There's nothing new in the lengthy Sunday Times report on Israel's plans to attack Iran.
What is interesting, though, is the timing of the report - following a similar one, less noticed perhaps, two days earlier in The Spectator. What both reports have in common, aside from their timing, is that they both highlight the possibility that Israel might use neutron bombs and that both were written by veteran journalists with Israeli connections.
That brings to mind another less well-known Israeli capability: planting false stories in prestigious foreign publications to serve hidden interests.
There are still valid arguments for Israel going ahead with a military operation against Iran, perhaps even a non-conventional one. But the current leadership, which is still reeling from the Lebanon war and which prefers Sderot to suffer a couple of Kassams a day to getting entangled in another bloody operation in Gaza, is hardly the leadership to take Israel into a daring operation so far away.
Ouch! I hope the both current and the former Ehuds are reading this.
Instead the government would prefer to rely on the vague promises of US President George W. Bush that he won't leave office in two years with the Iranian threat still intact. But since the US cooperated with the ineffectual watered-down Security Council sanctions resolution that was finally passed last month, Israeli fears have grown that the administration has lost the stomach for another front in the Middle East. Perhaps a few stories of the crazy Israelis' plans to go it themselves, and even use some of their own nukes in the process, might convince the Americans that it would be better if they did the job themselves.
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