An Israeli-Iranian Nuclear War Is Portended by 2016
Thursday, Oct. 12, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert called together the national intelligence service chiefs and five senior ministers for a discussion on the Iranian nuclear threat in the light of Monday’s North Korean nuclear test.
The conference ended with the routine decision to leave the problem in the hands of “the international community.”
The seven-day Succoth festival of 2006 which ends Sunday will go down as a black week for Israel. Syrian president Bashar Asad stated explicitly that a war is unavoidable between Syria and Israel. It is common knowledge that Asad would not have been so forthcoming without Tehran’s blessing.
Hizballah continued to rearm while lurking uncomfortably close to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The Palestinian Hamas and al Qaeda-Palestine went on amassing arms and explosives in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas interior minister Siad Siyam was made welcome by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran and promised training and hardware for his men.
North Korea’s nuclear test struck at the deterrent effect of Israel’s secrecy-shrouded nuclear arsenal, as well as that of its protector, the United States.
The Israeli government’s failure to rise to these multiple challenges is the most glaring event of the week.
The national discourse was fixated on petty wrangling over the expansion of Olmert’s government coalition, quibbling over the proper response to the Syrian ruler’s threats and the sex scandal surrounding the President.
Middle East watchers, not all of them friendly to the Jewish state, have taken note that only two months ago, Israel suffered serious military reverses in the Lebanon war against the Hizballah. In a few short weeks, the Jewish state has been shorn of key elements of its deterrent strength while suffering a shortage of competent national leadership.
Iran‘s race for a nuke has gone too far to stop
Russian president Vladimir Putin has no doubt been well briefed by his defense minister Sergei Ivanov and secret services chiefs on Israel’s strategic situation in advance of Olmert’s visit to Moscow on October 18.
A glimpse of the Russian intelligence evaluation of Israel’s situation was offered at a conference held on the Greek island of Rhodes on Sept. 28.
Titled The International Conference on Dialogue among Civilizations, it was addressed notably by Evgeny Satanovsky, the President of one of the leading Jewish organizations in Russia, the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC).
Satanovsky also happens to be the president of a lesser known organization, a small think tank called the Moscow Institute for the Study of Israel and the Middle East, which often invites American and Israeli politicians, journalists and academics for lectures.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources who keep track of Moscow’s Middle East policies believe that the Moscow Institute often unofficially represents the views of influential circles in the Kremlin. Therefore, when Satanovsky spoke about Israel’s future in the nuclear age which is dawning in the Middle East during his lecture at the Rhodes conference, the better informed members of the audience sat up.
They heard Satanovsky sum up his lecture with three conclusions:
1. Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon can no longer be halted.
2. Even if it is attacked, the Islamic Republic will stick to this course.
3. Within the next decade, a nuclear war will break out between Iran and Israel. Satanovsky did not say so explicitly, but he intimated that little would be left by this conflict of Israeli-Jewish civilization in the Middle East.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources quoted members of the audience as being taken aback by the tone of the lecturer, which sounded more like a strategic briefing than an abstract academic treatise on the theme of the conference, the dialogue among civilizations.
His words were taken as representing Moscow’s view that Israel’s cities are in greater danger of nuclear assault than Seoul or Tokyo.
