Heavy Grows Israel’s Finger on the Trigger
P5 +1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) and Iran failed to secure a breakthrough at the third round of talks in Moscow last week. Meanwhile, Israel’s trigger finger remains itchy. On May 17 Michael Stott of Reuters reported:
“I think they’ve gone into lockdown mode now,” the senior Western diplomat said. “Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens.” …
“I think they have made a decision to attack,” said one senior Israeli figure with close ties to the leadership. “It is going to happen. The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them.”
Also, on June 22 at Christian Science Monitor, Scott Peterson reported the comments of Sergei Markov, a Kremlin adviser, who said:
[T]he talks need a “more clear advance and quicker developments” if they are to forestall a conflict [and] there is a “quite high” chance of an Israeli attack on Iran in July or August — just months before the U.S. presidential election in November.
Why exactly does Israel see the American elections as, at best, a window of opportunity, or, at worst, a deadline for mounting an aerial attack on Iran?
Part of the reason, according to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic in May, is that when Netanyahu solidified his coalition, he dodged his own election this September and, with all parties on board, is able to proceed.
A month earlier, at Slate.com, Fred Kaplan wrote:
In fact, if the Israelis really are intent on attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities, they’re likely to do so before this November’s American presidential elections. If they started an attack and needed U.S. firepower to help them complete the task, Barack Obama might open himself up to perilous political attacks — for being indecisive, weak, appeasing, anti-Israel, you name it — if he didn’t follow through. It could cost him the votes of crucial constituencies. If the Israelis tried to pressure the United States into joining an attack after the election, Obama would have … more flexibility [about whether or not to attack].
Many are tired of hearing the charge that Israel, or more to the point, its American supporters (read: campaign contributors) “drive” U.S. foreign policy. But, after three rounds of P5+1 talks with Iran, one can be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that the United States has lost sight of its own goals toward Iran because of the overriding imperative to arrive at an agreement that will keep Israel from attacking Iran.
One can’t help but wonder what U.S. policy toward Iran would look like shorn of the need to prevent that from happening, as well as the perceived need to present a front toward Iran that’s sufficiently bellicose for Israel’s Americans supporters.
Originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.
Read more by Russ Wellen
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- No One Supports the Troops More Than Bradley Manning – July 12th, 2011
whiskeypapa
June 27th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Tired of hearing that isreal drives US foreign policy??
Does that mean it is an acknowledged fact?
or they are just tired of hearing about it?
Claus Eric Hamle
June 27th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
46 % of Americans believe God made us 6,000 years ago. You can´t see a film on Darwin in the US, only in Canada, because he is the Antichrist. Americans are ignorant bloody fools. youtube The Mysterious Origins of Man. http://www.mcremo.com And now the Pentagon is approaching its goal: To replace MAD with Disarming First-Strike Capability with the missiles in Eastern Europe by 2018. But of course, this leads to Launch On Warning by 2017. Professor J. Edward Anderson: Deployment of anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe is part of a first-strike strategy.
Claus Eric Hamle
June 27th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
46 % of Americans believe God made us 6,000 years ago. You can´t see a film on Darwin in the US, only in Canada, because he is the Antichrist. Americans are ignorant bloody fools. youtube The Mysterious Origins of Man. http://www.mcremo.com And now the Pentagon is approaching its goal: To replace MAD with Disarming First-Strike Capability with the missiles in Eastern Europe by 2018. But of course, this leads to Launch On Warning by 2017. Professor J. Edward Anderson: Deployment of anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe is part of a first-strike strategy.
Claus Eric Hamle
June 27th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
46 % of Americans believe God made us 6,000 years ago. You can´t see a film on Darwin in the US, only in Canada, because he is the Antichrist. Americans are ignorant bloody fools. youtube The Mysterious Origins of Man. http://www.mcremo.com And now the Pentagon is approaching its goal: To replace MAD with Disarming First-Strike Capability with the missiles in Eastern Europe by 2018. But of course, this leads to Launch On Warning by 2017. Professor J. Edward Anderson: Deployment of anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe is part of a first-strike strategy.
Yonatan
June 28th, 2012 at 1:50 am
And the first strike is aimed at Russia, not the non-existent Iranian nukes and the non-existent Iranian ICBMs. The events in Syria are aimed at removing Russia from its last naval base in the Mediterranean region. The Syrian people are just pawns and their fate is irrelevant to US/Israel and the UK.
Andrewp111
June 28th, 2012 at 5:39 am
Geopolitics at its best.
The Russkies have done their best to make life difficult for the USA in Af-Pak, so payback is a bitch, isn't it?
Dr.Khan
June 28th, 2012 at 6:51 am
So it is an established fct now,that each time an IMPOTENT,GOOD FOR NOTHING to be Pres.of the usa need s-election,they will have to attack an Islamic country to boost rates.My God,how low can a nation go to even support such idea.
notinmyname
June 28th, 2012 at 7:27 am
There is a madness in the concept Israel and its supporters have of the world. It runs along the lines of "we can do what we want because there are no consequences" and "what's best is what's best for Israel", f**k the rest of us. The US, as nominal minder of this mad dog, ought to take on the responsibility of preventing Israeli tribalism engulfing us all in a war the consequences of which will be devestatingly real, even if they are unforeseeable.
Jaime
June 28th, 2012 at 7:48 am
The best? What the Russians have done, if they've done something at all, pales in comparison with what the US did during trhe Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians perhaps should start giving the Taliban portable Stinger-like SAMs to do their "best".
LibertyRising
June 28th, 2012 at 8:12 am
Now that's a really great idea.! And they'd have a much easier time providing them.
LibertyRising
June 28th, 2012 at 8:13 am
A nuke right on top of Tel Aviv would go a long way to improving the situation.
zioctopus
June 28th, 2012 at 10:44 am
Leave the pseudo-science called evolution out of this.
WhichWaldenPond
June 28th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Remember that this is all about blowing open nuclear reactors and nuclear refineries, and casting the radioactive contents all of the the Persian Gulf landscape. What would be the price of oil if it were pumped and loaded in Fukushima or in Chernobyl? Well, that will be the price after we or Israel pull the trigger on the gun we hold to our head. The stoppage of the US petroleum-based economy will be certain, severe, and long lasting. Within months of our bombing of reactors in Iran, there will be daily curb-side pick up of corpses in American cities, there will be so many people dying of starvation and civil anarchy.
El Tonno
June 28th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
> The Russkies have done their best to make life difficult for the USA in Af-Pak
LOLWUT?
El Tonno
June 28th, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Let's just not go down that road.
El Tonno
June 28th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Not a believer in ratcheting environmental adaptation by trial and error? Still think you have been spawned by Lilith at the dawn of time?
Wilmaaa!!
Anti_Govt_Rebel
June 28th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
I wonder what a Russian or Chinese response would be to an Israelite/US attack on Iran.
deliaruhe
June 28th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
This'll be an October Surprise.
Bibi knows exactly how and when to push Washington's buttons. Obama will not go to election as a "wimp" on foreign policy, and Bibi knows it. Right now, all Bibi is doing is whipping up the wimp impression, and he's pacing it well, because he also knows that Obama won't take the chance of attacking too early, in case the whole operation goes south by election time. Obama will go in October while the nation is in that first flush of patriotic machismo.
patriothere
June 28th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
There isn't going to be a war with Iran while Obama is in the white house. Maybe if romney wins but that's not gonna happen. They're flip flopping. One minute they say Israel is gonna attack. Next minute they don't. Israel is not gonna attack iran. That much is clear. BUT, there might be a terror attack somewhere in the world blamed on Iran and America goes in and decimates iran causing WW3. THAT might happen. We wont be able to breath a sigh of relief until next year I'm afraid.
Once and for All « Poetry for Palestine
June 29th, 2012 at 7:53 am
[...] continue to “teach” and “train” Americans the “art” of war, and continue pushing and planning for a new war on Iran and fantasizing and drooling over yet another war [...]
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