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Newsweek: Israel keeping U.S. in the dark on Iran attack by Barak Ravid According to article, Israel stops sharing plans regarding Iran in response to Obama's May 2011 speech calling Israel to negotiate peace with Palestinians based on 1967 lines. Mossad head Tamir Pardo's visit to Washington around two weeks ago was meant to evaluate how the United States would react if Israel decided to attack Iran's nuclear facilities on its own, Newsweek magazine reports this week. A senior American official quoted in the story said that Pardo had come to Washington to "check the pulse" of the Obama administration and to ascertain the degree to which Washington opposes an Israeli strike. According to the report, Pardo posed a number of questions during his talks with senior administration officials, including: What military preparations are being made with regard to Iran? Is America willing to attack Iran? What would be the significance of Israel doing so on its own? Pardo's visit was exposed last month by Haaretz after top U.S. officials, during a public hearing in the Senate, mentioned having met him earlier that week in Washington. The Senate hearing was broadcast live on American television. What are your thoughts on this issue? Follow Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views. Israel has also asked President Barak Obama several times for guarantees that if sanctions against Iran do not work, the United States would attack its nuclear facilities, but to date the administration has made no such commitment, the report said. According to the report, Obama's refusal to offer these assurances was what led Israel to formulate its current position - refusing to promise restraint in anything regarding Iran or to necessarily inform the United States of a pending attack in advance. The Newsweek story states that during the second half of 2011, Israel stopped sharing its plans regarding Iran with Washington. Between July and October, the report said, U.S. officials were in "a black hole" with regard to Israel's activities. The reason, the article says, was Israel's anger over Obama's speech in May 2011 in which he called on Israel to conduct negotiations with the Palestinians based on the 1967 lines. But the Americans played the withholding game as well. Senior U.S. defense officials quoted by Newsweek said there were disagreements between Israel and the United States over the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Americans took pains to make sure that intelligence information they were passing to Israel could not be used to plan assassinations, which are against U.S. law. "We were always careful about what we said to the Israelis, and they knew why," a Defense Department official told Newsweek. "We hid things like satellite photographs and other types of intelligence." Though America refused to take part in these attacks, it did act against nuclear facilities, sometimes alone and sometimes with Israel, the report said. The report also revealed that when Obama took office in 2009, senior U.S. intelligence officials feared that he was about to stop all clandestine activity against Iran so as not to derail his efforts to engage Tehran in a dialogue. At issue were actions aimed at slowing Iran's nuclear progress, such as supplying defective parts to the uranium enrichment stations, introducing viruses to Iranian computer systems, and more. Shortly after he assumed office, Obama met with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright and CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappas, who both asked Obama permission to continue the covert activities. In the end, the president decided to allow the secret activities to continue parallel to the dialogue attempt, in an effort to buy time for diplomacy to work. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/newsweek-israel-keeping-u-s-in-the-dark-on-iran-attack-1.412731?localLinksEnabled=false Netanyahu: Abbas has turned his back on peace with Israel by Barak Ravid PM responds to Palestinian president's speech in which he says that peace talks cannot resume without Israeli settlement freeze; Netanyahu accuses Abbas of effectively embracing Iran through his link to Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has turned his back on peace after the Fatah leader warned that peace negotiations cannot resume without an Israeli settlement freeze. Abbas spoke Sunday before the foreign ministers of the Arab League in Cairo, and harshly condemned Netanyahu. He effectively posed an ultimatum before the prime minister, saying that if Netanyahu would not agree to freeze all construction in the settlements and agree to negotiate based on 1967 borders, the Palestinian Authority will renew its unilateral efforts to obtain statehood in the United Nations. Abbas said he will be sending a letter to Netanyahu with his demands for resuming negotiations. In case of a negative response, Abbas said he will resume the campaign for recognition of a state of Palestine by the UN. Abbas harshly condemned Netanyahu and said that he did not present any serious proposal during the talks in Jordan, and blamed Netanyahu for failing to make any significant trust building steps toward the Palestinians. Abbas claimed that Netanyahu did offer to impose another settlement freeze, but one that only includes a freeze on new state tenders and not a halt of private construction in the settlements. "90% of the construction in the settlements is private," Abbas said. "To call that settlement freeze is just false. Today, there is no place in the West Bank and East Jerusalem without settlements. I once told my advisers that one day, we will find a settlement at the heart of the Muqata in Ramallah." A senior Israeli source confirmed that Netanyahu offered to halt new tenders, but not construction that has already been approved. Netanyahu issued a statement sharply criticizing Abbas' speech, accusing him of bonding with a terror group, and effectively embracing Iran. "Abbas' speech showed he is turning his back on peace," Netanyahu said. "Instead of engaging in negotiations that would bring an end to the conflict, Abbas prefers to link to the terror organization Hamas – the same Hamas that embraces Iran." A senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem added, "Israel agreed in recent weeks to be more flexible and offered Abbas a package of serious gestures, but he decided to reject them, to again pose preconditions and to work toward reconciliation with Hamas," he said. "We wanted to begin a long-term diplomatic process, but every time we get to the moment of truth, Abbas flees. It's a pattern with him." http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-abbas-has-turned-his-back-on-peace-with-israel-1.412519 Netanyahu can't fly solo in Israel to attack Iran by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Three decades ago, an Israeli prime minister faced his cabinet and invoked the Holocaust in an emotional appeal to approve an air strike against an Arab atomic reactor. Menachem Begin got the nod, cautioning that a nuclear-armed Iraq under Saddam Hussein would pose a threat to the existence of the Jewish state. On June 7, 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed the nuclear facility near Baghdad. The current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would also need ministerial backing, from his 15-member security cabinet, should he seek to attack Iran, despite Washington's warnings of the risks to the global economy and U.S. regional interests. Precedents such as the bombing in Iraq and a similar 2007 sortie against Syria, suggest that Netanyahu, fearing for operational secrecy given Israel's talkative political culture, would count on the reduced government forum to represent cross-partisan agreement on any risky mission against Iran. Much would hinge on whether he would deem striking Iranian nuclear sites an "operation" and thus sidestep a decade-old Israeli law requiring the full cabinet ratify the launching of a war. "In the State of Israel, any process of a military operation, and any military move, undergoes the approval of the security cabinet and in certain cases, the full cabinet," Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday when asked in an interview how a green-light to attack Iran might be given. "In any event, the decision is not made by two people, nor three, nor eight," he told Israel's Army Radio on Sunday, alluding to media speculation that Netanyahu might make do with conferring with his defense minister, or with the foreign minister as well, or with his eight-member inner council. U.S. President Barack Obama, with whom Netanyahu has had a frosty relationship, said on Sunday he did not believe Israel has made a decision on a course of action towards Iran. Washington, Obama said, was not taking any options off the table to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Tehran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes and has accused Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, of hypocrisy. It has threatened to wipe Israel out and, more recently, to retaliate against U.S. and European sanctions on its finances and oil sales. IN THE DARK In 1981, Begin kept both the Knesset plenum and a key parliamentary security panel in the dark about the planned F-16 sneak attack, explaining later that he could not trust lawmakers not to leak details to the media. The air force chief at the time, David Ivry, said the mission was approved by the security cabinet and then the full cabinet, with all present being asked to sign secrecy contracts. "First came the approval in principle, and then the detailed discussions and briefings," Ivry told Reuters. A briefing paper presented to Begin's cabinet ministers by Israeli military intelligence cautioned that Washington might respond to an attack against Iraq by clamping an arms embargo on Israel, according to "Tammuz in Flames," a 1993 book on the operation by Israeli journalist Shlomo Nakdimon, whose manuscript was reviewed by close Begin aides. But with just one holdout, and over opposition by Israel's Mossad spy chief, the ministers voted in favour of the attack, which destroyed the French-built reactor without the loss of a single Israeli plane. "The memory of the Holocaust in which six million Jews perished remained before (Begin's) eyes throughout all the discussions," Moshe Nissim, a cabinet minister at the time, wrote in his own book about the strike. "He underscored the fact that this action was saving thousands of Israeli children from the claws of the Butcher of Baghdad," Nissim wrote. Israel's official statement on the 1981 air raid spoke of the need to eliminate "an existential threat to the people of Israel," language echoed by Netanyahu, who has said the Holocaust has taught the Jewish state it must not shy from acting alone to thwart any danger to its survival. The 2007 raid on Syria -- which the United States said targeted a nascent reactor, though Damascus denied having one -- also appears to have been a success, not least as Israel's policy of not discussing the event has since been upheld by those members of the cabinet who were made privy. The naming on Sunday of a new air force chief, Amir Eshel, has stirred speculation that he would be reluctant to carry out an attack on Iran. Briefing foreign diplomats and reporters last month, Eshel, currently the military's planning chief, said Israel could "an adversary very, very hard" but cannot expect to deliver "knock-outs" should it go to war again. Ivry said that while the air force chief was not legally empowered to veto a government decision to take military action, in practice he wielded make-or-break sway in the deliberations. "If you say that it can't be done, that it's too risky or dangerous, then that's a veto, de facto," Ivry said. COALITION SUPPORT As is customary for Israeli premiers, Netanyahu heads a coalition government which commands the majority of Knesset seats. His alliance is dominated by religious and rightist parties which would likely be more accommodating of arguments in favour of preemptively striking Iran's nuclear program. On Thursday, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Tehran's nuclear program was reaching a stage where atomic facilities would be sheltered against any military attack. "Those who say 'later' may find that later is too late," Barak said, an indirect reference to the prevailing view in Washington that sanctions on Iran should be given time to work. To cast the net of consensus further, Netanyahu would almost certainly convene Israel's centrist opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, to notify her of his plans and ask for her support. Learning of plans for the strike against Iraq's reactor, Shimon Peres, Labour opposition leader at the time and now Israeli president, cautioned Begin that Israel would be isolated internationally, "like a thistle in the desert," if the attack went ahead. As opposition leader in 2007, Likud party chief Netanyahu was consulted about the Syria strike by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Though Netanyahu's lacks chemistry with Livni, as a former cabinet minister and Mossad spy she would not be viewed as a leak risk. Three decades ago, Begin took no such chances. Israeli warplanes were already on their way to Iraq when Begin, who also served as defense minister, summoned his cabinet to his Jerusalem residence. Although the ministers had approved the operation, they had agreed that only Begin, his foreign minister and top generals would decide when to launch the raid. "Shalom, my friends," Begin told them, according to Nakdimon's account. "At this moment, our planes are approaching Baghdad and the first one will be over the atomic reactor shortly." (Reporting by Dan Williams and Jeffrey Heller; editing by Philippa Fletcher) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/06/us-israel-iran-decision-idUSTRE8151JU20120206 |
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