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Media Hawks Make Case for War Against Iran

This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).

What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment.

Gregory Shupak, FAIR, 25 Oct 24

The media hawks are flying high, pushing out bellicose rhetoric on the op-ed pages that seems calculated to whip the public into a war-ready frenzy.

Just as they have done with Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 10/10/24), prominent conservative media opinionators misrepresent Iran as the aggressor against an Israel that practices admirable restraint.

Under the headline, “Iran Opens the Door to Retaliation,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/1/24) wrote that Iran’s October 1 operation against Israel “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets. This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal.”

The editors wrote:

After April’s attack, the Biden administration pressured Israel for a token response, and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.

‘We need to escalate’

The New York Times‘ self-described “warmongering neocon” columnist Bret Stephens (10/1/24), in a piece headlined “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” similarly filed Iran’s April and October strikes on Israel under “aggression” that requires a US/Israeli military “response.” And a Boston Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that Iran “launched a brazen attack,” arguing that the incident illustrated why US students are wrong to oppose American firms making or investing in Israeli weapons.

All of these pieces conveniently neglected to mention that Iran announced that its October 1 missile barrage was “a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah and Hamas” (Responsible Statecraft, 10/1/24). One of these assassinations was carried out by a bombing in Tehran, the Iranian capital. But we can only guess as to whether the Globe thinks those killings are “brazen,” Stephens thinks they qualify as “aggression,” or if the Journal believes any country can let such assassinations “become a new normal.”

Likewise, Iran’s April strikes came after Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (CBS, 4/14/24). At the time, Iran reportedly said that it would refrain from striking back against Israel if the latter agreed to end its mass murder campaign in Gaza (Responsible Statecraft, 4/8/24).

‘Axis of Aggression’

A second Stephens piece (New York Times, 10/8/24) claimed that “the American people had better hope Israel wins” in its war against “the Axis of Aggression led from Tehran.” The latter is his term for the coalition of forces resisting the US and Israel from Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, which refers to itself as the “axis of resistance.” Stephens’ reasoning is that, since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran; the diplomatsand Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons used against commercial shipping.

The war Israelis are fighting now—the one the news media often mislabels the “Gaza war,” but is really between Israel and Iran—is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.

This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).

Given this background, suggesting—as the Journal, the Globe and Stephens do—that Iran is the aggressor against the US is not only untenable but laughable. Furthermore, as I’ve previously shown (FAIR.org, 1/21/20), it’s hardly a settled fact that Iran is responsible for Iraqi attacks on US occupation forces in the country. Stephens’ description of the Navy SEALs who died in the Red Sea is vague enough that one might be left with the impression that Iran or Ansar Allah killed them, but the SEALs died when one of them fell overboard and the other jumped into the water to try to save him (BBC, 1/22/24).

Stephens went on:

Those who care about the future of freedom had better hope Israel wins.

We are living in a world that increasingly resembles the 1930s, when cunning and aggressive dictatorships united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships also know how to smell weakness. We would all be safer if, in the Middle East, they finally learned the taste of defeat.

What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment. More realistically, the “future of freedom” is jeopardized by the US/Israeli alliance’s invading the lands of Palestinian and Lebanese people and massacring them. These crimes suggest that, in the Journal’s parlance, it’s the US/Israeli partnership that is the “regional and global menace.” Or, to borrow another phrase from the Journal’s editorial, it’s Israel and the US who are the “dangerous regime[s]” from which “the civilized world” must be defended.

‘A global menace’

Corporate media commentators didn’t stop at Iran’s direct strikes on Israel, casting Iran as, in the Journal‘s words (10/1/24), “a regional and global menace”:…………………………………………………………………

Painting Iran as the mastermind behind unprovoked worldwide aggression helps prop up the hawks’ demands for escalation. But the US State Department said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, “either in planning it or carrying it out” (NBC, 10/12/23)…………………………………………………………………………………..

Propaganda goes nuclear

As usual, those who are itching for a war on Iran invoke the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) wrote:

This year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.

Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.

That someone will probably be Israel.

By “something,” Stephens said he also meant that “Biden should order” military strikes to destroy the “Isfahan missile complex.” “There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too,” Stephens wrote suggestively.

The LA Times published two guest op-eds in less than two weeks urging attacks on Iran based on its alleged nuclear threat. Yossi Klein Halevi (10/7/24) wrote:…………………………………..

‘Threshold’ is a ways away…………………………………………………….

Recent history shows that Iran has been willing to “stop itself” from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran abided by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, under which Iran limited its nuclear development in exchange for a partial easing of US sanctions. It stuck to the deal for some time even after the United States unilaterally abandoned it.

Just before President Donald Trump ripped up the agreement in 2018, the IAEA reported that Iran was “implementing its nuclear-related commitments” under the accord. The year after the US abrogated the agreement, Iran was still keeping up its end of the bargain.

‘Provocative actions’ from US/Israel

Iran subsequently stopped adhering to the by then nonexistent deal—often advancing its nuclear program, as Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24) noted, “in response to provocative actions from the US and Israel”:

In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.

In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.

However, situating Iranian policies in relation to US/Israeli actions like these would get in the way of the Journal’s campaign, which it articulated in another editorial (10/2/24), to convince the public that “If Mr. Biden won’t take this opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the least he can do is not stop Israel from doing the job for its own self-preservation.”

Of course, the crucial, unstated assumption in the articles by Stephens, Halevi, Heilman and the Journal’s editors is that Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons are emergencies that need to be immediately addressed by bombing the country—while Washington and Tel Aviv’s vast, actually existing nuclear arsenals warrant no concern. https://fair.org/home/media-hawks-make-case-for-war-against-iran/

October 29, 2024 Posted by | Iran, media | Leave a comment

Israel strikes Iran military targets amid fears of a wider war

The Age, October 26, 2024 

Israel said it struck military sites in Iran early on Saturday in retaliation for Tehran’s attacks on Israel earlier this month, the latest step in the escalating conflict between the heavily armed rivals.

Iranian media reported multiple explosions over several hours in the capital and at nearby military bases, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Before dawn, Israel’s public broadcaster said three waves of strikes had been completed and that the operation was over.

The Middle East has been on edge awaiting Israel’s retaliation for a ballistic-missile barrage carried out by Iran on October 1, in which around 200 missiles were fired at Israel and one person was killed in the West Bank.

Tensions between arch-rivals Israel and Iran have escalated since Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group based in Gaza, attacked Israel on October 7 last year. Hamas has been supported by Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants, also backed by Iran.

Fears that Iran and the United States would be drawn into a regional war have risen with Israel’s intensifying assault on Hezbollah since last month, including airstrikes on the Lebanese capital Beirut and a ground operation, as well as its year-old conflict in the Gaza Strip………………………………………………………….

US President Joe Biden had warned that Washington, Israel’s main backer and supplier of arms, would not support a strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites and has said Israel should consider alternatives to attacking Iran’s oil fields.

Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned Israel against any attack.

“Iran reserves the right to respond to any aggression, and there is no doubt that Israel will face a proportional reaction for any action it takes,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Saturday, quoting sources…………………………………………..

Videos carried by Iranian media showed air defences continuously firing at apparently incoming projectiles in central Tehran, without saying which sites were coming under attack.

The semi-official Iranian Fars news agency said several military bases in the west and southwest of Tehran had also been targeted…………………………………………………………………….

US informed ahead of strikes

……………………………..The US was notified by Israel ahead of its strikes on targets in Iran but was not involved in the operation, another US official told Reuters.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the Middle East for another attempt to broker a peace deal, said on Wednesday that Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.

Even as it sought to convince Israel to calibrate its strikes, the US moved to reassure its closest ally in the Middle East that it would aid in its defence should Tehran decide to stage a counter-attack.

This included Biden’s decision to move the US military’s THAAD anti-missile defences to Israel, along with about 100 US soldiers to operate them. …………………………….. more https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/israel-raids-gaza-hospital-strike-on-a-home-kills-13-children-20241026-p5kli5.html

October 26, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran complains to IAEA about possible Israeli attack on nuclear sites

Iran International, Oct 21, 2024, 

Iran has written to the UN nuclear watchdog to complain about Israel’s threats against its nuclear sites in a possible retaliatory strike, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Monday.

“Any acts of aggression towards nuclear sites are condemned under international law,” Baghaei said during his weekly news conference.

He added that Tehran had officially communicated its position to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying, “we have sent a letter about it to… the UN nuclear watchdog.”

Israel has vowed to attack Iran in retaliation for a volley of Iranian missiles launched on October 1, leading to widespread speculation that Iran’s nuclear sites could be among Israel’s targets.

On October 1, Iran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel, a move described as retaliation for the killings of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. It was the second Iranian attack on Israel this year. Israel responded to the first missile volley in April with an air strike on an air defense site in central Iran.

After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Tehran had made a “big mistake tonight” and vowed that “it will pay for it.” Later, the Biden administration revealed that it told Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

Last week, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would listen to key ally the United States regarding a response to Iran’s missile attack but would decide its actions according to its own national interest.

His statement was attached to a Washington Post article which said Netanyahu had told President Joe Biden’s administration that Israel would strike Iranian military targets, not nuclear or oil sites.

Baghaei, responding to a question about the possibility of Iran changing its official nuclear doctrine, said “weapons of mass destruction have no place in our policy”. Tehran would decide on how and when to respond to any Israeli attack.

Israel, which has long accused Tehran of plans to develop nuclear weapons, regards Iran’s nuclear activities as a threat. Tehran denies these accusations, insisting that its program is entirely peaceful.

Additionally, Israel’s former premier Naftali Bennett called for the country’s leaders to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as the Jewish state weighs its response to the barrage of 181 ballistic missiles.

Bennet slammed Biden who had called for a “proportionate” response, saying, “President Biden has said that Israel can retaliate against Iran, but must keep the response ‘proportionate’. The president also urged Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear program.”

Moreover, prominent Israeli opposition lawmaker and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman also called on the government to use “all the tools” at its disposal to confront the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, tacitly suggesting that Israel should use a nuclear weapon against the Islamic Republic.

“In order to stop the Iranian nuclear program, which is already at weaponization stages, we must use all the tools at our disposal… It must be clear that, at this stage, it is impossible to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons via conventional means.”……………………………………………………………………………………https://www.iranintl.com/en/202410210736

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Iran complains to UN nuclear watchdog about Israeli threats against its nuclear sites

 https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/10/21/iran-says-it-warned-un-nuclear-watchdog-about-israeli-threats-against-its-nuclear-sites

Iran has written to the UN nuclear watchdog to complain about Israel’s threats against its nuclear sites, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday at a weekly news conference.

Israel has vowed to attack Iran in retaliation for a volley of Iranian missiles launched on Oct. 1, leading to widespread speculation that Iran’s nuclear sites could be among Israel’s targets.

“Threats to attack nuclear sites are against UN resolutions…. and are condemned… we have sent a letter about it to… the UN nuclear watchdog,” Baghaei said in the televised news conference.

Separately, Baghaei said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi would travel to Bahrain and Kuwait on Monday as part of Iran’s efforts to curb regional tensions.

Iran launched its Oct. 1 missile attack to retaliate against Israeli strikes targeting its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. It was the second Iranian attack on Israel this year; Israel responded to the first missile volley in April with an air strike on an air defense site in central Iran.

October 23, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

SCOTT RITTER: Iran’s Bomb is Real — and It’s Here

20 Oct 24, By Scott Ritter, Consortium News,  https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/20/scott-ritter-irans-bomb-is-real-and-its-here/

For months now, the world has focused on the danger of nuclear war between the United States and Russia. But Iran and Israel could beat them to it.

The outbreak of conflict between Iran and Israel appears to have changed Iran’s stance against possessing a nuclear weapon as Israel is poised to strike after Teheran’s retaliation with two major attacks of drones and ballistic and cruise missiles.

Iran has issued at least three statements through official channels since April that has opened the door to the possibility of religious edicts against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons being rescinded.

The circumstances which Iran has said must exist to justify this reversal appear to have now been met.

No mere threats, these statements issued by Teheran should be viewed as declaratory policy indicating Iran has already made the decision to obtain a nuclear weapon; that the means to do so are already in place and that this decision can be implemented in a matter of days once the final political order is given. 

The religious fatwa against possessing nuclear weapons was issued in October 2003 by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It reads:

“We believe that adding to nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons and biological weapons, are a serious threat to humanity…[w]e consider the use of these weapons to be haram (forbidden), and the effort to protect mankind from this great disaster is everyone’s duty.”

However, the Shia faith holds that fatwas are not inherently permanent, and Islamic jurists can reinterpret the scripture in accord with the needs of time.

Shortly after Iran launched Operation True Promise against Israel in April, Ahmad Haghtalab, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander responsible for the security for Iran’s nuclear sites, declared:


“If [Israel] wants to exploit the threat of attacking our country’s nuclear centers as a tool to put pressure on Iran, it is possible and conceivable to revise the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear doctrine and policies to deviate from previously declared considerations.”

In May, Kamal Kharrazi, a former foreign minister who advises the Supreme Leader, declared: “We [Iran] have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine.”

And earlier this month Iranian lawmakers called for a review of Iran’s defense doctrine to consider adopting nuclear weapons as the risk of escalation with Israel continues to grow. The legislators noted that the Supreme Leader can reconsider the fatwa against nuclear weapons on the grounds that the circumstances have changed.

These statements, seen together, constitute a form of declaratory policy which, given the sources involved, imply that a political decision has already been made to build a nuclear bomb once the national security criterion has been met.

Has the Capability

Iran has for some time now possessed the ability to manufacture and weaponize nuclear explosive devices. Using highly enriched uranium, Iran could construct in a matter of days a simple gun-type weapon that could be used in a ballistic missile warhead.

In June Iran informed the IAEA that it was installing some 1,400 advanced centrifuges at its Fordow facility. Based upon calculations derived from Iran’s on-hand stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium hexaflouride (the feedstock used in centrifuge-based enrichment), Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium (i.e., above 90 percent) to manufacture 3-5 uranium-baed weapons in days.

All that is needed is the political will to do so. It appears that Iran has crossed this threshold, meaning that the calculus behind any Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran has been forever changed.

Iran has made no bones about this new reality. In February, the former chief of the Atomic Energy Organization, Ali-Akbar Salehi, stated that Iran has crossed “all the scientific and technological nuclear thresholds” to build a nuclear bomb, noting that Iran had accumulated all the necessary components for a nuclear weapon, minus the highly enriched uranium.

Two weeks later, Javad Karimi Ghodousi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission, declared that if the supreme leader “issues permission, we would be a week away from testing the first [nuclear bomb]“, later adding that Iran “needs half a day or maximum a week to build a nuclear warhead.”

A simple gun-type nuclear weapon would not need to be tested — the “Little Boy“ device dropped on Hiroshima by the U.S. on Aug. 6, 1945 was a gun-type device that was deemed so reliable that it could be used operationally without any prior testing.

Iran would need between 75 and 120 pounds of highly enriched uranium per gun-type device (the more sophisticated the design, the less material would be needed). Regardless, the payload of the Fatah-1 solid-fueled hypersonic missile, which was used in the Oct. 1 attack on Israel, is some 900 pounds—more than enough capacity to carry a gun-type uranium weapon.

Given the fact that the ballistic missile shield covering Israel was unable to intercept the Fatah-1 missile, if Iran were to build, deploy, and employ a nuclear-armed Fatah-1 missile against Israel, there is a near 100 percent certainty that it would hit its target.

Iran would need 3-5 nuclear weapons of this type to completely destroy Israel’s ability to function as a modern industrial nation.,

Consequences of Pulling Out of Iran Nuclear Deal

This situation came about after President Donald Trump in 2017 withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. The driving factor behind the negotiation of the JCPOA, which took place under President Barack Obama, was to shut down Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon. As Obama said,

“Put simply, under this deal, there is a permanent prohibition on Iran ever having a nuclear weapons program and a permanent inspections regime that goes beyond any previous inspection regime in Iran. This deal provides the IAEA the means to make sure Iran isn’t doing so, both through JCPOA-specific verification tools, some of which last up to 25 years, and through the Additional Protocol that lasts indefinitely. In addition, Iran made commitments in this deal that include prohibitions on key research and development activities that it would need to design and construct a nuclear weapon. Those commitments have no end date.”

Early on in his administration, in June 2021, after Trump had already pulled the U.S. out of the deal, President Joe Biden declared that Iran would “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”

The director of U.S. National Intelligence said in a statement released Oct. 11 that, “We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003.”

In the aftermath of Trump’s precipitous decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, Iran took actions which underscored that it no longer felt constrained by any JCPOA limits.

Iran has expanded its nuclear program by installing advanced centrifuge cascades used to enrich uranium and scaled back International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring of its nuclear program. In short, Iran has positioned itself to produce a nuclear weapon on short order.

While the ODNI currently believes that the Supreme Leader has not made the political decision to do so, an assessment published in July contains a telling omission from past assessments of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The February 2024 ODNI assessment noted that, “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”

However, this statement went missing from the July 2024 assessment, a clear indication that the U.S. intelligence community, due in large part to the reduction in IAEA inspection activity, lacks the insight into critical technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear-related industries.

Senator Lindsey Graham, after reading the classified version of the July 2024 ODNI report on Iran, said he was “very worried” that “Iran will in the coming weeks or months possess a nuclear weapon.”

What Confronts the US & Israel

This is the situation confronting Israel and the United States as they decide on an Israeli retaliation against Iran for the Oct. 1 missile attack.

Iran has indicated that any attack against its nuclear or oil and gas production capabilities would be viewed as existential in nature. That could trigger the reversal of the fatwa and the deployment of nuclear weapons within days of such a decision being made.

President Joe Biden told reporters on Friday that he knows when and where Israel will strike but refused to say. Leaked U.S. intelligence documents in recent days showed the limits of U.S. knowledge of exactly what Israel plans to do. 

The United States and nuclear-power Israel have long said that a nuclear-armed Iran was a red line which could not be crossed without severe consequences, namely massive military intervention designed to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

That line has been crossed — Iran is a de facto nuclear power, even if it hasn’t taken the final steps to complete the construction of a nuclear bomb.

The consequences of attacking Iran could prove fatal to the attackers and possibly the whole region.

October 22, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Fever: War Mongering on Iran

In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing.

In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”

Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so

October 18, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/nuclear-fever-war-mongering-on-iran/

The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or at least as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess in war. Such prowess promises much: redrawing boundaries; overthrowing governments; destroying the capabilities of adversaries and enemies. Nothing, in this equation, contemplates peace, let alone diplomatic resolution. It’s playground pugilism that rarely gets out of the sandpit.

In Washington, a fever has struck regarding Israel’s advances. The outbreak has stirred much enthusiasm in a doctrine that has been shown, time and again, to be wretchedly uncertain and grossly dangerous. With no concrete evidence of imminent harm to US interests, it featured in the highest policy planning circles that oiled an invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the stated objective was the disarming of Saddam Hussein’s regime for having Weapons of Mass Destruction it turned out not to have, the logic was one of pre-emptive strike: we attack the madman in Baghdad before he goes nuclear and loses it.

The establishment wonk on empire and espionage at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, offers a fairly meaningless assessment in terms of claimed Israeli dominance over Iran and its proxies. After a year of conflict, Israel had “gained what military strategists call ‘escalation dominance’.” The implication: a decisive attack on Iran is imminent.

The point here (at this juncture, the mind lost seeks sanctuary in a mental asylum of lunatic reassurances), is that attacking Iran in toto will not result in much by way of retaliatory detriment. Some bruising, surely, but hardly lingering flesh wounds. Israel has, it would seem, been working some magic, spreading its own view that Iran has a gruesome plan in its military vault: eliminating Israel by 2040.

In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing. The reason for such an attack lies in a presumption. Yet again, the doctrine of pre-emption, one hostile to international law and the UN Charter, plays out its feeble rationale. Evidence, in such cases, is almost always scanty. Kroenig, however, is certain. Iran will secure one bomb’s worth of weapon-grade material within a matter of weeks. The rest is obvious. No evidence is offered, nor does it even matter, given Kroenig’s longstanding zeal in wishing to rid Iran of its nuclear facilities.

The Atlantic Council has also suggested a policy that what is good for the goose of Christian-Jewish freedom is not good for the gander of Persian Shia ambition. It is exactly this full-fledged hypocrisy that the despots of the secular tyranny in North Korea realised in dealing with Washington. Beware the nostrums against nuclear armament.

In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”

Instead of resisting belligerent chatter, the authors suggest that the US threaten Iran through announcing “yearly joint exercises with Israel, such as Juniper Oak and seek additional funding in the next budget cycle to speed research and development of next-generation military hardware capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear program

Kroenig shows his usual stuffing. Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so. (The Sunni powers, for their own reasons, agree.) This form of perennial idiocy could apply to all the powers that have nuclear weapons, including Israel itself. At one point, no state should have had that relic of sadism’s folly. Then they came in succession after the United States: the Soviet bomb, the Britannic bomb, the Gallic bomb. Throw in China, India, Pakistan, Israel. Plucky, deranged North Korea, was wise to note the trend, showing lunacy to be eternally divisible.

It is precisely that sort of logic that has drawn such comments as this from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a May interview: “Iran’s level of deterrence will be different if the existence of Iran is threatened. We have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb, but we will have to change our nuclear doctrine if such threats occur.” This month, almost 40 legislators penned a letter to the Supreme National Security Council calling for a reconsideration of current nuclear doctrine. The greater the fanatic’s desire to remove a perceived threat, the more likely an opponent will give basis to that threat.

For all the faux restraint being officially aired in Washington regarding Israel’s next round of military assaults, there is enormous sympathy, even affection, for the view that wrongs shall be righted, and the mullahs punished. Bedding for a more hostile response to Iran also features in the inane airings of the presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview with 60 minutes, remarked that, “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” In making that claim, she suggested that Tehran was somehow Washington’s greatest adversary.

In response to this fatuous remark, Justin Logan of the Cato Institute offers an ice-cold bath of reason: “This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940.” The path to dominating the Middle East hardly involves such tools as propaganda, proxy operations and psychological warfare “much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.”

The nuclear option is now available to governments that should never have had them. But acquiring the dangerously untenable followed. To assume that brutal, amputation loving theocrats in Tehran should not have them defies the trajectory of a certain moronic consistency. The Persian bomb is probably imminent, and it is incumbent on the murderous fantasists in Israel and the United States to chew over that fact. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the fetish against acquisition risks expanding a conventional conflict through testing the will and means of a power that, while wounded, hardly counts as defeated.

October 20, 2024 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could backfire

And recent Iraqi history can tell us how. 


Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Associate Professor of Middle East History at California State University San Marcos, Aljazeera, 16 Oct 24,

Since Iran’s October 1 missile attack on Israel in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, there has been much speculation about how Tel Aviv will retaliate. Some observers have suggested that it could hit Iranian oil installations, and others, its nuclear facilities.

US President Joe Biden’s administration seems to oppose both options, but it has approved the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defence system and United States troops to Israel, possibly in anticipation of an Iranian response to an Israeli strike.

Biden says he would not back Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites

Iran’s President Pezeshkian says Tehran ready to improve ties with West

Iranian president says ‘ready to engage’ on nuclear deal

Iran ready to resume nuclear negotiations immediately: Foreign minister

Meanwhile, Biden’s political adversary, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, has egged on Israel to “hit the nuclear first”. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has also suggested the same.

While Trump, Kushner and other staunch Israel supporters are happy to cheer on an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, they likely know very little about the consequences of another such Israeli attack that targeted an Iraqi nuclear site.

Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s French-built Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981 actually pushed what was largely a peaceful nuclear programme underground and motivated Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invest in the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. An aggressive act against Iran’s nuclear programme will likely have a similar effect.

A ‘pre-emptive’ strike

Iraq’s nuclear programme started in the 1960s with the USSR building a small nuclear research reactor and providing it with some know-how. In the 1970s, Iraq purchased a bigger reactor from France – called Osiraq – and expanded its civilian nuclear programme with significant French and Italian assistance.

The French government had made sure that technical measures were in place to prevent any possible dual use of the reactor and it shared this information with the US, Israel’s closest ally. Iraq, which was a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and had its nuclear sites inspected regularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was not “on the brink of” developing a nuclear weapon, as Israel falsely asserted.

Nevertheless, the Israeli government, which was facing growing discontent domestically and a potential loss at the approaching legislative elections, decided to proceed with the “pre-emptive” strike…………………………………………………

A trove of declassified US documents released in 2021 demonstrates that Israel’s strike did not eliminate Iraq’s programme, but rather made Saddam more determined to acquire a nuclear weapon………………………………..

The consequences of a strike on Iran

…………………….assassinations may have killed key cadres, they have inspired a new generation of Iranians to pursue nuclear science, part of an Iranian “nuclear nationalism” emerging as a result of the constant attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme.

…………………………….. Israel’s actions so far are only increasing Iranian determination to continue its nuclear programme. A strike on any of its nuclear facilities would make that determination even stronger. And if we are to go by the Iraqi example, it may drive the Iranian nuclear programme underground and accelerate it towards the development of a nuclear weapon.

………. what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza and Lebanon now and will do in Iran will not bring victory to Israel. His strategy produces resentment in these countries and across the Middle East, which will help Iran and its allies rebuild swiftly whatever capabilities they lose to reckless Israeli strikes.  https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/14/an-israeli-attack-on-irans-nuclear-facilities-could-backfire

October 17, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden, Netanyahu Closer to Consensus on Attacking Iran

Netanyahu convened his war cabinet on Thursday to approve plans

by Dave DeCamp October 10, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/10/biden-netanyahu-closer-to-consensus-on-attacking-iran/#gsc.tab=0

President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer to an understanding on Israel’s plans to attack Iran during their phone call on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday.

The report, which cited US and Israeli officials, said that the US had accepted Israel is going to launch a major attack on Iran soon and is only concerned that striking certain types of targets could dramatically escalate things. However, Iran has vowed it will respond to any type of Israeli attack, and the situation could easily turn into a full-blown war that would involve the US.

An Israeli official told Axios that the Israeli plans are still a bit more aggressive than the US would like. The US has been warning against striking nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, and recent media reports have said Israel will likely target military infrastructure.

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday to brief them on the situation with the US and is expected to get approval for him and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to set a timeline for the Israeli attack. The Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel will continue conversations on the plans in the coming days, signaling the attack is not imminent.

NBC News reported on Tuesday that the US was considering supporting Israel’s attack with direct airstrikes of its own, although US officials said intelligence support was more likely.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was offering Israel a “compensation package” of military aid and full diplomatic support if it only hits US-approved targets in Iran. The US has also committed to defending Israel from any Iranian response.

Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in response to a string of Israeli escalations, including the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Immediately after the attack, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran suffers “severe consequences.”

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Report: US Considers Launching Airstrikes Against Iran To Support Israeli Attack

US officials say Israel hasn’t briefed the US on its specific plans to attack Iran,

by Dave DeCamp October 8, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/08/report-us-considers-launching-airstrikes-against-iran-to-support-israeli-attack/#gsc.tab=0


The US has discussed the idea of supporting Israel’s expected attack on Iran with intelligence or with airstrikes of its own, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing two unnamed US officials.

The report said senior US military officials have discussed launching “very limited” airstrikes against Iranian targets inside Iran or outside of the country, though the US officials said intelligence support for Israel was more likely.

So far, no final decision on US action has been made, according to the report, and the US officials said Israel has not briefed the US on its specific plans to strike Iran in response to the Iranian missile barrage that hit Israel last week.

Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel in response to multiple Israeli escalations in the region, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. In the aftermath, the US said it would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for the attack.

The NBC report said US officials were worried that Israel could launch its attack while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Wednesday. However, after the report was published, Gallant’s trip to the US has been canceled.

Israeli media said the trip was postponed because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to speak with President Biden and wants the Israeli security cabinet to agree on a plan to attack Iran before Gallant heads to Washington.

The Israelis are considering several types of targets to hit in Iran: military and intelligence infrastructure, air defenses, and energy facilities. Based on media reports, Israel does not plan to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in its first attack, but could if Iran hits back and the situation turns into a full-blown war, which Israeli officials think is likely to happen.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israeli retaliation threat sparks call in Iran for nuclear weapons

any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

By Afp, 11 October 2024 ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-13946359/Israeli-retaliation-threat-sparks-call-Iran-nuclear-weapons.html

With the prospect of Israeli retaliation for Iran’s missile attack looming, some Iranian hardliners want their government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue atomic weapons.

Israel has vowed to launch a “deadly, precise, and surprising” attack on Iran in retaliation for its second-ever direct strike on Israeli territory.

On October 1, Iran launched 200 missiles on Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed militant leaders and a general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

More than three dozen hardline lawmakers have submitted a letter to Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, urging it to revisit the Islamic republic’s nuclear doctrine, local media said on Wednesday.

The parliamentarians also called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

“Today, neither the international organisations nor… European countries or America can control the Zionist regime which commits crimes at will,” lawmaker Hassan Ali Akhalghi Amiri said, citing this as his reason for supporting the call.

Another lawmaker, Mohammad Reza Sabaghian, said “building nuclear weapons is Iran’s option to create deterrence”, according to the Ham Mihan daily.

On Tuesday, state media reported that parliament had received a bill on “the expansion of the country’s nuclear industry”, without elaborating.

The Islamic republic has maintained its policy against acquiring nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.

– ‘Red line’ –

Iran has been drawn into the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, with Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militants on the front lines of two wars with Israel………………………………………………….

US President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposed striking oil installations.

Iran has warned that any attack on its “infrastructure” would provoke an “even stronger response”, while Revolutionary Guards General Rassul Sanairad has said an attack on nuclear or energy sites would cross a “red line”.

– Message to the West –

Iranian political commentator Maziar Khosravi said the lawmakers’ letter is “rather a strong message addressed to Western supporters” of Israel “so that they try to control” it.

Ultimately, he said, any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader, and “is not linked to the will of the MPs”.

It is far from the first time that Iran has seen debate over whether it should revisit its nuclear doctrine.

Shortly after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel in April, Kamal Kharazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said the Islamic republic was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

But “if Israel dares to threaten Iran with a nuclear weapon, we may reconsider our nuclear doctrine”, he said in an interview with Al Jazeera at the time.

For Khosravi, it remains unlikely for Iran to change its doctrine in the meantime.

But “if Israel attacks the nuclear facilities, what seems likely to me at this stage is the withdrawal of Iran from the NPT”, he said, referring to the United Nations treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian who took office in July has sought to revive a landmark 2015 nuclear deal to ease the country’s isolation and offset the economic impact of US sanctions.

The deal granted Iran sanctions relief in return for accepting curbs and monitoring that were designed to ensure it could not develop an atomic weapon covertly — a goal Iran has always denied having.

The accord has been hanging by a thread since the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.

Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities.

“We want to tell the world that we are not after a nuclear bomb,” said Pezeshkian in an interview with CNN in New York last month.

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” he said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

IAEA Missing in action, on Israeli nuclear strike threats, Iranian outlet argues

Oct 9, 2024, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202410096802

As anticipation mounts over a potential counterstrike by Israel on Iran which could target nuclear sites, an Iranian media outlet has faulted the UN nuclear watchdog’s silence on the issue.

The relatively moderate Iranian news site Rouydad24 wrote in an editorial on Wednesday that despite the possibility of attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) silence was perplexing.

“Should this silence be interpreted as tacit approval for such an attack, or does it imply the IAEA sees no reason for concern on this issue?” the editorial asked, suggesting that the agency’s silence could be interpreted as either passive endorsement or indifference to the potential threat.

The website characterized Western and Israeli discussions about the possibility Israel will destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities as a warning sign that the IAEA should intervene.

Publication of such articles in the tightly controlled Iranian media may indicate that the government’s top policy bodies have agreed or prompted a particular point of view to be made public.

The article may be an attempt by Iran to raise the issue of an IAEA intervention to stop a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear sites, especially since the US government has also voiced opposition to such a move.

Historically, the IAEA has remained neutral on political matters while stressing the importance of nuclear facility safety. Its statements generally focus on the consequences of strikes such as a potential radioactive release rather than on endorsing or opposing any party in a conflict.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the IAEA took an unusually vocal stance on nuclear safety, especially around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Director-General Rafael Grossi has repeatedly warned of the severe risks from military actions near nuclear reactors and has called for a protective zone around ZNPP to prevent a potential radioactive disaster.

The outlet went on to posit that the IAEA’s silence on a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites could be seen as an indication that the agency perceives Israel’s threats not as imminent actions but as strategic moves aimed at influencing Iran’s stance and pressuring the US to meet certain demands.

Last year, Grossi condemned what he called Iran’s “disproportionate and unprecedented” move to bar multiple inspectors assigned to the country, hindering the UN nuclear watchdog’s oversight of Tehran’s atomic activities.

The editorial may highlight a catch-22: by barring inspectors, Iran itself has limited the IAEA’s influence and capacity to respond effectively to the looming threat of a possible strike by Israel on nuclear targets.

Tehran’s removal of inspectors not only limits the IAEA’s influence but also isolates Iran further from the international system, complicating any calls for international intervention to prevent Israeli strikes.

As a threshold nuclear state, Iran has accumulated highly enriched fissile material for producing a nuclear weapon, though it has not yet taken the final step toward weaponization.

Although Tehran has consistently argued that its nuclear program is meant for peaceful purposes, the current state of its nuclear program, experts say, could act as a deterrent against Israeli aggression.

Some military analysts argue that Israel would require US assistance to effectively strike Iran’s nuclear targets. Despite this, the Biden administration has not received any assurance from Israel that targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities is off the table, according to a senior US State Department official who spoke to CNN last week.

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Biden Officials Say Ceasefire Talks Are Suspended as Harris Names Iran Top Enemy

The U.S. has reportedly all but given up on a ceasefire proposal it put forth just two weeks ago.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, October 8, 2024,  https://truthout.org/articles/biden-officials-say-ceasefire-talks-are-suspended-as-harris-names-iran-top-enemy/

iden officials have reportedly admitted that ceasefire negotiations amid Israel’s war on Lebanon and genocide in Gaza have been suspended, despite public insistence by high-powered figures within the administration that they are working around the clock for a ceasefire.

The Biden administration has given up on ceasefire talks after first proposing a deal for a 21-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel just two weeks ago, CNN reports, citing U.S. officials. The U.S. is “not actively trying to revive the deal,” the outlet wrote.

Two weeks ago, CNN reported that senior U.S. officials have also suspended efforts for ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Officials said the effort isn’t totally canceled but admitted there is no political will for a ceasefire to happen; though officials blamed Hamas and Israel, Israeli officials have been openly sabotaging ceasefire negotiations, while Hamas officials have voiced support for numerous ceasefire proposals.

Though officials are admitting to the suspension of ceasefire talks in private, however, in public, officials are still claiming that the administration is pushing for a ceasefire. Just on Monday, in a statement recognizing the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack, President Joe Biden insinuated that talks are ongoing.

“We will not stop working to achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza that brings the hostages home,” the president said. “We also continue to believe that a diplomatic solution across the Israel-Lebanon border region is the only path to restore lasting calm and allow residents on both sides to return safely to their homes.”

Vice President Kamala Harris also gestured toward the ceasefire talks in a statement Monday, saying, “It is far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people.”

However, as many experts have said, it has long been clear that the priority for the administration is not to secure a ceasefire, but rather to give Israel all of the tools it needs to carry out its genocide and, potentially, escalate tensions into a wider war in the Middle East. Indeed, in the same statement, Harris said: “I will always ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists like Hamas.”

Just last week, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller seemed to openly admit that the goal of ceasefire negotiations has never been to actually achieve a ceasefire.

“We’ve never wanted to see a diplomatic resolution with Hamas,” Miller said in a press briefing, despite the administration having blamed Hamas officials for negotiation failures even as Israel has assassinated multiple top officials in Hamas and Hezbollah responsible for ceasefire negotiations.

Meanwhile, as Israel escalated tensions across the Middle East, including threatening to bomb key sites in Iran, Harris has named Iran as the U.S.’s current top enemy — rather than a country like Russia, a country that the U.S. is actively helping to fight amid its invasion of Ukraine.

When asked in her interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday about the U.S.’s “greatest adversary” on the world stage, Harris said: “I think there’s an obvious one in mind which is Iran. Iran has American blood on their hands.” She raised Iran’s recent missile attack on Israel, and said one of her “highest priorities” is to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities.

This statement appears aimed at stoking tensions with Iran, gesturing toward a war with the country — a seeming goal of Israeli leaders, some analysts have said. It also ignores that, while it’s unclear what Harris is referring to when she suggests that Iran has killed Americans, Israel has killed many Americans just amid the genocide. Just last week, in fact, Israeli forces killed an American citizen, Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, in a bombing on Lebanon.

October 10, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Carnegie nuclear expert James Acton explains why it would be counterproductive for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program

Bulletin, By John Mecklin | October 5, 2024

In the aftermath of Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel this week, it has become clear that Israeli missile defenses are robust. Of the estimated 180 ballistic missiles that Iran launched, only a small percentage evaded Israel’s anti-missile defenses, causing limited damage at or near some Israeli intelligence and military sites and apparently having little impact on Israeli military operations. But the attack marks a major escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict and has led to widespread speculation about when and where Israel will respond. Much of that speculation has centered on the question of whether Israel will attack facilities related to Iran’s nuclear program.

Late this week, I asked James Acton, a physicist and wide-ranging nuclear policy expert who co-directs the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for his assessment of the Israel-Iran situation, especially as regards the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. His answers follow in a lightly edited and condensed Q&A format.

John Mecklin: I gather you think it would be a bad idea for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Can you explain why for our readers?

James Acton: Sure. If Israel or the United States tries to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, my belief is that that will harden Iranian resolve to acquire nuclear weapons without eliminating Iran’s capability to do so. Israel would be motivated, in part, to punish Iran for its recent attack on Israel, using that as an opportunity to try and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, so the Israelis didn’t have to worry about it in the future. I think if they decide to attack Iran’s nuclear program, they will find themselves worrying much more about Iran’s nuclear program in the future. We’ll elaborate on this, but an attack would, I believe, simultaneously harden Iranian resolve to acquire nuclear weapons while also not destroying permanently their capability to achieve that goal…………………….

…………..If the Iranian program today comprised a single reactor that had not been turned on, I think you could make a fair argument that it could be in Israel’s interests to attack it. But that’s nothing like what the Iranian program actually looks like…..

……………..But the Iranian program today is based around centrifuges, which are very small and can be manufactured quickly and placed almost anywhere. So even if an Israeli attack destroys Iran’s current centrifuge plants at Fordow and Natanz—and it’s not obvious to me that Iran has the capability to destroy Fordow, which is buried inside a mountain—but even if Israel can destroy Iran’s existing centrifuge plants, Iran is almost certainly going to reconstruct centrifuge facilities………………………………………………………………….

So people tend to say the Israelis can destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Even if that is true in the short term, the question they have to answer is: Then what?

Mecklin: Okay, the second question is: How likely do you think it is that Israel is actually contemplating attacking the nuclear facilities?

Acton: Let me distinguish between two ideas. Are they contemplating doing so? And will they do so?

I think there is an extremely high probability that there is a serious discussion going on right now in the Israeli Security Cabinet about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Many Israeli leaders have openly called for that at this juncture. And you know, Netanyahu has been publicly mentioning this possibility on and off for many years now. So I would be staggered if there was not a serious discussion within Israel right now about attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.

Would Israel actually go ahead and do that? I think it would be tough without a lot of US support. And Biden has come out and said unequivocally, no. And doing it without US support would do enormous damage to the US Israeli relationship. And I think the Israelis understand that.

I think the Israelis fully understand that if they attack Iran’s nuclear program, Iran then attacks Israel in a much larger way than we’ve seen before. The Israelis are going to want America’s help in defending against those attacks, and there must be at least some uncertainty in their mind, if they just point blank defy an American president, whether that help would be forthcoming. So for all of those reasons, if the US is being as clear in private as it is in public, I do think it’s substantially less than 50/50 that the Israelis are going to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. I think it’s higher than 10 percent, but it’s not, I think, 50/50. Which I find somewhat reassuring.

………………………..one thing that I feel pretty confident in saying is that if Iran has not yet made a decision to build a nuclear weapon, an Israeli strike makes it much, much more likely that It will make that decision to do so—both for reasons of defending the state and for reasons of domestic politics…….. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/carnegie-nuclear-expert-james-acton-explains-why-it-would-be-counterproductive-for-israel-to-attack-irans-nuclear-program/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter10072024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NuclearExpert_10062024#post-heading

October 8, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel may launch symbolic attack on Iran nuclear-related facilities, says Ehud Barak

Israeli former prime minister says in interview it is too late to significantly set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and that a ‘massive’ attack on Iran’s oil facilities is likely.

Julian Borger, Fri 4 Oct 2024 , https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/04/israel-may-launch-symbolic-attack-on-iran-nuclear-facilities-says-ehud-barak
Israel is likely to mount a large-scale airstrike against Iran’s oil industry and possibly a symbolic attack on a military target related to its nuclear programme, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has predicted.

Barak said there was no doubt there would be an Israeli military response to Iran’s assault on Tuesday with over 180 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted, but some landed on and around densely populated areas and Israeli military bases.

“Israel has a compelling need, even an imperative, to respond. I think that no sovereign nation on Earth could fail to respond,” Barak said in an interview.

The former prime minister, who also served as defence minister, foreign minister and army chief of staff, said the model for the Israeli response could be seen in Sunday’s reprisal airstrikes against Houthi-controlled oil facilities, power plants and docks in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, a day after Houthi fired missiles aimed at Israel’s international airport outside Tel Aviv.

“I think we might see something like that. It might be a massive attack, and it could be repeated more than once,” he told the Guardian. Joe Biden said on Thursday there had been discussions in Washington about a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s oil sector, but it not give any details or make clear whether the US would support such an assault.

Barak, now aged 82, said there had also been suggestions in Israel that it should make use of this opportunity, in reprisal for the Iranian attack, to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, but he argued it would not significantly set back the Iranian programme.

When Barak served as defence minister from 2007 to 2013, under both Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, he was among Israel’s most vociferous advocates for bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, trying and failing to convince presidents George Bush and then Barack Obama, to contribute US military might to the campaign.

On Wednesday, Biden followed Obama in voicing his opposition to any Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. And Barak himself now accepts the Iran nuclear programme is too far advanced for any bombing campaign to set it back significantly.

“There are some commentators and even some people within the defence establishment who raised the question: Why the hell not hit the nuclear military programme?” Barak said. “A little bit more than a decade ago, I was probably the most hawkish person in Israeli leadership arguing that it was worth considering very seriously, because there was an actual capability to delay them by several years.

“That’s not the case right now, because Iran is a de facto threshold country,” he argued. “They do not have yet a weapon – it may take them a year to have one, and even half a decade to have a small arsenal. Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner.”

Under a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, Tehran accepted tight restrictions on its uranium enrichment and other elements of its programme in exchange for sanctions relief, but that agreement has steadily fallen apart since the US withdrawal under Donald Trump in 2018.

Iran now has a stockpile of enriched uranium that is 30 times higher than the agreed 2015 limit, and it is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, which in terms of the additional processing required, is very close to 90% weapons grade fissile material. Under the 2015 agreement, Iran’s “breakout time” – the period it would need to produce a nuclear bomb – was at least a year. Now it is a few weeks.

Barak believes there is pressure within the Netanyahu government for at least some symbolic strike against the Iranian programme, even though the former prime minister sees such a gesture as futile.

“You can cause certain damage, but even this might be perceived by some of the planners as worth the risk because the alternative is to sit idly by and do nothing,” Barak said. “So probably there will be even an attempt to hit certain nuclear-related targets.”

While Barak believes that a significant Israeli military response to Tuesday night’s Iranian military attack is now unavoidable and justifiable, he argues the drift to a regional war could have been averted much earlier, if Netanyahu had been open to a US-promoted plan to rally Arab support for a postwar Palestinian government in Gaza to replace Hamas. Instead, Israel’s incumbent prime minister opposed any political “day after” solution that recognised Palestinian sovereignty.

“I think that a strong response is inevitable. That doesn’t mean it was written in heaven a year ago that it’s going to happen,” Barak said. “There were probably several opportunities to limit this conflict before it turned into something like a full-scale Middle East clash. For reasons that cannot be explained under any strategic thought, Netanyahu rejected any kind of discussion of what we call ‘the day after’.

“I do not put the blame for the whole event on Netanyahu. This is basically the fault of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them,” Barak said. “But having said that, we have a responsibility to take action under a certain innate logic that understands the situation, the opportunity, and the constraints. There is an old Roman saying: ‘If you don’t know which port you want to reach, no wind will take you there.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sullivan: US Will Ensure Iran Faces ‘Severe Consequences’ for Attacking Israel

 October 2, 2024 , By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for launching a missile attack on Israel, which came in response to recent Israeli escalations.

“There will be severe consequences for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

President Biden said the US was in “active discussions” with Israel on what the response would be. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” he said.

Media reports say Iran fired at least 180 missiles at Israel. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attack was launched in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and Abbas Nilforoushan, an IRGC commander who was killed alongside Nasrallah.

The IRCG has claimed that 90% of the missiles hit their targets, while Israel claimed most were intercepted. Videos have surfaced that show Iranian missiles making an impact on Israeli military sites. So far, there’s been no word on Israeli deaths, but a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was killed when shrapnel from an intercepted missile fell on Jericho.

The US said that it helped Israel intercept some of the Iranian missiles and portrayed the defense as a success. Sullivan said the Iranian attack “appears to have been defeated and ineffective.”

…………………………………………Iran has signaled that it’s done attacking Israel but warned there would be a “crushing response” if Israel hits back. Israeli officials have made clear that they plan to respond.

“There will be consequences,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari. “Our defensive and offensive capabilities are at the highest levels of readiness. Our operational plans are ready. We will respond wherever, whenever, and however we choose, in accordance with the directive of the government of Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran will “pay” for the attack. “This evening, Iran made a big mistake — and it will pay for it,” he said at a security cabinet meeting. “The regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies.”  https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/02/sullivan-us-will-ensure-iran-faces-severe-consequences-for-attacking-israel/

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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