Israel to divorce US for war with Iran?
Photo: Israel’s Home Front Command has announced plans to mobilize the Israeli army as well as the public to hold the largest military exercise in its history on June2.
Israel resumes its anti-Tehran war talk in spite of stiff US opposition to the launch of go-it-alone air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
With less than a week having passed since Israeli military plans against Iran received the brush-off in Washington, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said the allegedly new US policy toward Tehran would be a ‘waste of time’ without a threat of military action.
Ya’alon -- who is wanted in several countries for war crimes over his involvement in the massacre of civilians and the assassination of senior Hamas official Salah Shehade -- urged Western countries to confront Iran and refrain from making any concessions on its nuclear program.
‘I have no doubt that the Iranians will use any dialogue to stall for time if there will not be a clear time frame and clear benchmarks like telling them that they have two months to stop the enrichment,’ Ya’alon reasoned.
The former Israeli military heavyweight refused to comment on Tel Aviv’s military agenda for Tehran but inarticulately warned that if the Obama administration fails to put an end to Iranian enrichment activities, a unilateral strike against the country’s nuclear infrastructure would be looming on the horizon.
‘We need to hope that the job will be done by someone else and at the same time, as the Talmudic sage Hillel said, ‘If I am not for myself who will be?’ he asked, signaling Israeli willingness to go to war with or without White House support.
His statements come amid a temporary lull in Israeli war rhetoric and at a time when echelons in Tel Aviv have been trying to give the impression that they have no plans for a military attack on Iran.
Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of nuclear weapons development -- a charge rejected by both Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog, which has so far made over 14 snap inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities.
With eyes firmly fixed on Iran’s nuclear progressions, the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to bomb the country’s enrichment facilities out of existence.
Netanyahu’s hawkish policies during his previous prime ministerial term (1996-1999) have been described by The Economist as a ‘calamity’ for the peace process.
A recent study has assessed that a military exchange between Iran and Israel could result in the death of as many as 6 million people.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an attack on the Bushehr Reactor, in southern Iran, would release contamination in the form of radionuclides, and most definitely affect Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
‘Any strike on this reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume,’ the study said.
The Israel-allied Obama administration has managed to conjure up the image of a government opposed to calls for war with Iran and is, according to RIA Novosti, mulling over whether to impose sanctions on Tel Aviv should Israel go ahead with a unilateral attack.
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