POSTED BY BILL
Everyone remembers that a few months ago the North Koreans torpedoed and sank a South Korean frigate, killing a lot of sailors. It's pretty easy for a sub to torpedo a ship that doesn't think there's a war. They got away with it, despite the South finding, recovering, and displaying the remains of the torpedo - clearly of NORK origin.
Fast forward to now. Two Iranian warships are going through the Suez Canal on the way to the Mediterranean. I imagine their crews are about as professional as one might expect. The Israelis are taking this very seriously, calling it a serious provocation. At the very least, they probably assume the Iranians are carrying weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel has submarines, very good ones with highly professional crews. Just sayin'.
9 comments:
"serious provocation"
As when 11 US warships and one Israeli vessel transited the Suez Canal last June? That kind of serious provocation?
Glenn, neither the US or Israel have vowed to cause the destruction of a mid-east nation. Big difference.
Update: As of last I heard, the Egyptians are saying warships have to provide 48 hours notice and Iran has yet to do so. They seem to still be in the Red Sea and may just be trying to stir things up. You can be sure lots of eyes are watching them.
"...neither the US or Israel have vowed to cause the destruction of a mid-east nation."
Neither has Iran.
"…what he said was that 'the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.' No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation — 'wipe Israel off the map' — suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can 'wipe out' U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous." ~Shiraz Dossa, professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University
"Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian." Instead, "he did say he hoped its regime ... would collapse." ~Juan Cole, University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History
Ian and Glenn, you two are delusional if you think that Iran and other radicalized anti-Zionist nations wouldn't take a shot as Israel if they thought they had a chance. They've attacked Israel several times already beginning with the day after modern Israel came into existence. No, I definitely think that they'd take a shot knowing that even if Israel killed milliions of Muslims and other assorted anti-Zionists, there'd still be millions left. Not the case with the Jews. It would be relatively easy to kill them all and effectively destroy the state of Israel.
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the downfall of the U. S. installed puppet, Iran has not invaded anyone. Nada.
(Jews there find life so comfortable that they turned down a cash offer by the government of Israel to emigrate.)
In the same period, Israel attacked Iraq (1981), invaded Lebanon (1982), attacked the Unites States of America (2001), staged incursions into Gaza and Nablus (2003), attacked Lebanon (2006), bombed Syria (2007), attacked Gaza (Feb. 2008), attacked Gaza (Nov. 2008), attacked an international aid flotilla (2010), and carried out numerous clandestine assassinations, all the while threatening almost daily to attack Iran. Prior to all that, Israel carried out an earlier attack on the United States of America (1967).
Now just who has justification to fear whom?
The threat to Israel is existential, not so for the surrounging states. I'll give Israel the benefit of the doubt here and allow them acts of perceived self-preservation. Their skirmishes have not been one-sided either. What about the daily rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah?
I guess you're going to tell me the poor, put-upon Palestinians are just trying to eek out a life for themselves and the thug Jews won't let them?
As I understand it, Ed, the question on the table is not Palestine but, rather, which is the more provocative toward the other - Iran or Israel.
It seems to me that in both word and deed, Israel is by far the more provocative.
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