US, UK Alliance Prepare Iran Attack in 2012

11 Comments

1. 

   Indianadem on November 3, 2011 at 2:24 pm

   Anyone want to start a pool on when the yellowcake and aluminum tubes will show up in the Iranian desert?

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     ask on November 3, 2011 at 5:31 pm

     Is Judith back? Then odds would be low…

2. 

   Oui on November 3, 2011 at 7:18 pm

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   Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are the two Siamese twins of the Iranian issue
   By Richard Silverstein

   The Yediot columnist explains some of the subtleties of how the political and military echelons operate in Israel:

   In Israel, the division of labor on security matters is [ostensibly] clear: the political echelon decides, the operational level implements…But the process is more complex that what we are taught in civics lessons: the professional level is an equal partner in the discussions. It expresses its view not only on subjects that are within its realm of responsibility, but in every relevant subject that comes up. The lines of separation are blurred.

   In actual practice, the prime minister cannot make a decision that entails risks if the defense minister, the chief of staff, the Mossad director and the GSS director, all of them or most of them, are opposed. Even if he enjoys the support of the majority of the security cabinet members, he would not dare. He will take into account that if the action fails, he is liable to arrive at the commission of inquiry naked and exposed, without documents that prove that he had the support of the professional level.

   There is therefore great importance to the question of how the professional level expresses its view. Does it pound on the table, as Meir Dagan would do, or does it delicately and calmly express reservation?  Is it an active player in the  decision-making process or is it a minor player doing the bidding of its superiors?

   Barnea appraises the role of Bibi and Barak as political partners who reinforce each other’s judgments, for good or ill, through their symbiotic relationship:

   Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are the two Siamese twins of the Iranian issue. A rare phenomenon is taking place here in terms of Israeli politics: a prime minister and defense minister who act as one body, with one goal, with mutual backing and repeated heaping of praise on each other…They’re characterized as urging action. Netanyahu portrayed the equation at the beginning of his term as: Ahmadinejad is Hitler; if he is not stopped in time, there will be a Holocaust. There are some who describe Netanyahu’s fervor on this subject as an obsession: all his life he’s dreamed of being Churchill. Iran gives him with the chance. The popularity that he gained as a result of the Shalit deal hasn’t calmed him: just the opposite, it gave him a sense of power.

   How many contemporary leaders can you think of who single out Winston Churchill for admiration?  And what does this say about Bibi that he worships Churchill?  Is this truly, in anyone’s mind but Bibi and his far right followers, an era of existential doom and gloom like what the British leader faced on the verge of WWII?  Further, if Bibi’s political instincts and historical outlook end up dragging Israel into war, don’t forget that it isn’t just Israel and Iran.  It’s the entire region plus all the various allies and proxies involved (including the U.S. as Israel’s protector) who will go along for the ride.  Is the world prepared to join Bibi in his crusade to liberate the Middle East from Iranian tyranny?

   Churchill and his disciple

   • Obama replaces bust of Winston Churchill by Abraham Lincoln in the Oval Office  
   • Dagan, Panetta Warn Bibi Against Iran Adventure

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

3. 

   Oui on November 3, 2011 at 7:41 pm

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   Iran Alleges Saudi Plot Story is MEK Sting
   By Juan Cole

   The state-backed Iran Times carries a report from Iran’s Mehr news service that alleges that it learned from Interpol that Gholam Shakuri is a member of the People’s Holy Jihadis guerrilla group (the Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK). The MEK wants to see the rule of the ayatollahs in Iran overthrown.

   Shakuri is the second person named in the Department of Justice case that holds that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was involved with expatriate Manssor Arbabsiar in a plot to blow up the Saudi Ambassador in Washington.

   Prominent right wing Israel apologists such as Daniel Pipes have campaigned to have the MEK taken off the State Department terrorist watch list. The Neoconservatives in the Pentagon used Camp Ashraf in Iraq to spy on Iran and on Shiite political groups in Iraq. The MEK continues to try to overthrow the Iranian government. It is highly intolerant of criticism and has bought well-placed US politicians and flacks, so it is dangerous to criticize it.

   If Shakuri is an MEK double agent, then that would blow the FBI case against Iran out of the water, since they are constantly plotting against Tehran and are entirely capable of trying to frame the ayatollahs.

   The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) may succeed in getting removed from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

4. 

   shergald on November 4, 2011 at 9:45 am

   Here is Juan Cole on the political outlook secondary to anyone, the US or Israel, bombing Iran, apart from its insanity.

   ….Netanyahu and Barak are bluffing, and have been using opposition from their security establishment as a convenient explanation for why they do not go beyond threats and innuendo.

   A key consideration is that it is difficult to believe that Israel would dare launch such an attack without a green light from the Obama administration. Israel will need the US to resupply arms and spare parts if hostilities spiral out of control, and would like help with signals and other intelligence. An angered Obama could drag his feet on such help.

   No such green light will be forthcoming while US troops are withdrawing from Iraq, because they will be especially vulnerable to attack at the hands of radical Shiites. Muqtada al-Sadr would likely relaunch his Mahdi Army for this purpose, and everyone in Washington knows this. Obama would not want convoys hit as they headed toward the Kuwaiti border. So the whole thing is out of the question until at least January.

   Even after US troops are out of Iraq, the US will want to try to keep as much influence in Baghdad as it can. The Obama administration almost certainly realizes that an Israeli attack on Iran would willy-nilly push Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into the arms of Tehran. Even the US embassy in Baghdad would be vulnerable to massive attack, especially once the troops are out. Al-Maliki supported Lebanon’s Hizbullah against Israel during the 2006 war, and would certainly adopt the same position in the event of another conflict, kicked off by a bombing of the Natanz facility. Al-Maliki’s Da’wa Islamiya or Islamic Call Party was partially responsible for the formation of Hizbullah in Lebanon in 1984.

   Moreover, Iran can still make a lot of trouble for the US in Afghanistan, which Obama also wants to begin wrapping up, with a planned 30,000 troop reduction in the first half of 2012.

   An Israeli attack on Iran would kill what is left of the Arab Spring. Syrians would be forced to rally behind Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies. Likely in Yemen as well, Ali Abdullah Saleh would use the attack to silence his opposition.

   A budding Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut axis would be brought to fruition and strengthened, creating a problem for the US from the Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.

   Such an Israeli attack would certainly give the Muslim Brotherhood a fillip in the parliamentary elections, which the US would see as undesirable.

   An Israeli attack on Iran would artificially put up the price of petroleum significantly for as long as hostilities continued, which in turn could push the US economy into a second dip recession and kill Obama’s chances of reelection.

   Obama disapproves of adventurism. He was difficult to convince on the Libya War, and wants to be able to campaign on a calming Middle East, not one in flames. President Dwight Eisenhower was furious about the Israeli, British and French attack on Egypt in late October 1956 because it happened days before election day and made him look weak and not in control on foreign policy. For the same reason, Obama would be angered by an attack on Iran now that election season has begun.

   So my own analysis suggests that there will be no American green light for Israeli adventurism regarding Iran.

   http://www.juancole.com/

   • 

     Oui on November 4, 2011 at 2:26 pm

     .
     I completely disagree with this analysis of Juan Cole. He is more of a mathematician using extrapolation to look a tomorrow’s decision from the past. The war-horses, generals of the Israeli Armed Forces toughened during the Sinaï campaigns of 1967 and 1973 have retired or gone in private business. The intelligence community of Mossad and Shin Beth possess the best experience. Meir Dagan is strongly opposed, his voice is heard in the media. Israel’s cabinet of Netanyahu and Barak may clamp down and censure all information about a potential attack on Iran.

     As far as US politics, look at the decisions of Bill Clinton in 1996 and 1998. Both Clinton and Eisenhower were re-elected for a second term. Israeli politics has always shown the population united behind its generals and the prime-minister. Netanyahu will use any pretense to further the Zionist cause of Eretz Israel. President Obama has succumbed to Jewish blackmail and the Gifts for the 2012 campaign. As soon as the weather improves and clouds above Teheran permits an aerial attack in early spring 2012, the Israeli leadership will surprise the World and the US administration. Clinton will hold a press conference to exclaim the US were not involved and mention such a pre-emptive strike is counter-productive to peace talks. Obama will warn the US is ready to deploy its missile capability in the Gulf region to retaliate if any missiles are fired from Iran towards Israel. The US will protect its vested interests in the Gulf regions and stand by its allies, the Sunni totalitarian states of Bahrain, Emerates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Yemen and Syria are of no importance, both are failed states anyway. The struggle is for economic power and the wealth of oil. Indeed, a new military campaign … Operation Fission.

     I give more credence to the analysis by Richard Silverstein.

     In the meantime … CO2 expansion, time is running out!

     "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

     • 

       shergald on November 4, 2011 at 6:32 pm

       “Netanyahu and Barak may clamp down and censure all information about a potential attack on Iran.”

       Oui, both of these characters have been publically verbal about Israel’s intent to attack Iran extending back over the past 5 years, and nothing has happened, fortunately, because that is not the purpose of their statements. We will just have to disagree on this issue.

       Never underestimate the Persians. They will retaliate and Israel must certainly know that.

     • 

       shergald on November 5, 2011 at 7:38 pm

       Another opinion: Uri Avnery’s.

       “Hold me back!”

       EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”

       Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.

       Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.

       Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.

       “Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against.

       A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars.

       Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.

       Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor’s ultimate boss) play their games.

       The respected former long-serving chief of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has publicly warned against the attack, describing it as “the most stupid idea” he has ever heard”. He explained that he considers it his duty to warn against it, in view of the plans of Netanyahu and Barak.

       On Wednesday, there was a veritable deluge of leaks. Israel tested a missile that can deliver a nuclear bomb more then 5000 km away, beyond you-know-where. And our Air Force has just completed exercises in Sardinia, at a distance larger than you-know-where. And on Thursday, the Home Front Command held training exercises all over Greater Tel Aviv, with sirens screaming away. All this seems to indicate that the whole hullabaloo is a ploy. Perhaps to frighten and deter the Iranians. Perhaps to push the Americans into more extreme actions. Perhaps coordinated with the Americans in advance. (British sources, too, leaked that the Royal Navy is training to support an American attack on Iran.)

       It is an old Israeli tactic to act as if we are going crazy (“The boss has gone mad” is a routine cry in our markets, to suggest that the fruit vendor is selling at a loss.) We shall not listen to the US any more. We shall just bomb and bomb and bomb.

       Well, let’s be serious for a moment.

       ISRAEL WILL not attack Iran. Period.

       Some may think that I am going out on a limb. Shouldn’t I add at least “probably” or “almost certainly”?

       No, I won’t. I shall repeat categorically: Israel Will NOT Attack Iran.

       Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.

       The US is Israel’s only dependable supporter in the world (besides, perhaps, Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.) To destroy this relationship means cutting our lifeline. To do that, you have to be more than just a little crazy. You have to be raving mad.

       Furthermore, Israel cannot fight a war without unlimited American support, because our planes and our bombs come from the US. During a war, we need supplies, spare parts, many sorts of equipment. During the Yom Kippur war, Henry Kissinger had an “air train” supplying us around the clock. And that war would probably look like a picnic compared to a war with Iran.

       LET’S LOOK at the map. That, by the way, is always recommended before starting any war.

       The first feature that strikes the eye is the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which every third barrel of the worlds seaborne oil supplies flow. Almost the entire output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran has to run the gauntlet through this narrow sea lane.

       “Narrow” is an understatement. The entire width of this waterway is some 35 km (or 20 miles). That’s about the distance from Gaza to Beer Sheva, which was crossed last week by the primitive rockets of the Islamic Jihad.

       When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough.

       The world is already teetering on the verge of an abyss. Little Greece is threatening to fall and take major chunks of the world economy with her. The elimination of almost a fifth of the industrial nations’ supply of oil would lead to a catastrophe hard even to imagine.

       To open the strait by force would require a major military operation (including “putting boots on the ground”) that would overshadow all the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can the US afford that? Can NATO? Israel itself is not in the same league.

       BUT ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.

       In a rare show of unity, all of Israel’s service chiefs, including the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, are publicly opposing the whole idea. We can only guess why.

       I don’t know whether the operation is possible at all. Iran is a very large country, about the size of Alaska, the nuclear installations are widely dispersed and largely underground. Even with the special deep penetration bombs provided by the US, the operation may stall the Iranian efforts – such as they are – only for a few months. The price may be too high for such meager results.

       Moreover, it is quite certain that with the beginning of a war, missiles will rain down on Israel – not only from Iran, but also from Hizbollah, and perhaps also from Hamas. We have no adequate defense for our towns. The amount of death and destruction would be prohibitive.

       Suddenly, the media are full of stories about our three submarines, soon to grow to five, or even six, if the Germans are understanding and generous. It is openly said that these give us the capabilities of a nuclear “second strike”, if Iran uses its (still non-existent) nuclear warheads against us. But the Iranians may also use chemical and other weapons of mass destruction.

       Then there is the political price. There are a lot of tensions in the Islamic world. Iran is far from popular in many parts of it. But an Israeli assault on a major Muslim country would instantly unite Sunnis and Shiites, from Egypt and Turkey to Pakistan and beyond. Israel could become a villa in a burning jungle.

       BUT THE talk about the war serves many purposes, including domestic, political ones.

       Last Saturday, the social protest movement sprang to life again. After a pause of two months, a mass of people assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. This was quite remarkable, because on that very day rockets were falling on the towns near the Gaza Strip. Until now, in such a situation demonstrations have always been canceled. Security problems trump everything else. Not this time.

       Also, many people believed that the euphoria of the Gilad Shalit festival had wiped the protest from the public mind. It didn’t.

       By the way, something remarkable has happened: the media, after siding with the protest movement for months, have had a change of heart. Suddenly all of them, including Haaretz, are sticking knives in its back. As if by order, all newspapers wrote the next day that “more than 20,000” took part. Well I was there, and I do have some idea of these things. There were at least 100,000 people there, most of them young. I could hardly move.

       The protest has not spent itself, as the media assert. Far from it. But what better means for taking people’s minds off social justice than talk of the “existential danger”?

       Moreover, the reforms demanded by the protesters would need money. In view of the worldwide financial crisis, the government strenuously objects to increasing the state budget, for fear of damaging our credit rating.

       So where could the money come from? There are only three plausible sources: the settlements (who would dare?), the Orthodox (ditto!) and the huge military budget.

       But on the eve of the most crucial war in our history, who would touch the armed forces? We need every shekel to buy more planes, more bombs, more submarines. Schools and hospitals must, alas, wait.

       So God bless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where would we be without him?

       By permission.

       http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1320356430/

       • 

         Oui on November 6, 2011 at 2:13 am

         .

         House enacts “Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011”

         Naturally, the United States Congress, which gets its marching orders on Middle East policy from the lobby which, in turn, gets its marching orders from Binyamin Netanyahu, is rushing to do what it is told. (If only Congress addressed joblessness at home with the same alacrity and enthusiasm.)

         Accordingly the House Foreign Affairs Committee hurriedly convened this week to consider a new “crippling sanctions” bill that seems less designed to deter an Iran nuclear weapon than to lay the groundwork for war. The clearest evidence that war is the intention of the bill’s supporters comes in Section 601 which should be read in full.

         US DIPLOMACY TOWARD IRAN BLOCKED

         It means that neither the president, the Secretary of State nor any U.S. diplomat or emissary may engage in negotiations or diplomacy with Iran of any kind unless the president convinces the “appropriate Congressional committees” (most significantly, the House Foreign Affairs Committee which is an AIPAC fiefdom) that not engaging with Iranian contacts would present an “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.”  

         • Mondoweiss: Neoconservative brinksmanship

         "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

5. 

   Oui on November 4, 2011 at 2:58 pm

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   U.S.: Iran’s biggest threat in the Middle East

   (Dutch newspaper NRC) – Iran is the greatest threat to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East, even more than Al Qaeda. This is from a senior source within the U.S. military on the basis of anonymity to tell Reuters. Iran presents itself more and more as a threat to the U.S.. The source said it is doubtful that the country seeks  a confrontation or conflict.

   More pressure on Iran over ‘assassination plot’

   Last month, an Iranian man arrested in the U.S. who may have plotted an attack on the Saudi ambassador in Washington. The U.S. suspects an Iranian conspiracy, but Iran denies any involvement in this matter.

   Obama at G20 in France: Condemns Iran’s Nuclear Programme

   • US, UK, France ratchet up pressure on Iran  

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

6. 

   ask on November 5, 2011 at 6:48 am

   From CNN Security Clearance (blog, Barbara Starr – Pentagon Correspondent):

   U.S. concerned Israel could strike Iran

   The United States has become increasingly concerned Israel could be preparing to strike Iran’s nuclear program, a senior U.S. military official told CNN on Friday.
   […]
   The military official told CNN that the United States is watching any Israeli military movements closely as well as those inside Iran.  In the past, the U.S. officials felt they had assurances from Israel that it would give warning to the United States of any attack.

   “Now that doesn’t seem so ironclad,” the official said.
   […]