(1) NY Post & National Post report Peres stopped attack on Iran; US & Israel spied on each other (2) NY Post: Peres stopped Netanyahu from bombing Iran (3) Netanyahu attack on Iran was thwarted by Peres & Iraeli military & intelligence chiefs (4) Reuters: Army head Ashkenazi & Mossad head Meir Dagan refused Netanyahu order (5) National Post: Peres stopped attack on Iran (6) WSJ: Israel & US were spying on each other, as Israel tried to stop US talks & deal with Iran (2015) (7) To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran - John Bolton (2015)  (1) NY Post & National Post report Peres stopped attack on Iran; US & Israel spied on each other - Peter Myers, October 3, 2016  Yesterday, I said that the MSM in the US had not reported this story. I made that claim after searching Google News (USA) and Google All (with time = 24 hours). Today I have found that the NY Post and the National Post have covered the story. That still leaves a lot that have not, including the New York Times.  The point is, that this story gives the lie to the idea that Israel is a weak, vulnerable country, only trying to defend itself. Here was a plan to launch a war that would have further destabilized the Middle East.  Further, Israeli spying on the US in this case reveals that far from being an ally, Israel seeks primacy over the US. When Netanyahu could not get his way over Obama, Netanyahu tried to get the Jewish Lobby to mobilize Congress and the Lobby's Evangelical dupes. At that point, Obama ordered the NSA to intercept Netanyahu's phone calls, and leaked that to the media; the WSJ seems to be the usual recipient. A US leader stood up to the Lobby for the first time since JFK.  The reports from the NY Post, Reuters and the National Post (items 2, 4 & 5) contain nothing new; you may just scan them briefly. The point of including them here, is that it's important to check how the media present (or censor) major stories. Item 3, from Al Monitor, is more detailed and worth attention.  Item 6, the WSJ report on how Israel & the US resorted to spying on each other over the Iran talks and deal, is top priority and, to my knowledge, has not appeared before in the alternative news. The report is here in full.  John Bolton's backing of Israel's war (item 7) confirms how close we came. The NYT saw fit to publish it, but not the recent report about how Peres stopped the attack.  These reports further discredit Noam Chomsky's denial of the Lobby's power, and portrayal of Israel as merely a loyal sheriff of the Empire. Chomsky is rarely cited these days; his credibility is in tatters.  (2) NY Post: Peres stopped Netanyahu from bombing Iran   Shimon Peres once stopped Netanyahu from bombing Iran  By Yaron Steinbuch  September 30, 2016 | 8:11am  Shimon Peres, who was hailed during his funeral Friday as a man of justice and peace, prevented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing Iran about five years ago, according to the Jerusalem Post, which honored his request to withhold the news until after his death.  The former Israeli president dropped the bombshell during a conversation with the newspaper’s Managing Editor David Brinn and former editor-in-chief Steve Linde at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa on Aug. 24, 2014.  Peres, who had retired a month earlier as president, was asked what he considered his greatest achievement of his presidency.  "I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran," he said about the planned strike on the country’s nuclear sites.  "I don’t want to go into details, but I can tell you that he was ready to launch an attack and I stopped him. I told him the consequences would be catastrophic," he added.  When asked if the paper could report it, he responded with a wry smile: "When I’m dead."  During a June 7, 2015, security panel that Linde moderated in New York, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and then-Mossad director Meir Dagan were asked about refusing an order from Netanyahu to prepare for an attack against Iran, the paper reported.  While pointedly denying that the order had been given, Dagan insisted: "It was an illegal order. We were always willing to obey any legal order by the prime minister. We never refused an order."  Ashkenazi acknowledged, though, that he had opposed a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.  A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv later raised the matter with Peres, who was furious that the question was being raised publicly.  "Peres had good reason to be angry," the columnist, Ben Caspit, later wrote on the Al-Monitor media site. "He was one of the key players in that drama, which played out between the summer of 2009 and the summer of 2011. These were some of the tensest times for Israel’s defense establishment.  "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak were pushing ahead with their plans to attack Iran, while the IDF, headed by Ashkenazi, and the heads of the other defense establishments opposed the move," he added. "Ashkenazi and Dagan had the support of none other than the president at the time, Peres, who joined their efforts to thwart the attack."  (3) Netanyahu attack on Iran was thwarted by Peres & Iraeli military & intelligence chiefs   Why didn’t Netanyahu attack Iran?  This week it was disclosed that there was a serious disagreement between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the heads of the security apparatus in 2010, when Netanyahu considered attacking Iran.  Author Ben Caspit  Posted June 8, 2015  Participants in the Jerusalem Post's fourth annual conference in New York on June 7 never imagined that they would find themselves under public cross-examination over the actions of Israel’s political and security services during the tense days of 2010, when the government contemplated a military assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Sitting on the panel were former Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi; former Mossad Director Meir Dagan; two former heads of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland and Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan; and senior columnist Caroline Glick. Moderating the panel was the Jerusalem Post’s editor-in-chief, Steve Linde. The much talked-about argument broke out toward the end of the discussion, when Glick, who is known for her hawkish, right-wing views, claimed that in 2010, two members of the panel "were given an order to prepare the military for an imminent strike against Iran’s nuclear installation, and they refused."  Quick to protest these allegations, Dagan got into a vociferous argument with Glick. "It was an illegal order," he said. "You were not there. You don’t know what happened there."  Glick refused to concede: "Had you not brought in your expert legal opinion to determine whether or not the prime minister of Israel and the defense minister of Israel have a right to order Israel to take action in its national defense, then we would not be where we are today." She blamed Dagan and Ashkenazi for the current situation, which, according to the Israeli right, leaves the country with no way out. What she was effectively saying is that the heads of Israel’s security forces conducted a quiet putsch against the political leadership, preventing them from launching an Israeli assault against Iran’s nuclear facilities following plans prepared well in advance.  This argument reignited the public debate about the issue in Israel. At the Herzliya Conference in Israel the following day, I asked the country's ninth president, Shimon Peres, about it. "That journalist wasn’t there! How would she know?" Peres raged. "These are issues that should be discussed in the Cabinet, not in the media and not in public."  Peres had good reason to be angry. He was one of the key players in that drama, which played out between the summer of 2009 and the summer of 2011. These were some of the tensest times for Israel’s defense establishment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were pushing ahead with their plans to attack Iran, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), headed by Ashkenazi, and the heads of the other defense establishments opposed the move. Ashkenazi and Dagan had the support of none other than the president at the time, Peres, who joined their efforts to thwart the attack.  Were they refusing a direct order? Was this a mutiny, or possibly a military putsch against the country’s political leadership? The answer is no. Glick’s question focused on a very specific incident, which occurred at the end of a meeting of the Septet, Netanyahu’s ministerial forum for strategic consultation. It was a private forum of ministers, without any statutory standing and therefore unable to make any decisions. During that meeting, Netanyahu ordered Ashkenazi to prepare the IDF for an attack on Iran within 30 days. In professional terms, this was a case of "prepping the system." Ashkenazi was rather shocked by the order, and he wasn’t the only one. So was Dagan, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin and the chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin. Not one of them could believe what they just heard. A "readiness order" requires a formal government decision before it can be issued, or at the very least, a decision by the Cabinet. It is a strategic order, during which time the IDF calls up the reserves and puts numerous systems into action. Although the law requires a government decision before such an order can be given, in this particular instance, Netanyahu issued the order offhandedly during the meeting of a forum with no legal standing.  That was why Dagan responded two days ago in New York that "It was an illegal order." It is also worth noting that Ashkenazi said during that same panel, "There was never a decision about it." Paradoxically, both men were right. The order was, indeed, illegal, and when the heads of the defense establishment clarified this to the leaders of the political establishment (Netanyahu and Barak), Netanyahu rescinded it. When Glick insisted on pressing against Ashkenazi with her line of questioning, he responded that there was a military option. It was prepared. That he gave his recommendations, did not intervene and did not block the decision. He claimed that there was never a decision about it. That’s all.  Glick refused to concede. "I think that at the end of the day, you have to wonder what it would be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I must say that if the prime minister would have given me an order, saying to prepare the military option, I would say, ‘OK, there needs to be a Cabinet vote.’ I would not say, 'No, it’s illegal.'" Dagan then added, "Our roles and our obligations are to the State of Israel, and we fulfilled them. There was no order. He could have said, ‘Or else I will fire you or bring it up with the Cabinet.’ The meeting ended with the prime minister, not us, stepping back from his proposal."  This dialogue in New York, about five years after the fact, reveals just the tip of the iceberg of what was taking place behind closed doors during those long, tense months in the conference rooms of Israel’s top defense leadership. All the heads of the various security forces were unanimous in their opinion that an Israeli attack on Iran would be a historic mistake that could result in disaster. At the same time, however, decisions in Israel are made by the political leadership. The defense establishment is then expected to carry them out without hesitation. On the other hand, to follow through with a perilous, strategically historic move such as attacking Iran, any Israeli prime minister would want the support of his defense leadership, or at least the chief of staff.  Netanyahu is an overly cautious prime minister with an aversion to military adventurism, for reasons of personal political survival. He knew that if something went wrong with the attack and it then became public that he gave the order despite the recommendations of all of the professionals in the security services, it would be the end of his political career. At first, he invested enormous energy in trying to convince some of the defense chiefs to adopt his position. The event reported here occurred when he finally gave up.  The question that the Israeli right should ask Netanyahu is why he didn’t attack Iran in the summer of 2012. As far as Netanyahu was concerned, that summer was seemingly the ultimate moment: The heads of the security forces had left the IDF and were replaced with a new crop of generals lacking experience, charisma or influence among the public. At that time, Netanyahu had a weak and anonymous chief of staff in the person of Benny Gantz, a novice director of the Mossad with Tamir Pardo, a new chief of military intelligence and a new director of the Shin Bet on the way. At the same time, the United States was caught up in a bitter presidential election, in which President Barack Obama was fighting for his second term. Netanyahu was seemingly free to act. There was nothing to prevent him from attacking Iran in July, August or September 2012, but he hesitated and eventually put his dream aside. At the time, however, there was no one to interfere in any significant way.  So why didn’t he go through with it? First of all, because Netanyahu was afraid. Second, Barak made a sharp, last minute U-turn and switched to the opponents’ side. And there must be other reasons.  At the Herzliya conference June 8, I asked Peres to comment on the issue and to speak about the shape that negotiations with Iran are taking. "There is no alternative to negotiations," Peres said. "War means blood, wars mean disaster. Such a war would involve not only Iran but apparently Hezbollah as well. President Obama is not alone. He has a coalition. He has partners. There is Russia and China. These partners are more important than any centrifuges. Without them, there can be no sanctions. Any agreement is good, and preferable to war."  (4) Reuters: Army head Ashkenazi & Mossad head Meir Dagan refused Netanyahu order   Mon Nov 5, 2012 | 6:18am EST  Netanyahu, Barak clashed with army over Iran attack: report  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israeli defence chiefs in 2010 to prepare for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities but were rebuffed, a television report said.  Excerpts released on Monday of an Israeli Channel 2 documentary said the armed forces' chief of staff at the time, Gabi Ashkenazi, and Mossad intelligence head Meir Dagan both objected to the order to raise the military's alert level to "F-Plus", which means a strike could be imminent.  Barak, interviewed on the Uvda investigative show, said Ashkenazi told him the army did not have the operational capability for a successful strike against Iran's nuclear programme, which Israel believes is aimed at producing weapons, an allegation Tehran denies.  The documentary said Ashkenazi disputes Barak's account and that he told confidants that while the military was capable of carrying out such an attack, to do so would be a strategic mistake.  Ashkenazi, the report added, cautioned that just giving the order to raise the alert status could set off a chain of events that could spiral out of control and lead to a wider conflict.  In an excerpt broadcast before the programme airs later on Monday, Barak played down the significance of the alert order.  "It is not true that creating a situation in which the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) ... are on alert for a few hours or a few days to carry out certain operations forces Israel to go through with them," Barak said.  Dagan, who since his retirement as Mossad chief has voiced opposition to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran, accused Netanyahu and Barak at the time of trying to launch a war illegally without cabinet approval, the television report said, citing participants at security discussions.  Barak and Netanyahu have since signaled that an attack on Iran was not imminent. In September, Netanyahu told the United Nations that Tehran would be on the brink of nuclear weapons' capability only in the spring or summer of 2013.  Barak said last week that Iran has pulled back on its nuclear programme, which has given Israel more time to contemplate its next steps.  (5) National Post: Peres stopped attack on Iran   ‘I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran’: Extraordinary claim Shimon Peres wanted published after his death  Tristin Hopper | September 30, 2016 3:07 PM ET  {photo} Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, points to a red line he drew on a graphic of a bomb while addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2012 in New York City. {end}  In an admission he said could only be published after his death, former Israeli president Shimon Peres reportedly said in 2014 that he personally stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from attacking Iran.  "I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran," Peres was reported as telling Steve Linde, then-editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, during an Aug. 24, 2014 conversation in Jaffa.  When pressed for details, Peres reportedly responded, "I don’t want to go into details, but I can tell you that he was ready to launch an attack and I stopped him. I told him the consequences would be catastrophic."  He then asked, with a "wry smile," that the comments be kept secret until after his death. Published Friday, the comments are based on Linde’s notes from the meeting.  Peres held the largely ceremonial role of Israeli president between 2007 and July 2014, a period of particularly high Iran-Israeli tensions.  September 2012, for instance, was when Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly holding a cartoon bomb and declaring that Iran was mere months from obtaining a nuclear bomb.  "At this late hour, there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs and that’s by placing a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program," he said.  It is not known what kind of action Netanyahu may have been planning, but it presumably would have been a limited strike similar to Operation Opera, a surprise 1981 Israeli airstrike on Iraqi nuclear facilities.  Last October, a Wall Street Journal éxposé revealed that, in the early 2010s, the U.S. had readied extra fighter aircraft in the Middle East in case "all hell broke loose" after a possible Israeli attack on Iran. Specifically, U.S. officials suspected that Israel was preparing for a commando raid on Fordow, a fortified Iranian uranium enrichment facility.  Peres, who died Wednesday at age 93, was the last of a generation of Israel’s founding leaders.  He immigrated at the age of 11 from Poland to what was then known as the British mandate of Palestine. In a military and political career stretching over seven decades, Peres was at the centre of many of the major events of Israeli history, including the 1956 Suez War and the negotiation of the 1993 Oslo Accords.  The Israeli leader is also credited as being the architect of the Jewish state’s nuclear program. Although Israel has never officially confirmed it has nuclear weapons, it is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power.  As a member of the liberal Kadima party, Peres’ views often differed sharply with those expounded by Netanyahu and other members of his right-wing governing coalition.  During a 2012 visit to Toronto, for instance, Peres called for patience with Iran.  "It is better to start with non-military efforts than to go straight to war," he said. "The fact that Iran is ready to enter negotiations shows (sanctions) are having an impact."  Peres’ funeral on Friday was Israel’s largest gathering of international dignitaries since the 1995 funeral of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Among the attendees were U.S. president Barack Obama, former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.  The Israeli leader’s death has so far elicited no official reaction from Iran, although according to the news website Al-Monitor, the event has been a cause for mild celebration for Iranian media across the political spectrum.  The reform-minded Shargh Daily, for one, described Peres as "the founder of Israel’s violations."  (6) WSJ: Israel & US were spying on each other, as Israel tried to stop US talks & deal with Iran (2015)   Spy vs. Spy: Inside the Fraying U.S.-Israel Ties  Distrust set allies to snoop on each other after split over Iran nuclear deal; each kept secrets   By Adam Entous  Oct. 22, 2015 9:01 p.m. ET  The U.S. closely monitored Israel’s military bases and eavesdropped on secret communications in 2012, fearing its longtime ally might try to carry out a strike on Fordow, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility.  Nerves frayed at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a commando raid on the site. Worried that Israel might ignite a regional war, the White House sent a second aircraft carrier to the region and readied attack aircraft, a senior U.S. official said, "in case all hell broke loose."  The two countries, nursing a mutual distrust, each had something to hide. U.S. officials hoped to restrain Israel long enough to advance negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. had launched in secret. U.S. officials saw Israel’s strike preparations as an attempt to usurp American foreign policy.  Instead of talking to each other, the allies kept their intentions secret. To figure out what they weren’t being told, they turned to their spy agencies to fill gaps. They employed deception, not only against Iran, but against each other. After working in concert for nearly a decade to keep Iran from an atomic bomb, the U.S. and Israel split over the best means: diplomacy, covert action or military strikes.  Personal strains between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted at their first Oval Office meeting in 2009, and an accumulation of grievances in the years since plunged relations between the two countries into crisis.  This Wall Street Journal account of the souring of U.S.-Israel relations over Iran is based on interviews with nearly two dozen current and former senior U.S. and Israeli officials.  U.S. and Israeli officials say they want to rebuild trust but acknowledge it won’t be easy. Mr. Netanyahu reserves the right to continue covert action against Iran’s nuclear program, said current and former Israeli officials, which could put the spy services of the U.S. and Israel on a collision course.  A shaky start  Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu shared common ground on Iran when they first met in 2007. Mr. Netanyahu, then the leader of Israel’s opposition party, the right-wing Likud, discussed with Mr. Obama, a Democratic senator, how to discourage international investment in Iran’s energy sector. Afterward, Mr. Obama introduced legislation to that end.  Suspicions grew during the 2008 presidential race after Mr. Netanyahu spoke with some congressional Republicans who described Mr. Obama as pro-Arab, Israeli officials said. The content of the conversations later found its way back to the White House, senior Obama administration officials said.  Soon after taking office in January 2009, Mr. Obama took steps to allay Israeli concerns, including instructing the Pentagon to develop military options against Iran’s Fordow facility, which was built into a mountain. The president also embraced an existing campaign of covert action against Iran, expanding cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.  Mossad leaders compared the covert campaign to a 10-floor building: The higher the floor, they said, the more invasive the operation. CIA and Mossad worked together on operations on the lower floors. But the Americans made clear they had no interest in moving higher—Israeli proposals to bring down Iran’s financial system, for example, or even its regime.  Some covert operations were run unilaterally by Mossad, such as the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, according to U.S. officials.  The first Oval Office meeting between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, in May 2009—weeks after Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister—was difficult for both sides. After the meeting, Mr. Obama’s aides called Ron Dermer, Mr. Netanyahu’s adviser, to coordinate their statements. Mr. Dermer told them it was too late; Mr. Netanyahu was already briefing reporters."We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we’re not coordinating our messages,’ " said Tommy Vietor, a former administration official who was there.  In 2010, the risk of covert action became clear. A computer virus dubbed Stuxnet, deployed jointly by the U.S. and Israel to destroy Iranian centrifuges used to process uranium, had inadvertently spread across the Internet. The Israelis wanted to launch cyberattacks against a range of Iranian institutions, according to U.S. officials. But the breach made Mr. Obama more cautious, officials said, for fear of triggering Iranian retaliation, or damaging the global economy if a virus spread uncontrollably.  Israel questioned whether its covert operations were enough, said aides to Mr. Netanyahu. Stuxnet had only temporarily slowed Tehran’s progress. "Cyber and other covert operations had their inherent limitations," a senior Israeli official said, "and we reached those limitations."  Mr. Netanyahu pivoted toward a military strike, raising anxiety levels in the White House.  The U.S. Air Force analyzed the arms and aircraft needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluded Israel didn’t have the right equipment. The U.S. shared the findings, in part, to steer the Israelis from a military strike.  The Israelis weren’t persuaded and briefed the U.S. on an attack plan: Cargo planes would land in Iran with Israeli commandos on board who would "blow the doors, and go in through the porch entrance" of Fordow, a senior U.S. official said. The Israelis planned to sabotage the nuclear facility from inside.  Pentagon officials thought it was a suicide mission. They pressed the Israelis to give the U.S. advance warning. The Israelis were noncommittal.  "Whether this was all an effort to try to pressure Obama, or whether Israel was really getting close to a decision, I don’t know," said Michéle Flournoy, who at the time was undersecretary of defense for policy.  Mr. Obama, meanwhile, was moving toward diplomacy. In December 2011, the White House secretly used then-Sen. John Kerry to sound out Omani leaders about opening a back channel to the Iranians.  At the same time, the White House pressed the Israelis to scale back their assassination campaign and turned down their requests for more aggressive covert measures, U.S. officials said.  The president spoke publicly about his willingness to use force as a last resort to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon—"I don’t bluff," Mr. Obama said in March 2012—but some of Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers weren’t convinced.  In early 2012, U.S. spy agencies told the White House about a flurry of meetings that Mr. Netanyahu convened with top security advisers. The meetings covered everything from mission logistics to the political implications of a military strike, Israeli officials said.  U.S. spy agencies stepped up satellite surveillance of Israeli aircraft movements. They detected when Israeli pilots were put on alert and identified moonless nights, which would give the Israelis better cover for an attack. They watched the Israelis practice strike missions and learned they were probing Iran’s air defenses, looking for ways to fly in undetected, U.S. officials said.  New intelligence poured in every day, much of it fragmentary or so highly classified that few U.S. officials had a complete picture. Officials now say many jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the Israelis had made a dry run.  At the time, concern and confusion over Israel’s intentions added to the sense of urgency inside the White House for a diplomatic solution.  The White House decided to keep Mr. Netanyahu in the dark about the secret Iran talks, believing he would leak word to sabotage them.  There was little goodwill for Mr. Netanyahu among Mr. Obama’s aides who perceived the prime minister as supportive of Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign.  Mr. Netanyahu would get briefed on the talks, White House officials concluded, only if it looked like a deal could be reached.  The first secret meeting between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, held in July 2012, was a bust. But "nobody was willing to throw it overboard by greenlighting Israeli strikes just when the process was getting started," a former senior Obama administration official said.  Israeli officials approached their U.S. counterparts over the summer about obtaining military hardware useful for a strike, U.S. officials said.  At the top of the list were V-22 Ospreys, aircraft that take off and land like helicopters but fly like fixed-wing planes. Ospreys don’t need runways, making them ideal for dropping commandos behind enemy lines.  The Israelis also sounded out officials about obtaining the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the U.S. military’s 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, which was designed to destroy Fordow.  Mr. Netanyahu wanted "somebody in the administration to show acquiescence, if not approval" for a military strike, said Gary Samore, who served for four years as Mr. Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. "The message from the Obama administration was: ‘We think this is a big mistake.’ "  White House officials decided not to provide the equipment.  Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu spoke in September 2012, and Mr. Obama emerged convinced Israel wouldn’t strike on the eve of the U.S. presidential election.  By the following spring, senior U.S. officials concluded the Israelis weren’t serious about a commando raid on Fordow and may have been bluffing. When the U.S. offered to sell the Ospreys, Israel said it didn’t have the money.  Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who championed a strike, said Mr. Netanyahu had come close to approving a military operation against Iran. But Israel’s military chiefs and cabinet members were reluctant, according to Israeli officials.  While keeping the Omani talks secret, U.S. officials briefed the Israelis on the parallel international negotiations between Iran and major world powers under way in early 2013. Those talks, which made little headway, were led on the U.S. side by State Department diplomat Wendy Sherman.  Robert Einhorn, at the time an arms control adviser at the State Department, said that during the briefings, Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers wouldn’t say what concessions they could live with. "It made us feel like nothing was going to be good enough for them," Mr. Einhorn said.  U.S. spy agencies were monitoring Israeli communications to see if the Israelis had caught wind of the secret talks. In September 2013, the U.S. learned the answer.  Yaakov Amidror, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser at the time, had come to Washington in advance of a Sept. 30 meeting between Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama.  On Sept. 27, Mr. Amidror huddled with White House national security adviser Susan Rice in her office when she told him that Mr. Obama was on the phone in a groundbreaking call with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani.  Mr. Amidror had his own surprise. During a separate meeting in the Roosevelt Room, he told several of Mr. Obama’s top advisers that Israel had identified the tail numbers of the unmarked U.S. government planes that ferried negotiators to Muscat, Oman, the site of the secret talks, U.S. officials said.  Mr. Amidror, who declined to comment on the White House discussions, said that it was insulting for Obama administration officials to think "they could go to Oman without taking our intelligence capabilities into account." He called the decision to hide the Iran talks from Israel a big mistake.  U.S. officials said they were getting ready to tell the Israelis about the talks, which advanced only after Mr. Rouhani came to office. During the Sept. 30 meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, the president acknowledged the secret negotiations. The secrecy cemented Israel’s distrust of Mr. Obama’s intentions, Israeli officials said.  Mr. Samore, the former White House official, said he believed it was a mistake to keep Israel in the dark for so long. Mr. Einhorn said: "The lack of early transparency reinforced Israel’s suspicions and had an outsize negative impact on Israeli thinking about the talks."  Israel pushed for the U.S. to be more open about the Iran negotiations. Ms. Rice, however, pulled back on consultations with her new Israeli counterpart, Yossi Cohen, who took over as Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.  In exchanges with the White House, U.S. officials said, Mr. Cohen wouldn’t budge from demanding Iran give up its centrifuges and uranium-enrichment program. Israeli officials said they feared any deviation would be taken by the U.S. as a green light for more concessions.  In one meeting, Mr. Cohen indicated Mr. Netanyahu could accept a deal allowing Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges, U.S. officials said. Soon after, Mr. Cohen called to say he had misspoken. Neither side was prepared to divulge their bottom line.  In November 2013, when the interim agreement was announced, Mr. Samore was in Israel, where, he said, the Israelis "felt blindsided" by the terms. U.S. officials said the details came together so quickly that Ms. Sherman and her team didn’t have enough time to convey them all. Israeli officials said the Americans intentionally withheld information to prevent them from influencing the outcome.  As talks began in 2014 on a final accord, U.S. intelligence agencies alerted White House officials that Israelis were spying on the negotiations. Israel denied any espionage against the U.S. Israeli officials said they could learn details, in part, by spying on Iran, an explanation U.S. officials didn’t believe.  Earlier this year, U.S. officials clamped down on what they shared with Israel about the talks after, they allege, Mr. Netanyahu’s aides leaked confidential information about the emerging deal.  When U.S. officials confronted the Israelis over the matter in a meeting, Israel’s then-minister of intelligence said he didn’t disclose anything from Washington’s briefings. The information, the minister said, came from "other means," according to meeting participants.  Ms. Sherman told Mr. Cohen, Israel’s national security adviser: "You’re putting us in a very difficult position. We understand that you will find out what you can find out by your own means. But how can we tell you every single last thing when we know you’re going to use it against us?" according to U.S. officials who were there.  Mr. Netanyahu turned to congressional Republicans, one of his remaining allies with the power to affect the deal, Israeli officials said, but he couldn’t muster enough votes to block it.  U.S. officials now pledge to work closely with their Israeli counterparts to monitor Iran’s compliance with the international agreement.  But it is unclear how the White House will respond to any covert Israeli actions against Iran’s nuclear program, which current and former Israeli officials said were imperative to safeguard their country.  One clause in the agreement says the major powers will help the Iranians secure their facilities against sabotage. State Department officials said the clause wouldn’t protect Iranian nuclear sites from Israel.  Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, said the U.S. and Israel could nonetheless end up at odds. "If we become aware of any Israeli efforts, do we have a duty to warn Iran?" Mr. Hayden said. "Given the intimacy of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, it’s going to be more complicated than ever."  Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com.   Obama Declassifies Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program  On March 26, 2015, it was reported that in early February -- when the Obama administration was enraged by the recent announcement that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would be addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress on March 3 regarding Iran's nuclear program -- the Pentagon had quietly declassified a top-secret, 386-page Defense Department document from 1987 containing extensive details of Israel's nuclear program. The document was entitled "Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations." As Israel National News (INN) explained, Israel's nuclear program was "a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the U.S. until now has respected by remaining silent."  INN added:  "[B]y publishing the declassified document from 1987, the U.S. reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel's nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.  The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu's March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran's nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.  Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel's sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.  (7) To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran - John Bolton (2015)   To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran  John R. Bolton  March 26, 2015  FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the region’s political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward.  As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors’ decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.  In theory, comprehensive international sanctions, rigorously enforced and universally adhered to, might have broken the back of Iran’s nuclear program. But the sanctions imposed have not met those criteria. Naturally, Tehran wants to be free of them, but the president’s own director of National Intelligence testified in 2014 that they had not stopped Iran’s progressing its nuclear program. There is now widespread acknowledgment that the rosy 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged that Iran’s weapons program was halted in 2003, was an embarrassment, little more than wishful thinking.  Even absent palpable proof, like a nuclear test, Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident. Now the arms race has begun: Neighboring countries are moving forward, driven by fears that Mr. Obama’s diplomacy is fostering a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia, keystone of the oil-producing monarchies, has long been expected to move first. No way would the Sunni Saudis allow the Shiite Persians to outpace them in the quest for dominance within Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitical hegemony. Because of reports of early Saudi funding, analysts have long believed that Saudi Arabia has an option to obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan, allowing it to become a nuclear-weapons state overnight. Egypt and Turkey, both with imperial legacies and modern aspirations, and similarly distrustful of Tehran, would be right behind.  Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.  Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.  The former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said recently, "whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same." He added, "if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it’s not just Saudi Arabia that’s going to ask for that." Obviously, the Saudis, Turkey and Egypt will not be issuing news releases trumpeting their intentions. But the evidence is accumulating that they have quickened their pace toward developing weapons.  Saudi Arabia has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, China, France and Argentina, aiming to build a total of 16 reactors by 2030. The Saudis also just hosted meetings with the leaders of Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey; nuclear matters were almost certainly on the agenda. Pakistan could quickly supply nuclear weapons or technology to Egypt, Turkey and others. Or, for the right price, North Korea might sell behind the backs of its Iranian friends.  The Obama administration’s increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why.  This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the president’s policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fuel drawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Iran’s nuclear weapons establishment.  The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.  Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.  Mr. Obama’s fascination with an Iranian nuclear deal always had an air of unreality. But by ignoring the strategic implications of such diplomacy, these talks have triggered a potential wave of nuclear programs. The president’s biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East.  John R. Bolton, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was the United States ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006.  A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 26, 2015, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.  -- Peter Myers Australia website: http://mailstar.net/index.html   |
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