Global intelligence firm Stratfor
circulates e-mail citing “confirmed Israeli intelligence agent” saying
that Israeli commandos and Kurdish forces destroyed most of Iran’s
nuclear infrastructure “weeks ago” • Email also says that attack on Iran
would be “so destructive that Iran will be unable to retaliate.”
Israeli commandos have already
targeted a number of underground nuclear facilities in Iran, claims an
email circulated within the U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor which
was posted on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks on Monday.
The email, leaked by an organization that aims
to publish private, secret and classified media from anonymous sources,
was dated Nov. 14, two days after one of Iran’s top commanders was
killed in a mysterious explosion in a missile base outside Tehran.
In the chain email, a Stratfor employee cited a
“confirmed Israeli intelligence agent” as saying that “the Israelis
already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground
weeks ago.”
When Stratfor employees asked the source to
clarify, he responded, according to the email, that “Israeli commandos
in collaboration with Kurd forces destroyed [a] few underground
facilities mainly used for the Iranian defense and nuclear research
projects.”
The source was further cited as saying that he
thought reports that Israel was preparing to launch an attack on Iran
were “a diversion.”
“The current ‘let’s bomb Iran’ campaign was
ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their
financial problems at home,” the email said.
The email also touched on a military
intervention in Syria. “Despite the reports in the media and against any
public knowledge, the promoter of a massive Israeli attack on Syria is
the axis India-Russia-Turkey-Saudi Arabia. The axis
U.S.-Germany-France-China is against such an attack [for] obvious
reasons,” the email said. “Not many people know that Russia is one of
Israel’s largest military partners and India is Israel’s largest
client.”
The information in the email runs counter to
recent warnings and actions by Russian officials in opposition to a
military intervention in Syria or an attack on Iran.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on
Monday defended a Russia-China veto of a U.N. resolution condemning
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on protests, saying that
Moscow would not allow a reprise of what happened in Libya, where NATO
airstrikes helped Libya’s rebels oust Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
“If a direct conflict between Iran and Israel
erupts, Russia and Saudi Arabia will gain the advantages of increasing
oil prices,” the Stratfor email said. “On the other hand, China and
Europe are expected to lose from an oil crisis as a result of a
conflict.”
The email also cited the Israeli intelligence
source as saying, “Based on Israeli plans, the attack on Iran will last
only 48 hours but will be so destructive that Iran will be unable to
retaliate or recover and the government will fall.”
This statement also seems to contradict a
recent New York Times report suggesting that U.S. defense officials
believe Israel would not be able to successfully strike Iran on its own.
Such a strike would require much more than the surgical strike Israel
carried out against Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and the 2007 attack on
a nuclear reactor in Syria that foreign media have attributed to
Israel, the New York Times said.
The Stratfor email added that “even if the
Israelis have the capabilities and are ready to attack by air, sea and
land, there is no need to attack the nuclear program at this point after
the commandos destroyed a significant part of it.”
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