Reading the Israeli Tea Leaves

The Israeli government has done two things that makes me think a strike on Iran is more likely than not. First, Israel recalled ALL their ambassadors from around the world for a "Heads of Mission Conference" on December 27-31 that will discuss quite a few issues, including the Iranian threat. Considering this "conference" comes exactly at the same time that the Iranian deadline expires gives me quite a bit of pause. They try not to make it look too obvious by putting at the bottom "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs plans to make the Heads of Missions Conference an annual event, as it is in other leading foreign ministries in the world." We'll see about that.

Second, Bibi has been trying very hard to get Kadima to join a national unity government. The question is why and why now? Bibi already has a 74/120 seat majority in the Knesset, which is a relatively comfortable margin in Israeli politics (although given the number of governments they have had, there might be no such thing as a truly comfortable margin in Israeli politics). Plus you had six Kadima MK's already signing on to leave Kadima and join the coalition. Based on Israeli electoral laws only 7 MK's need to leave a party in order to be considered a separate faction so Bibi is already on the cusp of getting 7 more seats in the Knesset, which would put him in control of 81/120, slightly more than 2/3rd of the seats. Since I believe any national unity government will likely be short lived due to the personalities involved, probably lasting little more than a year, the timing of this offer seems important. Bibi seems to think there will be a very good reason why he would want a national unity government in place in 2010. Note that Menachem Begin, who would only break Labour's stranglehold on the PM office in 1977, joined a national unity government on June 1, 1967. The Six Day War started on June 5, just 4 days later.

Something might be coming up.