Your theories as to the why and wherefor of Israeli official “signals” to Syria are probably correct. At the very least this is a quid pro quo for a U.S. veto of the Goldstone Report, and it might even have something to do with Iran.

As I’ve posted in other venues, I don’t rule out direct U.S. action against Iran. I know that I am a very lonely voice on this, but any reasonable observer has to concede the following as likely:

-That negotiations are going nowhere.

-That while an overthrow of the mullahs would solve everybody’s problems, and while this may ultimately happen, it probably won’t happen soon enough.

-Given the above, if the U.S. doesn’t act, Israel will.

Now, if Israel is left to act alone, this will instigate a s***storm in the region. Iran will blame the U.S. anyway for “letting” Israel attack, and will retaliate against U.S. interests in addition to Israel. Worst of all, in my own personal estimation, the Israeli Air Force – which I rate in absolute terms as the fifth most powerful in the world today – still will not land a sufficiently telling blow to make the fallout worth the trouble.

Like seventies movie character Billy Jack once said, “..If you’re in for a licking, you might as well get in the first lick”.

We can’t afford to “wound” this elephant. We have to kill it. Now, we don’t have the ground forces to spare for a land invasion of Iran – we’d need a draft and a couple of years lead time for that – but our air and naval assets could greatly reduce Iran’s ability to make regional trouble, outside of terrorism. We could destroy their entire air force and navy in the course of a busy afternoon (Israel cannot do this). We could obliterate every Revolutionary Guards barracks. And we could do this even while we employ our unique “bunker busting” capabilities against not just a few key nodes of Iran’s program – as Israel probably would – but the whole schmeer.

I’m sure Obama did not come into office planning to do this. I imagine that the fool actually thought he was clever enough to use a combination of diplomacy and economic sticks/carrots to solve this problem. And I think he really WANTS to solve this problem – not for Israel’s sake, but for his Gulf Arab buddies, who are just about as afraid of Iran as is the case for Israel. (Of course, if he actually does this, he will make it out to be for Israel’s sake for public consumption; after all, he DOES face reelection in 2012, and if things go wrong, it is always handy to be able to blame the “Israel Lobby” for forcing us to do something like this).

Now, I consider it at least plausible – I didn’t say LIKELY – that Obama & Co. are coming to the grim realization that they will have to pull the trigger at some point after all. I’d SWAG it at about a 40% chance(Scientific Wild Ass Guess, a favored U.S. military acronym – I’m a U.S. Army vet – for you uninitiated readers).

Real world, though, I expect Obambi to wring his hands and dither, make excuses, rationalize inaction, etc…..until Israel will be left with little chance but to take matters into her own hands. And we’ll all have to hope to heaven that she can strike a more decisive blow than most of us give her credit for being able to carry out.

But….sometimes a situation develops where events force a president to make a decision of a certain type, no matter who is president (well, almost no matter who, I suppose).