The Associated Press is getting some attention for its article alleging that Israel will not warn the U.S. if it decides to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Kimberly Dozier reports:
The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel’s potential attack, said one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to convince them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran’s nuclear program.
It seems unlikely Israel would do this unless the Obama administration is requesting plausible deniability–something indicated by the second sentence in that quote. As usual, it’s doubtful the unnamed source knows as much as the reporter would like him to know, but the administration should be furious with this particular leaker. Telling reporters the Obama administration believes an attack on Iran would only be a temporary setback and is therefore inadvisable is that unnamed source’s way of telling Iran that all options are not on the table, and that the credible threat of force has either been removed or is in the process of being removed from the equation, thus undermining any negotiations the administration insists it wants to hold.
That’s not the only way this unnamed source is attempting to sabotage the Obama administration’s Iran policy. Later on in the article we learn that Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and his Democratic counterpart, Dutch Ruppersberger, met with the Israeli leadership as well. According to Ruppersberger, they discussed “presenting a unified front to Iran, to counter the media reports that the two countries are at odds over how and when to attack Iran.”
One presumes the Obama administration’s anger at this unnamed source will be tempered by their ability to find humor in Ruppersberger explaining to the Associated Press the U.S. and Israel are trying to present a united front for an article about how the U.S. and Israel are unable to present a united front.
This wouldn’t be the first time there was confusion about Israel’s coordination with the U.S. about such a strike. In Ronald Reagan’s diaries, the former president writes of Menachem Begin after Israel destroyed the Osirak reactor in Iraq, “He should have told us & the French.” In an entry a week later, he writes:
We have just learned that Israel & the previous Admin. did communicate about Iraq & the nuclear threat & the U.S. agreed it was a threat. There was never a mention of this to us by the outgoing admin. Amb. Lewis cabled word to us after the Israeli attack on Iraq & now we find there was a stack of cables & memos tucked away in St. Dept. files.
Jimmy Carter was an especially nasty politician, but sometimes I can still be surprised by how willing he was to subvert and disrupt American security–concerning something as serious and dangerous as nuclear proliferation in the Middle East–in a vengeful fit about losing the election.
But if the current administration is really unwilling to launch or support a preemptive strike on Iran–as the AP’s source and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta keep insisting–they will be wholly reliant on other means to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Those means will be weakened significantly if Panetta and other administration officials keep telling reporters the Iranian leadership has nothing to worry about. Those means will be further weakened if President Obama continues trying to water down Iran sanctions and opposing sanctions that garner all 100 votes in the Senate.
If Obama persists in his efforts to prevent tough Iran sanctions and keeps signaling to Iran his administration has taken military action off the table, the president is unlikely to find much success at the negotiating table. All of which would, in turn, only encourage the Israelis to take action themselves.
Inevitable? Is there any doubt? The only question is when Israel attacks and the extent, if any, that the US provides assistance.
Agreed. Because Iran will not be deterred under any circumstances, the attack is baked in the cake, as they say.
Mixed signals are always bad policy, but Lebanon and more recently Bosnia show that empty sabre rattling is just as bad. n nIn our policy toward Iran, I see a scenario similar to America and Japan, leading up to December 7, 1941. Popular history depicts America negotiating in good faith with Japan, to avert war, even as Japan was secretly sending its task force to raid Pearl Harbor. What was really happening was that the U.S. had decided, for no valid strategic reason, that China was its client — "Oil for the Lamps of China" — playing the balance of power game in Asia as UK played it in Europe — and that no power would be permitted hegemony in Asia, just as UK had ordained that no power would be permitted hegemony on Europe's continent. n nToday, Iran seeks to become the hegemon in the Middle East just as Japan sought to become the hegemon in east Asia. In the 1930s through 1941, we applied the economic screws to Japan, ending in, guess what? An oil (and steel) embargo. Actually, what we did back then — a blockade of vital supplies — was an act of war. But of course, the "act of war" that popular history records is the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. Similarly, we and our allies are about to commit an act of war if we embargo what Iran considers vital supplies. n nBut like 1941, we are offering negotiations even as we apply the screws. And like 1941, when we demanded Japan quit China, we are demanding that Iran dismantle its nukes. if you think of it, pretty drastic demands, though in the latter case quite justified. Japan refused, as Iran has refused. So, what's the use of negotiations except as some kind of kabuki nations engage in prior to a military clash? n nAmerica did all it could short of war to have its way with Japan, making conditions intolerable for the Japanese and prompting an attack, thus becoming the "victim of aggression". This seems to be the scenario here: America, always "willing to negotiate," but making non-negotiable demands which lead Iran to become the aggressor. n nThis is what sabre rattling cannot accomplish. By holding out the peace laurel of negotiating the non-negotiable, we obtain moral license to destroy Iran, even as we push them into a corner like we did the Japanese. Neat! n nBy the way, I don't care how we do it — with force, if necessary, surgically or otherwise — Iranian's nuclear capability must be dismantled and Iran neutered as a regional threat.
Tell all this to the victims of mass atrocities in the Rape of Nanking. You are assuming for resaons that are not self-[ evident that Japan had some jusitification for invading China and inflicting mass misery on its populations in order to institute a racist Japanese feudal order. Why wouldn't that justify an act of war? But, as far as that goes, it isn't an act of war not to provide raw materials to aggressors. An embargo is NOT an act of war. It is not the same thing as a BLOCKADE.
Rubbish! Nowhere can you infer that I'm justifying Japan's conduct. n nAs for whether such conduct would justify and act of war on our part, what one country does to another country, no matter how despicable, is not a casus belli for a third country unless compelled by treaty, which we weren't. in any event, I wasn't criticizing what we did, merely using it as an analogy to our current statecraft vis-à-vis Iran. n nAn embargo is equivalent to a blockade if it has the same effect. Anyway, it's not my opinion but that of historians regarding the U.S. vis-à-vis Japan pre-12/7/41. n nIn your misplaced hysteria — I guess against someone you considered to be wising off — you completely missed the point. Or maybe you were just drunk.
Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is “nothing more than a screen to present chosen views.” The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. n nThe chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. n nSince at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. n nSo now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually “think outside of the (Jewish) box.” n nPeace. nMichael Santomauro nReporterNotebook@gmail.com
Oh, i get it, and you've chosen anti-Semitic psychosis as a vocation. The "chosen" Jews have mentally trapped the non-Jewish Euros in a mental lockbox but a few brave souls have managed to escape it. A few points MIchael: a) the Jewish control of discourse is a delusion so, b) your "escape" from the lockbox is consequently an illusion. Nobody ever had the key but yourself to begin with. You are your own Prisoner. Number Six was always Number One. You could be a free man any time you chose but you choose to be your own warder in the imaginary kingdom of the Jew.
Dear besht2003: n nWhat happened to Oliver Stone is a good case study. The Wall Street Journal reported that Stone said that “public opinion was focused on the Holocaust because of ‘Jewish domination of the media.’” Stone also said that the Jews “stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f—– up United States foreign policy for years.” n nLike so many others before him, Stone groveled: “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.” n nHow Jewish is Hollywood? That’s the question Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein asked some years ago just before Christmas. In answer, he wrote: n n"When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah." n nNeedless to say, Stein was not fired for writing this, nor was he rebuked in the least. As we have seen time and again, there is a glaring double standard about alluding to Jewish power in the media. Jews are free to reference it, but woe unto the non-Jew who wades into those shark-infested waters. n nThe late Joe Sobran had this to say about Jewish media power: n n“Jewish control of the major media in the media age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical and paralyzing. Survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don’t respect their victimhood, they’ll destroy you. It’s a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism.” n nIn 1996, reprinted in the May 27th issue of the New York Times, by Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist describing his feelings on the killings of a hundred civilians in a military skirmish in southern Lebanon. Shavit wrote, “We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own.” n nPeace. n nMichael Santomauro nReporterNotebook@gmail.com
Reading your anti-semitic rants, I am surprised that more readers are not complaining to Commentary Magazine. I do not know where you report, but you should not be reporting at all as everything that you write is colored by your anti-semitism.
Nobody forces any one to think one way or another in a "democracy". In totalitarian systems religious or secular, brainwashing force people to believe since they have not been thought to think for themselves. Now people who have the ability and the freedom to think may wish not to take advantage of that privilege. That is too bad. Do not accuse the Jews!
Deniability is nice for the US, but does anyone really think that there is no operative in the State Department/Pentagon/Executive Mansion who would pass the details on to Iran if he or she learned about an attack ahead of time?
Well, if it were the Reagan White House there might have been, since they were so chummy with the Iranians back then.
Thing is the Iranians always through the cakes away because of animal shortening. So they never discovered all the secret messages.
I thought the Wikileaks documents just released indicated the nuclear facitity was already destroyed by Israeli commandos three weaks ago.
Dear me if I had a nickle for every time some ijyut on the left like Sy Hersh or the Guardian or the EU predicted, nay promised us that the Evil Jew Menace ™ was 1 billion percent certain to begin bombing the peaceful peace loving Persians of peace tomorrow morning 8am sharp local no, we’re not kidding, bet the ranch it’s totally going to happen….
….for the last 15 years. Well let’s just say I could be living in my orbital space lab right now putting my finishing touches on my kosher hot dogs on the moon franchise business plan.
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