Special Report: A pressing foreign policy question of the U.S. presidential race is whether Israel might exploit this politically delicate time to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and force President Obama to join the attack or face defeat at the polls, a predicament with similarities to one President Carter faced in 1980, writes Robert Parry.
For decades, the debate about Israeli security has been far more robust in Israel than in the United States. The same holds true today as Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz challenges the government’s bellicose rhetoric on Iran while U.S. politicians and pundits pander or stay silent, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Israel’s latest saber-rattling over Iran’s nuclear program may be a pre-election strategy to coerce President Obama into a firm commitment that, if he’s re-elected and if Iran doesn’t destroy its own nuclear “capability,” he will authorize a U.S. military strike next year, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
Exclusive: As the clock ticks down to the U.S. elections in November, another clock is ticking in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, whether Israeli forces should exploit the American political timetable to pressure President Obama to support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Mitt Romney wants American Jewish voters to know he’s ready (if not eager) to back an Israeli preemptive war against Iran. Romney’s recent bellicose comments in Jerusalem add pressure on President Obama to escalate his support for an Israeli strike, too, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has kept President Obama behind a hard-line strategy on Iran’s nuclear program via lobbying pressure from Congress and Washington’s neocons. But a new member of the Israeli government is complicating matters, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
Exclusive: Hard-headed realism and outside-the-box thinking might be needed to avert another catastrophe in the Middle East, this time an Israeli attack on Iran and the unpredictable consequences. In that light, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern imagines a bleak report that an Iranian intelligence officer might send back to Tehran.
Israeli hardliners continue to block the compromises for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, while Jewish settlements keep expanding into land that would be part of a possible deal. Thus, the prospect for a meaningful two-state solution is dying, with dire consequences for both Arabs and Jews, writes Lawrence Davidson.
Exclusive: In the past week, several senior Israelis have criticized the extremism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward Iran and the Palestinians, but his American supporters continue to escalate their denunciations of anyone who won’t march in lockstep, as Robert Parry reports.
In Israel, the debate over bombing Iran has been tamped down by the belief in national security circles that Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu may be bluffing about going to war but that the bluff requires the world to think he may do it, Gareth Porter reports from Tel Aviv for Inter Press Service.
Towards an Investigative 'War Chest' -- To expand our coverage of issues of war and peace, we are trying to build a $100,000 "war chest," believing honest information is the best way to avoid war.
