Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

The time is short, and the Israelis are warming up.

Few believe the US intelligence report claiming that the Iranians have stopped their bomb preparations. This is especially true of the Israelis, who are in the direct line of attack by Iran. Their exercise last week underlines their capability to launch an an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities on which they have good information. This may not be entirely successful because of the dispersion and secrecy of Iran's installations.

Last year, I was convinced that we would launch an attack this Spring, or at least well before the November elections. Obviously a wrong opinion. I was equally convinced that Israel would attack first, which would force us to join them sooner or later, especially after Iranian counterattacks. This may well be borne out to be so in the not too distant future.

Is it possible that the Israelis are holding off until our election is over, so that they know early in November who will be in the White House after January 20th of 2009? An attack now would possibly throw the election in a uncertain direction, to the disadvantage of the Israelis. They would be in far better shape with McCain in the White House, I believe, and I also believe that the Israelis have a much clearer idea of how much time they have before they are compelled to attack than we do.

Thus, I believe that an Obama win would delay the Israeli attack until they could find out what support they would get from Obama. Any whiffle from Obama would precipitate the attack anyway, since the Isrealis only have their nation to lose if Iraq gets nuclear bombs. The Israelis would then be counting on Iran to attack US targets in retaliation, thus dragging us into the conflict anyway.

What we will have if Obama is elected is not only a total passivistic, neophyte President in war and foreign relations, but we also will have lost the coordination and preparation time with Israel for this new phase of the ME war. This could expose both us and the Israelis to serious losses from Iranian attacks before we contained the threat, or knocked Iran out of the running.

Do we always have to play catch up?

Labels: Iran, Israel, McCain, Nuclear Weapons, Obama

# posted by Mannning @ 8:45 PM