The idea that Israel is trying to bait the U.S. to attack Iran by threatening to do so itself is gaining hold in the US mainstream. In the Times, Jodi Rudoren hints at the purpose of the Israeli bellicosity:
“There is a window of opportunity,” said the official, Uzi Dayan, a former deputy chief of staff in the military. “This window is closing, but if the United States would be much clearer and stronger about the sanctions on one hand and about what can happen if Iran won’t make a U-turn — there is not a lot of time, but there is still time to make a difference.”
Mr. Dayan’s assessment seems to buttress the theory that the collective saber rattling is part of a campaign to pressure the Obama administration and the international community, rather than an indication of the imminence of an Israeli strike.
Robert Wright at the Atlantic says Israel is bluffing:
it’s yet more evidence that their hope is to get action out of Obama, not to bomb Iran themselves.
None of this means that Israel couldn’t possibly wind up bombing Iran in the next few months. Bluffs can be hard to back away from, and a bluff this loud makes for a particularly embarrassing climbdown. But the calculation seems to be that Obama, in high-anxiety pre-election mode, will deliver at least enough rhetoric–if only a more high-profile or in some other sense more binding articulation of things he’s already said–to make for a graceful climbdown.
Personally, I hope Obama doesn’t deliver.
At Foreign Policy, Steve Walt agrees:
The Israelis know that they cannot do the job themselves, and their larger aim is to keep attention riveted on Tehran (and not on settlement expansion) and to make sure that if war does come, the United States does the heavy lifting.
In short, all this war talk is a bluff, but one can scarcely blame Israel for employing a tactic that keeps working so well. It’s our fault we keep falling for it.
MJ Rosenberg calls it most directly:
To me, it is clear. Their entire game is to squeeze President Obama during the run-up to the presidential election. True, the tactic is not new but the urgency of the current campaign is unprecedented.
That is because the primary fear motivating Netanyahu and Barak is not of Iran. It is that President Obama will be re-elected and will, after November, be significantly more immune to their demands for more Iran sanctions, support for some future Israeli strike against Iran and even for U.S.-back-up should an Israeli strike not be able to finish the job. Then there is what former Prime Minister Golda Meir called the“shopping list” of whatever else the military and intelligence community wants from the United States at any given moment. Netanyahu and Barak know that the window to ask and to get could close in November so the name of the game is getting as much as possible now.
They may be right. President Obama will probably give Israel almost anything to prevent an attack on Iran during the election campaign, an attack that could quite conceivably crash the world economy and incidentally elect Israel’s preferred candidate, Mitt Romney. So now is the moment. ..
So here is my prediction. There will be no war any time soon. But Israel will be getting more and more goodies from President Obama between now and the election just to ensure it, and probably afterwards as well.
The US is a power amplifier and Israel is the signal.
Israels attempts to blackmail the US govt/president is the most disgraceful and dishonorable behavior the world has seen in recent history. They are treating war, the most horrendous shit to infect humanity, as a game. I am astounded that israel’s allies and the world as a whole has not united against this war mongering. This demonstrates precisely how powerful the Jewish lobby in America and UK really is.
The entire world, in addition to the most capable military circles are absolutely convinced that war with Iran could have tremendous unforseen consequences yet they sit on their hands. Can someone please explain to me why this is? Because I am truly at a loss
@ Real Jew
Israel has been blackmailing governments for a long time. This example from ’73 I know is true because I remember Eisenhower’s reference to it in his private papers (at the Eisenhower Library) and also Seymore Hersh wrote about it in his book on US Nuclear FP.
link to fpif.org
1973
Israeli Government threatens use of nuclear weapons during the “October War.”
There are also reports like below from declassified papers that Israel threatened or consider it other times also.
link to haaretz.com
U.K. envoy said Israel ready to use nuclear bomb in 1980, newly released cables reveal
Documents, released under Britain’s 30-year rule, include Marget Thatcher saying that Israel’s settlement policy was ‘absurd.
A British ambassador to Israel warned as early as 1980 that Israel would detonate a nuclear bomb in case of a new war with the Arabs, according to previously secret state documents released on Thursday.
“If they [Israelis] are to be destroyed, they will go down fighting this time. They will be ready to use their atomic weapon,” Ambassador John Robinson wrote in a cable to the Foreign Office on May 4, 1980.
The documents were released on Thursday as part of a 30-year rule. In addition to this cable about fear of Israel using a nuclear weapon, they also revealed that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had issues with Israel’s former Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
In the documents, she described him as the “most difficult” man she had to deal with in the early years of her premiership — and moreover, his West Bank policies, she opined, were “absurd.”
Thatcher said at the time that all “efforts to convince Mr. Begin that his West Bank policy was absurd, and that there should not be Israeli settlements on the West Bank, had failed to move him.”
“His response was that Judea and Samaria had been Jewish in biblical times and that they should therefore be so today,” she said.
The papers reveal that, during a meeting with French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing in November 1979, Thatcher admitted she had “never had a more difficult man to deal with” than Begin. Giscard, according to the report, seemed to agree, saying he had “always been surprised at the degree of support which the Labour government had given Israel”.
The French leader said he understood the support on some level as he felt France also experienced pressure to support Israel because of the large Jewish population in the country.
The archives reveal President Giscard “did not know Mr. Begin, whom he had never met, but he thought his approach fanatical and unrealistic.”
It’s funny too because from what I’ve read the US has ‘threatened’ to use it’s nukes on occasion…not outright but as sort of a unspoken thing….off and on depending on the WH seems we’ve had a ‘no first strike’ policy…..but when you have nukes that’s what’s on your enemies minds.
But Israel has and will continue , I am sure, to use their nukes to get what they want from the US by threatening to use them in the ME.
BUT, besides blackmailing the US to get what they want from us, if Israel actually wanted a country nuked they wouldn’t use theirs, they’d try to get the US to do because the US could get away with it and Israel couldn’t.
Because, Real Jew, many people are still afraid of being called an anti-semite in public. That’s all. But if you read comments on blogs and websites all over the web–hell, check out the comments on Peter Beinart’s blog post that deal with Israel and bombing Iran–the public is way ahead of timid media and political public figures now. Israel has lost the enormous sympathy it once had, and it’s lost it in the most long-lasting way: through revulsion and ennui. It’s disdain.
@Phil:
Interesting stuff, but from where I’m sitting over here across the pond, Obama doesn’t seem to have too much to worry about with Romney as an opponent.
I don’t quite see how Obama needs to pander to anyone or any good reason why he should. Romney is quite blatantly nuts, a fraudster and a liar and has spread his arse cheeks wide open for Bibi. Surely the American public are quite repulsed by him?
Plus he’s a Mormon. I thought the Bible belt that assured Bushy II his second term were against all that?
Some kind of Mondoweiss pre pre election run up news would be useful, ‘cos from here Barry ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin” Obama seems like the obvious choice.
Posts like these seem to indicate it’s going to be a close run thing and that leaves me scratching my head somewhat.
Am I getting it all wrong?
Yeah, I think you might be. The polls here have the presidential contest in a dead heat. Obama wins more polls than not nationally and in so-called swing states, but it’s a virtual tie. Either man can win right now. Why? Because the economy is stagnant – neither declining precipitously nor recovering at the pace all Americans alive today are used to.
@ Ranjit Suresh
Yes, what you say is true about the current mental state of the American voter, although the economy is actually declining, which is why insiders like Soros are dropping stocks, including bank stocks, and buying lots of gold, and why the US government is buying tons of hollow point ammo via the SSA & HMS–the insiders’ best guess is that there will be riots in the streets and then a heavy governmental crackdown on the masses, a new trajectory America has never seen, a tyranny slouching toward Bethelem, oops, I mean Washington DC. In November the usual Democrats will vote for Obama, and the usual Republicans will vote for Mitt, so it’s really up to the small swing vote, the Independents, who actually don’t want to vote for either contender, but the election process is rigged against any possible Third Party candidate, who may blend, for example Kucinich and Paul.
Why don’t you guys put together a list of names of Israel firsters, please include those with skin in the game.
Letter to Obama:
The proposed ISRAELI war in IRAN is a subterfuge to cover for the massive increase in Israel’s settlement activity and the significant CHANGE IN ITS CHARACTER marked by the Netanyahu’s “Levy Report” (June 2012).
(See: link to thejewishweek.com).
All Israel settlement activity in the occupied territories is illegal. Read UNSC 465 and ICJ decision of July 9, 2004.
Lately, the Israeli “Levy Report” has asserted that the settlements are perfectly legal because, so it says — maddeningly and baiting the international consensus — that there is NO OCCUPATION, and Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply.
This is savage and dangerous NONSENSE and the USA and others must say so and reiterate UNSC 465, demanding removal of ALL settlers and dismantlement of ALL settlement buildings.
Otherwise the USA — which sometimes puffs itself up as a champion of the rule of Law — will instead be the protector of the world’s longest-running act of reckless lawlessness — Israel’s entire settlement project (1967 — present, 45 years and running).
Netanyahu’s Levy report which he is set to bury?
link to haaretz.com
Millions hope and pray it is a bluff. If not and Israel attacks Iran…Iran has clearly stated there will be serious consequences. If Israel attacks Obama loses. Millions of Americans have had it with these long reach and unnecessary, costly in both blood and treasure wars. Going back to that Dennis Ross taking a neutral stance on the election. I think this says so much about where Obama might head the next four years. Clearly Ross fears that and sent a clear message to the I lobby.
Golda Meir “the shopping list” how disgusting and manipulative. Was it Golda who said that there are no Palestinian people. Enough of this flagrant racism and welfare for Israel
Folks need to be calling their Reps weekly. Cut off aid to Israel. Cut off aid used for expanding illegal settlements. No other country that the U.S. gives aid to can just spend it on what they please except that is Israel. No demands put on them to itemize where they are spending U.S. aid. Cut it off. Call your reps..let them know we are out hereee
Set up a time to meet with them as a group when they are back in your state to talk about these issues. You may hear some things you might be surprised about
I think Israel if bluffing too — but I also don’t think Israel is sane.
The situation’s like if I’m dealing with someone I know is (a) mentally unstable, and (b) armed. I may well think he’s bluffing — but I still don’t think the situation is all that safe.
…Israel’s likely to pull something. If a few Americans are killed in a ‘terrorist attack’ sometime in the next ten weeks, I’m going to be extremely suspicious.
The thing is if Israel and/or the US attack Iran, the whole scenario is completely predictable in the essentials.
1. Israel and/or the US have to start with some kind of limited strike that will neither terrify Iran into submission, nor seriously affect her ability to wage conventional war plus whatever bacteriological or chemical arsenal she’s managed to accumulate. Moreover, the strike will force the Iranian regime to visibly retaliate — and retaliate with a largely intact arsenal of whatever-they’ve-got. The regime will have no choice unless they want to get hung from the lampposts.
2. So Iran retaliates — visibly, and probably to such an extent that we and/or Israel feel we have to retaliate. Some guid ‘n bluidy raids on things billed as ‘Republican Guard headquarters,’ etc. Probably right in downtown Tehran.
3. …and we’re off to the races. There are no happy outcomes. Just more or less apocalyptic ones. It all probably finishes up with Israel visibly doomed, but that’s going to be scant consolation for the cost.
Assuming Israel is sane she has to realize this, but as I say, I don’t think she is sane. She’s high on her own supply, she’s been dealing PCP, and we’re all in a good deal of danger.
NYT title: Israeli Leaders Could Be Dissuaded From Striking Iran.
What a shallow piece. Judy Rudoren does not link the situation to the election. And the title shows who she’s working for.
This is what MJ Rosenberg concludes: So it is likely the U.S. taxpayer will continue to bear the cost of ever-increasing aid to Israel, our insurance policy against an Israeli attack on Iran. That is not ideal, but it is far better than a war that could cost lives, including Americans.
That is not ideal, MJ? Then write what it is: blackmail. The ideal option, tell Israel to get lost, not in sight?
RE: “In short, all this war talk is a bluff, but one can scarcely blame Israel for employing a tactic that keeps working so well. It’s our fault we keep falling for it.” ~ Steve Walt
AND RE: “President Obama will probably give Israel almost anything to prevent an attack on Iran during the election campaign. . .” ~ M.J. Rosenberg
MY COMMENT: So we once again countenance extortion on the part of the Israelis. They are as almost as bad as ‘Wall Street’! ! !
I for one, have had enough of this. No more battered
spousevoter syndrome for me!• Jill Stein for President - link to jillstein.org
[Contributions of up to a total of $250 are matched by federal matching funds.]
Has Jill Stein stated her views on Palestine/Israel?
Sounds not unlike the CIA’s push for the invasion of CUBA by US sponsored anti-Castro forces which the CIA fully expected to fail, which did, and whose planners assumed President Kennedy would simply fall in line and send in US forces to save the invasion. Obama is no Kennedy.