Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.
American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ “
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ “
The rationale for regime change was articulated in early March by Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and who has been a supporter of President Bush. “So long as Iran has an Islamic republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely,” Clawson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd. “The key issue, therefore, is: How long will the present Iranian regime last?”
When I spoke to Clawson, he emphasized that “this Administration is putting a lot of effort into diplomacy.” However, he added, Iran had no choice other than to accede to America’s demands or face a military attack. Clawson said that he fears that Ahmadinejad “sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in. We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates.” Clawson said that he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as “industrial accidents.” But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, “given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec.”
One military planner told me that White House criticisms of Iran and the high tempo of planning and clandestine activities amount to a campaign of “coercion” aimed at Iran. “You have to be ready to go, and we’ll see how they respond,” the officer said. “You have to really show a threat in order to get Ahmadinejad to back down.” He added, “People think Bush has been focussed on Saddam Hussein since 9/11,” but, “in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his focus all the way along, it was Iran.” (In response to detailed requests for comment, the White House said that it would not comment on military planning but added, “As the President has indicated, we are pursuing a diplomatic solution”; the Defense Department also said that Iran was being dealt with through “diplomatic channels” but wouldn’t elaborate on that; the C.I.A. said that there were “inaccuracies” in this account but would not specify them.)
“This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”
A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said. The danger, he said, was that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: “Hezbollah comes into play,” the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world’s most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. “And here comes Al Qaeda.”
In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been “no formal briefings,” because “they’re reluctant to brief the minority. They’re doing the Senate, somewhat selectively.”
The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”
Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions– rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing –since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.
Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the
National War College before retiring from the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear
program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be
hit. He added:
I don’t think a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. . . . We’d want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special Operations units.
One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is
no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the
conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.
There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for “continuity of government”Ôø?for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There
are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. “The ‘tell’ “Ôø?the giveawayÔø?”was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,” the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said,
it was determined that “only nukes” could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians
helped the Iranians design their underground facility. “We see a similarity of design,” specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.
A former high-level Defense Department official told me that, in his
view, even limited bombing would allow the U.S. to “go in there and do
enough damage to slow down the nuclear infrastructureÔø?it’s feasible.”
The former defense official said, “The Iranians don’t have friends,
and we can tell them that, if necessary, we’ll keep knocking back
their infrastructure. The United States should act like we’re ready to
go.” He added, “We don’t have to knock down all of their air defenses.
Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles really work, and we can blow
fixed things up. We can do things on the ground, too, but it’s
difficult and very dangerousÔø?put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and
put them to sleep.”
But those who are familiar with the Soviet bunker, according to the
former senior intelligence official, “say ‘No way.’ You’ve got to know
what’s underneathÔø?to know which ventilator feeds people, or diesel
generators, or which are false. And there’s a lot that we don’t know.”
The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the
goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider
the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view
of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior
intelligence official said. ” ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air
Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”
He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn
the technical details of damage and falloutÔø?we’re talking about
mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over
years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is
the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue,
and whenever anybody tries to get it out”Ôø?remove the nuclear
optionÔø?”they’re shouted down.”
The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious
misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added,
and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the
evolving war plans for IranÔø?without success, the former intelligence
official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this?
The option came from you.’ ”
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the
Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked
to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon
civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has
to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and
officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very
strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear
weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to
high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said,
because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal
recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering
the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened
in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers
express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then
it will never happen.”
The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear
weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science
Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can
build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.
The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr.,
an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January,
2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on
an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute
for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report
recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of
the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when
the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is
essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several
signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush
Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security
adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security.
The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. “The
Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very well, and we
have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of
the country,” he said. He warned, as did many others, that bombing
Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American
facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion
Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”
With or without the nuclear option, the list of targets may inevitably
expand. One recently retired high-level Bush Administration official,
who is also an expert on war planning, told me that he would have
vigorously argued against an air attack on Iran, because “Iran is a
much tougher target” than Iraq. But, he added, “If you’re going to do
any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well improve your lie
across the board. Maybe hit some training camps, and clear up a lot of
other problems.”
The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air
Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that
“ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation.
There are people who believe it’s the way to operate”Ôø?that the
Administration can achieve its policy goals in Iran with a bombing
campaign, an idea that has been supported by neoconservatives.
If the order were to be given for an attack, the American combat
troops now operating in Iran would be in position to mark the critical
targets with laser beams, to insure bombing accuracy and to minimize
civilian casualties. As of early winter, I was told by the government
consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units
were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris,
in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the
northeast. The troops “are studying the terrain, and giving away
walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from
local tribes and shepherds,” the consultant said. One goal is to get
“eyes on the ground”Ôø?quoting a line from “Othello,” he said, “Give me
the ocular proof.” The broader aim, the consultant said, is to
“encourage ethnic tensions” and undermine the regime.
The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld’s long-standing interest in expanding the role of
the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in
the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such
activities, if conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a
Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of
Congress.
” ‘Force protection’ is the new buzzword,” the former senior
intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon’s
position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as
preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not
intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to
congressional oversight. “The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say
there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran,” he said. “We need to have
more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do
everything we want.”
The President’s deep distrust of Ahmadinejad has strengthened his
determination to confront Iran. This view has been reinforced by
allegations that Ahmadinejad, who joined a special-forces brigade of
the Revolutionary Guards in 1986, may have been involved in terrorist
activities in the late eighties. (There are gaps in Ahmadinejad’s
official biography in this period.) Ahmadinejad has reportedly been
connected to Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who has been implicated in
the deadly bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks
in Beirut, in 1983. Mughniyeh was then the security chief of
Hezbollah; he remains on the F.B.I.’s list of most-wanted terrorists.
Robert Baer, who was a C.I.A. officer in the Middle East and elsewhere
for two decades, told me that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard
colleagues in the Iranian government “are capable of making a bomb,
hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If
you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and
missilesÔø?you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s
no reason to back off.”
Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power
base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they
had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One
former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience
with Iran, depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous
implications for the West. “Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are
out; others are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too
late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since
the revolution.” He said that, particularly in consideration of
China’s emergence as a superpower, Iran’s attitude was “To hell with
the West. You can do as much as you like.”
Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is considered by
many experts to be in a stronger position than Ahmadinejad.
“Ahmadinejad is not in control,” one European diplomat told me. “Power
is diffuse in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are among the key backers
of the nuclear program, but, ultimately, I don’t think they are in
charge of it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear
program, and the Guards will not take action without his approval.”
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that “allowing Iran to
have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent
downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added,
“The whole internal debate is on which way to go”Ôø?in terms of stopping
the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will
unilaterally renounce its nuclear plansÔø?and forestall the American
action. “God may smile on us, but I don’t think so. The bottom line is
that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that
the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they
defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.”
While almost no one disputes Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there is
intense debate over how soon it could get the bomb, and what to do
about that. Robert Gallucci, a former government expert on
nonproliferation who is now the dean of the School of Foreign Service
at Georgetown, told me, “Based on what I know, Iran could be eight to
ten years away” from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Gallucci
added, “If they had a covert nuclear program and we could prove it,
and we could not stop it by negotiation, diplomacy, or the threat of
sanctions, I’d be in favor of taking it out. But if you do it”Ôø?bomb
IranÔø?”without being able to show there’s a secret program, you’re in
trouble.”
Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told the
Knesset last December that “Iran is one to two years away, at the
latest, from having enriched uranium. From that point, the completion
of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter.” In a
conversation with me, a senior Israeli intelligence official talked
about what he said was Iran’s duplicity: “There are two parallel
nuclear programs” inside IranÔø?the program declared to the I.A.E.A. and
a separate operation, run by the military and the Revolutionary
Guards. Israeli officials have repeatedly made this argument, but
Israel has not produced public evidence to support it. Richard
Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me,
“I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons programÔø?I believe it, but I
don’t know it.”
In recent months, the Pakistani government has given the U.S. new
access to A. Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic
bomb. Khan, who is now living under house arrest in Islamabad, is
accused of setting up a black market in nuclear materials; he made at
least one clandestine visit to Tehran in the late nineteen-eighties.
In the most recent interrogations, Khan has provided information on
Iran’s weapons design and its time line for building a bomb. “The
picture is of ‘unquestionable danger,’ ” the former senior
intelligence official said. (The Pentagon adviser also confirmed that
Khan has been “singing like a canary.”) The concern, the former senior
official said, is that “Khan has credibility problems. He is
suggestible, and he’s telling the neoconservatives what they want to
hear”Ôø?or what might be useful to Pakistan’s President, Pervez
Musharraf, who is under pressure to assist Washington in the war on
terror.
“I think Khan’s leading us on,” the former intelligence official said.
“I don’t know anybody who says, ‘Here’s the smoking gun.’ But lights
are beginning to blink. He’s feeding us information on the time line,
and targeting information is coming in from our own sourcesÔø? sensors
and the covert teams. The C.I.A., which was so burned by Iraqi W.M.D.,
is going to the Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office saying, ‘It’s
all new stuff.’ People in the Administration are saying, ‘We’ve got
enough.’ ”
The Administration’s case against Iran is compromised by its history
of promoting false intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy Web site, entitled “Fool Me
Twice,” Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote, “The unfolding
administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its
successful campaign for the Iraq war.” He noted several parallels:
The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused
on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S.
Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most
serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation
the leading supporter of global terrorism.
Cirincione called some of the Administration’s claims about Iran
“questionable” or lacking in evidence. When I spoke to him, he asked,
“What do we know? What is the threat? The question is: How urgent is
all this?” The answer, he said, “is in the intelligence community and
the I.A.E.A.” (In August, the Washington Post reported that the most
recent comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate predicted that
Iran was a decade away from being a nuclear power.)
Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. officials on what
it said was new and alarming information about Iran’s weapons program
which had been retrieved from an Iranian’s laptop. The new data
included more than a thousand pages of technical drawings of weapons
systems. The Washington Post reported that there were also designs for
a small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment process.
Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of stories in the Times
and elsewhere. The stories were generally careful to note that the
materials could have been fabricated, but also quoted senior American
officials as saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline
in the Times’ account read, “RELYING ON COMPUTER, U.S. SEEKS TO PROVE
IRAN’S NUCLEAR AIMS.”
I was told in interviews with American and European intelligence
officials, however, that the laptop was more suspect and less
revelatory than it had been depicted. The Iranian who owned the laptop
had initially been recruited by German and American intelligence
operatives, working together. The Americans eventually lost interest
in him. The Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian
counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is today. Some
family members managed to leave Iran with his laptop and handed it
over at a U.S. embassy, apparently in Europe. It was a classic
“walk-in.”
A European intelligence official said, “There was some hesitation on
our side” about what the materials really proved, “and we are still
not convinced.” The drawings were not meticulous, as newspaper
accounts suggested, “but had the character of sketches,” the European
official said. “It was not a slam-dunk smoking gun.”
The threat of American military action has created dismay at the
headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency’s officials
believe that Iran wants to be able to make a nuclear weapon, but
“nobody has presented an inch of evidence of a parallel
nuclear-weapons program in Iran,” the high-ranking diplomat told me.
The I.A.E.A.’s best estimate is that the Iranians are five years away
from building a nuclear bomb. “But, if the United States does anything
militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter of
Iranian national pride,” the diplomat said. “The whole issue is
America’s risk assessment of Iran’s future intentions, and they don’t
trust the regime. Iran is a menace to American policy.”
In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting earlier this
year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.’s director-general, who
won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Robert Joseph, the
Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. Joseph’s message was blunt,
one diplomat recalled: “We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in
Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United
States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to
give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that
will undermine us. ”
Joseph’s heavy-handedness was unnecessary, the diplomat said, since
the I.A.E.A. already had been inclined to take a hard stand against
Iran. “All of the inspectors are angry at being misled by the
Iranians, and some think the Iranian leadership are nutcasesÔø?one
hundred per cent totally certified nuts,” the diplomat said. He added
that ElBaradei’s overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders “want
confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side”Ôø?in Washington.
“At the end of the day, it will work only if the United States agrees
to talk to the Iranians.”
The central questionÔø?whether Iran will be able to proceed with its
plans to enrich uraniumÔø?is now before the United Nations, with the
Russians and the Chinese reluctant to impose sanctions on Tehran. A
discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at
this point, “there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result
in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even
if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them.
It’s a dead end.”
Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, “Why would the West take the risk
of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the
I.A.E.A. to verify? We’re low-cost, and we can create a program that
will force Iran to put its cards on the table.” A Western Ambassador
in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House’s dismissal of
the I.A.E.A. He said, “If you don’t believe that the I.A.E.A. can
establish an inspection systemÔø?if you don’t trust themÔø?you can only
bomb.”
There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush Administration
or among its European allies. “We’re quite frustrated with the
director-general,” the European diplomat told me. “His basic approach
has been to describe this as a dispute between two sides with equal
weight. It’s not. We’re the good guys! ElBaradei has been pushing the
idea of letting Iran have a small nuclear-enrichment program, which is
ludicrous. It’s not his job to push ideas that pose a serious
proliferation risk.”
The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that
President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing
campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change.
“Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United
States wants regime change,” a European diplomatic adviser told me. He
added, “The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don’t have
to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or
going along with Washington on something they don’t want. Their policy
is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live
with. It may be untenable.”
“The Brits think this is a very bad idea,” Flynt Leverett, a former
National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, told me, “but they’re really
worried we’re going to do it.” The European diplomatic adviser
acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning
in Washington but that, “short of a smoking gun, it’s going to be very
difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.” He said that the British
“are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with
no compromise.”
The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, given its
record, had admitted to everything it was doing, but “to the best of
our knowledge the Iranian capability is not at the point where they
could successfully run centrifuges” to enrich uranium in quantity. One
reason for pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran’s essential
pragmatism. “The regime acts in its best interests,” he said. Iran’s
leaders “take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and they want
to call the American bluff,” believing that “the tougher they are the
more likely the West will fold.” But, he said, “From what we’ve seen
with Iran, they will appear superconfident until the moment they back
off.”
The diplomat went on, “You never reward bad behavior, and this is not
the time to offer concessions. We need to find ways to impose
sufficient costs to bring the regime to its senses. It’s going to be a
close call, but I think if there is unity in opposition and the price
imposed”Ôø?in sanctionsÔø?”is sufficient, they may back down. It’s too
early to give up on the U.N. route.” He added, “If the diplomatic
process doesn’t work, there is no military ‘solution.’ There may be a
military option, but the impact could be catastrophic.”
Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush’s most
dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
But he and his party have been racked by a series of financial
scandals, and his popularity is at a low point. Jack Straw, the
Foreign Secretary, said last year that military action against Iran
was “inconceivable.” Blair has been more circumspect, saying publicly
that one should never take options off the table.
Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value
of an American bombing campaign. “The Iranian economy is in bad shape,
and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,” the European
intelligence official told me. “He will benefit politically from
American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.” An
American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including
those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. “Iran is no longer living
in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S.
movies and books, and they love it,” he said. “If there was a charm
offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.”
Another European official told me that he was aware that many in
Washington wanted action. “It’s always the same guys,” he said, with a
resigned shrug. “There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail.
The timetable is short.”
A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose
leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to
begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several
officials that the White House’s interest in preventing an Israeli
attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the
region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational
planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush
depicted Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel as a “serious threat.
It’s a threat to world peace.” He added, “I made it clear, I’ll make
it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally
Israel.”
Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, would have to
consider the following questions: “What will happen in the other
Islamic countries? What ability does Iran have to reach us and touch
us globallyÔø?that is, terrorism? Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure
on Israel? What does the attack do to our already diminished
international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and
the U.N. Security Council?”
Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day,
would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world’s oil
markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the
thirty-four-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches
the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official
dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that
the U.S. Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions
and putting mine- sweepers to work. “It’s impossible to block
passage,” he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon
also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing
out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America
running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to
were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per
barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred
dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and
scope of the conflict.
Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former
cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might
be focussed on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. “They would be at risk,” he
said, “and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West.
You will have a messy world.”
Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and
elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington
Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks “is consuming
a lot of time” at U.S. intelligence agencies. “The best terror network
in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past
several years,” the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of
Hezbollah. “This will mobilize them and put us up against the group
that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran,
Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them
out, they will mobilize against us.” (When I asked the government
consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired
rockets into northern Israel, “Israel and the new Lebanese government
will finish them off.”)
The adviser went on, “If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light
up like a candle.” The American, British, and other coalition forces
in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from
Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is
predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in
Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight
thousand British troops in the region, “the Iranians could take Basra
with ten mullahs and one sound truck.”
“If you attack,” the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna,
“Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but
with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit
down with the Iranians.”
The diplomat went on, “There are people in Washington who would be
unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation
and regime change. This is wishful thinking.” He added, “The window of
opportunity is now.”
Arthur Magazine 