“We will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime [Israel] across the world, and we are not afraid of declaring this. The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off. And it definitely will be cut off.”—Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during Friday prayers at Tehran University. (Washington Post, February 3.)
IS ISRAEL PREPARING TO ATTACK IRAN?
David Ignatius
Washington Post, February 2, 2012
[U.S.] Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.
Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June—before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon—and only the United States could then stop them militarily. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action.…
President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail…other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold. But the White House hasn’t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack.… The administration appears to favor staying out of the conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets.…
Israelis are said to believe that a military strike could be limited and contained. They would bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz and other targets; an attack on the buried enrichment facility at Qom would be harder from the air. Iranians would retaliate, but Israelis doubt that the action would be an overwhelming barrage.… One Israeli estimate is that the Jewish state might have to absorb 500 casualties.…
A “short-war” scenario assumes five days or so of limited Israeli strikes, followed by a U.N.-brokered cease-fire..… U.S. officials don’t think that [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project. But senior Americans doubt that the Israelis are bluffing.…
IF THE U.S. BELIEVES IRAN WILL STRIKE,
WHY SHOULDN’T ISRAEL?
Matt Gurney
National Post, February 3, 2012
It’s deja vu all over again. Another year, another report saying that U.S. officials are concerned that Israel may be on the verge of launching a pre-emptive strike against the Iranian nuclear program (and probably a general assault against their air force and air defence assets while they’re at it). The latest comments come via the Washington Post, which claims that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is increasingly convinced that Israel’s attack could come this April, or perhaps as late as June.…
The U.S. isn’t particularly pleased about this. They still hope that the sanctions…could work. Also, if Israel strikes Iran and doesn’t entirely destroy its nuclear program…the U.S. is clearly concerned that Iran will finish its bomb and have a legitimate gripe. Based on the speculation in the Washington Post, the U.S. has signalled to Israel that it does not approve of an Israeli strike, and if Israel goes ahead, it will go it alone.…
Time will tell, of course. It will ultimately come down to whether the Israelis truly believe Iran to be an “existential threat” or if, in the inner corridors of Israeli power, Iran is viewed as a dangerous and determined, but otherwise conventional, geopolitical adversary. That’s certainly how the U.S. seems to view Iran. But then again, America could survive the worst Iran would be able to throw at it. Israel can’t be so sure. The sheer size and scale of the U.S. gives it some protection that Israel can’t rely on.…
Ironically, it has become harder for the U.S. to restrain Israel because U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iran is indeed increasingly likely to strike Western targets, including the United States itself. Several months ago, the U.S. uncovered a plot by Iranian intelligence to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to America by taking out an entire Washington, D.C., restaurant. That would have meant an attack on U.S. soil, killing many U.S. citizens. An act of war, in other words. The U.S. director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, told a Senate hearing [last week] that, “Some Iranian officials, probably including supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have changed their calculus and are now willing to conduct an attack in the United States.” Clapper added that this is especially true if the Iranian regime concludes that they are losing their grasp on power and become more desperate.
Clapper’s estimate of Iranian intentions seems logical enough. But it comes at a time when the U.S. [is] try[ing] to convince Israel not to act, that Iran doesn’t pose an existential threat. If Iran is willing to kill U.S. citizens in the U.S. capital itself, however, what will it be willing to do to Israel, which is by comparison in its own backyard and a much smaller power?
At best, the U.S. is sending mixed signals on how dangerous it considers Iran to be. If Israel is truly poised on the edge of launching a strike, that mixed signal might be enough to give them the push they need into striking first.
ISRAEL AND IRAN ON THE EVE
OF DESTRUCTION IN A NEW SIX-DAY WAR
Niall Ferguson
Daily Beast, February 6, 2012
It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful pre-emptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.
There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran:
1. The Iranians would retaliate with great fury, closing the Strait of Hormuz and unleashing the dogs of terror in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq.
2. The entire region would be set ablaze by irate Muslims; the Arab Spring would turn into a frigid Islamist winter.
3. The world economy would be dealt a death blow in the form of higher oil prices.
4. The Iranian regime would be strengthened, having been attacked by the Zionists its propaganda so regularly vilifies.
5. A nuclear-armed Iran is nothing to worry about. States actually become more risk-averse once they acquire nuclear weapons.
I am here to tell you that these arguments are wrong. Let’s take them one by one.
The threat of Iranian retaliation. The Iranians will very likely be facing not one, not two, but three U.S. aircraft carriers. Two are already in the Persian Gulf: CVN 72 Abraham Lincoln and CVN 70 Carl Vinson. A third, CVN 77 George H.W. Bush, is said to be on its way from Norfolk, Va.…
Picture the scene once described to me by a four-star general. It is not the proverbial 3 a.m. but 11 p.m. in the White House (7 a.m. in Israel). The phone rings.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS): Mr. President, we have reliable intelligence that the Israeli Air Force is in the air and within an hour of striking suspected nuclear facilities in Iran.
POTUS (Obama): Damn. What should I do?
CJCS: Mr. President, I want to recommend that you provide the Israelis with all necessary support to limit the effectiveness of Iranian retaliation.
POTUS: But those [expletives deleted] never ran this past me. They went behind my back, goddammit.
CJCS: Yes, sir.
POTUS: Why the hell should I lift a finger to help them?
CJCS: Because if the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz, we will see oil above $200 a barrel.
POTUS [after a pause]: Just a moment. [Whispers] How am I doing in Florida?
David Axelrod [also whispering]: Your numbers suck.
POTUS: OK, General, line up those bunker busters.
The eruption of the entire Muslim world. All the crocodiles of Africa could not equal the fake tears that will be shed by the Sunni powers of the region if Iran’s nuclear ambitions are checked.
The double-dip recession. Oil prices are on the way down thanks to concerted efforts of Europe’s leaders to reenact the Great Depression. An Israel-Iran war would push them up, but the Saudis stand ready to pump out additional supplies to limit the size of the spike.
The theocracy’s new legitimacy. Please send me a list of all the regimes of the past 60 years that have survived such military humiliation. Saddam Hussein’s survival of Gulf War I is the only case I can think of—and we got him the second time around.
The responsible nuclear Iran. Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy…because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction? Presumably this would be in the same way that, if German scientists had developed an atomic bomb as quickly as the Manhattan Project, the Second World War would have ended with a negotiated settlement brokered by the League of Nations.
The single biggest danger in the Middle East today is not the risk of a six-day Israeli war against Iran. It is the risk that Western wishful non-thinking allows the mullahs of Tehran to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Because I am in no doubt that they would take full advantage of such a lethal lever.…
War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all. It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.
PUSHING ISRAEL TO WAR
Jed Babbin
American Spectator, February 6, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes that Israel will attack Iran in April, May, or June.… [His statement surfaced] at the same time as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak [delivered a] speech in which he declared that Iran would soon enter a stage where its nuclear program would be immune from attack.
In his speech…Barak said, “The world today has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program is slowly but surely reaching the final stages.… Dealing with a nuclearized Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today. In other words, those who say ‘later’ may find that later is too late.…”
Since Obama took office, Israel has learned to suspect America, not trust it. Obama’s Islam-centric foreign policy has broken the link between Israel and the United States. There is no common policy on Iran that could have resulted in coordinated statements by Barak and Panetta.
The personal hostility between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the public face of deep disagreements. Their enmity became open after Obama had demanded Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on the pre-1967 war borders. Last May, Netanyahu schooled Obama before the television cameras after a rocky private White House meeting. A visibly angry Obama shifted uncomfortably in his chair during Netanyahu’s compelling lecture. Netanyahu’s subsequent speech before a joint session of Congress amplified the clear break between the two men.
Since then, Obama, Panetta, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have attempted to dissuade Israel from any military action against Iran. But the only result has been that Israel’s distrust of the Obama administration has grown to the point that Israel will not tell Obama what it plans.… In effect, by its feckless actions and pressure on Israel but not Israel’s enemies, Obama has deprived Israel of options other than war.…
Obama’s actions have made the Middle East and Southwest Asia vastly more unstable. [US] actions to encourage rebellion in Egypt and military action in support of the Libyan rebellion have only propelled the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood movement to power in both nations. Panetta’s [recent] announcement that we may withdraw from Afghanistan a year early relieves pressure on Iran and encourages both Iran and Pakistan to continue their strong support for the Taliban.…
Iran was greatly emboldened when, in 2009, Obama’s “hands off Iran” policy failed to support the nascent rebellion against the mullahs. Last December, a New York court held that Iran had helped al Qaeda mount the 9/11 attacks. The sad fact is that, since 1979, Iran has paid no price for its central role in terrorism against the United States. [And] Obama’s preference for passive sanctions…has only granted Iran more time to reach what Ehud Barak called the “immunity stage.…”
Israel can’t afford to wait for Iran’s nuclear weapons program to become immune.… The Israeli calculus is complex. Attacking Iran will certainly provoke Iranian attacks, using missiles and terrorist proxies.… Hizballah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, [could] launch its thousands of missiles into Israel. The Hamas terrorists in Gaza [might] do the same and other Iran-connected terrorists—including al Qaeda—will probably attack U.S. and other western targets. If Israel suffers massive casualties, it’s entirely possible that its Arab neighbors would try to mount another 1967-like attack.
But in 1967 and again in 1973, Israel had clear American support. When Israel appeared to be losing the 1973 war, U.S. Air Force aircraft were being armed and fueled to fly into the fight. That possibility still exists, but the Israelis…aren’t including that in their war planning. Israel believes it is alone, and in that it’s probably right.…
[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the U.S. for a major speech to the AIPAC group next month. It may be the last opportunity for him and Obama to come to an understanding on decisive action against Iran. Soon after Netanyahu returns home, the Israelis will have to risk their nation’s existence in a war that is as much ours as theirs.
(Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush.)
