Israelis Suspect Obama Media Leaks to Prevent Strike on Iran (ABC NEWS) By Alexander Marquardt JERUSALEM, ISRAEL 03/29/12)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israelis-suspect-obama-media-leaks-prevent-strike-iran-172438650--abc-news-topstories.html
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JERUSALEM - Two reports today about Iran´s nuclear program and the
possibility of an Israeli military strike have analysts in Israel
accusing the Obama administration leaking information to pressure
Israel not to bomb Iran and for Iran to reach a compromise in
upcoming nuclear talks.
The first report in Foreign Policy quotes anonymous American
officials saying that Israel has been given access to airbases by
Iran´s northern neighbor Azerbaijan from which Israel could launch
air strikes or at least drones and search and rescue aircraft.
The second report from Bloomberg, based on a leaked congressional
report, said that Iran´s nuclear facilities are so dispersed that it
is "unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be…" A strike
could delay Iran as little as six months, a former official told the
researchers.
"It seems like a big campaign to prevent Israel from attacking,"
analyst Yoel Guzansky at the Institute for National Security Studies
told ABC News. "I think the [Obama] administration is really worried
Jerusalem will attack and attack soon. They´re trying hard to prevent
it in so many ways."
The Foreign Policy report by Mark Perry quotes an intelligence
officer saying, "We´re watching what Iran does closely…But we´re now
watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we´re not happy
about it."
If true, the deal with Azerbaijan "totally changes the whole
picture," says Guzansky, making it far easier for Israel to strike
faster and harder, rather than having to fly 2,200 miles to Iran and
back over Iraqi airspace.
Thursday´s reports come a week after the results of a classified war
game was leaked to the New York Times which predicted that an Israeli
strike could lead to a wider regional war and result in hundreds of
American deaths. In a column this afternoon titled "Obama Betraying
Israel?" longtime defense commentator Ron Ben-Yishai at Yedioth
Ahronoth newspaper angrily denounced the leaks as a "targeted
assassination campaign."
"In recent weeks the administration shifted from persuasion efforts
vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel´s public opinion to a practical,
targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran," Ben-
Yishai writes. "The campaign´s aims are fully operational: To make it
more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF [Israeli
Defense Forces] to carry out a strike, and what´s even graver, to
erode the IDF´s capacity to launch such strike with minimal
casualties."
Ben-Yishai says much of the information in the reports has either
been published or is simply wrong, but in the case of the Bloomberg
report on American knowledge of Iran´s nuclear facilities, "instead
of forcing the Iranians to piece together all the assessments
themselves, the Congress report offers them everything in one place."
The reports pressure both Israel and Iran, fellow Yedioth columnist
and military analyst Alex Fishman told ABC News, but he doesn´t buy
into the theory that Azerbaijan will be a base for potential Israeli
operations.
"I don´t believe that there´s news behind this story because it
doesn´t make sense. It´s very romantic, very John le Carre, but less
practical," he says, explaining that the airstrips as they are now
are far too basic for a "huge wing of airplanes."
The report´s purpose is "to show the Iranians that something is going
on, to make them much more suspicious, much more nervous. You need
this pressure in order to put them in a lower position when
negotiations start."
Iran has agreed to international nuclear talks next month,
negotiations that the U.S. hopes will help avert a conflict but that
Israel dismisses as a stalling tactic by Iran. Asked whether Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees the reports as pressure from the
Obama administration, an Israeli official indicated that they fall
into the very category of "loose talk" of war that President Obama
recently criticized.
"When we [Netanyahu´s office] were in Washington [in early March],
President Obama called publicly for people to tone down the
rhetoric," said the official. "The prime minister has called on
ministers not to talk. We agree with Obama that loose talk is not
doing anyone any favors."
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