The non-pacifist case against attacking Iran

Israel should sit back and allow the Iranian threat to continue to build. In the end, faced with the prospect of losing control of the strategic Middle East and its oil the United States will be forced to act. The alternative would be to lose credibility as the last remaining global superpower. And the cost of that failure would be incalculable and irreversible for the United States.

George W. Bush launched the war to topple Sadam Hussein on 20 March, 2003. Three months later he famously and prematurely declared victory aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln positioned off the coast of Iraq. According to the president, “our mission is clear, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” In the end there were no Iraqi WMD and the administration was also forced to admit that Sadam had no connection to either September 11 or al-Qaeda.

Shortly before his execution Sadam was asked about the missing WMD. His interviewer reports, "The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors. Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."

With the withdrawal of US fighting forces on 19 August, 2010 the only observable American achievement following eight years of war that cost more than four thousand American lives, untold Iraqi deaths and more that $1 trillion in treasure is regime change for Iraq; and superpower America dependent on the restraint of the Iranian mouse that roared.

Iraq went to the polls on 7 March 2010 and the result was deadlock. Five months later, as the dust of the last withdrawing US combat vehicle settled on the Kuwaiti border Iraq still had no functioning government. And by all accounts the country is today closer to a bloodier civil war than it experienced in 2003 - 2007.

In an analysis of US options in post-withdrawal Iraq George Friedman, director of Stratfor writes, “There are many who are baffled by Iranian confidence and defiance in the face of American pressure on the nuclear issue. This is the reason for that confidence: Should the United States attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, or even if the United States does not attack, Iran holds the key to the success of the American strategy in Iraq.” In fact Dr. Friedman understates the problem for the US. American troops stationed in Iraq, the Gulf Arab states and Afghanistan are all at risk from Iranian supported proxies throughout the region. In Iraq the Islamic Republic arms, trains and provides guidance and leadership to anti-American Shiite militias. In Afghanistan Iran has the same relationship with the Taliban. The US is a virtual hostage to Iranian influence. And the United States is solely responsible for this situation, having toppled the Sunni Ba’ath regime of Sadam Hussein in Iraq.

The 1980- 1988 Iran-Iraq War cost Iran more than one million lives. The lesson was clear: Iraq under Sadam Hussein was to be avoided. When George Bush replaced the minority Sunni Baath regime with one controlled by the Shiite majority he threw wide the invitation to Iranian influence.

A Sh’ia (Iran)-controlled Iraq allowed Ahmadinejad to not only threaten US forces in Iraq, but to project Iranian influence and threat throughout the region. Iraq was the military buffer protecting the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Another consequence of invading Iraq was that Bush gave the fundamentalist Iranian regime the appearance of equality with the United States in regional affairs, directly in Iraq, through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in the Levant and Egypt. Even in Saudi Arabia Iranian-influenced Sh’ia are the majority in the kingdom’s richest oil fields.

To return to the Friedman analysis: “The United States cannot withdraw completely without some arrangement… Iran would dominate the Persian Gulf region after the withdrawal. Thus, the United States… can stay in perpetuity and remain vulnerable to violence. It can withdraw and hand the region over to Iran. It can go to war with yet another Islamic country. Or it can negotiate with a government that it despises — and which despises it right back.”

Debka, Israel’s equivalent of Stratfor, viewing American policy from a regional perspective, draws a much bleaker vision for Iraq’s future. “According to US intelligence, [the Shiites] are preparing to capture large parts of Baghdad as well as Habaniya, Ramadi, Tikrit, Falluja and sections of Anbar Province, in order to … [force the Sunnis] to accept their loss of political influence and… the loss of more territory in the cities…The second [goal] is to crush the power bases the Saudis are building in [Sunni sectors of] Iraq at great expense. While the Saudis and the Syrians are spending money to buy off Maliki's supporters, he plans to physically destroy the Sunni power centers in which they are investing.”

And while the Sunnis and Shiites fight their own civil war, Debka continues, “the Kurds of the north… plan to exploit the anticipated armed Sunni-Shiite feud to drive south and grab parts of central Iraq up to a line some 250 kilometers north of Baghdad.”

And where does Debka see Iran in all of this? “Tehran is also eyeing rich spoils in Iraq's post-American era… the southern oilfields centering on the city of Basra, which account for about 60 percent of the country's oil output.”

So here we are, 19 August, 2010, witness to the last of American combat forces having left Iraq. What are America’s options? Having destroyed Iraqi deterrence to Iran; having allowed Iran to project threat and influence from Saudi Arabia to Egypt; having allowed through accommodation Iranian progress towards nuclear status; how will the current president respond?

To date the signs are that the US will continue the Bush-Obama diplomacy-over-war effort at accommodation. But nothing is more likely to lead to a regional loss of confidence in the United States as regional defender than the kind of indecision and avoidance that has characterized American policy towards Iran for the past eight years. And this is the reason for the rapid deterioration of American influence in the oil-rich and strategic Middle East. Absent American willingness to eliminate the Iranian threat, the Arabs feel they have no choice but to seek accommodation with the new American-created, soon to be nuclear hegemon.

During his 6 July, 2010 interview with Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic, United Arab Emirates’ Ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba said, 'We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.' [Goldberg] asked him, Do you want the U.S. to stop the Iranian nuclear program by force? And he answered: ‘Absolutely, absolutely.’" According to reliable sources both the Saudis and the Egyptians delivered the same message to the administration, “Absolutely, absolutely.”

Turkey, of course, has already made it clear that it not only views America as irresolute and undependable, it has confidently defied its erstwhile ally and protector by not only voting against America’s UN sanctions resolution, but violates those sanctions by supplying Iran with gasoline and other petroleum distillates. And to further make the point of independence and defiance, the Turks now openly support Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxies in the Levant. And of course there was also that Turkish blockade-busting flotilla to which the United States, characteristically, stood quietly by as observer. Only afterwards, the damage done, did the administration once again realize the mistake after the fact and try to minimize the damage.

The Saudis recently warned that, absent decisive action by the United States to eliminate the Iranian threat, that they, like Turkey, would see no choice but to also reach an accommodation with Ahmadinejad. Should that happen American influence in the region would plummet, and her only remaining island of support in the region would be Israel.

The September 11, 2001 attacks set the stage for emotion to override common sense among US decision makers. One year later and six months before the invasion, in September of 2002 CIA Director George Tenet came to Bush with reliable information provided by Iraq’s foreign minister Naji Sabri, that Iraq had no WMD. According to Sabri it was all a bluff by Sadam to keep the Iranians at bay. But, according to Tenet, the president was not interested. Tenet writes that, “the administration was already committed to invade.” Whatever his true motives, Bush invaded and set the US on a course destined to place itself in a relationship of dependence on Iran for the security of its forces, its pursuit of the war, even its ability to end the war. It is no less dependent on Iran today.

The United States has little choice but to either confront directly what all states of the region consider a mortal threat, or to fall back on the wishful possibility that maybe just one more round of diplomacy might finally convince the Iranians to abandon the bomb and become good neighbors.

Of course the US always knows it has another option. Aware that war with Iran will, as occurred in 2003, result in hyper-inflation in the price of oil, and that this would likely tilt the world into a deeper recession, or worse; knowing that attacking Iran will result in an escalation of American casualties at the hands of Iran and her proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan; does it not make better sense to avoid direct conflict, to protest loudly but leave the deed, and the fallout, to Israel? If America waits long enough then Israel is likely to attack.

And this is the point. Israel would be justified, failing American resolve to protect its own regional interests, to pre-emptively attack Iran in its own defense. But can Israel sustain the fallout from the action? If, compared to attacking Iran, such relatively minor incidents as Operation Cast Lead or the boarding of the Mavi Marmara brought such intense international ire and isolation, can Israel afford, even survive the international isolation attacking Iran would bring? Israel justifiably sees a nuclear Iran as an existential threat. Would not the fallout resulting from the attack also constitute an existential threat?

Israel has other options. The Iranian threat is regional and not just to Israel. The Iranians have to be stopped, but not by a single member of the threatened regional community. The Saudis agree to “quietly” open their airspace to Israeli fighters, great; Egypt allows Israeli warships to transit Suez, wonderful. But is that the limit of their responsibility for containing the Iranian threat? Since the threat is regional the response must likewise be regional. Absent American leadership Israel should not heroically go it alone, should insist on Arab participation, a second “Coalition of the Willing.”

The result of this coalition would be that Israel is but one of several, including the oil producers, and so not alone responsible for the global economic fallout. The coalition would also serve to create a new reality in the Middle East, an alliance consisting of Israel and the Arab states.

Absent the participation of the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and Egypt as part of the armada Israel should sit back and allow the Iranian threat to continue to build. In the end, faced with the prospect of losing control of the strategic Middle East and its oil the United States will be forced to act. The alternative would be to lose credibility as the last remaining global superpower. And the cost of that failure would be incalculable and irreversible for the United States.

Israel beyond Zionism?

“Legitimizing Haredi control over conversion is a stalking horse for that other Haredi ambition, passage of Who is a Jew. With passage of Who is a Jew, discrimination against the non-orthodox, which includes the vast majority of Diaspora Jewry, becomes law of the land.”

Herzl would have to be ambivalent about the state of the Jews one hundred years after his death. He correctly assumed that having our own state would return us to “normalcy” as nation and as individuals. We farm the land and successfully defend the land we farm. We have our own government which, with an array of parties and ideologies for the voter to choose from, is surely the most democratic in the world. We are a world leader in the fields of medical and hi-tech innovation; have for decades pioneered such now trendy “green” industries as solar and wind power, offshoot industries such as electric powered transportation. In agriculture Israel first developed sprinklers, then drip and deep root watering for arid land farming, developed domestic plants adapted to arid climates. And for decades Israel has freely shared her expertise and innovations with the hungry of third world countries.

But “normal” also means that the state of the Jews has, under constant threat and open warfare, living with the obligation and burden of military service and taxation led to Israelis gradually seeing themselves as citizens of Israel rather than the avant garde of the Jewish People in our collective Zionist enterprise. And we of the Diaspora, ourselves aware of the threats and pressures facing Israel and Israelis over the decades, have respected the boundary between state and Diaspora, have hesitated to express ourselves in most internal affairs of Israel, even those that impacted the Diaspora.

The result has been an ever-widening gulf between Diaspora Jewry and the state of the Jews, with the partnership of the Zionist Project receding as a result.

What is the Zionist Project, how does it even apply to 21st century Jewry? Zionism was born of the mid-to-late 19th century realization that our emancipation from serfdom and religious persecution did not mean we would be accepted into the newly secular states emerging in the west. Long before Herzl’s nationalist awakening during the anti-Dreyfusard riots in Paris, in his book Auto-Emancipation Leon Pinsker had decades earlier concluded that Jewish security would always be subject to the mood of the majority among whom we reside, that Jewish survival could only be assured in a Jewish homeland capable of its own defense.

But not even Pinsker and Herzl could have even imagined the degree of threat we faced mere decades in their future. Without the Holocaust, the west’s first attempt at a final solution to the Jewish Problem, Israel would likely have remained nothing but a dream among our fringe, a millennial and continuing yearning, “next year in Jerusalem!”

Israeli and Diaspora Jewry consider the creation of the State of Israel the culmination of Zionism. It is not. This was clearly understood and put into law by the first Knesset. With the ovens just cooling at Auschwitz, among the first of the Basic Laws was the definition and commitment of Israel as the instrument of Zionism. The opening line of the 1950 Law of Return states that, “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.” Israel’s Zionist mission, its reason for being, is to provide every Jew in need a home of choice, a refuge in time of need. The Law specifically excludes limitations such as, “only Jews “halachically pure” need apply, even were Halacha as rigid as some among the Haredi would like us to believe it is. The full intent of the Law cannot be made more clear than its Grandchild Clause, a provision extending refuge to anyone who falls under Germany’s 1932 Nuremburg Laws. Those laws define as “Jew” and subject to murder anyone with a single Jewish grandparent.

Israel has avoided writing a formal constitution, likely because of the delicate balance between the contradictory demands of secularism and orthodoxy in the state of the Jews. Orthodoxy in Israel is estimated as less than 25% of the Jewish population, less than 10% in the United States. But the prominence of Haredi parties in the Knesset and coalition gives them a platform and impact far beyond their small numbers. The issue of Who is a Jew is raised periodically in the Knesset, and while it has so far failed to pass into law, to judge by recent efforts in more main-stream Knesset forums and public discourse, resistance to the issue, typically expressed in challenging the status of the Law of Return, is eroding.

For decades rivalry between right-wing and left-wing parties has required whichever party achieved the most votes in an election to turn to the Haredi parties to form a coalition government. This effectively meant that the secular parties were hostage to Haredi political and social demands. This leverage has given the Haredi community social and economic advantages well beyond those enjoyed by all other Israelis. Only in the demand to define as “Jew” for matters religious and civil, the Who is a Jew proposal, did Knesset and state appear to draw the line.

So it is surprising that the Knesset Constitution and Law committee under the secular chairmanship of Yisrael Beiteinu’s David Rotem is promoting a change in the conversion process which would return control of the Conversion Courts to the Chief Rabbinate, effectively providing a Haredi a veto over Who is a Jew.

At the heart of Who is a Jew is the definition of Israel as secular and democratic, and committed to the Zionist Project, or sectarian, exclusionary and, at least as regards the non-orthodox Diaspora, anti-Zionist. Should the Rotem proposal regarding conversion pass the Knesset and become law Who is a Jew will also in time grow less controversial, find less resistance among secular policy-makers. Over time Israelis will adjust to their new change of status as they adjusted to the ban on public transportation on Shabbat. But where the Diaspora is unaffected by Shabbat public transportation in Israel, Who is a Jew has an immediate impact on our Jewish identity, on our status in Israel. So Diaspora Jewry are understandably troubled by this legislation. Should Rotem become law the reaction by US Jewry would almost certainly be immediate and harmful to Israel at a time when she is in dire need our support.

But of even greater importance for the long-term survival of the Jewish people is the impact of any such Haredi-inspired law calling into question the identity of Jews, of its impact on the bedrock of Israeli Zionist obligation, the Law of Return. Limit the Law and Israel will have abandoned its reason for being. Even were a back-door compromise on the Law written in, such as suspending Who is a Jew if and when the Diaspora faces another Holocaust, Jews living in the Diaspora would long-since have grown distant from Israel, will have become accustomed to view Israel as inhospitable and anti-Jewish. At that crucial moment, when hesitation would prove fatal, our Diaspora might well hesitate. And Israel would be responsible.

Israel is the creation of the Diaspora. Even before the Holocaust we anticipated the need for refuge. The state of the Jews is not the property of its current Jewish residents. In matters of defense and taxation and Shabbat transportation Israel is free to decide. In matters of Jewish identity, issues that intimately affect the Diaspora, she is not.

Of course Israel is a sovereign country and free to pass whatever laws she deems fit. And if Israel chooses to accommodate exclusionary forces within her Haredi community over the needs and concerns of our Diaspora she certainly has the power to do so. But doing so comes with baggage. Who is a Jew is anti-Zionist in form and intent. To adopt it, or steps towards it such as Rabbinate control over conversion and identity, is anti-Diaspora in form and intent.

Legitimizing Haredi control over conversion is a stalking horse for that other Haredi ambition, passage of Who is a Jew. With passage of Who is a Jew, discrimination against the non-orthodox, which includes the vast majority of Diaspora Jewry (Israelis are already, for the most part, reconciled to the intrusion), becomes law of the land.

Israel has embarked on a treacherous path the obvious outcome being an unbridgeable breach with the Diaspora. Having abandoned her Zionist mission she will then face a hostile world alone, without even the assurance of Diaspora support.

Eyeless in Gaza: Confused Priorities and the Iranian Bomb

By slightly adjusting for characters and causes, today’s Middle East situation is eerily similar to that of the 1950’s. US policy has again opened the door to a radical threat to Arabian Gulf oil producers. And, as in the 1950’s, the US is again allowing Russia to successfully challenge American prestige and power in the region.

The White House chose to turn a minor announcement by a mid-level Interior Ministry bureaucrat into a major diplomatic brouhaha during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel. The timing of the ministry release, more likely intended to embarrass Israel’s prime minister, was interpreted by Washington as a “slight” to the vice president and the United States. According to the administration, the incident nearly derailed the opening of indirect peace talks with the Palestinians, the purported reason for the Biden visit.

Within hours of the story hitting the press Saudi King Abdullah summoned the American defense secretary to Riyadh for an explanation. Was the king concerned at the asserted slight to American prestige, to the danger to the peace talks? According to Israeli military officials the real purpose behind Biden’s trip was not Palestine but Iran. Obama wanted Israel behind his Iran policy and Netanyahu resisted. The media blitz was payback.

That Iran, not American prestige or peace with the Palestinians was the reason behind White House ire is strongly reinforced by visits to Riyadh by other high administration officials. Weeks before the Biden incident the secretary of state was dispatched to reassure the Saudis, and failed. Soon after Biden left Jerusalem the chairman of the joint chiefs made the same trip, with the same result. But most telling was the press conference called by the prime minister of a Gulf emirate on the heels of Biden’s departure. According to the prime minister, regarding Iran, Gulf Arabs and Israel “see eye-to-eye.”

So what is America’s Iran policy, and why the need to reassure the Arabs, to threaten Israel?

The most obvious reason for regional loss of confidence in American policy can be traced to the fallout resulting from the Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the history of American policy mistakes in the region goes back farther, at least to the 1950’s. On 26 July, 1956 Egypt’s Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. England and France decided to take it back. The European plan called for Israel to occupy the Sinai and, as it approached the waterway, the Europeans would intervene to “protect” the canal. When the Russians threatened to side with Egypt President Eisenhower ordered the three “allies” to withdraw. Eisenhower would later describe that decision a mistake. The result was that for nearly two decades Russia, through its radical nationalist proxies in Egypt and Syria, threatened the US-protected Arab oil monarchies and other US interests in the region. By the 1960’s Israel was an essential partner to the US. Natural enemy of the Russian-backed radicals Israel served as counter threat which protected the oil producers, and American interests overall.

By slightly adjusting for characters and causes, today’s Middle East situation is eerily similar to that of the 1950’s. US policy has again opened the door to a radical threat to Arabian Gulf oil producers. And, as in the 1950’s, the US is again allowing Russia to successfully challenge American prestige and power in the region.

So the hurried summons by the Saudi’s, the statement by that Gulf state prime minister are two indications of the degree of threat felt in the region. Others include Saudi Arabia spending billions on a fence, a high tech Maginot Line, intended to surround the entire country. And while the Saudis did not volunteer to join Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, months ago they quietly let it be know that they would provide Israel an air corridor to conduct the strike, an offer recently renewed.

Other indicators of America-inspired regional angst are not difficult to find. Turkey, long time ally of the United States has, in recent years, grown increasingly distant, carving out an independent Middle East policy. Some analysts attribute the shift to its Islamist government, to dreams of a return to Ottoman glory. A more immediate explanation is that US failure to deal with the Iranian bomb necessitates her neighbors find an accommodation with the Islamic Republic.

Before the overthrow of Sadam Turkey would never have defied the United States at the UN, as it recently did by voting against the US drafted Iran sanctions package. Indeed, the week before that vote the Turks succeeded where the US had failed, to “convince” Ahmadinejad to accept, six months late, Obama’s offer to ship low grade uranium overseas for reprocessing. That gesture nearly derailed the US sponsored UN resolution which would have dealt a major defeat to US diplomacy.

Turkey’s prime minister has staked out a position of support of Hamas against Israel. Since Hamas is also on the US list of terrorist organizations, by doing so Turkey is demonstrating US weakness in being not even being able control its principal Moslem ally. How credible its assurances that it can deal decisively with Iran?

The Mavi Marmara incident is another example of American regional retreat. In this instance one ally, Turkey, was involved in sending a convoy of ships to break the legal naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza by another ally, Israel. Lives were lost with many injured on both sides. Hailed as a “new” Nasser, Erdogan followed up by threatening to send another convoy, this one led by the Turkish navy. And now Iran, intent on not being left behind, is sending its own ships to confront the Israel navy. And American failure to control regional events, even between allies, is again demonstrated.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind down, with Iraq increasingly drawn into the Iranian orbit, with Turkey continuing its drift to the Muslim east; as the threat to the Saudis and Gulf emirates by Russia-backed radical Iran increases so also will Israel’s importance to America. The US-Israel “special relationship” was never, for the senior partner, based on sentiment but on national self-interest. And the need for a reliable ally on the ground in the Middle East will be the basis for that new special relationship. Of course this presupposes the Obama administration can overcome prejudice regarding the Jewish state, can recognize and respond to the reality of the Iranian threat, not only its regional implications, but as part of a resurgent Russian global challenge.

There are some indications that America is coming to grips with the Russian reality. US backing for Georgia in that short-lived war is one example; installing Patriot missiles in Poland, albeit after months of hesitation, is another. But America’s response to Russia in the Middle East continues muddled and ineffective, a confusion of priorities and missed opportunities. The White House seems to accept that there is no longer a question of “winning” in Iraq, but merely containing the damage. In Afghanistan CIA and US Special Forces succeeded in bringing down the Taliban regime a decade ago. But the lesson of the defeat of conventional Russian forces in that country should have been warning enough against the current intervention. Not even the US installed and backed Afghan president believes the US can prevail.

The stakes for America in the Middle East are enormous, its position as world leader is at stake. The Iranian threat inflates the price of oil worldwide, a potential tipping point that can spell global economic disaster; the region is the land bridge between north and south, east and west. The Middle East, not southwest Asia, is America’s strategic imperative, Iraq and Afghanistan mere sideshow and distraction.

America, Iran and the “Showdown in Jerusalem”

According to recent news reports the controversy surrounding the visit by Vice President Joe Biden was, and would have remained, a tempest in a teapot. Only after the vice president’s hour and a half consultation with the White House the night of his state dinner with Netanyahu did the event become a high profile media fiasco.

Ramat Shlomo, topic of the controversy, is a suburb of Jerusalem previously recognized by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of Israel in a future peace accord. So while the timing of the Shas party’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s announcement of plans to build on the site two years in the future may be politically suspicious, the decision itself was not. Other than its timing there was nothing in the issue itself to justify the controversy.

Soon after arriving in Israel Biden began a series of meetings with Israeli leaders. While the talks touched on peace talks assumed to be the primary reason for the visit, the real conversations reportedly centered on Iran and the bomb. The substance of those discussions prompted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to summon Defense Secretary Gates, just flying out of Afghanistan, to make an unscheduled stop in Riyadh for “urgent clarifications."

What might have so alarm the Saudi king that prompted him to issue that summons; what might have warranted Gates agreeing to the unscheduled stopover? According to Israeli military sources, the summons immediately followed "the failure of US Vice President Joe Biden's talks with Israeli leaders to resolve their differences on Iran."

That Biden was unable to convince Israeli leaders should come as no surprise since administration Iran policy to date has nothing by way of success to show for more than a year of conciliatory gestures towards the Islamic Republic.

With the departure of its director Mohamed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed what had been widely known outside of the American intelligence community, that Iran had for years failed to comply with United Nations resolutions, had evaded inspections, and was now in an advanced stage of developing a nuclear weapon. Soon after the IAEA disclosure Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s boasted that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium to 20%, also known as the “breakthrough level” to weapons grade uranium. A few days later President Obama announced that he was, yet again, delaying his “final deadline” for “strong” sanctions.

Israel is not the only country in the region troubled by administration reluctance to take on the Iranian nuclear threat, as the Saudi summons to Gates demonstrates. Just two weeks earlier the president dispatched Secretary of State Clinton to Riyadh with the same message Biden brought to Israel: support the Obama sanctions effort, trust administration assurances. And the Saudis reportedly gave the secretary the same reply, but without the public upheaval from Washington following Israeli skepticism. The United States, the Saudis observed, is thousands of miles and an ocean away, so might be comfortable with a long-term sanctions program. But for states in the region the Iranian threat sits across a narrow water way, only seconds distant as the rocket flies. The only assurance that would satisfy the king would be the president’s pledge to back up those sanctions with military force, something recognized and approved by more than 60% of surveyed Americans.

And, as if the message to the president needed further evidence of how its hesitancy was seen by the Arabs, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, second only to Saudi Arabia in importance, told the press that his country and Israel "see eye to eye on the Iranian issue."

What is obvious from the above is that America’s approach to Iran does not inspire confidence in her allies, including Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. That the United States is reconciled to, and willing to accept a nuclear armed Iran is something totally unacceptable to Iran's neighbors across the gulf. This being the case no amount of assurance by the president’s emissaries will serve to convince, to reassure. By their concerns expressed in the press Arab oil producers view American policy as more directed at protecting its interests in gulf oil and its transport than with the survival of the regimes producing it.

And, following seven years of chairman of Admiral Mullen’s repeated concern that an attack on Iran would result in “unintended consequences,” Israel is forced to agree with the Saudis that the Obama Administration long since concluded that an Iranian bomb is a fait accompli, that America’s Iran policy is of appeasement, containment and deterrence.

Since it is unrealistic for the administration to expect Israel and the Arabs to fall on their swords for the superpower, President Obama must choose between equally undesirable alternatives. To prioritize Afghanistan over Iran will, in the end, likely result in the loss of American influence over the region, and its oil.

Alternatively the United States can begin to behave as “the world’s only superpower,” fulfill its obligations to defend the region and its oil. But this will require Obama use the real threat of force to deter Iranian ambitions. And be prepared, should threat fail to deter, to carry through on those threats.

There is precedence for an alternative to America joining the fight. In 1957 President Eisenhower intervened to save the Egyptian president by forcing the withdrawal of England, France and Israel following the 1956 Suez War. By saving President Nasser Eisenhower unleashed a decade of radical Arab nationalism, opened wide the door to Soviet influence in the Middle East. Today, by coincidence, a resurgent Russian is supporting Iran. And those same conservative Arab oil producing monarchies, threatened forty years ago by Nasser’s radical secular Arab nationalism are today threatened by Ahmadinejad’s radical Islamic fundamentalism.

The Obama Administration expresses concern that defiance by Israel presents the United States as weak on the world stage, so places American global interests and her military forces stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan in danger. I suggest that America is judged by its actions, not by those of such mini-states as Israel and Saudi Arabia, or even Syria and Iran. That reputation is earned and, unfortunately, deserved. Let the United States act as the superpower she insists she is and no one would doubt or challenge her strength.

Today the United States is a hesitant giant. But in the fast-evolving Iranian situation hesitation is not an option. The administration’s only choice is to either lead, follow or get out of the way. In the final analysis Admiral Mullen’s mantra is correct: whichever course Obama takes will have “unintended consequences.”

Israel’s coming war with Iran

When it comes to the Middle East the only apparent consistency in American policy appears to be confusion.

At least since 2006 there has been a struggle within the White House to define a clear strategy confronting the problem of Iran. Through six years of his presidency George W. Bush regularly threatened military action. But, as the war in Iraq dragged on and Iranian influence in the former Sunni state grew, Bush needed Iranian influence to contain the Shiite militancy supported and encouraged by the Islamic Republic. Even threat itself grew less frequent until, by 2006 Bush's closest advisers were warning that a US attack on a third Muslim country would harm American interests in the region.

Then, in 2007, came the appointment of Admiral Michael Mullen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At an early news conference the admiral warned of “unforeseen dangers” should the US attack Iran. American policy was shifting from confrontation to sanctions.

When, later in 2007 the sixteen intelligence agencies contributing to National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded “with great confidence” that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, American interest in forcing Iran into compliance seemed to evaporate completely.

Today, one year into the Obama successor administration, the zigs and zags of the Bush Administration continue. One day sanctions with hits of a military option, the next sanctions as its own end and today we learn that not only are sanctions a thing for the future, but that the administration has reverted to "secret" talks with the Iranian regime.

And America’s vice president and long-time friend of Israel Joe Biden visits Israel apparently to inaugurate the latest round in futile Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. Except, as it turns out, the real purpose of the visit is to inform Israel that beginning now the two “allies” are marching in lock-step regarding Iran, with the senior partner, dazed and confused, leading the way.

No wonder that Turkey, astride the strategic crossroads of a Russian or Iranian advance on the Middle East, long-time ally of the United States and Israel, has been increasingly friendly towards Iran and Syria, increasingly distant from Israel.

No wonder that, at their recent Damascus summit Syria, Hezbollah and the Emirate of Qatar all agreed to host Iranian Revolutionary Guards on their territory. Of course Syria and Lebanon have long-since welcomed an Iranian presence. But Qatar? The emirate is host to America’s largest airbase outside the United States, an airbase whose sole purpose is to protect Qatar and its Arab oil producing neighbors from the Iranians.

No wonder that, on her recent visit to the Middle East, the Saudi king lectured America’s Secretary of State that sanctions may or not eventually prove effective, but the Iranian threat is immediate and demands an immediate American response.

Given American confusion, its abandonment of diplomacy-backed-by-threat-of-force, an Israeli response to this American created and exacerbated problem is increasingly likely. But, while Mullen and the US are using his “unforeseen dangers” as reason not to attack, feeble as the excuse, the dangers are real; and more so for Israel, a country a fraction of the size and influence of its super power ally. So, while it is increasingly likely that Israel will at some point be forced by American complacency to act, the conditions under which she does so must be carefully weighed and orchestrated to minimize those risks.

The recent warning by Defense Minister Barak that an attack by Hezbollah would be viewed by Israel as an attack by its sponsors suggests the path Israel may follow.

The gravest threat to Israel is not in engaging Iran in a four-front war with bordering Syria, Hezbollah, Gaza behind an Iranian missile shield, but in the repercussions by a world plunged into yet a second round of economic distress due to the war. The Iraq invasion triggered an oil price spiral that eventually reached its peak in the global Great Recession. An attack on Iran will bring on a second and likely far more severe shock to the price of oil. Its impact to a global economy just beginning to emerge from recession may well tip the world into an economic depression. And the initiator of the war, not the United States but Israel, would be blamed.

In such a situation Israel would find herself isolated, not just by Europe, but by its long-time “ally,” the country most responsible for the runaway Iran crisis, the United States. Nor will that isolation end with cessation of hostilities, because the resulting financial crisis will be long-lasting, its resentments also long-lasting.

Israel isolated is Israel vulnerable, and her enemies in the region will quickly appreciate the opportunity. And those enemies, Shiite-Sunni rivalry temporarily set aside, will take advantage of the unique opportunity and strike.

Under this scenario Israel will have neither military nor diplomatic cover, just Jews against Muslims. In virtually every war Israel has been forced into or chosen, in the end she was dependent on an outside source for munitions and arms. In the 1973 Suez War Nixon authorized the massive resupply airlift only after Israel agreed to American terms regarding the outcome of the conflict. Minus that airlift Sharon would not have had the supplies to cross the Canal and surround the Egyptian Third Army. Minus that airlift it would have been Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that would have been threatened, not Cairo.

The United States today is ordering Israel into compliance. The risks involved in open defiance of the order are dire. So Israel will have to avoid the appearance of initiating the attack.

How this might be achieved was hinted at in Defense Minister Barak’s warning that an attack by Hezbollah would be considered an attack by her masters in Syria and Iran. In diplo-speak this suggests a warning to Iran to keep Hezbollah on a short leash. But where conditions are ripe, and Hezbollah or Hamas test Israel, and the test escalates? According to the rules laid out at that recent Damascus summit, should Hezbollah or Hamas or Syria find itself at war with Israel the others are sworn to join the war. An Iranian misstep in support of her allies would be a causus belli no less than when Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran in 1967. Under such a direct provocation Israel would have justification for defending herself against Iran, and the nuclear facilities become open and justifiable targets. With the onus of aggression removed, although the impact on the global economy would be the same, the onus for having initiated the war would be on Iran, not Israel.

But let's be clear that, regardless of which country initiates the conflict, once combat between Israel and Iran commences the United States will have to participate actively in defense of Gulf oil and shipping. Even today, in addition to that massive air base in Qatar there are two aircraft carrier battle groups patrolling the waters of the gulf. The United States is already involved.

Should war break out under these condition the US would be drawn into the conflict and, as a participant, would be in a position to, in the end, enter a quid-pro-quo with the ayatollahs allowing the regime to survive, but with full and verifiable compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. Israel could emerge not only victorious again, but stronger. The appearance of provocation on the world diplomatic stage could well make the difference.

America’s Iran policy: Leave it to Israel!

"Let me be clear: We owe [Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates] and [President Obama] a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness," Adm. Mullen said. "But, as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action."

"[M]ost of us believe the greater threats [than Iran and the bomb] are the trans-national non-state networks," i.e. "al-Quaeda." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is now agreeing with Israel and most western intelligence agencies that Iran, "may currently be working on ways to turn enriched uranium into a nuclear warhead, instead of having stopped several years ago. This "...contradicts an assessment by Washington [the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, NIE] that Teheran suspended such activities in 2003." According to IAEA, "...Iran managed to make a minute amount of near 20-percent enriched uranium within days of starting production from lower-enriched material."

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington suggests that, 70 percent of the work toward reaching weapons-grade uranium was achieved when Iran succeeded in enriching uranium to 3.5 %. To bring it to Ahmadinejad's announced target of 20%, the breakthrough point to weapons grade enrichment, would take the process another "15 to 20 percent of the way there." To take it to the 90%, weapons grade level, could be achieved in months. Even more dangerous, according to Albright, the final enrichment step would require a much smaller and more easily concealed facility.

By IAEA evidence, then, even Mr. Albright's challenge to the years-long multi-US intelligence assumptions regarding the time-frame for Iran to reach the breakthrough enrichment level was very wrong.

On 2 February US, defense secretary Robert Gates told a news conference in Italy that, "I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work."

A few hours later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a CNN interviewer that, "most of us believe the greater threats are [not Iran and the bomb, but] the trans-national non-state networks [al-Qaueda affiliates]." And no doubt she is correct today regarding the security of the continental United States, an ocean away from the threat. But Israel and the Arab states are mere minutes as the missile flies, and for them the danger is not abstract, something that can wait.

On 3 February Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered "work to begin on producing 20 per cent enriched uranium." And whether that process preceded his order to enrich to breakthrough level, two weeks later he announced the deed done.

Caught off-balance yet again the administration repeated its "hope" that the UN Security Council would finally agree to "tough" new sanctions. According to a senior White House official, "This [sanctions policy] is about driving them back to negotiations, "because the real goal here is to avoid war." But if war is an extension of diplomacy, what is diplomacy without the threat of war?

As regards America's strategic interests in the Middle East, most visibly Arab oil, should US inaction permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability then options for her regional "allies" would quickly narrow. This narrowing is already evident in Turkey. A strategic US partner since the 1950's, Turkey has for several years been seeking accommodation with Iran. One example of this drift is her increasingly cool relationship with that other US regional military ally, Israel. At the same time as Turnkey distances herself from Israel her support for Hamas and her relationship with Iran's strategic partner in the region, Syria, continue to increase.

So, why America’s reluctance to take on in a more direct and serious manner the Iranian threat we need look no further than US Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen’s fears. Faced with more than a decade of American distraction in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, America's traditional defense shield over the Middle East, and particularly covering the oil-producing countries of the Arabian Peninsula has, put mildly, frayed. While the Arabs see themselves increasingly abandoned, the Iranians find the region increasingly open to their influence. And the perception of American weakness, while fueling Arab anxieties, emboldens Iranian aggressiveness.

Should Iran end up a nuclear power, surrounding states from Egypt to Afghanistan would have few choices but to accommodate Iran following the Turkish model, or try to counter the Iranian threat with nuclear weapons of their own. Either way the world would grows far more dangerous. And the increased threat to Middle East oil would will fast trigger a return to the oil price inflation attendant to Bush's invasion of Iraq. If the oil speculation frenzy following that invasion tipped the world towards the Great Recession, the response to a renewed threat to oil on a world just emerging from that recession would be catastrophic. But that's not the worst of it.

US intelligence has long warned of the interest of al-Quaeda in obtaining a nuclear capability. Whether or not Iran will, once it builds its bomb, have the technical ability to fit a nuclear warhead atop a missile, they will certainly have the technology to produce a small plutonium device, one well suited for use by terrorists. And which countries would be most vulnerable to such a weapon? Think Madrid, think London, both cities targets of more recent mass terror attacks. And, of course, the United States, a country only beginning to wake to its own home grown terrorist threat.

Israel, on most countries short list as primary target would, because of its long experience with countering local terrorism, be among the most difficult, so least likely immediate targets.

US policy is unchanged since Bush, provided the 2007 NIE “estimate,” abandoned threat of military action and turned instead to “containment” by sanctions. A serious question is, Do administration insiders even believe sanctions can work? According to the Times article quoted above, "the list of [Iranian] sanctions is [already] six pages long. But none have accomplished the central goal. "Not surprising since," the article continues, "North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar have been economically isolated for decades, with little effect."

So, if the US is anxiously searching for a way to avoid war, where does this leave Israel? Administration efforts to get the Chinese aboard the sanctions train centered on the threat that, "there is something worse than sanctioning Iran: letting war break out between Israel and Iran [and disrupting China's Iranian flow of oil]." Since sanctions without the threat of force is a known dead end, what remains is that, while the US provides a toothless sanctions bark, Israel is for Obama as she was for Bush, the US policy choice to provide the military bite. In my earlier article, "Israel, America's Shaheed?" I concluded that the risks to Israel for attacking would far outweigh even the risks of living with a nuclear-armed Iran. My conclusion remains unchanged.

Iran is, via the Iraq invasion, a made in America problem. The responsibility for its solution resides solely with that country. Only the US has the wherewithal to effectively carry out a military strike, if it comes to that, and withstand the fallout resulting from its impact on the global economy. Israel cannot afford to act as America's pawn in this matter. Her past and present position serves only to encourage the US in its efforts to evade responsibility for dealing with the problem. A public statement to the effect that "Israel stands by the United States and will support any initiative our American friends undertake to eliminate the Iranian threat, including an American led military action," would serve to put the administration on notice, would return responsibility for the solution and its consequences to the superpower and return worldwide focus back to its appropriate target.

Israel cannot place loyalty and machismo above survival. Israel is not America's shaheed.



David Turner blogs at, America, Israel and the Special Relationship and, Israel.

Israel, America’s Shaheed?

Iran is a made-in-America problem with Israel being stuck with the bill. But this bill represents an existential threat to Israel at least as serious as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ever since 2007, when Bush abandoned his oft-repeated threat to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program by force Israel has, apparently with little thought to consequences, stepped into the gap. Where does this enthusiasm come from? Are we so needy of U.S. approval, insecure as country that we have to parade our machismo endlessly across the world stage? Is it pride that blinds us to the fact that we are being set up for a suicide mission?

While Bush Administration appetite to wage war on Iran had been fading for some time, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (NIE) gave Bush the cover needed to bow out of his threats with some dignity. And from then until the present all threats against Iran emanating from the White House and the Joint Chiefs have directly or not pointed to Israel as designated warrior. Herb Keinon recently referred to White House Middle East expert Dennis Ross as warning the Chinese that if they did not join Obama’s most recent push for sanctions that Israel, “could bomb Iran and severely damage China's crucial Persian Gulf oil needs.” And just this week French president Sarkozy warned Lebanon’s prime minister Hariri that, “Israel might take action to prevent the Iranian regime… from obtaining a nuclear bomb.” Forget that French-built Iranian reactors continue to supply fuel for that weapons program.

Who does Israel think will stand by her when the attack on Iran produces the consequence Ross threatened China with, but on a global scale? Bush invading Iraq resulted in the price of oil skyrocketing from the mid-$20’s to more than $100 per barrel. Oil price inflation set the stage for the resulting global recession only now beginning to ease. But Iran is not Iraq, and Israel is definitely not the United States. If the U.S. has backed away from the consequences of such an attack, is Israel prepared to accept them? When the Iranians mine the Straits of Hormuz, or just threaten to do so, and a new round of oil speculation sparks yet another global economic crisis, will the United States, the country most responsible for permitting the Iranian problem to get this far, will Israel’s super power ally still support tiny Israel? Or will the U.S. distance herself while the world blames Israel for the new round of global misery?

Nor is the danger to Israel alone. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Agency recently released a report concluding that, “Anti-Semitism has reached a global peak since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead… levels of Jew-hatred have not been so high since the Second World War.” If a far lesser Israeli military action with no direct impact on Israel’s critics, how much more dangerous would the reaction to an attack whose consequences directly impact those predisposed by history to blame the Jews?

How did Iran grow into the massive problem it represents today?

With the invasion of Iraq Bush replaced Sadam and his Sunni Ba’ath party with a government headed by Iraqi Shiites. By that single act Iraq was overnight transformed from mortal enemy and barrier to Iranian hegemonic ambitions into a potential ally and invasion corridor, brought the Iranian threat to the border of Saudi oil wells. Responding to the dual threat of an Iranian bomb, and an increasingly uncertain American defense umbrella, countries from Yemen in the south to Turkey in the north are forced to seek accommodation with the emerging Iranian reality.

But the 2007 NIE allowing Bush to step back from Iran contradicted most credible intelligence agencies assessments of the situation, including Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s MI6 and Germany’s BND. The soon to be released 2010 NIE reportedly concedes its 2007 “mistake.” According to government sources quoted in Newsweek, “U.S. analysts now believe that Iran may well have resumed ‘research’…but that Tehran is not… actually trying to build a weapon (my quotes).” Two “estimates” for two presidents. With that earlier NIE having insisted that Iraq possessed those missing WMD, and so justified invading Iraq, it is fair to at least question the reliability and credibility of the combined wisdom of those 16 intelligence agencies party to the “assessment.” Is US intelligence merely a rubber stamp and whitewash for White House policy? If so, what might the 2010 NIE indicate about current US policy towards Iran and the Middle East?

President Obama, unlike his predecessor, prefers diplomacy and the threat of sanctions over bluster and the threat of war. And to all early signs the 2010 NIE will provide the new administration with the “intelligence” needed to justify that policy. After all, Iranian “research” is not the same as an active program to “develop” a bomb. So the United States has the leisure to pursue its policy of diplomacy while the Iranians continue to pursue their policy of the bomb, a clear and present danger to those counties actually facing the threat on the ground.

Just how real is that threat to the Arabs, to Arab oil? As this is being written the Saudis, who share a long border with Iraq, are building a physical wall between the two states and along its coastline, an Arab Maginot Line. They are also fighting a cross-border war with Iran-backed tribesmen in Yemen. And along the Mediterranean Israel is facing Iranian proxies in Assad’s Syria, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while down the coast Egypt is building an underground barrier to close Hamas weapons smuggling tunnels.

And to prepare Egyptians for the possibility of war by their Israeli protector against Iran, several months ago the Egypt’s press followed closely the passage of an Israeli submarine and accompanying flotilla through the Suez Canal. While Israeli military traffic through the canal is not in itself newsworthy, Egyptian press coverage is. And further evidence of this “pro-Israel” course change, Egypt’s semi-official al-Ahram newspaper last week described Israel’s Mossad chief Meir Dagan, “a hero who single handedly delayed Iran's advance on a nuclear weapon by several years."

The Saudis, in the meantime, are reported to be sharing intelligence on Iran with Israel, and have quietly given permission for Israel to pass over Saudi airspace in a future bombing run on Iran.

Iran is a made-in-America problem with Israel being stuck with the bill. But this bill represents an existential threat to Israel at least as serious as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. At best the outcome of the attack would, according to Israeli intelligence, not end the threat but merely delay it by “a few years.” But as the lone country to launch the attack Israel alone would be held responsible by the world for the economic crisis certain to follow. Already surrounded by an Arab world hostile to her very existence Israel can ill afford to be shunned also by the rest of the world.

So where does this leave Israel? The U.S. is irresolute, preferring not to be responsible for acting, ignoring not only the risk to its oil interests but the fate of its “allies”, and the likelihood of a regional nuclear arms race. Nor was this withdrawal from responsibility an innovation of the Obama Administration. It is an American position with deep roots in the Bush Administration. Still, regardless who introduced the policy, Iran is a threat not just to Israel but to all states of the region. And while the Egyptians and Saudis are apparently willing to quietly applaud an Israeli attack, neither has publicly allied itself with the Jewish state in its own defense and self-interest.

If the United States is content to remain aloof from her responsibilities towards the defense of her allies and Arab oil, of the danger posed by a Middle East nuclear arms race, then at least take responsibility for inducting the Arab states to join Israel in fulfillment of America’s obligations. As did Bush, Sr., use that preferred diplomacy to “encourage” diplomatically America’s Arab clients to join in a renewed “coalition of the willing” against the common strategic threat.

But the more sensible course of action for Israel would be to stop enabling the US to shun its responsibilities and withdraw from the playing field. Force the administration to act on behalf of its own responsibilities and strategic interests. Better to wait out the U.S., force her superpower ally, so much better able to absorb the shock of blame for the war’s fallout, than to accept a shaheed’s death.

This article also appears in slightly different form at, http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/guest/entry/israel_america_s_shaheed_posted and, http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/america-israel-and-the-special-relationship/.

Responses to my jpost article were posted after it was taken down from the front page, so I was unable to maintain a dialogue with the responders. I did, however, post my own response in case those who submitted were still following the blog.

1 flinky dinky, Thursday Jan 28, 2010
Of course, prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 military action had been heavily pushed for some time by the Israel Lobby, just as the same forces now pushes hard for military action on Iran. However, it appears the Israel Lobby has made enemies in the rank and file of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, and this takes the form of concerted resistance to any form of military action on Iran.

#1, Such confidence, but little knowledge. In fact Israel, the Saudis and the CIA all came out AGAINST Iraq, favoring the more dangerous Iran. And even there favored a diplomatic confrontation. See Bush*s CIA director Tennant*s memoir on issue.

15 Jacob - Amsterdam, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
Israel could go a long way in assuring its future if it would sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open up Dimona and any other nuclear sites to UN inspection. As things stand now, Israel wants to be excepted from international standards while insisting that others comply. Israel itself is the source of many of the problems it faces.

#15, Israel is not a member of NPT for good reason. If she has the bomb, to say so would start the nuclear arms race I suggest regarding an Iranian bomb. Israel may or not have it, but not saying so provides reassurance through ambiguity. The real question is What is Israel*s motive for an implied nuclear arsenal? She is small, isolated and vulnerable. An implicit threat provides end-game deterrence against the explicit threat of being *pushed into the sea.* In four major wars Israel never openly threatened a nuclear defense. The bomb, for Israel, is purely defensive. The Iranian bomb is not.

23 Larry xxxxx, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
Anyting Israel does will be seen as America having given it the green light, no matter what America says. SO GO AHEAD AND BOMB IRAN.

#23, Refer to my comment to #15. Ambiguity provides no hard evidence, so the world is free to interpret according to self-interest. Unless the United States is openly seen as the bringer of the global disaster likely to follow, unless it is the US that leads the attack openly, then whoever does do the deed will be seen through the prism of self-interest and predisposition. Would a Taiwan take on the US for the *possible* green light, or insignificant Israel. And what about the west and its long tradition of antisemitism? Blame the US when blaming Israel would *feel* so much more satisfying?

25 CARES1996, Saturday Jan 30, 2010
DAVID,HAVE YA GONE CRAZY MAN,WITHDRAWAL FROM THE FEILD AT WHO`S PERIL,ISRAELI DISENGAGEMENT WOULD BE GROSSLY NAIVE,THIS IS WHY SOME THINK WE NEED AN INTL. HOLIDAY,TO REMEMBER WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF CLOSE ATTENTION ISN`T PAID,THANK GOD YOUR NOT THE PRIME MINISTER. YEAH LETS ALL JUST PRETEND NOTHING`S GOING ON AND THAN NOTHING WILL HAPPEN,WHY DIDN`T SOMEBODY THINK OF THAT BEFORE,WAIT (CHAMBERLAIN)SORRY DAVE,WITHDRAWAL FROM PROBLEM NOT AN OPTION.

#25, I never said Israel should withdraw from the field, but. either sit back and let the resulting pressure of a growing Iranian threat ripen, forcing the US to accept its superpower responsibilities; or wait for the US to increase the list of its ME surrogates by inducing the Sunni Arab states to openly participate in another *coalition of the willing,* Saudi and Egyptian aircraft participation in the action. While the antisemites would still blame Israel, of course, blame would be more defuse, and Israel would not suffer global isolation, a very real existential threat to her survival.

David Turner also blogs at