Steve Clemons says Israeli Labor Party MK Ephraim Sneh told him he doesn't believe the new Iran NIE, sees the release of this report as an abdication of American responsibilities, and concluded by saying "When I get back, I will call together our intelligence establishment, and I will do all I can to begin seriously preparing the 'Israel option.'" Sneh's not a hugely influential politician at this juncture, but he's also not someone with a particularly hawkish record. Meanwhile, based on this Haaretz article, Ehud Olmert seems to be trying to respond in a reasonably responsible and restrained manner, but Labor ministers like Ehud Barak and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer are trying to call the credibility of the NIE into question.
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The Israeli View
05 Dec 2007 01:16 am
Comments (35)
Sneh? Obviously made up. If Labor is serious about peace they will stop electing MKs with typo names.
So they're going to fight their own battle this one time?
While Sneh is not a hawk vis a vis the Palestinians, he is certainly one regarding Iran. He has been calling for the bombing of Iran since the mid-1990s, and did so also in 2000, when he was deputy Security Minister.
Sneh, Barak and Ben Eliezer are all generals (brigadier, lieutenant and brigadier respectively), and have served either as Security Minister or the deputy. Barak was his own Security Minister when he was Prime Minister. They are old-guard army men turned politicians, who are renowned for representing the army in government and not the government in the army.
You sound surprised, but you shouldn't be. Iran getting nukes is a problem for the US, but it's not an existential problem. For Israel, given the many statements made by their President (and others) about Israel, it has to be taken as an existential problem.
Words matter, and vis-a-vis Israel and Iran, the Iranians have made sure that Israel will take nuclear acquisition very, very badly.
I can't imagine anyone challenging the credibility of US intelligence findings.
So Sneh apparently holds the same view of the NIE as nearly all Republicans in the U.S. and possibly several Democrats. I see Holy Joe on Fox & Friends sometime soon, musing about what size nuke might be needed to reach Ahmadinejad's secret Bat-Cave.
Exercising the "Israeli option" will result in a crushing response that will inflict major and perhaps fatal damage to this warmongering apartheid state. Good riddance. The rest of the world needs to realize that these people are mad, insane with their HerrenVolk triumphalism.
Apartheid state?
"These people"?
HerrenVolk?
So it's the Jews that echo the Nazis, not the Islamists who speak of nothing but their wish to kill them off?
So it's the Jews that echo the Nazis, not the Islamists who speak of nothing but their wish to kill them off?
Posted by C. L. K. Aqurette
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I thought denis was stating once Israel popped off it would be the U.S. that suffered the consequences seeing as how we're the puppeteer in the relationship. Aren't the members of Bushco mad, insane and possessed of HerrenVolk triumphalism?
Re the "good riddance" comment, I'm pretty sure that the idea of a bloody collective punishment for the acts of a government or a few whackjobs is the kind of thinking that put the terrorists in the planes on 9/11 and that put us in Iraq to teach the "Islamofascists" (wtf is that?) a lesson. Also we might think about the thousands of innocents in Lebanon who got dead in the summer of last year when Israel decided to teach Hezbollah a lesson. Or the thousands in Iran who'd die if we decide to teach Iran a lesson. "Justice" meted out via maiming and death to these folks isn't justice.
Yeah, that Sneh guy doesn't sound real, does he? Like he's a Monty Python character, the Knight from Sni or something in the Holy Grail.
I think that we see a systematic flaw in the thinking of Israeli establishent, how they perceive the goals and tactics of other countries, and what kind of vision do they have for the long term security of Israel.
When pieces of information do not conform with that vision, they are rejected.
Here the vision is:
a) Iran is ruled by religious fanatics, hence
b) Their chief goal is the annihilation of Israel (it is all about Israel, you know), hence
c) They have to crave nuclear weapons and it is impossible that they will truly give it up, nukes being the best if you want to annihilate someone, hence
d) The only long term solution is if USA somehow cows Iran to a vassal status, like that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps the reasoning on the way to d) is different, but I think that this is what they believe.
I think that d) is impossible, so it would be better if they were wrong.
I can't imagine anyone challenging the credibility of US intelligence findings.
Yes, if the NIE had backed up the shrieking of the White House about the deadly threat posed by Iran, telling the administration what they wanted to hear, southpaw would have been right out there expressing skepticism with the veracity of the intelligence. Stovepiping: it's not just for administration officials anymore.
Israel, on the other hand, faces an existential threat from the mullahs who somehow never got around to martyring themselves in their quest for temporal power, but who will welcome the annihilation of Iran in an Israeli counterstrike as long as they can nuke them some filthy Jewfolk first. Well, except:
(1) Israel was doing deals with Iran even when Khomeini was in charge, and his rhetoric was more inflammatory than anything the actual current rulers of Iran have gone in for.
(2) Wouldn't it be easier to nuke the Jews living in Iran, since they're much closer, and Iranians hate Jews so much?
(3) In private, Israeli Foreign Minister Livni has recently said that Iranian nukes don't pose an existential threat to Israel. Why, oh why, does she lack the clear understanding of the situation that Mr. Robertson has?
@ denis:
"Herren Volk"? "Apartheid state"? "Good riddance"?!
I am not sure when this sort of commentary about Israel became an acceptable element of the debate, but it is disgusting, and you are an idiot.
Why all the handwringing over what anyone might lob Israel's direction? It's known they have a counterstrike capability rivaled by only that of the U.S. and Russia. I'm sure they've secreted several launch silos in places secure enough to make an aggressor pay dearly for a 1st strike. And I'm just as sure the members on that list of potential aggressors knows this all too well. A nuclear strike on Israel will result in a lot of ash and glass far outside their borders.
Colin F. should visit a Palestinian refugee camp before he tosses around the word "disgusting" so blithely.
I think Colin F. is going easy. "Disgusting" isn't sufficient to describe the truly depraved import of the "denis" post, and I'd include s. duncan's ill-advised defense of it.
I've been in Palestinian camps, and they are indeed horrible. It's worth noting that these poor people have been warehoused like livestock over the last sixty years for use as bargaining chips, cheap labor, and cannon fodder not by Israelis, but by their fellow Arabs.
I don't think Iran has any intention of launching a nuclear strike against Israel. They have time and demography on their side already. Why create a general holocaust? I think their "fanatical irrationality" has been way overstated. If you look at what they do rather than just what they say, they've been notably level-headed.
Yes, if the NIE had backed up the shrieking of the White House about the deadly threat posed by Iran, telling the administration what they wanted to hear, southpaw would have been right out there expressing skepticism with the veracity of the intelligence.
Hah! Truly, I am hoisted on my own petard.
While I go shower off all the shame, it might be wise to consider whether a wholesale endorsement of this intelligence product is the best move for you.
The suspension of the Iranian weapons program, if true, is great news . . . the CIA report itself has made an unlikely conflict far less likely and that is great news.
But uncritically accepting the judgment of the intelligence community only when it tells you what you want to hear is a fools errand. It's how we got into this mess, and it ain't the way out.
But uncritically accepting the judgment of the intelligence community only when it tells the administration what it wants to hear is standard operating procedure. It's how we got into this mess, and it ain't the way out.
Fixed that up for you, southpaw, since it sure as hell wasn't me that was gobbling down every bit of blatantly ginned-up "intelligence" about the imminent danger posed by Iraq.
But gosh, if only the CIA didn't have such a bad track record with their NIE's, they'd have more credibility now. But who can forgive them for their October 2002 NIE downplaying the threat from Saddam Hussein's WMDs? Certainly not southpaw.
Enjoy toweling off the built-up mendacity.
Well, looking over the direction of certain portions of this comment-thread, I can only say that the world is a pretty interesting place.
And it's likely to become considerably more "interesting" once certain information becomes more widely distributed...
But gosh, if only the CIA didn't have such a bad track record with their NIE's, they'd have more credibility now. But who can forgive them for their October 2002 NIE downplaying the threat from Saddam Hussein's WMDs? Certainly not southpaw.
Hmm.
1990
Two blunders on Iraq. On July 31, The CIA dismissed the likelihood of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein invaded two days later. The CIA also significantly underestimated the scale of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
1998
The Indian bomb. The CIA failed to predict the testing of an Indian nuclear bomb in May 1998. The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Richard Shelby, bemoaned "a colossal failure of our nation's intelligence gathering." The CIA was better prepared for the first Pakistan nuclear test a few days later.
1999
Iranian missiles. A September 1999 intelligence forecast said that Iran could test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. territory "in the next few years." Eight years later, Iran has made little progress toward acquiring an ICBM. In a January 2002 article for the Post, I argued that the upgrading of the Iranian and North Korean ballistic missile threat came at least partly in response to political pressure from the missile defense lobby.2002
Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction. The CIA, in NIE 2002-16HC, said that Iraq had "continued its weapons of mass destruction program," and could build a nuclear bomb "within several months to a year" if it obtained the necessary fissile material. Evidence for such a program was never found and it subsequently turned out that a key CIA source, a defector codenamed Curveball, had lied extensively. As with the October 1962 NIE issued just prior to the Cuban missile crisis, the 2002 NIE illustrates the corrosive power of conventional wisdom. Since Iraq previously had a WMD program, the operating assumption was that it still had one.
hmm.
Come on folks....most of us know that the Iranian "bomb" is not "the threat", it's the excuse. The whole history of the US and most especially Israel is using military threat to acheive economic dominance and control of resources in the ME. The Israelis don't think Iran would bomb them, but they do know that Iran having the bomb would severely reduce Isr'merica threats being taken seriously as leverage against other ME states.
Let's take a look at what still is the main issue..who can force what oil resources and trade favors, for whom, out of whom, with military actions and regime change.
By taking a look at Israel's oil situtation.
Israel produces only a couple thousand barrels of oil a day, which means it relies on the global market for more than 99 percent of its consumption. It's difficult to name all of the country's suppliers—in 2004, Israel's minister of national infrastructures admitted that "Israel's situation is complicated. We don't have diplomatic relations with most of the countries from which we import oil." But over the past 25 years, significant fuel imports have come from Angola, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, and Norway. In more recent times, the Israelis have turned to Russia, Kazakhstan, and some of the other -stans for the bulk of their oil.
Israel has long sought a local source of oil, especially since the oil crisis of 1973. Having a nearby supplier would increase Israel's energy security and reduce the cost of its imports. Iran filled that need for a while: Starting in 1968, the Israelis used a pipe called the "TIPline" to import Iranian oil from the Red Sea. But the shah was overthrown in 1979, and Iran shut off the tap. (These days, Israel lets the Russians use the TIPline to pump oil in the opposite direction.)
The Israelis gained access to another local source when they took control of Egyptian oil fields in Sinai after the Six-Day War. When Israel agreed to return the fields in 1979, they wanted broad assurances about their access to oil imports. The peace treaty with Egypt stipulated that "Israel shall be fully entitled to make bids for Egyptian-origin oil not needed for Egyptian domestic oil consumption." An accompanying document outlined a deal with the United States that ensured Israeli oil supplies in times of crisis.
Egypt continues to provide oil, but its importance as a supplier has diminished as Israel's appetite has grown. In 1995, Egyptian oil accounted for one-third of Israel's fuel imports; by 2000 that fraction had shrunk to one-eighth. While Israel was forced to look elsewhere for oil, it maintained a warm relationship with Egypt, at least regarding energy. In 2005, the two countries signed an agreement on the trade of natural gas.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to seek nearby suppliers. In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, there was some talk of restarting an abandoned pipeline that runs from Mosul, Iraq, to Haifa. In order for this to happen, Israel would need to somehow wrangle the support of the Syrians, since they control part of the route.
Scott Lasensky of the United States Institute of Peace.
>>>>>>>>
Where the US and Israel are diverging in the "terrier wur" is the US isn't up for the global catastrophe a disruption in Iran oil, the world's fourth largest oil supplier would cause.
While the Israelis want to go for broke in converting Syria and returning Iran to a US controlled regime with all the prior favors Israel enjoyed from Iran before the US Shah was ousted.
Looks like as far the Israelis go they are counting on two things if they take it upon themselves and figure out a way to bomb Iran..
1)that the US will, under the MOU of '79, supply all Israel's oil needs from US reserves in the event of an oil disruption...
2) and that US public resentment and outcry at the impact of this on the US economy and prices would be ignored by Washington. Which on that they are probably right.
But on the other hand that event might finally make the already 75% of the US population that is disgusted with Washington ripe for a real political revolution.
Regime change in Iran is still cleary the goal of this adm..but the NIE report even takes some wind out the chances of that success because the Iranian street will see this as a plus for their current government.
Robert Powell: "I've been in Palestinian camps, and they are indeed horrible. It's worth noting that these poor people have been warehoused like livestock over the last sixty years for use as bargaining chips, cheap labor, and cannon fodder not by Israelis, but by their fellow Arabs."
This is remarkably ignorant statement. The creator of the refugees is not the problem, it's the country that receives them? Keep smoking what you're smoking.
BTW, I am nominating you for that Saudi court that increased the punishment of the rape victim who complained. I think you'd fit right in. You sure know how to blame the victim.
Zionism has to go. 60 years of wrecking havoc is enough.
You know Robert...
"Robert Powell: "I've been in Palestinian camps, and they are indeed horrible. It's worth noting that these poor people have been warehoused like livestock over the last sixty years for use as bargaining chips, cheap labor, and cannon fodder not by Israelis, but by their fellow Arabs."
...I think you are missing something by accepting the Israeli propaganda on that issue.
It is plain to everyone, well objective everyones anyway, that the major reason the Arab nations haven't actually done anything more about Israel's occupation of Palestine is the big US military shield over Israel. Without that US threat protection no doubt Israel would have been severely curtailed and the occupation would be over.
But now that the US is losing it's clout and leverage in the ME that may change ..or not. We will see.
Just mention Israel and the nut-jobs ( fine citizens) and ignoramuses ( insightful folks) can't wait to tell us what they think. So Carroll, when the Israeli occupation of Palestine ends ,we're coming to your neighborhood. Six million plus of us, assuming we're not nuked by Iran's non-existent WMD. Well maybe half of us wil come to your town ( you think we don't know where you live? Ve have vays) and half to abbl's town. Plus a whole bunch of Arab citizens that like living in democracies ( even imperfect ones like the US) rather than in corrupt theocracies). See you soon!
Just mention Israel and the nut-jobs ( fine citizens) and ignoramuses ( insightful folks) can't wait to tell us what they think. So Carroll, when the Israeli occupation of Palestine ends ,we're coming to your neighborhood. Six million plus of us, assuming we're not nuked by Iran's non-existent WMD. Well maybe half of us will come to your town ( you think we don't know where you live? Ve have vays) and half to abbl's town. Plus a whole bunch of Arab citizens that like living in democracies ( even imperfect ones like the US) rather than in corrupt theocracies). See you soon!
With all due respect, oil is a fungible commodity that's sold willingly FOR MONEY. It is not "taken". All the paranoid nonsense that revolves around this issue ("control of resources", etc) is transparent nonsense. The Greater Persian Gulf is an area of vital national interest because at the moment serious disruption there could wreck the world economy. It's our trading partners in Europe who get 80% of their oil from there, not us or, for that matter, Israel. Being against restraint of trade in vital commodities is hardly a new, or hegemonic, position.
Matthew, you may want to check your facts before throwing around labels like "ignorant". Palestinian refugees in the Arab front-line states are denied even the most basic human rights by their hosts--no passports, restrictions on where they can live, what jobs they can hold, etc. Those camps are festering sores because that's the way the Arab states want them to be. It's useful to compare them to the conditions of Israeli Arabs, who have more political and economic freedom than any of their compatriots.
Leaving aside the various arguments on who shares responsibility for the refugees' plight with Israel, suffice to say that during the same period tens of millions of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Balts, Finns and others were expelled from their homelands with appalling loss of life, and have never been allowed so much as a word about a "right of return" on pain of a one-way ticket to Siberia or a bullet in the neck. It wasn't pretty, but that region is now more peaceful than it has perhaps ever been. Ask the Germans--when you launch an unprovoked war of aggression and lose, expect negative consequences.
Pretty repulsive thread on both sides.
Though you sound rather obnoxious, Larry, you can come to my town if you want, I don't mind. Really. Just leave your phony victimhood and your exceptionalist/supremacist crap behind.
Hey abb1 - have you thought about prozac? electroshock therapy? cause you are one sorry dude.
BTW, once we finish our genocide of the palestians (you know, the unique Jooooish-perpetrated genocide that causes the victims' population to increase), the american zionist occupation government will be coming for you. and your women. if you have any.
Boogie Boogie!
Calm down and go back to the LGF, brother.
"So they're going to fight their own battle this one time?"
Get serious.
Cheney has already war-gamed the option of having Israel start the war. Israel appears to have been hesitant, fearing that when the war goes badly it will be blamed and that will erode its influence on US foreign policy.
Cheney, on the other hand, needs Israel to bypass the push back from the Pentagon, and possible interference from the US Congress, as well as enabling him to make a case to the US public (to the tiny degree that he gives a damn about the US public.)
There is no "existential threat" to Israel from Iran whether or not it has a bomb. Iran will never first strike Israel. The only way Iran would use a nuke on Israel is if regime change in Iran was already clearly immediate. Then it wouldn't matter if the mullahs went down in an Israel second strike.
This is WHY Israel is pushing the US to attack Iran - to remove the possibility that regime change will be taken off the table.
And if the US doesn't do it, Israel will. When the Iranians retaliate against both the US and Israel, the US will be in the war.
It's just possible that Iran will be smart enough NOT to attack the US if attacked by Israel. However, since Bush has already repeatedly said that if Iran attacks Israel, the US will support Israel - and he isn't talking lip service here, he's talking the US military - it won't matter. The end result will be the same.
The NIE has not changed anything but the dynamics of how the war with Iran will be started. Unless Israel blinks - which I doubt will happen because it's not going to cost the bozos running Israel any problems.
Look, they run a few planes over to Iran and bomb something. Iran throws a bunch of missiles at Israel in the first 24 hours. Probably fewer than 50 - because they know what comes next.
In the second 24 hours, the US concentrates its Air Force and Navy on Iran. Iran no longer can afford to waste any effort attacking Israel when it can attack the US air bases in Iraq and Qatar with those missiles.
So after the second 24 hours, Israel is in the clear. No cost to Israel at all, except a few missiles - half of whom probably got shot down on top of Arab neighborhoods by the anti-missile systems in place for precisely this purpose - and the rest probably missed their targets by a half mile or more (the CEP for Iranian missiles sucks.)
So why WOULDN'T Israel initiate an attack on Iran? Only if it expects the US to do so, that's why. And how bad the negative impact will be when - not if - the war goes badly for the US and the US public ends up blaming Israel. Even then, though, Israel can probably skate by with little damage, given the influence of the Lobby.
As for nitwit Powell: "Ask the Germans--when you launch an unprovoked war of aggression and lose, expect negative consequences."
Or you could ask the US public about Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan - or the Israeli public about Lebanon (twice - and a third one coming up).
southpaw, you have no real evidence to back you up and you point to a handful of mistakes (granted, big ones, but I doubt the AIPAC crowd would actually do better) the CIA has made in its judgment and that somehow points to... what exactly?
Hack (how appropriately named!), I am not sure how your riposte to Robert Powell amounts to much of a response. I think the point is that Israel expanded beyond its borders, rightly or wrongly, after it was attacked by all of its neighbors in 1967. Israel won the war, and "negative consequences" resulted for Israel's neighbors in the form of lost territory.
You point to other "unprovoked wars of aggression," including Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. I am not sure how this reference bolsters whatever criticism you are trying to level. To the extent that Vietnam was an unprovoked war of aggression, and to the extent the U.S. lost that war, didn't the U.S. suffer negative consequences? Doesn't that fit the pattern?
Also, I am unclear on how the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which followed a terrorist attack in the U.S. by al Qaeda, an organization harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan, counts as an "unprovoked war of aggression." Ditto for the Israeli-Lebanon conflict last summer. It probably wasn't a good idea for Israel to invade, and it was certainly a terrible idea to respond so incommensurately, but wasn't Israel at least "provoked" by Hezbollah's cross-border raid, which resulted in five casualties and two kidnappings of Israeli soldiers? If not, what does "provocation" mean?
Comments closed December 19, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Are they trying to pull a false flag? Or do they have a cousin Bernie in Mossad that's had a few too many glasses of wine? Or are they turning into Labor's Joe Lieberman?
This story seems surreal.
Posted by Greg | December 5, 2007 1:22 AM