Gates: Israeli Attack On Iran's Nukes Will Cause Iran To Pursue Nukes, Detonate US-Israeli Relations
It'll be Israel's fault!
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned against an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, asserting that such a strike would have dangerous consequences, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. According to the report, Gates explained that a strike was dangerous because it would unify Iran, "cement their determination to have a nuclear program, and also build into the whole country an undying hatred of whoever hits them."
This argument is awesome for at least two reasons:
(1) It's unblinkingly stupid. It doesn't matter how many times Iran declares that they'll never give up nuclearization. It doesn't matter how obviously true it is that we can't give them anything they want more than a bomb. It will still be Israeli self-defense that causes them to cross the nuclear threshold. Of course it will be.
(2) It's obnoxiously predictable. Of course the Obama administration is going to tag Israel for the length and breadth of Middle East instability. The only people who really denied that during the campaign were pro-Obama Jewish shills. And I don't think they ever really believed it.
I don't know how other people cracked the code, but my clues were when Obama's top advisers - followed by Obama himself on multiple occasions - implied that Israel was responsible for the length and breadth of Middle East instability. That's the subtle hint that tipped me off.
More pointedly, Israel has been getting set up to take the fall for Obama's diplomatic failures since before the inauguration. It's a win-win for opponents of the US-Israel alliance. If negotiations don't work out, Israel gets blamed for Obama's naivety.
In the meantime Israel gets diplomatically and militarily boxed in. Obama's surrogates have made it clear that even rumors of Israeli self-defense will be blamed for knocking out Obama's diplomatic knees. Brzezinski went so far as to say that discussing military action in US-Israeli military circles would cause a "lot of resentment," on top of what was left over "after the war in Iraq" (unmentioned: how his and his friends' feverish Israel Lobby conspiracism was the cause of that resentment).
Now the warning has been echoed by Gates. It had already made a random but convenient appearance in the NYT news section, which I guess also answers my question about why Roger Cohen doesn't move out of opinion. And it's even been explicitly made by Biden:
Vice President Joe Biden issued a high-level admonishment to Israel's new government Tuesday that it would be "ill advised" to launch a military strike against Iran. Biden said in a CNN interview that he does not believe newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take such a step... With his brief comment Tuesday, Biden became the highest-ranking administration official to caution the Jewish state against a military strike. In the interview, Biden was asked whether he was concerned that Netanyahu might strike Iranian nuclear facilities. "I don't believe Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill advised to do that," Biden said.
Israel's strategic considerations all but necessitate an attack on Iran, which they might very well be gearing up for right now. My original guess for when we'd see articles half-acknowledging half-asserting an unprecedented crisis in US-Israeli relations was mid-2010. So I think I'm pretty much on track, no?
References:
* Gates warns against strike on Iran sites [JPost]
* Obama Drops Preconditions On Iran Talks, Will Let Them Keep Enriching During Negotiations [MR]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]
* 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say "We Didn't Know" When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know) [MR]
* Obama Foreign Policy Appointees: Israel To Blame For Mideast Instability, Sweeping Concessions Necessary [MR]
* * Obama Figures Out The Real Problem With Iranian Nuclearization (Plus: Obama's Foreign Policy Kneejerks Provide Excellent Illustration Of Exactly How He'd Screw Israel) [MR]
* New Palin Smear: She Supports Hamas (Plus: Obama's Anti-Israel FP Sensibility, Support From Hamas) [MR]
* Predictable Media Meme Congealing: Israeli Self-Defense Is Bad For Obama [MR]
* Brzezinski: Israeli Campaign Against Iran Will Detonate US-Israel Relations [MR]
* NYT: Israel Is Kind Of Undermining Obama's Diplomacy, Isn't It? [MR]
* Roger Cohen: Obama Should Sell Out Israel To Appease Iran [MR]
* Biden warns Israel off any attack on Iran [LAT]
* Why Israel Will Bomb Iran [Slate]
* Israel's attack on Iran is coming [Israel Matzav]
* Anti-Israel Activists To Anti-Israel Voters: Don't Worry, We Pretty Much Own Obama [MR]
Previously:
* Obama's Top NSA And CIA Picks: Harsh On Israel, Sympathetic To Iran And Hezbollah
* No Kidding: Obama To Pressure Israel On Its Nuclear Deterrent
* Israeli Politics Roundup - What Will Cause Netanyahu's First Blowup With Obama? [MR]
