Israel’s annual Herzliya conference, which draws leaders from around the world to discuss the region’s security issues, is always a cause for the news media to get a case of the vapors. Its major topic this year, of course, is Iran. Israelis intelligence chief said that Iran has enough material for four nuclear bombs. And that Israel has other problems:
Kochavi said that Israel was currently threatened by 200,000 rockets and missiles in the hands of Israel’s enemies. The missiles, he said, currently covered the entire State of Israel and were growing in their ranges and the size of their warheads.
Ehud Barak says that Iran is nearing the point where their underground bunkers will be too heavily fortified to be bombed. Moshe Ya’alon said that the missile base that exploded in Iran last year was building ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S. And now Leon Panetta says that there is a “strong likelihood” that Israel will attack this spring.
Iran has responded by threatening to destroy Israel, using the same language of the Nazis:
The supreme leader of Iran issued a blunt warning Friday that war would be detrimental to the United States — and that Iran is ready to help anyone who confronts “cancerous” Israel.
[…]”Well, these kinds of threats are detrimental to the U.S.,” he said. “The war itself will be 10 times as detrimental to the U.S.”
He said Iran will support any nation or group that fights against Israel.
“The Zionist regime is really the cancerous tumor of this region and it needs to be removed and will be removed,” Khamenei said to a cheering crowd.
The AP chose not to write a headline including the threats to remove the “cancerous tumor.” Instead, the focus was on Iran openly declaring to harm any nation that helps Israel–a declaration that is not really new.
Khamenei: Iran will back ‘any nations, any groups’ fighting Israel
Iran will help any nation or group that confronts the “cancer” Israel, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday.
The London Telegraph got it right:
Iran: We will help ‘cut out the cancer of Israel’
Iran will help anyone willing to “cut out the cancer” of Israel, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today.
The Telegraph is using the AP story. They rewrote it to emphasize the points the AP thought were worth burying. Remember that next time some AP editor puts in the weasel words that Hamas “denies” getting support from Iran, or some idiot pundit tries to ell you that Hamas is not working under Iranian orders.
And now that we’ve gotten the war of the words out of the way, here’s Barry Rubin on why neither Israel nor the U.S. are going to bomb Iran.
If Israel attacks Iran now, does that mean Iran would never get nuclear weapons? No, it would merely postpone that outcome for at most a year or two more than it would take otherwise. And then it would ensure an all-out, endless bloody war thereafter.
If Israel attacks Iranian nuclear installations, would that ensure future peace between the two countries? Would it make it less likely that the Tehran regime uses such weapons to strike at Israel in the future? No. On the contrary, it would have the exact opposite effect. Again, it would ensure direct warfare between the two countries and make Iran’s use of nuclear weapons against Israel 100 percent probable.
I’ll put my faith in Barry Rubin. He’s one of the best Israel analysts on the planet.