As a threat from Iran increases, US may lack preemptive options

WASHINGTON -- In a speech to explain the Bush administration's national security report to Congress, the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, made it clear last week that the eyes of the White House are on Iran.

''We face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," Hadley said Thursday, and he reiterated the administration's policy of preemptive war to remove threats to the United States before they become imminent.

''The doctrine of preemption remains sound," Hadley said.

''We do not rule out the use of force before an attack occurs," he added.

But Hadley spoke just two days before President Bush, in one of several speeches on national security in recent weeks, touted the fruits of the last preemptive war, in Iraq, and unintentionally revealed why preemptive war is going to be a very hard sell in the future.

''The decision by the United States and our coalition partners to remove Saddam Hussein from power was a difficult decision -- and it was the right decision," Bush declared.

''America and the world are safer today without Saddam Hussein in power," he said. ''He is no longer oppressing the Iraqi people, sponsoring terror, and threatening the world."

Bush's rhetoric was almost the same as three years ago, at the start of the war, with one major omission: the charge that Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction, the centerpiece of the original case for war. That's now on the cutting-room floor, since no such weapons were found.

And the other justifications -- freeing the Iraqi people and removing a state sponsor of terrorism -- look very thin in light of the deadly security breakdown in Iraq and the scant evidence of ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda.

So the administration is in the awkward position of building a case for the dangers posed by Iran -- a case that shows every sign of being far clearer than the one against Hussein -- while making an increasingly implausible case that there is no reason to believe the last preemptive war was a mistake.

Bush has two major audiences to which he might address the case for any new military action.

The first and most important audience is the American people, a majority of whom now believe the Iraq war was not worth the cost. They -- through their representatives in Congress -- would be reluctant to let the president use preemptive force again.

The second audience is the nations of the world, whose willingness to share in the burdens of warfare, both in troops and reconstruction dollars, seems more necessary with every US taxpayer check that goes to Baghdad. Other countries are skeptical of preemptive war not because they have sympathy for rogue regimes, but because they fear the unfettered power of the United States.

Pursuing a war in Iraq without the support of the United Nations could have served as the best defense of the doctrine of preemption, if the benefits of the war were on display. In the case of Iraq, though, skeptical nations are further emboldened by what they see as an unfolding disaster.

The political situations at home and abroad greatly limit the options for the administration.

But it cannot ignore the dangers posed by a belligerent power that may be on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons.

It must hope that people in the United States and abroad can look beyond Iraq in assessing the threat posed by Iran.

But when people hear the case against Iran, the reports will sound familiar -- and yet so much stronger -- that it could set off new rounds of questioning as to how Bush, and so many others, had viewed Iraq as the more immediate threat.

Where Iraq offered the merest hints of a nuclear program, based on testimony from defectors and a few shards of intelligence, Iran has been openly building actual nuclear plants. Where Americans were forced to decode a bunch of mixed signals from the oddly manipulative Hussein, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly vows to wipe Israel off the map.

A possible lesson of the Iraq war is that Western nations should work harder to separate the bluster from the reality in assessing Middle East regimes.

No doubt, Hadley's national security team is hard at work examining all the policy options on Iran, including that of a preemptive war.

Much of the world, meanwhile, is hoping that Hadley's team will do a better job than its predecessor, under Condoleezza Rice.

Peter S. Canellos is The Boston Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.