Benjamin Netanyahu Is Revving Up the Bombers

Israel’s leadership publicly envisions an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, while Tehran is rebuking certain Gulf nations’ allegiance to Washington, who has pronounced itself ready to retaliate if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz.

We must fear the worst by the spring if Israel decides to execute its plan to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Persuaded without providing actual evidence that Iran will possess nuclear weapons one year from now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak now speak publicly of military action against Tehran. Israel has already been preparing itself for years: They have already been organizing aerial maneuvers over the Mediterranean, while American soldiers are already on the ground to install an antimissile defense system to protect Israel from an Iranian response. In light of this, last Monday’s attacks against Israeli embassies in India and Georgia, condemned by the United States and the European Union, only added to the strategic tension knowingly orchestrated over several years by Israel’s leaders. This is a way to divert the attention of global opinion regarding their politics of colonization of occupied Palestinian territories. One more war, as demonstrated by the experiences of Lebanon in 2006 and of Gaza in 2008-09, would relegate settlement of the Palestinian issue towards an uncertain future date.

A Severe Caution to Petromonarchies

The time chosen by Israel to threaten Iran is not happenstance. The oil embargo placed on Iran by the U.S. and the European Union, based on reinforcing economic sanctions and having the effects of lowering the value of Iran’s currency (the rial) and sharply raising prices, made tensions increase in several pockets of the region. The Iranians, who threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes nearly 40 percent of global oil, sent out earlier this week a severe warning to the Gulf petromonarchies: “We recommend to some of the countries in the region who sided with Saddam [Hussein] and now are siding with the U.S. plots against the Iranian nation to give it up…. Iran will not forgive them again. There will be consequences in the region if new plots against our nation are carried out,” warned Ali Larijani, President of the Iranian Parliament and influential member of Iran’s conservative party.

Qatar, who shares exploitation of an offshore gas field with Iran, has the most to lose. But the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait are also all positioned less than 30 miles from Iran’s borders and therefore within reach of the guns of the Pasdarans, Guardians of the Revolution. This warning is taken seriously by the United States command. The U.S. Navy, stationed off the coast of Iran, is in a state of alert. The vice-admiral Mark Fox, commander of the 5th fleet, declared yesterday from the American base in Manama, Bahrain that the U.S. Navy has “built a wide range of potential options to give the president” and that it is “ready today” to confront any hostile action from Tehran.

Whatever the case may be, it is amid the sounds of boots that Bahrain’s monarchy is about to see difficult days: One year after the start of an essentially Shiite popular movement was crushed by Saudi tanks, rebellion against the current regime has returned. Yesterday in Manama, the riot police brutally dispersed a protest of several thousand people chanting “Down with Hamad!”, the king of Bahrain.

Police Deployment in Tehran

Having nothing to do with the tension throughout the region, the opposition in Iran called for protests against Ahmadinejad’s regime in central Tehran. Last week, Tehran’s governor, Morteza Tamaddon, called these protests “publicity stunts” by opponents of the Islamic Revolution. This was on the occasion of the anniversary of the house arrest placed on two figures at the forefront of the reformist camp, Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi. On Feb. 14, 2011, an opposition protest had accumulated several thousand people to contest the controversial reelection of President Ahmadinejad in 2009. That day, the two leaders of the opposition called out support for revolutions in the Arab world and were arrested. In any event, huge police forces were deployed in the capital’s center yesterday. Foreign press members were prohibited from covering the protests.