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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/35263/full/35263/no-sneak-attacks-israel-needs-u-s-approval-to-strike-iran/ <br /><br /> <b>No sneak attacks: Israel needs U.S. approval to strike Iran</b> <br /> Friday, June 27, 2008 | by <p>ron kampeas </p> <br /><br /><p>A number of neoconservatives in Washington, D.C. — who are known for their closeness to the Israeli defense establishment — are predicting that Israel may strike Iran between the presidential election in November and Inauguration Day in January 2009.<br /><br /> “Israel would be unlikely to do it before the U.S. election,” said John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is close to the pro-Israel community in the capital. “But after the election and before the inauguration would be a window.”<br /><br /> Israeli officials will not name a date of attack, but some have grown more vocal in recent weeks about the increased prospect of a strike should Iran develop nuclear weapons capability.<br /><br /> “A year from now Iran will be very, very close to the completion of its first nuclear bomb,” Ephraim Sneh, a member of Israel’s ruling coalition, said earlier this month at the annual AIPAC policy conference. “[There] will be no government in Jerusalem which would allow it to happen.”<br /><br /> Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli transportation minister, said this month that an attack would be “unavoidable” if Iran had the bomb. As Mofaz also is the top Israeli negotiator in the U.S.-Israeli strategic dialogue, his remark suggested that he is confident of U.S. support for an Israeli attack.<br /><br /> Bolton says that is not an unreasonable conclusion with the current administration.<br /><br /> “From past policies, they know that Bush holds a favorable view of Israel’s right to self-defense,” Bolton said of Israeli officials.<br /><br /> Israel’s closeness to Bush has led Bolton and fellow neocons such as William Kristol to predict that Israel may time its strike before inauguration, particularly if Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidency.<br /><br /> “The thing that makes an Israeli strike more likely is when any U.S. politician gets up and says Iran can be contained,” said Michael Rubin, a colleague of Bolton’s at the American Enterprise Institute and an alumnus of the Bush administration’s Pentagon policy unit on Iran.<br /><br /> Obama argues that tough diplomacy may contain the threat of a nuclear Iran. Even in the case of a presidential victory by Sen. John McCain, who has adopted a hard-line posture on Iran, Israel is likelier to trust the Bush administration, Bolton said.<br /><br /> “You can’t predict what a new president will do with accuracy,” he said.<br /><br /> Any Israeli attack on Iran almost certainly would first need approval from the United States. Airspace over eastern Turkey and Iraq, controlled in part by the United States, would be the likely flight path from Israel to Iran.<br /><br /> “You would absolutely need permission and the IFF codes,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center, referring to the electronic Identification Friend or Foe codes that combat planes need to cross international airspace.<br /><br /> Schanzer, whose group is allied with the Republican Jewish Coalition, is a Bush administration alumnus, having worked at the Treasury Depart-ment as an intelligence analyst.<br /><br /> Orde Kittrie, an Arizona State University expert on Iran and proliferation, said Israel likely would expect U.S. backup following a first strike against Iran because the Jewish state alone could not sustain the required extended attack on Iran.<br /><br /> “You’d have to send several waves” of air attacks, Kittrie said. “It’s not clear the Israelis have the capacity for more than one wave. The Americans do have the capacity.”<br /><br /> Rubin, who has researched the consequences of an attack for a bipartisan Senate panel considering its consequences, said an attack would require at least 1,400 sorties — well beyond Israel’s capacity.<br /><br /> “It’s not out in the open like Osirak,” the Iraqi nuclear reactor Israel destroyed in 1981, he said. “It’s all over the place. It might take more than one sortie to strike [some targets]. You’ll have to go after the military structure, take out the means for retaliation.”<br /><br /> Israel lost the element of surprise after the 1981 strike, Rubin said, and now Iran and other Persian Gulf states have sophisticated anti-aircraft systems.<br /><br /> The difficulties notwithstanding, Israel seems determined to signal to the U.S. that it is considering a strike on Iran.<br /><br /> Last week the New York Times reported that the Israeli military held an exercise this month involving more than 100 combat aircraft flying up to 900 miles — the distance between Israel and Iran. Helicopters also conducted pilot rescue exercises.<br /><br /> Bolton said that available Western intelligence on Iran does not adequately predict the outcome of a strike, leaving open the danger of an enraged — and still nuclear capable — regime in Tehran.<br /><br /> “You could have a successful military strike that destroys the conversion facility at Esfahan only to find there’s another conversion facility 100 miles away,” Bolton said, referring to the process that creates weapons-grade uranium. “You could have the risks and downsides of nuclear attack without breaking the cycle.”<br /><br /> The White House and the presidential campaigns would not talk about such a prospect beyond issuing generic defenses of Israel’s right to self-defense, but it is clear there are concerns.<br /><br /> The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, toured Israel this week on a surprise visit. And senior advisers to both campaigns signed on to a report last week calling for an urgent dialogue between Israel and the United States on Iran, which would address the prospect of military action.<br /><br /> Among the participants on the panel on U.S.-Israel relations convened by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank, were Tony Lake and Susan Rice, top foreign policy advisers to Obama, and James Woolsey, who advises McCain.<br /><br /> “It’s very significant that the key advisers to the presidential candidates signed on to a report that specifically talks about the need and importance for U.S.-Israel cooperation and partnership on the entire range of options regarding Iran,” said Robert Satloff, who convened the panel.<br /><br /> “It is more than just being on the table. It takes it to another level. These are topics that merit at the appropriate time high-level engagement and discussion. It does suggest that these options are legitimate.” </p> <p> </p>

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