Israeli President says attack on Iran is increasingly likely

Shimon Peres

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Today the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, said that a military strike against Iran is growing increasingly likely by the day.

This comes just days before the report on Iran’s nuclear program is going to be released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations body.

Peres has been quite clear that the push for an attack on Iran is gaining steam saying that an attack on Iran was becoming “more and more likely” in an interview on Israel’s Channel Two on Saturday.

Peres made this even clearer in a statement to Israel’s Hayom, in which he said, “The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option”.

To make matters even worse for the world, Haaretz reported today that Israel is refusing to clear a military strike with the United States before it occurs. Panetta was reportedly seeking to coordinate U.S. efforts with Israeli efforts in combating the perceived threat of Iranian nuclear ambitions but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to provide a clear response, instead “answering vaguely and in general terms.”

Haaretz reports that American military officials had previously been confident that the U.S. would receive advance warning of an Israeli attack on Iran but now they are not so sure.

The IAEA report is supposedly going to reveal that Iran has indeed pursued the development of nuclear weapons including “experiments in the final stage for developing nuclear weapons including explosions and computer simulations of explosions”, according to Israeli news outlet Haaretz.

Leaks coming from anonymous sources in Vienna where the IAEA is headquartered claim that Iran has already carried out experiments in the critical stage of weaponization at the Parchin military base around 30 km outside of Tehran.

According to the leaks, the report will include documents and satellite photos that support the accusation that Iran is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons in violation of international agreements.

However, this type of satellite imagery intelligence is quite unreliable and easily falsifiable as we saw in the push to invade Iraq.

The claim of “satellite photos of the site [which] reveal a bus-sized container for conducting experiments” sounds eerily like the claims (which later turned out to be outright lies) made to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Haaretz reports that “The Associated Press and other media outlets” have reported on these alleged bus-sized containers although how they know a bus-sized container is a facility for conducting nuclear experiences is anyone’s guess.

The report is also supposedly going to reveal that Iran has started the installation of centrifuges in an underground nuclear facility near Qom.

This type of underground nuclear facility would give Iran a “second strike” capability because they are designed to absorb an aerial attack while still being able to fire back afterwards.

This is designed as a deterrence mechanism because countries without a second strike capability are at risk of being wiped out in one massive first strike without any means to retaliate.

The second strike capability makes a nuclear attack much less likely because it provides the attacker with the guarantee that they will be retaliated against if they decide to attack.

Of course this would require that Iran has nuclear weapons to begin with, an underground nuclear power plant unto itself is not dangerous and it would not represent a second strike capability.

I do not think it is either unlikely or wholly objectionable for Iran to develop a nuclear defense strategy against the looming threat of U.S.-U.K.-Israeli aggression, although the proof showing that Iran has indeed pursued a weapons program just isn’t there.

A second strike facility is not designed for an act of nuclear aggression and the facility near Qom is subject to IAEA inspections so it is unlikely that such a facility would be used as such.

Yet this information, if true, will surely be spun to give the impression that the facility is a threat to the world instead of a defensive measure.

Regardless, anonymous diplomats cited by Haaretz say that the governing board of the IAEA will likely not condemn Iran at the November 17th-18th meeting.

They say that it would likely take months to push China and Russia into supporting a resolution which could lead toward additional UN sanctions against Iran.

Both China and Russia have been very reluctant to support broadened sanctions against both Iran and Syria, given that historically speaking it would likely be the first step on the road towards Western military intervention.

Israeli Defense Minister Barak has denied the reports circulating that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu had already come to the decision that they would attack Iran.

I hope Barak is being honest and forthcoming, but my hope would be misguided if I did not temper it with reality.

In the following interview you can see Barak emphasize that “no option should be off the table” when dealing with the perceived Iranian threat.

Meanwhile, in Iran, the Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that the IAEA’s report was politicized and that the report would be “baseless”.

“I believe that these documents lack authenticity. But if they insist, they should go ahead and publish. Better to face danger once than be always in danger,” Salehi said.

“We have said repeatedly that their documents are baseless. For example one can counterfeit money, but it remains counterfeit. These documents are like that,” he added.

I truly hope that all of this posturing coming from Israel is just that but I think many people around the world agree that an assault on Iran by Israel, the U.S. and/or the U.K. would be devastating for us all.

As I have previously shown, Iran isn’t shying away from rattling their sabers either (evidenced by their threat to deploy ships of the U.S. East Coast), so we must hope that one side of this conflict doesn’t escalate, or else we can expect the other side to respond in kind.