\t15 ao\u00fbt 2006 \u00ab It would be a demo for Iran<\/em> \u00bb, dit une source ( a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel<\/em>) \u00e0 Seymour Hersh, telle que Hersh le rapporte dans son dernier aticle pour le New Yorker<\/a>. La demo<\/em>, c’est l’op\u00e9ration lanc\u00e9e par Isra\u00ebl contre le Hezbollah.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’article de Hersh d\u00e9monte les m\u00e9canismes des liens entre Washington et Tel Aviv pour pr\u00e9parer et lancer cette attaque. L’article est largement cit\u00e9 dans la presse internationale. Le Guardian<\/em> du 14 ao\u00fbt<\/a> \u00e9crit : \u00ab The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLe 14 ao\u00fbt, Hersh a r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 CNN, \u00e0 propos de l’enl\u00e8vement de deux soldats isra\u00e9liens par le Hezbollah le 12 juillet et l’op\u00e9ration isra\u00e9lienne qui s’ensuivit : \u00ab July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel’s attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa notori\u00e9t\u00e9 de Hersh est tr\u00e8s grande<\/a>, et justifi\u00e9e par la valeur et le bien fond\u00e9<\/a> de ses r\u00e9v\u00e9lations. Sa version du conflit Isra\u00ebl-Hezbollah est d\u00e9sormais un fait politique et militaire. Elle clarifie d\u00e9cisivement les circonstances de la pr\u00e9paration et de l’engagement d’Isra\u00ebl dans cette affaire. Hersh a apport\u00e9 une contribution essentielle \u00e0 l’\u00e9clairage et \u00e0 la compr\u00e9hension \u00e9vidente de la signification du conflit. Isra\u00ebl a agi comme un proxy<\/em> et Washington a manipul\u00e9 l’action de ce pays contre le Hezbollah, tout cela dans le but de pr\u00e9parer une attaque contre l’Iran.<\/p>\n \tCi-dessous, nous pr\u00e9sentons des extraits substantiels de l’article de Hersh sur ce point de la connivence entre Isra\u00ebl et les USA. Ces extraits de l’article<\/a> de Hersh sont en deux parties principalement.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre\u00ebmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a legal state. Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah and shared it with Bush Administration officials well before the July 12th kidnappings. It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into, he said, but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel’s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, Prior to Hezbollah’s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were. A Pentagon spokesman said, The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military co\u00f6peration for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tThe big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully, the former senior intelligence official said. Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congoit’s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits, a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a pre\u00ebmptive blow against Hezbollah. He added, It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it. (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t()<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington separately, to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear. The consultant added, Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Securit Council. After that, persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board, the consultant said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran. (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior co\u00f6rdination with the United States. He was troubled by one issuethe speed with which the Olmert government went to war. For the life of me, I’ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily, he said. We usually go through long analyses.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n \tOn commence ainsi \u00e0 avoir une vision pr\u00e9cise des tenants et aboutissants de l’attaque isra\u00e9lienne. Il s’agissait bien d’une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition de l’attaque contre l’Iran, avec \u00e9ventuellement dans l’imagination de certains, un encha\u00eenement direct entre l’attaque contre le Hezbollah et l’attaque contre l’Iran.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLes correspondants privil\u00e9gi\u00e9s des Isra\u00e9liens \u00e0 Washington dans ce cas sont connus et sans surprise. Au sein de l’administration, il y a Cheney bien s\u00fbr; il y a le clan des n\u00e9o-conservateurs et tous les extr\u00e9mistes qui les entourent; il y a aussi une partie importante de la bureaucratie du Pentagone. Ce dernier point est le plus important. Il n’est pas certain que Rumsfeld soit partie<\/a> prenante<\/a>. Au contraire, il est \u00e9vident que l’USAF en tant que telle, et \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence des autres services, est compl\u00e8tement partie prenante. Avec elle, il est encore plus question d’une attaque contre l’Iran.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’USAF est le service le plus int\u00e9ress\u00e9 par une attaque contre l’Iran, pour diverses raisons, qui tiennent essentiellement \u00e0 son statut et \u00e0 l’affirmation de sa puissance bureaucratique. Nous en avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 d\u00e9velopp\u00e9 certaines<\/a>. On ajoutera que, du point de vue spirituel, l’USAF est toute d\u00e9sign\u00e9e<\/a> pour une mission qui est vue par les mill\u00e9naristes am\u00e9ricains comme r\u00e9pondant \u00e0 la volont\u00e9 de Dieu, selon, dans tous les cas, le sc\u00e9nario des Saintes Ecritures, au chapitre Armageddon. Du point de vue des capacit\u00e9s enfin, l’USAF repr\u00e9sente la seule possibilit\u00e9 d’attaque US contre l’Iran, \u00e0 cause des moyens dont elle dispose. Ce n’est plus du tout le cas de l’U.S. Army et des Marines, durement \u00e9prouv\u00e9s par l’Irak, et qui pourraient m\u00eame \u00eatre mis en danger<\/a> en Irak par une attaque contre l’Iran. L’U.S. Navy tend \u00e0 \u00eatre du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l’Army et des Marines, contre l’USAF, notamment par crainte statutaire d’\u00eatre rel\u00e9gu\u00e9e au second plan dans le cas d’une attaque contre l’Iran sous la direction de l’USAF.<\/p>\n \tLes acteurs \u00e9tant clairement identifi\u00e9s, il reste \u00e0 voir ce qu’est aujourd’hui la situation en fonction des \u00e9v\u00e9nements depuis le 12 juillet. L’id\u00e9e de d\u00e9part que l’attaque contre le Hezbollah \u00e9tait une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition de l’attaque contre l’Iran est d’autant plus justifi\u00e9e que les Am\u00e9ricano-Isra\u00e9liens per\u00e7oivent le Hezbollah comme une simple duplication des capacit\u00e9s et des techniques iraniennes. L’USAF estimait que l’attaque contre le Hezbollah permettrait de tester l’efficacit\u00e9 d’une action a\u00e9rienne contre des installations souterraines, bunkers notamment, mises en place et supervis\u00e9es par des Iraniens, telles qu’on devrait en trouver par cons\u00e9quent dans le complexe nucl\u00e9aire iranien. Le r\u00e9sultat (positif, indeed<\/em>) de l’attaque isra\u00e9lienne devait convaincre d\u00e9finitivement de la justesse du choix d’une attaque a\u00e9rienne contre l’Iran. L’\u00e9chec est complet et la situation particuli\u00e8rement sombre, avec la d\u00e9monstration \u00e0 contretemps et \u00e0 contresens de Tsahal<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tHersh cite notamment Richard Armitage sur ce point : \u00ab According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah may be the A team of terrorists Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. If the most dominant military force in the regionthe Israel Defense Forces can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million, Armitage said. The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tNous entrons dans une phase nouvelle. L’\u00e9chec de Tsahal<\/em> est une d\u00e9monstration en temps r\u00e9el (avec les morts civils qui vont avec) qu’une attaque essentiellement, voire exclusivement a\u00e9rienne contre l’Iran est une aventure hautement risqu\u00e9e, avec si peu de chances d’aboutir qu’on peut parler d’\u00e9chec certain avec de probables cons\u00e9quences catastrophique (\u00ab If the president is still listening to these people, Lord help the Republic<\/em> \u00bb, nous dit Patrick J. Buchanan<\/a>). L’\u00e9chec de Tsahal<\/em>, c’est la d\u00e9monstration qu’on ne peut rien contre l’Iran avec les plans de l’USAF. Bien \u00e9videmment, ce n’est en rien un argument valable pour les esprits \u00e9chauff\u00e9s qui tiennent le haut du pav\u00e9 \u00e0 Washington ce serait m\u00eame le contraire (Buchanan encore : \u00ab With our War Party discredited by the failed policies it cheered on in Lebanon and Iraq, there will come a clamor that Bush must go to the source of all our difficulty Iran.<\/em> \u00bb)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tEt maintenant que fait-on? On attend fin ao\u00fbt, la r\u00e9ponse des Iraniens aux propositions des Europ\u00e9ens concernant la question nucl\u00e9aire. Et si les Iraniens disent non? (Cette possibilit\u00e9 est vraiment une probabilit\u00e9. Apr\u00e8s la piteuse aventure libanaise des Isra\u00e9liens, et sachant tout ce qu’on sait d\u00e9sormais, notamment les choses expos\u00e9es ici, les Iraniens ne sont certainement pas inclin\u00e9s au compromis.) Soyons plus pr\u00e9cis : que vont faire les Europ\u00e9ens, avec une administration GW dont il est bien possible qu’elle sera plus d\u00e9cha\u00een\u00e9e que jamais<\/a> contre l’Iran? A force de couardise, d’indiff\u00e9rence, de capitulations diverses, les Europ\u00e9ens ont repouss\u00e9 le probl\u00e8me central de la crise du monde que repr\u00e9sente l’attitude am\u00e9ricaniste. Ils n’ont vraiment rien perdu pour attendre. Peut-\u00eatre le temps est-il venu, fin ao\u00fbt n’est pas loin de s’y mettre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Le rendez-vous de la fin de l’\u00e9t\u00e9 15 ao\u00fbt 2006 \u00ab It would be a demo for Iran \u00bb, dit une source ( a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel) \u00e0 Seymour Hersh, telle que Hersh le rapporte dans son dernier aticle pour le New Yorker. La demo, c’est l’op\u00e9ration lanc\u00e9e par Isra\u00ebl… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1294,4180,2773,1104,4714,41],"class_list":["post-67881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-cheney","tag-hersh","tag-iran","tag-neocons","tag-tsahal","tag-usaf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Les r\u00e9v\u00e9lations de Seymour Hersh<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
L’USAF au cur du projet<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Au tour de l’Iran<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n