Olmert: “Iran Has Crossed The Red Line”
Debka:
This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources.
Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.
Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.
Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.”
Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: “I don’t think we’re stretched in that regard.”
It is worth noting that whereas Olmert’s visits are officially tagged as part of Israel’s campaign for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.
The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard words exchanged between Putin and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct. 16.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that the latest development in Iran’s nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any longer; the clerical regime’s options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else facing tough sanctions, or even military action.
The Russian ruler’s private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.
Our sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putin’s dressing-down of Khamenei followed by his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardliners’s abrupt action in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi’s threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.
Our military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own. Iran would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.
DEBKAfile’s US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a secret underground location.
Related From AP:
“Israel’s security is not a topic that is up for discussion,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy reassured Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during their meeting in Paris Monday. Olmert told reporters after the meeting that “such a statement from the French president is very impressive. I could not have expected to hear better things than I heard on the Iran issue.”
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If these intel reports are accurate, we’ve reached the boiling point. Strike now, on the scale of WWII. Delibrate, overwhelming force with total destruction of the enemy. No more ‘pussy war’ shit. Lets do it, do it right and get it overwith. Am I alone in this sentiment?
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:40 amWake up people! If Syria can have a place without detection I’m sure Iran is close to having as well.
Almadick my jean is a dangerous islamic facist that will need to be stopped one way or another.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:50 amWOW this is a pretty sobering report, when Israeli intelligence says something its usually 100% accurate. “Iran has crossed the red line”. all i can think is wow. The shit is about to hit the fan
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:18 pmPolitical.fish, you are not alone in this sentiment.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:44 pmMan, if it’s serious enough to get O-don’t-hurt-me excited, it’s thumpin’ time.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:41 pmI’m sure whereever their nuclear facilities are, they are below elementary schools and marketplaces, not to mention hospitals and muslim holy sites. That way they can get CNN to come in and show how evil we are after we destroy the nuke sites.
I fear that there is no way we can do this without going to full out war. If that happens, they will need to find a way to get more recruits.
I’m not saying the draft because that will produce nothing but cannon fodder. Maybe up the enlistment age or up the bonuses and pay of the military and those that once served that could come back. I’ll be 35 next month and I know I’d need to lose 50 pounds and would hate to go to sea but I would join back up with the Navy if they needed me and made it possible not to lose my job and house while I was gone.
I just wish that if this was to happen, the President would go to congress and they would declare a FUCKING WAR and lets get down. I’m tired of these half-assed, almost wars that they keep having. No one at home that doesn’t have someone serving is really affected. It is just something they see on TV at night. We need to mobilize as a nation and let’s fuck them up really bad and get an unconditional surrender and be done with it.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm