SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: This plan was cooked up in Tel Aviv decades ago.

https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/2030276423697490431

Jonathan Cook

There is no clear rationale from Washington for its attack on Iran because the author of this attack is not to be found in either the White House or the Pentagon. This plan was cooked up in Tel Aviv decades ago. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, admitted as much last Sunday. He gloated: "This combined effort allows us to do what I have hoped to achieve for 40 years: to crush the regime of terror completely. That's my promise and this is what is going to happen." Those four decades, let us note, were also the timeframe for an endless series of warnings from Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that Tehran was only months away from developing a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu has been peddling this same urgent, nonsensical pretext for attacking Iran all that time. For 40 years, each year has been proclaimed the very last opportunity to stop the “mad mullahs” from obtaining a bomb – a bomb that never materialised. And all the while, Israel’s own arsenal of nuclear weapons, undeclared and therefore unmonitored, has been an open secret. Europe helped Israel develop its bomb, while the US turned a blind eye, even as Israeli leaders espoused a suicidal doctrine known as the “Samson Option“, which posited that Israel would rather detonate its nuclear arsenal than suffer a conventional military defeat. The Samson Option implicitly rejects the idea that any other state in the Middle East can be allowed to acquire a bomb and thereby level the military playing field with Israel. It is that very premise that, for decades, has guided Israeli policy towards Tehran. Not because Iran has shown an inclination to develop a weapon. Nor because its supposedly “mad mullahs” would be foolish enough to fire them at Israel were they ever to acquire them. No, it was for other reasons. Because Iran is the largest and most unified state in the region, one with a rich history, a strong cultural identity and a formidable intellectual tradition. Because Iran has repeatedly shown itself – whether under secular or religious leaders – unwilling to submit to western, and Israeli, colonial domination. And because it is looked to as a source of authority and leadership by Shia religious communities in neighbouring countries – Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen – that have a history of similarly refusing to bow to Israeli hegemony. Israel’s fear was that, were Iran to follow North Korea and acquire a nuclear weapon, Israel would be finished as the West’s most useful militarised client state in the oil-rich Middle East. Stripped of its ability to terrorise its neighbours, stoke sectarian division and help project US imperial power into the region, Israel would lose its rationale. It would become the ultimate white elephant. Israeli leaders – grown fat on endless military subsidies paid for by US taxpayers and given licence to plunder the Palestinians’ resources – were never going to willingly step off their gravy train. Which is why Iran has rarely been out of Israel’s sights. This is an extract from my latest article Israel planned this war on Iran for 40 years. Find a link to the rest in the reply post