Israel Never Planned To Bomb Iran?

AP.

Israel's government, press and supporters in America have been threatening an attack against Iran's nuclear sites, alleged to procure weaponry, for years. A preemptive attack a la the Israeli 1980s mission against an Iraqi reactor. Israel has long stated that a nuclear Iran is viewed by the Jewish state as an existential threat. That Israel could not live with a nuclear Iran, because the Iranian regime is seen as irrational and willing to risk an Israeli counterattack for the purpose of eliminating the Jewish state (Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adds credence to such claims with his calls for whipping Israel off the map and denying the Holocaust).

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But as the rhetoric on the Israeli side rose it always managed to default. Deadlines for action came and went. Israel's defense minister, for instance, stated that 2010 would be decisive but nothing happened.

In the end, it appears now that Israel's military establishment has long concluded that an Israeli attack against Iran was not feasible. And that the more Israeli publicly threaten such an attack the more unlikely it actually was, just a rhetorical gambit designed to scare the Iranians (which evidently had no affect).

U.S. diplomatic cables released by whistle blower site Wikileaks and published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz show that this was the Israeli calculation all along:

"Levite said that most Israeli officials do not believe a military solution is possible," the telegram ran. "They believe Iran has learned from Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor, and has dispersed the components of its nuclear program throughout Iran, with some elements in places that Israel does not know about."

Later on in the conversation, Levite told the Americans that Iran could obtain nuclear weapons within two to three years, but admitted the estimate could be inaccurate as "Israel does not have a clear or precise understanding of Iran's clandestine program."

Another note worth emphasizing is how little Israel knows about the region surrounding it. Israeli mythology is in part one of portraying a skilled Israeli with an alpha intelligence, the Mossad, which has eyes and ears everywhere. But this was always been a well-crafted smokescreen. Former director of the C.I.A. Stansfield Turner once remarked that the Israeli ‘intelligence’ agency Mossad earns an A for public relations and a C for actual intelligence. And as former C.I.A. officer Robert Bear once stated, “Let me tell you something, what people most err in in the Middle East, and I am responsible for my words to the end, is related to Israeli intelligence. To be sure, they can kill somebody in Paris or Rome or killing the wrong person in Finland or wherever else they did that in. To be sure they know Europe and Palestinians, and they know many things about Palestinians, but when it comes to the rest of the Middle East, I have not seen anything from their part that indicated their knowledge of those countries.” But Israel cultivates the image of the Mossad as an uber-intelligence outfit in order to demoralize its enemies. But after the recent Dubai fiasco that now is conspicuously incredulous and Israeli admission of such a fact will not repair the Mossad's image.

The Iraqi attack and Iran are entirely different: Iraq had one reactor in public view in the middle of a desert plain. Iran has at least 30 sites (many more could be unknown) spread out strategically over a nation three times the size of Iraq and many are located underneath mountains and similarly rough terrain which would require a massive Israeli air commitment against a nation farther away, and Iran has better air defense and retaliatory abilities than Iraq ever had. Simply put, Iraq was a rookie's game next to Iran's chessboard.

And Israel knew it. But now the Jewish state is in a bind. They, or rather Wikileaks, has given up the element of surprise. How Israel denies the report and seeks to dismiss it will be very interesting, and Israel will surely note that the report is dated and a new Israeli more hawkish Israeli government is in power now with a resolute prime minister and the threat of an attack remains still.