1. The Arab springboard, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum
2. Hamas fires scores of rockets at Israel, 3 wounded, The Israel Project (TIP), Press Release
3. The Egypt-Gaza Powder Keg, JINSA, Yaakov Lappin
4. The Legality of an Attack against Iranian Nuclear Facilities, INSS Insight No. 345, Robbie Sabel
5. Ahmadinejad to Quits Politics in 2013, FARS News Agency,
6. Will Obama Admin Leaks Prompt Middle East War?, Breitbart, Ben Shapiro

It is not for nothing that jihadists refer to the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and to Israel as the “Small Satan.” What the U.S. and the Jewish state have in common is so profound and unmistakable that radical Islamists have recognized and felt threatened by it from the get-go.

Using Quranic texts and the “hadith” (oral traditions) to support their aim to kill or convert all Jews and Christians to Islam, they have little trouble explaining their aversion to the key countries that base their legal and moral systems on the Ten Commandments.

But this is only their theological justification for hating the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular. Their religious zeal in actually trying to carry out what they believe their prophet, Mohammed, had in mind for them comes from a combination of fear and envy.

What they fear is freedom. It is also what they envy....

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Jerusalem, June 19 – Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired volleys of rockets and missiles at Israeli towns and villages on Tuesday in the worst outbreak of violence for several weeks, wounding three Israelis.

The military wing of the Hamas terrorist group, armed and financed by Iran, claimed responsibility for many of the strikes. In previous outbreaks of violence against Israel this year, the rival Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility while Hamas worked to calm matters down.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, 29 rockets, mortars and missiles landed in Israel on Tuesday. Other media outlets, including the Jerusalem Post, put the number at 45. The Israel Project now puts the number of rockets, mortars and missiles fired at Israel from Gaza this year at 396, compared to 653 in the whole of 2011....

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Recent developments on Israel's southern borders have illustrated the direct relationship between the changes sweeping Arab lands and mounting threats to Israel's national security.

This past weekend, as Egyptians went to the polls, terrorists operating in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula fired two Grad rockets into southern Israel.

The projectiles landed in Uvda and Mitzpe Ramon, which are located north of the Red Sea tourist hub of Eilat. These are areas that had never seen terrorist rocket fire before.

Mitzpe Ramon is situated 14 kilometers north of the Egyptian border. According to Israel Police bomb squad officials, the rockets used in the attack have a maximum range of 22 kilometers, and Israeli security forces say that Sinai is filled with secret weapons caches containing many more rockets, RPGs, machine guns, and anti-tank missiles, as well as terror cells from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda-affiliated groups ready to use them.

Soon after the double rocket attack, some of those deadly weapons were put to use again on Sunday, when a four-man terror cell from Sinai attacked a Ministry of Defense construction crew working on a fence being built by Israel on its border with Egypt....

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The starting point for any analysis of the legality of an armed attack by Israel or the US against Iranian nuclear facilities must be the UN Charter prohibition against "the threat or use of force." ¹ The UN Charter provides explicitly for only two exceptions to the prohibition against use of force. The first exception is if the use of force is authorized by the UN Security Council acting within its powers under Chapter VII of the Charter. It can be assumed with high certainty that China and Russia would veto any proposal that the Security Council authorizes use of force against Iranian nuclear facilities and that therefore no such authorization will be forthcoming.

The second explicit exception to the prohibition against the use of force refers to a State's "inherent right of individual or collective self-defense where an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations." ²  There has not been an armed attack by Iran against either Israel or the US. Iran has supported Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist attacks against Israel but according to a ruling of the International Court of Justice, supplying arms and training to an enemy of a State does not, by itself, constitute an armed attack against that State. ³

Some commentators consider that since Article 51 of the UN Charter refers to an "inherent" right of self defense therefore this inherent right preserves the pre-Charter right of preemptive self defense. Preemptive self defense implies a right to use force to prevent a potential attack even if no preliminary steps for an attack have been taken by the potential attacker. Pre-conditions for the right to preemptive self defense include establishing that the need to use force was overwhelming, the threat was imminent and there was no alternative. ⁴ An Iranian use of nuclear weapons against Israel would certainly seem to satisfy the condition of the "overwhelming need". According to a recent Foreign Policy study, a "nuclear attack on Tel Aviv… would potentially kill 42 percent of the Israeli population". ⁵  How far it would be dire for the US could however be debatable. In order to satisfy the second condition, namely of having no alternative, the US and Israel would need to present a convincing case that sanctions and diplomatic pressure were not yielding results. The third pre-condition, that of an "imminent" threat appears to be problematical. This pre-condition could perhaps be met by relying on the statement by the International Court of Justice that "a 'peril' appearing in the long term might be held to be 'imminent' as soon as it is established, at the relevant point in time, that the realization of that peril, however far off it might be, is not thereby any less certain and inevitable. A measure of uncertainty about the future does not necessarily disqualify a State from invoking necessity, if the peril is clearly established on the basis of the evidence reasonably available at the time." ⁶...

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TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would leave the scene of politics after he steps down as Iran's president next year.

Ahmadinejad is nearing the end of his second term in office and can't run in Iran's June 2013 elections because of term limits.

Ahmadinejad was quoted Saturday as saying in an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that he plans to return to academia.

He said that - though he might engage in political activity at a university - "I will not found any political party or group."

Asked whether, like Russia's Vladimir Putin, he envisions returning to the presidency at a later date, he replied, "No, eight years are enough."

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Today, the Obama administration leaker, who has been distributing information about American and Israeli security for weeks, struck again. This time, the leaker went to the Washington Post, prompting the Post to run a piece crediting Israel and the United States with developing the computer virus that screwed up Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is the latest in a long line of leaks, most of them credited to anonymous Defense Department officials; this one was credited, more discreetly, to “Western officials with knowledge of the effort.”

The fact that the Defense Department has been the source of many of the leaks – leaks including information about Israel’s timing regarding a possible attack on Iran, cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia for such a strike, and Azerbaijan allowing Israel access to their airbases for such purposes.

There has been widespread speculation about the source of the leaks. Some have suggested that Tom Donilon, President Obama’s National Security Advisor, is the source; today, others suggest that it is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta....

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