....Israelis are acutely sensitive to US politics, and the Israeli media already express understanding for the acute dilemma that will face the US president if sanctions do not succeed in persuading Iran to abandon all enrichment (the Israeli objective). How might Israel see the way to help President Barack Obama resolve this dilemma - given the improbability that Israel will be given any "green light" to attack Iran directly, with all the consequences that such military action might entail for US interests in the region?
A recent article by the veteran and well-connected Israeli columnist, Alex Fishman, in the Hebrew language newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth, perhaps offers some insights into how Israelis may be speculating about such issues when he warns about "the approaching December winds”. These winds, Fishman tells us, will bring more and new revelations - not about Iran's nuclear ambitions - but about Syria's nuclear projects: the departure of Mohamed ElBaradei from the chair at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he states, will open the door to new IAEA demands to inspect two suspected nuclear sites in Syria.
Fishman notes that, following the surfacing last month in Germany of stories that Israeli special forces had been on the ground covertly in Syria, no one should be surprised if more evidence and photographs of the nuclear reactor, destroyed by Israeli air attack in September 2007, come to dominate the headlines in the Western press this December.
The "star" turn in this prospective public relations campaign is to be evidence proving a direct Iranian nuclear connection and finance for Syria's alleged nuclear project.
Fishman suggests that it suits "Israel's internal as well as foreign PR efforts" for the time being to play along with talk of peace between Israel and Syria; but that both the December campaign against Syria's alleged Iranian nuclear cooperation in the Western press, and the playing along with the Syrian peace track "are directly linked to negotiations" that the US is conducting with Iran. Fishman concludes that these could end in confrontation with Iran - "and also lead to a military strike", in which case, "whomsoever is in the Iranian camp will also get a pounding" - a reference to Syria.
Does this piece truly reflect Israeli thinking? We do not know; but Fishman certainly is well connected. Does the Israeli security establishment really conceive that the road to military action against Iran passes through Damascus? For those who recall the tacit support given by Europe and the US to Israel's 2007 surprise military attack on Syria, Fishman's scenario is not as unlikely as it may seem.
That earlier episode could easily have escalated to a wider war. More likely is that this is but one of a number of "game changing" scenarios that Israel is considering, but which ultimately all have Iran as the "end game".
In the past, Israel's political parties of the right had a reputation for conceiving unconventional military actions, which sought to transform and invert the political paradigm of that time. Such actions did not always wait on, or seek, a US "green light". There was not direct collusion with the US. Israeli leaders looked more to the direction of the political wind in Washington. It was viewed by Israelis historically as finding a creative way to help a US president "get to yes" - to borrow Obama's own phraseology - by creating the public support and momentum to let a US president feel pulled forward by sentiment from a need to "hold Israel back".
Is a new scandal of Iranian nuclear malfeasance and proliferation into Syria to serve as the pretext? Will a repeat of the 2007 air strikes on Syria lead to a wider conflict? Does the Israeli leadership think to ease Obama out of his Iran dilemma, by using the supposed "provocation" of a "Syrian-Iranian nuclear partnership" for a widening conflict? Perhaps we should beware these December "winds"?
Alastair Crooke is a co-director of the London-based Conflicts Forum.
