Ready for another week of media reports on a possible Israeli retaliation? Waiting for: Israeli retaliation is "imminent," or "in hours," or "as early as tomorrow," or "within days," or "during the week," and, of course, "soon?" Well, there's a very DANGEROUS RUMOR going around . . .
When the Israeli War Cabinet convened, Gantz and Eiznekott's immediate response to the Iran response attack, was to ask for a counter-strike on Iran. Immediately. They did not even want to wait for the attack's results.
They were concerned that American pressure would arrive and wanted to attack first.
Everyone else in the cabinet, as well as the IDF Chief of Staff and Netanyahu were said to be against that.
That was all before Biden, the UK, and France asked for restraint.
Yet this afternoon, we are hearing publicly "MAJORITY IN ISRAELI WAR CABINET FAVOUR RESPONSE TO IRAN ATTACK BUT DIVIDED OVER TIMING AND SCALE, ISRAELI OFFICIALS SAY."
So which is it? Attack immediately or wait?
As of 4:50 PM EDT my former colleagues in the Intelligence Community, from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, tell me there's dangerous skuttle-butt in the corridors of power inside Israel. The skuttle-butt is: "Tonight."
This jives with other reporting that came out of Israel earlier this afternoon "Israel is in a very "significant 24-hour period" and appears to be carefully weighing its next steps in response to Iran's attack, IDF spokesman Hagari said. Operational plans have been approved for both offensive and defensive actions, he declined to provide further details - NBC.
So the skuttle-butt about "Tonight" could, in fact, be true.
If Israel goes ahead and does that, Iran has already said the next response from them will be "dozens of times larger."
The thing is, Iran does have such capability. They actually __can__ do it.
I don't like this diametrically opposite information. No, I don't like it one bit. There is so much more at stake than just little Israel.
I guess it will be another night of feeling like we're waiting on a razors edge.
UPDATE 5:07 PM EDT --
From the Wall Street Journal:
"Some Western officials: Israel’s response to Iran is expected soon, US won’t be part of the attack."
UPDATE 5:40 PM EDT --
Hebrew Channel 14 TV in Israel is now PUBLICLY Reporting "The War Cabinet decided to strike Iran TONIGHT"
Machine Translation from Image via YANDEX:
(HT REMARK: Who, in their right mind, reports something like this publicly? Who would dare to even LEAK something like this and where is the discretion of the media outlet about whether or not to report it? If this is actually true, this TV report is endangering the lives of troops.)
