'Mounting Evidence Suggests Israeli Strike On Iran Approaching'

This is another very interesting update from Joel Rosenberg and it is hard to argue with his logic. I also believe a big event between Iran and Israel is approaching:

Joel Rosenberg: Mounting Evidence Suggests Israeli Strike On Iran Approaching

 Evidence is mounting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly prepared to order a massive preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Here’s why:

1. Iran aggressively pursuing two routes to nuclear weaponry, one via uranium enrichment, the other via plutonium.
2. Thus, Iran is steadily approaching the “red line,” the point at which Netanyahu has said Israel would have no choice but to strike.
3. Officials in Jerusalem do not see the Obama administration taking decisive action to prevent Iran from getting The Bomb.
4. To the contrary, Israel sees President Obama and Secretary John Kerry weakening their resolve and opening the door to indefinite negotiations with the new Rouhani administration, which they perceive as “moderate.”
5. Israeli military leaders believe they have the operational capabilities to destroy — or at least seriously damage — Iran’s nuclear program, but they have a shortening window of time, after which the task would be beyond Israel’s capabilities.

Israeli officials at the highest levels were telling me that Iran was dangerously close to the “red line” and that they were ready to go to war, but that they were waiting for any signs that the West — and specifically the U.S. — were going to take meaningful action. 

However, not only has President Obama refused to take such action, his administration is going in the opposite direction. The White House is resisting tougher economic sanctions. It is lauding the emergence of a “moderate” like Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s new president. It is offering an olive branch to Rouhani, actively opening the door to many more months of diplomatic negotiations. It is doing so even though the Ayatollah Khamenei — the true power in Iran — has shown no sign he is willing to back down from pursuing The Bomb, and even though Rouhani’s claim to fame was that as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, he fooled the world into believing that Iran was not advancing its nuclear program from 2003 to 2005 when the truth was Iran was, in fact, aggressively building its nuclear capacities.

• In recent months, U.S. and European officials say, the Tehran regime has made significant advances on the construction of a heavy water reactor in the northwestern city of Arak. A reactor like the one under construction is capable of using the uranium fuel to produce 40 megawatts of power. Spent fuel from it contains plutonium—which, like enriched uranium, can serve as the raw material for an explosive device. India and Pakistan have built plutonium-based bombs, as has North Korea.
• The Arak facility, when completed, will be capable of producing two nuclear bombs’ worth of plutonium a year, said U.S. and U.N. officials.
• Iran has notified the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, that it plans to make the reactor operational by the second half of 2014 and could begin testing it later this year.
• The IAEA has been monitoring Arak since its construction began. But following Iran’s latest timeline, the site’s importance has vastly shot up for Washington and Brussels, said U.S. and European officials. “It really crept up on us,” said an official based at the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters.

• “The Arak heavy water nuclear reactor in Iran will be capable of producing two nuclear bombs’ worth of weapons grade plutonium a year and will be capable of producing the material by next summer, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that cited US, UN and EU officials…..
• ‘There’s no question that the reactor and its heavy water are more vulnerable targets than the enrichment plants,’ the report quoted Gary Samore as saying, a former top adviser on nuclear issues to US President Barack Obama. ‘This could be another factor in [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu’s calculations in deciding how long to wait before launching military operations,’ Samore added.
• The report cited current and former US officials who said an Israeli strike on Arak would likely have to take place prior to Iran introducing nuclear materials into the facility, in order to prevent an enormous environmental disaster.”

Bottom Line: I pray war isn’t necessary and that somehow Iran is stopped from building and deploying operational nuclear weapons before it’s too late. War is not inevitable. But it does appear increasingly likely, especially if Israel perceives American resolve weakening in light of the Rouhani rise to power. Let us be faithful in praying for peace, but preparing for the possibility of war.