WarSclerotic

Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Bunker Busters to Israel: Strategic Leak or Foreign Policy Liability?.

Stephanie Spies , Center for Strategic & International Studies, October 1, 2011 

Although this revelation may come as a shock to anyone not privy to classified military information, the most puzzling issue at stake is the timing of this story. According to the article, Obama sold these weapons to Israel in 2009…so why are we just hearing about it now? Some experts believe the leak is nothing more than a ploy to bolster Jewish support of Obama before the next election, while others contend it is meant as a warning to Iran in light of new information confirming the acceleration of the country’s nuclear activities. Then again, it could just be an unapproved disclosure from a notoriously leaky Obama administration. Regardless of the motivations behind such an information leak, it could also have interesting effects on the Obama administration’s attempts to prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. While the transfer of bunker busters to Israel could reveal the U.S.’s true commitment to stopping Iran’s nuclear program, it could also undermine the administration’s credibility on nonproliferation issues, especially in the Middle East.

The somewhat surprising news of this sale, and the media frenzy that followed, arrived in an environment rather hostile to the Obama administration, particularly on Middle East policy. The President’s most recent attempt to restore U.S. credibility in the Arab world in a speech at the U.N. was dismissed by several countries and journalists as a hypocritical ploy lacking substance, as the U.S. is currently fighting a Palestinian bid for statehood while simultaneously preaching for democracy in the Arab Spring. To say that the U.S. no longer looks like an honest or credible broker of the peace process, according to these sources, would be an understatement. Despite this apparent support for Israel at the expense of the Arab world, however, recent news also illustrates a lack of Israeli, and domestic Jewish, support for the Obama administration. The President “urg[ed] the Israelis to make wrenching concessions to the Palestinians” throughout his term in office, undermining domestic Jewish support for the administration.

Amidst this unfavorable political environment, the story of the bunker buster sale emerged. Suddenly, Obama no longer looks so “anti-Israel”. Even former Bush administration hawks “grudgingly give Obama credit for behind-the-scenes progress” on relations with Israel, claiming “it’s the best military-to-military relationship ever”. According to Lake’s article, Israel requested the bombs in 2005, but was refused by the Bush administration until 2007, when Bush said he would order the weapons for a 2009 or 2010 delivery. Shortly after taking office, Obama secretly authorized the transfer of the bunker busters to Israel. The military deal, Lake writes, “has drawn the two nations’ militaries increasingly close even as their leaders seem politely distant”. In another article, he also quotes Representative Rothman (D-NJ) as saying “Obama gave ‘orders to the military to ratchet up the cooperation at every level with Israel”.

All of this information seems to indicate that Obama has continued to support Israel, despite public accounts to the contrary. Why, then, has it all been kept quiet? The bunker buster sale may have external political consequences that warrant secrecy, but certainly the request for Congress to improve Israeli aid and cooperation is not as controversial. The sale in particular occurred in 2009, yet it is just now becoming public. The Israeli military and government were obviously privy to this information, as were U.S. officials, but the information was still kept secret.

(…) Perhaps the leak was less designed to conjure political support for Obama than it was to send a message to Iran. Although the U.S. has kept “all options on the table” with regards to Iran’s nuclear program, so far the Obama administration has pursued diplomacy and economic sanctions as its primary strategy to deal with such a threat. The transfer of bunker busters to Israel which, according to recent articles, are “deemed important to any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites” seems to illustrate potential administration support for an alternate military approach. In particular, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright is quoted in the Newsweek article as saying that although there was no military opposition to the sale in 2009, “there was a concern about ‘how the Iranians would perceive it’ and ‘how the Israelis might perceive it’”, including fears of giving “a green light for Israel to attack Iran’s secret nuclear sites”. Now that knowledge of this sale has become public, Iran may be receiving that exact message.

The perception that the U.S. is arming Israel for a potential military strike on Iran, whether correct or not, is consistent with other news of the U.S. “bolster[ing] clandestine efforts to undermine Iranian atomic efforts”. Although the facts are, predictably, unclear, Iran believes, and military experts agree, that the U.S. has sponsored a series of covert operations, or at least condoned Israeli actions, to undermine the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, including killing Iranian nuclear specialists and using the Stuxnet cybervirus to target Iranian uranium enrichment equipment. The Obama administration has not publicly said or done anything to indicate that it supports military action as a solution to Iranian nuclearization, but these actions may be intended to convince Iran that the U.S. truly is keeping all options on the table, or in other words, is still entertaining the possibility of strikes on Iranian facilities.

Stephanie Spies is a research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues. The views expressed above are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Strategic and International Studies or the Project on Nuclear Issues.

This entry was posted on October 1, 2011 at 6:41 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.