An Israeli F-16I fighter plane takes off from Ramon Air Base in southern Israel in 2008. Foreign Policy magazine reports that Israel is developing a 'secret staging ground' in Azerbaijan for a possible air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Gil Cohen/Reuters/File
AFP: 47% of Israelis would back unilateral Iran strike: poll
Jerusalem (AFP) - Almost half of Israelis would support a unilateral strike to prevent Iran obtaining the atomic bomb, an opinion poll carried out after Tuesday's nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers found.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents in the poll published by the Maariv newspaper on Friday said they thought the agreement would accelerate Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, not prevent it as claimed by the powers.
Asked "Do you support independent military action by Israel against Iran if such action is needed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon?" 47 percent said yes, 35 percent said no and 18 percent expressed no opinion.
WNU Editor: No details on how this poll was done have been released ... but if true, it appears that for half of the Israeli population they are hoping (there is that word again ... hope) that by doing nothing war will not come to their borders. If this is the case .... for Israeli PM Netanyahu this is a difficult position to be in .... how can you justify going to war when a good part of your population is against it.
9 comments:
I don't believe this poll for a moment. It's timing, it's wording, and everything else about it reeks of anti strike propaganda.
How do you justify this? The way I'd suggest is by winning the war quickly. I patiently explained to friends and family back in early 2008 that we did not need to worry about or even think about a nuclear armed Iran. At that time, I assumed that Israel working with the Sunni Arab states would take care of this problem or Israel working alone would take care of it.
I was never under any delusion that the US had the capability to deal with this problem with its conventional forces. The US pilots simply don't have the flying skills to penetrate Iran's air defenses and Iranian agents in the US government would instantly warn the Iranian leadership of any impending attack. Furthermore US military action against Iran would likely lead to war with Russia making the idea of the US taking out Iran's nuclear facilities even more of a fruitless endeavor.
The Israelis operating with an element of surprise, better intelligence on the part of the Israelis and the Sunni Arabs, better piloting skills on the part of the Israelis, and better military leadership on the Israeli and Sunni Arab side would have meant they had a chance to pull this off whereas we never could have and still cannot. As I pointed out at the time, the Americans would not be notified in advance. To do so would risk undermining the operations as the Americans lack anything they could contribute to such an operation and the risk of the Iranians and their allies finding out in advance would simply be to great and, if by some chance we did learn of the impending operation, our best approach would be to GET OUT OF THE WAY,
Essentially as I had explained the Israelis were going to carry this out and the pilots and other military personnel would be back home before US officials even knew it happened. Frankly I was rather looking forward to the deer in the headlights look that was going to be on the faces of top American officials as they tried to explain this to the microphones and cameras of the news media.
This never materialized. I suspect either because the Arabs and the Israelis were never quite able to trust each other to work together or I overestimated Israeli power. Now, if it is a lack of trust and they can overcome it, you act decisively crushing the enemy swiftly and emphatically before the opposition has a chance to get started. If it is a lack of ability to carry out the operation, you do not "do nothing." Great places to start would be to improve defensive capabilities making yourself a more difficult target to attack and perhaps making he enemy reconsider. For Israel this will be much harder than it would be for America as it is closer to Iran, it is much smaller, and it seems to have even fewer allies than America does who might be willing and able to assist.
I have Israel is working on trade deals with China and Russia. This would be a good place to start as they, especially Russia, have clout with Iran and may be able to affect Iranian behavior. As an old saying goes, "you want to get stuff done you go to the top" except the saying does not say "stuff" it uses a far more colorful term. As the most powerful countries on earth, it seems a wiser course for Israel to try and work through them than to waste time on dealing with America.
Poster,
I have a feeling Putin will develop a relationship (military, economic, and diplomatic) with Israel at the very least to use as a stick in his relationship with Iran. If I was him I would. Actually Putin has a golden opportunity here to completely push the US out of the region if he plays it right.
Russia has found a way to develop a professional diplomatic relationship with Iran, Israel, and now Saudi Arabia. How Putin goes beyond that is something that I am very curious about .... but my money is that he is going to play the neutral broker that everyone will use as their back-channel to communicate information to the other side. This is sorely lacking in the Middle East, and it would not surprise me if the KGB part of Putin actually goes about doing just exactly that. In short ... he will position himself as the indispensable player that everyone needs .... especially right now.
WNU,
That would be a pretty good set of moves for Putin and very productive for him for the long run. It would put Assad in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable position though. If I was him (Assad) considering his already precarious position, I would be worried that someone would consider me too much of a liability for the future.
That was about the most concise and probably accurate assessment I have heard from anybody and it is what I have been thinking all along. At risk of spilling the beans, I have also wondered if the treaty would serve as the means of exit for America, a way for America to wash its hands of the situation precisely to step out of Israels way. After the treaty America further arms Israel. With its new ground freedoms, Iran purchases more advanced arms and oversteps, crossing Israel's red line, at which point the attack commences and success thanks to Israeli dropped American made bunker busters and other advanced weapons. It would have to be one hell of campaign though and I'm afraid it would back fire and eventually lead to Armageddon.
I assumed Iran would get its bombs no matter what and we would have 2 options: make nice with Iran and not give them reason to abuse the bombs, or try to take them away at the risk of destroying the region. All this goes on while agents of Iran have hundreds of thousands of rockets pointed at her, much like North Korea and it's southward facing artillery. Stalemate.
Ropestuff,
I had much the same thoughts back in late 2007. I might have suspected something like this to be at work during the Bush Administration. I suspect it never happened because the Bush's were/are to close to the Saudis to try and encourage the Saudis to cooperate with Israel and the Saudi leadership, as well as its people are to blinded by ideology to work constructively with Israel. sine Saudi intelligence was/is likely needed to maximize the chances of success, without this cooperation the needed attack simply could not be forthcoming. While I think based upon my knowledge this theory is valid, I'm not totally certain why the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel and perhaps the Sunni Arab states never materialized.
With the Obama Administration I don't think such a scenario is likely to have been a motivating factor here. I don't think Mr. Obama is nearly that clever and I don't think he or his advisors have the desire to do anything concrete to help Israel. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Some analyses of the deal have speculated that the purpose of the deal was to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran. If so, team Obama including POTUS himself are even dumber than I thought. This only makes the attack even more likely. It also makes it more likely that the Israelis and the Arabs will cooperate in such an area.
James,
I would not be so quick to dismiss the poll. Israel has spent many decades fighting the Palestinians, Hamas, and Hezbollah. These groups, especially the Palestinians with the exception of Israel and perhaps Russia are the best led, best trained, and most tactically superior forces on earth. From dealing with this on a daily basis for many decades the Israelis have a keen understanding that goes beyond what we or anyone in the "west" can remotely comprehend of how difficult war is and how difficult such an operation would be.
You mention Putin forming a relationship with Israel. This could well be in the works. I wish we would work on better relations with Putin and Russia. He could make it plain to the Iranians that harming America or its interests is not in their interests. As for pushing the US out of the region, the US military and economic situation make it all but inevitable that the US will leave the region out of necessity sooner rather than later. As such, there's not much he really needs to do here except do as WNU suggests. As for Assad, I don't think he's worried about the Russians abandoning him but if they wanted to I suspect they could remove him quite easily.
WNU,
Very respectfully professional diplomatic relationship describes perfectly the nature of our relations with nations like Israel and what we've had with other nations like Saudi Arabia. The relationship between Iran and Russia seems to go far beyond this.
I agree with you that Putin is trying to position himself and Russia as the indispensable power in the region and how he is going about this based upon his KGB past. Hopefully there is someway we can use this back door channel to communicate to the Iranians that it will be very costly for them to try and harm us and perhaps we could even enlist Russian assistance here. In order to have any chance of achieving this, we will need to look at finding ways to add value to Mr. Putin, the Russian leadership, and Russia itself.
For example, Russia seems to be having some trouble with it Air Force. How can we help? Russia is having some trouble with Chechnya. How can we help? Russia has a very dangerous, crazy, and frankly very stupid neighbor in Poland and Mr. Donald Tusk. How can we help? While forming better relations with Russia, does NOT mean we will or should even be expected to do EVERYTHING they might want, trying to find ways to add value should be a good place to start.
Russia and Vladimir Putin are on the cusp of becoming the greatest power the world has ever known in both relative and absolute terms by a great margin over any other great powers of the past. There seems little at this point that could be done to alter this. As such, the best approach would seem to be to work within the current geo political realities instead of what someone might wish them to be. What Mr. Putin and Russia actually do with this power and will it last beyond Mr. Putin and can Russia deal with certain mid to long range problems that would need to be dealt with in order to remain in this position I do not think are known at this time.
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