NATO may help US air strikes on Iran

When Major-General Axel Tüttelmann, the head of NATO's Airborne Early Warning and Control Force, showed off an AWACS early warning surveillance airplane in Israel two weeks ago, he caused a flurry of concern back at headquarters in Brussels. It was not his demonstration that raised eyebrows, but what he said about NATO's possible involvement in any future military strike against Iran. "We would be the first to be called up if the NATO council decided we should be," he said. NATO would prefer the emphasis to remain on the "if," but Tüttelmann's comments revealed that the military alliance could play a supporting role if the US launches air strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, visited Recep Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, a NATO country, late last year and asked for political, logistical and intelligence support in the event of air strikes, according to western intelligence sources quoted in the German media. The news magazine Der Spiegel noted: "Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack." NATO would be likely to operate air defenses in Turkey, according to Dan Goure, a Pentagon adviser and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. A former senior Israeli defense official said he believed all NATO members had contingency plans. Israel's special forces are said to be operating inside Iran in an urgent attempt to locate the country's alleged secret uranium enrichment sites. They are operating from a base in northern Iraq, guarded by Israeli soldiers with the approval of the US, according to Israeli sources.