The hawkish Likud Party-led Israeli government continues to insist that the United States bomb Iran, setting off a war which could be disastrous for US troops and interests in the area, not to mention the almost certain loss of many civilian lives. Dan Williams has the latest in a Reuters piece that is being carried by Yahoo News:
Dan Meridor, Israeli hawk
A senior Israeli official said on Sunday the United States should not wait forIran to decide on building a nuclear weapon before it considers military action against the Islamic Republic.
“When is the point at which it should be stopped? Just when the bomb is assembled on the tip of the missile and is ready for launch?” Dan Meridor, deputy Israeli prime minister with responsibility for nuclear and intelligence affairs, said in a radio interview.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees a mortal threat to Israel from Tehran, has hinted he could resort to war unless Washington and other world powers give Iran an ultimatum on curbing its uranium enrichment programme.
…Tehran denies seeking the bomb, saying its nuclear projects are for peaceful energy and medical purposes. Diplomatic talks between it and world powers have so-far proved fruitless.
Speaking on Israel Radio, Meridor praised the Obama administration for its insistence that it will not allow Iran to get nuclear arms. But such shows of resolve must be emphasized, he said.
Iran could reach a stage of nuclear development which would allow it to make a warhead quickly years in the future when the world’s guard was down, he said.
“This demands clarification, to my mind, to make clear that even an Iran that is a decision away from nuclear weaponry, be it within days or weeks, is a nuclear-armed Iran,” Meridor said.
Notice the strange logic of the Israeli hawks: even though Iran has neither decided to make a nuclear weapon nor enriched any uranium to a weapons grade, it is still nuclear-armed. How is it possible for a country that has no nuclear weapons to be nuclear-armed? Quite obviously, a country without nuclear weapons is not nuclear-armed, despite the word-play of Meridor and Netanyahu.
As well, Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and despite the constant warmongering of its political leaders, it is not the end of the world. Additionally, Pakistan, India, Russia and the United States all have nuclear weapons in the region. It is understandable why some Iranians might wish to have a nuclear deterrent in such an environment, especially given the frequent calls of Israel for an attack on them. Should Iran get such a deterrent, how many US and foreign lives should be destroyed in order to satisfy the demands of Israeli hawks?
Update: Netanyahu is reported by Haaretz today as claiming once again that Iran is six or seven months away from having the capability of building a nuclear bomb. Israeli hawks and Neo-cons have been making such claims for many years. And once again, the bellicose Israeli prime minister demanded that the US establish so-called ‘red lines’ and promise to attack Iran if it crossed these lines. As usual, Netanyahu equated the Iranian capacity to build a nuclear weapon (even if it did not build such a weapon) with a reason for the US and Israel to go to war against Iran.
The neocons certainly have moved the goal post forward for starting a war with Iran. The traditional standard for an act of war is committing an act of aggression against another country. For Iran the neocons asserted that possessing a nuclear weapon constitute an act of war (nevermind that the US, Israel, Great Britain all possess nuclear weapons.) When it was clear that Iran isn’t close or may never obtain a nuclear weapon, the goal post for war was moved up again. Now the threshold for war is simply having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.
I’m glad you pointed this out, Anti-Federalist.
Michael,
Honestly, I think there is a lot monied interest behind this push for war. The supposed rationale behind this war is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supposedly threatening to wipe Israel off the map. I personally believe that his statement was mistranslated but this doesn’t matter to the masses who have an inability to engage in any critical thinking. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leaves office next year. Without their boogeyman in power, the merchants of death (e.g. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, et al) will have a harder time selling the war to the public. After all, if Adolf Hitler (aka Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) voluntarily leaves office, is there really a threat anymore?
Another good point, Anti-Federalist. I think money power is definitely part of what is behind it. There are other factors as well, I would say. In both the US and Israeli, war is good politics with a large part of the voting public. There is actually more resistance to the push for war from inside the militaries of both the US and Israel than there is from the government and public. As well, ideology (Neo-conservatism and the Likud Party vision of an Israeli empire) is partly to blame.
Israel is a double edged sword.
On the one hand, I understand why Palestinians and other Arabs in that country would be angry and resentful.
We took lands from the Indians in the same way.
On the other hand, Israel acts somewhat as a buffer between between Europe and many Islamic fundamentalists.
These Islamic extremists would love to do nothing more than to take people from the West, sodomize the men, rape the women, torture us, and then kill us.
That’s the truth.
This is why the West better be unified on this one.
I also fear the inevitable is coming…..
TNSDG, If we had our borders closed to the Third World here (as we did before 1965) and in Europe (as before WWII) the Islamic threat would be negated almost entirely. The importation of millions of people from the Third World in general and the Islamic world in particular is the real problem here.
Also, it is typical of the strongest Israeli supporters here to defend Israel as a Jewish state and be very much opposed to Islamic immigration into Israel, while at the same time strongly promoting Third World immigration into the US and Europe. There are many Zionists in the West but few nationalists who are consistent in not only supporting the right of Jews to have a homeland but of Europeans to also have a homeland.
I hear your point.
I do agree with everything you’ve just said.
However, I do fear that the “genie has been let out of the bottle” (No pun intended).
Perhaps it was let out of the bottle centuries ago with invasion of the West by Mohammedens (sp?) and the beginning of Islam in general.
I also agree, shutting down immigration for a whole host of reasons would solve an entire miriad(sp?)of problems, including this one.
Having said that, again, no matter what our political ideology, I think the West better brace itself for radical Islam, and how to deal with it. I don’t want it that way, but I’m also trying to be realistic. I think forces are in play at the present time that are beyond our control. I also believe we will start to see “sparks fly”, sooner rather than later.
It’s not my wish, nor is it yours I’m sure.
But I think it’s coming…..