Then I saw a group of people standing around in their pajamas and bathrobes and all of a sudden - the rug was pulled out from under them and they all fell over.

end of visions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2XzpVqzao  video Israel celebrates 60

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpJGUDG1qPE&feature=related  video - The Birth of Israel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sKCylTT74&feature=related  video - 1948 History of Israel - with
                                                                                                                              subtitles in English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNWgfei6wO8&feature=related  video  May 14, 1948 - in English

The Iranian Chess Game Continues

William O. Beeman | August 6, 2008

Editor: Erik Leaver

Foreign Policy In Focus

Diplomacy between Iran and the United States has entered the opening gambit stage and Iran appears to be winning at this point.

The game began on July 19, when Iranian nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili met with European negotiators with an American diplomat, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, present for the first time at such a meeting since the Iranian hostage crisis.

The presence of William J. Burns riled many anti-Iranian forces resulting in a flurry of pronouncements and articles about American "capitulation" to Iran. The recriminations continued. Even now, on August 5, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, a notorious anti-Iran detractor, wrote a fulminating article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes."

The Bush administration clearly found itself in a difficult situation, needing to placate hawks like Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney while seeming to allow diplomacy to have a chance, so they made the talks not about substance, but about power – which side could compel the other to toe the line.

So the Bush administration started with a big lie. At the time of the July meeting the press and the State Department announced that Iran had a two-week deadline to respond to the European proposals, (the exact details of which remain secret, but which are presumed to include an extensive basket of technology, economic, and trade incentives).

There was no such deadline. It appears to have been a fiction. However, this falsehood gave Washington and the press the opportunity on August 2 to announce that Iran had "rejected" the deadline. The New York Times went so far as to call it an "informal deadline," a head-scratching concept.

Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki was reported by Agence France Press to have said, "The language of deadline-setting is not understandable to us. We gave them our response within a month as we said we would, now they have to reply to us."

Even the State Department itself had to back down from the fictional deadline. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack threatened further sanctions if Iran did not respond on Wednesday, July 30. But he had changed his tune on Saturday, August 2, the putative deadline. "I didn't count the days. It's coming up soon," he said. And when asked when Washington would pull incentives off the table designed to persuade Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program, said "there is no indication of that.

So little happened at the July 19 meeting, it could hardly be called a diplomatic encounter. In fact, Iran has been pursuing a productive diplomatic course. Rather than responding to deadlines and ultimatums, Iran has steadily put forward proposals for resolving its differences with the European and American governments over its nuclear energy program. It is clear that Iran will not give up its "inalienable right" to peaceful development of nuclear energy, as enshrined in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it (but not India, Pakistan or Israel) is a signatory. It seeks other means, short of suspending uranium enrichment, to assure the world that it has no active nuclear weapons program.

Iran's proposal for negotiations presented to the European Nations is titled "The Modality For Comprehensive Negotiations" and sets out three stages of proceedings:

Preliminary Talks. Overall determination of the negotiating timetable.

Start of Talks. Actions against Iran would be suspended and common ground matters would be discussed.

Negotiations. Actual negotiating stage which the Iranians envision should last two months, but could be extended by mutual consent.

Iran does not agree in this document to suspend uranium enrichment. The document states in the negotiation stage that determinations regarding Iran's compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty would be "concluded in the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] and fully and completely returned to the Agency [The International Atomic Energy Agency]."

This is a reasonable blueprint for forward negotiations, and it represents a real diplomatic effort on Iran’s part. By contrast, the United States seems to have acted with a combination of bluff and muscle, and has gotten nowhere for their efforts.

This has not stopped the United States and its European allies for calling on August 4 for more sanctions based on Iran's violation of the "informal deadline." This is an astonishing exercise in diplomatic audacity – calling for punishment where there could be no violation, there being no mutual agreement of the conditions under which actions would be declared a violation. Unfortunately, the political climate against Iran being what it is, such an unwarranted bellicose move will likely go unquestioned.

Except by Iran.

Iran had its own gambits in mind to retain control of the process. After the accusations and the threats by the European and U.S. consortium, they countered with a grim reminder that they could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which two-thirds of OPEC crude oil passes. They tested some new conventional missiles. Then they announced that they would indeed answer the European proposals – but in their own time and on their own timetable, according to their own agenda. They were clearly working through their own negotiation plan step by step, catching the United States off guard, and throwing everyone in Washington off their game, leaving them to continue their slow burn.

The question is whether, out of frustration or pique, the  impatient Washington  detractors will upset the table.

By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer

8-6-08

JERUSALEM -

Such talk could be more threat than reality. However, Iran's refusal to accept Western conditions is worrying Israel as is the perception that Washington now prefers diplomacy over confrontation with Tehran.

The Jewish state has purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has bought two new Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads — in addition to the three it already has.

And this summer it carried out air maneuvers in the Mediterranean that touched off an international debate over whether they were a "dress rehearsal" for an imminent attack, a stern warning to Iran or a just a way to get allies to step up the pressure on Tehran to stop building nukes.

According to foreign media reports, Israeli intelligence is active inside Iranian territory. Israel's military censor, who can impose a range of legal sanctions against journalists operating in the country, does not permit publication of details of such information in news reports written from Israel.

The issue of Iran's nuclear program took on new urgency this week after U.S. officials rejected Tehran's response to an incentives package aimed at getting it to stop sensitive nuclear activity — setting the stage for a fourth round of international sanctions against the country.

Israel, itself an undeclared nuclear power, sees an atomic bomb in Iranian hands as a direct threat to its existence.

Israel believes Tehran will have enriched enough uranium for a nuclear bomb by next year or 2010 at the latest. The United States has trimmed its estimate that Iran is several years or as much as a decade away from being able to field a bomb, but has not been precise about a timetable. In general U.S. officials think Iran isn't as close to a bomb as Israel claims, but are concerned that Iran is working faster than anticipated to add centrifuges, the workhorses of uranium enrichment.

"If Israeli, U.S., or European intelligence gets proof that Iran has succeeded in developing nuclear weapons technology, then Israel will respond in a manner reflecting the existential threat posed by such a weapon," said Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking at a policy forum in Washington last week.

"Israel takes (Iranian President) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements regarding its destruction seriously. Israel cannot risk another Holocaust," Mofaz said.

The Iranian leader has in the past called for Israel's elimination, though his exact remarks have been disputed. Some translators say he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," while others say a better translation would be "vanish from the pages of time" — implying Israel would disappear on its own rather than be destroyed.

Iran insists its uranium enrichment is meant only for electricity generation, not a bomb — an assertion that most Western nations see as disingenuous.

Israeli policymakers and experts have been debating for quite some time whether it would even be possible for Israel to take out Iran's nuclear program. The mission would be far more complicated than a 1981 Israeli raid that destroyed Iraq's partially built Osirak nuclear reactor, or an Israeli raid last year on what U.S. intelligence officials said was another unfinished nuclear facility in Syria.

In Iran, multiple atomic installations are scattered throughout the country, some underground or bored into mountains — unlike the Iraqi and Syrian installations, which were single aboveground complexes.

Still, the Syria action seemed to indicate that Israel would also be willing to use force preemptively against Iran.

"For Israel this is not a target that cannot be achieved," said Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, former head of Israel's army intelligence.

However, it's unlikely Israel would carry out an attack without approval from the United States.

Recent signs that Washington may be moving away from a military option — including a proposal to open a low-level U.S. diplomatic office in Tehran and a recent decision to allow a senior U.S. diplomat to participate alongside Iran in international talks in Geneva — are not sitting very well with Israel.

That may help explain recent visits to Jerusalem by Mike McConnell, the U.S. director of national intelligence, and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, each of whom delivered a message to Israel that it does not have a green light to attack Iran at this time.

Senior Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they do not wish to appear at odds with their most important ally, said they were concerned about a possible softening of the U.S. stance toward Iran.

Apparently to allay Israeli concerns, Bush administration officials last week assured visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the U.S. has not ruled out the possibility of a military strike on Iran. And the U.S., aware of Israel's high anxiety over Iran's nukes, is also hooking Israel up to an advanced missile detection system known as X-Band to guard against any future attack by Iran, said a senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions over the issue have not been made public.

With sanctions and diplomacy still the international community's preferred method to get Iran to stop building the bomb, an Israeli strike does not appear imminent.

If it did attack, however, Israel would have to contend with upgraded Iranian defense capabilities, including 29 new Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile systems Iran purchased from Russia last year in a $700 million deal.

Russia has so far not gone through with a proposed sale to Iran of S-300 surface-to-air missiles, an even more powerful air defense system than the Tor-M1. An Israeli defense official said the deal is still on the table, however. This is a big source of consternation for Israel because the system could significantly complicate a pre-emptive Israeli assault on Iran.

Military experts say an Israeli strike would require manned aircraft to bombard multiple targets and heavy precision bombs that can blast through underground bunkers — something Israel failed to do in its 2006 war against Hezbollah. It's widely assumed that Israel is seeking to obtain bunker buster bombs, if it hasn't already done so.

Elite ground troops could also be necessary to penetrate the most difficult sites, though Israeli military planners say they see that option as perhaps too risky.

America's ability to take out Iran's nuclear facilities is far superior to Israel's.

Unlike Israel, the United States has cruise missiles that can deliver high-explosive bombs to precise locations and B-2 bombers capable of dropping 85 500-pound bombs in a single run.

Yet the cost of an attack — by the U.S., Israel or both — is likely to be enormous.

Iran could halt oil production and shut down tanker traffic in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which could send the price of crude skyrocketing and wreck Western economies.

It could stir up trouble for the U.S. in Iraq by revving up Shiite militias there just as Washington is showing some important gains in reining in Iraqi chaos.

It could activate its militant proxies in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, from where Israel could come under heavy rocket attack. And it could strike Israel with its arsenal of Shahab-3 long-range missiles — something Israel is hoping to guard against through its Arrow missile defense system.

Perhaps most importantly, any strike on Iran — especially if it's done without having exhausted all diplomatic channels — could have the opposite of the desired effect, "actually increasing the nationalist fervor to build a nuclear weapon," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Israeli and expert on Iranian affairs.

Whether an attack on Iran would be worth its cost would depend on how long the nuclear program could be delayed, said Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser and now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

"A two, three-year delay is not worth it. For a five to 10-year delay I would say yes," he said.

___

Associated Press Writers Anne Gearan and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report from Washington.  
 

While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes

This weekend, yet another "deadline" passed for Iran to indicate it was seriously ready to discuss ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Like so many other deadlines during these five years of European-led negotiations, this one died quietly, with Brussels diplomats saying that no one seriously expected any real work on a Saturday.

The fact that the Europeans are right -- this latest deadline is not fundamentally big news -- is precisely the problem with their negotiations, and the Bush administration's acquiescence in that effort.

The rationality of continued Western negotiations with Iran depends critically on two assumptions: that Iran is far enough away from having deliverable nuclear weapons that we don't incur excessive risks by talking; and that by talking we don't materially impede the option to use military force. Implicit in the latter case is the further assumption that the military option is static -- that it remains equally viable a year from now as it is today.

Neither assumption is correct. Can we believe that if diplomacy fails we can still take military action "in time" to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons? "Just in time" nonproliferation assumes a level of intelligence certainty concerning Iran's nuclear program that recent history should manifestly caution us against.

Every day that goes by allows Iran to increase the threat it poses, and the viability of the military option steadily declines over time. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

First, while the European-led negotiations proceed, Iran continues both to convert uranium from a solid (uranium oxide, U3O8, also called yellowcake) to a gas (uranium hexafluoride, UF6) at its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. Although it is a purely chemical procedure, conversion is technologically complex and poses health and safety risks.

As Isfahan's continuing operations increase both Iran's UF6 inventory and its technical expertise, however, the impact of destroying the facility diminishes. Iran is building a stockpile of UF6 that it can subsequently enrich even while it reconstructs Isfahan after an attack, or builds a new conversion facility elsewhere.

Second, delay permits Iran to increase its stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) -- that is, UF6 gas in which the U235 isotope concentration (the form of uranium critical to nuclear reactions either in reactors or weapons) is raised from its natural level of 0.7% to between 3% and 5%.

As its LEU stockpile increases, so too does Tehran's capacity to take the next step, and enrich it to weapons-grade concentrations of over 90% U235 (highly-enriched uranium, or HEU). Some unfamiliar with nuclear matters characterize the difference in LEU-HEU concentration levels as huge. The truth is far different. Enriching natural uranium by centrifuges to LEU consumes approximately 70% of the work and time required to enrich it to HEU.

Accordingly, destroying Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz does not eliminate its existing enriched uranium (LEU), which the IAEA estimated in May 2008 to be approximately half what is needed for one nuclear weapon. Iran is thus more than two-thirds of the way to weapons-grade uranium with each kilogram of uranium it enriches to LEU levels. Moreover, as the LEU inventory grows, so too does the risk of a military strike hitting one or more UF6 storage tanks, releasing potentially substantial amounts of radioactive gas into the atmosphere.

Third, although we cannot know for sure, every indication is that Iran is dispersing its nuclear facilities to unknown locations, "hardening" against air strikes the ones we already know about, and preparing more deeply buried facilities in known locations for future operations. That means that the prospects for success against, say, the enrichment facilities at Natanz are being reduced.

Fourth, Iran is clearly increasing its defensive capabilities by purchasing Russian S-300 antiaircraft systems (also known as the SA-20) directly or through Belarus. In late July, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and his spokesman contradicted Israeli contentions that the new antiaircraft systems would be operational this year. Assuming the Pentagon is correct, its own assessment on timing simply enhances the argument for Israel striking sooner rather than later.

Fifth, Iran continues to increase the offensive capabilities of surrogates like Syria and Hezbollah, both of which now have missile capabilities that can reach across Israel, as well as threaten U.S. troops and other U.S. friends and allies in the region. It may well be Syria and Hezbollah that retaliate initially after an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, thus making further strikes against Iran more problematic, at least in the short run.

Iran is pursuing two goals simultaneously, both of which it is comfortably close to achieving. The first -- to possess all the capabilities necessary for a deliverable nuclear weapon -- is now almost certainly impossible to stop diplomatically. Thus, Iran's second objective becomes critical: to make the risks of a military strike against its program too high, and to make the likelihood of success in fracturing the program too low. Time favors Iran in achieving these goals. U.S. and European diplomats should consider this while waiting by the telephone for Iran to call.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

We lie and bluster about our nukes - and then wag our fingers at Iran

By failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits, nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad

The unequivocal statements Barack Obama and Gordon Brown made in Israel last week about Iran's nuclear weapons programme cannot yet be justified. Nor can the unequivocal statements by some anti-war campaigners that Iran does not intend to build the bomb. Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN's terms?

Those who maintain that Iran's purposes are peaceful clutch at the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US government in November. While it judged that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country's civilian uranium programme as a means of developing "technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so". The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran's stocks, but raises grave questions about some of the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad's claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The security council's offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a "Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction". But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.

This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel's nuclear weapons are "a destabilising factor" in the Middle East. "My understanding," he replied, "is that Israel does not acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons." Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened.

But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the UK is one, to work towards "general and complete disarmament". On Friday, the Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK's nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear to have misled the House.

At the Geneva conference on disarmament in February, one delegate pointed out that the "chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably" if non-nuclear states can see "planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states" like the UK. If the nuclear states "are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations", other nations would use this as an excuse for maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne, the secretary of state for defence. A man of the same name is failing to fulfil our disarmament obligations.

Browne claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere say that they must develop their arsenals because the official nuclear nations aren't disarming. With the exception of France, none of the other European states feels the need to deploy nukes. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. Of course, no one is refusing to disarm; it's just that the task keeps getting pushed into the indefinite future. Opponents of British nuclear weapons maintain that a new generation of warheads would survive until 2055.

The permanent members of the UN security council draw a distinction between their "responsible" ownership of nuclear weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all announced that they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.

The danger has been heightened by the US government's current offensive. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is demanding that other countries accept her plans to destroy the last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The treaty grants countries which conform to it materials for nuclear power on favourable terms. It's a flawed incentive - as the spread of civil nuclear programmes makes the proliferation of military material more likely - but an incentive nonetheless. Now Rice insists that India should have special access to US nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the NPT and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.

If she is successful, this effort - and the concomitant US demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power - will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty which survived the cold war, and which remains the most important of the wilting guarantees against global annihilation, is being nuked for the sake of a few billion dollars of export orders.

Here's where it gets really depressing. The Bush administration's proposal has been supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama's position on India and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insistence that Iran enriches its own fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with Israel, the atomic energy agency and the UN security council is irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his position I might be tempted to do the same.

www.monbiot.com

Faith, nukes, and the Promised Land`s borders

By: Shoher, Obadiah

July 25, 2008

Despite President Bush's insistence that the military option remains "on the table" for dealing with Iran's nuclear program, Israeli officials have recognized that a U.S. air strike on Iranian nuclear sites is increasingly unlikely in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Israelis, along with everyone else, are now counting on European-led diplomatic efforts to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. But they know diplomacy may fail, which is why a debate now rages in the highest circles of Israel's government and military: If the Europeans fail and the Americans remain reluctant to launch another war in the Middle East, should Israel strike alone against Iran?

Last week's U-turn, in which the Bush Administration sent a high-ranking State Department official to join the European delegation meeting Iran's top nuclear negotiator, and the proposal to open a U.S. Interests Section to handle consular matters in Tehran - which would be the first U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran since its embassy was stormed in 1979 - has stunned Israeli officials. So dismayed were the Israelis by the latest U.S. moves, one military source told TIME, that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote to Bush complaining that Israel should have been forewarned about the White House's abrupt change of course towards Iran.

Just last month, Israel conducted a complex military exercise involving over 150 aircraft flying 900 miles over the Mediterranean Sea, that was widely interpreted as a rehearsal for an air strike against Iran's dozens of nuclear facilities. A top former officer from Mossad, the Israeli equivalent of the CIA, told TIME that Israel is mindful that an air strike on Iran would jolt the U.S. presidential election - probably rebounding badly on Republican contender Senator John McCain. Sources say that Israel sees a narrow "window of opportunity" for military action opening up between November and the swearing-in of the new American president next January. "No Israel leader wants to be blamed for destroying the Republican chances," says the former Mossad officer.

But will Israel really go it alone and attack Iran if talks break down, or is the threat simply a bluff aimed at prompting the U.S. and Europe to step up the pressure on Tehran? Until now, Israel has been using a "hold me back, or I'll do something crazy" tactic, concedes the ex-Mossad officer.

The Israelis do believe time is short. An Israeli military planner estimates that Iran will reach "the point of no return" in developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons by early 2009. The U.S. sees things differently, he says, calculating that Iran will have enriched enough uranium to weapons-grade to be able to build a bomb by mid-2010. Both scenarios, says the Israeli planner, "give them some leeway for negotiations, but not much."

Despite Israel's top-notch air force, launching a long-range strike against a multitude of hidden targets in Iran entails huge risks and uncertain rewards. At most, say Israeli intelligence sources, an attack - which Israel would only undertake with a nod and perhaps logistical support from the U.S. - is likely to stall Iran's program by only a year or two. And that makes the cost-benefit analysis weigh against an air strike on Iran, according to some senior Israeli officials who urge caution.

Active and retired Israeli intelligence officials interviewed by TIME tended to dismiss Iran's threats of retaliation against Israel and the U.S. Ephraim Halevy, the previous Mossad chief who now heads the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says, "Iran is not 10 feet tall." Halevy contends that a barrage of Iran's missiles on Israel would not do too much damage, since dozens would be shot down by Israel's advanced anti-missile system. (Iran staged a missile test recently in which the published photo had been doctored to hide the fact that one of the fired missiles was a dud.) Halevy claims that "the relative success" of the U.S. military's surge in Iraq has curtailed Iran's capacity for mischief among its Shi'ite brethren in Iraq. He also doubts that Iran's ally Syria, which has long-range missiles, or its Hizballah and Hamas allies would risk a major dust-up merely to exact revenge on Iran's behalf. Still, Halevy warns that the long-term effects of attacking Iran could be devastating for Israel, and the region. "This could have an impact on us for the next 100 years," he says. "It will have a negative effect on public opinion in the Arab world, and we should only do [a strike on Iran] as a last resort."

Meir Javedanfar a respected, Iranian-born writer and analyst specializing in Israel-Iranian relations, warns that an Israeli attack would unite Iranians around their hawkish president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This would guarantee that Ahmadinejad wins next year's elections," says Javendafari, who says that right now the incumbent's reelection is in doubt because of the economic hardship he has brought to Iran's middle classes.

Whatever the real prospects for military action, in the game of rhetorical brinksmanship, Israel has matched every hot-headed statement from Ahmadinejad with threats of its own. The Israeli press often compares Iran's bellicose, Holocaust-denying leader to Hitler. In the past few months, rightwing Israeli politicians, retired generals and pundits have ratcheted up rhetoric calling on Olmert to quash the "existential threat" from Iran. But lately, these war cries have been toned down, in part, to prepare the Israeli public for the possibility that it will not attack Iran on its own.

Says one former senior Mossad officer who served under Olmert, "Iran's achievement is creating an image of itself as a scary superpower when it's really a paper tiger." In Tehran, meanwhile, more sober heads among the clerical leadership whose authority is greater than that of the president's are reining in Ahmadinejad, says Javedanfar. After a public scolding in a conservative newspaper by a top aide to the Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad several weeks ago publicly declared that Iran has no intention of attacking Israel or anyone else unless it was hit first. Halevy concurs. "I don't detect an appetite among the Iranians to bring about a catastrophe." But, he cautions, "There's a narrowing gap of opportunity for negotiations."

The danger remains in this high-stakes game of brinksmanship that either Israel or the Iranians could push the other too far. But the Bush Administration's sudden overture towards Iran, and moves towards engaging it diplomatically in search of a solution to the nuclear impasse, makes it more likely that Israel will follow Washington's lead rather than striking out on its own. View this article on Time.com

Related articles on Time.com:

• Iran Assessment Creates an Israeli Headache
• The Israelis Prepare for Bush Visit
• Bombing Iran: The Clamor Persists
• Why Did Israeli Planes Enter Syria?
• How Iran Has Bush Over a Barrel

   

The Last Stand of the West

by Mary Katharine Ham

In the hilltop neighborhood of Gilo in south-western Jerusalem, the chilly spring wind sweeps up through the town of Beit Jala below, bringing with it the stinging sands of the West Bank.

An eight-foot-high wall takes the brunt of the dusty breeze, as it wings harmlessly up and over the modern barriers of a conflict as ancient as the sand it carries. The wall was built in 2000 to protect Israeli children in their schools from sniper fire from the valley just 100 yards below.

In the days of the second intifada, Gilo was hit 400 times over a two-year period by Palestinian militants, injuring residents and causing major property damage. Palestinian terrorists, moved by Yasser Arafat’s call to arms, had forcibly overtaken the homes and schools of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank town of Beit Jala to send terror into Israel, as indiscriminately as the desert winds that whisper through the quiet valley.

Decorated by Israelis with cartoon animals and idyllic family scenes, the high, concrete sniper wall of Gilo embodies the struggle of a people to protect children while preserving childhood. The wall is a struggle to be both safe and free.

The struggle is the same in Metulla and Qiryat Shemona, where the goal of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Northern Command is to give Israeli citizens near the Lebanon border a “liveable life” within sight of the bright yellow flag of Hezbollah.

The struggle is in the small town of Sderot in southern Israel, where children play soccer on short fields, the better to rush to a bomb shelter. They have only 15 seconds to run when a Code Red alarm warns of another Qassam rocket from the Gaza Strip.

It’s in Tel Aviv, where parents let their children walk out the door, hoping they don’t walk into a club or a bus whose name will live in infamy, such as the Dolphinarium (21 dead, 100 injured in a suicide bombing, 2001) or Bus 5 (22 dead, 50 injured in a suicide attack, 1994).

A Shared Enemy

It is easy in this, the 60th year of Israel’s existence, to believe blithely that the Middle East’s tiny besieged bastion of Western thought will continue to endure simply because it always has. But, what four hijacked American jetliners brought home to the United States in a horrific, towering blaze of national tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, is that we are engaged in the same struggle.

Radical Islamists had tried to send the message before: when Islamic Jihad bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, killing 63, and bombed a Marine barracks killing 242; when Hezbollah killed 19 servicemen at Khobar Towers in 1996; when al Qaeda struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998; and when the same group drove a dinghy into the U.S.S. Cole, killing 16 in 2000.

We neglected to draw the line from Sayiid Qutb’s short educational stint in Greeley, Colo., in 1948 to the holy war waged against us in 2001. We did not see that the cranky Egyptian scholar observed American culture with disdain. It was, after all, the year Israel won its independence by defeating four invading Arab armies—the Arabic word for the war is “The Catastrophe”—that Qutb first developed his distaste for the West.

We did not know that his almost comic dyspepsia would eventually metastasize into a declaration of all modern society as jahiliyya—the unredeemed period of history before the founding of Islam—making it open season for jihad on Jews, Christians, Westerners and even secular Muslims complicit in the maintenance of modernity itself. Qutb’s “scholarship” boasted such famous acolytes as Ayman al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, and fueled the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a branch of which now runs the Gaza Strip after wresting it violently from the more moderate Fatah party of the Palestinian Authority in summer 2007. That branch is Hamas, and it now smuggles tons of explosives per month into Gaza and has shot more than 2,700 rockets into the civilian population of southern Israel since disengagement.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the other father of radical Islamist thought and Qutb’s Shia counterpart and contemporary, founded an Islamic state in Iran that now unites the causes of extremist Islamists of all sects by funding the wars of Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel and the terrorism of extremists in Iraq against Iraqi and American forces.

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President Bush has always advocated, wisely, taking terrorists at their word, famously using Osama bin Laden’s words in a 2005 speech to stress that among terrorists “there is no debate” about Iraq being central to the War on Terror.

In that spirit, these are the words of Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal preached on Al-Aqsa TV in April: “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered. … Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics … this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.”

Make no mistake, it is the same fight. From the craggy hills of the West Bank to the lush heights of Golan, Israel is a testing ground for their tactics, a proving ground for their martyrs and a potential foothold for their bloody philosophy. The West cannot afford to ignore the battles waged, lessons learned and indignities suffered by those who share our values and fight to preserve them in the most inhospitable of climates.

Close Quarters, High Stakes

As an American, standin