What if Israel Attacks?

In light of our recent Iran/war simulation, I fought a recent news article I read rather intriguing. Entitled “Israel ups war training despite US discontent”, the article detailed the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and its recent training exercises against MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, the fighter jets used by neighboring Arab nations including Iran. Israel was apparently loaned these soviet-designed fighters by an unidentified foreign country in order to simulation dog fights and other military encounters with potential enemies. This recent and specific military exercises have worried the White House, who have been seeking reassurance that Israel would not launch a surprise attack on Iran without first notifying the US. While the US and Israel remand strong allies, the new Obama Administration has changed the US’s policies in regards to Iran, attempting to engage in direct diplomatic relation with Tehran in order to address Israel and the US’s nuclear concerns. One of the worries that the article addresses is that the hawkish government of Israel’s new prime minister could potentially blindside the US government and drag the US into an undesirable war with Iran.

In this article, I noticed many parallels with our own simulation on the issue in class. Similar to the stances my classmates portrayed in the simulation, the US is desperate to solve the issue diplomatically and reserve war as a last resort, while Israel appears ready to attack Iran at first sight of a threat. I also noticed a parallel regarding the alliance between Israel and the US; namely how while the US has agreed to support Israel militarily despite the two nations’ differing approaches to solving the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. In our simulation, the danger of such an alliance was made clear as the US mobilized forces to Iran’s border along with Israel, despite the fact that the US, in the simulation UN summit a day prior, had proposed a peacefully and fairly lenient compromise on the issue. Luckily, in our simulation, Israel did not jump the gun and invade Iran at this point, as such actions would have forced the US into war which it had little intentions of entering. However, the recent military preparation detailed in this article makes the troubling suggestion that Israel could potentially invade Iran without first consulting the White House, knowing that the US would be forced to engage regardless. Thus, the US would be forced into another costly, unfavorable war, this time over an issue it had tried to solve (and perhaps made significant progress in solving) diplomatically.