Israel 'Scratching Its Head' After U.S. Leaks

Israel Scratching Its Head After U.S. Officials (Again) Leak Syria Strike

In the wake of Israeli media reports about “anger” in Jerusalem over American leaks to CNN and The New York Times regarding an alleged Israeli attack in Syria this month, official sources clarified to The Times of Israel Monday that “there is no anger toward the administration.”

Still, according to the sources, Israel is trying to understand how and why it happened: why twice in the past two months American media ran reports — based on tips from US officials — that could get Israel caught up in a military conflict with Syria. According to the same sources, there is also disappointment among decision-makers regarding the conduct of the American media. But again, they stressed, “there’s no anger.”

According to the reports in CNN and The New York Times, Israeli warplanes targeted a Syrian naval base in Latakia earlier this month and destroyed a warehouse full of Russian-made anti-ship missiles that may have been bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

There are two, conflicting assessments in Jerusalem as to the source of the leaks. One suggests that they come from groups interested in deeper US involvement in the fighting in Syria. Through such leaks, those groups are trying to show that, just as Israel has managed to avoid getting sucked into the fighting in Syria, the American military can do the same while still achieving meaningful intervention. This despite assessments in the Pentagon that military involvement — to impose a no-fly zone, for instance — would require hundreds of aerial sorties and even boots on the ground.

The second Israeli assessment holds that those who oppose American involvement in the fighting in Syria are trying to send the message that such a campaign is unnecessary, since for the time being Israel is striking critical targets; and that an attempt to topple the government in Syria could bring to power a government even more extreme than the one in Damascus today.

The Israeli officials pointed out that despite the leaks, there’s a noticeable effort by the Syrian regime to emphasize that the incident in Latakia wasn’t an Israeli attack. The Syrians underscored in reports published over the past few days that “No foreign army was involved in the explosions, and there was no action from the air or from the sea,” as some Western and Arab media outlets claimed.

President Assad is apparently trying desperately to avoid being forced into standing by his promise from two months ago that he would respond militarily against Israel if it attacks Syria again.

Also see:

John Bolton: Israel Should Have Attacked Iran

[John Bolton provides for some interesting information in this article]

“Israel should have attacked Iran yesterday – every day that goes by puts Israel in greater danger, every day Iran makes more progress,” John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday.

“I can understand why Israel wants us to take action, but the longer Israel waits for something that is not going to happen, the greater the danger Israel is in,” the senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute said.

The US and Israel cannot expect to have perfect intelligence about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but if Israel attacked Iran after it gained that capability, there could be “nuclear retaliation,” he said.

Bolton believes that the election of Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president will serve as a trap for the US, which will lull it into a false sense of security and more negotiations, inevitably leading to a nuclear Iran.

One can already see this by the reaction of the EU and the White House to Rouhani’s election, he said.

“The idea that Rouhani will negotiate seriously shows that this administration is on a different planet.”

There have been more than 10 years of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and it has just kept building “a broad and deep infrastructure,” he said.

“Rouhani is a snare for the unwary and we fell right into it,” said Bolton asserting that the main difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the “moderate” president-elect is only rhetorical.