Dick Cheney warns of Israeli preemptive strike on Iran

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Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It is no secret that Israel has problems with Iran. Just last month I published an article about Israeli leaders pushing other Western nations to present a credible military threat to Iran and according to former Vice President under George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, this is nothing new.

Cheney revealed that, through meetings with a number of Israeli officials, the Israelis “correctly perceive Iran as a basic threat” and thus “will do whatever they have to do to guarantee their survival and security.”

Cheney’s assessment doesn’t seem too far off, especially given the heavy handed anti-Iranian rhetoric coming out of Israel as of late.

However, Cheney would not point to a specific Israeli leader saying, “I wouldn’t want to do that,” thereby implying that if he wanted to, he could “attribute it to any one particular Israeli leader” if he wanted to.

Obviously Cheney would have no interest in painting any Israeli leaders in a negative light given his tight relationship with Israel and his former position as a proxy for Israeli interests in the White House.

This proxy status was emphasized by his attempts to push the United States into bombing a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. When then President Bush refused to carry out the operation after other advisers did not approve, Israel went ahead and bombed the reactor instead.

Bush revealed this in his own memoir published last year by stating that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked the United States to bomb the suspected facility in Syria.

It appears the only thing that kept the United States from carrying out the wishes of Israel this time was disagreement among White House staffers.

The New York Times quoted Dick Cheney writing about a meeting on the potential bombing of the Syrian reactor, “I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor. But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

I find it a bit disturbing that, if the advisers had been more compliant with Israel’s request, we could have entered into yet another conflict without any good reason and without the approval of the American people.

I think this information coming from Cheney, which was covered by the Israeli news outlet Haaretz earlier today, gives some dark insight into how the Israeli-American partnership works behind the scenes.

Thankfully, in this case the advisers prevented an attack that had questionable grounds and even more questionable American interests at stake.

However, if Israel is able to convince Washington that Iran presents a threat to the West, we might be drawn into yet another conflict at the behest of our so-called ally in the Middle East.