What does Olmert's resignation mean for the timing of the Israeli attack on Iran?

[arendt]

I don't follow Israeli politics. I have enough trouble keeping track of the gangsters and crooks running MY country. No time for their gangsters.

So, sorry for the lack of knowledge, but do the politicians still control the Israeli military? Or is it like Amerika? In other words, does the resignation of the PM have any effect on the war plans of the military? Or is it like Amerika, where the "opposition" also completely supports killing anyone they don't like?

I have been surprised by the lack of speculation on this.

I see three scenarios:

1) Olmert has nothing to lose by attacking Iran. He's already toast, he might as well do something really big - in case it succeeds. He will do it before he leaves office, but perhaps after the election. (I'm assuming there will be one upon his resignation.)

2) His resignation is part of some political infighting over attacking Iran. He is being forced out, not because of corruption, but to stop the attack on Iran.

3) The military want to attack Iran, but they don't trust Olmert, who fucked up the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. So, they want him out and someone competent in, before they attack Iran. So the attack will come after the election.

Feel free to add your own.

arendt

[readmoreoften]

1. That's an excellent question. So he's stepping down in September.

Good lord I hope it's unrelated.

[KharmaTrain]

2. Depends On Who Wins...

I'm all but sure Netenyahu will run and maybe Barak...and IMHO this could be a "change" election there as well. From what I've read, Olmert's resignation is all but a death knell to Kadima and it'll be a battle between Labour and Likud. Also, remember that Israel is a parlimentary system...no one party is strong enough to get a majority and must play with the many fringe parties to win. The closer the eletion, the more likely a coalition government will be installed that will put a big check on one party or ideology getting too out of hand.

[arendt]

3. But you didn't mention the military or Iran. Are these not big issues? Or is there consensus?

That is my original question, and its still un-answered. I could interpret "death knell to Kadima" (Sharon's party) as an indication that the warmongers have lost.

Are you saying that an aggressive guy like Bibi does not represent an "ideology gettinig too out of hand"? Are you saying he would not attack Iran? IMHO, he's the kind of reliable politico that the military would want running things during an attack.

arendt

[KharmaTrain]

4. There's A Large Peace Movement In Israel

It's been marginalized over the years, but they've suffered with poor leadership. They've never really recovered from Rabin's assasination, but they're still a very viable voice that hsan't been properly organized. Kadima was an attempt to split away parts of that movement...a "half-way" house for those who didn't support the radical platforms of Likud but didn't want to look weak in regards to national defense. Remember, the last real election in Israel was right in the midst of a lot of suicide bombing inside Israel that swept Sharon into office.

A big win for Bibi and Likud would definitely would give a green light not just for an attack on Iran, but more importantly, more repression on the West Bank and Gaza. Remember, from the Israeli standpoint, Iran's biggest threat isn't missiles but the funding of Hamas and Hezbollah. I think they'd far prefer the US do the dirty work on any attack on Iran...or if they take the lead, we clean up the mess.

Now if crashcart can't get the military to cooperate and attack, this Israelis aren't gonna go in alone. There's something below the surface here...we all know that this regime is hellbent on an attack but hasn't been able to pull the trigger. Maybe it's not just the reluctance of a military to over extend further, but also that Israel isn't firmly on board as well.

Let's see who emerges as candidates...right now the situation has been quiet, but all you need is a car bomb in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and all bets are off.

Cheers...

[Douglas Carpenter]

5. Israel simply does not have the military capabilities to carry out a successful strike against Iran

unless they went nuclear. And I think it is fair to say that would be highly unlikely.

The Israeli military simply does not have enough long range bombers capable of flying approximately one thousand miles and successfully attacking Iran's massive array of North Korean style deep earth, heavily fortified bunkers in a manner capable of significantly degrading Iran's nuclear program and their military.

Furthermore an attack would require flying over Iraqi airspace when no democratically elected government in Iraq would ever, ever allow that. Talk of an awkward position that would the United State in.

The United States would find itself trapped into intervening given that Iran would retaliate against the U.S. presence in the Gulf. For the U.S. to continue such an attack and to make the attack at least technically successful, this would require forcing the Gulf states into granting rights to air space and facilities. Thus making the Gulf states and their oil fields, refineries, infrastructure and transport network targets of devastating Iranian retaliation. Although Iran does not have particularly sophisticated weaponry, they do have a vast array of relatively unsophisticated medium range missiles positioned in hostile and unapproachable terrain and quite capable of causing enormous and crippling damage very rapidly and choking off the Straits of Hormuz.


Even more importantly, any attack by either the United States or Israel on Iran would have a catastrophic effect on the world's oil supply thus sending oil prices into the stratosphere way beyond anything currently imaginable thus triggering a global economic collapse and worldwide depression of catastrophic proportions.

Would Israel really want to be seen in the eyes of the world as the ones who caused a global depression and economic collapse? I do not think even Benjamin Netanyahu is that mad. At least I hope not.

Here is an interesting article from todays salon. com:

" Reality, of the military and petroleum-based variety, forced the administration to change course. Now Bush sounds like Obama.

By Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/iran/index.html?source=newsletter

"July 31, 2008 | Pundits and diplomats nearly got whiplash from the double take they did when George W. Bush sent the No. 3 man in the State Department to sit at a table on July 19 across from an Iranian negotiator, without any preconditions. When Bush had addressed the Israeli Knesset in May, he made headlines by denouncing any negotiation with "terrorists and radicals" as "the false comfort of appeasement." What drove W. to undermine John McCain by suddenly adopting Barack Obama's foreign policy prescription on Iran?

snip:"It was just a year ago that war with Iran seemed imminent. Last August David Wurmser, a major neoconservative figure who had just left Cheney's staff revealed that the vice president was talking about having Israel hit Iran's nuclear research facilities. At the same time, Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin went public with what he was told by a Bush administration insider -- that Cheney would make a big push for a strike on Iran in the fall of 2007. Journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Cheney was attempting to reconfigure the Iraq war as a struggle with Iran. And, indeed, Cheney did make threats against Iran at institutions of the Israel lobby such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In December 2007, however, the intelligence community pushed back. Key findings from the National Intelligence Estimate, released that month, showed that Iran had mothballed any weapons-related research since early 2003. The Cheney push for one more war was effectively blocked."

snip:" Mullen seemed to warn hawks in the U.S. and Israel against a strike on Iran of the sort Cheney had earlier envisaged, saying that in light of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, "opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us." Mullen admitted when pressed that the Iranians "have capabilities which could certainly hazard the Strait of Hormuz," though he was confident that the U.S. could reopen it. Despite that confidence, Mullen said that he was worried about instability in the Middle East, and about anything that might contribute to it. "

snip: "Both the U.S. and its European allies know that the negative fallout from a war could be immense. Its effect on the world oil supply would be catastrophic. Iran's perennial threats to close the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in the event that it is attacked have to be taken especially seriously when oil supplies are as tight as they are now. Some 40 percent of the world's petroleum flows through that choke point, and any significant interruption of supply under today's conditions could send prices skyrocketing so far as to threaten the world with another Great Depression. In short, Iran is far more powerful when petroleum is $127 a barrel than when it is $25 a barrel, and that power makes it more prudent to negotiate with it than to rattle sabers. The opening to Iran was not a victory of the realists, but of realism. That in the aftermath, Bush's Iran policy looks more like that of Barack Obama than that of John McCain, is just an indication that Obama is more realistic about the increasing constraints on U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle Eastern oil states than is McCain. "

link to full article:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/iran/index.html?source=newsletter

[arendt]

6. You are being rational. Crashcart and his gang are not rational.

They didn't set all this up to just quietly leave office.

Yes, to a normal, middle class person, the damage to the world economy and to our military now on the ground in Iraq are good reasons not to do it.

But the neocon/fundie mob is not sane. They have put enough fundie nutjobs into positions of power that an Israeli strike will automatically pull the U.S. in. So, all they have to do is get some Israeli to do something stupid. They don't need to nuke Iran, just to attack it. The attack will cause a WW1-like engagement of military plans on the part of both Iran and the U.S.

Think of Cheney and his gang as the anarchists who started WW1 - only Cheney knows damn well that he is starting a world war. I have ceased trying to comprehend what motivates Cheney and the other neocons. I simply refuse to pretend that they are incapable of the worst possible actions. As long as they are in power instead of in jail, the world is at risk.

arendt

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. as one old hard nosed cold warrior said about attacking Iran

"I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world. Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vanity Fair, 2006.

[arendt]

8. Then Zbig needs to put Cheney under armed guard. Because Cheney doesn't seem to care...

about America's position in the world; he only cares about Haliburton's position in the world. Cheney will be long dead by the end of Zbig's time frame. In the short run (until he dies) he could be dictator and eliminate tons of people he hates. It seems that torturing and killing "enemies" is the only pleasure available to sociopaths.

I repeat, stop thinking rationally about Cheney, the neocons and the fundies. There is a Hannah Arendt quote that I have to paraphrase because my copy is at home:

The world underestimates the will of totalitarians to commit evil acts, while it overestimates the physical power of their armed forces.

That is, Cheney may live in a fantasy world where military force trumps everything. Or, he may want to take the world with him in a nuclear holocaust. I don't know. But, despite their measured opposition, Zbig and Gates and the "realist" wing of the American aristocracy, they have yet to deflect Cheney one bit.

I will stop worrying when Cheney/Addington/Bill Kristol/etc. are all dead or in jail. Not one minute sooner.

arendt

[arendt]

9. Gary Leupp is saying what I'm saying...

Marxist analysis of imperialism at this point in fact gropes in the dark, confronted by the historical factor of personality---personalities who have acquired extraordinary power and may deploy it against the interests of their class itself. I noted the extreme Zionist ideology of the neocons around Cheney. I concluded that, while those downplaying the possibility of a U.S. and/or Israeli attack on Iran do so based on an assessment of how it would deeply damage U.S. imperialism in general, it may be that the Bush administration will do just that.

My piece questioned the applicability of logical standards to the U.S.-Iran confrontation. It may be that Bush/Cheney feel, like the Joker in the “Dark Knight” gleefully torching a mountain of $100 bills, that “It’s not about the money!” Or perhaps they’re willing to sacrifice short-term interests for what they perceive to be ultimately fabulous gains. Maybe Cheney is prepared to hurl the world into depression and world war thinking that the long-term investment will only pay off after his next heart attack, and the U.S. emerge the feared imperial ruler of the whole zone from the Mediterranean to Pakistan some years from now. He’s positioned his lackeys in places that allow him to sideline his “realist” or other opponents. It’s not clear to me at this point who’s likely to win out in the inter-administration debate about an attack on Iran, and to what extent the “internal logic” of the capitalist system will assert itself.

- G Leupp responds to J. Raimondo --- http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/16204/

- the original G. Leupp article --- http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07252008.html

[arendt]

10. kick n/t

[arendt]

11. kick for the rush hour crowd. n/t