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Breaking report: US/Israel military drill cancelled, after US tells Israel to back off

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US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey

Huge news.   Israel Hayom (Sheldon Aldeson’s Israeli newspaper) has just reported that the military drill with Israel entailing the deployment of thousands of American troops this spring has suddenly been canceled.

Israel Hayom based its report on an Israeli Radio report this afternoon:

Set for May, “Austere Challenge 12” was supposed to be the largest drill ever held between the two countries • U.S. Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey to arrive in Israel later this week to receive assurances from Israel that it won’t strike Iran.

The cancellation– if true– has huge political significance. It would be the culmination of a war of words between Israeli officials and US officials in recent days. Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US had warned Israel to back off in its actions and rhetoric re Iran.

Following the Wall Street Journal report,  the Jerusalem Post  republished an announcement first made in December  regarding the deployment of thousands of US troops in a military exercise in Israel next spring although, it has now been edited to read “later this year”. The announcement of the deployment was hardly covered in the US media.

 Israel Hayom:

A large joint U.S.-Israeli military drill, scheduled to take place in the coming months, has been cancelled due to budgetary constraints, Israel Radio reported on Sunday afternoon.

It was unclear from the Israel Radio report which side cancelled the drill. The radio report said that the drill would likely be held toward the end of the year.

Set to take place in May, the drill called “Austere Challenge 12” was supposed to be the largest ever held between the two countries, and was designed to improve defense systems and cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli military forces. Just on January 6th the IDF spokesperson, commenting on the future joint drill with the U.S., said thousands of U.S. and Israeli soldiers from different units would take part. He said the drill would test multiple Israeli and U.S. air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets. Israel has deployed the “Arrow” system, jointly developed with, and funded by the U.S., designed to intercept Iranian missiles in the stratosphere, far from Israeli airspace.

UPDATE:

Jerusalem Post now reporting “officials cite technical, logistical issues” as the reason the drill was cancelled. Claiming both “Israel and the US canceled a missile defense drill”.

The parties were scheduled to simulate missile defense scenarios with the objective of creating a high level of interoperability so that, if needed, US missile defense systems would be able to work with Israeli systems during a conflict.

Officials refused to elaborate on the reasons behind talks to postpone or cancel the drill, but said they were mostly “technical and logistical.”

Talks about postponing the drill took the Americans, as well as the Israeli Air Defense division, responsible for missile defense, by surprise. Just last Thursday, top IAF officers had said that the drill was scheduled for this spring.

This year’s drill was expected to be unique in its size and scope and also mark the first time that commander of the US European Command, Adm. James Stavridis, would participate in the simulations. In the event of war, the EUCOM commander will be responsible for approving Israeli requests to deploy US missile defense systems in Israel.
 

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I wonder if the Israeli’s cancelled it. Barry and the O’s were planning on running on this – highlighting this type of military integration in its pitch to jewish americans, I wonder if Bibi isn’t messing with him – taking away one of his campaign angles.

Paranoia must also play a part, I could see the Israeli’s not wanting US troops snooping around….either way, an interesting development…

We will have to await more signs like this to determine if the wise and sage Obama will emerge from the evil clutches of the lunatic state known as Israel/AIPAC. For those of us who closely follow these events and observe the takeover of our Foreign Policy by the Zionist forces, this could be a breakthrough event in line with the Reagan/Baker denoument after the Iraq nuclear facility bombing and the Bush, senior withholding of aid to Israel ?

The US does not want a war in this region at this time, they are engaged in a game of high stakes chicken, the threat to close the Gulf of Hormus is the ace the Iranians have and whatever the US says about keeping them open is just hot air, I was Intrigued by a story in ‘ Atlantic Wire’ see here
http://news.yahoo.com/navy-depending-dolphins-keep-strait-hormuz-open-150106787.html
This is about General’s bragging about using dolphins to keep the straights of Hormuz open I saw another story in Salon, see here
http://www.salon.com/2000/03/24/dolphins_2/
This is about the Russians supplying the Iranian navy with dolphins for the same purpose. What terrifies me and what should terrify all God fearing Americans is that our pusillanimous and penny pinching Generals should allow a ‘dolphin gap’ to develop. Do not ignore Gen ‘Buck’ Turgidsons warnings! I propose the Pentagon close that gap with a massive increase in the defence budget.
unless we spend billions more, those I-ranians will be impurifying “all of your precious bodily fluids”. Be warned!

It is obvious that the administration is horrified at the prospect of being dragged into another trillion dollar debacle at the behest of belligerent little terrorist state Israel and its lunatic leadership. However, like nearly all administrations since the elder Bush, they have sought to placate a lobby which is openly boastful about running Congress, which gives it the ability to outflank the president. Allied with the near total submission of the corporate media to Israel’s vicious agenda of apartheid and war, most presidents might rail in private but acquiesce in public, knowing that the political capital they would have to expend on standing up to the bullies would probably wreck their term of office. It is this stranglehold which urgently needs to be broken, before Israel drags us all into the dystopia it craves. It appears that the administration has peered over the cliff edge, and is appalled at the prospect (as would any sane person, contemplating attacking a state which offers no threat whatsoever to the US). Trying to play both sides, appeasing Israel by going along with its murderous intent, while privately seeking to string it along without real action, is proving disastrous. The real danger is that Israel will once again try a USS Liberty and set up a terrorist incident which will bind the US into a war which nobody wants except the paper tigers in Tel Aviv, who have absolutely no intention of suffering any damage themselves, or even risking any Israeli life. Israel is absolutely treacherous, views the US with ill-disguised contempt and presumes it can manipulate it to suit its apocalyptic fantasies. Time to call it out.

DebkaFile’s version of this story is very interesting, starting with the headline: “US, Israel in open rift over Iran: Big joint military drill cancelled.”

Some excerpts:

US-Israeli discord over action against Iran went into overdrive Sunday, Jan. 15 when the White House called off Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint war game the US and Israel have every staged, ready to go in spring, in reprisal for a comment by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon in an early morning radio interview. He said the United States was hesitant over sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil for fear of a spike in oil prices.
The row between Washington and Jerusalem is now in the open, undoubtedly causing celebration in Tehran.

The exercise was officially postponed from spring 2012 to the last quarter of the year over “budgetary constraints” – an obvous diplomatic locution for cancellation. It was issued urgently at an unusually early hour Washington time, say DEBKAfile’s sources, to underscore the Obama administration’s total disassociation from any preparations to strike Iran and to stress its position that if an attack took place, Israel alone would be accountable.
Israel’s Deputy Prime minister further inflamed one of the most acute disagreements in the history of US-Israeli relations over the Obama administration’s objections to an Israel military action against Iran’s nuclear sites in any shape or form.

The friction was already fueled last week by the deep resentment aroused in Israel by Washington’s harsh condemnation of the assassination last Wednesday, Jan. 11, of the nuclear scientist Prof. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, and absolute denial of any US involvement.
Although Tehran has since accused the United States of the attack, the White House treated it as the defiant sign of an approaching unilateral Israeli military operation against Iran to which the administration is adamantly opposed.
Friday, Jan. 13, the Pentagon announced the substantial buildup of combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait – two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region: The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis and their strike groups.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a third aircraft carrier and strike group, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is also on its way to the Persian Gulf.
This massive military buildup indicates that either President Obama rates the odds of an Israel attack as high and is bolstering the defenses of US military assets against Iranian reprisals – or, alternatively, that the United States intends to beat Israel to the draw and attack Iran itself.

The “budgetary constraints” pretext for cancelling Austere Challenge 12 is hard to credit since most of the money has already been spent in flying 9,000 US troops into Israel this month. Although the exercise in which they were to have participated was billed as testing multiple Israeli and US air and missile defense systems, the exercise’s commander, US Third Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, announced that the event was more a “deployment” than an “exercise.”
Its cancellation leaves Washington and Jerusalem at loggerheads in four main areas:
1. President Obama believes he is rushing through the sanctions against Iran’s central bank CBI and oil restrictions with all possible speed. He needs time to persuade more governments to support him. Israel sees little real progress in the crawling diplomatic bid for backers and is impatient for action. At the rate the sanctions are going through, they will not be in place before the end of 2012 and by then, Iran will have already acquired a nuclear weapon.
Israeli leaders also suspect that the Obama administration may be foot-dragging deliberately in the hope of encouraging Iran to enter into negotiations and so avoid a military showdown. They point out that all previous rounds of talks were exploited for Iran’s forward leaps in their nuclear weapon drive, free of international hassle.
2. President Obama insists on the US acting alone in attacking Iran with no Israeli military involvement. This would leave him free to decide exclusively when and how to stage an operation. He is counting on the tightened military and intelligence cooperation he has instituted between the two armed forces and agencies to safeguard Washington against the surprise of a lone Israeli action.
But Israel has declined to make this commitment – even in the face of US officials’ efforts at persuasion.
3. US military strategists are counting on an Iranian reprisal for an attack on its nuclear sites to be restrained and limited to certain US military assets in the region, Israeli targets and oil installations in the Persian Gulf, including a temporary and partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world’s oil passes.
They expect Israel to refrain from striking back for Iranian attacks and to leave the payback option entirely in American hands. US officials have said they fear an Israeli overkill would tip the entire American military operation into imbalance and generate unforeseen consequences.
The incoming US troops were therefore armed with the sophisticated missile interceptorTHAAD systems (easily transportable Terminal High Altitude Area Defense hit-to-kill weapons) to show the Israeli government that the US would stay on top of all the military moves against Iran – offensive and defensive alike.
On these three points, the US and Israel disagree. …