{"id":296085,"date":"2024-10-04T06:49:53","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T06:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=296085"},"modified":"2024-10-05T07:15:14","modified_gmt":"2024-10-05T07:15:14","slug":"israel-may-launch-symbolic-attack-on-iran-nuclear-facilities-says-ehud-barak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=296085","title":{"rendered":"Israel may launch \u2018symbolic\u2019 attack on Iran nuclear facilities, says Ehud Barak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julian Borger \u2013 The Guardian Oct 4, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Ehud Barak. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Israel is likely to mount a large-scale airstrike against Iran\u2019s oil industry and possibly a symbolic attack on a military target related to its nuclear programme, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak<\/a> has predicted.<\/p>\n

Barak said there was no doubt there would be an Israeli military response to Iran\u2019s assault<\/a> on Tuesday with over 180 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted, but some landed on and around densely populated areas and Israeli military bases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has a compelling need, even an imperative, to respond. I think that no sovereign nation on Earth could fail to respond,\u201d Barak said in an interview.<\/p>\n

The former prime minister, who also served as defence minister, foreign minister and army chief of staff, said the model for the Israeli response could be seen in Sunday\u2019s reprisal airstrikes against Houthi-controlled oil facilities, power plants and docks in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, a day after Houthi fired missiles aimed at Israel\u2019s international airport outside Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we might see something like that. It might be a massive attack, and it could be repeated more than once,\u201d he told the Guardian. Joe Biden said on Thursday<\/a> there had been discussions in Washington about a possible Israeli attack on Iran\u2019s oil sector, but it not give any details or make clear whether the US would support such an assault.<\/p>\n

Barak, now aged 82, said there had also been suggestions in Israel that it should make use of this opportunity, in reprisal for the Iranian attack, to bomb Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, but he argued it would not significantly set back the Iranian programme.<\/p>\n

When Barak served as defence minister from 2007 to 2013, under both Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, he was among Israel\u2019s most vociferous advocates<\/a> for bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, trying and failing to convince presidents George Bush and then Barack Obama, to contribute US military might to the campaign.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Biden followed Obama in voicing his opposition to any Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear sites<\/a>. And Barak himself now accepts the Iran nuclear programme is too far advanced for any bombing campaign to set it back significantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some commentators and even some people within the defence establishment who raised the question: Why the hell not hit the nuclear military programme?\u201d Barak said. \u201cA little bit more than a decade ago, I was probably the most hawkish person in Israeli leadership arguing that it was worth considering very seriously, because there was an actual capability to delay them by several years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the case right now, because Iran is a de facto threshold country,\u201d he argued. \u201cThey do not have yet a weapon \u2013 it may take them a year to have one, and even half a decade to have a small arsenal. Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, Tehran accepted tight restrictions on its uranium enrichment and other elements of its programme in exchange for sanctions relief, but that agreement has steadily fallen apart since the US withdrawal under Donald Trump<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n

Iran now has a stockpile of enriched uranium that is 30 times higher than the agreed 2015 limit, and it is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, which in terms of the additional processing required, is very close to 90% weapons grade fissile material. Under the 2015 agreement, Iran\u2019s \u201cbreakout time\u201d \u2013 the period it would need to produce a nuclear bomb \u2013 was at least a year. Now it is a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Barak believes there is pressure within the Netanyahu government for at least some symbolic strike against the Iranian programme, even though the former prime minister sees such a gesture as futile.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can cause certain damage, but even this might be perceived by some of the planners as worth the risk because the alternative is to sit idly by and do nothing,\u201d Barak said. \u201cSo probably there will be even an attempt to hit certain nuclear-related targets.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Barak believes that a significant Israeli military response to Tuesday night\u2019s Iranian military attack is now unavoidable and justifiable, he argues the drift to a regional war could have been averted much earlier, if Netanyahu had been open to a US-promoted plan to rally Arab support for a postwar Palestinian government in Gaza to replace Hamas. Instead, Israel\u2019s incumbent prime minister opposed any political \u201cday after\u201d solution that recognised Palestinian sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that a strong response is inevitable. That doesn\u2019t mean it was written in heaven a year ago that it\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Barak said. \u201cThere were probably several opportunities to limit this conflict before it turned into something like a full-scale Middle East clash. For reasons that cannot be explained under any strategic thought, Netanyahu rejected any kind of discussion of what we call \u2018the day after\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not put the blame for the whole event on Netanyahu. This is basically the fault of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them,\u201d Barak said. \u201cBut having said that, we have a responsibility to take action under a certain innate logic that understands the situation, the opportunity, and the constraints. There is an old Roman saying: \u2018If you don\u2019t know which port you want to reach, no wind will take you there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli former prime minister says that it is too late to significantly set back Tehran\u2019s nuclear program. Thus he believes that a \u2018massive\u2019 attack on Iran\u2019s oil facilities is likely. However it responds though, Israel WILL HAVE TO retaliate to Iran’s missile strikes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":46544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296085"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296088,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296085\/revisions\/296088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}