merry xmas and a happy nuclear winter

Panetta Interview To Give Obama's `Green Light' to Israel to bomb Iran


Concern has been expressed about Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's ominous interview with CBS-TV News, which appears to give Israel a "green light" to bomb Iran. 

The interview shows a clear shift in Panetta's public statement of a U.S. "red line" on Iran, placing it at Israel's "red line", and without caveats as to consequences of starting an escalating war.

And although sufficiently threatening excerpts were put out today by CBS News, the full Panetta interview will be broadcast as a "60 Minutes" program -- on Christmas Day!

Panetta told CBS News Monday evening that Iran could "assemble a bomb within one year or potentially less" -- the "three quarters of a year" formulation of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak who just left the United States after meetings with Obama, Panetta, NSC head Tom Donilon, and Secretary of State Clinton. 

The U.S., said Panetta, "will take whatever steps necessary to stop it."

The following excerpt from the interview shows the change in Panetta's statements from just two weeks ago, when he warned on CBS that any attack on Iran would have severe economic repercussions worldwide.

[CBS News anchor Scott] Pelley: So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?

Panetta: It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less. But one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran [!] that may be enriching fuel.

Pelley: So that they can develop a weapon even more quickly...

Panetta: On a faster track....

Pelley: Than we believe....

Panetta: That's correct.

Pelley: If the Israelis decide to launch a military strike to prevent that weapon from being built, what sort of complications does that raise for you?

Panetta: Well, we share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.

Pelley: You just said if we have to do it, we will come and do it. What is "it"?

Panetta: If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.

Pelley: Including military steps?

Panetta: There are no options off the table.  (I suppose Obama, Netanyahu, and Amadindejad sitting yoga style in the center of Strawberry Fields sharing cups of tea is NOT off the table either?  ed.)

Pelley: A nuclear weapon in Iran is...

Panetta: Unacceptable.

Although Israeli media today were connecting Panetta's dangerous shift with the Barack-Barak meeting, qualified U.S. military and other sources suggest for more than two weeks that Obama was changing the U.S. stance on bombing Iran toward that of Israel's Netanyahu government. 

It was Obama who shifted Panetta's formulation towards "green light" for war.

But it is highly probable, these sources now say, that Barak carried a "secret dossier" to his meetings last week, of the "dodgy dossier" variety with which Tony Blair duped Colin Powell over Iraq.