Posted on 11/13/2011 10:45:11 AM PST by drewh
A senior Foreign Office official says British government ministers have been told to expect Israeli military action in the wake of the UN watchdog report "as early as Christmas or very early in the new year," the London Daily Mail reported. The ministers were told that Israel would strike Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later" – with "logistical support" from the US.
According to the British paper, which has good military and intelligence ties in London, President Barack Obama would "have to support the Israelis or risk losing Jewish-American support in the next presidential election." The bigger concern is that once Iran is nuclear-armed, it will be impossible to stop Saudi Arabia and Turkey from developing their own weapons to even out the balance of nuclear terror in the Middle East.
Military sources add that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has told Obama more than once this year, "If Iran gets nuclear arms, Turkey will get nuclear arms."
The Daily Mail goes on to report that in recent weeks, British Ministry of Defense sources confirmed that contingency plans had been drawn up in the event that the UK decided to support military action. The British chief of staff, Gen. Sir David Richards, paid a secret visit to Israel on Nov. 2, followed the next day by the arrival in London of the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for talks with British defense and military heads.
The reference to US logistical support is explained by our military sources as pointing to the Libyan model of military intervention whereby France, Britain and Italy spearheaded the action against the Qaddafi regime while the United States from "a back seat" laid on satellite and aerial intelligence and placed at their disposal its logistical supply network, including the in-flight refueling of bombers and ordnance.
Transposing this model to an offensive against Iran, Israel's air and naval forces would front the attack on Iran with logistical and intelligence backup from the United States, while leading NATO powers France, Britain, Germany, Holland and Italy would participate directly or indirectly in the Israeli operation.
Since this attack would almost certainly bring forth reprisals from Tehran and its allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islamists, it would almost certainly expand into a wider Middle East conflict, thus also broadening US and West European military intervention.
Prospects are fading for the alternative to military action - tough new sanctions able to choke Iran's financial operations and oil exports after the nuclear agency confirmed its surreptitious attainment of a nuclear weapon capability.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov promised visiting Iranian official Ali Baqeri that "Any additional sanctions against Iran will be seen… as an instrument for regime change in Tehran. That approach is unacceptable to us and the Russian side does not intend to consider such proposals."
China will certainly go along with Russia on this.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first response to the IAEA report was to attack its credibility and declare that Iran would continue its nuclear program regardless of its findings.
Debka!
“Debka!”
My thought too. There are a lot of possible scenarios, now we know which one will definitely NOT happen.
Its getting crunch time for the elections next year!
0 support Israel? Highly doubt that will happen.
SHEESH!
It originated in the Daily Mail. Debka bash not appropiate in this case. Keep Nutjob guessing.
So some false flag misdirection? Or a big nothing?
We wait and see.
“0 support Israel? Highly doubt that will happen.”
It’s called bring the Jewish vote (and especially money) home...
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Post of the week.
It appears Debka took the article, rewrote it and posted it.
Lots of info in the Daily Mail article that's not in the Debka article.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “Israel to attack Iran”. A Google search for “Israel to attack Iran” brings up 4,070,000 hits.
I pray that these leaks from the UK are merely deliberate misinformation. Happy as I would be to see Iran’s nuclear ambitions smashed, I don’t think that Israel is the one to do it. We have no carrier groups, no pilots trained to land on carriers, and a very hard time getting flyover clearance for such a mission, being a regional paraiah for beating the Moose Limbs and living better than them. The US has carriers and superpower status. Britain has carriers and former great power status. If the US is unwilling, let Tommy Atkins carry the white man’s burden once again. We’re not entirely white (lots of Eastern, Menashe and Ethiopian Jooos!), and entirely too small to take on that burden vis a vis Iran. All those astounding victories, 1948, 1967 and 1973, were in defensive wars. This is something else entirely.
But...it’s the London Daily Mail!
;-)
The purpose of this public sabre - rattling is to convince Russia and China to go along with sanctions.
China’s okay with military action against Iran, though.
‘China will not stop Israel if it decides to attack Iran’
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2781965/posts
Israel shows China evidence of Iran bomb program
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2461472/posts
Russia to be neutral in possible Iran-US armed conflict
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618125/posts
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