In the last couple of days, both Christy1947 and Lefty Coaster have posted diaries on articles published in both the Washington Post and Haaretz claiming that Israel would not warn the US if it decides to attack Iran. It was clear from the comments following these diaries that most Kossacks have no appetite for this war even given a fig leaf of plausible deniability.
But today, Haaretz and others are citing a Bloomberg article by John Walcott that appeared online this morning at 12:01 am, that takes a decidedly different direction. For snips and comments, follow me beneath the little orange thing that this morning is uncomfortably reminiscent of a mushroom cloud.
Apparently rejecting the figleaf, Walcott bares this:
Obama administration officials are escalating warnings that the U.S. could join Israel in attacking Iran if the Islamic republic doesn’t dispel concerns that its nuclear-research program is aimed at producing weapons.
Four days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington, Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz told reporters that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict.
“What we can do, you wouldn’t want to be in the area,” Schwartz told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Pentagon officials said military options being prepared start with providing aerial refueling for Israeli planes and also include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Pentagon plans are classified.
“There’s no group in America more determined to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon than the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Army General Martin Dempsey told the House Budget Committee yesterday. “I can assure you of that.”
Separately, unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post (WPO) that U.S. military planners are increasingly confident that sustained attacks with the Air Force’s 30,000-pound “bunker- buster” bombs could put Iran’s deeply buried uranium enrichment plant at Fordo out of commission.
Walcott's article is long, and I believe I've already hit the limit of fair use, so I'm urging you to read it. In summary, there remains a significant level of disagreement as to what act on the part of Iran warrants an attack. It's somewhere between rumors, production of weapons grade uranium, and gas prices. Republican Lindsay Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said to reporters, "blah, blah, blah... The intelligence community is uncertain about Iranian intentions. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this out...blah, blah, blah.”
Yesterday, Hezbollah in Lebanon warned, "An Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program would set the Middle East ablaze, possibly drag in the United States and unleash a conflict beyond Israel's control," via Harretz / Reuters.
And finally, in case you thought I was finished using other people's words to cobble togeter a diary, here's one more quote from a while back: