Busters!

Last week JTA’s Telegraph noted:

Ha’aretz has some details on some of the weapons it says the U.S. government denied Israel out of fear they’d be used to attack Iran. They include bunker-buster bombs, permission to use an air corridor over Iraq to fly to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes, the report said.

Now we learn that the United States won’t sell bunker busters but another advanced bomb to Israel.

The Pentagon’s announcement, which came on Friday, said the U.S. will provide Israel with 1,000 units of Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39) – a special weapon developed for penetrating fortified facilities located deep underground.

The $77 million shipment, which includes launchers and appurtenances, will allow the IAF to hit many more bunkers than currently possible. Although each bomb weighs 113 kilograms, its penetration capabilities equal those of a one ton bomb, according to professional literature.

So does this latest sale show a change of heart of the Americans? Or do we really know that the Americans really denied Israel permission to overfly Iraq?

MJ Rosenberg thinks that this signals a change of heart of Sec. Gates.

(via memeorandum)

At this point I’m not convinced of anything. I suspect that the real details of American-Israeli contacts about Iran are highly classified at this point. Many of the sources used in the media either don’t know what’s really being discussed or are deliberately misleading the media. There’s been too much variance in the reports for them all to be true, so they all must be discounted. We can’t know what’s true, except perhaps that the United States sold Israel some bombs for attacking hardened targets.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.