Barack Obama has told America’s allies that the United States will attack Iran before fall 2012 unless Tehran halts its nuclear program, a time frame that suggests Obama is willing to use war as a re-election campaign tool to rally the population around his leadership.

A subscriber-only report by DebkaFile, the Israeli intelligence outfit which has been proven accurate in the past, reveals that shortly after the end of NATO operations in Libya at the start of this week, “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs.”

According to the report, the window of opportunity for an attack before Iran moves the bulk of its nuclear processing underground is quickly evaporating.

Obama’s directive contributed to the flurry of reports this week about NATO powers putting their Iran war contingency plans on standby.

“Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years,” states the report, adding that “Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead.”

The imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is part of a program to re-arrange the United States’ presence in the Gulf. This dovetails with numerous reports over the past few weeks that large numbers of U.S. troops are being stationed in Kuwait.

“Military sources in the Gulf report that NATO and Persian Gulf leaders are treating the prospect of a US strike against Iran with the utmost seriousness,” states the article, adding that America plans to rebuild its Gulf presence as part “of a new US focus on cutting Iran down to size.”

The timing of a potential fall 2012 attack would of course coincide with Obama’s attempt to secure a second term in the White House. If by that time the United States has embarked on yet another military assault in the Middle East, it would undoubtedly play to Obama’s advantage, just as George W. Bush cited U.S. involvement in Iraq as a reason for voters not to “change horse” in the middle of a race back in 2004.

As we have previously reported, influential neo-cons within the U.S. have made it clear to Obama that they will give him political cover and an opportunity to resurrect his flagging political career if he launched an attack on Iran.

In February last year, vehement Israeli-firster and signatory to the infamous PNAC document Daniel Pipes wrote a piece for the National Review Online entitled, How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran, encouraging Obama to “salvage his tottering administration” by giving orders “for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.”

Rumors that Israel was preparing for an attack on Iran have been rumbling all summer, but they really came to the fore in early October when US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s October 3 Tel Aviv visit was used as an opportunity by Israeli hawks to convince Panetta to green light the attack. Just ten days later, details emerged of a highly dubious assassination plot in the United States that was blamed on Iran.

This week has seen a barrage of news and leaked information which confirms that Israel, the U.S. and the United Kingdom are all on a war footing in preparation for targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Much of that information came as a result of deliberate leaks by former Israeli intelligence chiefs Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, who are attempting to derail the attack on Iran and remove Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office.

DebkaFile has proven itself to be accurate in predicting the precise time frame of conflicts in the past, correctly reporting back in July that the war in Libya would come to a head in early September, which is when rebels seized Tripoli and Gaddafi went on the run.

Should Obama and the United States’ NATO allies lead the attack on Iran, Israel itself is likely to take a back seat, according to reports which suggest the Zionist state will concentrate on defending the home front against likely reprisal attacks carried out by Hizballah.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.