Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu is due in DC in early March to discuss various things with the President, and this article has now appeared in Ha'aretz to make that visit more 'interesting.'
Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.
Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack
The article is problematic in that there have also been a number of reports in the various English language Israeli papers of various high ranking Israeli military and intelligence figures about just how bad an idea such an attack would be. And how horrible the logistics.
The article follows a widely reported piece in which Wikileaks and Anonymous claim to have hacked a vast quantity of memos and emails from a defense contractor named Stratfor, among which was a group which indicated some information to the effect that Israel, acting with its allies the Kurds, had already acted to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, an allegation as to which proof has not yet appeared, if it is true at all. The reporting does not clarify whether this is a reference to explosions which have already been reported to have occured here and there in Iran, some of which are associated with the Iranian nuclear facilities, or are some different event.
The relationship of Israel and Kurds has been diaried here before, as ethnically ideological I politicians have said they believe Kurds are a people of great age, non Arab as the Israeli Jews are, who have also struggled against illicit Arab domination, and have put both agents and money into Kurdish indepencence related activities as well as actions through the Kurds against Iran, a portion of which country is within the area Kurds claim as their own.
The reporting on the Stratfor leak suggests serious skepticism about whether the claim is true, both as to destruction and as to destroyers. Of course, if the Stratfor leaks were true, then there would be no Iranian nuclear facilities left to be attacked by Israel out of necessity at a later time. Both have been published in the last days in Israeli papers.
The article in Ha'aretz also provides a second possible reason for the action:
... the apparent decision to keep the U.S. in the dark also stems from Israel's frustration with the White House. After a visit by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in particular, they became convinced the Americans would neither take military action, nor go along with unilateral action by Israel against Iran. The Israelis concluded they would have to conduct a strike unilaterally, a point they are likely to hammer home in a series of meetings over the next two weeks in Washington, the official said.
Of course, the source is an anonymous US official. But the claim is made that this intention has also been provided to all other American politicians visiting Israel recently, which would include Mike Huckabee among others.
This would be the most serious but not the only recent public disagreement between the US and Israel. Another recently was an announcement by the US among others that it found plans by Israel to build new housing units in WB to be unhelpful to peace.
There have also been apparently provocative announcements of other developments planned by Israel, including the rehabilitation of an airport which would apparently preclude the creation on independence of an airport for the Palestinian authority, and an announcement of plans to build 475 kilometers of surface railroads throughout the West Bank, connecting to Israel, which developments at least suggest that Israel is moving forward with steps inconsistent with that independence. Israel has also announced that it has put peace talks on ice until it sees what happens with the reunification talks between Fatah and Hamas, and put out last week a series of what purport to be leaks about what happened in the Amman talks. All of which suggest that Israel is now acting on a premise that there will not be an independent state in WB. The papers have also been full of reports of attacks on Palestinians and their entire towns by settlers and middle of the night detentions of Palestinians, and ejections by IDF of Palestinians from homes and villages for alleged military purposes, when the only problem publicly suggested was that the Palestinian facilities were too close to various legally irregular but established settlements.
The soon to occur visit of Netanyahu to DC preceded an AIPAC meeting by a day (and I do assume that Bibi will speak at that, after his conversation with Obama, with whatever difficulty his version of events may cause in the way of additional pressure), and also comes at a time at which the US position in the region is somewhat at risk because of Egyptian arrests of persons working with various politically connected US organizations operating in Egypt, which has shaken the US Egyptian relationship and has at least seven people taking shelter against arrest by the Egyptians in the US embassy and thrown US financial aid to Egypt in question, at a time when Egypt and its new government still in formation but dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis to the right of them publicly mulling over whether to continue the peace arrangement from the Seventies, with Israel.
The matter is separately a sensitive one, as Russia has taken the position that any attack on Iran would be catastrophic. Historically, Israel has played off Russia and the US in connection with prior wars, in which its own actions were treated as somewhat less serious than what Russian would do and what it proposed, as part of the Cold War, and where the priority was not for the US what Israel and its enemy of the moment would do but rather what Russia would. Readers here will recall there is also an election ongoing in Russia, as to which Russia has accused the US of meddling in its internal affairs. Russia is also a member of the Quartet, and in that capacity has resisted the US' consistently very pro Israel views.
Timing of such an attack or the threat of it may also be affected by the peculiarity that the disruptions in Syria may offer a window, when taken together with rebellious Kurdish areas of both Turkey and Iraq, to find a route for a flight plan to Iran not going through Turkey or Iraq as such, a window which would close if the Syrian rebellion turns into another Arab Spring successful revolution. This assumes that the Syrian matter will not resolve itself for a few months, but will ultimately be resolved in a manner which will eliminate the opportunity.
Given the hawkish nature of some Republicans, who seem to love the idea of another war against Muslims, this appears to present certain questions.
First, is the Netanyahu government trying principally to stir up trouble in the middle of the US elections, by suggesting that what it proposes to do is to take whatever action it chooses without notice, making the US have to decide whether to back it up after the fact of the attack or other form of action beginning, on terms and targets and under conditions decided solely by Israel, in effect trying to take control away from Obama and the US of the supposedly ascloseasthis alliance, and daring Obama not to back them up. This is plausible to me as the notion that publicly saying they are not telling the US so as to give it deniability is not an explanation which will be accepted in the middle east generally, given the longstanding US position that Israel is its closest ally, and may be meant to be understood as bs. It is far too late for such deniability, especially when announced in this way, and has something of the effect of limiting that deniability just by the statement of it in this manner.
Second option for an explanation may be principally a desire to weaken Obama with the American Jewish electorate, in an election in which the Israeli government dearly wants a Republican to be elected President in November, but in a situation in which the Republicans are not looking so good right now and might benefit from this dramatic sort of help. Bibi has always been very close to Republicans, as is his own personal billionaire, Sheldon Adelman, who is also Gingrich's personal bilionaire. Setting up the possibility creates the option to create an October surprise if the election is close enough by that date, and the risk of it throughout the balance of the electoral cycle. Talk is cheap and Israel is forever letting various trial balloons fly to try to ascertain just how far any particular US president can be pushed, without necessarily having the intention of following through on the matter floated. Obama is not the first to get this treatment.
A third possibility is that Israel may be preparing for another bargaining session with the US to get something else it wants, financial or otherwise, for which it is placing this threat as a dangerous bargaining chip publicly on the table. I have not yet seen reporting on the in US papers, so those who have an interest in this would have seen it where I found it, as well as the Republicans with whom it has allegedly been discussed, but is not necessarily more generally known here.
A fourth is simply that all of this is woofing, as Netanyahu has ever increasing problems at home and challenges to his leadership from the right, which may be nullified by at least the threat of an imperialistic and militaristic action in the immediate future which would appeal to the rightist nationalists of Israel who looove the idea of Israel as a sort of New Rome who for once can do whatever it wants, without regard for others, and thereby enjoy themselves for a time the kind of unaccountable control over others which they see has having historically being imposed on them.
A fifth option is that Netanyahu is coordinating the trip to dovetail with the AIPAC meeting, as a way of ringing Obama's chimes by backing the meeting up against the place where Jewish political donors will be, and he wouldn't do this now if that meeting were not occurring when it is. A way of continuing to pry Obama's policy away from international cooperation and forums by putzing around with the US elections. Israel has not been doing so well with international forums and international report writers recently.
A series of unappealing options. What do you think is going on here and why? And what do you think the US should do, given that it has other interests in the Middle East, including oil in an election year as a club already claimed by Republicans? What are the realistic US options under these circumstances and what are the limits on their other interests in the ME which it might not want to be affected by this threat or an act carrying it out?
Comments under my usual rules, although people have been being verry verry good recently in general. No ad hominem attacks, no violation of Godwin, no personal attacks on anyone, back up your factual allegations with linkables, and if you feel someone is being actionably antisemitic, take it up with management.