Seems to me Israel is overreaching at this moment, as renewed diplomatic efforts are underway, sort of like what Bush did with the invasion of Iraq. It appears Israel is of the mind to bomb its way to peace.
Bloomberg: Israel might choose to attack Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East said today.
Army General David Petraeus told Congress that “the Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military action to derail or delay it.”
While Iran insists its nuclear program is intended for peaceful power generation, Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said “Iranian officials have consistently failed to provide the assurances and transparency necessary for international acceptance and verification.”
Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment, in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions, and won’t give international inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities.
Iran’s “obstinacy and obfuscation have forced Iran’s neighbors and the international community to conclude the worst about the regime’s intention,” Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Iran responds:Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media adviser to Iran’s President Mahmound Ahmadinejad, responded to the general’s comments.
“Iran’s position as a powerful country that is a proponent of logic and peace, the Zionist regime’s chaotic situation, and the state of the world’s economy are realities that do not make this possible,” Javanfekr said in a telephone interview.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on Petraeus’s remarks.
Netanyahu’s Threat
Israel has signaled impatience with the international diplomatic effort to deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with the Atlantic magazine given shortly before he became prime minister yesterday, said President Barack Obama must act quickly to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb or Israel might be compelled to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
Here is a bit of the story from the
Atlantic:
In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.
“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”
Netanyahu is skeptical of diplomatic efforts:
Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
