Interesting news story:
President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
How do you subtly sabotage a nuclear program? Fairly easily in a nation which is a user rather than developer of new technology. Its complex and its been done before and if you really are interested you can go dig it up. There is no way to absolutely stop Iran’s nuclear program short of regime change – and so our goal has long been to try and knock it back by ten years, and presume that within ten years the Iranian people will finally have had enough of the corrupt mullahs and there will be a revolution to bring in a more reasonable government. You can knock it back ten years by blowing it sky high, or you can sabotage it – if we’ve gone the sabotage route (and there really is no way to be certain of this from our position), then we have to award President Bush some sort of medal for this, alone: getting a CIA and larger intelligence community up to snuff enough to carry off something as complex – and dangerous – as subtle sabotage (what is subtle sabotage? Well, lets just say that un-subtle sabotage is blowing up a bridge, or some such).
This news story – which, like all MSM stories, must still be taken with a grain of salt – does explain to me why Israel hasn’t acted directly against Iran’s nuclear program. Keeping on good terms with us is vital, but stopping Iran’s nuclear program is a matter of national survival for the Israelis and if push ever comes to shove, Israel will apply whatever force proves necessary to stop Iran from deploying nuclear weapons which can hit Israel (and this is even if we extend our “nuclear umbrella” to Israel – the Israelis will be entirely unimpressed with any post-Holocaust II promise on our part to massacre those who massacred the Israelis).
Now, as to how this effects Obama – the clock is still ticking, and if Israel feels that Iran is approaching a deployable nuclear force, then Israel will insist upon US action, or will take it upon herself. Obama will send someone to talk to the Iranians – these talks will get nowhere (even if there is some sort of paper agreement signed) as the Iranian leadership is lunatic and thus will honor any agreement – if at all – only if its in their immediate interest to do so. So, talks or no talks, there might come a day – even with US sabotage slowing it down – when Iran has a credible nuclear force coming on line in the near future where Obama will have to decide to let Israel loose to destroy Iran’s nuclear program (and thus upset our applecarts in both Iraq and Afghanistan), or order a US strike to pre-empt any Israeli action.
Its going to be a thorny issue, and I hope that Obama has someone besides Hillary to lean on for advice.
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