“The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country,” he said in a clear reference to Iraq.
It is impossible to secure or make the United States safe and sound from Iraq a country with a fifth rate army who was never a threat to the United States.
You secure or protect something from a danger.
But wait! this gets better - a challenge for Bush from Israel.
“Iran made this decision because they are getting the impression that the US and the Europeans are spineless,” a senior official from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said.
Israel is now calling Bush spineless or a coward unless he confronts Iran for them.
Cheap psychological banter but potent against a man of little accomplishment like Bush.
-Am
Bush refuses to rule out force against Iran
CRAWFORD: US President George W Bush refused to rule out the use of force against Iran over the Islamic Republic’s resumption of nuclear activities, in an interview with Israeli television aired on Friday. When asked if the use of force was an alternative to faltering diplomatic efforts, Bush said, “All options are on the table.”
“The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country,” he said in a clear reference to Iraq.
“I have been willing to do so as a last resort in order to secure the country and provide the opportunity for people to live in free societies,” he added.
Bush was speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas to a reporter from Israeli public television. The Jewish state has accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and believes it is the prime target of the alleged arms programme.
The international community was waiting for Tehran’s response after urging the Iranian government to halt its uranium conversion activities, which it resumed on Monday. Bush expressed doubts that the EU initiative to defuse the crisis through diplomatic means would succeed.
“The Iranians refused to comply with the demands of the free world which is: do not, in any way shape or form, have a programme that could lead to a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“In this particular instance the EU three – Britain, France and Germany – have taken the lead in helping to send the message, a unified message to the Iranians,” Bush said. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday in Vienna passed a EU resolution expressing “serious concern” at Iran’s resumption of uranium conversion activities, and set a September 3 date for an IAEA report on Iran’s compliance.
“In all these instances we want diplomacy to work and so we are working feverishly on the diplomatic route and, you know, we will see if we are successful or not. As you know I’m sceptical,” he said.
Bush’s interview to Israeli television was a step up from his previous warning to Iran on Thursday. “If Iran doesn’t take the steps described in the resolution, we would expect that the next step would be referral to the Security Council,” he had said.
Israel has been prodding Washington to adopt a tough stance on Iran and charged that Iran resumed its uranium conversion activities because it had sensed the ‘weakness’ of the international community.
“Iran made this decision because they are getting the impression that the US and the Europeans are spineless,” a senior official from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said.
Israel itself is believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Although it has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, it is believed to possess an arsenal of about 200 warheads. afp
Georgie Anne Geyer, a syndicated columnist based in Washington: Universal Press Syndicate Published August 12, 2005
WASHINGTON -- It is grossly unfair that crises always seem to arise in these "dog days" (with apologies to my cat, Nikko) of August.
President Bush is down at his Crawford ranch, still "cautiously optimistic" about Iraq and Iran.
His approval ratings plummet even as temperatures inch up to 95 or 100 degrees. The world should leave us alone in August.
But that's never the way it happens. The first Gulf War started in August 1990 in 125-degree weather, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq.
The big decision for us to invade Iraq came that hot American August of 2002, when Secretary of State Colin Powell dramatically went to the United Nations for support.
So it goes in this dreary white heat of summer's end.
And now, with the new Iranian president's decision to restart a uranium conversion facility, there is a kind of strange stirring about in Washington.
It is as though this were all somehow not kosher in our view of the Middle East.
Rumors like this abound, that Cheney is in one of his hyper moods in Bush's absence and has missiles fixed and ready to strike at Iran's facilities.
To put it simply, the "Iran crisis" of August 2005 is really about how, with American power mired in the quicksand of Iraq, Iran has been moving to become an aggressive, and perhaps the major, power in the Middle East.
The unspeakable ignorance of this administration about the history and culture of the region has finally caught up with it.
First, the surface story:
The new president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a rank conservative who was probably one of the American hostages' captors in 1979, this week made it clear again that Iran wants to generate electricity through nuclear power, which is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
But the United States, along with most of the European states, fears that Iran is really after nuclear weapons and has so deceived inspectors for years about its activities that it has forfeited its right to the innocent electricity program.
Then the dangerous subtext:
While America has been so dangerously and wastefully tied down in Iraq, Iran has been moving to form the diplomatic, political and military imprint of a kind of "Shiite Internationale" among the region's Shia populations.
This would take in all the followers of the Shia sect of Islam, from the 60 percent of Iraq, to the oil-rich eastern regions of Saudi Arabia, to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrilla/political control of Lebanon.
Two of our most sagacious analysts of the area, Larry Johnson and Patrick Lang, both with years of apt experience in these areas, sent out an e-mail to their colleagues this week outlining the situation.
It read: "Iran, if things continue to go its way, finds itself on the threshold of controlling vast oil resources that stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean....Iran is well on its way to achieving de facto control of significant portions of Iraq.
"Tehran is backing Shia cleric the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (a Persian, not an Arab) and the radical Muqtada al-Sadr. The Iranians are funneling money and training to supporters inside Iraq. The Iraqi Shia control the political process and comprise the majority of the security forces. ... Iran is in a dominant position in Lebanon. The murder earlier this year of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has left Lebanon under the de facto military guard of Hezbollah. Iran remains the main benefactor, supporter and adviser to Hezbollah."
In fact, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went out of his way this week to accuse Iran of, at the very least, allowing weapons, especially deadly improvised explosive devices to be exported to insurgents in Iraq.
The odd thing is that Iran, not Iraq, was always the primary target of the neocon group that so distorted American policy after 9/11, in part because Iran was seen as the primary enemy of Israel. But Iraq seemed easier to them.
Thus, the Iranians were able to simply stand back while their archenemy, Hussein, fell at Americans' hands and at no cost to themselves.
Should it be any surprise that they should move, as ruthlessly as always, to achieve their goals?
And now, with their exalted idea of themselves as the holiest of Shia, their goals have been perfectly complemented by the "Great Satan." (That's us.)
Iran is no unified state. There are special ministries that, often secretively, back revolutionary movements like Hezbollah; there are special military units, such as the Revolutionary Guards, the "Quds" (Jerusalem) forces and other militias.
The new president, the former mayor of Tehran, is himself a kind of mystery; but we do know that he, too, represents a turn away from the liberalizing that was slowly progressing in Iran--surely another reaction to the American occupation next door.
Michael Mazarr, professor at the U.S. National War College, wrote this week in The New Republic that "the only long-term solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear aspirations is integration into the world economy and a gradual return to reform."
But the American overextension into the Middle East has made this, at least for now, impossible.
The administration was warned by many of these analysts before 2003 of every one of these historic alignments in the Middle East, and of every rather obvious danger.
The administration very deliberately chose not to see them then, and there is little evidence that it sees them now.
Ever since its 1979 Islamic revolution the only fate Iran has had in mind for Israel has been simple: its destruction. Now that Teheran seems to be moving towards acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, its plans for its great enemy threaten to be both fiery and radioactive.
Sometimes Iran's stated policy towards Israel is couched in inflammatory rhetoric, like that on a 40ft banner that used to hang outside the entrance of the foreign ministry in Teheran bearing the message: "Israel Must Burn".
Sometimes the language is tamer, such as the "Down With Israel" chants of students who march after Friday prayers in Teheran week in, week out.
But whatever the tone, the message remains the same. The Jewish state has survived wars, internal upheaval, intifadas and bloody entanglements in the internal affairs of its neighbours. But now a major enemy, one committed to its annihilation, appears close to deploying the most destructive force known to Man.
"Having the ayatollah regime armed with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the state of Israel," Mark Regev, senior spokeman at its foreign ministry, admitted grimly. "We take the issue extremely seriously.''
But while the danger Israel faces is clear, what it should do about the threat poses much more of a quandary.
Some Israelis cite the precedent of the 1981 unilateral Israeli airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Israel, they argue, should do the same again and launch pre-emptive military attacks on Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure.
But Iran has developed its nuclear programme with such a scenario in mind. It has deliberately spread its facilities far and wide, using nine locations, according to one intelligence source.
And each facility is buried under tons of reinforced concrete, making it more difficult to destroy, even with the help of the BLU-109 "bunker-buster" bombs the US is selling its closest Middle Eastern ally.
Iran, moreover, is further away from Israel than Iraq, raising even greater doubts about the ability of the F15 and F16 planes Israel would use in any air raids to reach their target and then make it home without being refuelled.
And there is also the question of how the aircraft would get close enough to hit their targets. The US controls Iraqi airspace but it seems inconceivable that Washington would open it up to Israeli combat jets and tankers.
While the problems facing air strikes are significant, Israel's military nevertheless believes it has the means to cause serious damage to the Iranian nuclear capability.
Israel's cruise missiles, launched from planes or submarines, give the country a capability that it did not have in 1981 when it attacked the Iraqi reactor with a conventional bombing sortie.
"It's a bit more challenging in Iran but the military option remains a real one," said David Ivri, a retired Israeli air force officer who commanded Operation Opera, the attack on Iraq's reactor.
"After all, the aim would not be to neutralise the Iranian nuclear programme. That would be impossible. But what we could do is delay it considerably.
"That was our aim in Iraq and that is what we achieved - a very long delay.''
The calculation Israel must make is a simple one: when will Iran become a nuclear power?
The Iraq attack was launched only when Israel's intelligence concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime was within a year of producing its own nuclear weapons.
It also followed a lengthy diplomatic campaign by Israel to dissuade France from selling nuclear technology to Iraq. When that failed, Mossad agents blew up components due to be shipped to Iraq at a warehouse in France.
Only when it was clear that Iraq's nuclear programme continued did Operation Opera get the green light.
According to a senior figure in the Israeli Defence Force quoted in the Jerusalem Post, Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear bomb until 2008 at the earliest; 2012 is a more realistic date and experts believe that the current situation is insufficiently acute to warrant military action.
"The best-case scenario for Israel is that the negotiations between Iran and the European Union succeed," said Emily Landau, senior research associate at the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "And at the moment that is still the most likely possibility.
"If you look at the wording of every statement by Iran, they sound defiant but always include some sort of reference to the talks and the possibility of some sort of new initiative. As long as this sort of language continues, then a full-blown crisis can be avoided."
This would suit Israel, which backs the negotiations and wants to avoid turning the current crisis into a row between Iran and itself.
As long as international negotiators are taking the lead, Israel is happy to stay on the sidelines.
And there is one important factor at play: it is one of the Middle East's worst kept secrets that Israel has the nuclear bomb. Iran certainly knows this and it will have a clear deterrent effect.
The result is that Israel might not need to take pre-emptive military action against Iran - if only because Teheran would never use a nuclear weapon against Israel for fear of itself being attacked, and annihilated, by the Jewish state's nuclear arsenal.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
