US military commanders have warned their Israeli counterparts that any action against Iran would severely limit the ability of American forces in the region to mount their own operations against the Iranian nuclear programme by cutting off vital logistical support from Gulf Arab allies.
US naval, air and ground forces are dependent for bases, refuelling and supplies on Gulf Arab rulers who are deeply concerned about the progress Iran has made in its nuclear programme, but also about the rising challenge to their regimes posed by the Arab spring and the galvanising impact on popular unrest of an Israeli attack on Iran.
The US Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain and the US air force has major bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Senior US officers believe the one case in which they could not rely fully on those bases for military operations against Iranian installations would be if Israel acted first.
“The Gulf states’ one great fear is Iran going nuclear. The other is a regional war that would destabilise them,” said a source in the region. “They might support a massive war against Iran, but they know they are not going to get that, and they know a limited strike is not worth it, as it will not destroy the programme and only make Iran angrier.”
Israeli leaders had hinted they might take military action to set back the Iranian programme, but that threat receded in September when the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the United Nations general assembly that Iran’s advances in uranium enrichment would only breach Israel’s “red line” in spring or summer next year.
Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said this week in London that it was the Iranian decision this year to convert a third of the country’s stock of 20%-enriched uranium into fuel (making it harder to convert to weapons-grade material if Iran decided to make a weapon) that had bought another “eight to 10 months”.
Barak’s comments appear to signal that Israel’s new red line is an Iranian stockpile of about 200kg of 20%-enriched uranium in convertible form, enough if enriched further to make one bomb. Western diplomats argue the benchmark is arbitrary, as it would take Iran another few months to enrich the stockpile to 90% (weapons-grade) purity, and then perhaps another year to develop a warhead small enough to put on a missile. Even then Tehran would have just one nuclear bomb, hardly enough to make it a nuclear weapons power.
France’s president, François Hollande, met Netanyahu in Paris on Wednesday but rejected the push for military action.
“It’s a threat that cannot be accepted by France,” Hollande said, arguing for further sanctions coupled with negotiations. A new round of international talks with Iran are due after the US presidential elections, in which Tehran is expected to be offered sanctions relief in return for an end to 20% enrichment.
Netanyahu argued sanctions had failed to stop Iran’s nuclear programme and claimed Arab nations would be “relieved” if Iran was stopped from building nuclear weaponsa bomb.
Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Bahrain, disagreed, saying: “I don’t believe the Gulf states are praying for an Israeli attack.
“An attack would create difficult problems for them on the political level. They will be called on to denounce Israel, and they will want to stay out of it. The risk of regional war to them is huge,” he said, but added that if Iran responded to an Israeli attack by lashing out at the US and its Arab allies, those restraints on the Gulf states’ own response would be lifted.
The UK government has told the US that it cannot rely on the use of British bases in Ascension Island, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia for an assault on Iran as pre-emptive action would be illegal. The Arab spring has also complicated US contingency planning for any new conflict in the Gulf.
US naval commanders have watched with unease as the newly elected Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has made overtures towards Iran. US ships make 200 transits a year through the Suez canal. Manama, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, is the capital of a country that is 70% Shia and currently in turmoil.
Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Israeli navy and the country’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, argues Israel too cannot ignore the new Arab realities.
“We live in a new Middle East where the street has become stronger and the leaders are weaker,” Ayalon told the Guardian. “In order for Israel to face Iran we will have to form a coalition of relatively pragmatic regimes in the region, and the only way to create that coalition is to show progress on the Israel-Palestinian track.”
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Netanyahu and the Zionist regime are master spinners. The fear of Iran being a nuclear weapon capable State has been overly exaggerated. No State with a nuclear weapon capability will launch a first strike due to the capability of another nuclear weapon State to launch 2nd and 3rd strikes. Nuclear weapon is more commonly viewed now in the context of deterrence rather than confrontation. Any confrontation will result in a mutual destruction. Zionists are picking on Iran perhaps largely due to it wanting to be the only State in that region to have nuclear weapon capability. There is no clear and present danger to Israel from Iran. Modern warfare points to unconventional warfare like guerrilla warfare and insurgencies. The assymetrical type that is not easy to defeat. They take the form of acts of terrorism and urban guerrilla to destabilise a State. As an eg. the US finds it hard to win wars in Iraq and Afghanistan due to the assymetrical nature of resistance. So, Israel’s continued harping on Iran being a threat to it via nuclear weapon is a load of BS and hogwash. It is just taking the opportunity of the current instability in the region to further weaken any govt in the region that wont kowtow to it through all sorts of tales and stories of fear which it has spun to the maximum. And certain quarters believe such BS.
As for the latest act of state terriorism by the Zionist State against the Palestinians , it is another episode of Israel’s unilateral arrogance since it knows that there is nothing the Arab League or the UN can do about it. Its pretext is the same i.e for its security. Such bonehead rationale ignores the fact that a State founded on forced expulsions of its inhabitants i.e the Palestinians cannot expect security which it wants to achieve through building illegal settlements and through its military might. All peace deals have been a farce as they tend to be lopsided and the Zionist regime will do what it wants to do and disregard international law and international opinion. And we all know that it has the backing and support of its old ally.
Though they were historically cousins, the Jews and the Arabs have become bitter enemies for thousands of years. The Jews migrated out of the areas later known as Palestine, to Europe and beyond, bringing with them the characteristics of selfishness beyond reason, always wanting to win, not wanting to be left out – the “ultra kiasu” aspects of the Chinese in the East. They didn’t even want to share their religion with others – Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the famous translator, interpreter and commentator of the Qur’an, said that Christianity and Islam were born due to Jewish selfishness, they don’t even want to talk about their god, known only as Yhwh.
Perennially selfish, largely engaged in usury (lending money at exorbitant interest rate or loan sharking) they were hated everywhere they went. The English playwright William Shakespeare even wrote about the Jewish “Merchant of Venice” demanding “a pound of flesh” for an unpaid loan. Always determined to win, they succeeded in many places. In England one of them even became Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli. Then Zionism, the political activities of the Jews, became a strong voice. Ideas about a “return to their homeland” surfaced.
When 6 million Jews perished at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis during World War II (Iranian President Ahmadenajad had denied it as mere propaganda to get world sympathy), the victors Britain and the US, which have been flooded with Jewish immigration, encouraged the Jews to settle in then British-administered Palestine in te latter half of the 1940s. They demanded the creation of their own state in Palestine. They even resorted to terrorist tactics, exploding bombs at a hotel where the British were stationed – some even considered the Jews the first terrorists of the world. Then they made a unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel.
Zionists based in Washington lobbied US President Harry Truman to announce recognition of the state of Israel. Again they resorted to underhanded means, including coercion. Finally Truman caved in and announced US recognition, Britain and others followed. The Zionists next secretly lobbied for US assistance to defend themselves against the Arabs who opposed the unilateral declaration of the state of Israel. The US provided them military protection and assistance. Then secretly sent a used nuclear reactor. They secretly built nuclear bombs with US help. There began the arrogance, intransigence, bullying and what have you of the damned Zionist Israelis against the Arabs and the Palestinians.
The Israeli Lobby in Washington has grown to become so strong that a paper jointly written by Professor John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University said it has “unmatched power”, influencing major foreign policy decisions in the US, including the Iraq War.
That’s why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (otherwise known as Setanyahu) dared to openly talk about bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. They thrive under Republican administrations, especially under the half illiterate George W Bush who gulped down Israeli insistence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that the entire Iraq War effort could not find.
The Republican Party is comprised of many conservative thinking whites, half and full blooded Jews, and people who forgot that the Jews are also Arabs in origin, similar to the hated Osama Ben Laden, Zionists who once also engaged in terrorism when wanting the state of Israel be recognized by Harry Truman. Now they call themselves Neo-conservatives or Neocons. Blokes that include.Dick Cheney, Vice President under George W Bush, William Cohen, Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State and later World Bank President – the last two are bachelors, friends of Anwar Ibrahim, the bloke who announced his support for the defence of the security of Israel,
Good that Obama was re elected President. If Mitt Romney had won, US would be supporting Setanyahu’s call for bombing nuclear facilities and another war might break out in the Middle East. Let’s hope and pray that sane and less Israeli-influenced people continue to become President in US. And Anwar Ibrahim never makes it to Putrajaya. Havoc to this country if he does. He’d be Setanyahu’s proxy in this region.
Bombing of nuclear facilities in the last paragraph refers to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Obama’s foreign policy of ‘ leading from behind’ and Zionist’s strong lobby in Congress and DC, can make Israel more blatant in its unilateral military actions against its disunited Arab neighbours.
They are already blatant in Gaza.