This is how Rupert and friends roll (via the New York Post editorial). Because Murdoch’s support for the Iraq war hasn’t already caused enough mayhem:
How’s this for astonishing: NBC News is reporting that Israeli spies have been involved in the assassinations of five Iranian nuclear scientists.
So far, not so bad. We’d say the engineers basically needed killing.
But here’s the astonishing part: The source for the story apparently is theObama administration— albeit through anonymous leaks.
The network claims that Israel used members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), a dissident group the United States classified as a terrorist group in 1998, to ice the engineers.
An Iranian spokesman told NBC the Mossad has been flying MeK members to Israel for training and sending them back home to carry out assassinations, which began in 2007.
The allegations are nothing new.
Whatisnew is that “senior US officials” are said to have confirmed the gory details.
One must wonder why.
We understand that the Obama administration’s ties with Israel are strained — at best — and that the State Department has a particular allergy to the Jewish state.
But Iran’s nuclear program is about much more than Israel alone.
A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a near-existential threat to US allies in the region — meaning a nuclear-arms race among its Arab neighbors would be inevitable.
And, of course, the lion’s share of the world’s oil passes through the Persian Gulf.
So who… cares… whether the MeK is a designated terror group? (Britain and the European Union already removed it from their lists, and there is pressure on America to do the same.)
And isn’t Iran itself the leading exporter of terrorism in the world?
Let’s be frank: Were the MeK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.
So why is the administration making such details public?
President Obama did Israel no favors when he pressured it to join his love-peace-and-harmony nuclear summit in 2010, undermining a basic pillar of Israel’s security — its undisclosed nuclear program.
And his administration has done far worse damage now, which may make it much harder for Israel to operate in Iran.
Trouble is, Israel won’t suffer the consequences alone. Everyone will.
America included.