Will Israel Attack Iran? When I mentioned to Barak the opinion voiced by the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi — that the Iranian threat was not as imminent as he and Netanyahu have suggested and that a military strike would be catastrophic (and that they, Barak and Netanyahu, were cynically looking to score populist points at the expense of national security), Barak reacted with uncharacteristic anger. He and Netanyahu, he said, are responsible “in a very direct and concrete way for the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people.” As for the top-ranking military personnel with whom I’ve spoken who argued that an attack on Iran was either unnecessary or would be ineffective at this stage, Barak said: “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions.
But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us — the minister of defense and the prime minister. 1. 2. 3. Israel's Spy Revolt - By Natan Sachs. Something has gone very wrong with Israel's posture on Iran's nuclear program. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak lead a confrontational approach -- including dramatic interviews and speeches to U.S. audiences that have convinced many that Israel might soon strike Iran's nuclear facilities -- the former heads of Israel's intelligence agencies have come out publicly against the government's position.
First, Meir Dagan -- who headed the Mossad until late 2010 and coordinated Israel's Iran policy -- called an attack on Iran "the most foolish thing I've heard. " In April, Yuval Diskin -- the previous head of the domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet -- voiced a scathing and personal critique of Netanyahu and Barak. Diskin questioned not only the leaders' policy, but also their very judgment and capacity to lead, warning against their "messianic" approach to Iran's nuclear program. But not all view the Israeli strategy this way. The Iran-Israel What-If. What if we change places with Iran for a moment? Let’s say we’ve been learning that (a) Western nations are implementing even tougher sanctions as payback for our sovereign right to develop our nuclear capacity in order to accomplish whatever goal we choose and (b) Israel is basically telling everyone—us, the United States, its allies, and especially the New York Times—that it will wipe out our nuclear facilities before the year is out should we, the sovereign nation of Iran, go ahead.
Which would be an act of war. Or let’s try trading places with Israel. It is (see above) making no secret of its likely plans. They’re less a Netanyahu trial balloon than a Netanyahu public promise engraved in stone, available for anyone, Leon Panetta especially, to read. There are now, Israel estimates, around 40,000 missiles, all far more lethal and some with the capacity to target Tel Aviv, in Hezbollah’s hands. Really, it has no choice. Really, Assad would have no choice. This may all be bluff. What Happens After Israel Attacks Iran. Since its birth in 1948, Israel has launched numerous preemptive military strikes against its foes. In 1981 and 2007, it destroyed the nuclear reactors of Iraq and Syria, operations that did not lead to war. But now, Israelis are discussing the possibility of another preemptive attack -- against Iran -- that might result in a wider conflict. The public debate in Israel about whether Jerusalem should order a strike on Iran’s nuclear program is surprisingly frank.
Politicians and policymakers often discuss the merits of an attack in public; over the past year, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have sparred regularly and openly with former Mossad director Meir Dagan, the most prominent opponent of an Israeli operation. Indeed, the analysis in Israel about the possible effects of a bombing campaign against Iran is limited to a small, professional elite, mostly in government and behind closed doors.
To continue reading, please log in. Israel's Iran Dilemma. The Iranian regime has long been committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. Its program to build a nuclear weapon is close—just how close is unclear—to reaching the “zone of immunity,” after which a dash to produce nuclear weapons cannot be stopped. This combination of eliminationist anti-Semitism and nuclear capacity has placed the most fateful decision since the founding of the state on the shoulders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak: whether or not to conduct pre-emptive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The dilemma is excruciating. And it faces the world, not just Israel. A nuclear Iran would set off the blue touch paper on a regional nuclear arms race as well as create a shield behind which Iranian proxies (militias, terror networks) could run amok. There are a cluster of factors suggesting that a strike may be the only real option, and that it has a chance of being effective. Photo Credit: Pete Souza. Nuclear War in Iran: Six questions to consider about whether and how it might happen. Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images; Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images. Not long ago an editor at a respected scientific journal contacted me. He wanted to know if I could expand—scientifically—upon the scenarios I sketched out in my recent book, assessing the likelihood of nuclear war in the Middle East.
The book began with an account of a 2007 Israeli raid on a nuclear reactor being built in a remote corner of Syria. A hushed-up rehearsal, perhaps, for a future raid on Iran. In these conjectural sketches I had adumbrated the possibility that by the Law of Unintended Consequences, an attack by Israel (or by Iran) could lead to a cascade of ever more grave developments, ranging from a regional nuclear war to, potentially, a global one. The science journal editor seemed to think so. “Zone of immunity” is Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak’s term for bomb-making facilities buried so deep they’d be theoretically impossible to target and destroy with Israeli conventional weaponry. Q. A. Q. A. Q. "Iran’s Nuclear Grass Eaters" by Shlomo Ben-Ami.
Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space MADRID – After long years of failed international efforts to end Iran’s cunning drive to develop nuclear weapons, the question today is no longer whether the West can prevent the nuclearization of Iran’s military arsenal, but whether the Islamic regime collapses first. Unfortunately, if it does not, the only option for stopping Iran is war – and war is a very bad option. Pakistan is worth invoking when assessing whether the sanctions now imposed on Iran will force it to surrender its nuclear program. In 1965, Pakistani Foreign Minister Zulficar Ali Bhutto famously declared that if India, its sworn enemy, went nuclear, his country would “eat grass and even go hungry” in order to develop a nuclear bomb of its own.
Today, Pakistan, a near-failed state on the verge of disintegration, possesses more nuclear warheads than India. The French and the Soviet revolutions taught us that exporting the revolution is one way to protect it. Red, Red Lines - By Colin H. Kahl, Matthew Irvine, and Melissa G. Dalton. In an April 18 speech commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu painted a stark picture of the Iranian nuclear threat and made clear that Israel might soon have to take military action to address it: Today, the regime in Iran openly calls and determinedly works for our destruction.
And it is feverishly working to develop atomic weapons to achieve that goal.… Seventy years ago the Jewish people did not have the national capacity to summon the nations, nor the military might to defend itself. But today things are different.… Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons. It is the duty of the whole world, but above and beyond, it is our duty. As Iran's nuclear progress continues, the risk of an Israeli preventive strike grows. Given ongoing talks between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (the so-called P5+1), an Israeli attack may not be imminent. On June 1, U.S.
ATTA KENARE/AFP/GettyImages. Hands On Syria, Hands Off Iran by Martin van Creveld. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space CAMBRIDGE – Israel is daily ratcheting up its threats to attack Iran over its nuclear program. Unfortunately, these threats have come to overshadow more pressing events in Syria, which is the epicenter of a regional crisis that will determine the future of the Arab Spring, as well as Iran’s role in the Middle East. Throughout 2011, the Arab uprisings were driven by each country’s internal dynamics. Yet the disparate movements were united by the pursuit of freedom, dignity, and economic opportunity. Now this liberal narrative is breaking down. Chaos reigns in Egypt and Libya, where post-revolution authorities are proving too brittle either to consolidate their authority, or to incorporate more popular forces. This violence could spill over into Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, increasing the risk of a regional conflagration. Whereas Turkey is on the rise regionally, Iran is in decline.
It is Israel's fears, not a nuclear Iran, that we must tame | David Grossman. In his speeches, Binyamin Netanyahu likes to fire up his audiences with frequent references to the Holocaust, Jewish destiny and the fate of future generations. In light of this doomsday rhetoric, one wonders if Israel's prime minister can always distinguish between the real dangers confronting the country and shadows of past traumas. This question is crucial, because to confuse one with the other could sentence Israel to relive those echoes and shadows. If all that – the tough talk, the big bellows of catastrophe –, is no more than a tactic meant to enlist the world to tighten the screws on Iran, and if the tactic were to succeed without an Israeli attack, then we would happily acknowledge, of course, that the prime minister had done an excellent job, for which he deserves due credit and kudos.
But if he indeed thinks and operates within a hermetic worldview that swings between poles of disaster and salvation, we are in a very different universe of discourse. Netanyahu: Iran good at playing this chess game. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu weighed in Friday on the next round of Iran nuclear ngotiations, due to take place next week in Baghdad. He spoke at a press availability in Prague, and his comments were forwarded by the Israeli embassy: “Obviously, nothing would be better than to see this issue resolved diplomatically. But I have seen no evidence that Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear weapons program.
It looks as though they see these talks as another opportunity to device and delay just like North Korea did for years.They may try to go from meeting to meeting with empty promises. They may agree to something in principle but not implement it. Netayahu Iran Policies Rejected By Increasing Numbers in Israel. Israelis hold placards as they protest, against a possible attack of Iran's nuclear facilities, in Tel Aviv March 24, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Nir Elias) Author: Meir Javedanfar Posted April 24, 2012 After winning the Kadima primaries on March 27, Shaul Mofaz gave his first television interview as head of the party. He immediately started attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, especially his policies and statements regarding Iran. Summary⎙ Print Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar writes that Netanyahu's Iran policy is increasingly unpopular in Israel. “[Netanyahu] wants to create an image that he is the protector of Israel,” stated the Iranian-born Mofaz.
Bickering among Israeli politicians is the norm. Nevertheless, the criticism to which the Netanyahu Iran policy has been subjected recently is unprecedented in Israel. There are a number of reasons behind the recent domestic backlash. First and foremost are public statements by former heads of the Mossad. Israelis afflictions: instilled memory and paranoia vera > Palestine. Israel's secular middle class strikes back | Carlo Strenger.
The international press has paid remarkably little attention to Israel's civil uprising in the last weeks – probably because, ostensibly, it is about a purely internal matter: the exorbitantly high cost of housing in Israel. Inside Israel, this uprising is filling the pages of all newspapers and websites. The uprising started in Tel Aviv. Daphni Leef, a 25-year-old video editor, was sick and tired of the high rents she could no longer afford to pay. On Facebook she called upon other youngsters to join her on Tel Aviv Rothschild Boulevard to set up tents and protest. In the beginning, Likud members of the Knesset dismissed the uprising as a "far-left conspiracy", but soon the Netanyahu government, generally quite impervious to the public's mood, became nervous.
The demonstrators have kept the protests apolitical, and a week ago, support for their demands commanded the support of 87% of the respondents to a Haaretz poll – an unheard of degree of unity in Israel's divided citizenry. Zionism is the Problem. It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept. " For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism. Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. It's not working. Jewish communities clash as zealots bully schoolgirl - Middle East, World News. Aron Heller in Beit Shemesh, Israel – Updated 01 December 2012 01:51 PM Naama Margolese is a ponytailed, bespectacled pupil who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls' school for fear of ultra-Orthodox extremists who have spat on her and called her a whore for dressing "immodestly".
Her plight has drawn new attention to the simmering issue of religious coercion in Israel, and the increasing brazenness of extremists in the insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. "When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared ... that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting," the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview. "They were scary. The girls' school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.
The ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 10pc of Israel's population. Ultra-Orthodox Attacks on Israel’s Women Linked to Arab Inequality. Naama Margolese: Why did the Haredim call her a whore? What to make of the Israeli movement for social justice. Tent Revolt in Tel Aviv. Israel: The Knesset vs. Democracy by Dimi Reider. Israeli Democracy Faces an Intensifying Conflict of Values.
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