U.S. option to bomb Iran still on the table

KazKav
Posted: 2008-01-16 15:10:46

Nobody actually said very much but Israeli officials seemed happy with how talks about Iran went here last week with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who came home for the President's visit, said that Israel and the Bush White House were "in sync" about the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. All options, including a military strike, remained on the table, he said, despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate prepared by an alphabet soup of U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded Iran no longer had a nuclear weapons program and had not had one since 2003.

The NIE provoked shock, anger and deep disappointment in Israel, which fears a nuclear-armed Iran would be a mortal threat because it already has missiles capable of reaching the Jewish state. A sense of how acutely and urgently Israel regards the danger posed by Tehran can be seen online by accessing the home page of the Jerusalem Post. It includes a permanent tab that opens to a special section on Iran.

While the awkwardly worded NIE findings were widely thought in the West and elsewhere to have precluded U.S. military action against Iran any time soon, Israel, which probably has had nuclear weapons for more than 20 years, has tried to counter its conclusions in a series of meetings here and in Washington.

Far from having his hands tied by the NIE, or by secret talks the United States may be having with Iran about Iraq, Bush has given the Israelis hope of military action by keeping the rhetoric at a boil.

"Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will be a threat," Bush said while in Jerusalem, unless the international community united "to prevent that nation from the development of the know-how to build a nuclear weapon."

However, senior military commanders, including those who would lead an attack against Iran, have seemed lukewarm and sometimes openly hostile to the idea of such an operation. In this context last week's contretemps in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian gunboats swarmed and taunted U.S. warships must have been manna from heaven to those in the Bush camp who favour bombing Iran.

The main reason for Bush's visit to four Gulf states, which began over the weekend, was to gauge how much diplomatic support and practical help the desert sheikdoms might give if the United States or Israel attacked Iran. Kuwait has already expressed its misgivings about such an operation. Saudi Arabia, which has far more influence in the Middle East, may quietly be more willing to listen. It fears Iran's growing influence in the Islamic world and on its large Shia minority, and how much greater influence Tehran would undoubtedly have if it got the bomb.

But Bush faces a tough sell everywhere in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Part of this is that these states do not want to get too close to Washington if the U.S.-led Annapolis peace process does not give the Palestinians most of what they have demanded. America's Arab allies also have doubts because of how it has handled the war in Iraq and because, like everyone else, they have read the fresh intelligence estimates about Iran.

Yet another factor is that like the boy who always cried wolf, the United States has beat the drum about Iran for so long, starting with the Carter and Reagan administrations, that its message is not taken as seriously as it should be. Not withstanding U.S. and UN sanctions and diplomatic isolation, Iran has become bolder, fiercely boasting of how it would destroy Israel while continuing to openly support Hezbollah and Hamas in their never-ending conflict with the Jewish state.

Furthermore, since the NIE report was published, China and especially Russia, which is reasserting itself as a global player, have become increasingly skeptical about anything that Bush says about Iran.

The United States, with its unique ability to assemble a fleet of aircraft carriers off Iran, and to fire hundreds of missiles at once from warplanes and submarines, always has a range of military options. Israel has a small long-range bombing and missile capability that would be greatly enhanced if it gets substantial help from U.S. Air Force refuelling tankers.

Given how the NIE has undercut Bush's position on Iran, and barring any further Iranian follies such as that mad incident in the Strait of Hormuz, American technical assistance to Israel of this kind was likely discussed in Jerusalem last week.