Posted on 04/21/2010 1:53:28 AM PDT by Fennie
The Israeli security establishment is divided over whether it needs Washington's blessing if Israel decides to attack Iran.
The Israeli security establishment is divided over whether it needs Washington's blessing if Israel decides to attack Iran, Israeli officials say, as the U.S. campaign for sanctions drags on and Tehran steadily develops greater nuclear capability.
Some senior Israeli officals say in interviews with the Wall Street Journal that they see signs Washington may be willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, an eventuality that Israel says it won't accept.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is no joke, and it will be a bloody, bloody war that will follow.
I wish I were as sanguine about this as you seem to be: I don't think the Israelis will strike first; I think they'll let the Iranians get the bomb, clarifying the Samson option for themselves and the world. But, I think the Iranians will either use the bomb or get their proxies to use CBR (since the Obama administration doesn't seem to take CBR seriously). Only then will the Israelis strike, and I think it would be a broad strike, not one focused purely on the nuclear facilities.
I think there would be an Arab rising in response to the 10+ million dead that would result in, and I don't trust the Pakistanis not to make a nuke or two available (assuming the Pakistani nuclear capability were not also taken out in the first strike). I know all the shock and awe arguments, and have made them, but I think there are enough chemical and biological weapons floating around the Middle East that someone would get their hands on them and use them on the Israelis, perhaps even use a nuke on them.
Good to hear. Many do.
The time to strike militarily with any effect...is past, true. There remains another option, one that 0bama has “unselected” once already: destabilize the govt of Iran and support its internal overthrow.
Tough as it sounds it’s more practical and less bloody than everything else.
Won’t happen on 0bama’s watch if he can help it. :(
The writer has to write something and this was the best he could do. It is a very little to do about nothing.
There is no real wishy washyness in Israel.
I have long thought that Iranian nukes is part of a covert strategy to bring peace to the region by eliminating Israel. I am not saying that Israel would be nuked. Rather, I think the approach is to create an overwhelming sense of doom and isolation around Israel that Israel Jews increasingly migrate elsewhere. Every Jewish departure would serve to accelerate the effect. Eventually, there would not be enough Jews to sustain a Jewish state and Israel really would become a (defacto) Arab state—without a shot being fired. That is the theory anyway.
That strategy aside, I think Iran would give nukes to its proxies and then the scenario you pose is the more likely one. If Israel was smart, they would take out Iran’s capabilities before it came to that. There would be a firestorm of protest and criticism, but the world would stop thinking that the Jews will (once again) march into the (figurative) gas chamber.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Why does Israel need US “Permission” to defend itself, build houses, or do ANYTHING, for that matter?
Barry has said that when things get messy he’d side with the muslims.
Let’s leave it up to Iran to call the US when it starts. Go Israel!
You are mostly right. A complete Israeli program to neutralize Iran would require ground penetrating nukes. Not just nukes
Before 9/11, I actually thought something like this would be the most likely scenario: the Israelis long term either had (have) to reach an accommodation with the Arabs that the Arabs will accept (I know, but after Oslo, it was at least a possibility...), conquer the surrounding Arab countries (which looked increasingly both unlikely an unattractive after the whole Lebanon debacle), or face increasing pressure that would cause the best and the brightest to leave the country. I knew quite a number of Israelis in the US whose behavior, if not their rhetoric, was evidence of this. I figured that even if the Israelis were successful in conquering the surrounding Arabs states, they couldn't sustain an occupation for more than a couple of generations - say 50 years at the outside.
I got lots of grief from people who called me anti-Semitic on these boards for that view, which I saw as merely realism. One doesn't have to like an analysis to think it best fits the facts one observes on the ground. And, that was before the complete Palestinian and Arab rejection of a real deal with Israel. So, an accommodation with the with the Arabs looked like the least bad solution.
Now, that doesn't seem possible. I think it was possible after the invasion of Iraq, had the US been more aggressive in dealing with both Syria and Iran, and the Israelis been more successful in suppressing the Palestinians, but the moment has passed.
So, the two plausible outcomes in the Middle East are the slow destruction of Israel if neither the Israelis or the Iranians use the bomb, or a 'sooner rather than later outbreak of the war no one wants, but will eventually happen (given the Iranians) whether it's now started by the Israelis, in a very few years started by the Iranians or their proxies, or several years later as a result of Iranian moves against Europe or the US.
It pains me to have to say I don't think Israel as a state in the Holy Land will survive in any of these scenarios (except, perhaps, the preemptive strike - the least likely outcome, and then, perhaps for another 100 years....).
It is sobering to think that even if Israel survives as a Jewish state for another hundred years, it will have had a shorter existence, by some twenty years, than the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1099-1187.
This is double plus ungood. The only way Israel can survive is if the Iranian and Arab threat is permanently removed. A Carthagenian Peace.
Israel is waiting for Hezbollh to do something stupid then she will settle all accounts.
BTW—I am Jewish, so I don’t consider my views to be anti-semetic. I think there is a consensus among the global “elites” that Israel is not viable and (worse) is a thorn in the side of the Muslims. What they fail to realize (or maybe do realize and just can’t cope with) is that the entire West is an irritant to the Muslims and Israel’s problems are Europe’s problems in 40-50 years. I really believe that short term peace (and appeasement) works in favor of the Muslims—who are waging a slow war of attrition against the West. Currently, the West is in a position to win any hot war with them, but it lacks the will. In 50 years, it may not be in a position to win, even with the will. Israel is just a test—one battle in a long war.
Thanks, I wish that more Jewish people were voting like you.
“This would give Obama the excuse to completely throw Israel under his bus.”
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I like how you write “under HIS bus”. It is not my bus and it is not America’s bus. I have been praying to God about this and remind Him it is a few very corrupt people in our government that are doing this and is not the majority of views in this country.
I can't say I like the prospect of millions dying. It sounds so callous to write about, and soooo seductive to deny that it will happen, to hope a solution will be found and that the Arabs and Iranians will change.....
But, it ain't happening.....
Why the HELL should Israel need or want “consent” from anyone to act in self defense?
You’d better believe it. I thought that they would raid in between zero’s election and coronation.
JERUSALEM—In his Friday sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reserved special wrath for “Zionist radio” that he said tried to drive a wedge between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic. Such attention from Iran’s supreme leader was music to the ears of Menashe Amir, a bespectacled Iranian-born Israeli who has been broadcasting in Persian from Jerusalem for the past five decades.
“We’re listened to in Iran and considered very credible and effective,” Mr. Amir says with pride. “We’re close to the Iranian people, we know what they want, and we have our sources that give us detailed news about everything that’s going on in Iran.”
The spread of the Internet and satellite television in Iran over the past decade seemed to eclipse the prominence of Mr. Amir’s old-fashioned shortwave broadcasts on Kol Israel, Israel’s public radio. But now, as the Web in Iran is either blocked or dramatically slowed and satellite-TV channels are jammed by the government amid spreading unrest, Mr. Amir has suddenly become relevant again.
“Today we have many more listeners inside the country because Iranians are thirsty for any information” about the unrest, the 69-year-old Mr. Amir says. He estimates the Iranian audience for Kol Israel’s 85-minute daily show in Persian is between two million and six million people. Independent audience numbers, for obvious reasons, are impossible to come by.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571901245939581.html
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