Global Research

1) Israeli ambassador to US: Obama’s end-of-the-year deadline to Iran has been moved up to September (16 August 2009)
2) Israeli ambassador to US: Iranian nuke could wipe off Israel in seconds (4 July 2009)
3) Israeli army to train overseas for Iran strike operation (5 July 2009)

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0908/16/fzgps.01.html

excerpt from: Interview With Israeli Ambassador to United States

CNN web site, 16 August 2009

[W]e were greatly comforted during the [Israeli] prime minister’s visit here in May, when the [US] president told the [Israeli] prime minister that there would be a serious reassessment of the engagement policy before the end of the year.

And we are further reassured now that that end-of-the-year deadline has been moved up to September. We actually have a date when it’s going to occur.

We are comforted by the fact that the [Obama] administration, in the aftermath of recent events in Iran, has exhibited greater willingness to consider formulating a package of serious sanctions against Iran, even now in advance of the reassessment.

[Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” interview, 16 August 2009]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1097673.html

excerpt from: ‘Iran nuke could wipe Israel off map in seconds’

Haaretz, 4 July 2009

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, on Friday warned that an Iranian atomic bomb could “wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds,” and that the Iranians could “accomplish in a matter of seconds what they denied Hitler did, and kill 6 million Jews, literally.”

Oren made his comments in a conversation with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

The newly appointed ambassador warned, “There are clocks ticking all around,” with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue. “One of those clocks is the uranium enrichment clock, which will show that by a certain date the Iranians will have sufficient, highly enriched uranium materials to create a bomb that could literally wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds.”

video link:

In Conversation with Michael Oren (part 2)

Aspen Ideas Festival website, 3 July 2009

http://www.aifestival.org/audio-video-library.php?menu=3&title=515&action=full_info&qclip=1

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443724418&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

excerpts from: IAF to train overseas for Iran strike op

by Yaakov Katz and AP, Jerusalem Post, 5 July 2009

[…] The Jerusalem Post learned that the IAF [Israeli Air Force] plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights. […]

IAF planes will take part this year in a joint aerial exercise with a NATO-member state that cannot be identified.

In addition, later this month, the air force will send F-16C fighter jets to participate in the Red Flag exercise at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. At the same time, several of the IAF’s C-130 Hercules transport aircraft will participate in the Rodeo 2009 competition at the McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.

Defense officials said the overseas exercises would be used to drill long-range manoeuvres. […] Israel has a number of defense pacts with countries under which the air force is allowed to fly in foreign airspace. […]

Last summer, more than 100 IAF jets flew over Greece in what was viewed as a test-run for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. […]

In May [this year], the French newsweekly L’Express reported that the IAF had staged military exercises over Gibraltar […] [in which] 83 jets drilled live bombing runs under a simulated surface-to-air threat environment.