Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran

[paul wright]

I looked on here and could find no mention of this story, which, if true, demands some kind of response I'd have thought.
Then I look at the reply given here, and I look at the locked down thread and remember the Willie goes to Iran furore, and offer this with some trepidation

[wepmob2000]

The Sunday Times presented this story as fact, but has been publishing basically the same story under different guises for about three years now. Were not the American supposed to be planning the same thing to be carried out last year? The Sunday Times, whilst a good read, does love these scare-mongering speculative style stories, theres usually one per weekend on average.

[uselesseater]

Seems like an attempt to build up some 'Attack Iran' momentum again. Hopefuly that's all and it won't work.

[Disco_Destroyer]

Given all propaganda normally has a reverse meaning?
Maybe:- http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=6259

[HERA]

http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=10276

[gypsum]

[paul wright]

[wepmob2000]

This is pure speculation, and nothing more. The Sunday Times used numerous 'unnamed' sources to bring us a 'non' story. It would be remiss for the Israeli high command not to have considered a pre-emptive strike on Iran, same as the Iranian high command should consider the possibility of an attack, along with a hundred other possibilities.

Of course these things are played out as scenarios, and some planning done, thats what planners do, so hopefully their respective countries are not caught with their pants down.

None of this means it will actually happen, but it will sell a few more newspapers on a weekend where nothing very newsworthy occurred.

If it does happen it will be the most talked about and anticipated surprise attack in modern history!!

[blackbear]

Hello Webmopp 2000..........

Do you have some unique insiight into the complexities of the middle east.

However, you might be a Israeli. With empathy and understanding. I could appreciate listening to that kwowledge.

If not.....

Another sad controlled Jew..............why.?

Why are you not bothered about the present holocaust...........is it a moustache thing.

William Rodriguez.....thousands of jews didn't turn up for work......

Belinda ...you got the wrong site...try Harry's Place...

[wepmob2000]

Hello Blackbeard

Do you have some unique insight into the complexities of the middle east? I don't think I do.

But I probably do know a provocative 'non' story when I see one, exchange the word 'Israeli' for 'U.S', and you have the same story that ran last year, I wonder if next year it will go back to 'U.S' when the story is re-run?

Please do a little research into Arab nations attitudes toward, and treatment of Palestinian refugees, before pointing the finger at any one state. You see, in the real world things are not as clear cut as maybe imagined.

Personally I'm probably as 'controlled' as you are, my black-bearded friend, and probably share about the same level of empathy with both Arab and Jew as you do....I trust.

Belinda's posts have been very interesting, and are clearly well-informed, I find them a valuable addition to this forum and definitely worth seeking out and reading.

[Keith Mothersson]

I find that the best coverage of these dangers is on www.endofempire.org/, also the website of Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in iran (CASMI), www.campaigniran.org/ .

My guess is that the Israeli-Zionist failure to get its 'clean break' policy going, e.g. defeat Hezbollah, turn Lebanon into a base to bring down Syria on the way to Iran, coupled with relative unpopularity of war in the US for the moment, makes Israeli hawks nervous, so they aim to strengthen the hands of the US hawks by saying: look, if we attack Iran you'll get reprisals anyway, so you have to hurry up and do it your way if you don't want us to attack iran our way, to our timetable, etc. i.e. An attempt to blackmail and bounce US leaders into giving them more rope, stop this nonsense about putting pressure on Israel for a settlement with Palestinians.

In recent weeks we have also see Olmert deliberately admit nuclear weapons (always hitherto a no-no for fear of Congress cuttting off funds as per US law about not aiding NPT breakers) - partly because he knows most Dems, especially Hilary Clinton, Liebermann and the DLC wing, won't stand up to AIPAC lobby, indeed are now the Zionist's party of choice for blocking US 'disengagement' (many conservative Republicans vulnerable to isolationism, America firstism).

We are seeing the dollar sliding faster and faster and may eventually be fast-crashed (thus through hyper-inflation US debts can be paid in worthless dollars), which crash will be blamed one way or another on China, Iran, and/or Russia's use of their financial 'nuclear bomb' on the poor US econmy, so all you rednecks, sign up for war, help FEMA round up college kids and Arabs, the Big Show-Down is nigh.

I see Israel as prepared to crash hypocritical pretences in a double or quits sort of throw to try to force the neocons to come out fighting. One indication of why they should do this is the amazingly significant and doubtless sanctioned appearance NOW (well December) on Israeli TV of three of the five 'dancing Israelis' (Mossad operatives) arrested on suspicion of being Arabs celebrating as they watched the towers burn and fall from another quarter ofr New York.
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=6135

[conspiracy analyst]

Israel has plans for nuclear attack on Iran
By Peter Symonds
8 January 2007



A report in yesterday’s London-based Sunday Times revealed that the Israeli military has been training to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and other nuclear facilities. Based on several Israeli military sources, the article said two air force squadrons were involved, with the preparations being overseen by air force commander Major General Eliezer Shkedi.

Israeli officials were quick to disparage the report. Foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev “formally denied” the claim and restated the official stance that Israeli was committed to a diplomatic solution and supported last month’s UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. Top government and military figures have repeatedly warned, however, that Israel would not allow Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.

Last month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pointedly included Israel among his list of responsible nuclear powers, in contrast to Iran. Previously Israel always refused to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal, which various analysts estimate at between 80 to 200 warheads. Olmert’s comment was not so much “a slip” but a calculated warning to Iran in particular that Israel had nuclear weapons and was prepared to use them to maintain its military predominance in the Middle East.

The Sunday Times report indicated that military preparations are well advanced. “Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open ‘tunnels’ into the targets. ‘Mini-nukes’ would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout,” the newspaper stated. Several routes had been mapped out and in recent weeks pilots had flown to Gibraltar to train for the 3,200-kilometre round trip to Iranian targets.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” one source told the Sunday Times. According to the newspaper, the targets include Iran’s uranium conversion plant near Isfahan and its heavy water reactor under construction at Arak, both of which would be hit with conventional bombs. “There is no 99 percent success in this mission. It must be 100 percent or better not at all,” one of the pilots explained.

In making what was almost certainly a deliberate leak, the Israeli regime has a number of motives. Following the Israeli military’s humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon last year, the Olmert government is determined to take a tough stance. The Sunday Times article is in part designed to send a message to the Middle East and the world that Israel is willing to use all means at its disposal to crush any potential rival in the region.

According to the Sunday Times, Israel justifies the choice of tactical nuclear weapons by the fact that Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz are protected by an estimated 20 metres of rock and concrete. However, any use of atomic bombs—for the first time since the US incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945—would above all be a political, rather than a military, decision aimed at reasserting Israel’s strategic superiority as the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East.

Anyone who thinks that an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran is impossible needs to consider Israel’s long record of carrying out the unthinkable. Over the past year, it has waged a criminal war of attrition against the population of the Palestinian territories. Last July, on the pretext of rescuing two captured soldiers, Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians and reducing much of the country to rubble, as the first stage of an operation directed primarily at Iran and Syria. It should also be recalled that Israeli warplanes carried out an unprovoked attack on Iraq’s small research reactor at Osirak in 1981.

Neither the Olmert government nor the Bush administration has offered any conclusive proof that Tehran has a nuclear weapons program. The Iranian regime has consistently maintained that it is entitled under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to engage in uranium enrichment and that its Natanz plant is to provide fuel for nuclear power reactors, the first of which is nearing completion at Bushehr. Israel has openly flouted the international non-proliferation efforts, refusing to sign the NPT or allow inspection of any of its nuclear facilities.

In this context, the openly anti-Semitic statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sponsored an international conference of Nazi Holocaust deniers in Tehran last month, have played directly into the hands of the most right-wing, militarist sections of the Israeli ruling elite. Israeli leaders have exploited Ahmadinejad’s calls for the destruction of Israel to whip up fears of “a second holocaust” of Jews.

Last November, in an effort to shore up his government, Olmert brought Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right Israel Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) party, into his cabinet as deputy prime minister. He was given the specially created post of minister of strategic affairs, dealing with threats against Israel, with a particular focus on Iran. Lieberman, a right-wing nationalist and racist, is notorious for his calls for the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs, the bombing of Palestinian civilians and the targetting of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. In 2001, he openly advocated the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Last week, Lieberman called on the UN to expel Iran and for the major powers to act against Tehran. “The state of Israel can, and will, stand alone against Iran, but we should not be asked to,” he said. “If allowed to achieve nuclear weapons, the entire free world will pay a heavy price—Israel will be the first and will pay the heaviest price, but Iranian aggressiveness will not stop there.”

Lieberman is not alone in complaining that UN sanctions on Iran are inadequate. In its annual report released last week, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think-tank, ominously warned: “Despite the growing concern within the international community, the INSS questions whether effective sanctions will be imposed. Time is working in Iran’s favour, and barring military action, Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons is only a matter of time.”

These comments point to another motive for the leak to the Sunday Times: to put pressure on the Bush administration to take action soon against Iran, or, at the very least, to give backing for Israel to do so. The newspaper cited the comments of Israeli deputy defence minister Ephraim Sneh last month, saying: “The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran.” The Times also noted that Israeli and US officials had met several times to consider military options.

In an article in the New Yorker last April, veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh provided details of high-level planning in the White House and the Pentagon for a massive air assault on Iran, including but not limited to its nuclear facilities. The most chilling aspect of the revelations included a fierce debate over the use of tactical nuclear weapons against targets such as the Natanz enrichment plant.

Hersh’s article quoted a former defence official who revealed that US warplanes, operating from aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, had been “flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending manoeuvres known as ‘over the shoulder’ bombing—since last summer... within range of Iranian coastal radars”.

The Bush administration has never ruled out a military attack on Iran and rejected the proposal made by the top-level Iraq Study Group for negotiations with Iran and Syria to help stabilise Iraq. The most militarist layer of the US ruling elite openly advocates war against Iran. In an article late last year laying out a strategy for neo-conservatives, Joshua Muravchik, from the American Enterprise Institute, candidly declared: “Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office.”

Already there are indications that the Pentagon is preparing for just such an eventuality. Over the past few months, senior US officials have been travelling to the Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to discuss ways of strengthening defence ties and military capacities in those countries. One obvious reason for such discussions is the necessity of defending US military bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain from possible Iranian retaliation in the event of a US attack.

The US and Britain are also bolstering their naval strength in the region. A second US aircraft carrier group—the USS John C. Stennis and escort ships—is due to enter the Persian Gulf later this month. President Bush has also taken the unusual step of appointing an admiral—William Fallon—for the first time to take over as head of US Central Command which is responsible for Middle East operations including Iran and Iraq.

Retired Colonel Sam Gardiner told the Sunday Times that he believed that a US attack on Iran remained a possibility. He described the deployment of a second aircraft carrier strike force to the Gulf region, as well as British minesweepers, as a “huge deal”. “It is only necessary to do that if you are planning to strike Iran and deal with the consequences,” he said, which could include Iranian attempts to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the sea route for much of the world’s oil.

Whatever the precise motives behind all these menacing threats, the US and Israel are recklessly plunging towards a new conflagration that includes the possible use of nuclear weapons.

[rodin]

[dry kleaner]

Am I right in thinking/ believing that the Sunday Times is an MI6 asset? If so does this article not suggest something? That the PTB want the whole world to believe in this idea. I'm sure Israel has or is concidering such a thing. This article to me appears to be Sabre rattling.

There are forces at work trying to inspire a 'Holy War' between Muslims and Jews. This article furthers my feeling that if we don't get our selves together WW3 could be a reality. This year.

[Skeptic]

I would guess this is Murdoch's way of testing the waters of public opinion.

With all the anti-Iranian sentiment recently I imagine the British public wouldn't object too much to a 'tactical strike' on Iran. Just as long as the UK isn't involved.

<shrug>

[gypsum]

[Skeptic]

Me neither but I know a lot of people who think....

"They've got nuclear weapons and a mad president who denies the holocaust and says he wants Israel wiped off the map"

Because it's been hammered out in every article concerning Iran for the last 2-3 years.

[Mark Gobell]

Bush's Rush to Armageddon
By Robert Parry

Consortium News

Monday 08 January 2007

George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel's help.

On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq, and removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran's nuclear program.

Most Washington observers have treated Bush's shake-up as either routine or part of his desire for a new team to handle his planned "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq. But intelligence sources say the personnel changes also fit with a scenario for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and seeking violent regime change in Syria.

Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a former Navy fighter pilot and currently head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for two aircraft carrier groups now poised off Iran's coastline, such as support for possible Israeli air strikes against Iran's nuclear targets or as a deterrent against any overt Iranian retaliation.

Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neoconservative circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining "the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel."

Bush's personnel changes also come as Israel is reported stepping up preparations for air strikes, possibly including tactical nuclear bombs, to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, such as the reactor at Anton, south of Tehran, where enriched uranium is produced.

The Sunday Times of London reported on Jan. 7 that two Israeli air squadrons are training for the mission and "if things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete [at Natanz]. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole."

The Sunday Times wrote that Israel also would hit two other facilities - at Isfahan and Arak - with conventional bombs. But the possible use of a nuclear bomb at Natanz would represent the first nuclear attack since the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II six decades ago.

While some observers believe Israel may be leaking details of its plans as a way to frighten Iran into accepting international controls on its nuclear program, other sources indicate that Israel and the Bush administration are seriously preparing for this wider Middle Eastern war.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb an "existential threat" to Israel.

After the Sunday Times article appeared, an Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel has drawn up secret plans to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. For its part, Iran claims it only wants a nuclear program for producing energy.

Full article http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807R.shtml

[blackbear]

Hopefully of interest...

The Zionist Agenda As Observed
By Ted Lang

http://www.rense.com/general74/obs.htm

Is Bush's War Winding Down or Heating Up?
The Coming Attack on Iran
by Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10286

Let's have no support for anymore "regime change", ....unless it involves the "Axis of Evil"........US, Britain and Israel.

[uselesseater]