I don’t want to alarm you or anything — well, actually, I do want to alarm you, albeit not unduly. I want to share something with you, a little news item that just came over the wires:
An Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites may become likelier in 2012 if Israel calculates it has more room to act alone in a U.S. presidential election year, a former U.S. official and nuclear diplomacy expert said.
Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran watcher at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, told Reuters the latest report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog made him more worried that Iran was closer to mastering how to use nuclear power as a weapon.
“When you consider that next year being the U.S. presidential election year, and the dynamics of politics in the United States, this could increase Israel’s inclination to take matters into its own hands,” Fitzpatrick said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might not necessarily ask President Barack Obama for permission to mount a strike, Fitzpatrick said, if Israel believed Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon or place one in a site out of reach. Netanyahu said on Sunday Iran was closer to getting an atomic bomb than had been thought.
“The most likely possibility is that Mr. Netanyahu calls up Obama and says: ‘I’m not asking for a green light, I’m just telling you that we’ve just launched the planes, don’t shoot them down,’” Fitzpatrick said. “And in a U.S. presidential election year, I think it’s unlikely that Obama would shoot them down.”
Think of what a war with Iran would mean: a regional war that would send oil prices shooting to over $200 a barrel, a worldwide economic meltdown of already shaky markets, huge losses of U.S. troops still in Iraq, an increased threat of terrorism directed at America, and the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe.
Is this our impending fate?
We at Antiwar.com are fighting every waking hour to prevent this disaster before it happens, but we can’t do it without your help. Every page of our site is a refutation of the War Party’s lies, a daily debunking of the war propaganda that clogs the airwaves and seems to permeate the very air we breathe. Our writers, our researchers, and the core of our audience are an Army of Peace, locked in eternal combat with the War Party. Our big problem is that the battlefield is hardly level: ours is an uphill march against a very well-funded and well-connected enemy. We need your financial support to continue our work — work that is ever more vital as the threat of war with Iran increases. And it is increasing every day.
Please donate as much as you can, as soon as you can. Your generous support is the only chance we have to spread our message of peace, and stop this march to war.
In peace and liberty,
Justin Raimondo
Editorial Director
Antiwar.com
P.S. Antiwar.com’s Week in Review will return on Friday, December 2.
