Israel Matzav

Bush playing both sides?

Here's an interesting video of an interview with Christopher Dickey, an analyst for Newsweek, regarding Sunday's article in the Times of London, which claims that President Bush has given Israel an 'amber light' to proceed with plans to attack Iran. I found the idea that Bush could be playing Israel and Iran off against each other interesting, if ultimately fruitless. Note also how both the anchor and Dickey himself avoid saying that what Israel destroyed in Syria in September 2007 was a nuclear weapons facility despite all evidence to the contrary.

Let's go to the videotape.



Ultimately, President Bush will support an Israeli decision to attack (and not just stand aside as was claimed by the Times of London over the weekend). But that assumes that he is still in office when push comes to shove. Again, if Obama wins the election in November, I believe that push will come to shove sometime between November and January (and probably sooner rather than later, since at that point, the longer you wait, the more likely the weather is to be adverse to an attack).

Last night, I met up with a fellow blogger who was on the way back to the US after a week here. That blogger heard from an intelligence source that Israel does not have enough functioning jet fighters to do the job properly (I won't throw out the number she gave, because frankly, I suspect that Israel has more functioning jet fighters than that number). But the key here is the following: The US is the only power that has the wherewithal to take out Iran's nuclear capability with virtual certainty. Israel can set it back but it would 'take a miracle' for Israel to take it out simply because of the number of targets. If the US decides to attack Iran, Israel will sit on the sidelines, because it won't be needed. If the US decides not to attack Iran, at some point Israel will have to and the US will likely be blamed. Under the circumstances, whose attack makes more sense? I think the answer is obvious.

And by the way, the 'intelligence source' believes that the Israelis really are training in Iraq (denials notwithstanding), although whether Israel will ultimately be allowed to - for example - use the Haditha base is a separate story.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:50 AM