The sweeping opposition by heads of the defense establishment to attacking Iran before the American presidential elections stems from a secret. The details of this secret are now being expressed privately by Israel’s leaders. Does this expression – at least in the case of Defense Minister Ehud Barak – come from a desire that the senselessness of these ideas will help thwart them? Perhaps. Let’s hope so.
Whatever the case may be, this is how things are. In private talks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak reiterate the logic behind going to war against Iran at this time. They claim that the aim of conducting a war now is to drag the United States into it, contrary to the Americans’ wishes.
The logic is simple. According to Netanyahu and Barak, Israel has the military power to delay Iran’s nuclear project by only one year. This is the up-to-date estimate based on operations research by the body in charge of the matter in Israel: the air force. There is no significance to a delay of that length. There is, however, a force that can stop the Iranian project militarily: the United States. The problem, Netanyahu says, is that the U.S. administration is not willing to do so.
The solution is simple. A moment before the U.S. presidential elections, when Mitt Romney – the candidate of Netanyahu’s patron, Sheldon Adelson – is breathing down Barack Obama’s neck, and in the wake of the large number of casualties and the extensive damage that the Ira… >>>
