There is currently a contest taking place between the military of Israel and the military of the United States, who can be quieter regarding Iran. Sure there is no shortage of politicians who will discuss the topic, but in politics it is only worth noting when nobody says a word. While the western media has been openly discussing the Israeli air power exercises that took place last week, many claims being it was an exercise designed to simulate an attack on Iran, the Israeli military hasn't said a word about it. What is also interesting, yet not reported that we can tell, is how we also observe almost no media coverage regarding what the US military is doing in the Middle East. All those ships, all those planes, and yet no press.Hiding in plain sight is something we have been observing that is at least as interesting as a major Israeli air power demonstration: the news from sources other than official military regarding military activities in the Middle East excluding Iraq has almost completely disappeared. Somehow we think that if the absence is a result of the media shying away from embed reporting, that the US citizen is who is really losing out. We used to consider "Fox" Fallon pretty good regarding controlling the message regarding Naval activity in the Gulf, but we are observing that a major OPSEC change has either been officially or unofficially enacted, because military news from the Persian Gulf region has been replaced by a black hole, a near absolute absence of information. We cannot possibly be the only ones who have noticed.
We find it hard to believe Israel would conduct a major military demonstration that coincidently takes place right before the US Navy CNO spends four days in Israel. We observe that Israel has begun a major orchestration of events with a broad approach for the region. On one hand we have an Israeli President nearly absent any power at all propped up by some hidden political force internally attempting to resolve a major negotiation with Hamas that could still go either way, and on the other hand we have rising tensions between Israel and Iran of which the same President is being blamed for failure to get a meaningful response from the international community to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue.
We believe the next twelve weeks will be important in regards to events between Israel and Iran. Over the next six weeks we will observe some of the largest international displays of naval power that will take place this year, exercises in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters that will combine international Navies in cooperation for dealing with various threats, including several wartime scenarios. That essentially allows for a six week disinformation campaign by all sides, but also the window of opportunity to reach a peaceful solution. While the west does not appear to have a sense of urgency on the issue, we observe the Israeli's do, and they are dependent on factors other than their own capability regarding when the time to strike would be.
The six week period leading into the first week of August will be followed by major US Navy rotations of forces, timing of which will just happen to put the most US naval forces at sea either deploying to or returning from major theaters of operation, and at the same time, the US Navy will have the next group of naval forces for the winter deployments begin workup operations as they prepare for deployments later this year. All in all, we will see half the US Navy in motion, an occurrence that usually happens twice a year, and the last time in 2008 will start in about 6 weeks.
If Israel intends to coordinate any military attack against Iran during a period of time when the US Navy is at a high level of readiness, we observe that windows of opportunity will begin roughly the first week of August, just prior to the beginning of the Olympic Games, and last into mid September. Taking a historic look at the choreography that leads up to military operations, which always includes disinformation and deceptions by Israel, we tend to believe it will be that six week window leading until mid September that Israel could potentially unilaterally strike Iran. The necessity to avoid creating an oil shock as a result of the absence of sufficient international naval forces in the Middle East tends to suggest this would be the time Israel would choose for such a strike. We observe that this coincides with the same time period that Israel bombed the nuclear facility in Syria last year.
However, with the activity of Israel in mind, this analysis does not explain the OPSEC change that has either officially or unofficially occurred with the US military forces in the region outside Iraq. While it is purely speculative to suggest, one might call such a change to represent a shift in tasking, away from traditional duties towards what one might speculate as battlefield preparation. This shift would seem relevant to Iran, who can't possibly be oblivious to the absence of any hard news of military activity in the Gulf region, because it implies their window for a negotiated conclusion may be closing as well. It is hard to predict how Iran might respond when their intelligence concludes an attack is imminent.
