| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:09 am Post subject: An Israeli Surprise for Obama? |
| An Israeli Surprise for Obama?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402900.html?wprss=rss_print/editorialpages
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, April 26, 2009
President Obama's national security aides are struggling to conclude a strategic review of U.S. policy toward Iran. The review is certain to be comprehensive, imaginative -- and largely silent to irrelevant on the most difficult choices about Iran that Obama will face over the next year or two.
The review cannot be completed until Obama has what may be his toughest meeting yet with a foreign leader. That Oval Office session with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's newly elected prime minister, will come in mid-May. Netanyahu's impressions of Obama's intentions on Iran will determine war-or-peace choices for the Middle East.
The survey of American options on Iran forms a major part of the sprint that the president and his advisers have made toward the 100-day milestone they will reach on Wednesday.They have authored strategic reviews on Afghanistan and Iraq, dispatched special envoys to urgent trouble spots, and invited Middle East leaders to the White House to keep that region's flickering peace hopes alive.
Obama has already offered diplomatic engagement to Iran without preconditions -- making Tehran's behavior, not Washington's conduct, the dominant issue for international opinion. The policy adjustments have been necessary and adroitly handled.
But they have also stirred doubts in Israel's untested and politically heterogeneous government about Obama's commitment to Israel's security, as Netanyahu defines it. These misgivings create a queasiness between the two allies that cannot be publicly discussed by either without damaging political consequences.
So even after the Iran review is completed, don't expect it to deal forthrightly (or perhaps at all) with this core question: Can Obama's hopes for Middle East peace and fruitful negotiations with Iran survive an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear program, perhaps as early as the first half of 2010?
The likelihood of that strike has been growing since it became clear in the final months of the Bush administration that the United States would not undertake such action itself. I draw this conclusion from a series of not-for-attribution conversations with American, Asian, European and Middle East diplomats, and other officials and analysts, conducted since Obama's inauguration.
There are serious arguments on the other side, beginning with doubts about Israel's ability to identify, reach and destroy all of Iran's bomb-building capabilities. There is also a widespread belief that not even the hawkish Netanyahu would risk the rupture with the United States and the fury of the Arab street that an Israeli attack on Islamic Iran could bring.
"The Israelis who have to decide this thing will find these arguments very familiar," said a former ambassador to Israel from a developing country. "They are precisely the arguments used in 1981 to say Israel could not and should not disable Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Iraq before that happened. They are arguments that could have been used against striking the North Korean reactor in Syria last year. And yet, it did not turn out that way at all in either case."
Asked whether Israeli warplanes had the range to fly around Arab-controlled airspace to hit Iran, a European official replied: "You might think not, unless you noticed the emphasis being put on Israel's in-air refueling capacity in its recent military exercises. In any event, Arab air defenses have never been a problem for Israel."
Israel sounded out the Bush White House nearly a year ago on flying across Iraq to hit Iran. George W. Bush discouraged what was a probe of U.S. attitudes rather than a serious request for a specific mission that was being planned. "But we did not say the answer would always be no. And we did not say we would shoot Israeli planes down if they came," a former U.S. official says.
The nightmare scenario for Obama is that Israel launches an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that is largely unsuccessful but that provokes an Iranian missile retaliation against Israel and all-out guerrilla campaigns by Hamas and Hezbollah. Could any U.S. president, however angry, turn his back on Israel in that situation? What would happen to the U.S. mediation efforts Obama promised King Abdullah II of Jordan in their White House meeting last week?
Battle plans famously don't survive an army's first encounter with the enemy. Strategic reviews are works of intellectual cogency until they are broadsided by reality. There are so many moving parts to the Iranian dilemma that the White House is considering not issuing a formal document to reflect its findings. Such reticence will be tacit acknowledgment that the true test of Obama's Iran policies will come when events that are foreseeable -- but currently unspeakable -- occur.
jimhoagland@washpost.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 10:24 am Post subject: Iranian Arms Ship Bound for Gaza Reportedly Destroyed Off Su |
| Iranian Arms Ship Bound for Gaza Reportedly Destroyed Off Sudan
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/27/headlines#9
Iranian Arms Ship Bound for Gaza Reportedly Destroyed Off Sudan
The Egyptian newspaper El-Aosboa is reporting an Iranian vessel laden with weapons bound for the Gaza Strip was torpedoed off the coast of Sudan last week, allegedly by Israeli or American forces operating in the area. Anonymous sources in Khartoum told the newspaper that an unidentified warship bombed the Iranian vessel as it prepared to dock in Sudan.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&Do=&ID=37388
26 / 04 / 2009
Bethlehem Maan An Iranian ship transporting arms to the Gaza Strip was destroyed off the Sundanese coast in the Red Sea last week, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Usbu (The Week) reported on Sunday.
The newspaper reported that an unidentified warship launched missiles at the ship, sinking it with its crew and cargo. Quoting anonymous sources, the newspaper suspected Israeli or American forces were responsible for the attack.
The same sources said the ship was on course to dock in Sudan, where the weapons would be unloaded and eventually shipped to Gaza through Egypt.
Neither Iran, Israel, nor the United States have made any official comment on the report.
In March it was revealed in American media that warplanes, likely Israeli, bombed a convoy of trucks suspected of transporting weapons to Gaza in January. Israel did not deny that it participated in the attack. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 12:07 am Post subject: |
| http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/gates_iran_bombing/2009/05/01/209791.html?s=al&promo_code=7F04-1
Sec. Gates: Bomb Iran, They'll Still Get a Nuke
Friday, May 1, 2009 2:25 PM
By: Dan Weil
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities with a military strike won’t work and recommends tougher sanctions instead.
The military option would simply push Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons into secrecy, making it more difficult for the U.S. to know what’s going on there, he told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In the end, a strike would merely postpone Iran’s plan to build nukes, not eliminate it. The best strategy for keeping such weapons out of Iran’s hands is for the U.S. and its allies to convince the country that it’s better off without them, Gates says.
Sanctions can help there, he maintains. And along those lines, Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senators that the U.S. and its allies should strengthen the sanctions against Iran.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., says the U.S. should tighten loose regulations that allow American companies to do business with Iran.
As for Gates, he says the argument that should be presented to Iran is that its production of nukes would “start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and they will be less secure at the end than they are now.”
The Defense Secretary also says the U.S. and Russia should cooperate in establishing missile defense programs in the Mideast to repel Iran.
Russia has objected to U.S. plans to station anti-missile facilities in Eastern Europe.
The White House recently denied a report that Washington could scrap its demand that Iran cease enriching uranium at the start of talks on its nuclear program. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
