WarSclerotic

Iran’s secret pipeline into the U.S..

August 18, 2010

FILE — In a Feb. 11, 2008 file photo Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaks during a rally to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution at Azadi Square, Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian/file)

J.J. Green, wtop.com

WASHINGTON – Iran Air 744 is a bimonthly flight that originates in Tehran and flies directly to Caracas with periodic stops in Beirut and Damascus. The maiden flight was Feb. 2, 2007.

The mere existence of the flight was a significant concern for U.S. intelligence officials, but now a broader concern is who and what are aboard the flights.

“If you [a member of the public] tried to book yourself a seat on this flight and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a week before, a month before, six months before — you’ll never find a place to sit there,” says Offer Baruch, a former Israeli Shin Bet agent.

Baruch, now vice president of operations for International Shield, a security firm in Texas, says the plane is reserved for Iranian agents, including “Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and other intelligence personnel.”

Current and former U.S. intelligence official fear the flight is a shadowy way to move people and weapons to locations in Latin America that can be used as staging points for retaliatory attacks against the U.S. or its interests in the event Iranian nuclear sites are struck by U.S. or Israeli military forces.

“My understanding is that this flight not only goes from Caracas to Damascus to Tehran perhaps twice a month, but it also occasionally makes stops in Lebanon as well, and the passengers on that flight are not processed through normal Venezuelan immigrations or customs. They are processed separately when they come into the country,” says Peter Brookes, senior fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

The 16-hour flight typically leaves Tehran and stops at Damascus International Airport (DAM), which is Syria’s busiest. In 2009, almost 4.5 million passengers used the airport.

After a 90-minute layover, the flight continues the remaining 14 hours to Venezuela’s Caracas Maiquetía International Airport (CCS). Upon arrival, the plane is met by special Venezuelan forces and sequestered from other arrivals.

“It says that something secretive or clandestine is going on that they don’t want the international community to know about,” says Brookes, a former deputy assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs and CIA employee.

“The fact that there is a flight is of course of interest, but the fact that not anybody can gain access to this flight or buy a ticket for that flight is of particular curiosity and should be of concern to the United States.”

In addition to speculation about who is aboard, there are significant concerns that the Boeing 747SP airplane might be transporting uranium to Tehran on the return flight. The U.S. government has enacted strong sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear program and there are worries the flight might provide an opportunity to skirt the embargo against materials that might be used for the program.

“Clearly, Iran has been a sponsor of Hezbollah, and clearly Hezbollah profits from this relationship,” former CIA Director Michael J. Hayden says.

“It would be too much to say that Hezbollah is a puppet of the Iranian state, but one way of looking at this relationship is that the Iranian state might rely on Hezbollah as a strategic weapon — its weapon for global reach.”

Hayden, now a principle in the Chertoff Group, says the CIA has been aware of the activities for several years.

“Fundamentally, the thing that first and very solidly caught our attention at the Agency was the inauguration of direct air flight between the two capitals. Here was a conduit that people could travel from Iran into the Western Hemisphere, into Latin America in a way that would be very difficult for American intelligence services to detect and to understand.

“Right there at that very simple level, just the direct flight is something that we would be and should be concerned about.”

Brookes says the passengers “may not even need visas because they are special passengers. That obviously is of concern because there is no transparency about who the people are coming in and going out of the country. Of course there is concern that these folks may be Iranian special agents.”

Beyond concerns about Iranian intelligence flooding the west, Brookes and others worry that Iranian special advisers are schooling the Venezuelan military and may be involved in plans to move Iranian agents inside the U.S.

“It’s certainly a possibility. Would the agents that come into Venezuela be able to find their way to the United States? That’s certainly possible. You see the drug smugglers today using submersibles to move drugs to the U.S. and other parts of the Caribbean which is a real challenge. So why wouldn’t they be able to do the same with persons?”

A U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity says there are concerns about the relationships between Iran and Venezuela, but you have to keep it in perspective.

“The problems both countries face internally, and their own regional priorities closer to home, limit the amount of trouble they can cause together. But it’s something you have to watch, whether it’s the potential for government-to-government mischief or the possibility of something involving Iran’s friends like Hezbollah.

“You can ask what a self-proclaimed Bolivarian socialist has in common with a bunch of theocratic thugs in Iran. The answer is ‘not much,’ beyond a taste for repression and a shared desire to make life difficult for the United States and its allies.”

On Friday, the next flight is expected to take off. While U.S. intelligence may be able to track the flight, there appears to be little more they can legally do to determine what or who is on board.

“American intelligence services have a lot of things on their plate. The fact that I can tell you that we’re really interested in that direct flight tells you that it was on our scope — something that we are sensitive to,” Hayden says. “Are we doing enough about it? I would have to say ‘no,’ because it’s a very challenging menu that American intelligence has to deal with.”

In a statement, the State Department says, “Nations have the right to enter into cooperative relationships with other nations.”

Neither the Iranian nor the Venezuelan governments responded to request for reaction before this article was published.

(This opinion article, again only rehashing reports published abroad, may be either the true opinion of Derfner or more disinformation. – JW)

RATTLING THE CAGE: War without end, amen.

By LARRY DERFNER

Over the last week, prominent American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and columnist George Will each wrote that Israel is very likely to bomb Iran. Goldberg, in his Atlantic cover story, “The Point of No Return,” bases his conclusion on interviews with about 40 Israeli military and political leaders; Will, in his Washington Post column titled “Netanyahu’s warning,” bases his partly on an interview with the PM in Jerusalem.

Iran’s supreme leader: No nuclear talks with U.S. until sanctions lifted – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Islamic Republic’s atomic chief says opposition to Iran’s nuclear program ‘will collapse’ in the face of resistance, ISNA news agency reports.

Iran’s supreme leader said on Wednesday the Islamic Republic would not conduct talks with the United States about its nuclear program unless sanctions and military threats are lifted.

	Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) talking with Iran’s naval chief, after a military exercise in the Gulf in February, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

“What they say, our president and others are saying, that we will negotiate – yes we will – but not with America, because America is not negotiating honestly and like a normal negotiator,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech to senior officials.

“Put away the threats and put away the sanctions,” he added.

Meanwhile, Iran’s atomic chief said the country had no alternative than resisting world powers in the dispute over its nuclear programs, the ISNA news agency reported earlier Wednesday.

“Today, our only option in the nuclear dispute is resistance, and if we do resist, then the opposition against our nuclear programs will collapse,” Ali-Akbar Salehi predicted.

Using nuclear power to generate energy would also generate economic benefits because no fossil fuels are necessary, he said.

	Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, gestures to chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, after unveiling of uranium centrifuge in Tehran on April 9, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

Iran has insisted that all its nuclear projects are solely for peaceful purposes and rejected Western charges that it is working on a secret military program.

Tehran rejected all past demands to suspend its uranium enrichment, saying it is its legitimate right to pursue nuclear technology.

“We have so far succeeded to resist all political pressures, and the more they pressure us, the more we accelerate the speed of our programs,” Salehi said.

Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which was built by Russia, is to be opened Saturday in the southern Gulf port of Bushehr. The 1,000-megawatt reactor is to become fully operational within six to seven months.

“There are 1,000 Iranian experts in Bushehr who will take charge of the plant from the Russians as soon as the guarantee phase is over,” Salehi said.

He also said “more happy news” about Iran’s nuclear achievements would be announced in the coming days.

Iran plans to build 10 to 20 nuclear power plants and enrichment sites in the coming years with the final aim to produce enough nuclear fuel to cover its electricity needs.

Iran currently operates one uranium conversion and one enrichment site. A second enrichment plant is under construction.

According to Salehi, construction of a third enrichment site is to start by March.

Netanyahu to IDF: Focus on Israel’s security, not Galant affair – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Prime Minister calls on Israel’s defense establishment to stop focusing on document that sparked a row over appointment of the next IDF chief of staff.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Israel’s defense establishment to stop focusing on the document that sparked a row over the appointment of the next Israel Defense Forces chief of staff.

	IDF Chief of Staff Ashkenazi and Prime Minister Netanyahu
	Photo by: Eran Yuffie Cohen

“The IDF top brass must stop dealing with this investigation,” Netanyahu said in a statement, his first public reaction to the affair. “I expect the security and military elite to continue working together and cooperating for the sake of Israel’s security.”

The document, which was exposed on Channel 2 news on August 6, features the logo of Arad Communications, and is said to outline a public relations campaign for GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant, who is among the candidates to succeed IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

Police now believe the document was forged, as part of a plot involving current and retired senior IDF officers to influence the appointment.

Netanyahu met earlier Wednesday with Defense Minister Ehud Barak to discuss the apparent tension between him and Ashkenazi.

The premier urged Barak to work quickly to defuse the tension, so as not to allow their unstable relationship affect the security of Israel.

Netanyahu also spoke with Ashkenazi by telephone to relay a similar message, and the two are expected to meet in person in the coming days.

The prime minister also spoke with Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to ask him to accelerate the police investigation into the document.

Ashkenazi earlier on Wednesday made his first public remarks regarding the document, saying he trusts that authorities will bring the truth to light.

His comments came just hours after the chairman of the Knesset’s security committee called for an emergency session to debate the growing storm over the race for the post of IDF chief amid allegations of forgery and smear tactics among top brass.

While Ashkenazi is not suspected of any criminal offense, he has come under fire for failing to hand immediately to police a document that seems to suggest a conspiracy to cause a rift between him and Barak.

Dozens of people have given statements to police in connection to the affair. Investigators are expected to begin questioning suspects under caution.

Iran condemns US ‘threats’.

UNITED NATIONS  — Iran took its case against the United States to the United Nations on Wednesday and strongly condemned the top US military chief for saying military action remains a possibility if the country develops nuclear weapons.

Iran’s acting UN ambassador Eshagh Alehabib claimed in letters circulated to the secretary-general and presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other US officials and lawmakers “threatened” to use military action under the “totally false” pretense that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Mullen said earlier this month that the US military has a plan to attack Iran although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea. Still, he said the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable and he reiterated that “the military option” remains on the table.

Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, told Iranian state TV that there will be no talks with the US under the shadow of threats.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, was apparently referring to recent calls by the US and other key powers for Iran to resume talks on its nuclear program following the UN Security Council’s recent vote imposing a fourth set of tougher sanctions against the country for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.

The US and some of its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the charges, saying its nuclear program is geared merely toward generating electricity, not bombs.

Mullen said earlier this month that the US military has a plan to attack Iran although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea. Still, he said the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable and he reiterated that “the military option” remains on the table.

Alehabib said the United States was using threatening language that violates international law and the UN Charter and goes against “global efforts to strengthen regional and international peace and security.” He reiterated that Iran “would not hesitate to act in self-defense to respond to any attack.”

Khamenei said negotiations would be possible if the US stops making threats against Iran, and he set conditions for it.

“Talks under the shadow of threats and pressure is not dialogue. The Islamic Republic of Iran will never hold such talks,” state TV quoted Khamenei as saying Wednesday. “We are for talks but not with the United States because America doesn’t enter into negotiations sincerely.”

Israel’s Compelling Reasons to Attack, Despite the Uncertainties – International – The Atlantic.

This post is part of our forum on Jeffrey Goldberg’s September cover story detailing the prospects and implications of an Israeli strike against Iran. Follow the debate here.

Gary Milhollin’s questions about the efficacy of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities are surely among those that have most tormented Israeli cabinets and air-force planners. Milhollin’s likely-damage assessment seems reasonable — with the exception of what an Israeli preventive attack might do to the regime’s scientific talent. If Tehran were to lose several of its key nuclear scientists and technicians in such a blow, the Iranian program might sustain a crippling hit from which it would be extremely difficult to recover. I have no idea of whether the Israelis have developed a personnel roster of Iran’s nuclear program — who works where, and when — but if they have that kind of clandestinely collected intelligence (and I’m skeptical that they do), then they could do real long-term damage. The Islamic Republic does not have a deep scientific bench, which is in part why its Manhattan Project has taken so long (Tehran has been working on nukes fairly seriously since 1989) and why the program has, it appears, been plagued with technical difficulties.

But Israeli calculations for a preventive strike don’t have to be conclusive to be successful. If the Israelis do nothing, they know that they would eventually be staring at an internally unstable, virulently anti-Semitic, terrorist-fond regime with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Simply imagining the probable hair-trigger scenarios in which Israel will have to play atomic-bluff with Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — the organization that oversees Iran’s nuclear program — ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder. For the first time ever, the same organization that has been responsible for all of the Islamic Republic’s terrorist liaison relationships — including an operationally supportive relationship with al-Qaeda after the 1998 Africa embassy bombings, according to the 9/11 Commission Report — would control nuclear weapons. Then imagine other Middle Eastern regimes, especially the Saudi state, built upon Wahhabism, also acquiring the bomb in order to counter Iranian Shiite power — and you can see why the nerves of any Israeli nuclear planner have to be fried. Although it’s possible that the American sanctions approach could eventually succeed in producing sufficient internal turmoil to derail the atomic program, the odds of this seem unlikely. The sanctions regime still has too many Russian and Chinese holes, not to mention German breaches, to have a sufficiently crushing effect.

What the Israelis need to do is change this dynamic. A preventive strike offers them the only conceivable alternative for doing so. Any bombing run will, at least temporarily, shock the international system and rock Iran internally. The Israelis will have shown that they are deadly serious about confronting the Iranian nuclear threat, that they are willing to go on a permanent war-footing with the Islamic Republic and its deadliest ally, the Hizbollah, which will probably unleash rocket hell on Israel in turn. Although President Obama may become (privately) furious with the Israelis, any Israeli strike will make the United States, and probably even the reluctant Europeans, more determined to shut down Iran’s program. If Khamenei and the Guard Corps respond to an Israeli strike with terrorism, which is likely, then they could well put themselves into a strategic cul-de-sac, especially if they strike out against American targets or do something truly stupid, like trying to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

Milhollin walks us through an interesting scenario in which the Iranians play the victim after an Israeli attack. Tactically and strategically, that would be the most intelligent thing for Tehran to do. Such a response could conceivably leave the Israelis in a real pickle. It is, however, unlikely. If the Israelis can inflict real damage on the Iranian program, and what Milhollin has described would probably be seen in Iranian eyes as serious damage, then the Revolutionary Guards — who have asserted repeatedly that the Jewish State wouldn’t dare attack their nuclear facilities — would be confronting a real crisis. To maintain their revolutionary self-esteem, let alone the awe essential to Khamenei’s dictatorship, Iran’s leaders will have to strike. Making the Jewish State bleed is an inextricable part of their core identity.

For better or worse, liberal democracies always try to avoid military confrontations. Israel, which since its birth in 1947 has been the most besieged liberal democracy in the world, has been more willing to use force more quickly. Given the daunting prospect of attacking Iran, and given the uncertainties that Milhollin has enumerated, Jerusalem will likely do all that it can to avoid sending its planes east. I suspect that Goldberg is right: we’ve got at least a 51 percent chance that the Israelis will strike by next summer. If they do, Israeli pilots will unlikely be flying with the conviction that they can end the Iranian nuclear menace forever. But they will, no-doubt, be hoping that, with some luck, they can change a nuclear equation that will otherwise put atomic weapons in the hands of a regime that holds international conferences denying the Holocaust’s existence, while arming and funding those who strive for Israel’s annihilation.

Reuel Marc Gerecht – Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran and former director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century. He has also served as a specialist with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.

Tuesday Round-Up: Will Domestic U.S. Politics Change the Game? – International – The Atlantic.

Aug 17 2010, 9:00 PM ET | Comment

If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon during his tenure, Obama would — in his own eyes — see the UN Security Council’s resolutions made a mockery, the International Atomic Energy Agency transformed into a joke, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty come to an end. Multilateralism a la Obama would be finished, for Iran would have proved the “international community” to be toothless or non-existent.

It’s inevitable that as Iran creeps closer to the Bomb and Obama creeps closer to defeat, Democrats — above all, the ones in the White House — will start wondering exactly why striking that nuclear program is such a terrible idea. … They will of course not tell themselves this re-assessment is related to politics; they will persuade themselves they are doing what’s right for the security of our country. Watch.

Karim Sadjadpour responds — granting for the sake of the argument that domestic political concerns could determine the prospects of Obama striking Iran, and arguing that “Plouffe or Axelrod would swiftly reach precisely the opposite conclusion from Elliott Abrams’s”:

… they would conclude that a military attack on Iran, and the myriad long-term repercussions of such an attack (which I will address later), could well sabotage Obama’s chance at re-election. As a longtime student of the cynical, Machiavellian world of Middle Eastern politics, I suspect that’s why Elliott offered such advice in the first place.

… to some in the Obama administration, the “fact” of Iran’s eventual nuclear declaration is already priced-in to their Middle East calculus. … I’ve also spoken with Obama advisers who believe that breakout Iranian nuclear capacity would instantly create a new existential threat to American national security. But to a person, no one in power now believes that the consequences of an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran would be productive, let alone acceptable.

For all of the criticism Obama has faced from the “professional left” regarding his “pragmatic” approaches to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, detainee trials, wiretapping, etc. – I resolutely refuse to believe that Obama would recklessly plunge his nation into another war simply to score political points. I think he’d rather lose an election. If you don’t understand that – then you don’t understand Obama, or many of the millions of Americans who voted for him.

By many measures, Iraq was more of a threat than expected. Some say we caused a near civil war, but if that near civil war had happened under Saddam rather than under coalition rule, imagine what might have happened: poison gas, anthrax, genocide on a scale not seen in this generation.

It’s easy to lament the things that went wrong in the Iraq war and there is no denying that the planning was poor, in some ways. But Niall Ferguson has taught us we must think counterfactually to truly understand history. And in this case, a sharp counterfactual analysis makes it clear how much worse things might have been had we not invaded Iraq.

I’d support it again and think claims of inaccurate pre-war analysis are badly overblown.

Wars have frequently been waged for balance-of-power concerns, but in this case [if Iran acquired a nuclear bomb], how significant would the balance of power shift out of America’s favor? Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is not the top country on the subcontinent – it can barely curtail its own home grown insurgency and it was threatened/cajoled by the U.S. to allow us to bomb portions of the country almost at will. North Korea has nuclear weapons and you’d be laughed out of a room if you suggested they had anything resembling “hegemony” in Asia.

Iran with a crude nuclear weapon would still be poor, weak and surrounded by unfriendly states.

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser and one of Israel’s sharpest military analysts, argued in a much-touted position paper late last year that there is no way Israel would risk harming its key strategic relationship with the United States for the lesser gain of putting Iran’s nuclear program back by a few years. Moreover, he said, if there is to be a military strike, the chances are that the Americans would prefer to carry it out themselves. According to Eiland, some U.S. Army chiefs maintain that since America would be affected by the fallout of any strike, it should bring its greater military prowess to bear to ensure success. In Eiland’s view, for Israel to have a realistic strike option, the following conditions would have to pertain: a clear failure of the current sanctions against Iran; American unwillingness to take military action despite what some of the generals have been saying; and American understanding for Israel’s need to act. Then Netanyahu would have to make his own personal calculus — bearing in mind that failure could leave the Gulf unstable, Western interests undermined, Israel blamed and isolated on the world stage, and worst of all, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons accorded a degree of legitimacy. Zeev Maoz, a political scientist at the University of California, Davis, and at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, adds another concern. In a mid-August article in Haaretz, he suggested that an attack on Iran could lead to international pressure on Israel to dismantle its presumed nuclear arsenal and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Israel refuses to buckle, it could be ostracized, Maoz wrote, and if it does buckle under pressure, it would be losing a key bargaining chip for the creation of a new regional security order.

For instance, Goldberg writes that numerous Israeli defense ministry offices contain the same aerial photograph of Israeli jet fighters flying over a historic site in Poland with particular meaning for the modern world — Auschwitz. It’s a graphic reminder of one of the Jewish state’s shibboleths: Never Again.

Then there’s the influence of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, the 100-year old father of Israel’s prime minister, who is a noted historian of the Spanish Inquisition.

Goldberg describes the scene of a birthday party for the Israeli leader’s father at which the centenarian spoke, to demonstrate the pull of the father on the son. Small wonder this piece has generated so much buzz in Washington and elsewhere.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, a first-caliber incendiary nationalist politician, may well understand this perfectly, and his gratuitous finger-in-the-eye Holocaust denials may be intended to bring on an airstrike that would benefit him politically. But this only highlights how Israel is rendered vulnerable by its tendency to view the world through the distorting prism of the Holocaust. The Holocaust prism leads Israelis and their leaders to adopt inappropriate, self-defeating, violent policies, in much the way that the American tendency to view the world through the distorting prism of the Cold War led us to adopt inappropriate, self-defeating, violent policies in response to the September 11th attacks. The Israeli assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat should be viewed sceptically [sic] especially because of the ways it is bound up with Holocaust thinking. If the Israeli desire to bomb Iran is unreasonable and rooted in historical trauma, then the challenge facing American leaders is different from the one Mr Goldberg describes. The challenge is not solely to ensure at a great level of certainty that Iran does not obtain a nuclear device. The challenge is also to dissuade Israel from launching a catastrophic attack on Iran.

Given that Iran has expressed interest in the International Criminal Court (ICC) — the country played an enthusiastic role in the negotiations of the Rome Statute ,the Court’s founding treaty — one ostensible solution to defuse the crisis would be to explore Iran’s ratification of the Rome Statute of the ICC as part of the new round of nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

The ICC, based in The Hague, is the first permanent international court with jurisdiction to hold individuals – including heads of states – criminally responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and indeed crime of aggression. Based on the existing evidence, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has to date maintained that Iran’s nuclear program remains within the boundaries of peaceful civilian purposes, even if questions concerning a potential military dimension of the Iranian program remain unresolved, given that full cooperation from the Iranian authorities suffered a setback after the country’s referral to the Security Council in 2006 (UN SC Resolution 1696) and the ensuing sanctions. It follows that, at this stage, strictly speaking, the nuclear crisis is centered on the hypothetical threat of Iran’s eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons and, in particular, the subsequent hypothetical use of such weapons. On this logic, Iran’s proprio motu ratification of the Rome Statute, as part of the nuclear negotiations could potentially be just the deal-clincher to defuse the crisis, break the impasse and avert a war with ripple effects that would likely spread well beyond the immediate Middle East.

Media Watch: The Guns Of August | The Jewish Week.

In 1938, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who advocated an “iron wall” of Zionist self-defense, warned European Jews that they “were living on the edge of the volcano,” but those Jews were essentially helpless. Now Jabotinsky’s spiritual grandchild, Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose father worked for Jabotinsky, says, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany.” The difference this time, says Netanyahu, is Israel isn’t helpless.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has for years been promising to annihilate Israel. One thing all students of Jabotinsky learn is to take someone at their word when they say they’re going to kill you.

War is coming, as surely as 1938 turned to 1939. A pre-storm wind is kicking up, with a swirling of articles and blogs predicting war by this weekend, perhaps before the leaves fall, almost certainly before another summer.

War by this weekend? Arutz Sheva (Aug. 17) quoted former U.N. ambassador John Bolton pointing out that Russia announced that on Aug. 21 it will start loading nuclear fuel and specialized fuel rods into Iran’s Bushehr reactor. Once that happens, an attack on the reactor, which happens to be above ground, would unleash radioactive material, hurting civilians.

“If Israel wants to do something against the reactor in Bushehr, it must do so in the following eight days,” says Bolton, but “I fear that Israel has lost this opportunity.”

On the front page of Iran’s Tehran Times (Aug. 17) there is the ominous headline: “Iran to test-fire new missiles on Aug. 22,” the day after the nuclear installation.

Bolton told the National Review, on the right, “Despite White House spin, the sanctions have had no effect.” In The Nation, on the left, Robert Dreyfuss says, “virtually no one, including the proponents of sanctions, thinks they can work,” except to “inflict real suffering on ordinary Iranians.” Pres. Obama, he adds, “has run out of ideas about how to handle Iran.”

The one article that’s galvanizing the conversation is Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Point of No Return” in The Atlantic (Sept.). “One day next spring,” he writes, Israel will inform Washington that the Israeli air force is flying toward Iran “because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people.”

In dozens of interviews, across the spectrum and across borders, Goldberg asked for predictions and was given a consensus answer: “there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.”

As for Obama, writes Goldberg, “Israelis are doubtful that a man who positioned himself as the antithesis of George W. Bush… would launch a preemptive attack on a Muslim nation … If the Israelis reach the firm conclusion that Obama will not, under any circumstances, launch a strike on Iran, then the countdown will begin for a unilateral Israeli attack.”

According to one Israeli official, “the only reason [Netanyahu] would place Israel’s relationship with America in total jeopardy is if he thinks that Iran represents a threat like the Shoah.”

Obama may have many Jewish aides, friends and supporters, writes Goldberg, “but philo-Semitism does not necessarily equal sympathy” for Netanyahu’s dilemma. One Israeli official told Goldberg, if Obama is a “J Street” person, “we are in trouble,” J Street being the lobby representing “liberal American Jews who say, ‘If we remove some settlements, then the extremist problem and the Iran problem go away.’ ”

And yet, writes Goldberg, far from J Street, “some Israeli generals, like their American colleagues, questioned the very idea of an attack,” it would be too difficult, too risky.”

George Will, writing in The Washington Post (Aug. 15), sees Netanyahu believing that stopping Iran’s nuclear program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948, the year of Israel’s independence, returning everyone to that darker time, says Netanyahu, when a Jew “couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

The attempted undoing of 1948, writes Will, can be seen in the persistent campaign “to delegitimize” one Israeli military action after another “in order to extinguish [Israel’s] capacity for self-defense.” Says Will, with italics for emphasis, “Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged ‘disproportionate.’ Israel knows this as it watches Iran.”

War talk has been strong in Europe, and for quite a while. Germany’s Spiegel, back in December, headlined, “It’s 1938, and Iran Is Germany,” with the sub-head, “Israel’s patience with Tehran wearing thin.”

The left, in blogs and papers, has attempted to discredit Goldberg: “A neo-con preps U.S. for war with Iran,” while “cauldrons are still boiling in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

In The Washington Post, Ezra Klein, admits, “I don’t even know if there actually is an Iranian nuclear-weapons program,” but an Israeli attack would only “make the Arab world… hate Israel even more. It would also hurt Israel’s standing in the world… Is that worth it? I’m skeptical, to say the least.”

Even if J Street was used loosely in the Goldberg story as a liberal Jewish catch-all, it’s clear that liberal Jews such as Klein will not support Israel if it went to war. As Klein explains, when “the Israeli government swings far to the right, elevates anti-Arab extremists like Avigdor Lieberman to positions of power, and focuses intently on bombing Iran while essentially mocking those who focus on the peace process, it becomes clearer and clearer that they have no solutions, and may not even be interested in solutions, to their underlying problems.”

Israel, adds Klein, is “willing to do dangerous things when they involve firepower — like attacking Iran or bombing Gaza — but not hard things when they involve fighting domestic battles to restart the peace process and reverse the settlements…”

Tikkun, a leftist Jewish magazine, asked, “Is war with Iran likely in the next 12 months?” One writer says, “as early as this month.” An editorial note in Tikkun hoped that something might “derail this terribly mistaken direction.”

Also on the left, Katherine Smith, in the Daily Kos, argues that “Iran, a country with a non-existent nuclear weapons capability and an air force that belongs in a museum, is not a threat to either nuclear power with a presence in the Middle East, the United States or Israel. The community of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups have proven over and over, when we cooperate with each other we can make a difference,” even stopping a war.

Goldberg’s blog (theatlantic.com/jeffreygoldberg) has been offering a terrific ongoing conversation on the situation, with critics and advocates from all sides. Christopher Hitchens told Goldberg, on the blog, “I take Holocaust denial as Holocaust affirmation. People [such as Ahmadinejad] who say it didn’t happen are people who wish it would happen again. I don’t think there are any exceptions to that. This is not a fit person to be in command of nuclear weapons.”

Hitchens concludes, “The Iranian regime has several times publicly not just sworn but signed its name to [international] documents… that it has no ambitions to weaponize its nuclear capacity. If, after that, it is found that they have such impulses, then there is no such thing as international law anymore… we watched while that was contemptuously dismantled, trampled. In that case I see no reason not to take out the regime.”

Iran’s Three Plans For Confronting Attacks By The ‘Enemy’.

By Golnaz Esfandiari, RFE/RL

Iranian ships take part in a naval war game in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in April.

The head of the operations department of Iran’s armed forces, Ali Shadmani, says Tehran has three contingency plans in place to confront “any possible aggression” against the country. He said implementing any of the plans would “undoubtedly” bring the country’s enemy to its knees.

Closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz and taking it fully under Iran’s control would be the first measure, he said.

The second measure, he said, would deal with U.S. troops based in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are closely monitoring the U.S. forces bases in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Shadmani said in comments posted on the Tabnak website. “Therefore, if they take any measures against our country, we will paralyze the forces in these bases and will not let them make any moves.”

And the third measure Iran would take in case of attack, according to Shadmani?

“Israel is the U.S.A.’s backyard. Therefore, we will destroy the peace at that backyard,” he said. “The U.S.A. and Israel know very well that we are capable of doing so.”

The comments come amid speculation about a possible Israeli attack against Iran’s suspect nuclear facilities.

“The Atlantic,” a respected U.S. magazine, reports in its latest edition that the odds of an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities within the next year have risen to above 50 percent.