Burning Fingers

On February 12, the Pentagon quietly declassified a top-secret 386-page Department of Defense document from 1987 detailing Israel's nuclear program has ever been officially and publically referenced by the U.S. authorities. In the declassified document, the Pentagon reveals supposed details about Israel’s deterrence capabilities, but it kept sections on France, Germany, and Italy classified. Those sections are blacked out in the document. The two main exceptions in the international media that wrote about the declassification at the time were the state-funded Iranian regime station Press TV and the state-funded Russian station RT.  Both these media were rumored to have been tipped off about this obscure report at the time by persons in Washington. (Both the RT and PressTV stories falsely claim that the U.S. gave Israel help in building a hydrogen bomb. This is incorrect.) Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation. The declassification is a serious breach of decades’ old understandings concerning this issue between Israel and its north American and certain European allies. The Pentagon’s February declassification coincided with intense pressure on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration, trying to force the Israeli prime minister to cancel a planned speech to Congress questioning the wisdom of a highly risky nuclear deal with the Iranian regime. However, in the past 24 hours several media in the U.S. and elsewhere have now chosen to report on the February declassification by the Pentagon. This coincides with stepped up efforts this week by the Obama administration to weaken Israel’s deterrent capabilities, including leaking to the Wall Street Journal incorrect allegations that Israel directly spies on the U.S.  An informed person connected to the government in Jerusalem, tells me:  “Over the years there have been backhanded references and comments made by individuals with some familiarity with this issue. But there has never before been any official description of the quality and capacity of installations. This kind of declassified document constitutes a whole different level of acknowledgement. It is part of a pattern of carefully controlled leaking of information which is very hard to attribute to a specific government agency or individual. Nevertheless it is clear what is happening. “The failure to maintain the degree of mature and cooperative discretion that officials from several governments have exercised up to now, marks a serious change in the code of conduct. It is not wise to draw attention to this issue because it would tend to destabilize the international order and encourage others to pursue nuclear capabilities.” The Pentagon declassification is not the first time the Obama administration has seemingly tried to curtail or control Israeli efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

In May 2011, the State Department revealed that the Israeli business tycoon brothers Sami and Yuli Ofer, were sending their cargo ships to Iran, as reported, for example, here in the Financial Times. 

The Sunday Times of London, again on the basis of tip-offs, reported on June 5, 2011 that cargo ships owned by a subsidiary of the Ofer Brothers Group were being used to shuttle Israeli agents and reconnaissance equipment into Iran.

According to the report, at least eight ships belonging to companies owned by the Ofer group docked in Iranian ports to load and offload cargo in the years prior to 2011, as Israel made substantive efforts (aided by some European countries) to slow down and hamper Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Sami Ofer died on June 2, 2011, three days before that report was published.

The full story of the Obama administration’s effort to undermine, and effectively attempt to take control of, Israel’s deterrent capabilities in various spheres is yet to be written. There have been several other aspects to these efforts.

Many might say that the Israeli government has had little choice but to turn for assistance to Congress and to persons in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities, who share Jerusalem’s intense concerns about the nature of the anticipated deal with the Iranian regime Obama seems determined to sign. Tom Gross 

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Israel had been spying on the nuclear talks between negotiating representatives of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. And that the information it had gleaned from that intelligence enterprise was shared with U.S. lawmakers to enable them to build their resistance against the emerging nuclear agreement that their president is so anxiously committed to reaching with the Iranians.

That report has evidently "baffled" the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. "I'm not aware of that at all" confessed John Boehmer, Speaker of the House. Had Israel indeed done any such thing the first individual to receive that purloined data would of course be Mr. Boehmer. So for the accusations levelled by the Obama administration against Israel to be true, it would mean, needless to say, that both Israel and the head of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are lying.

While the P5+1 group representing China, Russia, United States, France, Britain and Germany are doing their utmost to lead Iran to an agreement that would appear on the surface to meet the standards the international community has agreed that at the barest minimum would deter Iran from achieving its nuclear weapons breakout for a hoped-for decade, all the Sunni majority countries in the Middle East, plus Israel, are sitting on barbed tenterhooks of apprehension.

Israel, of course, has an arsenal of nuclear weapons and has possessed them for a considerable length of time, without publicly acknowledging that fact well known to the world at large. Israel's possession of those nuclear weapons has never posed a threat to the region, let alone the wider world. Had real fears about Israel's intentions respecting those nuclear warheads been a factor, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey and perhaps Egypt would long ago have initiated a similar program of their own.

Understanding Israel's need for those weapons as a purely deterrent factor with no intention of using them but as insurance that no belligerents would attempt to demolish the Jewish State for fear of their own annihilation appears to be a widespread, if unspoken understanding by her neighbours. The contemplation of Iran, with its hegemonic ambitions and doomsday theistic beliefs attaining nuclear weapons represents an altogether different scenario, one the other Middle East states will arm themselves against with their own nuclear programs.

And back to the charges leaked to the Wall Street Journal by White House sources of Israel's spying on the United States: "We do not spy on the United States" said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. "All the information we obtained is from a different side and not through the United States". Clearly, 'a different side' refers to sources within another of the P5+1's delegation to the talks. "I have never encountered anyone who breached this directive [not to spy on the U.S., directly or indirectly as an Israeli government policy] in the past two decades."

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, formerly military chief and head of military intelligence in Israel also noted that the United States had never directly complained to Israel that it suspected it was being spied upon. As would, said Mr. Yaalon, occur between friendly countries, if such had indeed been the case. 

The Wall Street Journal went on to state that White House officials had become aware -- and how else than by American intelligence spying on Israel -- that information had been acquired from confidential American briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe. This information, the White House officials claimed, was then shared with House Republicans hoping they would attempt to deter President Obama in his campaign of achieving his legacy moment in history.

"It's no secret that the Israelis spy on us. What's significant is that Israeli political leaders took intelligence and used it to push a political point of view", complained a U.S. official to The New York Times. Irrespective of the truth of what each side claims, Israel will be punished, and will continue to be punished for attempts to safeguard its house from the raging elements of Islamist fanaticism ripping apart the Middle East, as a foretaste of what is to come, should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.

And Israel's great good friend which has guaranteed it has Israel's back is busy undermining its security by all underhanded means available to them, through the Obama White House conspiracy to wreak vengeance on a nation and a head of state who had the unmitigated gall to think he knew more about the temper of the Middle East and the actors in the ongoing drama that is unfolding there than a Nobel Laureate for Peace.