affairs and defense committee, signaled Thursday that Israel could be compelled to act on its own. While Israel's preference is for Western powers to gain control over Syria's arms stockpile, he said there are no signs of that happening.

"Israel finds itself, like it has many times in the past, facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond to. And it could well be that we will reach a stage where we will have to make decisions," Hanegbi told Israel's Army Radio Thursday. Hanegbi, like other Israeli officials, would not confirm Israeli involvement in the airstrike.

In this week's incident, Israeli warplanes conducted a rare airstrike inside Syria, according to U.S. officials who said the target was a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.

The Syrian military has denied the existence of any weapons shipment and said a military research facility outside Damascus was hit.

On Thursday, Syria threatened to retaliate, while Hezbollah condemned the attack as "barbaric aggression." Iran, which supplies arms to Syria, Hezbollah and the Hamas militant group in Gaza, said the airstrike would have significant implications for Israel. Syrian ally Russia said it appeared to be an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation.

Syria's ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, said Damascus "has the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation." He told Hezbollah's al-Ahd news website that it was up to the relevant authorities to choose the time and place.

For now, Israeli officials seem to be playing down the threats.

"Israel took a big gamble out of the belief that Iran and Hezbollah won't retaliate. The question is, 'Are they right or not?'" said Moshe Maoz, a professor emeritus at Hebrew University who specializes in Syria.

Officials believe that Assad's position in Syria is so precarious that he cannot risk opening a new front with Israel. With an estimated 60,000 Syrians killed in the civil war, Israeli officials also think it's too late for Assad to rally his bitterly divided nation behind him.

"Syria is in such a bad state right now that an Israeli retaliation to a Syrian action would be harsh and could topple the regime. Therefore Syria is not responding," Maoz said.

Israel is far more worried about the threat of sophisticated weapons reaching Hezbollah. In a monthlong 2006 war, Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israel before the conflict ended in a stalemate. Israeli officials believe the guerrilla group has restocked its arsenal with tens of thousands of missiles, some capable of striking deep inside the Jewish state.

Resigned to this fact, Israel has set a number of "red lines" for Hezbollah that it says are unacceptable, in particular the acquisition of new weapons that it believes would change the balance of power in the region. These include chemical weapons and sophisticated anti-aircraft and surface-to-sea missiles.

This week's airstrike targeted trucks containing Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, according to a U.S. official. The trucks were next to the military research facility identified by the Syrians, and the strike hit both the trucks and the facility, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation.

If the SA-17s were to have reached Hezbollah, they would have greatly inhibited the Israeli air force's ability to operate in Lebanon. Israel has frequently flown sorties over Lebanese skies since 2006.

The airstrike is part of an Israeli strategy known to military planners as "the policy of prevention," or the "war between wars." In recent years, Israel is believed to have launched a number of covert missions, including airstrikes in Sudan and assassinations of key Hezbollah and Hamas militants, aimed at disrupting the flow of weapons to its Iranian-backed enemies. Israel has never acknowledged involvement.

Israeli security officials believe that Hezbollah, despite its claims of victory, is still deterred by the experience of the 2006 war, in which it lost hundreds of fighters. Instead of a direct war, Israel fears Hezbollah might try to strike Israeli or Jewish targets around the world. Israel has accused Hezbollah of a string of attacks on Israeli targets in recent years, including a deadly attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last July.

The Israeli airstrike comes at a particularly sensitive and vulnerable time for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Despite its formidable weapons arsenal and political clout in the country, the group's credibility and maneuvering space has been significantly reduced in the past few years.

Hezbollah still suffers from the fallout of the 2006 war, which many in Lebanon accused it of provoking by kidnapping soldiers from the border area. Since then, the group has come under increasing pressure at home to disarm, leading to sectarian tensions between its Shiite supporters and Sunnis from the opposing camp that have often spilled into deadly street fighting.

When Hezbollah sent an Iranian-made reconnaissance drone over Israel in November, the group boasted of its capabilities — but critics in Lebanon slammed it for embarking on a unilateral adventure that could provoke Israel.

Despite persistent reports and accusations that Hezbollah members are fighting alongside the military in Syria, Hezbollah has largely approached the Syria conflict with caution, mindful that any action it takes could backfire.

"In different times, Hezbollah would have reacted to Israel's surgical strike, but not today," said Bilal Saab, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, North America. "This is a time for hunkering down and weathering the storm."

The uprising in Syria, the main transit point of weapons brought from Iran to Hezbollah, presents the group with its toughest challenge since its inception in 1982.

The group could still get weapons, but would struggle to get them as easily without the Syria supply route. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's public support for the Assad regime has proved costly and the group's reputation has taken a severe beating. Former champions of the group now describe it as hypocritical for supporting Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but not in Syria.

As for Israel and Syria, although they are bitter enemies, they have avoided direct conflict for most of the past 40 years. Israel has been careful to stay out of Syria's civil war, not wanting to be seen as supporting any side in the conflict.

While the attack overnight Tuesday, believed to be the first by Israel on Syrian soil since 2007, appeared to come out of nowhere, signs of impending action were evident in recent days.

On Jan. 23, the day after national elections, Netanyahu convened top security officials for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Syria.

One of the meeting participants, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, warned this week that Israel could be forced to carry out a pre-emptive attack under certain circumstances. The same day, Israel suddenly moved a new, state-of-the-art rocket-defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was hit hard by Hezbollah rocket fire during a 2006 war.

Uzi Rabi, a military analyst at Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center, said the attack was a "kind of message" sent by Israel to Syria and Hezbollah.

"It says we do have capabilities when it comes to intelligence gathering ... and this would serve as kind of a warning sign to Hezbollah not to transfer chemical weaponry from Syria to Hezbollah," he said.

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Defiant Iran plans to speed up nuclear fuel work

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has announced plans to install and operate advanced uranium enrichment machines, in what would be a technological leap allowing it to significantly speed up activity the West fears could be put to developing a nuclear weapon.

In a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran said it would introduce new centrifuges to its main enrichment plant near the central town of Natanz, according to an IAEAcommunication to member states seen by Reuters.

The defiant move will increase concerns in the West and Israel about Iran's nuclear ambitions, which Tehran says are entirely peaceful, and may further complicate efforts by big powers to negotiate curbs on its enrichment program.

The United States said on Thursday that installation of new Iranian centrifuges would be a "provocative step".

"This does not come as a surprise," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington. He said the introduction of these machines would result in Iran's further isolation by the international community.

Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated aim, or provide material for bombs if refined to a high degree, which the West suspects is Tehran's underlying purpose.

A new generation centrifuge could, if successfully deployed, refine uranium several times faster than the model Iran now has.

"It is certainly a provocation to increase any enrichment capacity at all," a senior Western diplomat said.

It was not clear how many of the upgraded centrifuges Iran aimed to put in place at Natanz, which is designed for tens of thousands of machines, but the wording of the IAEA's note implied it could be up to roughly 3,000.

Analysts say U.N. sanctions have limited Iran's access abroad to special steel and other components needed to produce sophisticated enrichment machines in larger numbers. Iran says it is able to manufacture them domestically.

Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges more efficient than the erratic 1970s IR-1 model it now uses, but their introduction for full-scale production has been dogged by delays and technical hurdles, experts and diplomats say.

Iran's announcement coincides with wrangling between Tehran and six world powers over when and where to meet next, delaying a resumption of talks aimed at reaching a negotiated deal and avert a new Middle East war.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who handles contacts with Iran on behalf of the big powers, said in Brussels on Thursday that she was "confident there will be a meeting soon," without elaborating.

The powers - the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China - want Iran to scale back its enrichment to ensure it remains within peaceful dimensions and submit to stricter U.N. nuclear inspections.

"We along with the other U.N. Security Council members have called upon the Iranians to freeze enrichment work during negotiations," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Western states have intensified the sanctions pressure on Iran over the past year, targeting its lifeline oil sector. This has inflicted increasing damage to Iran's economy but its clerical leadership is showing no sign of backing down.

Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, has hinted at possible military action against Iran if sanctions and diplomacy fail to resolve the nuclear stand-off.

Signaling impatience, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said: "While the world continues to talk about setting a time and place for the next meeting with Iran, Tehran continues to race toward building a nuclear bomb."

GAME CHANGER?

Iran asserts a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and has repeatedly refused to halt the work, a stance underlined anew by its new centrifuge plans. Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of uranium's fissile isotope.

Iran said it would use the new model at a unit in Natanz, where it is now refining uranium to a fissile concentration of up to five percent, according to the IAEA's communication.

The IAEA "received a letter from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) dated 23 January 2013 informing the Agency that 'centrifuge machines type IR2m will be used in Unit A-22' at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz," it said.

The IAEA said it had asked Iran, in a letter earlier this week, to provide technical and other information about the plans. A unit can house more than 3,000 centrifuges.

About 10,400 IR-1 centrifuges were installed at Natanz as of late last year, an IAEA report said in November, but diplomats in the Austrian capital said they expected a jump in that figure in the next update from the U.N. agency due around February 22.

The nuclear watchdog, whose mission it is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, regularly inspects Natanz and other, declared Iranian nuclear sites.

Nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank said that employing more efficient centrifuges at Natanz could be "a most unfortunate game changer," depending on how many there were.

"Using the IR-2m in large numbers would enable Iran to enrich uranium much faster," Fitzpatrick said.

Iran says it refines uranium to power a planned network of nuclear energy plants. But just one of these plants would take many years to complete, raising many questions abroad about the motivations of a major oil and gas producer speeding up its accumulation of enriched uranium and, since early 2010, refining to a level beyond the 5 percent suitable for civilian energy.

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in London, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Internet outrage grows over Indiana officer charged after saving deer

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - An Indiana police officer said he does not know how Dani the deer slipped into the wild before the state could execute her, but he does not think he should be prosecuted in the case.

Neither do 60,000 other people who are demanding online that charges be dropped.

Jeff Counceller and his wife were charged with illegal possession of a wild animal for bringing the injured fawn to their Connersville home more than two years ago. They have said they planned to nurse her back to health and release her.

When the Indiana Department of Natural Resources sent an officer to their property last summer to kill Dani under department rules, she was gone from her pen. The Councellers have said they do not know who left the gate open, but it was not them. Dani has been in the wild since then.

Indiana state law prohibits handling wild animals without a permit because there is a threat of disease transmission.

"At the end of the day, the deer survived and that's all that matters," said Jeff Counceller, a Connersville police officer. "She's getting to live a hopefully long life and that's all that matters."

Outrage over the charges sparked a change.org online petition with more than 30,000 signatures and a Facebook page "Drop Charges Against Connersville Police Officer" with more than 36,000 "likes" on Thursday.

A legal defense fund received more than $2,100 in pledges (http://www.giveforward.com/connersvillecharges) and the couple made an appearance on "Good Morning America."

Indiana Governor Mike Pence has asked for a review of the case, his press secretary Kara Brooks said.

"I never wanted it to balloon as it has," said Jeff Counceller. "I just wanted to be treated fairly, and I don't think I have been because I am a police officer."

Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman Bill Browne said the department could not comment on ongoing litigation.

(Reporting by Susan Guyett; Editing by David Bailey and Barbara Goldberg)

Soldier admits shooting man trying to cure hiccups

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — A Fort Hood soldier has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, saying he shot his friend accidentally while trying to scare away his hiccups.

Fort Hood officials say Spc. Patrick Edward Myers, of Spartanburg, S.C., was sentenced Thursday to 3½ years in military prison. He also was busted to private and will receive a bad-conduct discharge.

Myers fatally shot Pfc. Isaac Lawrence Young in September while they were watching a football game at a Killeen apartment. Myers told police he thought the weapon had dummy rounds and was trying to scare his friend so his hiccups would stop.

Young, of Ash Grove, Mo., was 22.

The case was tried in military court on the Central Texas Army post because the victim and suspect were soldiers.