The New York Times reports that Israel has conducted a series of exercises which appear to be a rehearsal for an attack on the Iranian Natanz reactor:
WASHINGTON — Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
As the NYT notes, this is signalling behavior:
“They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know,” the Pentagon official said. “There’s a lot of signaling going on at different levels.”
I’ve treated this subject at length and I continue to believe that an Israeli bombing attack on Iran is extremely unlikely. It certainly looks, however, as though the Israelis were trying to convince the Iranians that an attack is much more likely.
Among its many bad consequences, such an attack would give Iran complete justification for a retaliatory attack on Israel. Worst of all, unless Israel’s human intelligence on Iran is significantly better than ours (it may well be—ours is awful), there’s no way of knowing how much such an attack would retard Iran’s nuclear development program.
The only sure way to end Iran’s nuclear development program is by striking at command and control and in Iran that’s likely to be as dispersed as their nuclear development program is. That will mean attacking population centers, e.g. Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and so on, with the intent of killing as many people as possible. Never again, indeed.
译文:
警告行为
纽约时报报道,以色列在伊朗纳坦兹进行一系列模拟攻击演习.
华盛顿—美国官方认为，这个月初以色列进行大量的军事炮弹练习，其目的可能是要袭击伊朗的核设备基地。
几个美国官员表示，以色列演习是为了展示其在军事方面的实力完全可以进行长期袭击及证明伊朗核项目对于以色列的威胁程度。
美国官员还表示，以色列已投入超过100辆F-16及F-15型战斗机参加演习，在6月份第一个星期已经在东地中海及希腊上空演习过。
纽约时报报道，认为这是一种警告行为：
国防部官员说，“他们这样做是想大家知道，也想让欧洲知道，更想让伊朗知道，还有很多警告将以不同程度的方式继续。”
经过长期观察，我坚信以色列核炸弹袭击伊朗是极不必要的。但很明显以色列努力让伊朗相信袭击更有可能发生。
在众多负面影响中，袭击后伊朗完全有理由对以色列进行报复性攻击。最糟糕的是，除非以色列人的想法绝对高尚（也有可能是我们做了最坏的打算），根本不知道这样的袭击会很大阻碍伊朗的核项目发展。
唯一可以做的是通过自由控制袭击以终止伊朗核项目发展，在伊朗，这样的轰炸可能像核发展项目散布开。意味着可能轰炸人口众多的地方，如德黑兰，伊斯法罕，设拉子，等等，如果因为要阻止伊朗核项目发展而屠杀这么多无辜的人。事实上，这是绝对不允许。