Israel Matzav

Why Israel will attack Iran

Welcome to Dan Shimoff @dshimoff, who is Twitter follower number 3,000.

Former Chief of Israeli Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin, who was one of the eight pilots (pictured) who attacked Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, explains why Israel will attack Iran unless....

What matters more is the campaign after the attack. When we were briefed before the Osirak raid, we were told that a successful mission would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only three to five years. But history told a different story.

After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed. This could be the outcome in Iran, too, if military action is followed by tough sanctions, stricter international inspections and an embargo on the sale of nuclear components to Tehran. Iran, like Iraq and Syria before it, will have to recognize that the precedent for military action has been set, and can be repeated.

Others claim that an attack on the Iranian nuclear program would destabilize the region. But a nuclear Iran could lead to far worse: a regional nuclear arms race without a red phone to defuse an escalating crisis, Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, more confident Iranian surrogates like Hezbollah and the threat of nuclear materials’ being transferred to terrorist organizations.

Ensuring that Iran does not go nuclear is the best guarantee for long-term regional stability. A nonnuclear Iran would be infinitely easier to contain than an Iran with nuclear weapons.

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Asking Israel’s leaders to abide by America’s timetable, and hence allowing Israel’s window of opportunity to be closed, is to make Washington a de facto proxy for Israel’s security — a tremendous leap of faith for Israelis faced with a looming Iranian bomb. It doesn’t help when American officials warn Israel against acting without clarifying what America intends to do once its own red lines are crossed.

Mr. Obama will therefore have to shift the Israeli defense establishment’s thinking from a focus on the “zone of immunity” to a “zone of trust.” What is needed is an ironclad American assurance that if Israel refrains from acting in its own window of opportunity — and all other options have failed to halt Tehran’s nuclear quest — Washington will act to prevent a nuclear Iran while it is still within its power to do so.

I don't believe Obama is capable of giving those kinds of guarantees, and I don't believe that Israel can or should trust him even if he does give them. If he had the relationship with us that George W. Bush had, accepting that sort of commitment might have been possible. But this President has spent so much of his time in office trying to put 'daylight' between the US and Israel that the required level of trust is no longer possible.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Osirak

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:39 PM