Report: Mossad intel of looming Iranian attack led US to send in carrier force | The Times of Israel 6/5/19 23)04

Report: Mossad intel of looming Iranian attack

led US to send in carrier force
Deploying USS Abraham Lincoln to vicinity of Iran, US National Security Adviser John Bolton says it came after ‘a
number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings’

By TOI STAFF and AFP

Today, 10:46 pm

The USS Abraham Lincoln deploys from Naval Station Norfolk, in the vicinity of Norfolk, Virginia, on April 1, 2019. (Kaitlin McKeown/ The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency reportedly tipped off the United States on an impending Iranian attack on
American interests in the Gulf, prompting Washington to deploy an aircraft carrier strike group to the region late
Sunday, in a sharp escalation of US President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign.

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser who advocated attacking Iran before taking up the post, announced
late Sunday that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group would sail to unspecified waters in the vicinity of
Iran.

The deployment is aimed at sending “a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on
United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” Bolton said.

“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack,
whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

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Report: Mossad intel of looming Iranian attack led US to send in carrier force | The Times of Israel 6/5/19 23)04

US President Donald Trump, left, meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-In in the Oval OQce of the White House in Washington, as national security adviser John Bolton,
right, watches. May 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

According to Israel’s Channel 13, Israeli officials conveyed information gathered largely by the Mossad on an Iranian
plan to attack either a US or US-allied target, details of which were not provided to the network.

The threat was initially raised two weeks ago in the White House, officials told Channel 13, when an Israeli
delegation led by National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat huddled with their American counterparts.

“It is still unclear to us what the Iranians are trying to do and how they are planning to do it, but it is clear to us that
the Iranian temperature is on the rise as a result of the growing US pressure campaign against them, and they are
considering retaliating against US interests in the Gulf,” an official was quoted as saying.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has previously been deployed to the Gulf, including during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and
was the scene of then-president George W. Bush’s later notorious victory speech in front of a banner that read
“Mission Accomplished.”

The Pentagon had already announced with little fanfare last month that the USS Abraham Lincoln and the rest of its
strike group had headed on a “regularly scheduled deployment” out of its base in Norfolk, Virginia.

But Bolton gave the deployment a new urgency as he said that it was in response to “a number of troubling and
escalatory indications and warnings” by Iran.

Iranian navy personnel celebrate after successfully launching a Ghader missile from the Jask port area on the shores of the Gulf of Oman during a drill near the Strait of Hormuz,
January 1, 2013. (AP/Jamejam Online, Azin Haghighi)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters he could not elaborate on what those indications were, but said

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Report: Mossad intel of looming Iranian attack led US to send in carrier force | The Times of Israel 6/5/19 23)04

they were separate from a violent flare-up between Israel and Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist terror group that
runs the Gaza Strip.

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates a hard line on Iran,
said he had heard of a “spike” in intelligence in recent days about planned attacks.

He believed Iran had given the green-light to the missiles out of Gaza by Hamas and allied movement Islamic Jihad.

The strikes sought “to tie down Israeli forces and create a
crisis to distract the US and Israel from IRGC plans
elsewhere,” he said, referring to Iran’s elite Revolutionary
Guards.

Other observers were much more skeptical, believing that

Bolton had seized on a routine deployment as a way to
pile pressure on Iran.

The statement came almost a year to the date after Trump

A picture taken on May 5, 2019 from the Israel-Gaza border shows a barrage of
rockets being \red from the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave. (Jack GUEZ / AFP) pulled the United States out of a multinational accord
under which Tehran drastically scaled back its sensitive
nuclear work.

“I think this is manufactured by Bolton to try to justify the administration’s very harsh policy toward Iran, despite the
fact that Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal,” said Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran
Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“Given Bolton’s record,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it past him to try to manufacture a crisis here.”

UN inspectors say that Iran has been in compliance with the nuclear deal, which is still backed by European powers as
well as Trump’s Democratic rivals seeking to unseat him next year.

But Iranians have voiced frustration that they have not seen a promised economic boon, with Trump instead slapping
sweeping sanctions on the country.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has hit even harder, moving to ban all countries from buying Iran’s oil, its
top export, and declaring the Revolutionary Guards to be a terrorist group — the first such designation of a unit of a
foreign government.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may announce “retaliatory measures” on Wednesday on the anniversary of the US
pullout, the semi-official ISNA news agency said on Monday.

READ MORE:

· Israel & the Region

· Mossad
· John Bolton
· US-Iran relations

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