Israel Hints at Possible Iran Strike

Several reports surfaced today that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a panel in Israel's parliament that no options are off the table when it comes to the country's efforts to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability. This is not the first time Olmert has alluded to the possible use of force against Iran. However, any preemptive strike against Iran by Israel is fraught with potential danger, not only for the Jewish state, but for the region. Any attack against Iranian nuclear facilities could throw the entire Middle East into chaos, and that is assuming such an attack could be successfully carried out.

Some analysts have speculated that any attack could mirror the Israeli strike against Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israeli bomber jets flew over Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi airspace and destroyed the reactor in an attack that lasted less than ninety seconds. The Iranians tried a similar attack against the Osirak reactor in 1980, but were able to inflict only minimal damage on the facility. But the dynamics of the region are different now, with U.S. forces present

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly asserted Iran's right to peaceful nuclear development, and Tehran has continued to work on uranium enrichment in spite of United Nations Security Council resolutions that have imposed economic sanctions on the country. The United States and its European allies have been pushing recently for a third round of tougher sanctions against Iran for its continued defiance of the United Nations.

The Israeli government disagreed with the findings of the recently released U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that concluded with high confidence that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The estimate also noted that the intelligence community could only say with moderate confidence that the weapons program had not been restarted in the years since 2003. Israel maintains that Iran poses a serious threat to its security and its survival as a nation. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise says that Iran has already developed non-nuclear missiles capable of reaching Israel, and that the development of a nuclear weapons capability could pose an indirect threat through regional proliferation.

Iran has been accused of instigating violence against Israel through its proxy militant organization, Hezbollah, a known terrorist group that frequently conducts attacks against Israeli civilians and Israeli Defense Force personnel. Iran has been a longtime benefactor of Hezbollah, supplying weapons and training to the group from bases inside Lebanon.

Sources: American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Federation of American Scientists