More signs signaling Israel will not be attacking Iran soon

Haaretz

If anyone needed further proof that Benjamin Netanyahu has buckled under the pressure and will probably not be giving the order to attack Iran in the next few months, at least not before the U.S. elections, the latest reported IDF appointments seem to supply it.

Yedioth Ahronot reported Wednesday that two key appointments in the IDF that have been frozen for the past few weeks are going ahead. Maj. Gen. Yoav Har-Even, who was only promoted last week, will this week become the new head of the IDF General Staff's operations directorate, replacing Maj. Gen. Yaakov Ayash who is moving to Washington to serve as the IDF military attaché. The other is of Col. A. (name withheld for security reasons), an air force operations chief who will assume command of Ramon airbase, replacing Col. Tal Kalman.

Both appointments were in the pipeline for a while and Yedioth surmises that both the decision to postpone, and now the decision to go ahead with the appointments, are due to fact that "the level of alertness and readiness in the IDF, which was at a record high in recent weeks, is about to go down."

The operations directorate is the central department in the army responsible for coordinating any wide-scale operation, while the Ramon CO has under his command three squadrons of F-16I fighter-bombers, a major component in Israel's long-range strategic strike force. The timing of either of these replacements may not be connected to the reduced chances of an attack on Iran, but they do seem highly suggestive.