UPDATE: No terrorist activity reported overnight.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Just last week, we witnessed the spectacle of the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, throwing Israel under the bus by revealing a possible timetable for an Israeli attack on Iran. That an ally of Israel would alert the archenemy of Israel to the dates of a possible Israeli attack– apparently in order to give it time to bolster its defenses is simply flabbergasting and unprecedented.
But it seems that the United States did not throw Israel far enough under the bus.
Yesterday, two senior unnamed officials in the Obama Administration “confirmed” to NBC News in the United States that Mossad is behind the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
An Iranian nuclear scientist was driving this car in November when it exploded (photo from Iranian news agency).
Even more specifically, the two U.S. officials spelled out that Mossad is training, arming, and providing logistical support to the MEK (the leading Iranian dissident group, the People’s Mujahedin) to carry out the killings. According to the Americans, Mossad has even replicated homes belonging to the scientists in order to facilitate the assassinations.
If all of this is not astonishing enough, the officials went on to confirm that the MEK is providing Mossad with information about Iranian facilities in advance of a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
What in the world is going on here?
Almost immediately after the program aired, a U.S. State Department spokesman rushed to the podium to repeat what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said three weeks ago: “The U.S. is in no way involved with the assassinations in Iran.” Can the Panetta statement and the officials’ comments about Mossad simply be explained as the United States trying to cover its “rear end”?
Perhaps, but your humble servant thinks not.
It is one thing for the Iranians to believe that Mossad is behind the assassinations. It is another thing altogether to have the Obama Administration tell the Iranians (and the world) that they are right. One cannot help but get the idea that the Obama administration is feeding Iran information so that it can act against the Israeli threat–and is supporting those actions in advance.
Your humble servant does not suggest that the Obama Administration would in any way support a preemptive Iranian strike against Israel, but the Administration seems oblivious to the repercussions of its “revelations”.
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One of those repercussions is that leading Iranians are indeed beginning to call for a preemptive strike against Israel. On Sunday–following Panetta’s revelation of Israel’s timetable for an attack–Ahmed Tavakoli, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s Research Institute, said that Islamic law and military strategy dictated the necessity of an Iranian preemptive strike.
Tavakoli specifically urged that the Iranian government use its current missiles to hit Israel’s hardened missile launching sites “between Israel’s coastal plain south of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” He further urged immediately hitting Israel’s two nuclear reactors at Dimona and Nahal Sorek.
One of the personality traits that has always characterized President Obama is his belief that he knows better than ‘you’ what is good for ‘you’. Perhaps this is just another case of his arrogantly believing that by revealing all to Iran, he is somehow “saving” Israel.
Whether the Obama Administration is remarkably arrogant, remarkably pusillanimous, remarkably incompetent, or remarkably malicious is a question that you, dear reader, must answer for yourself.
THIS DATE IN ISRAELI HISTORY
The THEL laser weapon
This news item appeared on February 9, 1996:
The Pentagon announced that the first trial of a jointly developed Israeli-American anti-missile laser beam system was successful. In the test, the laser beam system succeeded in intercepting an unarmed Katuysha rocket at short-range.
The trial took place Tuesday at White Sands military base in New Mexico and was carried out by the Strategic Space Command of the American Ground Corps. Project Director Gerald Wilson said at the conclusion of the test, “At this stage, we believe that we now possess all of the necessary information to move on to the next stage in Project Nautilus.”
The development of the THEL (and later the MTHEL)–deuterium fluoride chemical lasers–proceeded successfully and as late as 2004 the weapon system was demonstrating great efficiency in shooting down Katyushas and mortars.
Unfortunately, the weapon system fell by the wayside as a result of budget cuts in the U.S. and Israel. However as late as 2006, leading Israelis were calling for its deployment to combat the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Imagine what could have been.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.