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Did Obama Threaten to Shoot Down Israeli Jets if it Hits Iran’s Nukes?
The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.
Following Obama’s threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.
According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel’s back.
The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.
Al-Jarida quoted “well-placed” sources as saying that Netanyahu, along with Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon, and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, had decided to carry out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders.
According to the report, “Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security.”
The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully. Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran’s airspace after they managed to break through radars.
Former US diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for Obama in 2008, called on him to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast.
Ma’an is properly spelled PLO. I’m not sure if anyone has seen this original Kuwaiti report so we’re working with a possible game of broken telephone. The details about Israeli political and military roles make it plausible, but Ma’an would be quite familiar with it.
Such a threat would not be unprecedented. Bush I’s admin, during the Gulf War, allegedly warned that Israeli planes trying to stop Saddam’s attacks on Israel risked being shot down. Obama may have issued a similar threat, but was there enough American aviation in place at the time for that to even be a serious threat?
Then again, Obama is not exactly well informed when it comes to military issues. It’s the kind of threat he could toss off without knowing what it would involve.
There’s no real verification of the story, but it says a good deal about how much Obama has poisoned relations with Israel, that the story is out there.
Thus far the administration’s approach to preventing an Israeli strike has been to leak classified information and to maintain the charade of phony negotiations. If this report is true, it would mean that the sabotage efforts have been stepped up a good deal.
UPDATE: This is the original Arabic article that served as the basis for the story.
The story appears to be much the same except that it makes the claim that the unnamed minister was Lieberman and that Obama claimed that Netanyahu was violating some unstated red lines.
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