A Brief History of Aborted Israeli Nuclear Strikes: 1991, 2006, 2024
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ABORTED ISRAELI NUCLEAR STRIKES: 1991, 2006, 2024
by William Thomas
willthomasonline.net exclusive
DURING THE PREDAWN HOURS of January 18, 1991, Saddam Hussein responded to the opening sorties of a ferocious allied air campaign by ordering his generals to launch sarin-tipped SCUD missiles into Israel if he became cut off from his military commanders. [Times of Israel Jan 24, 2014]
The Iraqi army responded by launching an initial eight Scud missiles, hitting Tel Aviv and Haifa and wounding seven people. In Vancouver BC, as Canadian artist Carl Chaplin and I prepared to fly into Jordan on a private peace mission financed by Carl’s maxed-out credit card and the thirty-dollars in my jeans, news outlets were reporting casualties from sarin nerve agents in Tel Aviv!
“Bye-bye Baghdad,” I told Carl. We both knew that the Israeli Government had pledged to respond to an Iraqi WMD attack with nuclear weapons. As the Jerusalem Post later reported, even as Israeli Prime minister Yitzhak Shamir “was being pressured by Bush not to retaliate” — Defense Minister Moshe Arens was pushing for an immediate nuclear counterstrike.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Dan Shomron later recalled how Arens had phoned US secretary of defense Dick Cheney to tell him: “OK, we’re going to attack, move your planes.” [Times of Israel Jan 18, 2018]
The erroneous reports of a lethal sarin attack on Tel Aviv were later corrected. But by then, Israel’s nuclear response was already airborne.
ECOWAR
I learned of this clandestine strike nearly two months later while waiting to board a specially laid-on US Navy C-2 Greyhound transport plane in Kuwait. After meeting up with three Earthtrust volunteers in shot-up Kuwait City five weeks previously, we had moved quickly to organize an environmental response to the biggest ecological disaster of modern times. After trudging through minefields and the black petroleum rain falling through perpetual darkness at noon, no wonder I was so ill.
But I was still a trained reporter.
Now, after this 65-hour Cessna driver had bonded with two US Navy pilots assigned to fly me out, I was standing nearby when they began comparing notes on an incident that nearly made me run in circles and scream and shout. Apparently, it was widely known throughout the navy air community that on January 18, a nuclear strike by the Israeli air force had been launched against Baghdad. But without the proper IFF code required to proceed, the IDF fighter bombers had been kept circling overhead while their request for clearance through American-controlled airspace was bucked all the way up the chain-of-command. “There still wasn’t permission from the [US] president, so we couldn’t coordinate,” Arens subsequently related.
IFFY“Identification Friend or Foe” are the unique transponder codes denoting friendly aircraft on friendly radars. In this recent war zone, absence of the proper IFF identifiers could prompt the immediate destruction of any presumed “bandits”.
This lesson had been tattooed into my DNA during an Earthtrust environmental survey flight over southern Iraq. Re-entering Kuwait airspace, we were making a beeline for Kuwait City when our helo was intercepted by a heavily armed US Navy gunship. Unhappily, our clattering Puma carried the same desert camouflage as identical Iraqi helos. While the Kuwaiti Air Force pilots up front frantically radioed our identity on dead channels, the increasingly alarmed Americans repeatedly threatened to blast us out of the sky. Just in time, our chauffeurs stumbled onto the correct frequency. This unwelcome adventure illustrates why — with their request for the proper IFF codes denied — the atom-bomb-laden Israeli F-16s had turned back.
CAN YOU CONFIRM?
Fast-forward to Tuesday, January 9, 2006. After negotiating an elaborate telephone security screen, I finally reached my most trusted source. Though we had not spoken in months, I wanted to confirm a tip I’d just received. A Gulf War combat veteran whose connections included boots-on-the-ground with former comrades, high-ranking US generals, and intelligence agencies of the United States and “non-U.S.” countries, Jim Brown was my go-to guy for deep intel. “The people with dusty shoes,” he’d once remarked, “need to be the ones being listened to.” Having broken major stories together, which had caught the attention of a former Iranian president, the Vatican, British Parliament, the US Congress and the Joint Chiefs, I trusted my source.
Identified only as “Hank” in my posted articles, Jim Brown habitually spoke with a GI’s directness. With our posts immediately going viral, we were ever-mindful of the two “men in black” from a no-name agency, who paid him regular “attaboy” home visits after his carefully considered — and my diligently worded! — revelations were posted on my Convergence website for the good of his former comrades. And all humanity. “Keep going. But be careful,” we were told. None of these agencies wanted to see the world blown up.
After exchanging high-fives over the phone I told the medically discharged soldier — whose wartime service and subsequent Gulf War Illness I’d detailed in Bringing The War Home — that I’d been tipped that Israel had launched a nuclear strike against Iran on January 7. Could he confirm? “Yes,” my source replied without hesitation.
After a stunned silence, I asked, “Would you care to expand on that?”
OVER THE TAPLINE ROAD
He wouldn’t. A bona fide source will never volunteer sensitive information to a reporter, who can only elicit specific details by asking follow-up questions demonstrating that they were not just blindly fishing for Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”. Even with my abbreviated USNR background and knowledge of military aviation, it took another three-and-a-half hours to draw him out.
Under informed prompting, Brown serially recounted how a three-plane IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) strike had flown unannounced to the 160 marker on the tapline road, 160 km from Baghdad. While there was no immediate Iranian threat, the turbulent aftermath of a Desert Storm provided perfect cover for decapitating their most hated enemy.
Flying a standard racetrack pattern, the bomb-laden F-16s were topped off by a USAF KC-135 refueling tanker. “They were pushing the envelope”, Brown observed, referencing American tolerance. But by now everyone accepted rogue initiatives as standard Israeli practice.
Less routine was the single nuclear bomb strapped to each of the IDF Fighting Falcons. According to Brown’s sources, only one of those “bad boys” needed to reach its target in Iran. A second bomb could be used “to take out resistance,” or hold the Iranian government hostage. “The third is backup,” he explained.
GOING DOWNTOWN
Ordering this nuclear strike had been “a minute by minute decision.” Now, laden with drop tanks and nuclear ordnance, the three minimally marked Israeli F-16s from a “no name” IAF detachment finished tanking. But instead of turning back, their airspeed increased! Blowing right through the tapline 160 checkpoint, they banked towards the Iranian border. “They were going downtown, goin’ for the black robes,” Brown related, referring to Iran’s religious leadership, whose current location had been confirmed by Israeli assets “on the ground.”
Despite the demonstrated accuracy of his previous nuclear disclosures, how could he possibly know this? Jim Brown explained that his sources included “some of the handlers of some of those people on the ground.”
When I again queried his access, my source pointed out that 350 members of his Gulf War veterans organization, Gulf Watch, were members of the intelligence community. As a free bonus extra, Iranian air defenses were not EMP hardened, Brown continued. And with three unidentified bogeys coming in fast from the west, “All their stuff is lit up. Everything’s on.”
After a single nuclear airburst… “Now they’re permanently off.”
But the Americans were watching. A flight of patrolling US Air Force Strike Eagles quickly intercepted the trespassing Fighting Falcons. Swooping past the Israeli formation “a couple of times,” the F-15Es rocked their wings to get their allies' attention.
Expressions obscured by oxygen masks and polarized canopies, the Israelis kept going.
In response, the twin-tail American jets dropped astern, “and then got tone,” Jim Brown related. With their own aircraft “locked up” by American air-to-air targeting radars, the Israeli flight leader called home.
WHO, US?Even as this unannounced three-plane nuclear strike was being intercepted over Iraq, angry officials at the prime minister’s office, foreign ministry and defence ministry of Israel “flatly denied” that their country would ever use nuclear bombs against a nation the Institute for National Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University was calling Israel’s “most serious threat.” [AFP Jan 7/07]
Institute board member, retired Brigadier General Giora Eiland, assured Ha’aretz that no military strike would take place against Iran without a full “strategic and military” understanding with the Americans. “Because there are no free rides and our existence isn’t guaranteed,” retired Brigadier General Oded Tira chimed in, “we must prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the U.S.” [Ha’aretz Jan 2/07]
Though General Tira did not elaborate on the nature of such a lone strike, Eiland warned, “It might be perceived” as an understanding between the United States and Israel.
NO WORRIES
On January 8, Iran’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the previous day's radar-tracked shenanigans as a “bluff” intended to scare Iran away from developing peaceful nuclear power.
Warning that any “aggressor would regret such action very quickly,” spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini pointedly added: “This comes after the confession of the Israel prime minister who acknowledged that the Israeli regime possesses a nuclear weapon.”
Just one? Really? Who dares say, “Dimona”?
RTB
"Hank" confirmed that the Israeli command had once again ordered a nuclear strike to RTB: Return To Base. Once again?
This was the third attempted Israeli nuclear strike on Iran, my military intelligence insider stated. Though he would not provide the earlier dates, this Gulf War veteran did disclose that two previous raids had been prepared after public statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were interpreted as either clear or coded signals for an imminent war of annihilation against Israel.
Just how accurate was this assessment?
In mid-May 2006, an eight-page letter to President GW Bush from the Iranian president had been widely interpreted by the European press as a peaceful overture. Ahmadinejad’s closing phrase — “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda” — could translate as, “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.” But according to the Jerusalem Newswire, this historical phrase harkened back to the prophet Mohammad’s same salutation to two infidel emperors in the late 620’s, inviting them to convert to Islam. Or be forcefully persuaded. Incendiary footage of an April 2006 speech aired by the Christian Broadcast Network highlighted the Iranian president declaring: “The Zionist regime of Israel is like a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated by one storm.”
The implicit threat seemed clear enough. Especially if Iran had nukes. For years, American intelligence agencies had insisted they didn’t. But still…
FAST-TRACKING ARMAGEDDON
It seemed nuts for modern mullahs in Teheran to provoke a preemptive atomic attack that would quickly turn their nation into radioactive rubble, ending 4,000 years of Persian civilization within an hour.
On the other, other hand, in the absence of a demonstrable nuclear threat, would Israel’s equally fanatical but less restrained leaders issue orders proscribed by Christ, Nuremberg and the Geneva Conventions?
The Iranian regime’s own religious predilections remained troubling. Investigative reporter George Thomas told CBN, “Ahmadinejad believes that he has been chosen; he has a ‘divine mission’ to usher in the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. He believes that in order for this Mahdi to return, the entire world should be filled with chaos; there should be a battle between good and evil; in his mind between the east and the west.”
Mirroring the Christian fundamentalist vision espoused by the White House, most neocons, and millions of American Bible thumpers eagerly anticipating bare-naked Rapture — mirroring their own vengeful Redeemer, the Mahdi’s triumphant return could be helpfully hastened by Armageddon.
What would happen when both mythical Super Heroes met on the Plains of Abraham was anybody’s guess. But with Iran shipping rockets to the stubborn Hezbollah resistance, this small Jewish enclave dropped into an angry Islamic sea by UN and British authorities in 1945 had ever since adhered to the overriding military maxim: Do Unto Others Before They Do It To You.
Despite successive U.S. national intelligence consensus reaffirming that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons, apocalyptic visionaries like God-directede GW Bush and Dick Cheney remained “bent” on ordering an all-out attack against one of the world’s oldest and best armed civilizations. “There are a few things Israel cannot allow to occur, Jim Brown told me. “One is to allow a Middle Eastern power to become an acknowledged and capable nuclear power.”
“WIPING ISRAEL OFF THE MAP”
Even as Israel’s nuclear strike was turning toward Iran, Agence France Presse was reporting: “Israel considers Iran its arch-foe because of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.” [AFP Jan 7/07]
This “wipe out” quote has since become unholy dogma among militant Israeli and American Zionists. But Farsi-language expert Juan Cole more accurately translated the Iranian president’s controversial remark as: “This regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” According to Cole, Ahmadinejad was being “prophetic not threatening.”
There seemed to be a dangerous disconnect between Ahmadinejad’s boilerplate belligerence, and the aspirations of his constituents, most of whom were under the age of 30 and wanted only to be free of the mullah’s most demanding strictures. Especially Iran's women.
They wanted to run their own revolution. Was Iran being “framed” by a war-crazed corporate media recycling the same frenzied falsehoods to market more of the costly weapons that had led to more than one-million dead Iraqi civilians and the destruction of their ancient Eden?
As one blogger pointed out in the London Telegraph: “Iran has never attacked any neighbouring country, and the lives of ordinary Iranians are lived in modernity and a relative and increasing freedom compared to its four neighbours — chaotic Afghanistan, violent and disintegrated Iraq, fascist Turkmenistan, mediaevally oppressive Saudi Arabia — all of whom have American presence, [or whose governments] are pro-American.
“Another neighbour, unstable, strife-torn Pakistan, has confirmed nukes and was responsible for spreading nuclear secrets to other rogue states. Nearly all the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi. And no action against any of these countries — so why do you propose action against the Mid-East’s relative oasis of stability and modernity and peace?
“Iran is not a perfect society, but give them time, and let them develop towards democracy uninterrupted by the totally counterproductive interference the U.S. specialises in. Life has got much better since the revolution. [Outsiders] should be sympathetic of a society that changes slowly, organically for the better, as Iran is; slow change is the only change that endures.” [Daily Telegraph Jan 8/07]
ISRAEL’S NEXT BIG IDEA
Never mind history. Ccombining paranoia with projection, the Israeli calculus was compelling. Surely, detonating an atom bomb over Teheran would vaporize Iran’s secular and religious leadership in the flash of a thousand suns. And the ensuing electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would fry Iran's electronics, rendering further defense and retaliation against follow-on strikes impossible.
At least this was the plan.
BAD BOYS
How big were each of the three bombs carried by those Israeli jets? Jim Brown’s reply was immediate: “Twenty kilotons.” “Twenty kilotons!” The atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima, instantly killing or vaporizing more than 120,000 human beings (according to city records), had a yield of 15 kilotons. Many more soon died from radiation sickness. And then came Nagasaki’s torment. But who in the war-crazed West is keeping score?
KEIKO
Eight-year-old Keiko Ogura had stayed home from school the day the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on her city…
“That morning I was on the road near the house and all of a sudden I saw a flash of bluish white light — magnesium-like flash — and soon after a big sound with dust, and I was blown away and fell on the ground,” Keiko told the BBC in 2005.
“I found myself lying on the ground near the house. I thought the house was just in front of me, but I couldn’t see it because everything had become so dark and many pieces of wood and roof tiles and rubbish were falling on my head. There was black rain falling... It smelled bad and there were many spots on my white blouse.”
A wind sprang up like a typhoon. Blown into kindling, entire neighborhoods of flattened wooden homes burned like torches in the gloom.
“I saw long lines of refugees, just quiet. I don’t know why they were so quiet. There were long lines, like ghosts. Most of them were stretching out their arms because the skin was peeling off from the tips of their fingers. I could clearly see the hanging skin, peeling skin, and the wet red flesh and their hair was burned and smelled, the burnt hair smelled a lot. Almost all the people were just asking mizu (‘water’), and ‘help me’,” Keiko resumed.
The bewildered little girl climbed a hill overlooking Hiroshima. “I was so astonished — all the city was flattened and demolished. In the morning people were moving, brushing away flies from their skin. My house was full of injured people. The next day some of the buildings were still burning, and the next day, and the next day…” [BBC News Aug 5/05]
THE TWEET THAT ROARED
Pepe Escobar’s terse Tweet is reprinted verbatim below:4:51 AM Apr 20, 2024 2.4 million views
THE REAL STORY OF THE ISRAELI COUNTER RESPONSEby Pepe Escobar
From a very high level intel source.In Asia. NOT Russia-China. Although the strategic partnership, of course, exchanges at the highest level 24-7. Confirmed and re-confirmed [by independent sources]. It will be great to know what Sy Hersh hears from his Beltway sources. Here we go. Israel initially chose to respond with extreme force.An F-35 loaded with a nuclear bomb was sent east over Jordan. The mission: cause a high-altitude detonation over Iran that would provoke a surge in the high-capacity power lines, crippling Iran's electric grid, as well as disabling all electronic devices. An EMP attack. However...... As the Israeli F-35 was leaving Jordanian airspace it was shot down by the Russian Air Force. Hence the publicised version of the Israeli counter response was such a travesty.In the end all sides decided not to publicise the real news — to de-escalate what could well turn into WWIII.
Pepe's alarming revelations were brushed off by Western experts, who did not buy the alleged F-35 shootdown. Nevertheless, given the deep silence following each post-Nagasaki use and attempted use of nuclear weapons, this writer accepts Pepe’s broader assertions — even as conventionally armed Israeli F-35s continue pounding Lebanon today.
WHY I’M REPOSTING THESE ARTICLES
In August 2024, military experts warn that even backed by American firepower, if Israel’s war-weary reservists attempt another ground invasion of Lebanon, a much stronger and well-equipped Hezbollah will whip them again. Just as they did in 2006.
Or, as of Sept. 28, 2024, Israel can continue eliminating Lebanon's top civil and military officials through a relentless bombing and missile campaign, hoping to at last draw Iran into an all-out regional war that will see US military intervention to backup Tel Aviv.
Russia and China may not stand by to see their North-South Transportation Corridor demolished. Like Gaza, Lebanon will be wrecked. And Israel will lose. Perhaps catastrophically. If this were to happen, there is little doubt among informed observers that, to remain in power and out of prison, a cornered fundamentalist war criminal named Netanyahu would resort to the Sampson Option and “pop a nuke” or three into Lebanon. And then, the hardest of hardline Israeli and American Zionists will achieve their most fervid desire. Because, under the well-understood doctrine of “use it or lose it”, hypersonic and submarine-launched missile flight times measured in minute will soon necessitate an immediate automated response. And every major nuclear power’s emotionless AI will launch everything it has.
Clearly, if complicit and compliant taxpayers allows this to occur, there will be many more Keiko’s. At least, temporarily. In her frighteningly well-researched, Nuclear War: A Scenario, the experts Annie Jacobson consulted regarding a general nuclear exchange and resulting EMPs give a quarter-million-years of human evolution a further life-expectancy of… 70 minutes.
William Thomas
Sept 28, 2024
Photo Captions
American F-15s over Iraq -marinecorpstimes.com
Destruction caused by a conventional Iraqi Scud missile in Israel, January 1991. -Defense Ministry IDF Archive
Earthtrust sampling oil fires toxins -Will Thomas photo
UC-2A Greyhound -Raymond Rivard /AirHistory.net
Kuwait Air Force SA-330L Puma -Tom Dolders/ airliners.net
Bringing The War Home by William Thomas
Israeli F-16 Over Iraq -theweek.in
Mountains ringing Tehran would focus nuclear blast -Getty Images
Shot Grable, a 15-kiloton nuclear detonation -reddit.com
What Keiko might have seen -britannica.com
The extraordinary life of Pepe Escobar -arretsurinfo.ch