WarSclerotic

Are we friends? | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

“Administration officials have . . . repeatedly told the media that they aren’t entirely sure if Iran really intends to build a bomb. . . .

No wonder the Israelis are upset—at the U.S. Administration. It’s one thing to hear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he wants to wipe you off the map: At least it has the ring of honesty. It’s quite another to hear from President Obama that he has your back, even as his Administration tries to sell to the public a make-believe world in which Iran’s nuclear intentions are potentially peaceful, sanctions are working and diplomacy hasn’t failed after three and half years.

The irony for the Administration is that its head-in-the-sand performance is why many Israeli decision-makers believe they had better strike sooner than later. Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November. . . .

Since coming to office, Obama Administration policy toward Israel has alternated between animus and incompetence.”

Yedioth Aharonoth expressed at least part of the Israeli perspective on the Obama administration.

“Claiming that on the one hand, it supports Israel while on the other actually seems more inflexible towards Israel than towards the Iranian nuclear program.”

Yet another item reports a “heated” meeting between Prime Minister Netayahu and American Ambassador Daniel Shapiro.

” . . . unnamed sources present at the meeting (are) saying “sparks and lightning were flying” when the two men discussed the Iran situation. According to the sources, Netanyahu openly blasted what he called Obama’s ineffectual policies vis-a-vis Iran’s nuclear program . . . Netanyahu reportedly told Shapiro that instead of worrying about whether or not Israel will strike Iran, Obama should focus on the root of the problem and put some real pressure on Tehran. At that point, Shapiro was said to have broken diplomatic protocol and snapped back at Netanyahu, insisting that the Israeli leader was misrepresenting Obama’s position.”

“With Israel openly debating whether to strike at Iran’snuclear facilities in the coming months, the Obama administration is moving ahead with a range of steps short of war that it hopes will forestall an Israeli attack, while forcing the Iranians to take more seriously negotiations that are all but stalemated.”

U.S. sees signs Israel could use nuclear EMP attack against Iran | Washington Free Beacon.

BY: Bill Gertz
August 29, 2012 5:00 am

U.S. intelligence agencies recently reported growing concerns that Israel will conduct a strike on Iran using a high-altitude nuclear burst aimed at disrupting all electronics in the country.

The intelligence worries were triggered by recent publication of an article in the Israeli press suggesting the Jewish state should carry out an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack.

U.S. officials said the article likely reflects official Israeli government thinking about a possible preemptive response to Iran’s expected emergence as a nuclear weapons state in the near future.

Asked about the EMP report, an Israeli government spokesman declined to comment. A U.S. intelligence community spokesman also declined comment.

A U.S. official said the article in question appeared Aug. 6 in the news outlet Israel National News. The article stated that an Israeli nuclear burst over Iran could “send Iran back to the Stone Age.”

It was the first time the issue of a nuclear EMP attack by Israel had appeared in a mainstream Israeli press outlet.

U.S. officials also suspect the article was written by someone in the Israeli government who favors such a strike. Another theory among analysts is that the Israeli government, at a minimum, encouraged publication of the article.

The American author of the Israeli article, Joe Tuzara, wrote that growing signs Iran is speeding up development of nuclear weapons should lead Tel Aviv to launch the preemptive EMP attack.

“For the most part, Israel’s dilemma is focused singly on the use of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) without informing the U.S.,” Tuzara stated.

The attack could be carried out using a nuclear warhead detonated after launch by one of Israel’s Jericho III missiles at high-altitude over north central Iran.

EMP affects computers and other electronics and would disrupt critical infrastructure that relies on electronics and electricity, such as communications, transportation, and other networks.

The burst would create “no blast or radiation effects on the ground,” the article stated.

“Coupled with cyber-attacks, Iranians would not know it happened except for a massive shutdown of the electric power grid, oil refineries, and a transportation gridlock,” the article said.

“Food supply would be exhausted and communication would be largely impossible, leading to economic collapse. Similarly, the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Fordo, Natanz, and widely scattered elsewhere, would freeze for decades.”

Around the same time the article was published, state-run media in Iran announced that Iran plans to take all key government ministries off the Internet in September to protect against cyber attacks.

The announcement followed several cyber attacks that disabled Iranian computer networks, including those controlling the nuclear program.

The Israeli EMP article mirrors the doomsday scenario contained in the 2009 novel “One Second After” by American writer William R. Forstchen. The book has been widely read in U.S. military and intelligence circles, and examines the aftermath of an EMP attack on an American town.

Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and a leading U.S. specialist on EMP, said he doubts the allegations that Israel is planning an EMP strike.

“It is not based on any Israeli source, but is the result of the U.S. media recycling its own speculation,” Pry told the Free Beacon in an email.

Pry said he was present at a meeting with a U.S. journalist who first advocated the idea. The notion was later picked up and reported by other U.S. reporters.

Pry said the speculation “is creating a misimpression that there is some credible Israeli source behind it.”

“In fact, I have been to Israel, at the invitation of their government, to help convince officials that Israel should protect its electric grid from EMP,” said Pry, who now heads a group called EMPact America.

“I have been invited to return to continue this mission in October,” he said. “If Israel has such high confidence in the efficacy of an EMP attack, why do they need to be educated on the consequences to their own grid by me?”

Pry also said it is not clear an EMP attack would shut down the Iranian nuclear program since Iran’s centrifuges, which are being used to spin uranium gas into nuclear weapons fuel, are underground in bunkers protected from earth-penetrating weapons.

He also said the electromagnetic shockwave produced by an EMP blast could affect centrifuges, but the wave cannot penetrate too deeply into the earth.

“The EMP would certainly take down Iran’s national electric grid, and nuclear weapons programs do require vast amounts of electricity (less so when based on centrifuges),” Pry said. “But the underground facilities probably have emergency generators.”

“An EMP attack could conceivably stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, not by destroying nuclear facilities, but by paralyzing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allowing the people to successfully revolt and achieve regime change,” Pry said.

Tuzara said his analysis of the prospect of a preemptive strike is based on five signs that Iran has reached what Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called a “zone of immunity.”

They include Iran’s plans to speed up uranium enrichment to 80 to 90 percent or weapons grade; along with indications that Iran has tested its ballistic missiles in an EMP mode with help from North Korea.

Other indicators include reports that Iran can further enrich its stocks of low-enriched uranium for weapons; and satellite photos that show recent fortification of underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

Last, the Iranians have begun loading fuel rods into the core of the Bushehr nuclear power plant reactor.

“In light of the latest developments, there is no question that Iran is now a de facto nuclear state—a ‘casus belli’ for Israeli military action,” Tuzara said.

U.S. intelligence analysts and military intelligence officials are on high alert for any indications Israel will conduct a strike on Iran that could lead to a large-scale regional conflict.

Some U.S. officials believe Israel could conduct some type of action against Iran in October, prior to the U.S. presidential election.

America’s closest ally in the Middle East might act without warning.

U.S. concerns over an Israeli attack were heightened by Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, who said July 25 that any military strikes to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be costly, but that the loss of human life in a future Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would be far greater.

Iran has threatened counterattacks against Israel if it conducts a strike.

Iranian legislator Avaz Heidarpour was quoted in state-run Fars News Agency that if Israel attacks Iran, Iran could not guarantee that even one single Zionist living in the occupied Palestinian territories will survive.

“We have no doubt that the Zionists’ claims about attacking Iran are nothing but psychological warfare,” he said.

Preparing for Battle: The Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Battalion – YouTube.

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Isolating Israel | FrontPage Magazine.

Posted By P. David Hornik On September 3, 2012 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon notes:

When Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy blasted Syria’s government at the Non-Aligned Movement Conference in Tehran on Thursday, his comments prompted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to storm out.

But when Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei slammed Israel, labeling it a state of “bloodthirsty Zionist wolves” that controls the world media, nobody moved.

The silence of the world in the face of these charges is chilling.

Correct, and the full phrase from Khamenei is “bloodthirsty Zionist wolves who digest the Palestinian people in the haraam-eating stomach of the Zionist regime”—haraam being, of course, impure food according to Islam.

“Granted,” Keinon notes further,

nobody in Israel is expecting much of Bangladesh, Cuba or South Africa. But how about those countries with whom Israel has strong ties, such as India, Colombia and Thailand? Why did they sit still, and what does that say?

Indeed, the view from Zion is not rosy these days. In the same week that 120 “nonaligned” nations of the world were gathered in Tehran to give their blessing to its open genocidal anti-Semitism, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had doubled the number of centrifuges at its underground Fordo site since May, while increasing its stockpile of 20%-enriched uranium to within 50 kilograms of a bomb.

All this while continuing to block access—as it has been since November—to its Parchin facility for nuclear-explosives testing.

And that wasn’t all. Even though the IAEA’s findings vindicate all the warnings by Israeli leaders that Iran was exploiting the period of sanctions and diplomatic talks to race ahead toward the bomb, the Obama administration reacted—again—by coming down on Israel rather than Iran.

On Thursday the U.S. chief of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told reporters in London that an Israeli attack on Iran would delay but probably not stop its nuclear program, could unravel the “international coalition” supposedly “pressuring” Iran, and that “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

With a few words, then, Dempsey managed to convey that Israel was militarily incapable, a potential spoiler of an effective international strategy, and that it would be somehow criminal or illicit—“complicity” usually referring to illicit activity—if Israel did move to preempt the genocidal threat, something the U.S. would want no part of.

It was further reported by Time magazine that the U.S. was substantially scaling back a planned joint U.S.-Israeli military drill, though so far that account has evoked denials from some of the officials quoted in media reports. But, on the whole, the developments didn’t impart the sense that the Obama administration “has Israel’s back” as it has been ritually claiming.

A former Israeli cabinet minister and head of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tzahi Hanegbi, reacted by saying last week’s events—Iran’s diplomatic victory at the NAM conference and the latest IAEA report—had given Israel “increased legitimacy” for a military strike.

What Jerusalem may or may not be planning remains a matter of intense speculation. What is clear, though, is that if the international community prefers an Israel that feels less isolated and threatened, it is doing a bad job of attaining that result. With the solemn, soul-searching holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur approaching, it is hard for Israelis to escape a sense of being, once again, a people that is on its own.

To be sure, there is a clangor in Israel of left-wing media outlets, former military officers, former judges, and the like accusing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of being paranoid “messiahs” pushing the country toward war. As external pressures mount, the “elite” sector least comfortable with national cohesion turns increasingly shrill and adversary.

Most Israelis, though, get the message. Here in 2012, threats to annihilate the Jewish state evoke yawns. Dramatic, documented Iranian progress toward the means to do so prompts, from the top U.S. soldier, a warning not to do anything about it.

US to Iran: In case of Israeli strike, don’t fire on our bases | The Times of Israel.

( Is this actually happening? ! – JW )

Washington tells Tehran that it will not join in an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program, Yedioth Ahronoth reports

The flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln as it patrols the Persian Gulf (photo credit: AP/Hassan Ammar)

The United States has no intention of joining in a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran and expects the Islamic Republic to refrain from attacking US targets in the case of such an attack, senior Washington officials told their Iranian counterparts, according to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth on Monday.

In recent days, senior administration officials reportedly sent messages to Iran, through diplomats from two European states, addressing the possibility that Israel would launch a unilateral strike and establishing that the US expects Iran to not draw it into a conflict by firing on American army bases and aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.

Monday’s report came amid widespread debate over the level of coordination between Israel and the US on halting Iran’s nuclear program, which despite assurances by US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro on Sunday that the relationship is as good as ever, appeared to be showing cracks.

While Israel has warned that the Iranians are quickly approaching weapons capability and that the use of force must be seriously considered, the US says sanctions and international diplomacy must be given more time to work.

Highlighting the disagreement between the two countries on the use of force were reports of a scaling-down of joint US-Israel missile defense exercises in October, and public comments by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, who said last Thursday that he did not want to be “complicit” in an Israeli attack on Iran.

Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at criticism of the US position on Iran, telling ministers at the weekly Cabinet meeting that the international community has failed to send a clear message to Iran regarding its nuclear program. Netanyahu said that while international sanctions have harmed Tehran, they haven’t done “anything to stall the progress of the nuclear program.”

On Saturday, former minister Tzachi Hanegbi said the United States is not determined to halt Iran from getting a bomb and this week’s IAEA report, which indicated that Iran has expanded its capacity for uranium enrichment, granted Israel even more legitimacy to strike Iran on its own.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Monday that the Obama Administration is installing new curbs against Iran as a way to calm Israel and keep Jerusalem from launching an attack, asserting that included in these measures may be a declaration of American “red lines.”

‘US upping threat against Iran t… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS/Handout .

‘Iran must steer clear of US interests in Gulf’ – Israel News, Ynetnews

( Is this actually happening? ! – JW )

Washington reportedly sends Tehran indirect message saying it will not back Israeli strike on nuclear facilities as long as Iran refrains from attacking American facilities in Persian Gulf

Shimon Shiffer

The United States has indirectly informed Iran, via two European nations, that it would not back an Israeli strike against the country’s nuclear facilities, as long as Tehran refrains from attacking American interests in the Persian Gulf, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.

According to the report, Washington used covert back-channels in Europe to clarify that the US does not intend to back Israel in a strike that may spark a regional conflict.

In return, Washington reportedly expects Iran to steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf, such as military bases and aircraft carriers.

Israeli officials reported an unprecedented low in the two nations’ defense ties, which stems from the Obama administration’s desire to warn Israel against mounting an uncoordinated attack on Iran.

The New York Times reported Monday that US President Barack Obama is promoting a series of steps meant to curb an Israeli offensive against Iran, while forcing the Islamic Republic to take the nuclear negotiations more seriously.

Iranian drill in Strait of Hormuz (Photo: MCT)

One of the steps considered is “an official declaration by Obama about what might bring about American military action, as well as covert activities that have been previously considered and rejected,” the report said.

Several of Obama’s top advisors believe that Jerusalem is seeking an unequivocal American statement regarding a US strike on Iran – should it actively pursue a nuclear bomb.

Israel hopes such a statement is made during Obama’s address before the UN General Assembly on September 25.

Others in the White House said Israel is trying to drag the US into an unnecessary conflict in the Gulf.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that “There is absolutely no daylight between the United States and Israel when it comes to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Carney said that all options remain on the table for Iran. He said the “window for diplomacy remains open,” adding that the diplomatic process remains the best way to deal with the Islamic Republic, though “that window will not remain open indefinitely.”

Cyber war a go?

According to the New York Times, Washington has also sent Iran a back-channel deal suggesting they curb their nuclear ambitions, but Tehran rejected the deal, saying no agreement is possible sans lifting all West-imposed sanctions.

According to the report, the Obama administration is exploring the possibility of mounting a covert operation, as well as waging a “quiet” cyber war against Iran.

President Obama had previously rejected the notion, fearing such cyber assaults would wreak havoc on Iranian civilian life.

Later in September, the United States and more than 25 other nations will hold the largest-ever minesweeping exercise in the Persian Gulf, in what military officials say is a demonstration of unity and a defensive step to prevent Iran from attempting to block oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

In fact, the United States and Iran have each announced what amounted to dueling defensive exercises to be conducted this fall, each intended to dissuade the other from attack.

U.S. Is Weighing New Curbs on Iran in Nod to Israel – NYTimes.com.

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — With Israel openly debating whether to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, the Obama administration is moving ahead with a range of steps short of war that it hopes will forestall an Israeli attack, while forcing the Iranians to take more seriously negotiations that are all but stalemated.

Already planned are naval exercises and new antimissile systems in the Persian Gulf, and a more forceful clamping down on Iranian oil revenue. The administration is also considering new declarations by President Obama about what might bring about American military action, as well as covert activities that have been previously considered and rejected.

Later this month the United States and more than 25 other nations will hold the largest-ever minesweeping exercise in the Persian Gulf, in what military officials say is a demonstration of unity and a defensive step to prevent Iran from attempting to block oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, the United States and Iran have each announced what amounted to dueling defensive exercises to be conducted this fall, each intended to dissuade the other from attack.

The administration is also racing to complete, in the next several months, a new radar system in Qatar that would combine with radars already in place in Israel and Turkey to form a broad arc of antimissile coverage, according to military officials. The message to Iran would be that even if it developed a nuclear weapon and mounted it atop its growing fleet of missiles, it could be countered by antimissile systems.

The question of how explicit Mr. Obama’s warnings to Iran should be is still a subject of internal debate, closely tied to election-year politics. Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers have argued that Israel needs a stronger public assurance that he is willing to take military action, well before Iran actually acquired a weapon. But other senior officials have argued that Israel is trying to corner Mr. Obama into a military commitment that he does not yet need to make.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to criticize Mr. Obama for being too vague about how far Iran can go. “The international community is not setting Iran a clear red line, and Iran does not see international determination to stop its nuclear project,” he told his cabinet. “Until Iran sees a clear red line and such determination, it will not stop the progress of its nuclear project — and Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.”

None of the steps being taken by the Obama administration addresses the most immediate goal of the United States and its allies: Slowing Iran’s nuclear development. So inside the American and Israeli intelligence agencies, there is continuing debate about possible successors to “Olympic Games,” the covert cyberoperation, begun in the Bush administration and accelerated under Mr. Obama, that infected Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and, for a while, sent them spinning out of control. An error in the computer code alerted Iran to the attack in 2010, and since then many of the country’s nuclear sites have been modified to defend against such attacks, according to experts familiar with the effort.

All of these options are designed to buy time — to offer Israeli officials a credible alternative to a military strike that would almost certainly trigger an Iranian reaction and, the White House and Pentagon fear, could unleash a new conflict in the Middle East. While Mr. Obama’s national security team has been very closed-mouthed about the tense discussions with Mr. Netanyahu, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, gave voice to the concerns in London on Thursday.

General Dempsey repeated the familiar American position that an Israeli attack would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”

But then he went beyond any warning that Mr. Obama has given to Israel in public, saying that the international coalition of countries applying sanctions against Iran “could be undone” if the country was attacked “prematurely.” He added: “I don’t want to be accused of trying to influence, nor do I want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

United States intelligence officials have said they have no evidence that Iran’s top leaders have decided to take the final steps toward a weapon. Iran’s intentions remain unclear, intelligence officials say.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported an increase in the number of centrifuges that Iran has installed in an underground enrichment plant that is largely invulnerable to Israeli attack, but also indicated that Iran has converted some of its most highly enriched fuel to a form that would be difficult to use in a weapon.

The administration has already quietly proposed a “stop the clock” agreement to get Iran to halt production of the fuel that is closest to bomb-grade — and to ship it out of the country, according to diplomats from several countries involved in the discussions. But Iranian officials have rejected those calls, insisting on a lifting of all sanctions, and there has been no talk of a broader, more permanent deal.

Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, has taken a harder line, saying he would never agree to allow Iran to enrich uranium at any level — a restriction even many Republicans, including some of Mr. Romney’s advisers, say there is virtually no chance Iran will accept, since it has a legal right to peaceful enrichment.

One option the administration has already approved is the military exercise, scheduled for Sept. 16-27, in which the United States and its allies will practice detecting and destroying mines with ships, helicopters and robotic underwater drones. The ships will stay out of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, to avoid direct interaction with Iran’s navy.

In advance of the exercise, the United States Navy earlier this summer doubled the number of minesweepers in the region, to eight vessels. The deployments are part of a larger series of military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf in recent months, all described by the United States as defensive.

That is also the explanation for the American efforts to create a regional missile defense system across the Gulf to protect cities, oil refineries, pipelines and military bases from an Iranian attack. The latest element is a high-resolution missile defense radar in Qatar, meant to stress that Iran’s Arab neighbors are as concerned about Tehran’s abilities as is Israel.

Military specialists said offensive military options, including strikes against Iran’s refineries and power grid, could also be telegraphed to the Iranians.

“The United States does not have to threaten preventive strikes,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a longtime military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a recent paper, “Iran: Preventing War by Making It Credible.” “It simply has to make its capabilities clear in terms of a wide range of possible scenarios.”

But there is concern among American strategists that Iran could interpret these actions as encirclement, and that the actions could encourage those elements in the country that want to move faster to a nuclear “capability,” if not a weapon itself. Even one of the options that many Democrats and Republicans advocate to shake Iran — to help topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Iran’s only real friend in the region — could have the same effect.

Inside the Obama White House, there has also been debate about whether Mr. Obama needs to reshape his negotiating strategy around clear “red lines” for Iran — steps beyond which the United States would not allow the country to go. Earlier this year Mr. Obama said he believed that the United States and its allies could not simply accept a nuclear Iran, largely because of the high risk that other Arab states would seek weapons.

Even if Mr. Obama set a clear “red line” now, its credibility may be questionable. According to a tally by Graham Allison, the Harvard expert on nuclear conflict, the United States and its allies have allowed Iran to cross seven previous “red lines” over 18 years with few consequences. That leaves one other option that officials are loath to discuss: new covert action.

The “Olympic Games” attack on Iran’s centrifuges was chosen over another approach that the Bush administration explored: going after electrical grids feeding the nuclear operations. But Mr. Obama has rejected any attacks that could risk affecting nearby towns or facilities and thus harm ordinary Iranians. Other plans considered in the past, and now reportedly back under consideration, focus on other targets in the nuclear process, from making raw fuel to facilities involved in missile work. One missile plant blew up last year, and Israeli sabotage was suspected, but never proven. American officials say the United States was not involved.

One other proposal circulating in Washington, advocated by some former senior national security officials, is a “clandestine” military strike, akin to the one Israel launched against Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007. It took weeks for it to become clear that site had been hit by Israeli jets, and perhaps because the strike was never officially acknowledged by Israel, and because its success was so embarrassing to Syria, there was no retaliation.

But Iran’s is a much higher-profile program. “At best this would buy you a few years,” one administration official said, without acknowledging such a strike was under consideration by the United States or Israel. Even if an explosion at an Iranian facility was accidental, the official said, “the Iranians might well see it as a provocation for an attack of their own.”

Was Gen. Dempsey Goading Israel to Attack Iran? – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.

Chemi Shalev has an interesting interpretation of Gen. Martin Dempsey’s unfortunate comments earlier this week — he said the U.S. doesn’t want to be seen as “complicit” in an preventive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which when coupled by the U.S. decision to radically reduce the scale of a joint Israeli-American missile defense exercise, suggests that the Obama Administration is, to some degree, cutting Israel adrift. I don’t think it’s actually cutting Israel adrift; its goal is to prevent Israel from attacking Iran before the November election, and one way to do that is to reinforce the message to the Israelis that Obama means what he says when he says he will stop Iran from going nuclear. Anyway, it’s a bit of a mystery. As readers of Goldblog know, I’m in the camp of people who believe that Obama is serious about stopping Iran, but this week I’ve had my doubts about the overarching strategy. Here’s Shalev:

If I didn’t know any better I would assume that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey is trying to goad Israel into attacking Iran. Otherwise, why would he go to such great lengths to try and persuade them that Israel is on its own and can rely only on itself?

Because that is the net effect of Dempsey’s statements in London last week, especially his yet-to-be-properly-explained use of the word “complicit” as in “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.” Complicit? As in what – war crimes?

Even if one accepts the validity of Dempsey’s assertion that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would “delay and not destroy” Iran’s nuclear program, and even if one understands the need for him to spell out the Administration’s belief that such an attack would “thwart” the “international coalition” – whatever that means – his use of the word “complicit” is somewhere on the scale between unfortunate and way out of line. And to make matters worse, despite the days that have passed, it has yet to be explained or retracted or apologized for, as the Wall Street Journal correctly pointed out in its Friday editorial.

By the way, Dempsey is right: An Israeli attack would be premature and potentially ineffective.
But the way to convince the Israelis that the Obama Administration is serious about stopping Iran is not to make statements that reinforce Prime Minister Netanyahu’s belief that Israel stands alone on the issue. That makes an attack more likely, not less. Of course, Gen. Dempsey could be privy to information that we don’t have — which is to say, he knows that it is too late to stop Netanyahu and Barak from launching an attack before November, and is simply trying to protect American forces in the Gulf from the fallout. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Netanyahu and Barak have decided to attack before November. Quite the opposite: I’m under the impression they see the window of opportunity shutting fairly rapidly.