Barak Confidant: Israel Has Decided To Attack – OpEd
Former Labor party minister, Uzi Baram, wrote a column in Yisrael HaYom today that urges Israel’s leadership to tell the people clearly what lies in store when they execute an expected attack on Iran. What is most striking about the article is this:
Recently, I’ve come to believe that the leaders of the State have decided to act [attack Iran].
A trusted Israeli source tells me that Baram learned this from none other than a close confidant of Ehud Barak. In other words, Barak has begun to tell his closest friends that Israel is going to war. Before hearing this, I thought chances of an Israeli attack were 70-30. Now I believe they are 85-15.
Another interesting focus of Baram’s article is the economic fallout that such an attack will generate. Though he speaks in terms familiar to anyone who’s read Meir Dagan’s warnings on this subject, the columnist focuses specifically on economic issues. He warns a strike will bring an end to international investment in Israeli business and a halt to the flourishing tourism industry:
Every Israeli citizen should know that what has been will not be in the future…It will mean the end of today’s Israel.
…It’s no secret what will happen. If we attack, the Iranians will respond in kind. The western and Muslim world, including Iran’s allies and enemies, will tighten the “siege belt” around us.
In effect, Baram is warning that a BDS-like state of siege will descend on Israel. It won’t be fueled by moral arguments against Occupation as the current BDS movement is. It will be fueled by an even more potent fuel: outrage at Israel’s aggression against Iran.
This article was published at Tikun Olam
If Netanyahu and Barack are going to war don’t you think what was in Press TV quoting you alerted the Iranians and if Israel going to war with Iran you may have made it much harder by spilling the beans (war plans) so to speak stating plans of Israeli Colonel. What kind of a Colonel is it that give away the plans for what should be a secret, surprise attack. YOU TOOK AWAY THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE and Israelis may suffer IF Israel goes to war with Iran.
Copy of article in Iran’s Press TV today August 16, 2012 follows next.
A US-based political writer claims he has access to a plan made by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for imminent military strike on Iran.
According to Israeli news website Ynet, Richard Silverstein claimed on August 15 that the war document was leaked to him by a “high-level Israeli source” who obtained it from a military officer and includes missile and aerial strikes, assassination of Iranian officials and a massive cyber attack that will paralyze the country’s electronic networks.
The supposed Israeli strike on Iran, he added, will include crippling Iran’s electricity grid and telecommunications network, firing tens of missiles to Iran from Israeli territory and submarines in the Persian Gulf, and bombarding the houses of top Iranian scientists and military commanders. The strike, Silverstein noted, will also involve cyber attacks to render Iran’s internet and telecom networks as well as radio and television, telecommunication satellites, and fiberoptic network dysfunctional.
Smart carbon-fiber weapons will also attack Iran’s power plants causing short-circuit which will stop their operations, he noted, while more missiles will target Arak nuclear reactor and other nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Fordow.
A number of Iranian officials have been also shortlisted for assassination by Israeli missiles, Silverstein said.
Iranian authorities have frequently downplayed Israeli threats of military action against the Islamic Republic, warning that in case the Zionist regime dares to launch such an attack, it will be reduced to rubble.
A number of senior Iranian military commanders have also emphasized that in case Israel and even the US launch any attack an Iran, the conflict is certain to spill into the entire region.
Following the first wave of attacks, according to the American analyst, “an Israeli radar satellite will pass over Iran and transfer information directly to warplanes making their way covertly toward Iran.”
These Israeli planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to Tel Aviv’s close ally, the United States, Silverstein said.
The Israeli report, according to the US analyst, concludes by claiming that among the targets of the aerial attacks “are Shahab 3 and Sejjil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.”
Iranian observers, however, insist that such reports are the continuation of a joint US-Israeli publicity and psywar campaign aimed at inciting fear among the Iranian public.
From Israeli Newspaper ‘Ynet’ on August 16, 2012