Israel Matzav

Bet on an Israeli attack on Iran

The New York Times has a 'pessimistic' assessment of the likely outcome of Monday's meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama.

Sallai Meridor, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, reflected a widespread Israeli view that the world has done little to block unstable countries from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“Look at the record,” he said. “Pakistan was allowed to go nuclear. I don’t think anyone thought that was a good idea. One can assume that if Israel didn’t do what it did in 1981, Iraq would have been allowed to go nuclear. Then imagine the 1990 gulf crisis.”

Even some Israeli officials who believe that Mr. Obama would use force say they cannot wait until an attack is beyond their abilities. If Israel, in a nod to allowing sanctions and diplomacy to work, allows Iran to get past the point where it can effectively strike, it will have handed over its fate to the United States. While it would like Washington to strike, it does not want to wait past its own abilities, because even an ironclad promise of action could prove fickle.

When Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Aipac two years ago, he invoked World War II and two of the past century’s greatest statesmen to make a point about self-reliance, a point that his staff applies to Mr. Obama.

“Seventy-five years ago, the leading powers in the world put their heads in the sand,” Mr. Netanyahu said then. “Untold millions died in the war that followed. Ultimately, two of history’s greatest leaders helped turn the tide. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill helped save the world. But they were too late to save six million of my own people. The future of the Jewish state can never depend on the good will of even the greatest of men.”

Meanwhile, the JPost draws on extensive interviews with former Obama's former point man on Iran, Dennis Ross.

"The more explicit commitments you seek from one side, the more you’re going to be asked to make commitments of your own,” said Dennis Ross, until recently the top White House adviser on Iran, warning of demands the US would make of Israel should it go down that path.

“The notion of great specificity on either end is something that is overstated,” he said.

Ross also said all the Israeli prime ministers he had known during his 30-year career “want Israel in the end to take the steps it needs to take to deal with its national security as it defines it.”

...

Ross cautioned, however, that the US would want to be told ahead of time of any military action Israel took and that taking that decision too soon would be a mistake.

“We do have lots of assets in the area, and I think every administration that I’ve been a part of would want to know what they can know as soon as they can know it,” said Ross, who has worked under Republicans and Democrats, though he now serves in a private capacity as counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

...

Ross said that if a strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities took place after crippling sanctions and diplomacy had failed, there could be enough international support for such action that the global effort to keep sanctions and isolation in place could hold, which would constrain Iran’s efforts to rebuild its program.

He predicted that timelines for how long to give sanctions to work and what would constitute substantial achievement in diplomacy would be a major focus of Netanyahu’s discussions with Obama.

He said that negotiations with Tehran were almost certain to go ahead, and that recent declarations by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that nuclear weapons were a “great sin” could be a sign that he was trying to prepare the Iranian public and save face if a deal were reached.

But Ross also hardened the rhetoric over why acceptance of Iranian nuclear weapons was not an option.

My guess is that they reach an agreement that Netanyahu retains freedom to act but gives Obama very short notice provided that Obama does not pass that on to the Iranians or anyone else.

And that moron Leon Panetta gets his mouth taped shut.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Dennis Ross, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:30 AM