Israel Matzav

Israel's military option in Iran gone?

In the weekend JPost, David Horovitz writes that Israel's military option against Iran is essentially gone - at least for now:

But what has also become clear, in conversations I have had with various Israeli military and intelligence experts in the past few days, is that the NIE report has essentially deprived Israel of the supportive context it would need to put those reportedly honed military plans into action in 2008 as well. No matter how many centrifuges Iran sets spinning, unless it launches an overt, no-holds-barred, "crash program" for a bomb, or is proven to be making rapid headway with a covert program, the IAF's latest F-15s and F-16s will stay tucked away. Even as Iran heightens its defenses and makes any effort at military intervention all the more complex, the plans will rest in Ashkenazi's drawer for at least another 12 months.

For 2008, the Israeli experts chorus, will be the year not of military action, but of diplomatic engagement.

WHILE SOME determined optimists and mavericks are still desperately trying to find pockets of solace in the devastating aftershock of the NIE bombshell, the sober assessment is that its findings, presentation and reception constitute an extraordinary Iranian success on its journey to the nuclear club.

A US president who had keenly internalized the incalculable danger of Iran obtaining regional superpower status through nuclear leverage is not only unable now to counter Iran militarily in his final months in office, but has also lost the capacity to threaten military action and finds himself falsely accused by cynical opponents of having exaggerated the threat in the first place.

The international sanctions effort - the ideal means of pressing the Teheran regime into changing course - has not collapsed completely, but it is fading. The State Department's spokesman, Sean McCormack, tried Tuesday to put on a brave face, insisting that the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany were resolute and united in planning for a new, more forceful sanctions resolution. "What is very interesting about this is that we're not talking about whether or not there's going to be a resolution," he insisted, "but we're talking about what are the elements to a new Security Council resolution."

Unfortunately, McCormack was speaking after a conference call among the key world players had failed to produce agreement on a draft sanctions resolution from which several central intended Iranian targets for financial isolation and pressure, proposed by the US, have already been removed. As a consequence of the burgeoning disagreements, all talk of passing this third UN sanctions resolution by year's end has evaporated, McCormack is left talking vaguely about progress "in the next several weeks," and other US officials are wondering mournfully what any resolution will look like "after the Russians and Chinese get through with it."

The visiting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was told by his hosts here this week that Israel deeply disputes the NIE's confident assessment that Iran has halted its weapons program. Israel, Mullen heard, believes any such halt was limited and has since been reversed, and that Teheran is proceeding on all aspects of its nuclear drive.

Read the whole thing.

If - God forbid - Iran wipes this country off the face of the earth (we believe that's possible: God has only promised us that the Jewish people will not be wiped out - not that the Jewish people in any particular place will not be wiped out), I hope you will all never forgive and never forget Shrillery Clinton and her husband Slick Willy, Barak Hussein Obama, Nancy "I'm wearing my hijab" Pelosi and all the rest of them. When Slick Willy came to Israel the first time, he made a speech in front of the Knesset in which he said that his pastor made him promise that he would never forsake Israel. His pastor must be rolling over in his grave.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:42 PM