Signal to Israel and Iran
by GARETH PORTER and JIM LOBE
Washington D.C.
The postponement of a massive joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise
appears to be the culmination of a series of events that has impelled
the Barack Obama administration to put more distance between the United
States and aggressive Israeli policies toward Iran.
The exercise, called “Austere Challenge ’12″ and originally scheduled
for April, was to have been a simulation of a joint U.S.-Israeli effort
to identify, track and intercept incoming missiles by integrating U.S.
radar systems with the Israeli Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome anti-missile
defense systems.
U.S. participation in such an exercise, obviously geared to a
scenario involving an Iranian retaliation against an Israeli attack on
its nuclear facilities, would have made the United States out to be a
partner of Israel in any war that would follow an Israeli attack on
Iran.
Obama and U.S. military leaders apparently decided that the United
States could not participate in such an exercise so long as Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to give the administration any
assurance that he will not attack Iran without prior approval from
Washington.
We don't mind Isael attacking Iran, we only mind them doing it without asking first our permission, but, as Israel's suzerain, this is hardly the time to expect them to take such requests from U.S. seriously.
The official explanation from both Israeli and U.S. officials about
the delay was that both sides agreed on it. Both Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Mark Regev, spokesman for Netanyahu,
suggested that it was delayed to avoid further exacerbation of tensions
in the Gulf.
The spokesman for the U.S. European Command, Capt. John Ross, and
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told Laura Rozen of Yahoo News Sunday that
the two sides had decided on the postponement to the second half of
2012 without offering any specific reason for it.
However, Rozen
reported Monday that “several current and former American officials” had
told her Sunday that the delay had been requested last month by Israeli
Defense Minister Ehud Barak. One official suggested privately that
there is concern that the alleged Barak request could be aimed at
keeping Israel’s options open for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities
in the spring.
Spring time for Barak - Netanyahu and Israel
They plan to nuke Iran all to hell
But maybe the U.S. will yell
What the hell, yell and yell you little baby
We do what we want we don't mean maybe
U.S. Liberty we bombed
Never did apologize once
We will bomb Iran it's true
Watch out U.S., we may next come for YOU!
But it would make little sense for Netanyahu and Barak to commit Israel to war with Iran before the shape of the U.S. presidential election campaign had become clear. (Oh, get real, Obummah by a land slide!) And Barak would want to have knowledge gained from the joint exercise in tracking and intercepting Iranian missiles with the U.S. military before planning such a strike.
Moreover, the Israeli Air Force was still touting the planned
maneuvers as recently as Thursday and, according to Israeli media, was
taken by surprise by Sunday’s announcement. (As if the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing? Fat fricken chance.)
The idea that the Israelis wanted the postponement appears to be a
cover story to mask the political blow it represents to the Netanyahu
government and to shield Obama from Republican charges that he is not
sufficiently supportive of Israel. (Being totally AGAINST Israel would seem to me to be a way to win many votes, and with all the treasure chest Obummah holds the keys to, he don't hardly need any of that Jewish liberal moolah no mo' - in other words, he has the same latitude of action as Dwight D. Eisenhower did - the last American President to say "no" to Israel and MEAN IT! Nevertheless, the signal sent by the
delay to Netanyahu and Barak, reportedly the most aggressive advocates
of a strike against Iran in Israel’s right-wing government, could hardly
be lost on the two leaders.
Obama may have conveyed the decision to Netanyahu during what is said
to have been a lengthy telephone discussion between the two leaders
Thursday night. Iran policy was one of the subjects Obama discussed with
Netanyahu, according to the White House press release on the
conversation.
The decision to postpone the exercise may have been
timed to provide a strong signal to Netanyahu in advance of this week’s
visit to Israel by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin
Dempsey.
Dempsey reportedly expressed grave concern at a meeting with Obama
last fall about the possibility that Israel intended to carry out a
unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without
consulting with Washington in advance.
Obama has been quoted as responding that he had “no say” in Israel’s
policy, much to Dempsey’s dismay.
The coincidence of the
announced delay with Dempsey’s mission thus suggests that the new
military chief may inform his Israeli counterpart that any U.S.
participation in a joint exercise like “Austere Challenge ’12″ is
contingent on Israel ending its implicit threat to launch an attack on
Iran at a time of its own choosing.
This apparent rift between the two countries comes in the wake of a
series of moves by Israel and its supporters here that appeared aimed at
ratcheting up tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
In November and
December, U.S. neoconservatives aligned with Netanyahu’s Likud Party and
the Israel lobby engineered legislation that forced on the Obama
administration a unilateral sanctions law aimed at dramatically reducing
Iranian crude oil exports and “collapsing” its economy. (Time so start trying the neo-cons as traitors to the U.S. since their primary allegiance has ALWAYS been to Israel - the whinin' little tittie babies!)
The
administration’s reluctant embrace of sanctions against the oil sector
and the Iran’s Central Bank led in turn to an Iranian threat to
retaliate by closing off the Strait of Hormuz. The risk of a naval
incident suddenly exploding into actual military conflict suddenly
loomed large.
Netanyahu and Barak are widely believed to have hoped to provoke such
conflict with a combination of more aggressive sanctions, sabotaging
Iranian missile and nuclear facilities, and assassinations against
individual scientists associated with the nuclear program.
Amid tensions already reaching dangerous heights, Iranian nuclear
scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated in Tehran in a bombing
Jan. 11. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and NSC spokesman Tommy
Vietor immediately condemned the assassination and vehemently denied
any U.S. involvement in that or any other violence inside Iran.
It was the first time the U.S. government had chosen to distance
itself so dramatically from actions that mainstream media has generally
treated as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli policy. (Methinks they doth protest too much - more likely some rogue CIA operative(s) did the deed.)
U.S. officials told Associated Press Saturday that Israel was
considered responsible for the killing, (Being responsible for the killing probably means they just ordered one of their dual-citizen CIA operatives to do the dirty) and the London Times published a
detailed account of what it said was an Israeli Mossad operation.
The killing of the nuclear scientist also came in the context of what
appears to be an intensification of diplomatic activity that most
observers believe is designed to lay the groundwork for another P5+1
meeting (the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and
Germany). It has been widely assumed for the past week or so that here
another P5+1 meeting will be held with Iran by the end of this month or
early next.
While recent published stories about Washington’s communicating with
Tehran through intermediaries stressed U.S. warnings about its “red
lines” in responding to any Iranian move to close the Strait of Hormuz,
those same communications may also have conveyed greater diplomatic
flexibility on the nuclear issue in the hope of achieving some progress
toward an agreement.
Mossad is believed to have assassinated at most a handful of Iranian
nuclear scientists – not enough to slow down the Iranian program. And
the timing of those operations has strongly suggested that the main aim
has been to increase tensions with the United States and sabotage any
possibility for agreement between Iran and the West on Iran’s nuclear
program, if not actually provoke retaliation by Iran that could spark a
wider conflict.
The assassination of nuclear scientist Majid Shariari and attempted
assassination of his colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi on Nov. 29, 2010, for
example, came just a few days after Tehran had reportedly agreed to hold
a second meeting with the P5+1 in Geneva Dec. 6-7.
A major
investigative story published Friday on the website foreignpolicy.com
quoted former CIA officials as saying that Mossad operatives had been
impersonating CIA personnel for several years (Couldn't they be BOTH Mossad and CIA operatives?) in recruiting for and
providing support to the Sunni terrorist organisation Jundallah, which
operated inside Iran. That Israeli policy also suggested a desire to
provoke Iranian retaliation against the United States.
GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.
JIM LOBE’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com
