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Did Israel and the U.S. Just Cooperate on a Dry-Run for an Iran Intervention?

(New Republic) Jonathan Schanzer - Thousands of U.S. troops, including senior military officials, were in Israel last month on the day a bombing raid attacked a weapons factory in Sudan. According to Michael Ross, a former Mossad officer, there is "no doubt at all" that the Yarmouk complex in Sudan was being used by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Ha'aretz noted that the Sudanese opposition has fingered Yarmouk as an IRGC facility. Ross says that Sudan "has been a hub for IRGC activities since 1989." In all likelihood, according to Jacob Abel, a former Iran analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the attack was precipitated by a "game changing" rocket - one with a longer range or bigger payload than had previously been smuggled to Gaza - that was either being constructed or stored at Yarmouk. There is also ample reason to believe the attack was intended as a message to the Iranians. It demonstrated that Israel's jets can strike targets at great distances - specifically, a distance that's roughly equal to or longer than the distance between Israel and Iran's nuclear sites. In addition, immediately before the jets hit the plant, telecommunications in the surrounding area reportedly went dark, much as they did before Israel's strike on Syria's nuclear reactor in 2007. The writer, a former terrorism intelligence analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2012-11-05 00:00:00
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