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Israel's Leaked Sales Pitch For Attacking Iran Sounds Like an Amazing Tom Clancy Movie

Israel wants the world to know that it's not scared of attacking Iran. In fact, they've got it all planned out and apparently aren't trying too hard to keep those plans a secret. Richard Silverstein, a liberal Jewish blogger who focuses on Israel...

Israel wants the world to know that it’s not scared of attacking Iran. In fact, they’ve got it all planned out and apparently aren’t doing a very good job at keeping those plans a secret. Richard Silverstein, a liberal Jewish blogger who focuses on Israel-Palestine relations, got ahold of the details from “a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer.” Evidently, there’s some sort of schism within the ranks of senior military and intelligence officers in Israel, many of whom don’t want to go to war with Iran. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak, however, are pushing hard for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and making an increasing barrage of public statements to that effect.

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The leaked shock-and-awe plan is how Netanyahu and Barak hope to talk their team into going to war, says Silverstein. “This is Bibi's sales pitch for war,” he wrote in a blog post. “Its purpose is to be used in meetings with members of the Shminiya, the eight-member security cabinet which currently finds a 4-3 majority opposed to an Iran strike. Bibi uses this sales pitch to persuade the recalcitrant ministers of the cool, clean, refreshing taste of war.” And it’s actually not a bad pitch: it sounds like it was ripped out of a Tom Clancy novel, and makes absolutely no mention of Iranian counter attack or any real risks about storming into Tehran. The planners sound confident right from the start:

The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders. The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action. The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal. This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal.

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A map of possible attacks by Israel on Iran, 2008

The document goes on to explain how hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles will take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. (Read the full text at the bottom of this post.) But some senior United States officials don’t think this will do much good. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday that Israel “could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” As such, defense secretary Leon Panetta reiterated the U.S. position that Israel should continue to pursue diplomatic routes and that “any kind of military action ought to be the last alternative, not the first.”

The leaked text – portions of which are said to have been leaked online in 2002 – details technologies and capabilities that have, up until now, only been rumored about. But it doesn’t address at all how Iran might respond, or anything about the potential for a regional war, a possibility if Iran’s ally Hezbollah rains down missiles on Israeli cities.

A test of Israeli’s Iron Dome defense system

Iran, meanwhile, isn’t really buying it. Before the leaked plan of attack showed up on the internet, Irani defense minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi brushed off the threats, calling Netanyahu and Barak’s chatter mere “warmongering,” and claimed that Israel was waging a “psychological war” against Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast took it a stage further. “In our calculations, we aren’t taking these claims very seriously because we see them as hollow and baseless,” he said. “Even if some officials in the illegitimate regime (Israel) want to carry out such a stupid action, there are those inside (the Israeli government) who won’t allow it because they know they would suffer very severe consequences from such an act.”

Even if this alleged plan makes no mention of the inevitable Iranian retaliation, Israel has just announced its newest line of defense: a system that will send Israelis text message alerts in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Russian when the missiles are falling.

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Full text of the Israeli attack plan:

The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders. The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action. The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal. This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal. A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran. 300km ballistic missiles [R.S.-this might be a reference to the Popeye Turbo] would be launched from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. The missiles would not be armed with unconventional warheads [WMD], but rather with high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets. The missiles will strike their targets—some exploding above ground like those striking the nuclear reactor at Arak–which is intended to produce plutonium and tritium—and the nearby heavy water production facility; the nuclear fuel production facilities at Isfahan and facilities for enriching uranium-hexaflouride. Others would explode under-ground, as at the Fordo facility. A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus. Intelligence gathered over years will be utilized to completely decapitate Iran's professional and command ranks in these fields. After the first wave of attacks, which will be timed to the second, the "Blue and White" radar satellite, whose systems enable us to perform an evaluation of the level of damage done to the various targets, will pass over Iran. Only after rapidly decrypting the satellite's data, will the information be transferred directly to war planes making their way covertly toward Iran. These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally. This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible. Those Israeli war planes which participate in the attack will damage a short-list of targets which require further assault. Among the targets approved for attack—Shihab 3 and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.

Image via Wikimedia and Digital Globe-ISIS.

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