Will Trump play the ultimate card by attacking Iran's nuclear infrastructure to prevent Biden from restoring the horrible Iran nuclear deal? What flows from that threat?
Israel Defense Forces have been preparing for the possibility that the U.S. military will strike Iran during the last two months of President Trump's term, according to a report.
This comes a week after the New York Times reported that Trump asked senior advisers about his options to strike Iran's main nuclear site after international inspectors reported details about a significant increase in the Iran's stockpile of nuclear material.
There is no intelligence that indicates an imminent U.S. strike but Israeli officials anticipate that the coming weeks will be “a very sensitive period," according to Axios.
Are the Saudis and Israelis really discussing how to cope with an American strike, as the article speculates?
Or are the Israelis and Saudis coordinating on how to launch a joint operation to hit Iran's nuclear facilities while Trump is in office to shield them in the international community?
I will say that it annoys me that Democrats claim that the awful Iran nuclear deal prevented Iran from going nuclear and that pulling out of the deal allows Iran to go nuclear.
In fact, the deal expired in stages and after 15 years of shielding Iran from attack, enabling Iranian cheating by giving Iran benefits up front and caving in to Iranian threats to leave the deal if called on their cheating. The incentives to ignore cheating was clear. And the deal actually helped Iran with basic nuclear technology, as I noted when I first looked at the nuclear deal:
Fordow can be used for enrichment research as long as it doesn't use nuclear material. I assume Iran can learn a lot from this that is applicable to nuclear technology. And I guess the West is supposed to help since we commit to "international collaboration in the form of scientific joint partnerships."
Which will be of use when all international limits and scrutiny on Iran's nuclear program end, according to the deal.
The horrible deal actually rested on the flimsy objective that the deal would turn mullah-run Iran into a successful and responsible regional power that would not violate international norms and that by implication would not want nukes. Yes, the deal's flaw of opening the path to nukes would not be taken by Iran because of Obama's goodness lessons.
The Iranians demonstrated quickly that they had no intention of being responsible as part of being a successful regional power.
Indeed, Israel demonstrated that Iran wants nukes and the deal is not an obstacle to that objective. So that expiration is important.
As I argued well before the deal was signed, the basic premise of the deal was always clear to me: Iran's mullah rulers would pretend not to want nuclear weapons; and America would pretend to believe them.
If there is to be military action against Iran in the next two months to stop Iran's obvious nuclear weapon ambition, I'll say it will be Israeli-Saudi action and a Gulf Arab shield in the Persian Gulf to block Iranian retaliation against oil traffic; with the threat of American military action a red herring and reserve to protect oil traffic. If so, expect some American military deployments that appear to telegraph an American attack but which really increase our ability to maintain oil flows (and guard American forces in the region against Iranian attack).
Israel has had a long time to think outside the box on how to hit Iran. Heck, is that nuclear box even needed?
Although crippling Iran's physical infrastructure leaves the scientists able to rebuild. So maybe another dead scientist is a prequel to the kinetics:
The scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was described by U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments as the force behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program. News reports in Iran say he died after being attacked in a vehicle.
Time has given Israel better weapons plus Gulf Arab cooperation and friendship based on mutual fear of Iran. A further development is plentiful global oil supplies to blunt the Iranian oil flow weapon.
Would the incoming Biden administration pledge not to restore an Iran nuclear deal--which if restored would damage the Arab-Israeli peace path forged on shared fear of Iran--to prevent such an attack to keep some path to an Iran Reset 2.0 open?
UPDATE: Holy Process ranks high for Biden. We'll see if the threat of holy Hell trumps it.
UPDATE: An American carrier returned to the Persian Gulf. Given what I feel about putting big ships in the Gulf, I doubt this is intended to attack Iran. But it is a shiny object that draws attention.
UPDATE: Trump is pushing more peace in the Middle East. The Trump administration really needs to explain to the Saudis and others that if they want to cement the anti-Iran alliance and make it Biden proof, they have to get on board now and normalize relations with Israel.
