ABSTRACT
The year 2005 started with the US and Israel intensifying their threats against Iran. On January 17, 2005 Seymour M. Hersh published an article in The New Yorker entitled “The Coming Wars.” Hersh began by pointing out that Israel did not like the EU 3 approach. “I don’t like what’s happening,” Hersh quoted Silvan Shalom as saying. “If they can’t comply,” according to Shalom, “Israel cannot live with Iran having a nuclear bomb.” Hersh also quoted some individuals in the US on the need to threaten Iran. Patrick Clawson, Hersh went on to say, believed that “force, or the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran.” Hersh further quoted Clawson as saying that “it would be much more in Israel’s interest-and Washington’s-to take covert action. The style of this Administration is to use overwhelming force-‘shock and awe.’ But we get only one bite of the apple.” Hersh then contended that the US had been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical, and missile targets.1 “There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, cooperation with Israel,” contended Hersh. Furthermore, he wrote that a “government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran.”
