by Ray McGovern
"Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran.
This is of particular concern because Mullen has had considerable experience in putting the brakes on such Israeli plans in the past. This time, he appears convinced that the Israeli leaders did not take his warnings seriously -- notwithstanding the unusually strong language he put into play.
Upon arrival in Jerusalem on February 14, Mullen wasted no time in making clear why he had come. He insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences."....
But the Israelis turned the overture down cold. Such treaties, you see, require internationally recognized boundaries and Israel did not want any part of parting with the territories it had just seized militarily.
Besides, mutual defense treaties usually impose on both parties an obligation to inform the other if one decides to attack a third country. Israel wanted no part of that either. This virtually unknown background helps to explain why the lack of a treaty of mutual defense is more than a picayune academic point.....
Never before had a senior U.S. official braced Israel so blatantly about the Liberty incident, which was covered up unconscionably by Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, the Congress, and by the Navy itself. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack."]
The lesson the Israelis took away from the Liberty incident was that they could get away with murder, literally, and walk free because of political realities in the United States. Never again, said Mullen. He could not have raised a more neuralgic issue.....
It is altogether likely that Netanyahu has concluded that Barack Obama is -- in the vernacular -- a wuss. Why, for example, does the President keep sending an endless procession of the most senior U.S. officials to Tel Aviv to plead with their Israeli counterparts, Please, pretty please, don't start a war with Iran....
The Israeli Prime Minister has found it possible to thumb his nose at Obama's repeated pleas for a halt in construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories -- without consequence. Moreover, Netanyahu has watched Obama cave in time after time -- on domestic, as well as international issues....
...not to mention the entrée the Israelis enjoy to the chief executive himself by having one of their staunchest allies, Rahm Emanuel, in position as White House chief of staff. In the intelligence business, we might call that an "agent of influence." Emanuel's father, Benjamin Emanuel, was born in Jerusalem and served in the Irgun, the pre-independence Zionist guerrilla organization. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Rahm Emanuel, then in his early 30s, traveled to Israel as a civilian volunteer to work with the Israeli Defense Forces. He served in one of the IDF's northern bases.......
And so Mullen continues to worry -- not only about "unintended consequences," but about intended consequences, as well. The most immediate of these could involve mousetrapping Obama into committing U.S. forces to war provoked with Iran.....
"The one that interested me [Hersh] the most was why don't we build -- we in our shipyard -- build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy Seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up." In other words, another Tonkin Gulf-type incident, like the one that President Johnson used to justify a massive escalation in Vietnam......
The Persian Gulf would be an ideal locale for Israel to mount a provocation eliciting Iranian retaliation that could, in turn, lead to a full-scale Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear-related sites. Painfully aware of that possible scenario, Adm. Mullen noted at a July 2, 2008 press conference, that military-to-military dialogue could "add to a better understanding" between the U.S. and Iran....."
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