Israel Wanted Iran not Iraq

Interesting claim from a reliable source that Israel did not encourage the US to go after Iraq.

Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, "The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy – Iran is the enemy."

However, that is different from there public stance, which was to support the invasion including this statement:

A notable exception, however, was a statement on Aug. 16, 2002 by Ranaan Gissin, an aide to Sharon. Ranaan declared, "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose. It will only give [Hussein] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction."

Also, this does not take into account statements from out-of-power Israelis such as Bibi that the US should attack Iraq.

Nonetheless, it does indicate that Israel was the follower, not the leader, on Iraq. The leaders were US neocons who thought they were acting in Israels best interest.

They do know best, don't they?