Tornado Alley (PROG)

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A target too far

Editorial
The Guardian, Friday September 26 2008

The report in today's Guardian that an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear sites was vetoed by George Bush in a meeting with Ehud Olmert adds an important piece of information to the jigsaw of our knowledge about how close we have come to igniting a fresh firestorm in the Middle East.

The timing of the meeting, May 14, is significant. Soon afterwards more than 100 Israeli jets, rescue helicopters and midair refuelling planes staged an exercise over Crete, 1,400 kilometres away from home - the same distance as that to Natanz, where Iran is learning to enrich uranium. Like Iran, Greece has Russian S-300 air defence batteries which it acquired from Cyprus. Athens reportedly provided the data which Israeli jets could use to jam Iran's batteries. A month later the US and Israel were in advanced talks about upgrading Israel's Arrow II ballistic missile shield. And earlier this month the US defence department notified Congress that it intended to sell Israel 1,000 smart bombs capable of penetrating 90cm of steel-reinforced concrete. All three military developments are no doubt consolation prizes to compensate for the US veto, which - according to our sources - is unlikely to change for the rest of Mr Bush's term of office.

For once Mr Bush took the right advice. The two factors that weighed with him were concern over Iranian retaliation and anxiety that Israel would not succeed in disabling Iran's nuclear programme in a single assault. The most important argument against a military strike was not mentioned, namely that it would turn the probability that Iran would acquire the bomb into a certainty. But the two factors mentioned during the Bush-Olmert meeting are important enough.

It would require a large number of boots on the ground to recapture the heavily fortified islands in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran would close to the world's oil traffic in the event of an attack. It would also require not one but multiple waves of bombing raids to dismantle Iran's nuclear sites. The swift destruction of Osirak, the Iraqi nuclear reactor that Saddam Hussein was having constructed in 1981, is often cited as a happy precedent for a strike on Natanz. But the prolonged and bloody air campaign over Kosovo is a better analogy.

Israel has been telling anyone who would listen for the past two years that Iran's nuclear programme posed an existential threat, and that the consequences of delaying a strike outweighed the peril to the region as a whole of Iran's retaliation. Israel has lost the argument, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief that the pragmatism of Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has prevailed - for now.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/26/iran.israelandthepalestinians [with comments]

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further:

Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran
US president told Israeli prime minister he would not back attack on Iran, senior European diplomatic sources tell Guardian
September 25 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1

Thank you, George Bush
Against his background of military blunders, the US president's sobriety on the use of force against Iran stands out as remarkable
September 26 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/26/georgebush.israelandthepalestinians [with comments]