When Meir Dagan speaks ...

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC13Ak01.html

Washington is still working through recent events pertaining to Iran's nuclear program and calls for attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to town recently to make his pro-war case to President Barack Obama and also to gatherings of pro-Israel groups.

He cannot have come away terribly pleased as Obama rebuffed him and insisted on more diplomacy. But the debate continues in the US media and in the ongoing presidential campaign. Netanyahu is mobilizing his forces to press the US into attacking Iran or supporting an Israeli strike. This, he argues, must be done before Iran's uranium enrichment facilities are transferred to sites burrowed well into mountains where they may be invulnerable to attack.

Nor can Netanyahu be pleased that former Mossad chief Meir
Dagan is speaking out in the US media - and in a manner more consistent with Obama's position of continued sanctions and diplomacy. Dagan is a seasoned observer of geopolitics and his words carry weight.

A few minutes with a Mossad chief

Meir Dagan appeared Sunday on the popular US program and political sounding board 60 Minutes, where he took on Netanyahu and much of the US and Israeli right, albeit obliquely. The interview was interspersed with photos and anecdotes establishing Dagan's strong military and security credentials and his likely association with a number of assassinations across the Middle East. He had already spoken out last year against war with Iran, calling it "the stupidest thing I have ever heard".

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1. Obama's 0% doctrine on Iran

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC13Ak02.html

When I was young, The Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble - dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: "In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin."

Those ads came to mind recently when US President Barack Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans - but just about nobody noticed.

I don't mean, of course, that nobody noticed the president's statements. Quite the contrary: They were headlined, chewed over in the press and by pundits. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum
and Newt Gingrich attacked them. Fox News highlighted their restraint. ("Obama calls for containing Iran, says 'too much loose talk of war'.&quot The Huffington Post highlighted the support for Israel they represented. ("Obama defends policies toward Israel, fends off partisan critiques.&quot Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against them in a potentially deadly US-Israeli dance that might bring new chaos to the Middle East. But somehow, amid all the headlines, commentary and analysis, few seemed to notice just what had really changed in our world.

The president had offered a new definition of "aggression" against this country and a new war doctrine to go with it. He would, he insisted, take the US to war not to stop another nation from attacking us or even threatening to do so, but simply to stop it from building a nuclear weapon - and he would act even if that country were incapable of targeting the United States. That should have been news.

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3. It's not often that I disagree with Tom, but I do here.

"All options are on the table" has always been about threatening with "death from above", and nukes. Obama is being clever and cute, but not asserting anything new in US military policy. We have always felt free to attack anybody we didn't like.

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4. oh i agree -- if we want to attack somebody we will.

we don't even need a good reason -- but oil somewhere nearby is nice.

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2. Well, Bibi got stuffed. That seems clear, for the moment.

I expect this won't help him politically, to have made such an effort and gotten stuffed.