Yesterday, Paul Sheehan of the conservative Sydney Morning Herald had a piece focussing onIsraeli hardliners in perpetual launch mode -
Last week I met the Boogie Man, the former head of the Israeli Defence Forces, General Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon, who is preparing the political groundwork for a military attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities. "We have to confront the Iranian revolution immediately," he told me. "There is no way to stabilise the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime. The Iranian nuclear program must be stopped."
Defeating the theocratic regime in Tehran could be economic or political or, as a last resort, military, he said. "All tools, all options, should be considered." He was speaking in the tranquility of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, where he was, until last Thursday, one of Israel's plethora of warrior-scholars, though more influential than most.
Could "all options" include decapitating the Iranian leadership by military strikes, including on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction? "We have to consider killing him," Ya'alon replied. "All options must be considered."
Ya'alon is currently running as a Likud MP. Sheehan also spoke to other like-minded Israeli rightwingers, all ready to say that Israel must attack Iran and was preparing to do so.
But then again, yesterday TIME magazine's Tim McGurk wrote that an attack isn't on the cards .
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