ntv: Der Iran hat erstmals mit einer konkreten Zielnennung die Zerstörung Israels angekündigt. Das israelische Fernsehen zeigte ein Interview mit dem iranischen Generalstabschef Attalah Salihi. Er kündigte eine “Zerstörung Israels innerhalb von elf Tagen” an.
Der Arabienexperte Oded Granot erklärte dazu: “Noch nie haben wir eine so klare und offene Ankündigung des Iran gehört.” Zwar habe Präsiden Mahmoud Ahmadinedschad die Vernichtung Israels immer wieder “in großen Zügen und als politisches Ziel” angekündigt, doch noch nie so konkret und mit Zeitangabe, wie es Salihi getan habe. Offenbar ein Übersetzungsfehler. Was den Rest dieses Posts nicht weniger relevant macht.
Jpost: It is a strange situation when Egypt and Jordan feel it necessary to defend Israel against American criticism. But this is the situation in which we find ourselves today. [...] And Egypt and Jordan are not alone in supporting Israel’s commitment to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. American and other Western sources who have visited the Persian Gulf in recent months report that leaders of the Gulf states from Bahrain - which Iran refers to as its 14th province - to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and, of course, to Iraq - are praying for Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and only complain that it has waited so long to attack them.
As one American who recently met with Persian Gulf leaders explained last week, “As far as the Gulf leaders are concerned, Israel cannot attack Iran fast enough. They understand what the stakes are.”
UNFORTUNATELY, THE nature of those stakes has clearly eluded the Obama administration. As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.
Slate: From the standpoint of international relations theory, the scariest thing about recent Israeli rhetoric is that an attack on Iran lines up quite well with Israel’s rational interests as a superpower client.
While Israeli bluster is clearly calculated to push America to take a more aggressive stance toward Iran, that doesn’t mean the Israelis won’t actually attack if President Obama decides on a policy of engagement that leaves the Iranians with a viable nuclear option. In fact, the more you consider the rationality of an Israeli attack on Iran in the context of Israel’s relationship with its superpower patron, the more likely an attack appears. [...] The success of the American-Israeli alliance demands that both parties be active partners in a complex dance that involves a lot of play-acting—America pretends to rebuke Israel, just as Israel pretends to be restrained by American intervention from bombing Damascus or seizing the banks of the Euphrates. The instability of the U.S.-Israel relationship is therefore inherent in the terms of a patron-client relationship that requires managing a careful balance of Israeli strength and Israeli weakness. An Israel that runs roughshod over its neighbors is a liability to the United States—just as an Israel that lost the capacity to project destabilizing power throughout the region would quickly become worthless as a client.

A corollary of this basic point is that the weaker and more dependent Israel becomes, the more Israeli interests and American interests are likely to diverge. Stripped of its ability to take independent military action, Israel’s value to the United States can be seen to reside in its ability to give the Golan Heights back to Syria and to carve out a Palestinian state from the remaining territories it captured in 1967—after which it would be left with only the territories of the pre-1967 state to barter for a declining store of U.S. military credits, which Washington might prefer to spend on wooing Iran.
The untenable nature of this strategic calculus gives a cold-eyed academic analyst all the explanation she needs to explain Israel’s recent wars against Hezbollah and Hamas, its assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers, and its 2007 attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor. Israel’s attempts to restore its perceived capacity for game-changing independent military action are directed as much to its American patron as to its neighbors.

Laut einer umfangreichen CSIS-Studie wäre ein Angriff auf Irans Atomprogramm sowohl mit Flugzeugen als auch mit Raketen machbar. Die Risiken hängen wesentlich davon ab, ob die Shahab-3-Raketen Irans von der israelischen Abwehr abgefangen werden können, und in wiefern Israel Vergeltungen durch Hezbollah und Hamas vorbeugen kann. Ein Einsatz mit 92 Flugzeugen, die im Niemandsland über der syrisch-türkischen Grenze Betankungsmanöver fliegen, birgt davon unabhängig ebenfalls hohe Risiken.