No delusion of bombing Iran
PRESIDENT BUSH made the right decision last year when he refused Israel's requests for bunker-busting bombs, aerial refueling equipment, and permission to fly through US-controlled Iraqi airspace to reach nuclear sites in Iran. Had Bush enabled Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, he could have exposed US troops in Iraq to Iranian retaliation and risked US involvement in yet another war.
Bush, however, bears responsibility for allowing a situation to develop in which the United States, Israel, Iran's Arab neighbors, and Turkey now confront the likelihood that Iran will soon have enough enriched uranium to build a weapon. Bush obtusely refused to enter into a dialogue with the Iranian regime in 2003 - when Iran's rulers offered to put everything on the table including their nuclear program. So, Iran has had six years to master the technical challenges of enriching uranium.
For most of those years, the Bush policy was to rely on spotty economic sanctions rather than direct diplomatic engagement with the Iranian regime. Those sanctions were not only ineffective; they also seemed to spur Iran to plunge ahead with its enrichment activities.
It was the failure of Bush's policy that led Israel and some US officials to contemplate the desperate option of bombing Iran's nuclear sites. Such an act of desperation could have caused the Iraqi government to demand the immediate withdrawal of all US forces. And the most it could have accomplished would have been to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a few short years.
The New York Times reported Sunday on the administration's rebuff of specific Israeli requests for US assistance, and Israelis have known of US opposition for some time. The Israeli press reported last year on American warnings against any such attack from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tacitly acknowledging Israel's inability to act against Iran without Bush's approval, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that only the international community could deal with Iran's nuclear threat. Talk of an Israeli strike that could destroy Iran's nuclear program, he said, was an example of "our delusions of grandeur."
Fortunately, President-elect Barack Obama seems unlikely to base US policy on delusions of any sort. Speaking to George Stephanopoulos Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama said his approach to Iran will include "a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk, but also a clarity about what our bottom lines are." This approach may or may not work. But it is the road not yet taken, and a road that should have been taken years ago. 