Report: Israel breached Iran airspace in 2012 in what US thought was dry run for strike
President Obama may have prevented Israel from starting a war.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-israel-breached-iran-airspace-amid-tensions-with-us-over-nuke-talks/
According to the report, “[n]erves frayed at the White House” when the US discovered Israeli air activity over Iran, and Washington dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and also prepared attack aircraft, in case, as one senior American official told the Journal, “all hell broke loose.”
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At the same time, relations between the countries’ leaders had begun to deteriorate. Obama and Netanyahu — who, before their respective election wins, were of one mind on how to deal with Iran — found themselves further and further apart by 2009, once they had both taken office. Netanyahu had been told by Republican lawmakers that Obama was “pro-Arab,” the WSJ said, quoting Israeli officials. Those conversations had subsequently reached the White House.
As a result, the newspaper said, the president took steps to reassure Israel, including an expansion of existing joint covert operations against Iran and increased cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad. But the Americans were reluctant to approve some of Israel’s more drastic plans, such as bringing down the Iranian financial system or all-out regime change.
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Netanyahu’s determination to carry out a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities also caused anxiety at the White House, the report said. An Israeli plan to attack the heavily fortified Fordow enrichment facility from the inside was deemed to be a “suicide mission” by the US, which refused to sell the Jewish state the materiel it felt was needed to carry out the strike.
The Israelis “briefed the U.S. on an attack plan: Cargo planes would land in Iran with Israeli commandos on board who would ‘blow the doors, and go in through the porch entrance’ of Fordow, a senior U.S. official said,” according to the Journal. “The Israelis planned to sabotage the nuclear facility from inside. Pentagon officials thought it was a suicide mission. They pressed the Israelis to give the U.S. advance warning. The Israelis were noncommittal.”
The US tried to reassure Israel on the issue, persuading the Jewish state to engage in increased covert activity against Iran, and Obama even committed publicly to a military strike should negotiations fail. Yet this did not appear to comfort Netanyahu, and in 2012 US intelligence reported on “a flurry of meetings” between the prime minister and his senior defense officials.
Israeli officials, said the Journal, sought US “military hardware useful for a strike” in summer 2012. “At the top of the list were V-22 Ospreys, aircraft that take off and land like helicopters but fly like fixed-wing planes… The Israelis also sounded out officials about obtaining the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the U.S. military’s 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, which was designed to destroy Fordow.” According to Gary Samore, Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, the administration made plain it considered this “a big mistake.” Reported the Journal, “White House officials decided not to provide the equipment.”
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