DTN News - ISRAELI DEFENSE NEWS: Israeli Defense Chief Sounds Ready To Hit Iran, Thanks In Part To Iron Dome

Defense News: DTN News - ISRAELI DEFENSE NEWS: Israeli Defense Chief Sounds Ready To Hit Iran, Thanks In Part To Iron Dome

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Spencer Ackerman - Wired
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - November 30, 2012: Israel’s retiring defense chief thinks Iran needs to be “coerced” in 2013 from building an atom bomb, despite any U.S. hopes that sanctions will bring Tehran to the negotiating table. And the recent success of his new, U.S.-funded missile defenses seems to have convinced him that Israel is better able than ever to deter its Iran-backed foes.

“Of course, we would love to see some heavenly intervention that will stop them, to wake up some morning and learn that they’ve given up on their nuclear intentions,” Barak told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday during a joint press conference with Leon Panetta, his American counterpart. “You cannot build a strategy based on these wishes or prayers. Sanctions are working and they are more hurting than anything I remember from the past vis-a-vis Iran, but I don’t believe these kinds of sanctions will bring the ayatollahs to a moment of truth where they sit around a table, look into each other’s eyes and decide that the game is over.”

Not exactly what Panetta wanted to hear during what was supposed to be a friendly press conference in which they celebrated how the U.S.-backed Iron Dome rocket defense system stopped Hamas’ rocket attacks cold. The U.S. defense chief, who effused over the retiring Barak as “a man of peace” and praised their long friendship, said the “unprecedented pressure” on Iran from international sanctions present “time and space for an effort to try to achieve a diplomatic solution.”

Not likely, thinks the retiring Barak. “During the coming year and hopefully before they reach what I have called a ‘zone of immunity’” — a point at which Israeli airstrike couldn’t meaningfully hinder Iranian nuclear work — Iran “will be coerced into putting an end to it this way or another way,” Barak said. “The physical attack option is an option that should be there, should remain on the table, never be removed.”

That may be short of a pledge to attack Iran next year, but it’s hardly a vote of confidence in any alternative. And it reflects a lingering divide in U.S. and Israeli goals on Iran, despite the rhetoric of unity. “We will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Panetta said, “and that remains our policy.” Barak’s policy is different: to stop Iran from even getting to the point in its technological nuclear work where an airstrike is senseless, before Iran gets the bomb. The Israeli defense chief acknowledged “sometimes slight differences” with U.S. policy “that should be better discussed behind closed doors.”

However much Barak seems resigned to Iran’s determination “to go in the footsteps of Pakistan and North Korea,” he also mused out loud about Iron Dome as a security game-changer for Israel. Not because a system that was “extremely successful” at stopping unguided Qassam rockets can also stop Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles — it can’t. But because of the demonstration effect that Israeli missile-defense technology can have on Iran and its proxies.

“The very knowing of the other side that you have such an effective system, especially when we’ll be equipped with many more interceptors, it will change the balance of contemplation on the other side,” Barak said. “It creates a logical kind of deterrent, not a psychological one, because any enemy that tries against Israel is exposed to the effectiveness of our efforts that we’ve seen during in this operation.” Especially since, Barak noted, Iron Dome’s big brothers — David’s Sling and the Arrow — are in development to stop more powerful missiles launched by Iran and Hezbollah.

Barak won’t be defense minister next year, as he announced this week he’s retiring from politics. But if other prominent Israeli decision-makers think that Iron Dome restored Israel’s ability to deter adversaries, imagine the value they might place on an Iran attack next year.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Spencer Ackerman - Wired
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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