Report: U.S., Israel Discuss Triggers for Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure

When the American Defense Secretary is unable to discern fact from fiction and is more worried about the economy than a suicidal death cult willing to plunge the world into a nuclear Armageddon with the attempted destruction of Israel and America, is it any wonder then that Israel may be making plans for a possible unilateral strike against Iran? …

By Eli Lake – “When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opined earlier this month that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could ‘consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret,’ the Israelis went ballistic behind the scenes. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal diplomatic protest known as a demarche. And the White House was thrust into action, reassuring the Israelis that the administration had its own ‘red lines’ that would trigger military action against Iran, and that there is no need for Jerusalem to act unilaterally.

Panetta’s seemingly innocent remarks on Dec. 2 triggered the latest drama in the tinder-box relationship that the Obama administration is trying to navigate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. With Republicans lining up to court Jewish donors and voters in America in 2012, Obama faces a tricky election-year task of ensuring Iran doesn’t acquire a nuclear bomb on his watch while keeping the Israelis from launching a preemptive strike that could inflame an already teetering Middle East.

The stakes are immensely high, and the distrust that Israelis feel toward the president remains a complicating factor. Those sentiments were laid bare in a speech Netanyahu’s minister of strategic affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, gave on Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, in which he used Panetta’s remarks to cast doubt on the U.S.’s willingness to launch its own military strike.

Ya’alon told the Anglo-Likud, an organization within Netanyahu’s Likud party that caters to native English speakers, that the Western strategy to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons must include four elements, with the last resort being a military strike.

‘The fourth element of this combined strategy is the credible military strike,’ Ya’alon said, according to a recording of the speech provided to The Daily Beast. ‘There is no credible military action when we hear leaders from the West, saying, ‘this is not a real option,’ saying, ‘the price of military action is too high.’'” Read more.

Iran Claims It Chased Away Western Helicopter – “Iran says it chased away a Western helicopter that approached its navy war games area and did not leave until three warnings were issued. The United States, Britain and France are the only non-regional powers with troops in the region. None of the countries has commented on the Iranian claim, published in its semi-official media… ‘Yesterday, a chopper which belonged to the trans-regional countries tried to approach the region of Velayat 90 exercises, but it left the area when it received a serious warning after it ignored two other warning signals of our units,’ Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Navy Admiral Seyed Mahmoud Moussavi said.” Read more.

Iran threatens to cut off oil exports if sanctions imposed over nuclear activity – “TEHRAN — Iran threatened on Tuesday to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if foreign sanctions were imposed on its crude exports over its nuclear ambitions, a move that could trigger military conflict with economies dependent on Gulf oil… Iran’s warning on Tuesday came three weeks after EU foreign ministers decided to tighten sanctions over the UN watchdog report and laid out plans for a possible embargo of oil from the world’s No. 5 crude exporter. ‘If they [the West] impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz,’ the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi as saying.” Read more.