Juan Cole writes:
A 2007 cable from then US ambassador to Israel to Secretary of State Condi Rice shows a) that the Israeli leadership did not want the US to withdraw from Iraq and b) that Israeli politicians think that even if Iran never used a nuclear weapon, just for it to have one would doom Israel.
Since the US is in fact withdrawing from Iraq, and will be mostly out by next year this time, we may conclude that the Israeli leadership is very nervous about Tel Aviv – Baghdad relations. That the new government being formed by Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki depends deeply on the support of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Sadrist movement, the most anti-Israel political force in Shiite Iraq, must petrify Prime Minister Netanyahu and his security cabinet. The likelihood of the Sadrists further coordinating with Lebanon’s Hizbullah party-militia is high. So the fall of Saddam did not in fact take away the Iraq file from consideration in Israel’s future.
As for Iran, US intelligence still cannot find evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and the UN inspectors again certified spring, 2010, that no nuclear material has been diverted from the Natanz facility to non-civilian purposes.
But the cable shed light on the thinking of high Israeli officials about why Israel cannot, as many US analysts have suggested, just live with an Iranian bomb if one is achieved. They believe that such a development would create a psychological nervousness in the Israeli public that would likely doom it as a Jewish state.
Lets we never forget that Iran IS a signatory of the NPT, therefore it HAS the RIGHT to develop nuclear energy.
Lets we never forget that Israel IS NOT a signatory of the NPT and it HAS 200 Nuclar Bombs.
Lets we never forget that the US/UK/Israel continously THREAT Iran with military strike.
Let we never forget that Iran agreed with nuclear material swop, a deal made with Brazilian and Turkish diplomacy, that is identical to the one proposed by the US. And the the US, as soon as the deal was done, regected it and proceeded with sanctions.
Let we never forget the Sah!!!
Perhaps the Israelis best know the false pretenses upon with the state of Israel was founded and continues to exist. Having no legal basis for the state basically means that it can be maintained only force — a force that is countered by only a single state able and willing to neutralize it with a nuclear weapon.
We all would do well not to be distracted by the ancient Persian-Arab squabbles over borders– an issue that makes both want to block expansionism by the other with a Cold War like MAD nuclear deterrent policy– quoting meaningless angry words about cutting the head off the snake, and focus on the ONLY expanding nation in the Middle East, Israel.
The sins makes for guilt feelings as well as the intent, manifested as obsession with retribution. There’s no hiding the intent of Herzl as Israel has been expanding since 1948, in the words of Ben Gurion, “bit by bit, ever so slowly and steadily.” Of course, then, as the neocon memos to Israel declare, the idea was to use the US forces as Israel’s mad dog on a Jewish chain. If I were a Zionist honcho I would recall the nefarious evens associated with 9/11 that demanded a cover-up of the FBI releasing many an Israeli spies who cheered the collapse of the World Trade Center and not of the anti-binLaden binLaden family’s swift departure from the US. If such memories of the cheering Mossadists in West New York, NJ, across the Hudson for the collapsing World Trade Center, are recalled and combined with all the evidence that gives substance to DCI Tenet’s explanation that the Iraq War against non-existent WMDs was due to depending too much on another nation’s intel services, one notes that the first step to Israel holding the US like its own mad dog on a chain came to fruition when Israel played some as yet unknown role in the 9/11 catastrophe. If there’s substance to that and if Obama, in his totally collapsed morale, acquiesces to Israeli demands that its evil spy Pollard be released, then the chain of suspicion will form unbreakable links and the American Krystalnacht will explode upon us all, God forbid. So let us recall that psychotic fear should be treated pharmacologically if needed for in this kind of situation SILENCE IS GOLDEN and insolence is flammable.