Israeli jet exercise is warning to Iran over nuclear facilities, Pentagon says

As news is leaked of an Israeli military exercise, which many are proclaiming was a warning of their intent to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that any such attack would turn the region into "a fireball" and has warned that he would immediately resign were Israel to carry out this threat.

More than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s flew more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear plant. They were accompanied by refuelling planes and helicopters for rescuing any downed crews.

A source in Washington described the exercise as "sabre-rattling" and said he did not think an attack was imminent.

"If the Israelis were serious about it, no one would know about it until after it has happened," he said.

Nonetheless, the development sent oil prices higher after it was leaked to the New York Times by the Pentagon.

This really shouldn't be too surprising to anyone. After all, Olmert was said to have left the White House recently, after a meeting with Bush and Cheney, "quite satisfied" that the Iranian issue was not off the table and neo-conservative Daniel Pipes has gone as far as to say that Bush intends to carry out a "massive" attack in the window between the November elections and Bush's departure from office, particularly if Democratic Senator Barack Obama is his successor.

The notion that a president could launch an attack during the period between the election and the day he hands over to his successor is about as sick as it gets, but nothing would sum up Bush and Cheney's contempt for what ordinary Americans think better than that.

So, this recent Israeli show of power is another way of gearing the public up for a possible attack on Iran, despite the fact that no-one has to this day ever shown any proof that Iran are pursuing a nuclear weapon.

We are being asked to accept the hysterical estimations of the same people who told us that Iraq had WMD and, in a manner typical of neo-con disregard for international norms, we are being prepared for a breach of Iran's territorial integrity as if such a thing were routine. Mohamed ElBaradei, by threatening to resign, is trying to make us all aware that, not only is this far from routine, it is actually profoundly dangerous.

This week Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, repeated his warning that Iran remained the biggest threat in the region. "I don't think we deserve to live under the threat of a nuclear Iran," he said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald published on Thursday.

Shaul Mofaz, a deputy prime minister and former army chief, provoked criticism this month when he told an Israeli newspaper that an attack was unavoidable. "If Iran continues its programme to develop nuclear weapons we will attack it," said Mofaz, who is in charge of Israel's strategic dialogue with the US over such issues as Iran.

It is, of course, true that Israel does not deserve to live under the threat of a nuclear Iran. However, it is also true that Iran and the rest of the Middle East does not deserve to have to live under the threat of a nuclear Israel. But that's the problem with all nuclear powers, they all seem to think that the NNPT is there to prevent others from acquiring what they already possess and they ignore the parts of the NNPT which requires that they disarm. Israel, of course, has gone even further and simply refused to sign up to the NNPT at all. Indeed, we are all supposed to pretend that we don't even know that Israel is a nuclear power at all as she sticks to her ludicrous stance of "nuclear ambiguity".

But only in a world where George Bush and his ilk have presided for seven years would we be hearing threats of imminent attacks upon other sovereign nations and be asked to react as if the good guys were finally going in to clean up that violent saloon.

Bush has governed with a contempt for both international and US domestic law and - as we witnessed through the recent Democratic capitulation over wiretapping and immunity - he has gotten away with this largely due to the utter spinelessness of the Democratic party.

America is supposed to a nation governed by laws, but Bush has frequently dismissed laws and conventions which he found tedious and the Democratic party has never pushed to make him accountable. Indeed, Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to state that impeachment was off the table and to reassure Republicans that, if her party won the mid-term elections, that Bush and Cheney would never be held accountable for the crimes they had committed.

So, any of us appalled at the notion that Bush could take part in, or allow Israel to spearhead, an attack on Iran in the period between the election and the new president's inauguration, would have to hold Pelosi and the Democrats at least partially responsible for allowing Bush to operate so far outside of international norms - for such a long period of time - that he could even consider such an action in the first place.

The Democrats have, time and again, handed Bush a Get Out Of Jail Free card. He's behaving as if he's untouchable because the Democrats, and most especially Nancy Pelosi, have told him that he is.

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Tags: Israel, Iran, US, Olmert, Bush, Cheney, Pelosi, Republicans, Democrats