Israel planning New Year attack on Iran?

Bill Weinberg

Israel is planning military attacks on Iran after December, the French magazine Le Canard Enchainé asserted Oct. 13. According to the report, quoted by Israel Radio, Jerusalem has already ordered from a French food manufacturer combat rations for soldiers serving in elite units, and asked reservists of these units staying abroad to return to Israel. The report also states that in a recent visit to France, IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi told his French counterpart Jean-Louis Georgelin that Israel is not planning to bomb Iran, but may send elite units to conduct ground operations there. The magazine suggests these may involve sabotage of nuclear facilities and assassinations of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. (ANI, Oct. 15)

According to Wikipedia, Le Canard Enchainé is a “satirical newspaper” that also “features investigative journalism and leaks from sources inside the French government.”

The supposed leak comes simultaneous with news that the US military is speeding up delivery of a colossal “bunker-buster” bomb dubbed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)—to be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the Pentagon arsenal, carrying 5,300 pounds of explosives. The Pentagon has awarded a $52 million contract to speed placement of the MOP aboard the B-2 Stealth bomber, and officials say it could be fielded as soon as next summer. It is to be 10 times more powerful than the weapon it is designed to replace, the BLU-109. Media speculation suggests it is intended for the newly revealed nuclear site the Iranian regime has built deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom. Officials deny there is a specific target in mind. “I don’t think anybody can divine potential targets,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. “This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in.” (Daily Mail, Oct. 13)

We will point out that predictions of an imminent US or Israeli attack on Iran have been made many times before by Scott Ritter, Webster Tarpley, David Petraeus and Benny Morris. They’ve all been wrong, and none of them has ever publicly eaten crow that we’re aware of. On the other side of the coin, Bernard Lewis predicted an imminent Iranian attack on Israel three years ago. We haven’t heard that he’s eaten crow either. Why is the crystal ball set still treated with such reverence on the left and right alike?

See our last posts on Iran, Israel and nuclear fear.

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    1. israel bombing
      Israel will not bomb Iran in the next three months, Israel is dealing with war crimes right now and does not have world opinion on their side right now. Israel will wait till Iran does something that makes Iran look bad, crushing protest for example. my guess is that someone else will bomb the enrichment plant sometime after the new year. After the inspectors have been thrown out of course.

      1. “crushing protest”?
        Um, that already happened! And since when does Israel care about world opinion? And the only “someone else” that would or could bomb Iran is Obama…

  2. Excuse me, we asked you a question
    We posted this poll on Daily Kos at the same time we post it above. In the past hour, it has received 38 votes there—and zero here. So why are you all reading Daily Kos and not World War 4 Report?

  3. So will Israel attack Iran within the next three months?
    OK, 12 hours later the poll has had 119 votes on Daily Kos—and six here.

    Does anyone actually read World War 4 Report?

    Please vote!

  4. Juniper Cobra maneuvers postponed?
    The Chicken Little crowd also pointed to the fact that the US and Israel planned joint missile-interception exercises this month as evidence of an imminent attack on Iran. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11) But they may have been reading the maneuvers, dubbed “Juniper Cobra,” exactly backwards. A glimpse at the page on Juniper Cobra on the generally reliable Global Security site indicates that the first such exercises were held in February 2001. The less consistently reliable Israeli site DEBKAfile informs us that that the maneuvers have been held every two years since then—and have been actually been postponed for the first time this year. Announcement of the postponement came three days after Turkey called off its sixth annual international air maneuver when the US and Italy pulled out in protest of Ankara’s exclusion of the Israeli air force. DEBKA writes: “It was not immediately clear whether the highly exceptional week’s postponement of the exercise on the very day it was to begin was a joint US-Israeli decision or one made by Israel for political or perhaps technical reasons.”

  5. Um, I think we’re missing something here…
    Roger Cohen writes in an Oct. 15 New York Times op-ed, “An Ordinary Israel”:

    I think President Obama, himself talking down American exceptionalism, is trying to nudge Israel toward a more prosaic, realistic self-image.

    Hence the U.S. abstention last month at a U.N. nuclear assembly vote calling on all states in the Middle East to “accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons” (N.P.T.) and create a nuclear-weapon-free Middle East — an idea Obama administration officials have supported in line with a nuclear disarmament agenda.

    A shift is perceptible in the decades-old tacit American endorsement of Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. This is logical. To deal effectively with the nuclear program of Iran, an N.P.T. member, while ignoring the nuclear status of non-N.P.T. Israel is to invite accusations of double standards. President Obama doesn’t like them.

    How is abstaining from the vote indicative of this supposed “shift”? You mean instead of voting against it? Gee, thanks…

  6. Juniper Cobra goes forward
    From AlJazeera, Oct. 22:

    The United States and Israel have begun more than two weeks of tests to simulate missile attacks on the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons.

    According to the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Wednesday, the Juniper Cobra drills will simulate the firing of long-range missiles against Israel and will include a live missile interception.

    The 16-day defence drill involves 2,000 troops from the US European Command and the Israeli army. It will put the Israeli Arrow missile defence system and three US systems through their paces.

    Testing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence System and Patriot anti-aircraft systems has required Washington to dispatch 17 warships to the region.

    Monitoring from the Negev desert, the US-made Forward Based X-band Tactical radar – capable of detecting long-range missiles – will track the Arrow missile system while transmitting data to a US joint tactical ground station.