A Count Down for Iranian Strikes or a Serious Bluff is under Way!
October 23, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
A DEBKAfile Exclusive and Jerusalem Post Excerpt follow our lead in.
The first DEBKAfile Exclusive announced that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was carrying an urgent message to French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the effect that Iran had crossed the redline for developing a nuclear weapon. The second excerpt from the Jerusalem Post carries the reaction of Sarkozy to Olmert’s concerns after they conferred in Paris.
Events since the success of the Israeli jets in avoiding the sophisticated Russian air defense system in northern Syria, during their successful air strike, have left little doubt that Israel and the U.S. are quite serious in their intent to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat before it becomes operational.
My guess is that the big bad wolf bluff and carrot stick offer technique will be used for
the rest of this year and well into 2008, but I doubt if President Bush will leave this issue for someone else to solve.
If he does not take action and the next election is won by the Democrats, Israel will have to act alone in air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
If no action is taken against the Iranian nuclear facilities by air strikes, it is quite likely that Iran could have acquired as many as 12 deliverable nuclear warheads as early as 2010 or as late as 2014. When that many are obtained, I am guessing Iran will consider it is a sufficient deterrent to launch a conventional 10 Islamic nation attack against Israel, which will begin the last three and on-half years of the tribulation period.
Begin DEBKAfile Exclusive
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Olmert sounds alarm: Iran has crossed red line for developing a nuclear weapon.
It’s too late for sanctions
October 22, 2007, 2:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources.
Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.
Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.
Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.”
Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: “I don’t think we’re stretched in that regard.”
It is worth noting that whereas Olmert’s visits are officially tagged as part of Israel’s campaign for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.
The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard words exchanged between Putin and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct.
16.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that the latest development in Iran’s nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any longer; the clerical regime’s options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else facing tough sanctions, or even military action.
The Russian ruler’s private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.
Our sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putin’s dressing-down of Khamenei followed by his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardliners’s abrupt action in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi’s threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.
Our military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own.
Iran would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.
DEBKAfile’s US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a secret underground location.
Begin Jerusalem Post Excerpt
Sarkozy tells Olmert: Israel’s security isn’t up for discussion
Herb Keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST
October 22, 2007
Reflecting a dramatic, positive shift in the tone of Franco-Israeli ties, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emerged very upbeat from a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday, saying that the Israeli and French positions on the Iranian nuclear program were “identical.”
“I could not have expected to hear better things than I heard on the Iranian issue,” Olmert told reporters at a briefing after his 90-minute talk with Sarkozy.
Olmert’s satisfaction with the meeting was not limited to the Iranian issue, as – according to Olmert – Sarkozy said that Israel’s security was not a topic for discussion, and that “Israel’s establishment is a miracle and may have been the central event of the twentieth century.”
Furthermore, Sarkozy also reportedly told Olmert regarding the Palestinian claim to a right of return for Palestinian refugees that the Palestinians cannot demand a state for themselves and, in addition, “part of your country.”
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