Skip to main content

Stand back! The US and Israelis are gonna attack Iran

One can only hope, and pray, that this piece from UPI isn't reporting things correctly.   It is mind-boggling to think that some sort of surgical operation (that is, an attack on Iran) can be undertaken in a couple of days - and then, without any civilian casualties?  And one shouldn't think there would not be repercussions and fallout from any such attack?

"The United States and Israel are considering a surgical strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, Foreign Policy magazine says.

Based on a source reported to be close to discussions between the sides, the report published Monday maintains the strike may only take "a couple of hours" involving a "day or two," and would be conducted using "primarily bombers and drone support."

If such a strike is carried out it would set the Iranian nuclear program back many years, the report said and would do so without civilian casualties.

Benefits of such a strike would be regional, Foreign Policy says.

It quotes an unnamed advocate saying the outcome would be "transformative" -- "saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the (Persian) Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come."

Such a strike cannot be conducted by Israel alone and would require the involvement of the United States, "whether acting alone or in concert with Israel and others," the report says.

The report maintains that taking into account the progress made between Israel and the U.S. administration in recent weeks, such a strike would be the easiest way for President Barack Obama to defuse Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's critique on Iran.

"It's not the size of the threatened attack but the likelihood that it will actually be made, that makes a military threat a useful diplomatic tool. And perhaps a political one, too," the report says."


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...