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Mideast Mirror
March 30, 2012 Friday
Baku Games
Yedioth Ahronoth, taking a leaf out of Shaul Mofaz's book, leads its
weekend edition with a social issue: the jump in the price of gasoline
and electricity. Maariv also comments on these price jumps, saying
that the only threat to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government
is the social justice protest that is expected to be renewed this
summer. According to a Maariv poll, 68 percent of Israelis are not too
happy with Netanyahu's performance on the socio-economic field, which
Ben Caspit describes as 'a scary statistic.'
Israel Hayom, Maariv and The Jerusalem Post lead with the threat of
violence on Israel's borders with Lebanon and Gaza, as the defense
establishment braces for the possibility of thousands of protestors
attempting to cross over into Israel as part of the 36th annual Land
Day commemoration. According to Maariv, the IDF has cancelled all
leave and raised the level of alert to its highest level. Sources in
the IDF Northern Command said no demonstrations were expected on the
Syrian border because of the domestic situation in that country, but
that protests were expected on the Lebanese border. The Southern
Command expects protests at the Erez and Karni checkpoints.
The IDF has imposed a full closure on the West Bank and deployed
thousands of soldiers and police along the borders, who were ordered
to act with restraint. Thus far, however, there are no reports of
violence.
Haaretz leads with an exclusive report from Akiva Eldar which claims
that the Civil Administration - the branch of the IDF which controls
nonmilitary affairs in the West Bank - has been 'secretly setting
aside additional land for Jewish settlements, presumably with the
intention of expanding them.' According to Eldar, the IDF earmarked 10
percent (or 155,000 acresț) of the West Bank for settlement expansion.
Haaretz also reports that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was
sent on a secret and urgent mission to Washington, with the goal of
enlisting U.S. help in stopping the UN Human Rights Council from its
probe into settlements and their effect on Palestinian human rights.
Two nights ago settlers occupied a three-story house in Hebron, very
close to the Cave of the Patriarchs. An IDF source told Haaretz the
occupation was 'a provocation.'
Meanwhile, newly elected Kadima chairman and soon-to-be-sworn-in
leader of the opposition Shaul Mofaz has been granting interviews to
anyone willing to listen. While most of his comments have focused on
his plan to highlight a socio-economic agenda, he told Channel 10 on
Thursday that he believes that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak keep on returning to the Iranian nuclear threat solely for the
purposes of political manipulation. 'I do not trust Netanyahu, nor do
I believe him,' Mofaz said. 'I think the fact that he brings up Iran
is political manipulation to push aside the social issues.'
Finally, on the Palestinian front, Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth carry
an Associated Press report that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
has dropped his threat to dismantle the Palestinian Authority.
According to AP, U.S. President Barack Obama was behind the move.
AN IRANIAN SMOKESCREEN: In Maariv, Mazal Mualem interviews Shaul
Mofaz, who accuses Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of using the
Iranian threat in order to avoid dealing with more pressing issues
closer to home.
"One day after his stunning election as Kadima chairman, Shaul Mofaz
is clearly infused with new energy. He is already involved in his
party's preparations for the Knesset's summer session, where he will
serve as leader of the opposition; an excellent platform for future
progress up the political ladder. He will enjoy weekly meetings with
the prime minister, briefings from senior officials, increased
security and a much larger team of advisers than ever before.
Over the past few weeks, Mofaz has been preparing for his new
position. A team of advisers has been drawing up intricate plans for
his term as opposition leader. He plans to introduce a series of
bills, the headline of which will be the replacement of the law
granting blanket exemption from military service for yeshiva students
and other bills on a range of social issues. Kadima will continue to
hold chairmanship of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee until May, when the agreement with Likud expires; once it
does, Mofaz is expected to seek the Finance Committee instead - to
help his party become part of the social protest.
Do you prefer the Finance Committee over the Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee?
'Absolutely. We intend to make life very uncomfortable for the prime
minister. I want Kadima to become a centrist alternative to this
right-wing government. I have no intention of joining the Likud-led
coalition.'
Will you also be an opposition party when it comes to attacking Iran's
nuclear facilities?
'I have made my position on Iran known to the relevant people. The
Iranian issue cannot be used as a smokescreen to allow Netanyahu to
ignore issues that are more critical to the future of our country.
Netanyahu has wasted three precious years. Despite enjoying a stable
coalition, he has not done anything to advance Israel's security, its
standing on the international stage or social justice. We are closer
than ever to the danger of a binational state'."
WASHINGTON'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAEL: Writing in Israel Hayom, Dan
Margalit says that the United States has launched an offensive against
Iran, designed to scare off Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and
Defense Minister Ehud Barak from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.
"At the height of the Israeli-American honeymoon, some officials in
Washington have launched a peculiar and scathing political offensive
against Jerusalem over a possible military operation to destroy the
Iranian nuclear project. These are not occasional arrows of criticism,
but massive bombardments of nonconventional rhetoric. Among the WMDs
(words of mass destruction) that the Americans have fired: an Israeli
attack will only delay the Iranians by six months and 200 Americans
will die in the war that an Israeli attack will inevitably spark.
That's certainly a significant number of fatalities, but one has to
ask: How many Americans have been killed as a result of the Pentagon's
military misadventures in recent years?
Someone in Washington leaked a report - which has been denied left,
right and center - which claims that the Israel Air Force has bases in
Azerbaijan. In addition, Haaretz's Amir Oren reported yesterday that
the Israeli plans for a military strike against Iran have been shelved
to 2013 at the earliest.
Political rivals of Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu - including
those who are opposed to military action against Iran - admit that
Israel has scored a major success by getting Iran to the top of the
global agenda. The international boycott against Iran has 'Made in
Israel' stamped all over it and if the ayatollahs' central bank is
also subjected to sanctions, the efforts to thwart the Islamic
Republic's nuclear aspirations will be even more powerful and swift.
So what possible interest could someone in the Pentagon have to try
and persuade the international community that we have nothing to fear
from Iran at the current time? It's crazy.
Iran claims that it is willing to enter into fresh negotiations over
the military aspects of its nuclear project, but only as long as it
believes that Israel is making serious preparations for a military
strike. The comment by German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere
that, having spoken with Ehud Barak; he is now more fearful of an
Israeli attack, increases the chances of a peaceful resolution of the
standoff. Without the fear of military action, there is no way that
Iran will return to the negotiating table in Istanbul.
There is a significant political difference between the United States'
efforts to persuade Israel not to launch a military strike and public
American efforts to get Netanyahu and Barak to abandon their credible
threat against the ayatollahs. The criticism that was leveled against
former Mossad chief Meir Dagan for his public comments about a
military strike against Iran is just as valid when it comes to U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or even President Barack Obama himself.
Nobody wants military action, unless all the other options have been
exhausted. An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could be a
resounding success - 200 American and 500 Israeli fatalities would not
necessarily means that the attack was a failure - or it could be
something we will likely regret for generations. It is also possible
that there will be no such operation, either because (and this is the
ideal situation for Israel) the need for one no longer exists or
because Israel misses the boat and Iran enters what Barak called the
'zone of nuclear immunity.' Either way, the United States is closing
in on Israel and narrowing the window of opportunity by revealing
certain military facts that it is privy to.
The Romans used to say that if you want peace, prepare for war. In the
modern world, it's true to say that if you want peace, prepare for war
and threaten war. The Americans, it seems, haven't studied Latin."
WISHFUL THINKING: Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Ronen Bergman says that
there is very little truth behind reports that Israel is cooperating
with Iran's neighbors and also dismisses the possibility that the
White House is behind these reports.
"Every few weeks - and with increasing frequency - foreign news
sources report on alleged coordination between Israel and one of the
countries with which Iran shares a border, which they claim points to
the possibility of an attack against the Islamic Republic's nuclear
facilities.
Not so long ago, for example, there were reports that Saudi Arabia
would allow Israel to use its airspace en route to Iran; there were
reports about cooperation and coordination between Jerusalem and the
Gulf States; and there have been claims that Israel has established
air bases in more than one of the Moslem states that used to make up
the Soviet Union. Yesterday, it was Azerbaijan's turn to become
Israel's latest secret ally; in the eyes of the international media,
at least.
Israel would have good reason to cooperate with the countries that
border Iran or are located in the air corridor between Israel and the
Islamic Republic. First and foremost, for the collation of
intelligence. In other words, the ability to recruit and run
operatives in these countries, who would be able to report back on the
progress in Iran's nuclear project. The Iranian intelligence services
believe that Israel has a base in Kurdish Iraq, where it trains spies
and assassins. They say that the assassins who killed several Iranian
nuclear scientists were dispatched from there. They also believe that
the Mossad or some other branch of the Israeli intelligence services
has set up surveillance posts in the countries surrounding it.
If Israeli warplanes are given permission to land or take off from
bases in countries close to Iran, one of the key problems standing in
the way of a military strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear
facilities could be resolved: the distance between Iran and Israel and
the need to refuel planes midflight. Resolving that central issue
would make it much easier for Israel to resort to the military option.
Moreover, if Israel is allowed to station ground forces in one or more
of the countries adjacent to Iran, it could enable the IDF to send in
troops to mark targets or to launch a more direct attack. Additional
assistance could be forthcoming in the shape of Arrow anti-missile
rockets deployed closer to Iran. This would increase Israel's ability
to intercept the barrage of missiles that Iran would almost certainly
fire at Israel should it go ahead with a military strike.
The problem is that the vast majority of what I describe above is
nothing more than wishful thinking. We have to take reports of
coordination between Jerusalem and these countries with more than a
pinch of salt.
It is true that the government in Baku has expressed its reservation -
to put it mildly - about the recent activity of its neighbor, the
Islamic Republic. According to foreign news reports, the Azeri
intelligence services played an active role in thwarting an Iranian
plan, via Hizbollah, to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku in 2009 and
to carry out a series of attacks against Israel and Jewish targets
last year. In the aftermath of these successful counterterrorism
operations, the Iranians accused Baku of being Mossad lackeys.
But there is a massive difference between cooperating to thwart
terrorism and actively aiding and abetting an Israeli attack by
allowing Israeli planes to refuel or by allowing the IDF to have a
permanent military presence on your soil. Aiding Israeli planes for a
military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities is the sort of thing
that would be very difficult to keep secret forever and, once word got
out, could be interpreted by Tehran as tantamount to a declaration of
war. It is highly doubtful that any of Iran's neighbors would want to
provide Israel with that kind of assistance, especially since they all
have internal elements that would not look kindly on a government that
cozies up to the Jewish state.
I am also not convinced by the claim that the Obama administration is
deliberately leaking this information in order to make it harder for
Israel to resort to the military option. It's true, nonetheless, that
the White House has sent a series of former and current officials to
give interviews in the American media, where they warn of the
potentially dire consequences of an Israeli attack. The White House
adopted this policy in January, when it was convinced that the
Netanyahu government was also involved in an all-out media campaign to
convince public opinion in the U.S. that Israel was serious about
using the military option. The goal of the Israeli campaign was to
force the administration's hand and encourage it to take further
action against Iran.
The Israeli reaction to the reports about air bases in Azerbaijan was
mainly one of mirth. But it's highly doubtful that the White House was
behind the leak."
MIND GAMES: Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Alex Fishman explains the
reasons for the Azeri airbase story and warns that every such report
frays regional nerves a little more.
"In order to understand what lies behind the report that Israel is
planning on using air bases on Azerbaijan to launch an attack against
Iran's nuclear facilities, you need to look at a map. If such a
scenario happens, Israel would inadvertently have to drag four or five
other countries into a head-on confrontation with Iran. Somebody, it
seems, is keen to ensure that these countries - especially Turkey -
are adamantly and vocally opposed to any Israeli military action
against Iran.
In order to land in Azerbaijan, Israeli planes would have to fly over
Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Syria. Georgia and Armenia are also
located between Israel and Iran. The report that hit the headlines
yesterday not only got them hot under the collar in Tehran and Baku,
but also in the abovementioned countries too, since they would have
been concerned that they were being dragged into the Iranian issue
against their will. When Meir Dagan warns about regional confrontation
as a result of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, he is
referring to exactly this sort of scenario, which would drag countries
that appear to have nothing to do with the Iranian problem into the
firing line.
Even if Israel were able to overcome the problem of having to use the
airspace of countries that are not exactly lining up to volunteer to
help us, there is still an important unanswered question: does using
Azerbaijan really shorten the distance to the target and does it
justify taking the risk of embroiling additional countries? The answer
is not unequivocal. When it comes to attacking targets close to
Tehran, it is true that Azerbaijan has a geographical advantage. But
if we're talking about targets in southern Iran, the distance from
Azerbaijan does not justify the risk.
We have to accept the truth and the truth is that leaks of this kind
make sense. Otherwise they wouldn't be leaked. If the runways at Azeri
airfields are in decent shape, then it would take Israel less than 24
hours to set up an operational airbase. It would be possible, the day
before a planned attack, to send a cargo plane with control equipment
and refueling capabilities and to have an airbase that is able to
receive any warplane that needs to make an emergency landing. A
clandestine forward base could also be used to serve the backup
planes: refueling craft, surveillance planes, drones, rescue
helicopters and so on. But even if someone has thought of this option
- never mind put the wheels in motion - the moment that it is leaked
to the press it loses its relevance.
Someone - and we don't know whether in Tel Aviv, Washington, Moscow or
even Tehran - weaved a story designed to deter Israel from doing
anything rash on the Iranian front and to create an international
groundswell of opinion against Israeli military action against the
Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities. Or perhaps the goal was to
ensure that the issue of tougher sanctions against the ayatollah
regime remains topmost on the global agenda, by bandying about the
threat of military action.
This is part of the mind game that is going on between the focal
points of the Iranian problem. The date that everyone has in mind is
mid-April, when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council
and Germany are due to resume talks with Iran in Istanbul. There is
talk that the negotiations will be divided into several sessions and
no one expects any progress to be made straight away. Therefore, ahead
of these talks, the pressure on Tehran must be kept up. In addition,
the sanctions that have been imposed on Tehran - and the sanctions
that are likely to be imposed in the future - will only start to bear
fruit toward the end of 2012, so someone is trying to play for time.
These political maneuverings are accompanied by more forceful tactics,
in which every side is trying to gain the most that it can.
The Obama administration, for example, suddenly feels the need to give
Israel more money for another Iron Dome battery, despite the fact that
every other aspect of federal and defense spending in the United
States is being slashed. In October, American troops will come to
Israel to participate in a massive ground training operation and next
month there will be an extensive joint drill between the Israeli and
American air forces. These American moves, alongside the leaks, the
press briefings and the public embraces - are designed to gain time.
At the same time, Israel does not want Iran - or anyone else - to
think that it has turned its back on the military option.
The main damage that these leaks do is to send the entire region into
a state of exacerbated tension. So maybe someone in a dark backroom in
Tel Aviv, Washington or Tehran is terribly pleased about having got
the Azeri leak into the media. But every additional story, every
additional leak frays the nerves a little bit more until one day,
someone will snap and all the talk of war will become a
self-fulfilling prophesy."
WARNING JERUSALEM: Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon says
that the recent spate of leaks regarding Israeli plans for a military
strike against Iran is part of an the Obama administration effort to
reduce the chances of that happening.
"Yossi Klein Halevi, in an article on The New Republic's website
earlier this month entitled 'Why Israel Still Can't Trust That Obama
Has Its Back,' argued that Washington seemed more concerned about
warning Israel than stopping Iran.
'Even when he seemed to be warning Tehran, he was really warning
Jerusalem,' Halevi said about U.S. President Barack Obama's speech at
the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference. 'His
goal these last days hasn't been so much to deter them but us.'
A mere look at the headlines in some key Iran-related stories in the
media over the last few weeks proves Halevi's point. These are stories
whose conclusions are that Israel cannot stop Iran's nuclear program,
or that such an attack would actually get Iran to speed up its
program, or that it would suck the U.S. into a war. Thursday's piece
in Foreign Policy magazine by Mark Perry about Israel's ties with
Azerbaijan just proves this point. There was something off-putting
about the whole tone of the piece, as if the bad guy in this story
were not Iran, for trying to acquire nuclear weapons, but Israel, for
establishing close ties with Baku and securing the use of air bases
near the Iranian border to more effectively carry out an attack if
needed.
''We're watching what Iran does closely, one of the U.S. sources, an
intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a
prospective Israeli attack confirmed,'' according to the article. "But
we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not
happy about it.''
And this is just the latest in a series of high-profile stories -
based, in most cases, on unnamed American sources - warning about a
possible strike. Either Israel doesn't have the ability to carry it
out (The New York Times, February 19); or - according to the
conclusions of a classified war simulation - it will drag the U.S.
into a wider conflict and cost hundreds of American lives (The New
York Times, March 19); or an attack would only further accelerate
Iran's bid for the bomb (Reuters, March 29).
According to the logic in the last piece, if Israel attacked, then
Iran - which essentially developed its program in contravention of the
Non-proliferation Treaty it signed, and despite international
inspectors - may choose not to let those inspectors back in and, as a
result, have an easier time pursuing nuclear weapons.
Now, that is an interesting bit of logic: Don't attack, because if you
do, Iran won't let back in the inspectors who were so impotent in the
first place that Tehran is now on the cusp of nuclear capability.
And this constant drumbeat of Israel-must-not-take-action articles is
not only in press reports. A report Wednesday by the Congressional
Research Service - the U.S. Congress's nonpartisan 'think tank' - said
Iran could recover from a strike and rebuild its centrifuge workshops
within six months, meaning that such a strike would be futile. It is
'unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the
likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,' the report read.
These reports and stories are not being made up out of whole cloth.
Rather, they are fed by sources intent on sending a clear message: Do
not attack. That a spate of these reports is coming out just a couple
of weeks after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Obama in the
White House shows that despite the smiles and the talk then about
understanding and hyper-close coordination, the U.S. and Israel are
not seeing eye-to-eye on the Iranian 'military option' issue.
The U.S. wants Israel to wait, and what this constant drip of stories
indicates is a sense in Washington that its efforts to convince Israel
to do so are failing. As a result, some in Washington are using a more
public route to get that message across and to try and tie Jerusalem's
hands."
COOLING THEIR JETS: Writing in Haaretz, Amir Oren explains why
statements exchanged earlier this week between the Pentagon and
Defense Minister Barak signaled Israel's agreement to postpone an
attack on Iran at least until after the U.S. elections
"At 8:58 P.M. on Tuesday, Israel's war against Iran in 2012 ended with
a whimper, not a bang. The all-clear can be sounded for the time
being. The war will not take place this year, or until further notice.
The argument of the father-and-son-like pair, Ehud Barak and Binyamin
Netanyahu, in favor of an attack has rested on the urgency factor.
Against this, there has stood a double-barreled American argument.
First, President Barack Obama's desire to return safely to his house
(the white one) is an obvious given. As Obama explained to outgoing
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whom he asked to obtain an
extension (on another matter) from his master Vladimir Putin until
after the November elections after that date, the president expects to
have 'room for flexibility' (the inverse of Ehud Barak's 'immunity
zone').
Second, there is an intelligence assessment that Iran has not yet
decided to cross the nuclear-arms threshold. It's in this spirit that
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (during a visit to the Persian Gulf)
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey,
expressed themselves in the past few weeks. According to Dempsey, the
time that the Obama administration is allocating to play out its
engagement with Iran (a dialogue is likely to be renewed in about two
weeks), and the assessment of the impact of economic sanctions against
Tehran, cannot be measured in weeks or months, but in terms of the
ability of intelligence to identity an Iranian move to cross the
threshold.
Updating of the American National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007
was recently completed. According to what has dribbled out of
Washington so far, the situation has not changed substantially. The
amount of enriched uranium accumulated by Iran in the past
four-and-a-half years, ostensibly for civilian purposes, has been
added to the equation, but the conclusion remains the same: The
project to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons was suspended in
the wake of the American invasion of Iraq nine years ago whether
because that invasion terrified Tehran or because the downfall of
Saddam Hussein made Iranians feel they no longer needed a nuclear
project of their own.
A war in the gulf, which would spread to include Israel, is liable to
erupt as a consequence of American-Iranian friction in the Strait of
Hormuz, even though Washington will want to avoid any such development
this year. At the end of October, a week before the American
elections, a major exercise called 'Austere Challenge 12' will be held
in Israel and in the Mediterranean, with the participation of 4,000
troops from the European Command and the Sixth Fleet. Obama will be
able to cast himself as Israel's defender against Iranian missiles.
The unifying thread of Obama's policy (exactly like that of his
predecessor, George W. Bush), from Iraq via Afghanistan and Libya and
through Iran and Syria is that although unilateral American action in
self-defense and for the sake of its vital national interests is
permissible, an effective and long-lasting result is best achieved
within the framework of an international alliance. This is explicitly
what Obama and Panetta are saying to Israel: With all due respect for
your declarations of independence, please don't disturb the
international effort to organize.
In the Western democracies an alliance like this rests on governments;
in the East, which is fragmented among tribes, communities and
districts, it is based on ties with the army and security services. Of
all the entanglements, past and present, Obama is granting priority to
Afghanistan; he and not Bush is responsible for events there in the
past three years, including the blunders by the military that made it
possible for civilian massacres to occur and to Syria. While waiting
for regional allies (Turkey and the Arab League) who are essential for
an operation against the Assad regime, the U.S. Army is collecting
intelligence and preparing the infrastructure for operational plans.
Dempsey boasted about the Pentagon's good relations with 'all the
armies' around Syria meaning the Turkish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian
forces and also the Israel Defense Forces.
No Israeli prime minister, including Netanyahu, has dared defy an
American president in a crisis over the long haul. In that context,
it's fascinating to read the transcripts of the conversations held by
Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli ambassadors to Washington,
particularly Simcha Dinitz, with 'Naftali,' the code name given to
Henry Kissinger. In the Yom Kippur War, in the political developments
afterward and in the period of the American 'reassessment,' the real
question was when Israel would give in under pressure and what price
it would exact for its concessions.
According to a recent war simulation conducted by U.S. Central
Command, the Iranians are liable to kill 200 Americans with a single
missile in response to an Israeli attack. Accordingly, even if Ehud
Barak scorns the gravity of scenarios that would see 'only' 500
Israelis killed (though to market the scale of the disaster, he likes
to claim that one Israeli killed is equivalent to 35 Americans) the
meaning of that American scenario is that the blood of the 200 dead
Americans would be on Israel's head. The moment the whole dispute is
framed in these terms, Israel has no practical option to attack in
contravention of American pleas and warnings.
On Tuesday evening of this week, at 8:20, Pentagon spokesman George
Little stated, 'Supporting the security of the State of Israel is a
top priority of President Obama and Secretary Panetta ... During the
rocket attacks earlier this month, the Iron Dome system played a
critical role in Israel's security. When nearly 300 rockets and
mortars were fired at southern Israel, Iron Dome intercepted over 80
percent of the targets it engaged, saving many civilian lives. The
Department of Defense has been in conversations with the government of
Israel about U.S. support for the acquisition of additional Iron Dome
systems, and intends to request an appropriate level of funding from
Congress to support such acquisitions based on Israeli requirements
and production capacity.'
Thirty-eight minutes afterward, Defense Minister Barak responded by
publicly thanking Panetta and himself ('The decision is the result of
contacts between the Defense Ministry and the Pentagon'). When Barak
thanks the Obama administration 'for helping to strengthen Israel's
security,' he is abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without
permission before November. For all intents and purposes, this is an
announcement of the war's postponement until at least the spring of
2013.
Since Netanyahu will only agree to deferring realization of his dream,
rather than shelving it for all time, the linchpin of his platform in
the Knesset elections this autumn or next spring will be that he and
only he can save Israel from Iran.
For his part, Obama, if he's reelected, will demand that Israel
contribute its share to the denuclearization of the Middle East, and
he will simultaneously renew his efforts to achieve an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement."
March 30, 2012 Friday
Baku Games
Yedioth Ahronoth, taking a leaf out of Shaul Mofaz's book, leads its
weekend edition with a social issue: the jump in the price of gasoline
and electricity. Maariv also comments on these price jumps, saying
that the only threat to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government
is the social justice protest that is expected to be renewed this
summer. According to a Maariv poll, 68 percent of Israelis are not too
happy with Netanyahu's performance on the socio-economic field, which
Ben Caspit describes as 'a scary statistic.'
Israel Hayom, Maariv and The Jerusalem Post lead with the threat of
violence on Israel's borders with Lebanon and Gaza, as the defense
establishment braces for the possibility of thousands of protestors
attempting to cross over into Israel as part of the 36th annual Land
Day commemoration. According to Maariv, the IDF has cancelled all
leave and raised the level of alert to its highest level. Sources in
the IDF Northern Command said no demonstrations were expected on the
Syrian border because of the domestic situation in that country, but
that protests were expected on the Lebanese border. The Southern
Command expects protests at the Erez and Karni checkpoints.
The IDF has imposed a full closure on the West Bank and deployed
thousands of soldiers and police along the borders, who were ordered
to act with restraint. Thus far, however, there are no reports of
violence.
Haaretz leads with an exclusive report from Akiva Eldar which claims
that the Civil Administration - the branch of the IDF which controls
nonmilitary affairs in the West Bank - has been 'secretly setting
aside additional land for Jewish settlements, presumably with the
intention of expanding them.' According to Eldar, the IDF earmarked 10
percent (or 155,000 acresț) of the West Bank for settlement expansion.
Haaretz also reports that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was
sent on a secret and urgent mission to Washington, with the goal of
enlisting U.S. help in stopping the UN Human Rights Council from its
probe into settlements and their effect on Palestinian human rights.
Two nights ago settlers occupied a three-story house in Hebron, very
close to the Cave of the Patriarchs. An IDF source told Haaretz the
occupation was 'a provocation.'
Meanwhile, newly elected Kadima chairman and soon-to-be-sworn-in
leader of the opposition Shaul Mofaz has been granting interviews to
anyone willing to listen. While most of his comments have focused on
his plan to highlight a socio-economic agenda, he told Channel 10 on
Thursday that he believes that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak keep on returning to the Iranian nuclear threat solely for the
purposes of political manipulation. 'I do not trust Netanyahu, nor do
I believe him,' Mofaz said. 'I think the fact that he brings up Iran
is political manipulation to push aside the social issues.'
Finally, on the Palestinian front, Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth carry
an Associated Press report that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
has dropped his threat to dismantle the Palestinian Authority.
According to AP, U.S. President Barack Obama was behind the move.
AN IRANIAN SMOKESCREEN: In Maariv, Mazal Mualem interviews Shaul
Mofaz, who accuses Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of using the
Iranian threat in order to avoid dealing with more pressing issues
closer to home.
"One day after his stunning election as Kadima chairman, Shaul Mofaz
is clearly infused with new energy. He is already involved in his
party's preparations for the Knesset's summer session, where he will
serve as leader of the opposition; an excellent platform for future
progress up the political ladder. He will enjoy weekly meetings with
the prime minister, briefings from senior officials, increased
security and a much larger team of advisers than ever before.
Over the past few weeks, Mofaz has been preparing for his new
position. A team of advisers has been drawing up intricate plans for
his term as opposition leader. He plans to introduce a series of
bills, the headline of which will be the replacement of the law
granting blanket exemption from military service for yeshiva students
and other bills on a range of social issues. Kadima will continue to
hold chairmanship of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee until May, when the agreement with Likud expires; once it
does, Mofaz is expected to seek the Finance Committee instead - to
help his party become part of the social protest.
Do you prefer the Finance Committee over the Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee?
'Absolutely. We intend to make life very uncomfortable for the prime
minister. I want Kadima to become a centrist alternative to this
right-wing government. I have no intention of joining the Likud-led
coalition.'
Will you also be an opposition party when it comes to attacking Iran's
nuclear facilities?
'I have made my position on Iran known to the relevant people. The
Iranian issue cannot be used as a smokescreen to allow Netanyahu to
ignore issues that are more critical to the future of our country.
Netanyahu has wasted three precious years. Despite enjoying a stable
coalition, he has not done anything to advance Israel's security, its
standing on the international stage or social justice. We are closer
than ever to the danger of a binational state'."
WASHINGTON'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAEL: Writing in Israel Hayom, Dan
Margalit says that the United States has launched an offensive against
Iran, designed to scare off Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and
Defense Minister Ehud Barak from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.
"At the height of the Israeli-American honeymoon, some officials in
Washington have launched a peculiar and scathing political offensive
against Jerusalem over a possible military operation to destroy the
Iranian nuclear project. These are not occasional arrows of criticism,
but massive bombardments of nonconventional rhetoric. Among the WMDs
(words of mass destruction) that the Americans have fired: an Israeli
attack will only delay the Iranians by six months and 200 Americans
will die in the war that an Israeli attack will inevitably spark.
That's certainly a significant number of fatalities, but one has to
ask: How many Americans have been killed as a result of the Pentagon's
military misadventures in recent years?
Someone in Washington leaked a report - which has been denied left,
right and center - which claims that the Israel Air Force has bases in
Azerbaijan. In addition, Haaretz's Amir Oren reported yesterday that
the Israeli plans for a military strike against Iran have been shelved
to 2013 at the earliest.
Political rivals of Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu - including
those who are opposed to military action against Iran - admit that
Israel has scored a major success by getting Iran to the top of the
global agenda. The international boycott against Iran has 'Made in
Israel' stamped all over it and if the ayatollahs' central bank is
also subjected to sanctions, the efforts to thwart the Islamic
Republic's nuclear aspirations will be even more powerful and swift.
So what possible interest could someone in the Pentagon have to try
and persuade the international community that we have nothing to fear
from Iran at the current time? It's crazy.
Iran claims that it is willing to enter into fresh negotiations over
the military aspects of its nuclear project, but only as long as it
believes that Israel is making serious preparations for a military
strike. The comment by German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere
that, having spoken with Ehud Barak; he is now more fearful of an
Israeli attack, increases the chances of a peaceful resolution of the
standoff. Without the fear of military action, there is no way that
Iran will return to the negotiating table in Istanbul.
There is a significant political difference between the United States'
efforts to persuade Israel not to launch a military strike and public
American efforts to get Netanyahu and Barak to abandon their credible
threat against the ayatollahs. The criticism that was leveled against
former Mossad chief Meir Dagan for his public comments about a
military strike against Iran is just as valid when it comes to U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or even President Barack Obama himself.
Nobody wants military action, unless all the other options have been
exhausted. An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could be a
resounding success - 200 American and 500 Israeli fatalities would not
necessarily means that the attack was a failure - or it could be
something we will likely regret for generations. It is also possible
that there will be no such operation, either because (and this is the
ideal situation for Israel) the need for one no longer exists or
because Israel misses the boat and Iran enters what Barak called the
'zone of nuclear immunity.' Either way, the United States is closing
in on Israel and narrowing the window of opportunity by revealing
certain military facts that it is privy to.
The Romans used to say that if you want peace, prepare for war. In the
modern world, it's true to say that if you want peace, prepare for war
and threaten war. The Americans, it seems, haven't studied Latin."
WISHFUL THINKING: Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Ronen Bergman says that
there is very little truth behind reports that Israel is cooperating
with Iran's neighbors and also dismisses the possibility that the
White House is behind these reports.
"Every few weeks - and with increasing frequency - foreign news
sources report on alleged coordination between Israel and one of the
countries with which Iran shares a border, which they claim points to
the possibility of an attack against the Islamic Republic's nuclear
facilities.
Not so long ago, for example, there were reports that Saudi Arabia
would allow Israel to use its airspace en route to Iran; there were
reports about cooperation and coordination between Jerusalem and the
Gulf States; and there have been claims that Israel has established
air bases in more than one of the Moslem states that used to make up
the Soviet Union. Yesterday, it was Azerbaijan's turn to become
Israel's latest secret ally; in the eyes of the international media,
at least.
Israel would have good reason to cooperate with the countries that
border Iran or are located in the air corridor between Israel and the
Islamic Republic. First and foremost, for the collation of
intelligence. In other words, the ability to recruit and run
operatives in these countries, who would be able to report back on the
progress in Iran's nuclear project. The Iranian intelligence services
believe that Israel has a base in Kurdish Iraq, where it trains spies
and assassins. They say that the assassins who killed several Iranian
nuclear scientists were dispatched from there. They also believe that
the Mossad or some other branch of the Israeli intelligence services
has set up surveillance posts in the countries surrounding it.
If Israeli warplanes are given permission to land or take off from
bases in countries close to Iran, one of the key problems standing in
the way of a military strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear
facilities could be resolved: the distance between Iran and Israel and
the need to refuel planes midflight. Resolving that central issue
would make it much easier for Israel to resort to the military option.
Moreover, if Israel is allowed to station ground forces in one or more
of the countries adjacent to Iran, it could enable the IDF to send in
troops to mark targets or to launch a more direct attack. Additional
assistance could be forthcoming in the shape of Arrow anti-missile
rockets deployed closer to Iran. This would increase Israel's ability
to intercept the barrage of missiles that Iran would almost certainly
fire at Israel should it go ahead with a military strike.
The problem is that the vast majority of what I describe above is
nothing more than wishful thinking. We have to take reports of
coordination between Jerusalem and these countries with more than a
pinch of salt.
It is true that the government in Baku has expressed its reservation -
to put it mildly - about the recent activity of its neighbor, the
Islamic Republic. According to foreign news reports, the Azeri
intelligence services played an active role in thwarting an Iranian
plan, via Hizbollah, to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku in 2009 and
to carry out a series of attacks against Israel and Jewish targets
last year. In the aftermath of these successful counterterrorism
operations, the Iranians accused Baku of being Mossad lackeys.
But there is a massive difference between cooperating to thwart
terrorism and actively aiding and abetting an Israeli attack by
allowing Israeli planes to refuel or by allowing the IDF to have a
permanent military presence on your soil. Aiding Israeli planes for a
military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities is the sort of thing
that would be very difficult to keep secret forever and, once word got
out, could be interpreted by Tehran as tantamount to a declaration of
war. It is highly doubtful that any of Iran's neighbors would want to
provide Israel with that kind of assistance, especially since they all
have internal elements that would not look kindly on a government that
cozies up to the Jewish state.
I am also not convinced by the claim that the Obama administration is
deliberately leaking this information in order to make it harder for
Israel to resort to the military option. It's true, nonetheless, that
the White House has sent a series of former and current officials to
give interviews in the American media, where they warn of the
potentially dire consequences of an Israeli attack. The White House
adopted this policy in January, when it was convinced that the
Netanyahu government was also involved in an all-out media campaign to
convince public opinion in the U.S. that Israel was serious about
using the military option. The goal of the Israeli campaign was to
force the administration's hand and encourage it to take further
action against Iran.
The Israeli reaction to the reports about air bases in Azerbaijan was
mainly one of mirth. But it's highly doubtful that the White House was
behind the leak."
MIND GAMES: Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Alex Fishman explains the
reasons for the Azeri airbase story and warns that every such report
frays regional nerves a little more.
"In order to understand what lies behind the report that Israel is
planning on using air bases on Azerbaijan to launch an attack against
Iran's nuclear facilities, you need to look at a map. If such a
scenario happens, Israel would inadvertently have to drag four or five
other countries into a head-on confrontation with Iran. Somebody, it
seems, is keen to ensure that these countries - especially Turkey -
are adamantly and vocally opposed to any Israeli military action
against Iran.
In order to land in Azerbaijan, Israeli planes would have to fly over
Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Syria. Georgia and Armenia are also
located between Israel and Iran. The report that hit the headlines
yesterday not only got them hot under the collar in Tehran and Baku,
but also in the abovementioned countries too, since they would have
been concerned that they were being dragged into the Iranian issue
against their will. When Meir Dagan warns about regional confrontation
as a result of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, he is
referring to exactly this sort of scenario, which would drag countries
that appear to have nothing to do with the Iranian problem into the
firing line.
Even if Israel were able to overcome the problem of having to use the
airspace of countries that are not exactly lining up to volunteer to
help us, there is still an important unanswered question: does using
Azerbaijan really shorten the distance to the target and does it
justify taking the risk of embroiling additional countries? The answer
is not unequivocal. When it comes to attacking targets close to
Tehran, it is true that Azerbaijan has a geographical advantage. But
if we're talking about targets in southern Iran, the distance from
Azerbaijan does not justify the risk.
We have to accept the truth and the truth is that leaks of this kind
make sense. Otherwise they wouldn't be leaked. If the runways at Azeri
airfields are in decent shape, then it would take Israel less than 24
hours to set up an operational airbase. It would be possible, the day
before a planned attack, to send a cargo plane with control equipment
and refueling capabilities and to have an airbase that is able to
receive any warplane that needs to make an emergency landing. A
clandestine forward base could also be used to serve the backup
planes: refueling craft, surveillance planes, drones, rescue
helicopters and so on. But even if someone has thought of this option
- never mind put the wheels in motion - the moment that it is leaked
to the press it loses its relevance.
Someone - and we don't know whether in Tel Aviv, Washington, Moscow or
even Tehran - weaved a story designed to deter Israel from doing
anything rash on the Iranian front and to create an international
groundswell of opinion against Israeli military action against the
Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities. Or perhaps the goal was to
ensure that the issue of tougher sanctions against the ayatollah
regime remains topmost on the global agenda, by bandying about the
threat of military action.
This is part of the mind game that is going on between the focal
points of the Iranian problem. The date that everyone has in mind is
mid-April, when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council
and Germany are due to resume talks with Iran in Istanbul. There is
talk that the negotiations will be divided into several sessions and
no one expects any progress to be made straight away. Therefore, ahead
of these talks, the pressure on Tehran must be kept up. In addition,
the sanctions that have been imposed on Tehran - and the sanctions
that are likely to be imposed in the future - will only start to bear
fruit toward the end of 2012, so someone is trying to play for time.
These political maneuverings are accompanied by more forceful tactics,
in which every side is trying to gain the most that it can.
The Obama administration, for example, suddenly feels the need to give
Israel more money for another Iron Dome battery, despite the fact that
every other aspect of federal and defense spending in the United
States is being slashed. In October, American troops will come to
Israel to participate in a massive ground training operation and next
month there will be an extensive joint drill between the Israeli and
American air forces. These American moves, alongside the leaks, the
press briefings and the public embraces - are designed to gain time.
At the same time, Israel does not want Iran - or anyone else - to
think that it has turned its back on the military option.
The main damage that these leaks do is to send the entire region into
a state of exacerbated tension. So maybe someone in a dark backroom in
Tel Aviv, Washington or Tehran is terribly pleased about having got
the Azeri leak into the media. But every additional story, every
additional leak frays the nerves a little bit more until one day,
someone will snap and all the talk of war will become a
self-fulfilling prophesy."
WARNING JERUSALEM: Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon says
that the recent spate of leaks regarding Israeli plans for a military
strike against Iran is part of an the Obama administration effort to
reduce the chances of that happening.
"Yossi Klein Halevi, in an article on The New Republic's website
earlier this month entitled 'Why Israel Still Can't Trust That Obama
Has Its Back,' argued that Washington seemed more concerned about
warning Israel than stopping Iran.
'Even when he seemed to be warning Tehran, he was really warning
Jerusalem,' Halevi said about U.S. President Barack Obama's speech at
the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference. 'His
goal these last days hasn't been so much to deter them but us.'
A mere look at the headlines in some key Iran-related stories in the
media over the last few weeks proves Halevi's point. These are stories
whose conclusions are that Israel cannot stop Iran's nuclear program,
or that such an attack would actually get Iran to speed up its
program, or that it would suck the U.S. into a war. Thursday's piece
in Foreign Policy magazine by Mark Perry about Israel's ties with
Azerbaijan just proves this point. There was something off-putting
about the whole tone of the piece, as if the bad guy in this story
were not Iran, for trying to acquire nuclear weapons, but Israel, for
establishing close ties with Baku and securing the use of air bases
near the Iranian border to more effectively carry out an attack if
needed.
''We're watching what Iran does closely, one of the U.S. sources, an
intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a
prospective Israeli attack confirmed,'' according to the article. "But
we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not
happy about it.''
And this is just the latest in a series of high-profile stories -
based, in most cases, on unnamed American sources - warning about a
possible strike. Either Israel doesn't have the ability to carry it
out (The New York Times, February 19); or - according to the
conclusions of a classified war simulation - it will drag the U.S.
into a wider conflict and cost hundreds of American lives (The New
York Times, March 19); or an attack would only further accelerate
Iran's bid for the bomb (Reuters, March 29).
According to the logic in the last piece, if Israel attacked, then
Iran - which essentially developed its program in contravention of the
Non-proliferation Treaty it signed, and despite international
inspectors - may choose not to let those inspectors back in and, as a
result, have an easier time pursuing nuclear weapons.
Now, that is an interesting bit of logic: Don't attack, because if you
do, Iran won't let back in the inspectors who were so impotent in the
first place that Tehran is now on the cusp of nuclear capability.
And this constant drumbeat of Israel-must-not-take-action articles is
not only in press reports. A report Wednesday by the Congressional
Research Service - the U.S. Congress's nonpartisan 'think tank' - said
Iran could recover from a strike and rebuild its centrifuge workshops
within six months, meaning that such a strike would be futile. It is
'unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the
likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,' the report read.
These reports and stories are not being made up out of whole cloth.
Rather, they are fed by sources intent on sending a clear message: Do
not attack. That a spate of these reports is coming out just a couple
of weeks after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Obama in the
White House shows that despite the smiles and the talk then about
understanding and hyper-close coordination, the U.S. and Israel are
not seeing eye-to-eye on the Iranian 'military option' issue.
The U.S. wants Israel to wait, and what this constant drip of stories
indicates is a sense in Washington that its efforts to convince Israel
to do so are failing. As a result, some in Washington are using a more
public route to get that message across and to try and tie Jerusalem's
hands."
COOLING THEIR JETS: Writing in Haaretz, Amir Oren explains why
statements exchanged earlier this week between the Pentagon and
Defense Minister Barak signaled Israel's agreement to postpone an
attack on Iran at least until after the U.S. elections
"At 8:58 P.M. on Tuesday, Israel's war against Iran in 2012 ended with
a whimper, not a bang. The all-clear can be sounded for the time
being. The war will not take place this year, or until further notice.
The argument of the father-and-son-like pair, Ehud Barak and Binyamin
Netanyahu, in favor of an attack has rested on the urgency factor.
Against this, there has stood a double-barreled American argument.
First, President Barack Obama's desire to return safely to his house
(the white one) is an obvious given. As Obama explained to outgoing
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whom he asked to obtain an
extension (on another matter) from his master Vladimir Putin until
after the November elections after that date, the president expects to
have 'room for flexibility' (the inverse of Ehud Barak's 'immunity
zone').
Second, there is an intelligence assessment that Iran has not yet
decided to cross the nuclear-arms threshold. It's in this spirit that
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (during a visit to the Persian Gulf)
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey,
expressed themselves in the past few weeks. According to Dempsey, the
time that the Obama administration is allocating to play out its
engagement with Iran (a dialogue is likely to be renewed in about two
weeks), and the assessment of the impact of economic sanctions against
Tehran, cannot be measured in weeks or months, but in terms of the
ability of intelligence to identity an Iranian move to cross the
threshold.
Updating of the American National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007
was recently completed. According to what has dribbled out of
Washington so far, the situation has not changed substantially. The
amount of enriched uranium accumulated by Iran in the past
four-and-a-half years, ostensibly for civilian purposes, has been
added to the equation, but the conclusion remains the same: The
project to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons was suspended in
the wake of the American invasion of Iraq nine years ago whether
because that invasion terrified Tehran or because the downfall of
Saddam Hussein made Iranians feel they no longer needed a nuclear
project of their own.
A war in the gulf, which would spread to include Israel, is liable to
erupt as a consequence of American-Iranian friction in the Strait of
Hormuz, even though Washington will want to avoid any such development
this year. At the end of October, a week before the American
elections, a major exercise called 'Austere Challenge 12' will be held
in Israel and in the Mediterranean, with the participation of 4,000
troops from the European Command and the Sixth Fleet. Obama will be
able to cast himself as Israel's defender against Iranian missiles.
The unifying thread of Obama's policy (exactly like that of his
predecessor, George W. Bush), from Iraq via Afghanistan and Libya and
through Iran and Syria is that although unilateral American action in
self-defense and for the sake of its vital national interests is
permissible, an effective and long-lasting result is best achieved
within the framework of an international alliance. This is explicitly
what Obama and Panetta are saying to Israel: With all due respect for
your declarations of independence, please don't disturb the
international effort to organize.
In the Western democracies an alliance like this rests on governments;
in the East, which is fragmented among tribes, communities and
districts, it is based on ties with the army and security services. Of
all the entanglements, past and present, Obama is granting priority to
Afghanistan; he and not Bush is responsible for events there in the
past three years, including the blunders by the military that made it
possible for civilian massacres to occur and to Syria. While waiting
for regional allies (Turkey and the Arab League) who are essential for
an operation against the Assad regime, the U.S. Army is collecting
intelligence and preparing the infrastructure for operational plans.
Dempsey boasted about the Pentagon's good relations with 'all the
armies' around Syria meaning the Turkish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian
forces and also the Israel Defense Forces.
No Israeli prime minister, including Netanyahu, has dared defy an
American president in a crisis over the long haul. In that context,
it's fascinating to read the transcripts of the conversations held by
Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli ambassadors to Washington,
particularly Simcha Dinitz, with 'Naftali,' the code name given to
Henry Kissinger. In the Yom Kippur War, in the political developments
afterward and in the period of the American 'reassessment,' the real
question was when Israel would give in under pressure and what price
it would exact for its concessions.
According to a recent war simulation conducted by U.S. Central
Command, the Iranians are liable to kill 200 Americans with a single
missile in response to an Israeli attack. Accordingly, even if Ehud
Barak scorns the gravity of scenarios that would see 'only' 500
Israelis killed (though to market the scale of the disaster, he likes
to claim that one Israeli killed is equivalent to 35 Americans) the
meaning of that American scenario is that the blood of the 200 dead
Americans would be on Israel's head. The moment the whole dispute is
framed in these terms, Israel has no practical option to attack in
contravention of American pleas and warnings.
On Tuesday evening of this week, at 8:20, Pentagon spokesman George
Little stated, 'Supporting the security of the State of Israel is a
top priority of President Obama and Secretary Panetta ... During the
rocket attacks earlier this month, the Iron Dome system played a
critical role in Israel's security. When nearly 300 rockets and
mortars were fired at southern Israel, Iron Dome intercepted over 80
percent of the targets it engaged, saving many civilian lives. The
Department of Defense has been in conversations with the government of
Israel about U.S. support for the acquisition of additional Iron Dome
systems, and intends to request an appropriate level of funding from
Congress to support such acquisitions based on Israeli requirements
and production capacity.'
Thirty-eight minutes afterward, Defense Minister Barak responded by
publicly thanking Panetta and himself ('The decision is the result of
contacts between the Defense Ministry and the Pentagon'). When Barak
thanks the Obama administration 'for helping to strengthen Israel's
security,' he is abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without
permission before November. For all intents and purposes, this is an
announcement of the war's postponement until at least the spring of
2013.
Since Netanyahu will only agree to deferring realization of his dream,
rather than shelving it for all time, the linchpin of his platform in
the Knesset elections this autumn or next spring will be that he and
only he can save Israel from Iran.
For his part, Obama, if he's reelected, will demand that Israel
contribute its share to the denuclearization of the Middle East, and
he will simultaneously renew his efforts to achieve an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement."