CONFIRMATION THAT ISRAEL ADVISED AGAINST INVADING IRAQ. The confirmation comes from an unlikely source:

A senior official at the US State Department has said that political, diplomatic and military officials in Israel warned the United States against invading Iraq even before the American forces entered the country, the Inter Press Service news agency reported over the weekend.

According to the official, Israel tried to convince the Bush administration that the main problem in the region was Iran, not Iraq.

The man, Lawrence Wilkerson, was a member of the US State Department's policy planning staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In an interview with the news agency, he said that "the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy."

According to Wilkerson, different sources in Israel explained to senior US officials that "if you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy."

Wilkerson noted that the main point of their communications was not that the US should immediately attack Iran, but that "it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein" from a focus on the threat from Iran.

Why is Wilkerson an unlikely source? He appears in a German documentary about the Israel Lobby (mostly in English) where while he tries to straddle the fence, he does agree with Mearsheimer and Walt that America's interests are negated by the inability of the US to abandon Israel because of the "Jewish Lobby" which influences US policy through Dick Cheney. He fits in well with Tony Judt and Kenneth Roth.

If Wilkerson knew that Israel saw Iran as the bigger threat, why did he wait till now to say anything? Why did he not mention it in the documentary? Considering the animus he has against the Bush administration, his obvious bias suggests he could just be looking for another way to make Bush look bad.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Lawrence Wilkerson and Israel Lobby.