"Richard Silverstein
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
There have been endless recent visits to Israel from high-ranking U.S. officials regarding the Iran issue, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and most recently National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. The AP reports that during the last set of meetings the Israelis defiantly told the U.S. that if they attacked Iran, they would leave the U.S. in the dark. Here’s how Mike Rogers, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee put it:
Rogers told CNN on Monday: “I got the sense that Israel is incredibly serious about a strike on their nuclear weapons program. It’s their calculus that the administration … is not serious about a real military consequence to Iran moving forward.
“They believe they’re going to have to make a decision on their own, given the current posture of the United States,” he added.
Now, Israel’s two top leaders head to Washington for separate sets of talks in the coming days. Bibi comes for his annual triumphal curtain call before the Aipac national conference. There he will certainly repeat his baleful predictions of what a world with Iranian nukes would be like. It could be his last speech in this country before an Israeli attack.
It’s uncertain what he will discuss with Pres. Obama, with whom he will meet. The president seems more the supplicant than the officiant in this relationship. He doesn’t want Israel to attack. But both he and Bibi know that he doesn’t have the will to stop him. It feels to me like possibly the final stop on the way to war."
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2012/02/28/obama-promises-israel-use-of-u-s-bases-for-iran-attack-if-it-will-wait/
