[No: orange. Yes: blue.]
We had 20,000 responses to our Urtak poll from the other day on how to read the latest NYT piece about the Israel-Iran gathering storm. The results are here. A majority of you thinks Israel is serious about an attack, that Netanyahu is using the NYT to pressure Obama to do it himself, but that, in the end, Obama will not back such an attack unless sanctions have truly been shown to have failed. But one reader caught a nuance worth noting:
One sentence — specifically, one phrase — stood out to me in the NYT piece:
Assuming it does not use a nuclear device, Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could damage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.
This is the first time I’ve seen the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent mentioned in this debate. Consider the following in that light:
Should the United States get involved — or decide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes.
I’ve re-read the article a couple of times, and I still come away with the same impression: short of a nuclear blast, Israel is unsure whether they can achieve their goal, whereas the US would be perfectly capable of pulling it off with conventional weapons. It looks as though they’ve taken a page from the Nixon playbook — though Nixon used this strategy to intimidate the US’ adversaries, whereas Israel seems intent on using it to intimidate one of its allies.
I worry that this situation can so easily get out of control with this kind of brinksmanship, and today, we are seeing an increasingly jittery Tehran regime make more threatening noises about pre-emption in the same manner as Israel. Both countries are now assassinating each others’ citizens. But I hope and pray that Obama stays calm and calls Bibi’s bluff. If Israel refuses to allow sanctions to take their course, and wants to succeed militarily, then it can always use its nukes. How the world would react would be Israel’s crisis to cope with – not ours’. And we should adamantly disown the attack as Eisenhower did in 1956, and end all military aid.
One modest proposal for the MSM in these stories. When referring to Iran’s attempt to procure enough material for one nuclear warhead, stories should also mention that Israel already possesses somewhere in the region of 200, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and holds a nuclear monopoly in the region. Context matters.
The Dish 