Elections Raise Israel-Iran Tensions

By Laura Fawaz, TMO

The war of words between Iran and Israel is now a war of assassination attempts; headlines today read “National security analysts believe Israel’s government is giving serious consideration to an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months.”

It seems though, that with each presidential election campaigning nominees use this as means of flexing their muscles of international politics.  Though Americans seem to understand more the cascading affect of military, political and economic consequence that any action would trigger.

After the repercussions of Iraq, and American troops still in Afghanistan for over a decade, the talks of Iran being “next” has often been muttered.  Though at the center of all this is Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran denies is even aimed at developing weapons. 

And still, “Israel will decide for itself whether to strike Iran,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Barack Obama at his visit to the White House last week.  “My supreme responsibility as Prime Minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate,” he told Obama.

Washington, on the other hand, is pressuring Tel Aviv to hold off on what it considers would be a premature and dangerous attack on Iran, arguing that economic sanctions require time to take hold.  But Israel may have already decided to proceed with a military action against Iranian nuclear facilities. 

When it comes to Israel and Iran, all that is being said and done is mostly verbal.  This is due to the fact that Israel may feel they have clock that’s ticking, though most of this is bluffing.  According to Jeffrey Goldberg who writes extensively about Israel and Iran for Bloomberg and The Atlantic, part of this, as he puts it, “is to convince the world, hey, you better deal seriously with this problem or we’ll deal with it in a much more serious fashion.”  Almost in a sense that Israel feels they must over-dramatize the danger they feel so that America, once again, can come in and take care of Israel’s problem; all this while continuing to bankrupt the American citizens.

Although it must be said, that for all bombings around the Eastern world Israeli says Iran is behind it, and Iran says Israel is behind the abductions of their nuclear scientists.  Goldberg continued with stating that the Iranians look at the world in the following way: Libya, which gave up its nuclear program, was as he put it, “crushed by the West.” 

20 years later, the assassination attempts of the war of words between Iran and Israel continues.  Will we continue to hear more threats and plans by every politician until the end of next January’s elections, and then see no action?  Or will this shift towards yet another region?

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