Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON (IPS) - New arguments by analysts close to Israeli thinking in favor of US strikes against Iran cite evidence of Iranian military weakness in relation to the US and Israel and even raise doubts that Iran is rushing to obtain such weapons at all. The new arguments contradict Israel’s official argument that it faces an “existential threat” from an Islamic extremist Iranian regime determined to get nuclear weapons.

When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week at the Herzliya conference that Israel could not risk another “existential threat” such as the Nazi holocaust, he was repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel’s campaign against Iran — that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel. The internal assessment by the Israeli national security apparatus of the Iranian threat, however, is more realistic than the government’s public rhetoric would indicate.