Israel Matzav

Iran 'nervous' over prospect of Israeli strike

The Obama administration isn't doing much of anything to make Iran concerned that someone is going to strike their nuclear weapons program, but they're getting quite nervous about the prospect of an Israeli strike.

“Iran is making preparations for an attack, though they are not discussing this,” Ephraim Kam, deputy director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told the Post on Sunday. For a while now, Iran has been warning that anyone who strikes their nuclear program will fail in their mission, and that Iran’s reply will be enormously harsh. “It shows a certain nervousness, a desire to deter Israel,” Kam said. “They’re taking an Israeli strike into consideration, and are disturbed by it.”

Asked if the ongoing rhetoric regarding a potential Israeli strike could either speed up or slow down Iran’s efforts to move closer to nuclear weapons, Kam said Tehran was showing no indication of freezing its program.

“I don’t think they will freeze it. If they would, we’d see a change in their approach. But they’ve been making progress up until now,” Kam said. If anything, the talk of an Iran strike “could make them speed up their efforts, since they fear an attack, and could want to make the program as ready as they can beforehand,” Kam added.

Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit told Channel Two on Friday that he did not trust American assurances that Washington would stop Iran from going nuclear.

Shavit said that Israel could only trust itself when it came to its own fate. Also on Friday, the Yediot Aharonot daily carried a front-cover story saying that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were seeking to launch a strike against Iran this coming fall.

October. Right after the holidays. Bet on it. If that wimp in Washington won't stop Iran, someone else will at least try to stop them.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:40 AM