Israel Warned US Not to Invade Iraq after 9/11

By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, “The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy.”Wilkerson describes the Israeli message to the Bush administration in early 2002 as being, “If you are going to destabilise the balance of power, do it against the main enemy.”

The warning against an invasion of Iraq was “pervasive” in Israeli communications with the administration, Wilkerson recalls. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence and private citizens.

Wilkerson notes that the main point of their communications was not that the United States should immediately attack Iran, but that “it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein” from a focus on the threat from Iran.

The Israeli advice against using military force against Iraq was apparently triggered by reports reaching Israeli officials in December 2001 that the Bush administration was beginning serious planning for an attack on Iraq. Journalist Bob Woodward revealed in “Plan of Attack” that on Dec. 1, 2001, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had ordered the Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks to come up with the first formal briefing on a new war plan for Iraq on Dec. 4. That started a period of intense discussions of war planning between Rumsfeld and Franks.

The rest of the article is here. TM Note: I was asked for my reaction to this piece by a friend. Here it is:

I assume there is something to the story, but there is probably a lot of latitude in interpreting what happened. It could be that SOME Israelis made the point(s) Wilkerson is recounting about Iran...and other Israelis were perfectly willing for us to take on all their potential enemies.

As for the American branch of Likud, the Neocons, they tend to be 'holier than the Pope' (to mix metaphors). They generally push the Likud line...but even more so. Since they had argue for taking out Saddam since '92, it had become dogma that he was a major threat to Israel.

I believe the Neocons somehow arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. had the luxury of pushing an extreme pro-Israel position, since (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) it appeared that there were no real threats to U.S. security on the horizon. And then, they had a president who reportedly had some mystical experience in Israel in 1998 (the Jerusalem syndrome?) and who thinks God ordered him to attack Saddam.

And of course, they think that the problems in the Middle East are entirely due to the intransigent Palestinians, who mistakenly think they have some prior claim to the land.

Besides, Ahmadinejad only came to power later, and made the statements that alarmed the Neocons.

As for the reality of the threat, Iran will someday have a nuclear weapon, and with a true believer in power, you can never be sure what will happen. Ahmadinejad has all the religious delusions of bin Laden, reportedly making his entire cabinet take an oath of allegiance to the Hidden Imam and so on.

But I can't picture Iran attacking as soon as they have one or two nukes. The Israelis, in contrast, have perhaps 200 nukes and long-range delivery systems. A nuclear exchange would result in the devastation of Israel but the destruction of Iran. Iran could also provide WMD to Hizbollah, but Israel would react against Iran just the same, I think.

I wrote a piece some time back which said, in effect, that almost everything that Bush said about Iraq was actually true about Iran (WMD, state sponsor of terror, threat to U.S. interests). The Neocons couldn't change course fast enough after Ahmadinejad made his views clear, or maybe, decided to go after Israel's 'near enemy' first, then the 'far enemy.'

In any case, a small group of people hijacked U.S. policy, essentially for the defense of Israel. No other explanation for the invasion of Iraq makes sense.