In
signal to Israel, US delays war
games By Gareth Porter and Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - The postponement of a
massive joint United States-Israeli military
exercise appears to be the culmination of a series
of events that has impelled the Barack Obama
administration to put more distance between the
United States and aggressive Israeli policies
toward Iran.
The exercise, called "Austere
Challenge 12" and originally scheduled for April,
was to have been a simulation of a joint
US-Israeli effort to identify, track and intercept
incoming missiles by
integrating sophisticated US
radar systems with the Israeli Arrow, Patriot and
Iron Dome anti-missile defense systems.
United States participation in such an
exercise, obviously geared to a scenario involving
an Iranian retaliation against an Israeli attack
on its nuclear facilities, would have made the US
out to be a partner of Israel in any war that
would follow an Israeli attack on Iran.
Obama and US military leaders apparently
decided that the US could not participate in such
an exercise so long as Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu refused to give the
administration any assurance that he would not
attack Iran without prior approval from
Washington.
The official explanation from
both Israeli and US officials about the delay was
that both sides agreed on it. Both Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Mark Regev,
spokesman for Netanyahu, suggested that it was
delayed to avoid further exacerbation of tensions
in the Gulf.
The spokesman for the US
European Command, Captain John Ross, and Pentagon
spokesman John Kirby told Laura Rozen of Yahoo
News on Sunday that the two sides had decided on
the postponement to the second half of 2012
without offering any specific reason for it.
However, Rozen reported on Monday that
"several current and former American officials"
had told her on Sunday that the delay had been
requested last month by Israeli Defense Minister
Ehud Barak. One official suggested privately that
there was concern that the alleged Barak request
could be aimed at keeping Israel's options open
for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the
spring.
But it would make little sense for
Netanyahu and Barak to commit Israel to war with
Iran before the shape of the US presidential
election campaign had become clear. And Barak
would want to have knowledge gained from the joint
exercise in tracking and intercepting Iranian
missiles with the US military before planning such
a strike.
Moreover, the Israeli Air Force
was still touting the planned maneuvers as
recently as Thursday and, according to Israeli
media, was taken by surprise by Sunday's
announcement.
The idea that the Israelis
wanted the postponement appears to be a cover
story to mask the political blow it represents to
the Netanyahu government and to shield Obama from
Republican charges that he is not sufficiently
supportive of Israel. Nevertheless, the signal
sent by the delay to Netanyahu and Barak,
reportedly the most aggressive advocates of a
strike against Iran in Israel's right-wing
government, could hardly be lost on the two
leaders.
Obama may have conveyed the
decision to Netanyahu during what is said to have
been a lengthy telephone discussion between the
two leaders on Thursday night. Iran policy was one
of the subjects Obama discussed with him,
according to the White House press release on the
conversation.
The decision to postpone the
exercise may have been timed to provide a strong
signal to Netanyahu in advance of this week's
visit to Israel by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Martin Dempsey. Dempsey reportedly
expressed grave concern at a meeting with Obama
last autumn about the possibility that Israel
intended to carry out a unilateral Israeli attack
on Iran's nuclear facilities without consulting
with Washington in advance.
Obama has been
quoted as responding that he had "no say" in
Israel's policy, much to Dempsey's dismay.
The coincidence of the announced delay
with Dempsey's mission thus suggests that the new
military chief may inform his Israeli counterpart
that any US participation in a joint exercise like
"Austere Challenge 12" was contingent on Israel
ending its implicit threat to launch an attack on
Iran at a time of its own choosing.
This
apparent rift between the two countries comes in
the wake of a series of moves by Israel and its
supporters here that appeared aimed at ratcheting
up tensions between the US and Iran.
In
November and December, US neo-conservatives
aligned with Netanyahu's Likud Party and what is
sometimes called the Israel lobby engineered
legislation that forced on the Obama
administration a unilateral sanctions law aimed at
dramatically reducing Iranian crude oil exports
and "collapsing" its economy.
The
administration's reluctant embrace of sanctions
against the oil sector and the Iran's central bank
led in turn to an Iranian threat to retaliate by
closing off the Strait of Hormuz. The risk of a
naval incident suddenly exploding into actual
military conflict suddenly loomed large.
Netanyahu and Barak are widely believed to
have hoped to provoke such conflict with a
combination of more aggressive sanctions,
sabotaging Iranian missile and nuclear facilities,
and assassinations against individual scientists
associated with the nuclear program.
Amid
tensions already reaching dangerous heights,
Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan
was assassinated in Tehran in a bombing on January
11. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor
immediately condemned the assassination and
vehemently denied any US involvement in that or
any other violence inside Iran.
It was the
first time the US government had chosen to
distance itself so dramatically from actions that
mainstream media has generally treated as part of
a joint US-Israeli policy.
United States
officials told the Associated Press on Saturday
that Israel was considered responsible for the
killing, and the London Times published a detailed
account of what it said was an Israeli Mossad
operation.
The killing of the nuclear
scientist also came in the context of what appears
to be an intensification of diplomatic activity
that most observers believe is designed to lay the
groundwork for another "Iran Six" meeting (the
permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council and Germany). It has been widely assumed
for the past week or so that here another "Iran
Six" meeting would be held with Iran by the end of
this month or early next.
While recent
published stories about Washington's communicating
with Tehran through intermediaries stressed US
warnings about its "red lines" in responding to
any Iranian move to close the Strait of Hormuz,
those same communications may also have conveyed
greater diplomatic flexibility on the nuclear
issue in the hope of achieving some progress
toward an agreement.
Mossad is believed to
have assassinated at most a handful of Iranian
nuclear scientists - not enough to slow down the
Iranian program. And the timing of those
operations has strongly suggested that the main
aim has been to increase tensions with the United
States and sabotage any possibility for agreement
between Iran and the West on Iran's nuclear
program, if not actually provoke retaliation by
Iran that could spark a wider conflict.
The assassination of nuclear scientist
Majid Shariari and attempted assassination of his
colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi on November 29, 2010,
for example, came just a few days after Tehran had
reportedly agreed to hold a second meeting with
the "Iran Six" in Geneva on December 6-7.
A major investigative story published on
Friday on the website foreignpolicy.com quoted
former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials
as saying that Mossad operatives had been
impersonating CIA personnel for several years in
recruiting for and providing support to the Sunni
terrorist organization Jundallah, which operated
inside Iran. That Israeli policy also suggested a
desire to provoke Iranian retaliation against the
United States.
Gareth Porter is
an investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. The
paperback edition of his latest book, Perils
of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to
War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. Jim
Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read
at http://www.lobelog.com.
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