Did the US government deter an Israeli strike against Iran in 2008?
Cite?
Cite for what? That the OP asked a question?
Ayup-- looked like a question to me,
Hmmm, can he say his post is his cite? Will be be asked to cite that? Then that post will be the cite… I’m getting dizzy.
- Yes, we must have – no such strike ever happened.
- No, certainly not – a peace-loving country like Israel would never even consider such a strike.
- Maybe, but we’ll never know for years. Anybody who knows for sure won’t be talking.
Pick any one of the above that you prefer.
Really, GQ is for questions that can be answered. Wouldn’t this one get more in IMHO?
Is this what you were looking for?
I don’t have a cite but AFAIR after the Iran’s launch of missiles into Israel they were good and mad and wanted to retaliate but the Americans would not give them the transponder codes to keep their aircraft from being shot down so they had to sit on their hands.
The lack of retaliation by the Israelis was spun as great restraint by them in an effort to help peace break out in the area.
As I said have no cite but am sure some of the teeming millions can confirm, or not, the story.
OOps! Just noticed the date of the incident, the one I’m refering to was many years earlier.
Exactly. It’s true that Israel was making noises about attacking Iran and the U.S. was hinting its disapproval - but that doesn’t mean anything. Israel may just have been sabre-rattling to put pressure on the U.S. and Europe, or the U.S. might even have been playing along in a good cop-bad cop sort of way. Hell, we don’t know if Israel or anyone else is even capable of knocking out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There are just too many variables and unknowns for us to be sure about anything.
Isn’t a bunker-buster just a big sharp piece of metal with a bomb on the ass end of it? Israel has excellent home brew weapons systems and I’m sure they could produce their own version of a bunker buster if they were so inclined. After all, this is the same country that took captured tanks, gutted them and turned them into the most badass APCs known to man.
What I’m trying to say is that I think if Israel really wanted to bomb Iran they would, hard and repeatedly and no one, not even the United States, would have any kind of opinion that matters on the subject.
From that article:
I had no idea that an APC’s name could have a “female inflection.”
Hebrew’s a gendered language - everything’s either male or female.
That’s actually a mistake that many Israelis make as well. The “it” suffix can mean “female”, but it can also mean “vehicle” - as in *mechonit *(car), *masa’it *(truck) and *mifrasit *(sailboat). By that logic, a more precise translation for *Achzarit *would be “Viciousmobile”.
And anyway, the Nameris even more badass.
[QUOTE=Alessan]
That’s actually a mistake that many Israelis make as well. The “it” suffix can mean “female”, but it can also mean “vehicle” - as in mechonit (car), masa’it (truck) and mifrasit (sailboat). By that logic, a more precise translation for Achzarit would be “Viciousmobile”.
[/QUOTE]
See, this is why I need to learn modern Hebrew. I looked up the word in my Brown-Driver-Briggs and couldn’t find it exactly (the closest had an extra vav).
Also, Viciousmobile is the name of my next car.
Israelis can be accused of many things, but stupidity is not one of them (the intelligence agencies in the run up to the '73 war excepting!). A strike against Iran is unlikely to succeed in eliminating their programme, this is not a terrorist cell that needs hitting (like Tunis in the 80’s), the Israelis need to carry out a sustained campaign to achive those goals, against a target upto 2000KM away. The Israeli Airforce logistic system strained carrying out operations in Egypt with bases in the Sinai, I really think such an OP would be well beyond their capabilities.
So I don’t think they are contemplating it at all.
To be fair, “Achzarit” (like all the other “it” words) *is *a feminine word.