Israel is ready to strike Iran's nuclear facilities in the event that May 23 nuclear talks in Baghdad fail to bear results, daily Milliyet reported today.
Milliyet's report cited Israeli broadcaster Channel 10 as its source, which claims to have interviewed Israeli military officers in recent weeks to reveal the details of a planned attack on Iran.
Israeli forces are carrying out more special operations beyond the country’s borders and will be ready to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, Gaza and Lebanon if ordered, the chief-of-staff said in an interview on Sunday.
In an extract from an interview with the top-selling Yediot Aharanot daily, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said that 2012 would be a critical year in efforts to halt what Israel and much of the international community believe is an Iranian nuclear arms program.
“We think that a nuclear Iran is a very bad thing, which the world needs to stop and which Israel needs to stop ─ and we are planning accordingly,” Gantz said.
“In principle, we are ready to act.
“That does not mean that I will now order (air force chief) Ido (Nehushtan) to strike Iran,” he added in the interview which will be published in full on Wednesday, on the eve of Israel’s 64th anniversary as a state.
Regarding the likelihood of a war breaking out this year, Gantz said: “Our intelligence assessment asserts that given the strategic reality and instability in the region, the chance of deteriorating to a war is higher than in the past. There are no indications of war, but the chances of the situation deteriorating into one are higher than in the past.
A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands during the next fortnight states that Russian diplomats were “stunned” after being told by their Japanese counterparts that upwards of 40 million of their peoples were in “extreme danger” of life threatening radiation poisoning and could very well likely be faced with forced evacuations away from their countries eastern most located cities… including the world’s largest one, Tokyo.
Important to note, this report continues, are that Japanese diplomats told their Russian counterparts that they were, also, “seriously considering” an offer by China to relocate tens of millions of their citizens to the Chinese mainland to inhabit what are called the “ghost cities,” built for reasons still unknown and described, in part, by London’s Daily Mail News Service in their 18 December 2010 article titled: “The Ghost Towns Of China: Amazing Satellite Images Show Cities Meant To Be Home To Millions Lying Deserted” that says:
“These amazing satellite images show sprawling cities built in remote parts of China that have been left completely abandoned, sometimes years after their construction. Elaborate public buildings and open spaces are completely unused, with the exception of a few government vehicles near communist authority offices. Some estimates put the number of empty homes at as many as 64 million, with up to 20 new cities being built every year in the country’s vast swathes of free land.”
Ben-David said that if negotiations break down, and Iran moves key parts of its nuclear program underground to its Qom facility, the IAF “is likely to get the order and to set out on the long journey to Iran.”
“Years of preparations are likely to come to realization,” he said, adding that “the moment of truth is near.”
The attack, the report said, would presumably trigger a war in northern Israel, with missile attacks (presumably from the Iranian-proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon). “There will be no tranquility and peace anywhere in Israel,” Ben-David said.
This could be the first full-scale war the IAF has fought in nearly 30 years, the report stated.
Pilots had already been told where their families would be moved, away from their bases, for safety, the report said.
Such a scenario — played out and predicted increasingly by war game strategists — looms large as the decade-long diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program appears to be drawing to an end.
Talks between Iran and six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany — scheduled to begin in Istanbul next Friday could be the last chance to avoid full-fledged conflict.
If the talks fail, the Middle East could plunge into a regional war before the year is out.
Lt. Col. Oliver North says the administration will do everything it can to avoid an Israeli attack on a potentially nuclear Iran in order to keep President Barack Obama “out of trouble until November.” North also told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday the administration has a “naïve utopian hope” that Israel and the Palestinians can reach a peace accord, thereby ending the worldwide Islamist extremist threat.
