On Oct. 10, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) website posted photos and video clips of a maneuver that was carried out by the air force. In an unorthodox fashion, the footage — featuring IAF jet fighters refueling mid-air by huge refueling planes — was posted as the exercise was still taking place.
At exactly the same time, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was giving yet another series of interviews to European media outlets. The writers of the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the French Le Monde and the British Financial Times, as well as three TV networks from these countries — Sky, France 24 and ARD — seized the unexpected opportunity to take an active part in the second act of Netanyahu’s media blitz concerning the Iranian issue.
The first act, it should be recalled, took place last week in New York and Washington, on the sidelines of the prime minister’s address at the UN General Assembly on Oct. 1. The Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, currently in Washington, is carrying a message in the same vein: “The Iranians are smiling. At this rate, Iran will have not two, but 200 bombs, directed not only at Israel but at Europe as well. The Iranians need to be stopped now, while the West still has the upper hand. Be tough, consistent and strong. Don’t let the charm offensive of the Iranian regime fool you. Don’t let it pursue the enrichment process and keep the plutonium reactors in exchange for some cosmetic concessions. If the sanctions are eased, they will surely collapse. Tehran will get everything, and you will get nothing. It will be a fatal mistake with huge global repercussions.”
The publication of the IAF maneuver concurrent with this media campaign is a broad hint, albeit a tad childish, to the whole world. It took place just a few days before the kickoff of the negotiations between the West — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany — and Iran, which Jerusalem perceives to be a bona fide existential event. To chip away at the European-US smugness and dissipate the premature euphoria around the likely arrangement with Iran, Israel is trying to revive its independent military threat.
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