Nb. Nowhere in the following Los Angeles Times article does the author mention that these strikes would probably have utilised the high-tech tactical nuclear weapons gifted to Israel by The Bush Administration (and the international community), ..If Israel "released the- jinni" of war with Iran itself it would be fully aware that there would be no way to reinsert it!
Quote: "Accounts published in Israel over the weekend suggest that Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to strike Iran more than once in
recent years but met with internal opposition.
On Friday, Israel's
Channel 2 news broadcast excerpts from a taped interview that former
Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave to the authors of his upcoming biography.
Barak, who served as defense minister in Netanyahu's second government
during 2009 and 2013, described three occasions from 2010 to 2012 when plans to strike Iran fell through for different reasons.
Israel's
top leaders at the time -- Netanyahu, Barak and then-Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman -- reportedly believed that Iran would soon enter a
"zone of immunity," beyond which a strike would be more complicated and
less effective. In advance of what would have been the next stage of
government decision-making, the three held a meeting with Israel's top
security chiefs, including the chief of staff and the heads of the
country's intelligence agencies: Mossad, Shin Bet and military
intelligence.
"At the decisive moment, the army's answer was that
[Israel's] cumulative capabilities did not pass the threshold of an
operation," Barak said in the interview with Danny Dor and Ilan Kfir,
authors of his new biography. In other words, the military was not ready
to strike Iran.
When the matter next came up in 2011, the
military's new chief of staff, Benny Gantz, said the army did have the
necessary capabilities and a wider security cabinet of eight ministers
was convened, according to Barak. At that point, he said, two of
Netanyahu's more hawkish ministers, Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz,
objected that the potential losses Israel could face were too great.
The
following year, plans coincided with a joint military exercise with the
United States and Israel did not want to implicate its important ally
and get into diplomatic trouble, Barak said. He added that he persuaded
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to postpone the exercise by several
months but that ultimately, the new timing was inconvenient as well.
Accurate or not, Barak's detailed account of such sensitive discussions caused anger and concern among Israeli leaders and defense observers.
Netanyahu's
office did not issue an official response. Defense Minister Moshe
Yaalon said in a statement that he would not comment on the matter,
particularly not on deliberately "distorted versions" of events. A
statement from Steinitz said he would not comment on matters discussed
in closed meetings and that he regarded revealing information from
cabinet meetings "very gravely."
The timing or purpose of the publication was not immediately clear and subject to speculation. Barak reportedly objected to
broadcasting the recordings and tried to prevent Channel 2 from airing
the sensitive tape, although he had given the interview willingly for
the book.
Tzahi Hanegbi, head of the parliament's Foreign Affairs
and Defense Committee, which oversees sensitive security discussions,
was surprised that military censors permitted the publication and said
he intended to summon the chief censor to the committee in the near
future.
"I can't understand what reasons could have possibly justified the publication," he told Israel Radio.
The
censor, entrusted with screening information for potential harm to
national security, often permits Israeli media to publish sensitive
information that appeared previously in foreign reports. According to
Hanegbi, however, 90% of what Barak said had not been published before
at all. He wouldn't say whether he believed that Barak had caused damage
to Israel's security but said the publication "does not serve Israel."
Interior
Minister Silvan Shalom expressed concern that sensitive discussions
could be tainted if security and political officials avoided speaking
their mind for fear of being "outed" in the media.
Most
sensitive material is cleared for publication after 30 years, although
some remains under wraps even longer. "If everything comes out of
intimate forums in two, three years, this changes the game rules
dramatically," Shalom said." Go to: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-reports-planned-attacks-iran-20150823-story.html
Infact studiously avoids mentioning nuclear weapons at all!
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