"Will Israel & Obama bomb Iran this summer?"

I have just received the following note from a friend, who is generally very well informed on events in Washington, Tel Aviv and other Middle East capitals. I pass it on for comment.

A recent article in {Ha'aretz} by Amir Oren warned that ``between the end of June and Gates' retirement, and the end of September and Mullen's retirement, the danger that Netanyahu and [Ehud] Barak will aim at a surprise in Iran is especially great, especially since this would divert attention from the Palestinian issue.'' This warning of an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz and other locations has been buttressed by senior U.S. military and intelligence sources, who have warned, in the past 24 hours, that U.S. military forces have been conducting big contingency planning drills over the past several weeks, for a U.S. intervention, following Israeli strikes on targets in Iran. These sources say that a target date for such a joint Israel-U.S. attack on Iran would be July and August of this year.

First, on June 3, Britain's {Guardian} reported on an interview with recently retired Mossad head Meir Dagan, who attacked Netanyahu and Barak as ``irresponsible and reckless.'' ... Dagan told reporters that when he was head of Mossad, he and Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin and Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi could collectively veto any reckless behavior by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, but they have all been replaced by weaker figures who would not buck attack orders from the Prime Minister. ``I decided to speak because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure. Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak.''

Second, the Obama White House launched a panicked, clumsy preemptive attack this week against {New Yorker} magazine writer Seymour Hersh, to spike his June 6 article, ``Iran and the Bomb,'' which provided previously unpublished details of a 2011 updated National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear weapons program. The new NIE, updating the December 2007 NIE, concluded that there was still no compelling evidence that Iran had resumed its quest for nuclear weapons, which had been frozen in late 2003, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein....  DIA, in particular, assessed that the Iran nuclear weapons effort had been principally directed against Iraq--not Israel, and that the March 2003 invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein had taken the Iraq threat off the table, and Iran had shelved the nuclear weapons effort. Hersh quoted former DIA humint director Col. Patrick Lang that the intelligence community had ``refused to drink the Kool Aid this time.''... 

A senior U.S. intelligence official, after initially dismissing the imminent threat of an Israeli military strike on Iran, made a compelling case for why Israel might launch such an attack in the nearterm. If Israel concluded that the recent computer virus, which greatly disrupted the work at the Natanz facility, had been countered, and a new generation of centrifuges had been successfully installed, Iran could be 12-18 months away from a nuclear weapons breakout. That alone would suppress any Israeli institutional resistance to an attack on Iran. The source added that U.S. intelligence believes that Israel's military capabilities have been seriously diminished and that an Israeli attack on Natanz and other facilities would most likely do only minimum damage. Therefore, the U.S. would have only two options in the event of such an Israel attack: Sit it out and make it clear that the attack was not sanctioned by Washington, or launch U.S. military operations to ``finish the job.'' Contingency plans for the latter option are definitely in place, the source explained, and it would thus be up to President Obama to make the call. While there is no love lost between Obama and Netanyahu, Obama's decisions are all calibrated to ensure his 2012 reelection, and he would be very reluctant to buck the Israeli Lobby and leave Israel to fend for itself."