Former Israeli Ambassador the US Michael Oren has an op-ed in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal; it's mostly about the poor state of Obama-Netanyahu relations and mostly about how that's Obama fault, but along the way he drops in this interesting claim --
But parallel to the talks [Israel-US discussions about Iran] came administration statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.
So part of Israel's calculation in its strikes against Bashar al-Assad had to be whether the White House might disclose them in order to put a little heat on Israel about its ability to strike across borders.
It's almost as if the White House wasn't that keen on any military action against Assad!
UPDATE: It turns out that Oren's article draws from his forthcoming book in which the above is not the only scoop. Another being that the idea of offering Assad a joint Russia-USA chemical weapons disarmament plan came from an Israeli minister.
But parallel to the talks [Israel-US discussions about Iran] came administration statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.
So part of Israel's calculation in its strikes against Bashar al-Assad had to be whether the White House might disclose them in order to put a little heat on Israel about its ability to strike across borders.
It's almost as if the White House wasn't that keen on any military action against Assad!
UPDATE: It turns out that Oren's article draws from his forthcoming book in which the above is not the only scoop. Another being that the idea of offering Assad a joint Russia-USA chemical weapons disarmament plan came from an Israeli minister.
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