I had an interesting discussion this morning with a friend of mine who was wearing rose colored glasses with regard to the likelihood of an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities this year. He told me repeatedly that the probability of an Israeli attack this year is no more than 30%, a figure that was much lower than he previously thought. He discerned this reduced probability from the shrug that the oil markets gave to the failure of the latest P5+1 talks with the Iranians. After all, all those big money investors would surely have heard rumors of any imminent Israeli attack so that they would be buying oil and driving up the price of that commodity.
I strongly disagree. In my view it is better than 2 to 1 that Israel will strike the Iranian nuclear facilities this year, with the likely date for the strike to be in July or August. Here are the reasons why:
1) The Israeli government views Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat to the Jewish state. There is no way that the Israelis will allow Iran to get nukes without doing everything possible to stop that from happening.
2) The Israelis know that they have no friend in president Obama. Sure, Obama is constrained by political considerations from taking positions that could hurt Israel, but that constraint ends with the election in November. The Israelis know that Obama will not risk war or any upset that might derail his re-election campaign in a confrontation with Iran. Indeed, the thinking in Israel is that Obama is prepared to live with a nuclear Iran.
3) Israel also knows that its chances of success will be much greater if it has US backing for the attack. There are only two ways to get such backing: a)wait until 2013 in the hopes that president Romney will support and join in such an attack; or b)move forward unilaterally prior to the election so that Obama is forced to support Israel or to pay the price at the polls in November. Since everything that Obama does these days is determined by his calculus as to whether or not action will help his re-election, the Israelis can be faily certain that if they can have even partial success in Iran, Obama will be forced to support the attack. Otherwise, Jews and evangelical Christians as well as most other Americans will view inaction or opposition to the Israelis harshly. The best time for that attack is in July or August when the political conventions are approaching. At that point, more and more folks will be tuning in to the election, and there will be plenty of time for maximum pressure to be brought upon Obama to support the Israeli action.
4) Unless a Romney win seems certain, the Israelis will not wait until 2013. They know that once the election is passed, Obama will become an implaccable foe of any action against Iran.
5) The lack of reaction in the oil markets to the failure of the latest talks tells us nothing about what the Israelis will do. Unlike the Obama administration, the Israeli government does not leak state secrets. Israel will not tell anyone that the attack is proceeding. Oh, it will alert the USA a few hours ahead of time, but that is about it. The press and the markets will never get wind of it ahead of time.
6) The quiet in the press and the markets about Iran is actually an indicator that we may be approaching an attack. Israel is probably finished trying to use threats to stop Iran. It is now in pre-attack mode. That means secrecy and plenty of it. Hence the end of the stories.
7) Israel must also have understood the position in which Iran finds itself. If Israel attacks and destroys the Iranian facilities, Iran is unlikely to do much itself in response. Iran will not shut the Straits of Hormuz. Such action would demand a response from the US Navy and would likely start a chain of events that would end with the overthrow of the mullahs in Teheran. They will not take on the USA directly. Instead, a more likely response would be an attack by Hezbollah and Hamas on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza respectively. Even so, however, both groups of terrorists would understand that a severe Israeli response would follow such an attack. With Iran having been blasted by Israel and with Assad in Syria on the ropes, Hezbollah may not be so quick to launch a major offensive against Israel when it knows that there will not be help coming from either of its patrons.
I seriously hope that Iran returns to the negotiating table and that a peaceful resolution is reached. I find that outcome extremely unlikely however. I fear that we will soon be hearing and seeing the Israeli attack.
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