“That’s a thought, Ari,” the Prime Minister said as he swiveled around in his chair and pointed a finger towards Chaim and gave him a hard look. “Yes, let’s do announce a new eight hundred home settlement. But Ari’s right, Chaim, merely announcing another settlement is not enough. Not nearly enough after last night. It’s time to once again show the world that an attack on Israel will always hurt the attackers a lot more than it hurts us, a whole lot more. But first, we need to find out for sure who is responsible.”
Chaim sat silently at the table and didn’t respond; just grimly nodded his head in agreement. I may be a hardliner about making everyone pay who encourages terrorists, but I’m not stupid; we do need to be sure who did it. On the other hand, if it actually was the goddamn Ayatollah who sent them, we should kill the sonofabitch and bomb the Iranians back to the fucking Stone Age.
Then he couldn’t contain himself.
“Keren,” he said rather loudly as he looked over at the bearded man dressed all in black who represented the ultra-religious voters, “I certainly support your demand that we not let them get away with it. So how many of your people will volunteer to help the rest of us do it? Eh?” Then under his breath he muttered loud enough for everyone in the room to hear – “fucking parasites.”
******
The Prime Minister’s hastily called news conference did not go well that morning. It was televised live and the media fanned the flames with question after question about the little girls and their parents, the attack, the attackers, and what the government was going to do about it. The cabinet leaks like a sieve and the rumor that the attackers had been Iranians reached the media almost instantly.
“As you know, Prime Minister, there are reports that the Iranians may have been involved. Can you comment on that?”
“We are not yet sure who the attackers are or who sent them or why. So far, at least three terrorist groups are claiming responsibility. As you might imagine, we’ve launched a major investigation to find out the answers to those questions. Sooner or later we will know. And when we do, the criminals responsible for killing that family and their neighbors are going to pay dearly, no matter who they are or where they are.”
“Does that include religious leaders and heads of state?” inquired a sensation-seeking newspaper reporter. It was a serious question and when he saw himself say yes on television on the noon news the Prime Minister realized he hadn’t done a good job of answering it. Or maybe I did.
******
Later that day the newly elected President of Iran also held a news conference in response to the suggestions in the international media that Iran was involved in the incident and Israel may have just sent him and his country a pointed warning. What he said was neither helpful nor particularly coherent.
Iran’s President began by reading a somewhat disjointed statement neither admitting nor denying Iranian involvement. Interestingly enough he didn’t blame the Iraqi Sunnis or even mention the vicious wars going on in Iraq and Syria. Instead he suggested Israel may have attacked its own people so it would have an excuse to build settlements along the Jordan River. Then he diverted from his prepared text to explain Iranians aren’t afraid of Jews and that the whole concept of Israel is a fraud because there had been no Holocaust. He went on to say Iran sympathizes with anyone who fights against Israel and will always support them. Israel, he said with a smirk, is an old wound that needs to be closed.
What Iran’s President didn’t come close to doing was deny Iran’s involvement in the attack. If anything, what he said suggested Iran supported the attackers. He also didn’t say anything about the religious civil war raging once again between the Shiites and Sunnis.
The media noticed the Iranian President’s smirk and lack of denial and so did Israelis and many others. What happened the next day, which the media never did find out about, is that the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, an elderly prince of the royal family, a half-brother of the king, approached the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations as he was walking down a hallway in the building and pointedly informed him that no Arab countries with Sunni governments, meaning the Gulf Kingdoms and their allies, were in any way involved.
What was even more noteworthy, and transmitted instantly in a heavily encrypted flash message to Tel Aviv, was that the Saudi ambassador then suggested their two countries might find it profitable to quietly work together to stamp out state-sponsored terrorism.
It didn’t escape the Israeli ambassador and Tel Aviv that the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies are Sunni Muslims whereas the nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are either primarily Shiite in population or dominated by a Shiite sect. The Shiites and Sunnis have been at each other’s throats for centuries. Each group considers the other to be irredeemable heretics and a danger to their existence and influence, worse even than the Jews and Christians.
****** General Christopher Roberts
The surprising Saudi suggestion that the two countries might be able to work together didn’t escape the United States’ intelligence services either. Within an hour, the new President’s newly appointed National Security Advisor, a retired army general who years ago had commanded the American army in Europe, was sitting at the breakfast table of the Georgetown home he and his wife had inherited from her parents. He’d just finished eating a waffle and reading the daily Morning Book, the summary of important events and reports generated by his office in the wee hours of each night for the President and the members of the National Security Council. That’s when the second delivery arrived, a transcript of the Israeli ambassador’s message to Tel Aviv about his meeting with the Saudi ambassador.
I read the message about the ambassadors three times and I’m still not sure what it means. But it sounds important. So what the hell should I do now?
It pains me to admit it but I’m new on the job as the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs and don’t have a clue as to what I should do with the information which has just been handed to me.
Time to find out. So I called the Deputy National Security Advisor I’d inherited from my predecessor and told him to set up a NSA briefing for the two of us on the current state of affairs in Iran and the relationships between Iran and Israel and between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I asked him to try to have it held in the NSA’s Fort Meade offices at 9:30 this morning right after we brief the President as one or both of us does every day in the National Security Council briefing room.
I also told him to contact the CIA and ask for the same briefing at 11:00 at Langley and the State Department for a briefing at 2:30 this afternoon at the State Department offices down the street from my office in the White House Annex.
My deputy, Peter Ferrelli, had been appointed by my predecessor but I’d been told by a couple of people I greatly respect they thought Pete had been doing a good job of putting together the daily Morning Book as the deputy of the man I replaced. They said they thought he would make a pretty good deputy for me too.
When I first met with Peter after the President announced my appointment he seemed quite anxious to do whatever was necessary to keep his job. In any event, he was waiting at the door when my car pulled up to the entrance door to the White House Annex where my new offices are located. I guess I’m about to find out.
“Good morning, General. The briefings have been set up as you requested. And thank you for including me. Langley called back a few minutes ago and requested a time change to 1130 so the director could attend in person. I hope you don’t mind but they needed a decision immediately so I told them 11:30 would be agreeable.”
“Good decision. Glad you made it, Peter. Thank you.”
“Mrs. Rodman,” I said to the administrative aide on duty as we walked into the reception area of my new office, “please connect me to my counterpart in Israel. Whoever the hell that is these days. Then please contact Major Evans and Mister Duffy and tell them to stand by for a possible overseas deployment with me later this afternoon from Andrews.
Also please arrange a plane for me and two aides to Tel Aviv at about five this afternoon. I’ll need the plane for two or three days. And please, always for such long trips, try to find a plane with a seat which can be turned into a fold-down bed.” For some reason long flights are really starting to get to me. Old age must be getting me down.
“Peter,” I said as we walked into my office, “I want you to stay here and hold the fort while I’m gone. Keep me constantly updated as to what’s going on. That means multiple messages every day even if there is nothing to report. But, if something comes up and you can’t get through to me, don’t hesitate to make whatever decisions and recommendations you feel are necessary.”
******
NSA’s campus on Fort Meade is huge, and closely guarded though you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the place. I’d met the former navy admiral, Arlie Fletcher, who is its director several times years ago but always at the White House. I’ve never been here before so I really don’t know what to expect.
Things went smoothly. Peter and I were met at the main entrance door by one of the Director’s deputies and promptly escorted through its security checkpoint to a large conference room. Admiral Fletcher and his briefers, and the directors of his Middle East country sections, were waiting along with coffee and breakfast pastries. My favorite brand of tea was the only one on offer.
Our briefing began as soon as I sat down. There’s no doubt about it according to the NSA; all the major Middle East countries—even what’s left of Syria—, every one of them except Egypt, are once again in the process of trying to acquire nuclear weapons for one reason or another. The Israelis, who see these efforts as a serious threat, have apparently decided to do whatever it takes, even if it means war and their own preemptive conventional and/or nuclear attacks, to remain the only nuclear power in the region.
One of the biggest things I came away with is that NSA’s analysts believe it highly likely, unless we take steps to discourage them, the Israelis are going to use Iran’s support for terrorism as an excuse to launch a major attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Why would we discourage them from doing that? The Israelis are also concerned about the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear efforts and the fact that the Saudis’ are secretly helping to finance nuclear programs in both Pakistan and North Korea.
Worse, according to the NSA briefers, the recent terrorist attacks have pushed the Israeli government to the brink. They predict Israel is about to start responding to the nuclear threats of its enemies by once again aggressively going after their suppliers and supporters. What they don’t know is how the Israelis will do so or how soon. Or what it might mean for us in addition to the long list of problems and troubles we already know about.
“Uh, Mister Arroyo. Why would we want to discourage the Israelis or anyone else from taking out Iran’s nuclear program?"
******
Three hours later I find that the CIA basically agrees with the NSA. The Israelis are seriously pissed about the continuing terrorism and the constant support for it coming from their Arab neighbors. They are afraid, and rightly so according to the CIA, that terrorism and the hostilities between the Shiites and the Sunnis will grow and grow until the nuclear weapons now in various stages of development by the belligerents are used against Israel. The Israelis, the CIA briefer suggests, are probably going to act because they cannot afford to let neither a Shiite state nor a Sunni state get nuclear weapons. But how will the Israeli act and what should we do about it, if anything?
According to the CIA analyst conducting our briefing, the underlying source of the nuclear threats the Israelis are facing is the antagonism and open warfare between the various ethnic and religious groups in each country. The old religious animosities have broken into the open, according to the analyst, primarily because the national boundaries in the Middle East were drawn up years ago by the French and British.
“The current borders just don’t make sense,” the briefer told us. “They do not in any way reflect the religious, ethnic, and language differences of the citizens of the different countries. As a result, many people in each country do not see their national government as anything other than their long-time enemies and apostates who should be fought against and replaced as soon as possible. In essence, General, the basic problem of almost every Middle-Eastern country is its people don’t share a common language or a common core of values. There’s nothing to unify the people except an external threat, a scapegoat if you will.”
Then he went on to explain how the inevitable result of the artificial national boundaries was whichever group seizes power in each country inevitably tries to maintain its power by repressing the others and uniting its diverse peoples against real or imagined outside enemies – such as Israel and the United States.
Israel’s concerns, according to the CIA analysts, seem to be particularly and rightly centered on a nuclear power plant the Russians are helping the Iranians finish building in Bushehr. But then, the briefer added with a shrug, the Israelis are also worried about the Osirak reactor being built in Iraq with the help of France and a reactor being built in Syria with the help of the North Koreans. It’s an arms race?
What I learned from the CIA about the situation in Iran was more than a little embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because the Iranian reactor at Bushehr, the cornerstone of Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, was begun long before the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent rise of ISIS and the fighting in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon,—with the help of the United States as part of our seriously misnamed “atoms for peace” program.
Our nuclear assistance to Iran supposedly ended with the overthrow of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s much-praised rejection of nuclear weapons. But then the Ayatollah quietly turned right around and had his government do a deal with Moscow to help Iran continue developing its nuclear capabilities,—and that, of course, motivated all the other countries in the region to start developing their own nuclear weapons despite their civil wars and the continued suffering of their citizens.
According to the CIA one of the reasons for the war that just started between Iran and Iraq is the new Iraqi dictator is a psychopath who wants to be seen as an important world leader. He’s a Sunni militia leader who has "done a Saddam" and killed and murdered his way to power in a country where the Shia are a majority. He is worried the Iranian Ayatollah, who is a Shiite Muslim, will replace him just as an earlier Iranian Ayatollah replaced Saddam, both in the world’s eyes and literally, if Iran gets the bomb before he does.
Iraq’s newest dictator has good reason to worry according to the CIA analysts. The population of Iraq is still heavily Shia even though, thanks to Russian intervention and European financing resulting from the refugee crisis, there is once again a Sunni dominated government in Baghdad. The flow of refugees slowed to a trickle after the west and the Russians intervened a couple of years ago, but once again the fighting is beginning to flare up because the Sunnis and the Shia still absolutely hate each other for religious reasons and because of the disagreements as to who should govern which have once again broken out in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Only Iran is stable—if one ignores the repression of its Kurds and other minorities and its armies and militias fighting in Iraq and Syria.
"There is no doubt about it," said one of the analysts. "The situation in the Middle East is quite comparable to the hostilities and constant religious warfare between the Catholics and Protestants in medieval Europe—and it lasted almost one hundred years until the Christian leaders got together and worked out a solution."
According to the CIA, Israel is providing intelligence to both sides in hopes each will destroy the other in their current civil wars. The bottom line is the CIA believes Israel intends to do whatever it takes to remain the only Middle-Eastern country with nuclear weapons,—even if it means a major war.
“Peter,” I commented as we drove away from Langley, “Did you notice that the CIA briefer mentioned Pakistan and North Korea when I asked who else
is actively trying to develop nuclear weapons? He didn’t mention the Saudis at all even though the NSA briefers did.”
“What else is new? Our intelligence agencies still don’t trust or talk to one another.”
******
The State Department briefing in the afternoon left me shaking my head and bewildered. The State Department “professionals” actually believe, for reasons I could not fathom and they could not explain, that with enough talking and “diplomacy” and good presidential speeches the countries of the Middle East will put aside their religious differences and hatreds as they come to understand why it is not in their best interests to continue their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Then, allegedly, they will stop trying to get nuclear weapons and killing each other and there will be peace in the Middle East.
It also quickly became crystal clear the State Department is totally dedicated to maintaining the current national boundaries in the Middle East rather than encouraging them to be redrawn to reflect the natural borders of the people living in the region. It is almost as if the borders the French and British imposed years ago during their colonial period have somehow become a sacred trust of our State Department, something that must be protected and maintained despite the chaos and hostility they cause.
I asked the State Department briefer a question.
“It sounds to me as if you folks here at State are totally committed to maintaining the current national boundaries in the Middle East even when they don’t make sense for the people living in them and cause constant conflict. Why is that?”
“We think it would be too upsetting for the stability of the region, and thus not in the best interests of the United States, if the present boundaries are changed,” one pompous state department official proclaimed as the new Secretary of State, a former congressman from Chicago, beamed his approval. Who is that fool?
Israel's Next War Page 2
