4um: Who's Planning Our Next War?

Title: Who's Planning Our Next War?
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27228
Published: Jun 27, 2008
Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Post Date: 2008-06-27 09:01:11 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 411
Comments: 32

Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, "The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program? ` William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.

Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war.

Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.

In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June, Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers and helicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulated attack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400 kilometers, the distance to Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis: "We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. ... I left with a lot less question marks regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness. ...

"George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term. ... The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new president in the White House seven and a half months from now."

If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not discussing it with Congress or the nation?

On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it." The price of oil shot up 9 percent.

Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirak reactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syria last September give Israel a high degree of credibility.

Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degrade Iran's air defenses systematically and no longer has the element of surprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.

Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conduct follow-up strikes. The U.S. Air Force bombed Iraq for five weeks with hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.

Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, she has surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israel cannot reach -- and can probably replicate anything lost.

Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria and U.S.-occupied Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syrians and Saudis would deny Israel permission and might resist. For the U.S. military to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us an accomplice. How would that sit with the Europeans who are supporting our sanctions on Iran and want the nuclear issue settled diplomatically?

Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation with Jericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would she close the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and U.S. warships?

With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seem to ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.

What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now in indirect negotiations with Israel. U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that could force the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation, and to finish a war Israel had begun. But a U.S. war on Iran is not a decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.

Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left for Israel. CBS News cited U.S. officials as conceding the trip comes "just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex."

Vice President Cheney is said to favor U.S. strikes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.

Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is House Resolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a U.S. blockade of Iran, an act of war.

Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?

If you've ever wondered about the definition of hypocrisy you'll find the answer right here.

Last month the Swiss foreign minister visited Iran and, together with President Ahmadinejad, attended the signing of a multi-billion euro contract for Iran to supply Switzerland with large amounts of natural gas over the next 25 years.

The US State Department immediately condemned the deal and said it would be investigating whether it breached the Iran Sanctions Act. Israel complained too, describing the Swiss minister's visit to Tehran as an "act unfriendly to Israel". Various Jewish groups also joined in the protests, including the World Jewish Congress.

This righteous indignation was entirely predictable but more than a little odd nevertheless. On March 30, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag retaliated with the revelation that Israel, supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, has been buying Iranian oil for years.

The story is in German but Israeli journalist Shraga Elam has provided me with a translation which I'll quote from here.

"Israel imports Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts with Iran and purchasing of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the boycott by having the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter, EnergiaNews, reported this last week [March 18] ...

"EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources with ties to the management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd ... According to EnergiaNews the Iranian oil is liked in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.

"The report by EnergiaNews editor Moshe Shalev states that the Iranian oil reaches various European ports, mainly in Rotterdam. It is bought by Israelis and the necessary European bill of lading and insurance papers are supplied. Then it is transported to Haifa in Israel. The importer is the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC), which keeps its oil sources secret."

EAPC was established in 1968 as a joint Israeli-Iranian company to transport oil from Iran to Europe. After the fall of the Shah, Iran ceased to play an active role in its affairs and there are ongoing legal disputes between the two partners.

"It is not clear if the Iranian exporters know about Israeli purchases of their oil. At the other end, the Israeli buyers and governmental offices are well aware of where the high-grade oil comes from, although it is a blatant defiance of the boycott. The EnergiaNews article even made it through Israeli censorship, which asked only for some changes in the text. The fact that the report cleared the censors increases the credibility of the information. In the past, such reports were forbidden.

"When questioned by Sonntag, an energy expert of one of the leading Israeli papers confirmed the EnergiaNews report: Israel has been importing Iranian oil for many years. The expert stressed, however, that the purchases were made on the free market and not directly from Iran."

Sonntag quoted a spokesman for Oil Refineries Ltd as denying that his company imports and processes Iranian oil. However, Sonntag pointed to a report in Haaretz newspaper last October which said that an Israeli energy company called Paz would be refining Iranian oil and supplying it to the Palestinian Authority from the start of this year.

This begs the question: if Iran is, as Bibi Netanyahu argues, an existential threat to Israel, why does the government allow such trade? Would Israel have the US attack Iran's nuclear programme and provoke a potential region-wide conflict while it cannot seem to wean itself from high quality Iranian crude? You'd think if Israelis are cowering in fear from an Iranian bomb and the arch antisemite Ahmadinejad, they wouldn't want to trade with such an enemy.

When is a boycott not a boycott? When it's in your naked economic interest to circumvent it, apparently. But one should ask: if Israel doesn't honour its self-declared boycott of Iran, why should the rest of the world honour its boycott of Hamas and Gaza? If Israel doesn't honour its own boycott, then why should members of Congress vote with AIPAC when it proposes a measure that even Israel honours only in the breach?

It's interesting to note from a discussion (in Hebrew) on the Kedma website that Israel does not formally define Iran as an "enemy nation" and therefore in a strictly legal sense such trade is permissible. Ironically, Iran too has a boycott against Israel in place and is violating its own measures in that regard. Furthermore, the same commenter notes that Israel last week dismissed attempts to engage Syria in a diplomatic process as a failure because Syria refuses to renounce its ties with Iran. Do I hear the word "hypocrisy"?

Having adamantly denied for months that Israel could possibly be purchasing any oil originating in Iran, an Israeli official has now acknowledged that the Jewish state cannot be sure that Iranian oil is not coming here indirectly, and a former Israeli energy minister has told The Jerusalem Post that Iranian oil may have been imported indirectly for years and that he would have readily authorized such purchases himself.

"I don't see any problem if Iranian oil is arriving in Israel," said Moshe Shahal, who served as energy minister from 1984 to 1990, "because it's not coming straight from Iran."

Shahal explained that once oil is on the open market, its source becomes clouded. In a sense, he said, the oil loses its nationality while retaining its quality.

"The national oil companies sell their oil to buyers who in turn sell the oil on the free market," Shahal went on. And it was entirely possible that Israel had therefore been buying oil that originated in Iran for years. "The people selling the barrels of oil never see a barrel of oil in their life, they're just making the sales," he said.

"In my time, people came to me and said we had the opportunity to buy oil from all kinds of exotic locations - including Libyan oil or Syrian oil - countries with whom we obviously don't have normal relations," said former Labor MK Shahal, now a lawyer in Tel Aviv. "I approved those purchases, because it was good oil, and it wasn't coming directly from the governments of those countries, but from private sellers on the free market."

Today, he said, "I don't believe there is a target to specifically buy oil from Iran. But if it is being purchased, it would be through these types of opportunities."

The issue arose earlier this year, when EnergiaNews.com, an Israeli Web site that follows business and energy-related stories, asserted that Iranian oil was regularly reaching Israel, despite the dire state of relations between the two countries, with Teheran regularly predicting Israel's imminent demise and Israel leading the calls for greater international efforts, including wideranging trade sanctions, to thwart Iran's nuclear program. EnergiaNews.com reported that the oil was being transported and purchased through one of the world's largest commercial ports, Rotterdam.

"This is well known around the world," said Moshe Shalev, the editor of EnergiaNews and the author of the article. Shalev said that after the oil is purchased through a third party, the Haifa-based oil company, Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline, stores it and then moves it to Bazan, Israel's largest oil refinery, also located in Haifa, to prepare it for commercial consumption.

Shalev cited a source with ties to Bazan as initially leaking the story. He maintained that the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline has Iranian ties dating back to the time of the shah.

The National Infrastructures Ministry initially flatly denied any such supply route. Spokesman Assaf Azoulai told the Post, "Every oil shipment to Israel comes with certification as to where it's from, and Israel is not purchasing oil from Iran."

But Azoulai subsequently told the Post, "We buy oil from the biggest producers in the world, and there's no way of knowing where it comes from." Nonetheless, he still maintained, the "rumor" of Israel buying Iranian oil was "nonsense."

In a written reply to the Post, an Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline spokeswoman denied the EnergiaNews claim that her company buys oil at all, stating that it only provides "logistical services at the port and assists in the transportation of oil."

The Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline was set up to transport oil from the shah's Iran to Israel. Such trade dated back to the 1950s, but the pipeline was opened in 1968 to ease the supply. Iranian oil, which was shipped to Eilat, was both consumed in Israel and transported on to Europe. After Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, all direct contacts with Israel - oil deals included - were severed.

A spokesman for Bazan also categorically rejected the idea that his company uses oil originating in Iran. "That's absolutely not true," he said. "We know where all of our oil comes from, and none of it comes from Iran. It is all labeled and orderly. We are not buying oil from Iran, period."

A spokeswoman at the Iranian Embassy in London also distanced the Islamic Republic from any such supply. "I can confirm that Iran has no deal with a company having anything to do with Israel," she told the Post.

But echoing Shahal's explanation, world oil market specialist Shmuel Even said that Israel may very well be making such purchases indirectly.

"Oil is a commodity, like gold," he said. "You can buy it from anybody and sell it to everybody. It's quite possible that Israeli companies are buying oil in Europe which originated in Iran. But it's not official, it's on the free market, and I don't think it's a political issue."

The harbor master at Rotterdam Port, T. Selegars, said that both Iranian and Israeli ships came through his port, and that the Iranians were depositing shipments of crude oil there.

"A hundred million tons of oil are transported through the port every year, and ships come through from all over the world," he said. "Iranian ships are bringing oil to Rotterdam, and it is theoretically possible that oil is transported from here to Israel."

After the EnergiaNews piece was first published, in March, an oped article in the UK's Guardian newspaper termed the alleged Israel-Iran connection the "definition of hypocrisy" given Israel's call for heightened economic pressure on Teheran.

The story was also cited by the Swiss newspaper Sonntag after Israel complained that the Swiss foreign minister's March visit to Iran and subsequent signing of a multi-billion euro contract for natural gas was an "act unfriendly to Israel."

Quoting an "energy expert from one of the leading Israeli papers," the Swiss report stated, "Israel has been importing Iranian oil for many years." That article went on to mention that the purchases were made on the free market and not directly from Iran.

Israel Seeking to Convince U.S. That West Is Threatened by Iran; Jewish Leaders Say Only Washington Capable of Restraining Tehran

Israel is attempting to convince the United States that Iranian- inspired Islamic extremism and Iran's military rearmament drive have become a major threat to the stability of the Middle East and the interests of the West.

Although such warnings have been issued by Israel in the past, the campaign has intensified in the wake of Israel's deportation of 400 suspected Islamic activists, its arrest of four Palestinian Americans suspected of aiding militant Islamic groups here, the arrest of a Jordanian Palestinian in the World Trade Center bombing and growing awareness of Iran's rearmament and nuclear ambitions.

Last week, the State Department accused Iran of being the leading state sponsor of terrorism. But across the Israeli political spectrum, there is a conviction that American public opinion and political leaders need to be further convinced of the urgency of restraining Iran, and that the United States is the only global power capable of doing so.

Many Israeli intelligence, military and political leaders said in interviews that they fear the United States will ignore the warnings about Iran and eventually face a confrontation similar to the coalition war against Iraq two years ago.

"The intelligence community in the United States is aware of the danger, and the military establishment is aware, but I'm worried the political establishment might be influenced by the mood which says keep away from Iran," said Ephraim Sneh, a senior Labor Party legislator. "Iran is the Bermuda Triangle of American politics."

The Israeli effort also reflects some of the complexities confronting the Jewish state in the post-Cold War period.

Since the late 1970s, Israel has held itself out to the United States as a friendly bulwark against possible Soviet expansionism, and this became the rationale for greater military cooperation. But the Soviet collapse has made that role obsolete. Some Israelis say the new rationale should be that Israel is a bulwark against Islamic extremism or Iranian regional ambitions, although this is a controversial idea that has not been fully accepted here.

Another factor is that Israel increasingly finds itself in the same predicament as secular Arab regimes being challenged by Islamic militancy in the region. Israelis hope to show the United States that Islamic extremism is a threat to pro-American regimes and vital Western interests - not only Persian Gulf oil, but also the stability of moderate Arab governments such as Egypt.

A third factor is that Israel, while raising the alarm about Iran's possible long-term strategic ambitions, is not making the enormous investment that would be required to deter Iran if Israeli leaders concluded their very existence was threatened. Israeli policy- makers hope that the United States will put the brakes on Iran's quest for nuclear weapons and regional hegemony - saving Israel from a multibillion-dollar weapons program that would enable it to reach, or defend against, Iran, more than 600 miles away.

Israel intends to raise all of these issues during Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's current visit to the United States. In an interview published yesterday in the Israeli newspaper Davar, Rabin said Iran is on a "megamaniacal" quest to be "a Middle East empire, by using all the varietes of fundamentalist Islam to shake Arab regimes. This could be a different kind of threat to Israel."

Historically, Israel did not always view Iran or Islamic activists so ominously. For many years during the reign of the shah, Israel viewed Iran as a silent partner, with whom to squeeze the Arab states, and the two countries had open and thriving economic ties and weapons sales. Even after the fall of the shah in 1979, some Israelis still thought they could do business with elements in Iran, as was later shown by the Iran-contra affair.

Likewise, Israel offered early encouragement to the Islamic movements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Particularly in the late 1970s before the rise of the Islamic republic in Iran, Israel encouraged and supported Islamic activists as potential rivals to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Today, Iran and Islamic groups in the territories have been put at the top of Israel's list of perceived enemies, and Israeli leaders and news media and American Jewish groups frequently echo the point.

Rabin, in an address to parliament Dec. 21, set the tone, saying Israel's "struggle against murderous Islamic terror" is "meant to awaken the world which is lying in slumber."

He warned of "the great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism," which, he said, "threatens the peace of the world in the forthcoming years. The danger of death is at our doorstep." His address was followed by a long paper distributed by Israeli "military sources" asserting that fundamentalists are challenging regimes and creating instability across the Arab world.

The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith issued a report on Iran last month, based partly on a briefing from the Israeli army, that said Israeli officials "perceive a persistent strain of radical Islamic ideological motivation to Iranian conduct that, unless checked, is likely to culminate in Iranian aggression."

In an analytical paper written for the American Jewish Committee recently, Yonathan Lerner, a consultant who previously held a top Israeli military post, said "we cannot run away or avoid" the possibility that Iran by the end of the decade may become "the dominant force in the Middle East, and there will be more regimes with Islamic fundamentalist orientation and Iran will have the ability to wreak long-range mass destruction."

"As the World Trade Center bombing indicated, the United States is not immune from this threat," said Michael Oren, director of the American Jewish Committee office here. "These groups are being financed by Iran, and the United States must show leadership in the world in countering the Iranian threat. If it doesn't, then it will be doomed to repeat the mistake it made with Iraq, with potentially graver consequences."

Binyamin Netanyahu, a member of parliament who is front-runner to head the opposition Likud Party, said the World Trade Center bombing "is not the work of a solitary madman" but was "done by deliberate and systemic organizations of murder, and here you're talking about the spread of terror, organized Islamic terror, right into the heart of the United States, to the heart of New York City.

"I've seen in the past that it takes a concerted effort on the part of Israel to explain to the American public . . . that it is their interest, their security, their well-being that is at stake and not merely ours," he said.

After global condemnation of Israel for deporting Islamic activists in December, Israeli officials also tried to blunt the issue in the United States by suggesting that Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is being run from American shores. An Israeli television report alleging ties between Hamas and Islamic leaders in the United States was followed by the arrest here of two Americans in late January who Israeli officials said were suspected of carrying thousands of dollars into the Israeli-occupied territories to help rebuild Hamas.

Two other Palestinians who also are American citizens were arrested later. In an unusual step to publicize the case, at the behest of Rabin's aides here, color photographs of the suspects and details of their alleged activities in the territories were given to reporters by Israel's internal security service before the suspects had seen a lawyer or been arraigned. The officials distributed a chart they had made indicating that the organizational leadership of Hamas is in the United States. The suspects, still in custody, have denied any wrongdoing. One of them, Mohammed Jarad, 36, of Chicago, was charged last week with belonging to and rendering services to Hamas. His lawyer said he would seek a plea bargain.