In June this year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a statement that showed his eagerness to rally the White House to jointly participate in a bombing campaign against Iran.

“We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.”

The Jewish nation is telling Washington that Iran will attack Israel – Iran has been making veiled and open threats to wipe Israel out – and that a pre-emptive strike will be necessary to prevent Teheran from having an upper hand over Israel.

Washington has eventually prepared itself for the possible strike against Iran, firing top army Generals and Pentagon officials who are opposed to any war against Iran and replacing them with officials who are ready to follow Bush in his follies.

At the Capitol Hill, US lawmakers sensitive to the idea of yet another war during the Bush era, are pressing for his impeachment. They want to push the House to put forward the machinery that will lead to a vote of no-confidence in Bush and his government. The first step has already been taken with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who had his motion for Bush’s impeachment voted by 251 members of the congress.

Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge and many believe the only way to get the US not to engage in another deadly conflict in the Middle East is to impeach Bush and remove him from office but this is now a farfetched idea.

Olmert is supported by Dick Cheney, US vice president who has formulated the plan – according to informed sources from the US – on where and how to attack Iran. Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time, wrote Ray McGovern on the Consortium.com website.

It is the unending US debacle in Iraq that has dampened their attempts at dealing with Iran militarily, suppressing their eagerness to even bomb the nuclear sites of Iran. The current crack down by Iraqi army – aided by US troops – against the Shi’ite militias in Basra is part of a larger plan to pacify the Shi’a community and prepare Iraq for a possible launch of an attack on Iran.

The Israelis and the Americans are thinking of aiming at Mahmood Ahmadinejad, Iranian President and other government leaders in a massive raid by using hundreds of aircrafts and cruise missile launchers against Iran.

The US had planned to invade Iran in 2005 but the plans fell in limbo when the US army faced an ever ready opponent in the Mujahideen fighters in Iraq. The escalation of violence and the increasing number of US death in Iraq from 2005 to 2007 forced the Americans to shelve their attack plans against Iran.

The US presence in Iraq altogether played in favor of Iran, which enjoyed the geopolitical shift in the powers in the region with the fall of Saddam Hussein one of the most deadly opponents of the Iranian regime in the Middle East. The US suddenly found itself fouled by its own invasion of Iraq and salvaged its position only by increasing its war expenses and accepting the fact that nothing good will come out if it attacked Iran.

Nevertheless, Israel is getting worried of the Iranian strength and of the fact that it has to abide by the agreed concessions in the talks with ‘Quartet’ on Palestine. Israel is out to delay and to kill the peace plan accepted by the Palestinians and the Quartet and to achieve that, it has to create a new war zone in the Middle East. This new war zone is Iran but it cannot attack Iran alone without raising a fury in the Middle East and in Iraq.

Enlisting the US and its army in the attack plan is the best solution that Olmert has to offer to the Bush administration which it says will be crowned by yet another fulfillment with a swift, deadly but paralyzing attack on Iran.

The hope of the Israeli government is that such an attack on Iran will surely destabilize Lebanon, bringing the Hizbollah group to launch attacks on Israel in retaliation of the blitz on Teheran. The Hizbollah will then be the scapegoat in the failed plans to ensure the creation of a Palestinian state since Israel will have to seal borders with Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon in a bid to prevent the Shi’ite militiamen in Lebanon from engaging Israel further.

This is called war by ricochet, where an attack on the spiritual home of the Hizbollah movement in Iran will trigger a series of violent struggle against Israel. The Israelis are willing to suffer some casualties and defeats against the Hizbollah in order to prove that it cannot allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Such a state will be used by the Hamas and the Hizbollah jointly to mount attacks (retaliatory) against Israel for bombing Iran.

Consortium.com wrote that the Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.

Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.

The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example) added the website.

This indicates that Bush and Cheney are ready for a surprise blitz on Iran, at least with the intent to help Israel in its plans and to give a boost to John Mc Cain, the Republican Presidential Nominee to face the voters in buoyant mood in November 2008.

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