Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested the United States approve the sale of advanced refueling aircraft as well as GBU-28 bunker-piercing bombs to Israel during a recent meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a top U.S. official said on Tuesday.
Ever since their first awkward encounter – a hastily arranged meeting in a custodian\’s office at a Washington airport in 2007 – Iran has been one of the few issues on which Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have been able to find some common ground.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran for attacks on Israeli embassy staff in Georgia and India on Monday Feb. 13 that wounded at least two people. \”Iran is behind these attacks. It is the biggest exporter of terror in the world,\” Netanyahu told members of his Likud party. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland seemed much on the same wavelength two days later.
Iran proclaimed advances in nuclear know-how on Wednesday, including new centrifuges able to enrich uranium much faster, a move that may hasten a drift towards confrontation with the West over suspicions it is seeking the means to make atomic bombs.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top U.S. security officials told Jewish community leaders there is no imminent threat of an attack on Jewish targets in the United States.
The Obama administration expects a significant drop in foreign dealings with the Central Bank of Iran in the next two months.
In endorsing bombing Iran as a neat way to address Iran’s nuclear program, Matthew Kroenig makes the case that the theoretical nightmare of a nuclear Iran could be more or less eliminated, and that even if that can’t be fully accomplished, the bombing could buy time. But the logic of his argument does not acknowledge that the facts on the ground are not so clear.
The United States relayed a message to Iran that blocking the Strait of Hormuz would be a \”red line,\” the New York Times reported.
Israel test-fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday, Israel Radio said, amid a heightened public debate over the possibility of an Israeli attack against Iran\’s nuclear program.
In the wake of revelations that a computer virus may have set back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the Western groups and analysts that track the Islamic Republic are saying “More of the same, please.” The benefits of a nonviolent program that inhibits Iranian hegemony by keeping the country\’s nuclear weapons program at bay are obvious: Better to stop Iran with cyber warfare — in this case, the Stuxnet computer virus, which reportedly caused Iran’s nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control — than actual warfare. For those who favor engagement, the cyber attack buys more time to coax the regime in Tehran into compliance. For those who favor the stick, it allows more time to exert pressure on Iran through sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
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