Donald vs. Hillary: the winner gets the atomic bomb

The festive celebration of elderly, white-American andropause held in Cleveland Ohio drew to its close without bloodshed. For this we can be truly thankful. Coming next, the coronation of Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love".   It has been commented that Donald Trump is the only Republican that Hillary Clinton could defeat and that Hillary Clinton is the only Democrat that Donald Trump could defeat. 

The winner gets the atomic bomb.

For me that is the decisive fact. Hillary Clinton is not very honest and her judgement is questionable, but she is not mentally ill. Donald Trump is neither honest nor trustworthy, either, but on top of that, I seriously doubt his sanity,   The idea of Donald Trump in possession of the atomic bomb is unacceptable. For me it is that simple.

This campaign for the presidency of the United States of America shows every sign of becoming the ugliest, dirtiest one in American history. With my mind already made up and as a matter of elementary mental hygiene, I don't want to follow it blow by blow, wading in the filth.  These coming months, not being able to retire to a cave in the Himalayas, I hope to find other things to write about. DS

Iran's bomb... the bottom line

Here’s the bottom line: an Israeli attack unites Iran in fury, locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation, cements the Syrian regime, radicalizes the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition, ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, boosts Hamas, endangers U.S. troops in the region, sparks terrorism, propels oil skyward, triggers a possible regional war, offers a lifeline to Iran just as Europe is about to stop buying its oil, adds a Persian to the Arab vendetta against Israel, and may at best set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions a couple of years. Roger Cohen - NYT

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The selling point of starving or beating Iran into submission is that if they had an atomic bomb they would use it to attack Israel, who has at least 200 such weapons. The idea being that Iran is planning to turn Israel, its Jewish inhabitants and a considerable number of Palestinian Muslims into a radioactive Auschwitz.

The Persians, though notably strict in their religious practice, are eminently rational. They are just as rational as Khrushchev's USSR. They would not start an atomic exchange that would mean the annihilation of their country. The biggest problem brought on by the Iranians having a bomb would be that all the other countries in the region would want one too.

An atomic-weaponized Middle East would not mean a nuclear free for all, but it would mean that Israel's and America's freedom of action to behave like a colonial power "punishing the natives", would be forever curtailed.

It would be impossible for the USA to encourage Israel to continue a war like the one against Hezbollah in 2006 until it "finished the the job" or to have invaded Iraq for that matter either.

With atomic weapons in the mix, any action by Israel that could remotely set off to a general war in the Middle East, one with even the remotest possibility of an atomic exchange, would have to be snuffed out at the first whiff of smoke.

Lobby or no lobby, the USA would have to keep Israel on a very tight leash and Israel and their lobby know that. This would certainly cramp Israel's style, and many Israelis would find that restraint intolerable and a significant number of the "best and the brightest" of Israel's technological elite, who could find work anywhere in the world on 24 hours notice, might possibly take their families and head out for safer climes.

The fear of not being able to sufficiently intimidate the Muslim population of the Middle East, not any fear of Israel's perishing in a nuclear holocaust, is at the bottom of America and Israel's drive to eliminate Iran's nuclear program. DS

How I learned to love the bomb

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The dirty secret of the atom bomb is that it is a "peace maker", as in "blessed be the peacemakers". 

The "inconvenient truth" is that the only one to have ever used the atomic bomb on human beings (twice) is the USA. 

The atomic bomb, like "the sound of a clod of earth falling on a coffin, is something perfect in its seriousness" (hat to A. Machado).

The bomb concentrates people's minds totally and suddenly they act rationally when contemplating war. 

How do I know that?

From direct personal experience, that's how...

I owe my life to the atomic bomb and I'm certainly not alone.

I think my whole (boomer) generation owe our lives to the atomic bomb... 

Without the bomb we would have gone to war with the USSR for sure.

My whole generation would have been drafted in both countries and the ensuing "conventional" war would have been even more brutal than WWII.

More brutal, why?

Because if we compare the conventional weapons that the Americans used in Vietnam and the Soviets used in Afghanistan with what both sides used in WWII (compare the M1 to the M16), millions of us on both sides would have died (probably me included).

So, I for one think that I owe my long and heretofore happy life directly to the proliferation of the atomic bomb.

It should be underlined that Iran's having the bomb does not mean they will ever use it. Persians are very sensible folk. A people like the Persians don't exist for thousands of years because of lemming tendencies.

What an Iranian bomb will mean is that the Israelis, for example, will not be able to periodically destroy half of Lebanon or massacre Palestinians in Gaza with impunity, as is their wont.

In an "bi" or "multi" lateral atomic Middle East something that brutal could spin out of control.

I remember with what care and caution the Soviet Union and the USA regarded each other.

What do you call an 800 pound gorilla?

"Sir".

When you stop and think about it, MAD (mutually assured destruction) is a rather beautiful thing.

It remains to be seen if the Israelis can lay down their "white man's burden" and deal with their neighbors without "gunboat diplomacy"... that is really what this issue is all about. That is what all the urgency is really about.

Proliferation means the end of colonialism: Sitting Bull gets the Gatling Gun. DS

Iran's bomb... the skinny

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The Persians, though strict in their religious practice, are eminently rational. They are just as rational as Khrushchev's USSR. They would not start an atomic exchange that would mean the annihilation of their country. The biggest problem brought on by the Iranians having a bomb would be that all the other countries in the region would want one too. That would not mean an atomic free for all, but it would mean that Israel's freedom of action would be forever curtailed. It would be impossible for the USA to encourage Israel to continue a war like the one against Hezbollah last summer until it "finished the the job". Any action by Israel that could remotely lead to a general war in the Middle East would have to be snuffed out at the first whiff of smoke. This would certainly cramp their style, and many Israelis would not tolerate that restraint. DS

The riddle of Iran - Economist
Abstract: “The Iranian regime is basically a messianic apocalyptic cult.” So says Israel's once and perhaps future prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. If he is right the world is teetering on the edge of a terrifying crisis. While the world has been distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan and much else, Iran has been moving relentlessly closer to the point where it could build an atomic bomb. It has converted yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas. Now it is spinning the gas through thousands of centrifuges it has installed at the underground enrichment plant it built secretly in Natanz, south of Tehran. A common guess is that if it can run 3,000 centrifuges at high speed for a year, it will end up with enough fuel for its first bomb.(...) If Iran really is no more than the “messianic cult” of Mr Netanyahu's imagination, it would be worth running almost any risk to stop it acquiring nuclear weapons. But as our special report argues, Iran is not that easy to read. Iran is a self-proclaimed theocracy. Yet it has conducted foreign relations since the revolution of 1979 in a way that seems perfectly rational even if it is not pleasant. Its president, the Holocaust-questioning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is widely reported to have threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”. But in fact he may never have uttered those precise words, and there is both ambiguity and calculation behind the bluster. Look closer and Mr Ahmadinejad is vague about whether he means that Iran should destroy Israel or just that he hopes for Israel's disappearance. Knowing that a nuclear attack on Israel or America would result in its own prompt annihilation, Iran could probably be deterred, just as other nuclear powers have been. Didn't Nikita Khrushchev promise to “bury” the West? Since Israel has memories of a real Holocaust, it may not set much store by that “probably”. This newspaper continues to believe that even for Israel containment of a nuclear Iran would be less awful than a risky pre-emptive attack that would probably cause mayhem, strengthen the regime and merely delay the day Iran gets a bomb. Yet the whole world still has a huge interest in preventing that day from coming. Even if Iran never used its bomb, mere possession of it might encourage it to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy than the one it is already pursuing in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. READ IT ALL

The war in waiting

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We may have been too busy watching the French elections or the US congress and the president haggling over the bill for Iraq to pay much attention to the possibility of war with Iran... The AIPAC and the neocons like professor Beres of Purdue (writing in the most moderate of newspapers) haven't lost their focus however.

People who might think that Bush, Cheney, the neocons and the Israeli right are incapable of doing anything worse, much, much worse than Iraq are intellectually challenged. DS

The case for strikes against Iran - Christian Science Monitor Abstract: Iran's latest defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency says it all: Further diplomacy has no chance of stopping Iran's nuclear program. Neither will UN sanctions have any effect. Unless there is a timely defensive first strike at pertinent elements of Iran's expanding nuclear infrastructures, it will acquire nuclear weapons. The consequences would be intolerable and unprecedented.(...) Ideally, a diplomatic settlement with Iran could be taken seriously. But in the real world, we must compare the price of prompt preemptive action against Iran with the costs of both: (1) inaction; and (2) delayed military action. To be sure, all available options are apt to be injurious. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad maintains that his country's nuclear program is intended only to produce electricity, but there is no plausible argument or evidence to support this claim. Meanwhile, Mr. Ahmadinejad's genocidal intentions toward Israel are abundantly clear. Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms, and this can only be accomplished through "anticipatory self-defense." Precise defensive attacks against Iran's nuclear assets would be effective – and they would be entirely legal. They would be effective because the US has at its disposal the "McInerney Plan" (after Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, USAF/ret.). It calls, in part, for an immediate strike force to hit Iran's nuclear development facilities, command and control centers, integrated air defenses, selected Air Force and Navy units, and its Shahab-3 missiles, using more than 2,500 aim points. Operationally, the United States Air Force is best configured for such a complex task, but it would not necessarily be impossible for the Israeli Air Force to execute. It would be lawful because the US and/or Israel would be acting in appropriate self-defense. Both countries could act on behalf of the international community and could do so lawfully without wider approval. The right of self-defense by forestalling an attack has a long and authoritative history in international law. In the 1625 classic "On the Law of War and Peace," Hugo Grotius expresses the enduring principle: "It be lawful to kill him who is preparing to kill…." Today, some scholars say that Article 51 of the UN Charter overrides that right. But international law is not a suicide pact. READ IT ALL

Shalom: The last one out, turn off the computer

A December poll in the newspaper Maariv found that 27% of Israelis would leave or consider leaving if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on Israel. - Los Angeles Times

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The quote above defines the problem. The chance of Iran ever attacking Israel with atomic weapons are minimal. Israel has submarines at sea with nuclear missiles, so its second strike capability is assured. Persians are a very rational people, (study their carpets) and as Chirac said -- before he was forced to retract -- Tehran would disappear in an Israeli counter-attack. No, the problem is one of nerves. As America and the Soviet Union did during the cold war, Israelis would have to live with possibility of an error or a mad man unleashing Armageddon... in Megiddo. Improbable, but possible. Anyone who lived the 50s and 60s in the USSR or the USA can tell you how it feels.

Since the digital revolution, Israel's economy has gone through a sea-change. Its new prosperity is said to be based on about 20,000 highly qualified, English speaking, engineers. These people are, by definition, completely "portable", they could be out of the country, with new, highly paid jobs and working papers in a few days, if not hours. If that happened the Israeli economy would simply collapse.

If Israel loses its exclusive on atomic weapons then just a periodic rise in tensions between Israel and Iran, without it ever getting to "Cuban Missile Crisis" proportions, would see the women and children of this cyber-elite enplaned for Silicon Valley with hubby soon to follow.

So that is what the fuss is really about. Either Israel completely dominates the Middle East with an unanswerable capacity to terrorize its neighbors or its "best and the brightest" will decamp. DS

Israel sounds alarm on Iran's nuclear efforts - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: Israel's possession of nuclear weapons since the late 1960s, though rarely acknowledged by its leaders, has worked as a deterrent until now. "For decades, the Arab countries … knew they couldn't beat Israel, so there was no coalition forming against us," said Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, director of the Defense Ministry's Political-Military Bureau. But soon, he said, "the Iranians could create a belief that they can beat us, and under their umbrella create an axis that will destabilize the Middle East." Also, Sunni Arab countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan and Libya — could strive to build atomic weapons to compete with Shiite Iran, making any regional conflict a potential nuclear tinderbox, he said. In such an environment, many Israelis might flee. A December poll in the newspaper Maariv found that 27% of Israelis would leave or consider leaving if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on Israel. READ IT ALL

Israel to nuke Iran - Sunday Times

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This is the front page of the Sunday Times of London. Israel denies it. Easy prediction: If it does happen, then Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Senator McCain will endorse it and the United States government will veto any UN resolution condemning it. It probably would mean the political death of NATO and the relations with the people of the European Union... I wouldn't swear by the governments. The Times is owned by Murdoch, so this might all be part of the propaganda surrounding the "surge". What is clear is that the neocons have realized that it's double or nothing. So this could be bluff or reality or both. DS

Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran - Sunday Times

Abstract: Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.(...) The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. “As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources. The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years. Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said. Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack. Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.(...) Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran’s nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a “second Holocaust”. The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map”.(...) The Israelis believe that Iran’s retaliation would be constrained by fear of a second strike if it were to launch its Shehab-3 ballistic missiles at Israel. However, American experts warned of repercussions, including widespread protests that could destabilise parts of the Islamic world friendly to the West. Colonel Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon adviser, said Iran could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the route for 20% of the world’s oil. Some sources in Washington said they doubted if Israel would have the nerve to attack Iran. However, Dr Ephraim Sneh, the deputy Israeli defence minister, said last month: “The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran.” READ IT ALL

Bush: the most public failure in the history of the world

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To fail utterly at the presidency of the United States because one is totally lacking in all the qualities or the knowledge to do the job is to fail big time. It is almost impossible for anyone to fail so miserably. To be in such a job and with no idea of how to go about it is the stuff of nightmares: in deadly danger and unable to move. Men have failed at the job because of bad luck, like LBJ or Carter. Others have done a workmanlike job, but miscalculated politically like Bush senior did. Nixon, who was perhaps the most intelligent man to sit in the White House in the 20th century, failed because of his damaged personality. But not one of the above was an incompetent, ne'r do well and all had solid achievements to point to in seeking the job. Wisdom or even common sense would warn against taking on such a challenge; many men and women, and not by any means the worst, would shrink from it. We are looking at literally the most public failure in the history of the world. We can only hope Bush is too dumb or too deluded to realize how bad it is. He has the atomic bomb... missiles... chemical weapons, biological weapons... people are laughing at him... soon they will be laughing in his face. May God have mercy on us all. DS

New war staring us right in the face

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The man in the picture here is Aluf Benn, the diplomatic correspondent of the highly respected Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. The article quoted below is published in the English edition of Haaretz, thus it is available for the whole world to read. It goes without saying that anything Aluf Benn publishes in his newspaper has passed several filters. Three of them come instantly to mind. First: the brains, knowledge and professional experience to pass the selection process for such an important post. Second: the editorial policy of the paper. Third: the general consensus of his colleagues and community as to what is responsible discourse. Conclusion: Aluf Benn is a sensible, reputed professional, not some nut spouting off on an electronic street corner. Read in this light, the following article by Mr. Benn is literally terrifying. DS
Four reasons for ranting - Haaretz
Abstract: The ideal scenario, from Israel's point of view, would be an American military attack that would destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and remove the threat. "We have to get the United States to carry out what it promised to do, and to create the proper international climate," explains a senior official. It is not clear what President Bush told Olmert in private talks that had him leaving Bush's office feeling so satisfied. We can only presume that Olmert is depending on Bush's religious faith and obstinacy, which will lead him to attack Iran, even in light of American public opposition to military adventures in the Middle East. When will that happen? The head of the Mossad spoke this week about an Iranian nuclear bomb in another three years. This leaves a year for diplomacy and sanctions, and moves H-hour for a military attack to 2008, if Iran continues its nuclear development. The timing is right politically. It will be Bush's last year in the White House, and he will be busy bequeathing his "legacy." It is a known fact that U.S. election years have always been years of dramatic moves in relations with Israel, from Harry S. Truman's recognition of the Jewish state to Bill Clinton's Camp David summit, to the "Bush letter" that recognized the settlements and the separation fence.(...) Former prime minister Ariel Sharon used to deny that Israel was planning to attack Iran on its own. Olmert prefers to hint at a military option. That's good for spurring the "world" into action, but it is also good for preparing Israeli public opinion for a complex conflict that is liable to continue for years. The experts disagree as to whether Israel has the ability to paralyze the Iranian project if it strikes it at critical points. It is clear that Israel would have to receive American approval for such an operation, and would prefer receiving it from Bush, who is friendly to Israel, rather than gambling on his successor. That is why even for this alternative 2008 will be the critical year.(...) Olmert wants to remain in the Golan, refuses to talk to Syrian President Bashar Assad and uses Bush's opposition as an excuse: Israel needs Bush to fight Iran, and we must not annoy him by babbling nonsense about peace with Syria. READ IT ALL

Iran outfoxes Israel, Blair and Bush

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Today, Tony Blair is calling on "moderate" Arab (read Sunni) Muslim states to form an "alliance of moderation" to counter Iran's growing influence. Blair, who will soon be out of power, may have his eye as firmly fixed on his future lecture fees as on any plausible "peace plan". His anti-Iran alliance is certainly another dog that won't hunt. Blair's idea is to isolate Shiite Iran from its Sunni neighbors. By chance this is more or less Al Qaeda's program too. Ahmadinejad's maneuvering is calculated to avoid such isolation. None of the Sunni regimes has anything like Iran's democratic legitimacy (Ahmadinejad just lost a local election: dictators don't ever lose elections) and the "Arab street" of the "moderate" Sunni regimes is restless. Ahmadinejad's stunts like the Jew-baiting "Holocaust Conference" and Iran's support of Hezbollah resistance to Israel's invasion of Lebanon and Hamas's stoicism in Gaza, all of which Muslims seem to find thrilling and heroic, are an effective insurance policy against just the sort of alliance that Blair is proposing. The Sunni Arab Street would only see their rulers as dropping their trousers one more time for the "Jews and Crusaders". The way tempers are rising this could easily cost them their jobs and even their and their families lives. Also Ahmadinejad by his provocations has forced Israel into a historic error that may cost them the whole "atomic" game itself. By publicly admitting that Israel has the atomic bomb, following US Secretary of Defense Robert Gate's similar revelation, Israeli PM Olmert has cut the legal ground and the international legitimacy out from underneath the planned UN sanctions of Iran. If the Tehran "Holocaust Conference" was planned in order to provoke the Israelis into some stupid mistake, it has been successful beyond its wildest dreams. "I would suggest that all those who want to talk about the issue, for God's sake and for the sake of Israel's security, stop it," said the Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. The doomsday climate thickens as Bush seems to have his 'mind" set on one last "grand offensive" in Iraq, which military experts fear may, in true Stalingrad fashion, be the definitive disaster. DS

Ahmadinejad: Crazy!!!

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrible, terrible man and obviously insane. I have taken the liberty of underlining some of the crazier things this loon wrote in his absurd letter to the "Noble Americans" (doesn't that just sound like Borat?). I wonder what would happen if any American politician said any of these dreadful, insane things. DS

Abstract from Associated Press: In an open letter, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the American people Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and reject what he called the US government's "blind support" for Israel and its "illegal and immoral" actions in fighting terrorism.(...) "Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections," Ahmadinejad wrote. "I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people." In a message to Democrats, he said, "you will also be held to account by the people and by history." "If the US government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America," Ahmadinejad said.(...) In Wednesday's letter, he said, "we, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people" and accused the Bush administration of disregarding public opinion by remaining "in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people." "What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people?" Ahmadinejad asked. "It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world." He urged Americans to support the right of the Palestinians to live in their own homeland.(...) Ahmadinejad said in Wednesday's letter that the US invasion of Iraq, while overthrowing Saddam Hussein which people "are happy about," has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, an exponential growth of terrorism, and no rebuilding of Iraq's ruined infrastructure. "I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure," he said. "Now that Iraq has a constitution and an independent assembly and government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?" Ahmadinejad asked. "As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness." READ IT ALL

Olmert's drums of war - Aluf Benn - Haaretz

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The flow of play in the Middle East is running strongly against Israel at this moment. Bush and Blair are a pair of stumbling lame ducks and Iran is taking the diplomatic initiative. Spain, France and Italy have troops on the ground in Lebanon and thus the EU really has its "foot in the door" in the Middle East for the first time. When a game of chess or checkers is going badly sometimes the loser will knock over the table to halt the game and re-arrange the pieces more to his liking. That is the danger now. DS

Abstract: In his address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Communities of North America in Los Angeles earlier this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made it clear that Israel and Iran were headed down a road of confrontation. It is hard to interpret his message any differently: "We have reached the pivotal moment of truth regarding Iran... Our integrity will remain intact only if we prevent Iran's devious goals, not if we try our best but fail."(...) The problem is that the international community hears the threats of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to destroy Israel, and his declarations that Iran will soon celebrate "the manifestation of its nuclear right," and is not really bothered. Members of the UN Security Council are still talking about imposing ridiculous sanctions that will have little effect on Iran, and an international military operation against the Iranian nuclear installations is highly unrealistic. The Democrat's victory in midterm elections in the United States also lessened the likelihood that Bush will bomb Iran. Israel, it seems, is facing Ahmadinejad alone. Olmert stepped up his attacks on Iran's nuclear program without consulting any professionals. His declarations last month have broken his "low profile" policy on Iran that Israel adopted in its effort to present Tehran's bomb as an international problem. As late as last month, Olmert held talks in Israel on the Iranian nuclear program, and decided to stick with the low-profile approach. So what happened to change his position? "A weak prime minister who is dropping in the opinion polls suddenly found himself faced with Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Effi Eitam, who are politicizing the issue, and with a public that does not have faith in the prime minister due to his lack of security experience," senior officials in Jerusalem explained. (...)Therein lies Olmert's problem: After he made his bold statements, Netanyahu's warnings that Israel is faced with a situation similar to that faced by European Jewry when threatened by Hitler in 1938, and Shimon Peres' description of Ahmadinejad as "a Farsi-speaking Hitler," the moment of truth for Israel's political leadership is nearing. The public will justifiably want to know what has been done to prevent the threat to its existence posed by Iran, and to stop the possible mass exodus of Jews from Israel, as described by Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. Domestic pressure calling for military action will intensify. However, experts on strategy have voiced doubts regarding Israel's ability to carry out an effective aerial attack on Iran's nuclear installations, similar to the raid that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.(...) The U.S. forces in the region could become targets of Iranian retaliation, just like Israel, and therefore there is no way that an independent Israeli action can take place without authorization from Bush. Did Olmert get such a go-ahead and is this why he was pleased with his visit to the White House?(...) The challenge Olmert has set for himself is not a simple one. But the more his warnings intensify, the more difficult he will find it to back down and convince the public that we can live with an Iranian bomb. Therefore, we can assume that the confrontation is moving closer. READ IT ALL

Talk of another preventive war in the Middle East is folly - Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

"If Iraq has taught America and its allies anything, it is that it is much easier to start a war in the Middle East than to finish one."

Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

Seymour Hersh: The Next Act - New Yorker

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The idea that a Democratic congress lessens the chance of a war with Iran may be totally wrong. It may mean the exact opposite, because the last thing any of the major Democratic presidential candidates want to do in the run-up to the 2008 elections is to offend Israel. The Israelis are absolutely desperate to avoid losing their military superiority. A nuclear armed Iran does not mean the physical end of Israel, Iran wants to be "numero uno" in the Middle East, not to be turned into an ash heap, but it would probably mean the end of the Zionist project, as no one could ever say anymore that Eretz Israel constituted a safe refuge for the Jewish people, quite the contrary. If war is finally avoided the world will have a lot of reasons to thank Seymour Hersh. He is fast becoming a historical figure. He has been the substitute for an entire intellectual class that the United States no longer possesses. DS

Abstract: A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, (...) In an interview this month with the Jerusalem Post, (Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Ephraim ) Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran: The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.(...) The Bush Administration, if it does take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that—as Clinton said earlier this year—“we cannot take any option off the table.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, “A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die—the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.”(...) “Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East,” I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration official. “With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout the region, it’s basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate with us over Iraq?” READ ALL