[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [WBPF] Iran: Israeli Muscle-Flexing, US Vulnerability

[Brussel Morton K.]

Received from the ANL list serve. Good questions and perceptive, even  
if uncertain.  --mkb

Begin forwarded message:

>
>
> An acquaintance on another list sent the following rather  
> interesting analysis of the recent Israeli military exercise  
> apparently aimed at Iran.
>
> Helena Cobban seems to surmise that the NYTimes article was a plant  
> meant to hide American involvement in the exercises.  She also  
> seems to believe that the involvement was very deep and makes her  
> point rather convincingly.
>
> Further on she speculates as to why the whole thing was done in  
> view of the obvious nightmare an attack would bring.  Her thoughts  
> on this are unsupported, but are indicative of how Machiavellian  
> planning and conduct can become in international affairs.  So pity  
> us poor citizens trying to figure out what's happening, and  
> suffering the consequences of the dangerous behaviors of our  
> leadership.
>
>  - Carol [Herzenberg]
>
>
>
> This is a copy of Cobban's words, but you might enjoy looking at the
> site and taking a look a reader comments:  http://justworldnews.org/ 
> archives/002964.html
>
>
> Iran: Israeli Muscle-Flexing, US Vulnerability
>
> Posted by Helena Cobban at June 20, 2008 12:37 PM
>
>
> The NYT's Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt today published a report,
> sourced to Gordon's favored sources, those ever-anonymous "Pentagon
> officials", that states, Israel carried out a major military exercise
> earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a
> rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
> Several American officials [who remain unidentified throughout] said
> the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the
> military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate
> the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
>
> More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the
> maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and
> over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
> The military exercise in question, the Pentagon-leaked report about
> it, and the publication earlier this week of WINEP's long-awaited
> "It'll be a cake-walk, folks!", oh sorry make that "The Last Resort"
> report (http://washingtoninstitute.org/download.php?
> file=PolicyFocus84.pdf), that spins the neocon view of how painless an
> attack on Iran will be: all these developments together look like a
> sophisticated, multi-pronged campaign to prepare the world political
> climate for just such an attack.
> Any military attack by one country on the land of another is an act of
> war. Let's not forget that. Warmongers have always sought to cloak the
> nature of their actions in euphemistic mendacity. The euphemism
> favored by Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, the authors of the
> Cakewalk "Last resort" paper favor, is "preventive action."
>
> Oh my! It makes it sound as admirable and low-risk as a measles-
> inoculation campaign in a low-income neighborhood, doesn't it? Don't
> be fooled for a moment.
>
> Some first important points to note about the reported Israeli
> exercise:
> 1. If indeed it was of the scale reported by Gordon and Schmitt, then
> it was one large, very noticeable, and very expensive exercise. Two
> questions: Why have we not heard about it from other sources in Greece
> and the eastern Med before now? And why, if it was kept quiet until
> now, did these Pentagon officials choose to tell us about it now?
> 2. Over the years, it was the US that gave Israel the vast majority,
> if not all, of the air platforms used. These would be the same kind of
> platforms (i.e. planes and choppers) that would be used in the attack
> on Iran that is apparently being considered by Israel. But the
> transfer of all such weapons from the US to any other country is
> always attached to strict conditionality regarding the uses to which
> they can be put. Do we have any reason to think that the US would,
> actually, allow Israel to use these planes to bomb Iran? And why
> should it allow Israel to train to do so? These are very important
> questions.
>
> 3. The airspace over Greece and the eastern Med is part of Greece's
> and NATO's clearly understood area of operations. What authorities
> within Greece or NATO gave permission for an exercise of this nature
> to be conducted? What operational support did the Israelis receive in
> its conduct from either Greece or NATO?
>
> 4. The exercise looks to have been extremely expensive to conduct. Was
> any portion of that cost paid by the US? If not, how did Israel fund
> it?
> One inescapable conclusion: There is no way this exercise was carried
> without direct coordination with US and and probably also NATO
> commanders at, presumably, the highest level. In that sense,
> therefore, it was not solely an "Israeli" exercise. It was a US-
> condoned or perhaps even US-supported or US-funded exercise, carried
> out by Israeli pilots in planes given to Israel by the US.
> An important corollary: If Israel should build on what it learned in
> the exercise and actually undertake an act of war against Iran, then
> the US would be just as closely implicated in (and responsible for)
> that act of war as it was for the conduct of the training exercise.
> There is no way an Israeli air force strike group could reach Iran to
> bomb it without passing through airspace that-- in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi
> Arabia, other Gulf countries, and Turkey-- is all under tight control
> of either the US unilaterally, or of NATO.
>
> My first thought on reading the Gordon-Schmitt piece was, "Oh my gosh,
> maybe the Israelis will actually go ahead and launch a war against
> Iran in which the US would, like it or not, necessarily immediately
> become entangled."
>
> My second thought, on reading the two men's almost exclusively
> "Pentagon official" sourcing of the story was that it looks as though
> there are high-ups in the Pentagon actually conniving in something
> there.
>
> But what? Hard to believe that even the most hardened neocons left in
> the administration (and there aren't a lot there any more) would
> collude with Israel in undertaking an act of war that would place in
> immediate jeopardy the lives of our 160,000 American sitting ducks in
> Iraq-- and the supply lines that support them... and the entire global
> oil market?
>
> Don't be swayed, by the way, by all the attempts at emollient
> argument-- "it won't be so bad!" "we'll have lots of allies in the
> region, and even in Iran!"-- that Clawson and Eisenstadt brought forth
> in their Cakewalk paper. The effects of any outside country, whether
> US or Israel (with US collusion), launching a war against Iran would
> be of the utmost gravity.
>
> So if these "Pentagon officials"-- and perhaps also some officials in
> Dick Cheney's office-- are conniving in something, maybe it isn't
> actually the planning for an Israeli attack on Iran? Maybe they've
> been conniving in generating an appearance of an imminent Israeli
> attack against Iran, with the aim of-- what? Trying to up the  
> coercion-
> factor ante against Iran in the continuing negotiations, or non-
> negotiations, over its nuclear program? Perhaps.
>
> (Note to Gordon and Schmitt in this context: No-one has yet produced
> any conclusive evidence that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons
> program. You make mention of such a program twice in your article,
> both times in the context of reporting on allegations made about its
> existence by Israeli officials. But since you do mention it both times
> without comment or qualification, you surely owe it to your American
> readers to also note that Iran claims its program is for purely
> civilian purposes, and there is no conclusive evidence that it has a
> military dimension.)
>
> But it is also possible that what the Israelis, and their friends deep
> in the Bush administration including the office of the Vice President,
> are doing is something altogether more nefarious. Perhaps they are
> seeking to "use" the threat that Israel might launch an attack against
> Iran at a time and in a way of its own choosing as a way of
> essentially blackmailing the rest of the US government into agreeing
> to either coordinate more closely and cooperatively with Israel in
> planning a joint attack against Iran; or to do something else the
> Olmert government really wants them to do (more money, more weapons,
> less pressure on the "peace process", etc.)
>
> In any event, it is all an extremely risky business indeed... The oil
> market has already been showing jitters this morning, in response to
> the NYT article and to the latest declarations from Hugo Chavez.
>
> Whether Israel and its allies within the US (inside portions of the
> administration, and in highly ideological think-tanks) are supporting
> the flexing of Israel's military muscle in order to prepare for an
> actual act of war against Iran, or "merely" to blackmail the rest of
> the US government, then either way it's an outrage and should end
> forthwith.
>
> As for the still-continuing dispute between the US government and Iran
> over the latter's nuclear enrichment program, there are 1,000 ways
> other than war and violence to deal with that. Indeed, the non-US
> powers on the UN Security Council should right now be working overtime
> to try to convene an authoritative, high-level US-Iranian negotiation
> in which those concerns and all the other issues of concern between
> the two governments can be addressed.
>
> The creation of the UN in 1945, as a body that provides numerous
> different avenues for the nonviolent resolution of tough international
> conflicts, is a signal achievement of US diplomacy and wisdom in
> decades past. Our country's citizens-- and the whole world!-- would be
> extremely well served if our president decided to use the world body
> to help de-escalate the current, extremely high-risk tensions. And we
> would be correspondingly ill-served if he allowed the warmongers to
> jerk him into supporting any form of a military attack against Iran.
>
> Right now, as whenever there is an increased risk of an act of war
> being launched against Iran by the US or Israel, there is a heightened
> risk that matters might spin out of control. The stability of the
> global system as well as the lives of 160,000 US servicemembers in
> Iraq are put in direct risk.
>
> Stop the madness. Stop the war. Start the diplomacy of real engagement
> and real problem-solving-- now.

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