Israel Ups The Ante For US Sitting-Duck Troops In Iraq
posted by Helena Cobban
I have long argued-- most recently here-- that if an act of war is launched against Iran by the US or by Israel, then one of the most obvious ways for Iran to engage in the war that ensues would be to attack, or surround and cut off, the US troops distributed broadly throughout Iraq, very close to Iran's borders and at the end of agonizingly long and vulnerable supply lines.
My argument has always been that if Iran suffers any aerial (or naval) attack-- even if only Israeli forces participate in it directly-- then it could easily demonstrate that that attack could not have been launched without the active and premeditated collusion of the US, whose military dominates all the airspace around Iran, especially from the east, as well as the waters of the Gulf.
That would make the US's forces in the region legitimate targets for an Iranian counter-attack.
And now, Israel's Y-net website tells us, quoting unnamed "sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry", that,
Israeli fighter jets have been flying over Iraqi territory for over a month in preparation for potential strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network Friday, adding that the aircraft have been landing in American bases following the overflights.
The original reports of Iraqi defense officials reporting seeing Israeli military aircraft using US bases in Iraq seem to have come from the Iraqi news agency Nahrainnet. (That was also what AFP reported.) They have also been carried by the website of Iran's international Press TV station.
But it is interesting that Israel's Y-net carried the report-- even if attributed to those non-Israeli sources. The Israeli media is, like the old Soviet media, subject to heavy censorship on all military matters. But as in the old Soviet Union, when the Israeli military censors kind of want to "get the news out" about one of their own military developments, they allow a news medium to run the item-- but with attribution to foreign sources.
Update 4:20 p.m.: After I wrote the main post here, Y-net updated their article, on the same URL, to feature an IDF denial that they had been doing any "training" activities in Iraq. I note this is not a categoric denial that they've been doing anything else, such as reconnaissance or prepositioning of materiel.)
The fact that Y-net carried the report, even with-- at first-- no confirmation or denial from their military sources close to home, indicates strongly to me that it's true. Also, that the Israeli defense authorities want us to know that it's true. Otherwise, wouldn't they simply have squashed or denied the whole report from the get-go?
So that's even more interesting. It means they want the US to know that, at one level, they have us over a barrel. Our 157,000 troops spread widely throughout Iraq are not only hostages to any Israeli military adventurism, but those of them running the air-bases where the Israeli jets have been reported as landing have, in addition, been forced to support Israeli acts that greatly increase the risk to themselves and their G.I. buddies.
Where is the national leader in Washington who can put his foot down, who can tell our Israeli blackmailers that they can no longer play around in this extremely risky way with the security of our men and women in uniform in Iraq and throughout the Gulf; tell them that their military and special-force provocateurs are no longer welcome in the US-controlled battlespace of Iraq; and thereby restore the integrity of US national defense planning?
I will quickly add a few more thoughts.
1. All the war games that US military planners have done to game out the sequelae of a US (or Israeli) act of war against Iran have shown that they are truly devastating for the US.
2. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stated on July 2 that Iran does not, actually, fear an Israeli attack. That is consonant with the results of the war-gaming indicated above.
3. There is at least some possibility that this current piece of Israeli muscle-flexing-- like Iran's own recent, widely publicized, missile tests-- is an intentional precursor to Iran and the P5+1 sitting down to start the serious, de-escalatory negotiations that imho sorely need to happen. (Glenn Kessler posited this explanation, regarding the Iranians, in today's WaPo, I see.) But Israel's muscle-flexing is of a notably different order than Iran's-- not least because Israel is not, actually, a potential participant in the Iran-P5+1 negotiations. For that reason, Israel remains in the role of a potentially very dangerous 'rogue' actor-- and it might even have an incentive to prevent or spoil those negotiations. The fact that PM Olmert is in such deep political trouble at home, and that the country's whole political system is in such a shaky situation, means that Olmert's decisionmaking may indeed be reckless and risk-embracing.
4. We need to think much more about what "message" Olmert and his national-defense people are trying to convey to the Americans with this risk-taking behavior regarding Iran. This is true even if (or perhaps, all the more so if) Olmert has many enablers and supporters dug well in at high levels of the US national-security machine.
Finally, we should remember that it has all along been Pres. George W. Bush who has pushed to place scores of thousands of US servicemen and -women into the position of sitting ducks for Iranian retaliation, in Iraq. In December 2006 the bipartisan group headed by Baker and Hamilton recommended strongly that the US should withdraw a sizeable portion of its troops from Iraq and concentrate the remainder into a small number of more easily defended (and supplied) bases. But Bush's response to that was to pump large numbers of additional sitting ducks into the potential duck-abbatoir, and to spread them out thinly into many distant parts of the country under the logic of his so-called "surge."
It is time to end the madness, end the Israeli blackmail, end or substantially reduce the tensions with Iran (which could still flare out of control any day), and end the very vulnerable and counter-productive US troop deployment in Iraq.
We have a pretty good idea how to do all these things. But please God get on with it. This reminder from Y-net about the presence and muscle-flexing propensities of the Israeli wild card makes the whole task of de-escalation much more urgent. |
