The answer in our mind is, yes! Need I say more?
Israel has always had to stand alone so why would this be any different? Yes, there has been belated help like in the 1973 War when the United States under President Nixon sent tanks to replace those that had been destroyed early in the war. But that is just my opinion.
Read more from internal Israeli sources in the following article. It is enlightening.
Will Israel Face Iran Alone?
P. David Hornik - FrontPage Magazine, November 16th, 2011
Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem correspondent for Britain’s Telegraph, reports that “Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” and that Obama “was rebuffed last month when he demanded” such a guarantee.Blomfield says he has this dope from “insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America’s most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s hawkish prime minister….” He’s referring to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Israel last month, during which, in a “private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak,” Panetta conveyed Obama’s “urgent” demand. Yet
the two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States….Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu’s noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions.
The report meshes with Panetta’s not-so-veiled warning to Israel just before that visit to lay off Iran, and with his statement this week—albeit not explicitly directed at Israel—that an attack on Iran could have “unintended consequences…. It could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on US forces in the region.”
The same message came through from Europe this week. French foreign minister Alain Juppe said an attack on Iranian’s nuclear facilities would “drag the world into an ‘uncontrollable spiral.’” In the wake of last week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear progress—confirming all of Israel’s warnings over the years—EU foreign ministers “ruled out any military action for now.”
Juppe did say the EU would be “asking the European Investment Bank to freeze loans to Iran.” Meanwhile the EU foreign ministers “decided to wait till their next meeting on Dec 1., before taking further action.”
It somehow doesn’t have that ring of urgency.
And yet, as The Telegraph’s Blomfield also notes, “many in [Israel] believe time is running out.”
Blomfield quotes Ephraim Asculai, former IAEA official and an Israeli expert on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that “if the Iranian regime decides to do so, it can produce a nuclear explosive device within a year, plus or minus a few months.” There are also warnings that Iran could soon be transferring most of its nuclear production under a mountain near Qom, making it much harder—or impossible—to bomb from the air.
Is Israel, then, facing the threat essentially alone? If so, it would hardly be unprecedented. There’s an inglorious history of the United States and Europe leaving Israel to fend for itself against threats, sometimes even existential ones.
It happened in Israel’s 1948-1949 War for Independence, when it found itself embargoed by the West (with Britain aiding the Arab side) and had to turn to the Soviet bloc for arms. Just before the 1967 Six Day War, Israel’s “ally” France slapped an arms embargo on the region that was mainly aimed at Israel.
Six years later, in the Yom Kippur War, it took an Israeli threat to use nuclear weapons against its attackers Egypt and Syria for the U.S. to finally airlift desperately needed military supplies. Even then, America’s European allies refused the U.S. planes landing rights to refuel, with only Portugal finally acquiescing.
The record in recent years is not much better. Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield (2002) against the Palestinian terror war, Second Lebanon War (2006) against Hezbollah, and Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) against Hamas in Gaza all evoked a clamor of Western demands for immediate ceasefires along with charges of Israeli moral offenses. The U.S. was sometimes more sympathetic than Europe but still distinctly uncomfortable with Israeli military action and showed short patience for it no matter what savageries Israel had been subjected to.
It may be too soon to conclude that the current situation is as stark. As Joseph Klein notes, Obama could “surprise us and show the boldness he displayed in making the decision to take out Osama bin Laden,” though “his record to date on Iran is dismal.” And while some of the Republican presidential candidates have made hawkish avowals on Iran, Israel—even if one of them eventually defeats Obama—has to watch the clock.
If the reports (notably in The Guardian and Time) that Israel’s Mossad was behind the blast at the Iranian missile base are accurate, it could be an indication that Israel is already taking its own tack. As Israeli author and military commentator Ronen Bergman told the Telegraph reporter:
People outside Israel don’t understand how profound memories of the Holocaust are, and how they affect future policy making. At the end of the day, this policy of “never again” would dictate Israel’s behaviour when intelligence comes through that Iran has come close to a bomb.
Have you considered what happens to U.S. interests in Iraq (especially the oil), if Israel attacks Iran?
ReplyDeleteHere is how Juan Cole sees it….
"Even after US troops are out of Iraq, the US will want to try to keep as much influence in Baghdad as it can. The Obama administration almost certainly realizes that an Israeli attack on Iran would willy-nilly push Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into the arms of Tehran. Even the US embassy in Baghdad would be vulnerable to massive attack, especially once the troops are out. Al-Maliki supported Lebanon’s Hizbullah against Israel during the 2006 war, and would certainly adopt the same position in the event of another conflict, kicked off by a bombing of the Natanz facility. Al-Maliki’s Da’wa Islamiya or Islamic Call Party was partially responsible for the formation of Hizbullah in Lebanon in 1984"
--David
So David, What is Israel to do, accept annihilation? Iran's leadership has pledged to wipe Israel off the map.
ReplyDeleteIsrael should prepare for war, not start one. Personally, I don't believe either of these countries is willing to suffer the destruction of their own country by launching a war against the other. If Iran tried to "wipe Israel off the map," their own country would soon look like Iraq circa 2004. You saw what happened to Saddam. This would be the same story.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that the United States national interests in the Middle East (especially places like Iraq) is not helped by encouraging ("green light") Israel to start a war with Iran. I wanted to get you comment on that.
--David
David, once we leave Iraq, it will crumble like a potato chip under a car tire. The present leadership will be ousted and a new Sharia based administration will take its place. It will firm up relations with Iran, Turkey and Egypt as well as Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteOur misadventure into Iraq will all be for naught.
As far as our national interests in the Middle East, we dance to the tune of the Saudi leaders and when they tell Obama to stop supporting Israel, he will. Otherwise, his re-election will end before it begins when oil spikes to $150 again.
Our only ally in the Middle East is Israel. The only one to which we can expect significant support. The rest of the sand pit, is just that, a waste land that just happens to have oil. If we developed our resources here, we could tell them to eat their oil. But for some idiotic reason we feel that it is better to import their oil, to send our dollars over there, to bankrupt ourselves rather than to do the right thing.
Our national leadership sucks.
"Our national leadership sucks."
ReplyDeleteExxon-Mobil IS our national leadership. When you look at it that way, it makes more sense. Why else should the government pay subsidies to the richest corporation in America?