The media is full of reports from Israel about leading intelligence and military officials publicly assailing the Netanyahu government's line on Iran. One after another, Israel's most knowledgeable (and usually hawkish) members of the security establishment are coming around to the U.S. view that the Iranian government has not yet decided to develop nuclear weapons. They are concluding that the best way to avoid that eventuality is through a combination of diplomacy and sanctions, not war. This is also the Obama administration's view.
This developing consensus, combined with the start of negotiations with Iran, has led the New York Times and other major media outlets to conclude that the threat of an Israeli attack is receding. Even Obama administration officials seem to be moving in that direction.
That, in turn, has led the two Israelis who will make the decision whether or not to attack to double down on their threats of military action. Neither Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu nor his Minister of Defense Ehud Barak wants anyone to believe that they consider the war option dead. Here is Barak's latest warning as reported by the Times:
Just imagine the most unstable elements in the hands of the most unstable regime in one of the most unstable regions of the world," he warned. "It is well understood in Washington, D.C., as well as in Jerusalem that as long as there is a future existential threat to our people, that all options to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons should stay on the table, and they will.
Barak's position makes sense on one level. He and Netanyahu might believe that indicating that the war threat is gone might encourage cockiness, even recklessness, in Tehran. Rare is the government that tells an adversary that the military option is "off the table." That comes after an agreement, not before.
Of course, it is unlikely that the war option has been ruled out by Netanyahu, Barak or the Israel lobby here.
They have been peddling the Iranian threat for well over a decade with the clear message that "crippling sanctions" are a start toward neutralizing Iran but, ultimately, the only sure means to accomplish the job is through regime change, which itself may only be accomplished by means of war.
Any doubt that this is the "line" from Jerusalem and the lobby can be quickly eliminated by reading what the Republican candidates for president (with the exception of Ron Paul) said during the primary campaign. Of particular significance are the hawkish positions of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (who will almost surely be the GOP nominee) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
That is because Romney and Netanyahu have been close friends since the 1970's and Romney has said that on matters relating to Israel, he will defer to Netanyahu. As for Gingrich, he will not be the GOP nominee, but his hawkish views on Iran are significant because his largest campaign donor, by far, is Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, who is one of Netanyahu's most influential confidantes.
Neither Romney or Gingrich would be saber-rattling if Netanyahu and/or the lobby did not want them to. Like all matters related, even tangentially, to Israel, Iran policy is a campaign issue not a studied foreign policy position. The Republican hawks may or may not believe that war is the answer but they believe, and believe correctly, that war-mongering is what the Israeli government and its lobby want to hear.
That is why it's naïve to believe that just because Israeli security officials agree with their U.S. counterparts that the Iranian government is not now developing nuclear weapons, the Israeli government and its lobby are going to stop pushing for war.
If their determination to go to war was, in fact, motivated by the fear that Iran was about to develop nuclear weapons, the emerging consensus that it, in fact, isn't might stop Netanyahu and Barak's agitating for war. After all, once the supposed threat of Israel's annihilation was gone, so would be their desire to preempt.
However, it It is not Israel's elimination that the Israeli leadership and its lobby are worried about; it is the elimination of Israel's nuclear monopoly and its regional hegemony. Ehud Barak admitted as much to Charlie Rose last year. He said that if he were an Iranian government official, he would probably want a weapon, too -- not to destroy Israel but because "they look around, they see the Indians are nuclear, the Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear, not to mention the Russians" -- and Israel.
In other words, Barak conceded that Iran's nuclear ambitions, if it had them, are not motivated by its determination to eradicate Israel but by its overall regional concerns. It aspires to play a larger role in the region and, no doubt, would like to serve as something of a check on Israel's regional power which enables the Israeli government to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to. (Israel does not approve of Turkey's regional ambitions either but can't do anything about them, given that Turkey is a member of NATO and thus a formal ally of the United States which Israel is not).
That is why Netanyahu and Barak have not set aside the possibility of attacking Iran. They, quite simply, want to put Iran in its place.
The good news is that the Israeli people do not agree with them. A full 63 percent of Israelis oppose attacking Iran, believing that war is a more frightening prospect than a nuclear-armed Iran. It is safe to assume that risking the lives of their children to assert Israeli hegemony would appeal to them even less than going to war to stop a theoretical Iranian nuclear weapon.
Both Netanyahu and Barak are known for their messianic view of themselves, and messiahs don't much care what lesser mortals think, even when those lesser mortals are some of Israel's most knowledgeable military and intelligence officials.
Here is Barak in the New York Times describing how seriously he takes their concerns:
It's good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us -- the minister of defense and the prime minister.When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.
Wow. According to Barak, the only thing above him and Netanyahu is "the sky above us." This makes Louis XIV ("L'Etat, c'est moi") sound like James Madison.
Happily, Barak is wrong. Above him and Netanyahu, long before you get to the sky, is the United States of America and its president. The United States has interests in the Middle East too (like the safety of its military and civilian personnel) and it also supplies Israel with almost $4 billion a year in aid, more by far than it provides any other nation.
Netanyahu and Barak may choose to look skyward and not "down" to their own people. But they cannot ignore the United States which can stop an Israeli attack on Iran with a single word: no.
That is what George W. Bush did in 2008. Is it conceivable that Barack Obama would not do the same?
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Israelis, for the most part, support war but only when it does not cost them greatly. This makes sense of course. Still, it is naive to think that a belligerent people like Israelis shy away from war. After all, the Israeli nation has ethnically cleansed, occupied, invaded, tortured, killed, and so much more!!! I do not think that they are afraid of spilling someone else's blood. Instead, they are concerned that int his case, the blood spilled will also be their own. For that reason, they also strongly support a US-led invasion of Iran...
In other words, nothing has changed substantially in the general Israeli character: It is still a blood-thristy gritty character. It is still shrewd. The author does little to address those two aspects of the general Israeli character.
What guarantee does Iran have that the information that the IAEA inspectors gather at Iranian nuclear power sites won’t be used by Israel and the US to plan an illegal attack – an attack which has been the subject of their increasingly bellicose threats?
The US is insistent on Iran opening up every military base to inspection, but allows Israel to keep concealed their massive undeclared nuclear arsenal under the astonishingly dangerous deception known as ‘nuclear ambiguity’.
The US and Israel repeatedly state that ‘every option is on the table’, which clearly includes nuclear weapons. Threats by a nuclear power against a non-nuclear power, and attacks on civilian nuclear power programs, are both illegal according to the same charters of the UN that America is claiming Iran should respect.
It is known for a confirmed fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons but that Israel has secretly built up to 400 nuclear warheads, according to American scientists, that are completely outside the inspection of the United Nations’ IAEA.
All of the above, leads inescapably to the stench of political corruption, misinformation, propaganda, the power of unelected lobbyists and shadowy vested interests, all of which violate the democratic principles of both America and Europe whilst much of it is illegal according to international law.
Yet democratic governments in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid, amongst others, remain silent and look the other way.
The International Society for Open Government (TISFOG)
Imagine they hysteria if Iran had done the same.
The Israeli government wants to have the USA and the west feel an imminent threat that Israel is going to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities so they would step up their actions to stop Iran's nuclear program.
What better way to make the world feel Israel is not bluffing other than having those too high officals come out and say, we were there on the meetings, Barak and Netanyahu are crazy they are seriously going to go through with it and bomb Iran's nuclear program.
And the same goes to the promise regarding continued rockets after leaving Gaza. Not a lot of people would have what it takes to take Israel to another war after the backlash he got after the second Lebanon war.
He had the courage to offer the Palestinians a final status deal that if only the Palestinians had a leader with equal courage would have been accepted.
The man wasn't afraid to take on himself the decisions he thought were right for Israel.
It's hilarious! You know, we read about the collapse of regimes in junior high and high school. Yet it never seems to dawn on the person-in-the-present, ie., most people living right now in the West, that we are 'that' decadent civilization, we are 'that' corrupted population, and we are experiencing 'that' decline that so many other long-gone regimes and peoples have been and experienced.
Israel is like the litmus test for how far down the well we've fallen. And we've fallen deeeeeeep. I betchya, if Israel were to nuke Iran tomorrow, virtually every Western journalist would either
1. praise the act
2. mitigate it, explain it away, or apologize for it
3. be infuriated, not that Iranian's died, but that Israelis will now be known as Mass Murderers.
But its so likely that few Western journalists would decry the action, claiming it a crime against humanity, that must not be justified so much as punished.....
Thankfully, there are people similar to you who are unwilling to acknowledge campaigns of dehumanization. Moreover, those people are instrumental in maintaining an atmosphere of hostility as well as institutions and practices that result in tremendous suffering.
When I was a young child my parents and a group of their friends founded the Beth Am Temple in Pearl River, NY. The synagogue was very active in promoting the Zionist agenda, and in promoting Israel Bonds, the purchase of trees in Israel, sponsoring a Zionist youth group, and other pro-Israel activities. As a teenager, I was president of a Zionist youth group, and member of two others, including the one at my synagogue. Also as a teenage, I participated in the massive demonstration at the UN against Arafat's speaking appearance there, this on the grounds that he was a "terrorist."
http://www.richsiegel.com/page6.html
"Several years ago, as I got sick and tired of all the bad news coming from Israel, and caring deeply about it, I decided that I needed to educate myself thoroughly on the subject. I considered myself fairly well-read and well-informed, but I wanted to know everything. So, I began reading everything I could get my hands on- from both sides of the issue, and talking to everyone I could find who had first-hand knowledge- again from both sides. I fully expected this process to deepen my support for Israel. It did not.
What I found out is that I had been lied to all my life, by people who were also lied to, and that I had supported something that I never would have supported had I been told anything resembling the truth. The truth is this: Zionism was a political agenda which sought to take a land with a 95% non-Jewish population on it, Palestine, and make it into a Jewish-exclusivist state. It accomplished this in 1948 through massacres, campaigns of fear, and military forced mass expulsions, making three quarters of a million people homeless. "
why Iran should not be allowed nuclear bomb. Israel and U.S. have come up with million excuses, all lies,The Israelis have said Iran would “wipe them off the map” if Iran had a bomb, but leadership in Iran has proven itself much more stable, sane, logical, and peaceful than Zionist regime Iran would like to see “vanish from the pages of time”.
What Ahmadinejad actually said, to quote his exact words in Farsi:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage might not mean much to -Zionists trying to manufacture a casus belli, but one word might stick out: rezhim-e. It is word "regime.""Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country , or to Jews, but to Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
. Nor was "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's president threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." despite never having uttered the words "map." "wipe out" or even "Israel."
the full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."””
http://youtu.be/FckLO8HcNyo
Maybe. But Israel is surely determined to destroy Israel.