Ray McGovern: Israel Likely to Strike Iran Before November!

More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel's leaders are planning to attack Iran before the US election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without US military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful. At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Obama warning Israel not to count on US forces,, not even for the "clean-up." Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election. However, Obama's silence regarding a public warning speaks volumes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu. The recent pilgrimages to Israel by very senior US officials, including Secretaries of State and Defense carrying identical "Please Don't Bomb Iran Just Yet" banners, has met stony faces and stone walls. Like the Guns of August in 1914, the dynamic for war appears inexorable. Senior US and Israeli officials focus publicly on a "window of opportunity," but different ones. On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney emphasized the need to allow the "most stringent sanctions ever imposed on any country time to work." That, said Carney, is the "window of opportunity to persuade Iran to forgo its nuclear weapons ambitions." That same day, a National Security Council spokesman dismissed Israeli claims that US intelligence had received alarming new information about Iran's nuclear program. "We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon," the spokesman said. Still, Israel's window of opportunity, what it calls the "zone of immunity" for Iran building a nuclear bomb without Israel alone being able to prevent it, is ostensibly focused on Iran's continued burrowing under mountains, to render its nuclear facilities immune to Israeli air strikes, attacks that would seek to maintain Israel's regional nuclear weapons monopoly.