While anything is possible in the ongoing struggle between the Obama administration and the state of Israel, a high-level military source told PJ Media that today’s allegation — that an Israeli attack on Iran was supposedly imminent in 2014, but Obama warned Israel that U.S. jets would shoot down the Israelis if they attacked Iran’s nuclear installations — is not likely true.
More likely, the report, which emerged from Kuwait, is disinformation timed to discredit Prime Minister Netanyahu and make him seem a warmonger in advance of his address to Congress Tuesday.
The source stated that, since 2008, it is no longer possible for the U.S. to intercept Israeli jets flying over Southern Iraq, the normal route to Iran.
The U.S. simply does not have the facilities in place anymore, and if it were to get them, the “spin up” would be obvious to almost everyone, making it ineffective. Moreover, there have been many reports that Saudi Arabia has agreed to let the Israelis fly over their territory if they attacked Iran, making U.S. interception all the more difficult.
Still further, the source noted, it would be unclear if U.S. air force personnel would obey an order to attack their Israeli colleagues — some of whom they may have trained with. On top of that, the Israelis are often more experienced fighter pilots. The ones chosen to attack Iranian nuclear installations would undoubtedly be an elite team.
A more practical way for the U.S. to stop an Israeli attack would be for the administration to alert the Iranians in advance — something it could do without the knowledge of the Pentagon, the source said. The source also added, though, that no doubt the Israelis had already thought of that, and factored it in.
More importantly, newly retired Israeli chief-of-staff Benny Gantz just told Arutz Sheva that such an attack never happened.
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