Defense Secy Gates leaks details of Israel Air Force tactics against Iran's nuclear weapons

Israel-based analyst, DebkaFile reports on an alleged Pentagon role in leaking details of the Israel Defense Force's (IDF's) tactical preparations for destroying Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities.

US Pentagon sources report that more than 100 Air Force F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuver over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June. The maneuver included helicopters used for rescuing downed pilots and refueling tankers. They flew 1,440 km, roughly the distance between Israel and the Iranian uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

Israel officials declined to comment on the exercise, the IDF saying only that the air force trains regularly for various missions in order to meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel. Israel must be ready for a possible war with Iran in the near future. This conflict could erupt on three additional fronts, Syria, Hezballah and Hamas.

Of interest, too, is the probable motive behind the US Defense Department’s leak to the world media of the Israel Air Force maneuver and its presentation as an exercise to simulate an attack on Iran.

According to DEBKAfile’s informants, US defense secretary Robert Gates is adamantly opposed to American military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities and even more so to Israel going it alone, which this publicity was intended to pre-empt.

Why? Is the Bush administration, fresh from promising their defense support at the Knesset just weeks ago, concerned about perceived Republican political liability for providing Iraqi airspace to Israeli jets prior to Election Day? Or are they hoping to leave a clean record until the Bush regime has departed the White House, thwarting the Israelis until the next administration in late January? Any other ideas?

Update: Uproar, military alerts, oil price surge over apparent Israeli air drill for Iran attack June 21, 2008, 1:12 AM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that an oil price surge of 5 percent to $135.92 was triggered by the report leaked by US government officials of an Israeli air force drill over Greece for an apparent strike against Iran, Friday, June 20. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered a war alert in the Revolutionary Guards and armed forces, with the Israeli and US Gulf forces following suit.
Tehran made no immediate comment, while Iranian leaders were reported puzzled by the Bush administration’s motives in leaking the report to the New York Times.

The most extreme reaction came from the UN nuclear watchdog’s director Mohamad ElBaradei, who threatened to resign if there was a military strike on Iran, warning such an attack would turn the region into a “fireball.”

“A military strike would be worse than anything possible,” he warned. “..it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build them…”

Russian foreign minister Sergei Ivanov maintained that neither Israel nor the United States had produced proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons and said the issue must be dealt with by diplomacy and talks with Tehran.

The American UN ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad agreed. While stating the view that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would be “unacceptable,” he stressed:
"We're in the phase of diplomacy; we want a diplomatic settlement of this issue. The ball is frankly in Iran's court."

DEBKAfile’s political sources comment that if a reported air maneuver simulating an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities raised so much international, financial and military dust, how much more extreme would the world response be to a real attack.

The Greek Air force confirmed its participation in the Israeli military exercise held three weeks ago, but did not confirm the claim by Washington officials that it was a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran. The Greek source stated no ground targets were involved as the drill was mainly aimed at personnel training. It was the first large-scale exercise between Israel and the air force of Greece, a member of NATO.

UP to 40 Israeli Air force F-15 and F-16 warplanes were based at the Greek Air Force Station at Souda on the southern Mediterranean island of Crete for the duration of the exercise, said the source.

Al-Qaida nuclear attack in planning stages

New Delhi TV News' Lalit K. Jha reports:

Al-Qaida's nuclear attack against the US is in planning stages, top American intelligence officials have said. (Among others) Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the director of Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence for the Department of Energy testified before the Congressional committee on Congressional Committee on Homeland Security on April 2.

Mowatt-Larssen said the US successes against Taliban in Afghanistan have yielded volumes of information that completely changed its view of Al-Qaida's nuclear program. ''We learned that Al-Qaida wants a weapon to use, not a weapon to sustain and build a stockpile, as most states would,'' he said.

'The nuclear threats that surfaced in June 2002 and continued through the fall of 2003 demonstrated that Al-Qaida's desire for a nuclear capability may have survived their removal from their Afghanistan safe haven,'' he said.

Observing that the Al-Qaida's nuclear intent remains clear, he said it obtained a fatwa in May 2003 that approved the use of weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaida spokesman Suleyman Abu Ghayth declared that it is Al-Qaida's right to kill four million Americans in retaliation for Muslim deaths that Al-Qaida blames on the United States.

''Osama bin Laden said in 1998 that it was an Islamic duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, bin Laden reiterated his statement that Al-Qaida will return to the United States.

He said Al-Qaida has a track record of returning to finish a job they started. They failed at the World Trade Center in 1993. They came back in 2001. They canceled plans for chemical attacks in the US in 2003. ''We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next, but our past experience strongly suggests they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11,'' he said.

''To delve a little into how they may be thinking about the nuclear option, at any given moment, Al-Qaida probably has attack plans in development. Nine-eleven was planned when the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen and when our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania were attacked in Africa,'' he said.

Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why NOT!"

Prof. David Selbourne of Oxford, England- from the London Times (truncated):

1. The extent of political division in the non-Muslim world about what is afoot.

2. The strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a “religion of peace” nor a “religion hijacked” or “perverted” by “the few”... It is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Islam’s rule. Such belief therefore makes an absurdity of the project to “democratise” Muslim nations in the West’s interests, an inversion that Islam cannot accept and, in its own terms, rightly so. It renders naive, too, the distinction between the military and political wings of Islamic movements...

3. The low level of Western leadership, in particular in the United States.

4. The contribution to the disarray of Western policy-making being made by the egotistical competitiveness, and in some cases hysterics, of “experts” and commentators on Islam.

5. The confusion of “progressives” about the Islamic advance- misunderstand(ing) the inner strength of Islam’s revival, which is owed not to victimhood but to advancing confidence in its own belief system.

6. The vicarious satisfaction felt by many non-Muslims at America’s reverses. Others believe their refusal of support for the war with Islam, if there is such a war, is a righteous one. But the consequences are the same: Islam’s advance is being borne along by Muslims and non-Muslims together.

7. The moral poverty of the West’s, and especially America’s, own value system. Doctrines of market freedom, free choice and competition — or “freedom ’n’ liberty” — are no match for the ethics of Islam and Sharia, like them or not.

8. The skilful use being made of the media and of the world wide web in the service both of the “electronic jihad” and the bamboozling of Western opinion by Muslim spokesmen.

9. The West’s dependency on the material resources of Arab and Muslim countries.

10. The West is convinced that its notions of technology-driven modernity and market-driven prog- ress are innately superior to the ideals of “backward” Islam. This is an old delusion. In 1899, Winston Churchill asserted that there was “no stronger retrograde force in the world” than Islam.

David Selbourne is the author of "The Losing Battle with Islam"