HARPER: WILL BIBI AND OBAMA BOMB IRAN THIS SUMMER?

 
I have just received the following note from a friend, who is generally very well informed on events in Washington, Tel Aviv and other Middle East capitals. I pass it on for comment.

A recent article in {Ha'aretz} by Amir Oren warned
that ``between the end of June and Gates' retirement, and the end
of September and Mullen's retirement, the danger that Netanyahu
and [Ehud] Barak will aim at a surprise in Iran is especially
great, especially since this would divert attention from the
Palestinian issue.'' This warning of an Israeli military strike
on Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz and other locations has
been buttressed by senior U.S. military and intelligence sources,
who have warned, in the past 24 hours, that U.S. military forces
have been conducting big contingency planning drills over the
past several weeks, for a U.S. intervention, following Israeli
strikes on targets in Iran. These sources say that a target date
for such a joint Israel-U.S. attack on Iran would be July and
August of this year.

 

A number of other recent developments further fill out this
picture of a potential Armageddon provocation by Netanyahu, Barak
and Obama.

First, on June 3, Britain's {Guardian} reported on an
interview with recently retired Mossad head Meir Dagan, who
attacked Netanyahu and Barak as ``irresponsible and reckless.''
{Ha'aretz} columnist Avi Shavit explained: ``Dagan is extremely
concerned about September 2011. He is not afraid that tens of
thousands of demonstrators may overrun the settlements. He is
afraid that Israel's subsequent isolation will push its leaders
to the wall and cause them to take reckless action against
Iran.'' Dagan told reporters that when he was head of Mossad, he
and Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin and Israeli Defense Forces Chief
of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi could collectively veto any reckless
behavior by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, but they have
all been replaced by weaker figures who would not buck attack
orders from the Prime Minister. ``I decided to speak because when
I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any
dangerous adventure. Now I am afraid that there is no one to
stop Bibi and Barak.''

Second, the Obama White House launched a panicked, clumsy
preemptive attack this week against {New Yorker} magazine writer
Seymour Hersh, to spike his June 6 article, ``Iran and the
Bomb,'' which provided previously unpublished details of a 2011
updated National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear
weapons program. The new NIE, updating the December 2007 NIE,
concluded that there was still no compelling evidence that Iran
had resumed its quest for nuclear weapons, which had been frozen
in late 2003, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As
Hersh documented, the 2011 NIE was delayed for more than four
months, due to political pressures on the intelligence analysts
to reverse the earlier findings. But the intelligence community
experts, with backing from such senior officials as DIA Director
Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, stood behind the analysts, and refused to
bend to political pressures. DIA, in particular, assessed that
the Iran nuclear weapons effort had been principally directed
against Iraq--not Israel, and that the March 2003 invasion and
overthrow of Saddam Hussein had taken the Iraq threat off the
table, and Iran had shelved the nuclear weapons effort. Hersh
quoted former DIA humint director Col. Patrick Lang that the
intelligence community had ``refused to drink the Kool Aid this
time.''

On June 2, {Salon} magazine published a report by Glenn
Greenwald, which read, in part: ``Seymour Hersh has a new article
in the {New Yorker} arguing that there is no credible evidence
that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he
writes, `the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake
similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein's Iraq eight years
ago -- allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical
regime to distort our estimates of the state's military
capacities and intentions.' This, of course, cannot stand, as it
conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign
policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National
Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said). As a result,
two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to {Politico} to bash
Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity
automatically and subserviently extended by that `news outlet.'"
The trash-Hersh campaign spread to other publications, in a
futile Obama White House effort to kill the impact of the Hersh
story.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, after initially
dismissing the imminent threat of an Israeli military strike on
Iran, made a compelling case for why Israel might launch such an
attack in the nearterm. If Israel concluded that the recent
computer virus, which greatly disrupted the work at the Natanz
facility, had been countered, and a new generation of centrifuges
had been successfully installed, Iran could be 12-18 months away
from a nuclear weapons breakout. That alone would suppress any
Israeli institutional resistance to an attack on Iran. The
source added that U.S. intelligence believes that Israel's
military capabilities have been seriously diminished and that an
Israeli attack on Natanz and other facilities would most likely
do only minimum damage. Therefore, the U.S. would have only two
options in the event of such an Israel attack: Sit it out and
make it clear that the attack was not sanctioned by Washington,
or launch U.S. military operations to ``finish the job.''
Contingency plans for the latter option are definitely in place,
the source explained, and it would thus be up to President Obama
to make the call. While there is no love lost between Obama and
Netanyahu, Obama's decisions are all calibrated to ensure his
2012 reelection, and he would be very reluctant to buck the
Israeli Lobby and leave Israel to fend for itself.

Comments

[walrus]

The Henry and the Browning T-Bolt in .17HMR are available just down the road from me. I guess its time to go take a look..

Both have very good reviews. The round looks to be more "neighborhood friendly" for the area I'm thinking of as well as just right for Foxes.

Review of the T Bolt:

http://ausvarmint.com/av/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=28

[PeterHug]

TTG, I think I'm more of a luddite than you ... I have two firearms, one of .75 caliber and the other .69 - and they have a cyclic rate of about 5 rpm in well-trained hands.

:)

[William R. Cumming]

Potential war with Iran a serious subject! Both Israel and Iran seem to believe that war might have winners. IMO both would end their nation-state status after such a war.
And both have some claim to that status and not just tribal areas.
My view is that both Israel and Iran might well study closely the Han Chinese as the MONGOLS on the horizon, just better adept at avoiding direct confrontation. Sun Tzu?

[Fiorangela]

William R Cummings, re: "Both Israel and Iran seem to believe that war might have winners. IMO both would end their nation-state status after such a war."

It's important to put the right labels on the parties to a conflict: Who is the aggressor, who is the defender.

No rhetorical questions here to flesh out the situation; Israel is the aggressor, Iran is the defender.

In many of Iran's mid-sized towns and even in large cities, one can still see buildings that were damaged in 1981-1988 and have not yet been repaired.

Faded posters of sons, husbands, brothers of villagers killed in Iraq-Iran war are still visible on the doorways of the homes they never returned to.

I flew from Frankfurt to Tehran next to a woman who was returning from a visit to her brother who is confined to a hospital in Germany, where he is kept alive by machines that breathe for him; his lungs were damaged by chemical weapons in Iraq-Iran war; he is one of 50,000 Iranians living with the debilitating reminder of Saddam's gas attacks on Iran.

Iran does not want another war. Not Iran's people, not Iran's leaders, not Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Despite having paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel and the US for weaponry in the pre-revolution years, Iran was not prepared to defend itself against Iraq in 1981. As Ronen Bergman reports in "The Secret War with Iran," Iran, too, has promised itself that "Never Again" will Iran be caught with its defenses down.

[William R. Cumming]

Fiorangela! Well Iraq certainly the aggressor in the Iranian/Iraqi war! By picking sides in that war again the US showed its incompetent administration of foreign policy witness the grinning RUMMY shaking hands with SH!

Well the USA is paying for its ignorance and hubris daily even as its various picking sides and intervening force a world-wide consensus that the USA is a danger out of its almost total ignorance and incompetence at foreign affairs.
And Hillary should NOT be given the World Bank slot. Zoellick doing fine and perhaps like the IMF time for some other nation-state to lead the WB since we are totally incompetent at managing our (US) financial affairs and internal development! By the anniversary of WWII in 2045 the US is headed to joke status in the world. Just 34 years off. What clown will be the next US President? Perhaps the UN will let Canada intervene after riots and civil disorders later this summer?

[Patrick Lang]

WRC

OK. All you innocents come and talk to me six months from now about your opposition re my Turkish suggestion. By then the number of dead syrian civilians will be much larger.

WRC

In re the Iran-Iraq War. Yes, the Iraqis invaded Iran. Once it began the Saudis begged the US to intervene sufficiently to keep Iran from over running South Iraq, Kuwait and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. if you think that was not going to happen, then you don't know anything about that war.

I still have not managed to explain to many of you the difference between what ought to be and what is. pl

[Thomas]

Sir

This comment should be posted on the Turkey into Syria thread also:

"OK. All you innocents come and talk to me six months from now about your opposition re my Turkish suggestion. By then the number of dead syrian civilians will be much larger."