It’s hard to think of genuine foreign policy successes of the Bush administration – apparently the right-wing blogosphere in the US is touting “improved relations with Australia” as an achievement… The deals with Libya and North Korea were perhaps success, though the deal with North Korea remains horribly shaky. It seems, however, that the Bush White House did have the sense to not pour petrol on one hotspot. According to today’s New York Times:
WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
Instead, the US stepped up attempts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program by tampering with the goods it procured from foreign suppliers, and kept the Israelis informed on their efforts.
Iran’s nuclear program is going to be an issue again this year, or, if not, 2010 at the latest. Despite the US efforts, Iran has already produced enough low-enriched uranium to (with further processing), arguably, make one bomb. If they keep operating their centrifuges, and expand their enrichment plant, they will be in a position to turn their stockpile into an arsenal at short notice.
There’s obviously plenty of room to debate what should be done about these continuing developments; frankly, the best option might be “nothing”. But it’s important to keep an eye on the facts of the situation. And, on the basis of the fairly conservative IAEA’s reporting, Iran is going to have a for-real capability to make nuclear weapons pretty soon. And, given its past history, it’s unlikely that Israel will be blithely accepting of that idea, even if they were warned off this time around.
um … I think you will find this *is* “next year”.
Man, on some topics you just can’t believe a word the US media says. The whole premise, not to mention the tone, of this article is actively misleading.
That “extra purification” the NYT refers to, needed to convert LEU to bomb-grade HEU, would be a very non-trivial exercise. The common use for the LEU that Iran is supposed to be “stockpiling” is fuel for reactors, just as Iran says.
Certainly the IAEA doesn’t think anything has changed.
Peter: fixed.
DD: that’s not entirely accurate, at least from what I’ve read.
If you can make LEU, you can make HEU by running the LEU through the enrichment plant again. Furthermore, they’ve already done the majority of the separative work required – going from natural uranium to LEU requires a lot more separative work units than going the final step to HEU.
The notorious Judith Miller was on Fox News explaining how the White House had restrained Israel’s ‘madman act’. And she didn’t have to face a John Bolton-type lunatic providing ‘balance’ to her argument (”Kill’emallletGodsort’emout”).
The official media apparatus of the GOP is happy with this/has been told to express support for it? Interesting.
The world’s gone (going?) mad again.
Its some relief to see this idiocy was stopped. But is it only for the moment?
“White House restrained Israel from attacking Iran”
“But Couldn’t Give A Shit About Gaza”
(Although they did abstain in the UN Security Council – which I guess is something).
Of course not. Gaza is merely a human tragedy, and thus not a big deal.
Mind you, we all collectively managed to ignore the Congo (and still do), which is a human tragedy of a size orders of magnitude bigger than Gaza.
Of course, the truly cynical response to this news would be to say the real reason the US convinced Israel not to go after Iran was because they didn’t want anyone else having a shot at Iran before they could…
The US will go after Iran before Israel does, because the Israelis won’t do it by halves. The Israeli solution will be less palatable to the world community, so the Yanks will have to do it the hard way, with troops.
Iran will never develop a nuclear bomb, trust me. It won’t happen, by hook or by crook.
It’s this bit that scares the sh.ts out of me and which I find absolutely incredible that it is greeted with such seeming nonchalance.
“.. told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s”
The US admits it is waging covert war on a sovereign nation and we accept that as OK???
And their excuse, remember they always have an excuse, valid and credible or not is of no concern, they have had numerous excuses to wage overt and/or covert war on many many nations over the years and the mere mumbling that they are doing it cos …..[insert excuse here] has always been accepted as prima facie good enough.
Weird world we live in.
Hannah’s Dad: Iran is breaching United Nations sanctions by acquiring components for their nuclear program.
And the “covert actions” being discussed are most likely not of the “send in Delta Force” type. It’s probably more “bribe dodgy middleman to let the CIA’s technical wizards replace the firmware in some power supply controller”.
FWIW, I should make clear I’m not supportive of current US (and by extension Australian) policy towards Iran.
I think the current policy of provoking military confrontation with them is nuts.
This is a bit like warning me to not shag Kylie, isn’t it?
The odds of Israel mounting an operation like this successfully would be astronomical, and they know it. Osirak was a much easier (and for that matter – a lone) target.
Robert
2 things.
It would have been nice if you had gone with #12 before #11 or perhaps even omitted #11 entirely.
As I said the US govt. always has an excuse to attack and kill people in other countries.
Doesn’t mean that excuse is valid, worth while giving any more than cursory attention before dismissing, worth discussing until well after we consider that if it is valid it necessarily allows the US to attack and kill people in a country far far away.
Blimey they have been doing this all my life, in a variety of countries for a variety of reasons.
Time they stopped presuming they have the right to attack and kill people in countries far far away and time we stopped letting them, with or without whatever excuse their PR can drum for the occassion.
A bit off topic but still on US partners in the war on terror. Australian defence minister Fitzgibbon was quoted on ABC news today getting very excited about the killing by Aussi forces of a Taliban explosives expert. In fact to my mind he was sounding quite full of revenge at the linking of this ‘mastermind’ with the death of an SAS trooper last week. Sorry I can’t find links but he went on to say we’re committed to the Afghan campaign til 2012 which sounds like a lot more heavy lifting..punching above our weight in supporting US policy .. on what exactly?
Meanwhile the Russell Hill spin docters should get Fitzgibbon away from the vengeance motive. It’s not very dignified.
My guess is that the US “intelligence” suspects that Iran already has a few nukes that they bought from some failing state in the collapsing soviet union. The Israelis, being totally insane, are prepared to risk a nuclear exchange. (”hey if they reduce Tel Aviv to a glass filled smoking crater we can dine out on that for another 60 years).
Remember, the entire Israeli strategy is to be the mad dog of the Middle East – no risk too great no task too big no genocide turned down.
Huggy
Joe Vialls, is that you?
Craig, I think it is. Nobody mention the secret HQ of the international zionist-neocon conspiracy in Pyongyang or their use of super-secret Jewish micronukes at the Bali bombings, OK?
I miss Joe. He was funny. The moonbat’s moonbat. Even crazier than the Verdun Fruitbat.
BTW, Robert (No.3). Correct. For uranium fission bombs, you just have to keep running the gas thru the centrifuges. It’s how you get to LEU in the first place. Keep it up and you get to weapons grade. Takes a lot of passes, of course.
Anyone note that if this report is true, it’s now blown, thus increasing the chances of the Iranians getting (and perhaps using) nukes?
Anyone think this is a good development?
MarkL
Canberra
What are you talking about hannah’s dad?
The covert operations spoken of do not involve any killing at all. They involve sabotaging Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear technology on the black market. It’s not easy to develope many of these components to Iran trys to buy them rather than make them. Some US companies are recently discovered they’ve been selling components to Iranian front companies unknowingly.
Stephen may I suggest you make a list of the countries that the US govt. has attacked and killed people in during, oh say the period since WW2.
Next to that list write the excuses they gave each time.
It will take you a while, they have attacked a large number of countires overtly and covertly, dozens probably, and used a range of excuses each time.
Its a habit of the US govt..
And behind this aggressive behaviour is the assumption that they have the right to attack and kill people in other countries if they can dream up a plausible excuse.
Now we have a recent example where the US is actually covertly attacking ……[insert name of latest example].
Now what the hell difference does it make what the precise nature of that covert attack is for god’s sake its still a covert attack!!!!
What part of ‘covert action’ do you not understand?
We have had 100s of posts about Hamas/Israel attacking each other one lot defending one side and the other lot defending the other.
The US govt has been doing this for donkeys years and it seems to be given a free pass.
If anybody else were to do it there would be an almighty stink, blimey the US govt. has invaded more than one country because they claimed one mob were covertly attacking another.
Its massive hypocrisy and massive abuse of double standards.
I get sick and tired of discussing the fine points of US propaganda when the central essential essence of the matter is being blithely ignored.
The US govt is covertly attacking a country.
Again.
For the umpteenth time.
I take it you mean the “fascisty fascisting fascists fascisting fascistly” guy. He uses that word like others use “the” and “a”. God forbid I ever travel in a plane he’s touched.
Hmm, I think I need to listen to “The Horn” again.
I feel unable to add anything to this thread. H’sDad has set the markers, all else is sophistry, solecism & the eternal US solipsism.
This is more book release PR than news. Most of this information has already been in the news last year.
One slightly cynical person has suggested that the timing is rather helpful in diverting attention from the complete lack of US restraint on Israel re:Gaza.
Well I guess that proves that a dour minority of posters to this site are entirely unable to cope with a little satire. Must be citizens of the US. Sad really.
Huggy
This is the money shot in this article.
The rest is mere persiflage. This story is designed to assure the Shiite majority of Iraq that their regime really, really matters to the Bush administration.
An Israeli overflight of Shiite Iraq to attack Shiite Iran would be the sign for Iraq’s Shiites to rise up and end the charade of US “success” in Iraq. This is, after all, “Bush’s Legacy”.
The timing of all this has been terrible. Bush may have allowed the overflight of Iraq if he had already removed US troops from Iraq. But he hadn’t.
It is possible that Obama will give Israel the go-ahead after the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. After all, Iraq is Bush’s war. Obama has less to lose by turning Iraq into a hornets’ nest.
All of this demonstrates the extent to which Bush is a hostage to his Iraq Folly.
Interesting perspective Katz, and you’re right – letting that overflight happen would have resulted in the deaths of thousands more American soldiers than would otherwise been the case.
That said, I don’t think Obama’s likely to be an Iran hawk. Anybody with half a brain can see that the long-term consequences of either Israel or the United States attacking Iran are all bad.
The short-term consequences would be fairly dire too, Rob.
We still don’t understand the dynamics of the embryonic Obama administration.
My thesis is that it is not impossible that Obama may give Israel the go-ahead.
And Obama is more likely to do that than Bush was, given Bush’s dire predicament in his Mesopotamian barbed-wire canoe.
Americans culturally don’t “get” other nations’ self-belief in sovereignty.
For instance, my Australian passport was not considered valid ID over there – my visa card was. (and they didn’t get why I was so deeply affronted by this!).
I didn’t reach my conclusion based on the ID thing btw – I was there when they were invading somebody or other in the Bush Pere era.
Howard C: “Iran will never develop a nuclear bomb, trust me.”
The US and Israel might not be able to stop them.
Perhaps we should be thanking Muqtada al-Sadr more than anyone else.
Not only Muqtada, who is much more Iraqi nationalist than al Maliki, but also al Maliki as well. He has been a good and trusty agent of Iranian interests.
Now that it is too late for Bush and his dwindling claque of admirers, some of whom have sung his praises on this very blog, the horrible truth of the situation emerges.
Bush invades Iraq, kills unknown tens of thousands of Iraqis, enables the forced exile of millions, and then finds himself compelled not to hurt Iraqis’ feelings!
Breathtakingly ludicrous!
To continue with pablo’s #15 slightly off topic discussion of Afghanistan: I see Ann Jones has a piece in Tom Dispatch on the Scam to divert US dollars to the private war profiteers. With US and Israel private war profiteers competing for wars to fight the US would not want Israel profitting from the BIG ONE with Iran so the little skwirmish in Gaza will do for Israel to practice their new toys and methods for now.
“Instead, the Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it “liberated,” Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They’re all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren’t so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up.
What’s worse, there’s no reason to expect that things will change significantly on Barack Obama’s watch. During the election campaign, he called repeatedly for more troops for “the right war” in Afghanistan (while pledging to draw-down U.S. forces in Iraq), but he has yet to say a significant word about the reconstruction mission. While many aid workers in that country remain full of good intentions, the delivery systems for and uses of U.S. aid have been so thoroughly corrupted that we can only expect more of the same — unless Obama cleans house fast. But given the monumental problems on his plate, how likely is that?”
To read on see:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175019/ann_jones_the_afghan_reconstruction_boondoggle
Mark: all too true.
Katz – Off topic but thank you, “persiflage” is my new favorite word.
Robert, natural uranium is about 0.7% U235. LEU is typically about 3%. Normal bomb-grade HEU is over 85%. Getting from 3% to 85% takes a lot more spinning than getting from 0.7% to 3%.
You need about 50 kilos of 85% HEU to get critical mass for one bomb. While it’s theoretically possible to make a bomb with a much larger mass at somewhat lower enrichment levels or with a smaller mass of 90%+ HEU, it is so difficult in practice that (so far as we know) no aspiring nuclear power has ever succeeded in doing it. It’s always proved easier for beginners to take the inordinate amount of time and inordinate number of centrifuges to make the 50 kilos of 85% HEU.
And yeah, Israel has far and away the best tactical air force in the region but it’s not set up for the long-distance sustained strategic bombing campaign that’s needed to seriously disrupt a deliberately dispersed weapons program. If the Israelis struck it would only be in the hope of dragging the US into the war – but it turns out not even GWB was that dumb.
DD – “it turns out not even GWB was that dumb”
You reckon he actually made the decision?
Slightly off topic perhaps but a sobering reminder of the totally insane priorities of the US military and the US science program. The really scary stuff is in the last paragraph.
It is worth noting that without bunker busting nukes an Israeli attack on the nuclear failities in Iran was bound to fail. The US has resisted giving these to Israel. I guess the Israeli bomb Iran plan was just too stupid for even the Bush administration.
“The United States spends more than $52 billion a year maintaining, upgrading and operating its nuclear weapons arsenal each year, a little-heralded study revealed Monday.
Outside of the hefty price tag, equally significant is the way the money is spent. The US devoted just 1.3 percent — or $700 million — to preparing for the consequences of a nuclear attack.
The amount of money spent on America’s nuclear programs dwarfs the amount spent on diplomacy and foreign assistance (combined), effectively leaving US diplomatic efforts abroad in the long shadow of America’s ballistic missiles.
“Nuclear security consumes $13 billion more than international diplomacy and foreign assistance; nearly double what the United States allots for general science, space, and technology; and 14 times what the Department of Energy (DOE) budgets for all energy-related research and development,” the Carnegie Institute for Peace noted in a study posted to the Federation for American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog Monday.”
How GWB sees himself — Gary Cooper in “High Noon”
How GWB suspects the world sees GWB — James Dean in “Giant”
How the world actually sees GWB — Linky
Here is an insight into the nature of the state that requested permission to bomb Iran:
The two major Israeli Arab parties have been banned from contesting the Feb 2009 Israeli general elections! Balad and the United Arab List parties constitute more than two-thirds of the Arab members of the Knesset.
This disqualifies Israel claims to be respected as a democracy.
DD: it’s not that simple. Imagine a pile of 10,000 balls, of which 70 are black and the rest white. 0.7% of the balls are black.
Now, chuck away 8,000 of the white balls. You’ve now got a total of 2,000 balls; 70 of them are black. Now 3.5% of the balls are black.
Now chuck away another 1,923 white balls – less than a quarter as many white balls as you had to chuck away the first time. At the end of the process, you’ve got 77 balls, of which 70 are black. Woohoo, 90% of them are black.
That’s the analogy – it’s of course more complicated because the uranium sorting process is imperfect. If you want the technical details, read the Wikipedia article and have a play with the SWU calculator.
“This disqualifies Israel claims to be respected as a democracy.”
I’d have thought their 2-tier citizenship arrangements, whereby non-Jews are denied the rights to live, build, educate, marry or protest available to first class citizens, lost them that respect many moons back.
Meanwhile, where’s the evidence for the meme that Iran is dangerous to its neighbours? Nuclear-armed Israel has attacked all its neighbours, mostly preemptively (what used to be known as ‘aggression’). Iran, meanwhile, has been attacked by its neighbours but has not returned the favour for, um, quite a few centuries. Judge them by their actions, I say, not by the rhetoric their politicians serve up. The world would be a safer place if the leaders of the US and Israel stuck to wars of words rather than resort to actual killing.
Huh?
n 2003, the committee approved a similar request to disqualify Balad from Knesset elections, a decision that the High Court of Justice later reversed.
In this case, the High Court’s 2003 ruling has been quoted, ’saying the decision had mandated that there be substantial evidence that a given party supported an enemy’s armed fight against Israel in order to disqualify that party from running for the Knesset, not just random and sporadic hostile sentiments expressed by its members.’
So the Knesset Committee is being used as apart of a political ‘committee game’ which has been played – and knocked on the head – before. Similar ‘committee games’ are played here too, does that mean Australia is not a democracy?
Wow – politics in a parliament. How undemocratic! Surely it is simplistic to conflate this sort of game with the statement that is somehow indicates that Israel is not a democracy. That’s just plain bigotry.
If that’s true, what to make of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, who told the committee prior to the vote that the had not found sufficient evidence to disqualify Balad or UAL?
If that’s true, why will this go straight to the High Court, who will rule on it? Like they did in 2003?
MarkL
Canberra
Oh really?
Which Australian parliamentary committee can ban (as opposed to recommending the banning) of a political party? Your understanding of Australian civics appears to be sadly deficient.
Victimised parties are forced to prove their good standing on pain of outlawry at precisely the time when they should be contesting an election.
The Israeli arrangements aren’t democracy, they’re majoritarian tyranny.
Or there’s the favourite Arab-Israeli quip about it- Israel is a Jewish demoocratic state; democractic for Jews and Jewish for the Arabs.
Jarrah – I firmly believe that the US and/or Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran getting the bomb.
Iran getting the bomb is simply not permissable as far as Israel is concerned, as they believe it basically equals Israel being pushed into the sea. They believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would use the bomb against Israel without provocation.
Firstly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would not be in a position to do that, since he is not in control of the armed forces or the country’s nuclear policy – that is the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. And secondly, everybody knows that Iran would be totally ‘obliterated’, to use Hillary Clinton’s words, within ten seconds of launching a nuclear strike on Israel. They may be mad but they’re not mad enough to obliterate themselves.
Well, the argument about whether they are mad or not is academic. The real issue is firstly, do they get the bomb, and secondly, do the USA and/or Israel think the Iranians are mad. If the second is true, the first will never be permitted to occur.
maybe the question is not do the USA/Israel think the Iranians are mad, but do the US/Israel want to allow Iran to possess a nuclear deterrent?
There’s nothing that the US or Israel can do that will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capacity. If starving North Korea could do it and shambolic Pakistan could do it, then Iran doing it is, as they say, “a slam dunk”.
Bush, finally, conceded that when he tugged Israel’s chain. Israel won’t have a POTUS more sympathetic than Bush to their bellicosity for another 12 years.
Game over.
As someone upthread mentioned, Iran probably already has much of the fissionable material it needs from the collapsed Soviet program.
But Iran won’t let off a bomb until they prove to themselves and to the world that they can manufacture their own fissionable material. One never tests with the only bomb one possesses.
And in any case, the argument that Iran will behave any differently from any other nuclear power has not been adequately made.
Similar doomsday scenarios surrounded the Soviet, Chinese, Indian, South Africa, Israeli, Pakistani and North Korean acquisitions. As unwelcome as this proliferation is, hysterical responses have proven to be ill-founded.
The fascinating thing about nukes is that acquisition of them seems to have a very sobering effect on those folks whose fingers hover over the Red Button.
Howard, if Iran does develop a nuclear bomb I will be very cross with you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Katz
I must be difficult to understand. I apologise.
Our friend in Iran, who I’m sure would have no problems convincing the Ayatollah of doing what he wanted militarily, has said that Israel should be wiped off the map, or moved to Europe, and that the Holocaust never happened.
The Israelis simply will not permit Iran to get the bomb. They will be a moment of reckoning, the Israelis will want to do something, and the USA will stop them by doing it themselves. Israel feels threatened by an Iran with nuclear capabilities more than any other threat they have ever faced. This is in part because of Ahmadinejad’s rantings.
I don’t have to make the argument that Iran will act differently to other nations with the bomb. Someone needs to convince Israel and the USA that Iran won’t act differently if they have the bomb, and quite frankly, it ain’t going to be me.
But Howard C, to sustain your argument you would have to explain why you are so confident that either the US or Israel, or both, will at some time in the future behave very differently from how they have behaved up to now.
Vehemence or adamancy just doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid. In other words, you need to provide evidence. Tedious, I know, but there it is…
The news story upon which this thread s built is about Bush stopping the Israelis from doing something about Iran’s nuclear program. As someone mentioned upthread, the Israeli Air Force simply doesn’t have the technical capability to take out a dispersed and well defended program like Iran’s.
And Bush has demonstrated that in weighing a desire to maintain America’s imagined “success” in Iraq against the most fervent desires of Israel, Bush has decided on the former.
And one more thing.
Bush signed the recent State of Forces Agreement with al-Maliki. One of its provisions was that the US would not use Iraq as a base from which to attack another country.
A glance at the map reveals that only Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Russia remain as places for forward bases next door to Iran. None of them are likely to allow the US to attack Iran.
Iran is now essentially invulnerable to US invasion.
In 2003, did Bush think that this would be one of the fruits of his “success” in Iraq?
I think not.
Katz: you’re 100% spot on that the Israelis can’t pull off an extended bombing campaign. They should be able to attack a few targets though. Enough to disrupt the Iranian plans for a few months or even a year, but no more.
I can’t provide evidence because I’m not in the room where those decisions are being made, and neither are you.
And you are also misunderstanding me yet again. I really need to take that class in being understood. I’m not suggesting a full-scale invasion. I don’t think the US has the capability at the moment. But the US realises that it is somewhat more palatable to the world community it they militarily work to remove the Iranian nuclear threat than if the Israelis do it. The Israelis don’t really care what the world thinks, but they do care what the US thinks.
If the US can keep the Iranian capabilities are being a year or two away from being ready to produce nuclear weapons, that may be the stop-gap solution needed while other efforts are made.
I never implied that you were suggesting a full-scale invasion.
This is true. However, we are both in a position to read the words of persons who have been in that room. While these words seldom convey the whole truth and in fact they may be lies, nevertheless what has been said and reported supports my thesis and contradicts yours.
Yes, indeed, the US and perhaps even Israel can drop some bombs on some Iranian facilities. This act of war would certainly disrupt the Iranian program.
But when those facilities are replaced, they will be built deep underground, burrowed into the earth like NORAD, beyond the reach of even nuclear weapons.
Then, what “other methods” will be made?
Will US bombs, or worse, Israeli bombs, raining from the sky make Iranians more likely to overthrow their government and sue for peace? I think not. This military aggression is much more likely to have the opposite effect. Remember that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected under the shadow of US arms next door in Iraq. In a parody of democracy, Iranian voters chose the more radical of two candidates.
Will the US, already weakened and isolated by the absurd and self-destructive policies of the Bush Era, be willing to draw down further contempt upon itself by being party to a half-arsed bombing raid on Iran? If I read Obama correctly, the answer to that question is “No!” In her confirmation hearings as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made it quite clear that the US was soft-pedalling military “solutions”.
The only military alternative is invasion and occupation of Iran. That would require an army of at least 1,000,000. And as you say, the US doesn’t have “the capability at the moment”. The only way that “moment” would pass is if the US re-introduced the Draft. And that won’t happen.
I restate my point with some embellishment – either by hook or by crook, with carrot or stick, Iran won’t get the bomb. It will not be permitted. Israel firmly believes that if that happens, they may as well quit and start looking for some other piece of land somewhere they can live, which, unfortunately, won’t have been (they believe) promised them by God.
Yes, Howard C., your evidence-free adamancy is beyond dispute.
Well, we are certainly lacking evidence currently about how Israel deals with threats, perceived and otherwise.
Howard C: attacking militias armed with the odd rocket and obsolete small arms right next door is a much, much easier task than attacking dispersed, buried, heavily reinforced targets 2000 kilometres away. Iran also has an air defence system – a primitive one, mind you, but sufficient to complicate Israel’s task substantially given the logistical difficulty of the mission.
The only other option available to Israel to disrupt the Iran nuclear program is one that not even Benjamin Netanyahu is mad enough to seriously contemplate.