more on Iran (and Syria and Israel and the U.S.)
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a new piece in the New Yorker , A Strike in the Dark: What did Israel bomb in Syria? covers two issues that I've been writing about: U.S-Israe-Syria relationship and U.S.-Israel-Iran relationship. He speculates that last year's mysterious Israeli attack on a Syria installation was an Israeli rehearsal for a strike against Israel which, he implies, will probably receive a "yellow light" from the Bush Administration: There is evidence that the preĆ«mptive raid on Syria was also meant as a warning about—and a model for—a preĆ«mptive attack on Iran. When I visited Israel this winter, Iran was the overriding concern among political and defense officials I spoke to—not Syria. There was palpable anger toward Washington, in the wake of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded, on behalf of the American intelligence community, that Iran is not now constructing a nuclear weapon. Many in Israel view Iran’s nuclear ambitions as...