Obama: If sanctions fail, ‘Israel is going to strike Iran.’
By on Jul 30th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Obama: If sanctions fail, ‘Israel is going to strike Iran.’
During a meeting with House Democrats yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama reportedly told the caucus: “Nobody said this to me directly but I get the feeling from my talks that if the sanctions don’t work Israel is going to strike Iran.” Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) asked Obama how he would deal with Iran. “If the Iranians don’t accept a deal now because they think they’re going to get a better deal from the next president, they’re mistaken,” Obama responded. Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak “has told top U.S. officials that Israel won’t rule out a military strike against Iran.”
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Well folks. If this does happen (and I think it will) — Cheney will get his wish: WWIII.
You think things are bad now, just wait.
$12 a gallon of gas.
This is a Wet Dream for all of the War Profiteers.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:17 amIsrael is a terrorist nation.
The United Fascist States of a America is a terrorist naiton.
Iran is not.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:23 amWhy do I get this bad feeling that SP gets a chubby at the thought of WW III?
July 30th, 2008 at 10:23 amWhat’s the basis for this “feeling”?
a. the monthlong revolving door of Israeli military big wigs in and out of the Pentagon
b. America shoring up Iran’s missile defense systems in relatively short order
c. escalation of rhetoric between Israeli and Iranian leaders
d. Bush’s delaying a law provision requiring him to show what military assets move in and out of Iraq.
e. While Afghanistan deteriorates, the Pentagon refuses to mobilize its CentCom strategic reserves to defeat the Taliban. The reason? “Instability in the region”.
The play is already choreagraphed. Israel leads, America follows to mop up and contain blowback. It’s more than a feeling…
July 30th, 2008 at 10:23 amOccupying Iraq was needed to get to Iran. Figure it out.
Our Imbecilic Leaders
July 30th, 2008 at 10:26 am“Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) asked Obama how he would deal with Iran.”
Nobody asked Obama how he would deal with Israel if it pre-emptively, preventedly attacked Iran??????
July 30th, 2008 at 10:27 amI fail to see the real threat of any Country having a nuclear bomb. The Russians, the US, et al have had them for years with nothing happening but a bunch of atom wagging. Aside from the fact that a delivery system fasted than a speeding camel is required and, for the most part non-existent, there is always the small problem of retaliation. The only way that can be prevented is to make a simultaneous strike on every Country that has the capability for a retaliatory strike. If that feat is accomplished, which would entail making most of the globe radioactive, then the problem of fall-out arises. In short, any nuclear first strike by other than the US or Israel with US backing is suicidal to the point of total annihilation of all life on the planet. Even the Terrists, except for George WTF and Dick (not because his front name is Richard) are not that stupid.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:27 amHANG ON A SEC!
From the WashPo link:
Rep. Shelly Berkley (D-Nev.) said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) asked Obama about his stance on the current state of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. “If the Iranians don’t accept a deal now because they think they’re going to get a better deal from the next president, they’re mistaken,” Obama responded, according to Berkley.
That looks like ‘Chinese whispers’ to me and Faiz, I’d say in the interest of succinctness you’ve accidentally taken a misstep.
Obama’s second-hand reported response suggests to me that a)Obama is in total agreement with whatever terms Bush is offering the Iranians
b) that Obama is privy to those terms, and
c) when Obama becomes President the terms will be no different and therefore the response, should they not accept, will be no different than what Bush has been threatening for two years now.
None of this sounds consistent with Obama’s rhetoric and apparent philosophy and as it was delivered to a Democratic crowd, inconsistent with the general Democratic approach to such issues.
So either Obama is as hawkish as Bush on Iran or this third hand account. despite being from a Democratic source, is highly distorted.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:32 amCrusty
You are assuming that people act rationally. People who are in a hurry to bring on the rapture don’t fit into that category. We have a prez who thinks God wants him to be prez. Iran has a prez who is either the greatest performance artist in history or is batsh1t crazy. Not a good combination. As for Obama’s comments, I take nothing away except that he doesn’t want to be accused of submarining diplomacy by holding out the hope of a better deal for Iran. Doesn’t say a thing about what he will really do.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:35 amI know this is a Hill-Dog site, but it’s beginning to smell like fear in here.
You’ve gone out of your way to post articles questioning Obama, but during the primaries Hill-Dog didn’t even get mentioned.
5 posts on Goodling in one day, but none on Kucinich’s impeachment article.
C’mon, TP, CNN is doing a great job at being the new Fox, are you trying to follow in their footsteps?
July 30th, 2008 at 10:40 amGood Morning all, a couple of month’s ago Obama said he would back Israel 100%, that was during another saber ratteling week by Israel…A week that this old witch went balistick BTW…It seem’s to me far to many people are projecting their far fetched hope’s and dream’s on a candidate that is further right than I can accept..Peace, Blessings, Justice.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:40 amIf Obama want to be diplomatic, he’s soft on Iran. If he issues a statement standing firm against their nuclear program, he’s now a war-monger.
These right wing nut jobs are just incapable of giving this man any credit. Oh well, when your brainwashed by Limpballs and the rest, what do you expect?
Also, I have to agree with Crusty. I too see no harm in Iran having nukes. How on earth would they attack US Soil? They have no means to get a bomb here, except perhaps a suitcase bomb. And if that is what really worries the right wing pant pissing cowards, than why on Earth are they not all up in arms of the huge nuclear material black market in the former Soviet satellites? This is where a terrorist is going to get their hands material that could make a bomb that could be smuggled onto our soil. Given that Bu$h really hasn’t made any effort whatsoever to secure our ports and borders, this seems the most likely scenerio.
face it people, the only reason why we are worried about iran’s nukes is because of Israel.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:42 amOne of a politician’s favorite words during a campaign is “change.” The way I see it is the more things change the more they stay the same.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:47 amExclusive to STR
January 31, 2007
In the first fierce day of war, when coordinated air strikes on Iranian targets destroyed most of the Iranian air force and navy, the US military appeared invincible again. Wrecking a second-rate military power does that for an imperial war machine.
By the second day of the war, however, most American and Iranian citizens wished for peace. Unfortunately, wars are always easier to get into than out of. While the war planners in the Pentagon and Israel had devised a workable plan to force Iran into war, using a fake attack on US warships by Iranian gunboats (as the faked Tonkin Gulf attack initiated the Vietnam War), the US Navy fared far worse than the planners wished.
In 1987-88, during the First US-Iran Gulf war, the combined US Navy, Navy Seals, Marines and Army copters easily destroyed the navy of Iran in a single day. Yet Iranian gunboats continued to harass US shipping in that undeclared war, culminating in the USS Vincennes shooting down an unarmed Iranian jumbo jet while in Iran water.
Nearly 20 years later, after being armed with Russian and Chinese weapons, the Iranian defensive forces proved far more capable than the civilian wizards at the Pentagon predicted. Before the war, the chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said the advanced missile system served “to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message.”
By the second day, the message became clearer: Iran was no longer the pushover of years past. The combined effect of Sunburn, Exocet and Yakhonts missiles striking several US Navy ships fleeing the fishbowl of the Persian Gulf was an unforgettable sight. So unforgettable that CNN and Fox chose not to show them.
According to Mark Gaffney: “At the time of the Falklands war the Argentine air force possessed only five Exocets, yet managed to sink two ships. With enough of them, the Argentineans might have sunk the entire British fleet, and won the war.”
By contrast, the Iranians, cognizant of their defeat at the hands of the Iraqi and US forces in 1987-88, aware of the twin threat from Israel and the US, had focused heavily on defensive weaponry, supplied to them by Russian and Chinese manufacturers.
“The Russian SS-N-22.Sunburn (Moskit), which technical journals and experts have termed the most effective and lethal anti-ship weapon extant, is far cheaper to produce than a fighter plane or a missile destroyer, cruiser or aircraft carrier,” wrote Gaffney before the war. To make matters worse for US Navymen, the Russians provided the SS-NX-26 Yakhonts anti-ship missiles to Iran, reported to possess Mach 2.9 speed and a range of 180 miles.
The width of the Persian Gulf? 100-180 miles.
The immediate closure of the Persian Gulf to oil tankers from six nations provided a huge boost to peace advocates. By the second day of the war with Iran, with US Navy ships ablaze and sinking, with dire forecasts of worldwide fuel shortages, with gas prices spiking at $10 a gallon in some places, with increasing calls for impeachment appearing in the mainstream media, with environmentalist decrying the spread of radiation from the bomb blasted atomic sites in Iran, suddenly the neocon-sponsored war with Iran no longer seemed like such a good idea.
Despite the claimed success of the pre-emptive attack on Iran, despite the round-the-clock appearances of neocons on most US news channels, the fallout from the war, both in Iran and America, had become exceedingly toxic.
By the middle of the second day, with reports of missile strikes on the Green Zone, the media spin became harder to control. The glorious flag-waving patriotism that followed 911 and the approach of the Iraq War never materialized. Along the smalltown streets of America, fewer folks unfurled a flag. Instead, lines of panicked motorists, faces stricken by the new reality of another war, a war they had chosen to ignore for so long, unfurled into every gas station in America as a frightened mob. Most rushed to the pumps with a single thought in mind: I am going to fill my SUV to the top and woe be to anyone who tries to stop me.
Predictably the price of platinum, gold and silver rose. Gold topped $1000 an ounce while silver, the poor man’s gold, approached $50. Predictably, the US dollar fell, as nations as diverse as China and Kuwait began dumping greenbacks for gold. Predictably, most stocks not related to war industries tumbled. Housing starts dipped and sales dried up.
And all because of an ill-conceived war designed by a few Israel-centric US leaders with lots to gain and little to lose.
The retaliatory strikes by US carrier-based fighter planes that struck the Iranian oil platforms along Bandar Abbas and left them ablaze never appeared on American television. Likewise the attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran by Israeli and US warplanes. These were purely punitive attacks by US Navy fliers in revenge for ship losses in the Persian Gulf. The war with Iran had become a retaliatory war, a war of attrition, by the second day.
Yet throughout the Middle East, the television coverage by Al Jazeera of bomb damage to bridges, waterworks, power stations and oil platforms–not to mention schools, mosques and houses—only served to drive a wider wedge between US and their few remaining Islamic and European allies.
Throughout the first week, while US and Israeli fighter bombers attacked Iran at will, suffering an occasional loss, Iranian missiles rained down on US troops huddled in semi-permanent bases in Iraq. Resistance in Iraq grew as the war with Iran waxed and waned and US casualties rose.
Meanwhile another sort of war raged at home, another unexpected resistance. The American public, too long acquiescent, took to the streets, took to campuses, courthouses and public squares, loud, outrageous and strong. Uncivil disobedience, a public strength the powerful always feared, had returned to America three decades later.
The White House threatened to mobilize troops to handle dissidents at home, but Keith Olbermann asked President Bush: “Sir, from where do you intend to get those troops?”
Public support for the Iraq and Iran wars and support for the Bush administration fell to record lows. In Congress, the docile, do-nothing Democrats proved less adversarial than the tougher Republicans. But in the streets, where the fate of any nation thrives or dies, the spirit of Americans grew angrier and angrier. For each spike in crude prices, each report of new losses, each report of new atrocities inflicted on Iran, the calls for a change became cruder and more violent.
The first to fall, surprisingly, was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Imams, wielding real power in Iran, disapproved of the increasingly bellicose stance of Ahmadinejad and the destruction of the war, forcing his resignation.
Later in the week, calls for the impeachment of George Bush forced a brokered peace deal and a hurried vote by the House of Representatives passing articles of impeachment by an overwhelming majority.
The US Senate, under as much fire as the troops in Iraq, dragged their feet but the words “High Crimes” began to filter into their brains by the end of the first week of the war.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:50 amCO Bastard:
For all the rhetoric over the years the US and the USSR never launched, the Indians and the Pakistanis never launched, China never launched against the US on Vietnam.
Dozens of countries can claim to be a “nuclear power” by dint of having nuclear power-stations.
If Iran were to launch a nuclear strike against Israel, they’d also destroy major Islamic holy sites—how the heck would the Mullah’s justify that to the rabidly faithful ( or indeed to the more secular Iranians who would surely appreciate the simple stupidity of such an action)?
Iran doesn;t have a nuclear weapon, Israel has around 150 by most estimates, and it is THEY who are talking about bombing Iran (though they aren’t talking about a nuclear strike)even though they haven’t been directly attacked. Bush was allowed to set that precedent.
It’s all a lot of bollocks!
July 30th, 2008 at 10:53 am#15 Mr. Evil, the way I see it what they really mean is we the people have to change…FISA and all the other crap coming down the pike is proof posative..War’s with out end, rising price’s and corrupt polatician’s shoving their way’s down our throat’s….No matter the out cry of the people we are being forced to accept the huge war complex instigated of late by Israel…..No word of Peace any where just more war….Blessings
July 30th, 2008 at 10:55 amI agree with paleolib and citizen-pain in that the world seems to be dominated by the fringe idiots. That is the major problem with the increasing population and the bell-curve distribution theory. There undoubtedly comes the time, and we are unfortunately living in that time, when the inmates start running the asylum. The good side is that that same phenomenon that allows those outside the three sigma limits their rare fifteen minutes of ill fame will eventually put the keepers back in charge. We have less than 100 days before that happens here. Obama won’t have to deal with a hostile Iran because Iran is hostile only because of the Terrists in this Country–the war mongering Rethuglicans.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am5th Estate Says: “CO Bastard”
I like Crusty better!
July 30th, 2008 at 11:03 amHold up.
How can Sen. Obama make partners with Israel without knowing top secret facts?
July 30th, 2008 at 11:04 am“If the Iranians don’t accept a deal now because they think they’re going to get a better deal from the next president, they’re mistaken,” Obama responded.
When is Obama going to realize that talking like a Republican isn’t going to get him elected. The more he sounds like McCain, the more likely McCain will win.
http://progressiveworldreview.com
July 30th, 2008 at 11:07 amWhere’s Hagee & Lieberman when you need them?
July 30th, 2008 at 11:09 amIsrael – not just for Jews anymore
#22:
When is Obama going to realize that talking like a Republican isn’t going to get him elected. The more he sounds like McCain, the more likely McCain will win.
I could not agree more.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:13 am5th Estate says:
(though they aren’t talking about a nuclear strike)
For what it’s worth:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1290331.ece
I say nuclear weapons FOR ALL! Let’s just put an end to this failed human experiement and start over. Can’t be any worse than what we now consider the “civilized world”.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:19 amNot without explicit approval and authorization will Israel do anything of the sort…
July 30th, 2008 at 11:22 amSee Obama’s tacit consent???
Expect a new wave of global anti-Semitism if Israel attacks Iran and worldwide oil prices skyrocket. Economic hard times bring out the worst in people. Even people who aren’t anti Israel now will blame Jews for the global economic hard times that will follow. Iran will attack the oil facilities and shipments from in Saudi Arabia, since Saudi Arabia is the friend of the USA and the USA is the unconditional friend of Israel. Israel will have no one but themselves to blame it.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:22 amAnd Iraq will need more than a “surge” to contain the Shi’ite violence from Iran sympathizers.
Feel a draft, anyone?
‘Crusty’ it is then! Right you are!
July 30th, 2008 at 11:23 amisrael understands its role as a us base in the middle east, even if most murkins don’t
July 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am#25 lokidog…
Yeah, I left that out of my comment because I was discussing things in terms of all out nuclear war basically (like US v USSR) , not selective use of nukes.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:32 amThe reality is of course that if Israel is planning on definitively destroying just the nuclear facilities then a low yield nuke is all they’ve got to have a good shot at being successful.
Where does McWhiner stand on this? Has he asked Hagee yet?
July 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pmWe don’t hear a word from the idiot. Obama is acting as if he were already the President of the US (a democrat-turned-republican president). The idiot is laughing behind the curtains at the mess he started with the criminal invasion of Iraq. Neither Obama nor McCain can bail out this country from the mess it has gotten into. They are puppets dancing to the tune of higher order. They’ll do as they are told. And for us americans and the economy things will get pretty nasty here at home. The best we can do is prepare and stop paying so much attention to controlled manipulated puppet politicians.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:42 pmIf Israel thinks attacking Iran is going to be a cakewalk, they’re sadly mistaken. Iran has spent the last half-decade beefing up their defense capabilities thanks to $100+/gallon oil, and our removal of their two arch enemies, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And all Iran has to do to truly start World War III is close the Strait of Hormuz and cut off oil shipments from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.
This is going to get real messy real fast.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:43 pmObama seems to have morphed into just another trash-talking imperial war-monger. So now, in November, in our so-called free elections, we are offered a choice between McBombBombBombIran and OhZionistsWillStrikeIran? What is Bob Barr’s position on wars of imperisl aggression? Or just write in Rep. Ron Paul; he is against all this imperial madness…
July 30th, 2008 at 1:26 pmCalm down — don’t get upset over hypotheticals.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:52 pmIf you are disappointed in what Obama has implied, what do you think Hillary Clinton would be saying?
Clinton demonstrated she is a hawk in the same league as any Republican today – before you get all bent out of shape regarding Obama, just pause and consider who is his audience, and he is not in charge yet. Congress is the body to declare war.
Let us not forget that Hillery did not vote for FISA….I am not nor was a fan of her’s but atleast she didn’t vote against our constitutional right’s…Blessings
July 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pmObama has just de-fused Republican Attack ads, with his statement:
American Jews will play a key role in the U.S election. While Obama will likely win the Jewish vote by a large margin and win most of those states with the largest Jewish populations (NY, NJ, MA, IL, and CA), the Jewish community could be a key swing constituency in at least 4 key swing states – PA, OH, MI and FL. Watch for both candidates to target the Jewish vote in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit and South Florida. The Republicans know that most of the Jewish vote is an overwhelmingly Democratic vote based primarily on domestic issues, but they are trying to use Israel as a wedge issue to peel off Jewish votes. President Bush tried to do this in May when he spoke to the Israeli Knesset and implied that Obama would “appease” Iran.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/30/1623/29073/861/559524
July 30th, 2008 at 4:59 pmAll Obama said was he thinks Israel will strike Iran, he didn’t say we would strike Iran. Besides, remember what Hillary said on national television about striking Iran?
July 30th, 2008 at 6:38 pm