- A month before the November elections, Vice-President
Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive
Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats
won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward
Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power?
At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney
began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties,
for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen
were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one
wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and
his colleagues found a solution: putting "shorteners" on the
wire - that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers
at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President
said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military
option with Iran. The White House would put "shorteners" on any
legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting
in its way.
-
- The White House's concern was not that the Democrats
would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would
prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing
the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. "They're
afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit
on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war," a former senior
intelligence official told me.
-
- In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, a Democratic representative,
introduced the first in a series of "Boland amendments," which
limited the Reagan Administration's ability to support the Contras, who
were working to overthrow Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinista government.
The Boland restrictions led White House officials to orchestrate illegal
fund-raising activities for the Contras, including the sale of American
weapons, via Israel, to Iran. The result was the Iran-Contra scandal of
the mid-eighties. Cheney's story, according to the source, was his way
of saying that, whatever a Democratic Congress might do next year to limit
the President's authority, the Administration would find a way to work
around it. (In response to a request for comment, the Vice-President's
office said that it had no record of the discussion.)
-
- In interviews, current and former Administration officials
returned to one question: whether Cheney would be as influential in the
last two years of George W. Bush's Presidency as he was in its first six.
Cheney is emphatic about Iraq. In late October, he told Time, "I know
what the President thinks," about Iraq. "I know what I think.
And we're not looking for an exit strategy. We're looking for victory."
He is equally clear that the Administration would, if necessary, use force
against Iran. "The United States is keeping all options on the table
in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime," he told an
Israeli lobbying group early this year. "And we join other nations
in sending that regime a clear message: we will not allow Iran to have
a nuclear weapon."
-
- On November 8th, the day after the Republicans lost both
the House and the Senate, Bush announced the resignation of Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the nomination of his successor, Robert Gates,
a former director of Central Intelligence. The move was widely seen as
an acknowledgment that the Administration was paying a political price
for the debacle in Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group - headed
by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic
congressman - which has been charged with examining new approaches to Iraq,
and he has publicly urged for more than a year that the U.S. begin direct
talks with Iran. President Bush's decision to turn to Gates was a sign
of the White House's "desperation," a former high-level C.I.A.
official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me.
Cheney's relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration,
and Gates's nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that
the Vice-President's influence in the White House could be challenged.
The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier
offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former
high-level C.I.A. official said, was that "the President's father,
Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker" - former aides of the first President
Bush - "piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision."
-
- Critical decisions will be made in the next few months,
the former C.I.A. official said. "Bush has followed Cheney's advice
for six years, and the story line will be: 'Will he continue to choose
Cheney over his father?' We'll know soon." (The White House and the
Pentagon declined to respond to detailed requests for comment about this
article, other than to say that there were unspecified inaccuracies.)
-
- A retired four-star general who worked closely with the
first Bush Administration told me that the Gates nomination means that
Scowcroft, Baker, the elder Bush, and his son "are saying that winning
the election in 2008 is more important than the individual. The issue for
them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate
Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice" - the Secretary of State
- "a chance to perform." The combination of Scowcroft, Baker,
and the senior Bush working together is, the general added, "tough
enough to take on Cheney. One guy can't do it."
-
- Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's
first term, told me that he believed the Democratic election victory, followed
by Rumsfeld's dismissal, meant that the Administration "has backed
off," in terms of the pace of its planning for a military campaign
against Iran. Gates and other decision-makers would now have more time
to push for a diplomatic solution in Iran and deal with other, arguably
more immediate issues. "Iraq is as bad as it looks, and Afghanistan
is worse than it looks," Armitage said. "A year ago, the Taliban
were fighting us in units of eight to twelve, and now they're sometimes
in company-size, and even larger." Bombing Iran and expecting the
Iranian public "to rise up" and overthrow the government, as
some in the White House believe, Armitage added, "is a fool's errand."
-
- "Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and
Iran is the disaster we have to avoid," Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president
for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said.
"Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there"
- in the White House - "and still believe that chaos would be a small
price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be
the new Colin Powell - the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing
the Congress and publicly supporting it."
-
- Other sources close to the Bush family said that the
machinations behind Rumsfeld's resignation and the Gates nomination were
complex, and the seeming triumph of the Old Guard may be illusory. The
former senior intelligence official, who once worked closely with Gates
and with the President's father, said that Bush and his immediate advisers
in the White House understood by mid-October that Rumsfeld would have to
resign if the result of the midterm election was a resounding defeat. Rumsfeld
was involved in conversations about the timing of his departure with Cheney,
Gates, and the President before the election, the former senior intelligence
official said. Critics who asked why Rumsfeld wasn't fired earlier, a move
that might have given the Republicans a boost, were missing the point.
"A week before the election, the Republicans were saying that a Democratic
victory was the seed of American retreat, and now Bush and Cheney are going
to change their national-security policies?" the former senior intelligence
official said. "Cheney knew this was coming. Dropping Rummy after
the election looked like a conciliatory move - 'You're right, Democrats.
We got a new guy and we're looking at all the options. Nothing is ruled
out.' " But the conciliatory gesture would not be accompanied by a
significant change in policy; instead, the White House saw Gates as someone
who would have the credibility to help it stay the course on Iran and Iraq.
Gates would also be an asset before Congress. If the Administration needed
to make the case that Iran's weapons program posed an imminent threat,
Gates would be a better advocate than someone who had been associated with
the flawed intelligence about Iraq. The former official said, "He's
not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
and he'll be taken seriously by Congress."
-
- Once Gates is installed at the Pentagon, he will have
to contend with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Rumsfeld legacy - and Dick
Cheney. A former senior Bush Administration official, who has also worked
with Gates, told me that Gates was well aware of the difficulties of his
new job. He added that Gates would not simply endorse the Administration's
policies and say, "with a flag waving, 'Go, go' " - especially
at the cost of his own reputation. "He does not want to see thirty-five
years of government service go out the window," the former official
said. However, on the question of whether Gates would actively stand up
to Cheney, the former official said, after a pause, "I don't know."
-
- Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon's
expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions
overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.'s responsibility,
but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions
have been substantially increased. In the past six months, Israel and the
United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance
group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been
conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government
consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as "part
of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran."
(The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri,
and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the
regime's authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant
said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group "equipment and training."
The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest
to the U.S." (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was
involved.)
-
- Such activities, if they are considered military rather
than intelligence operations, do not require congressional briefings. For
a similar C.I.A. operation, the President would, by law, have to issue
a formal finding that the mission was necessary, and the Administration
would have to brief the senior leadership of the House and the Senate.
The lack of such consultation annoyed some Democrats in Congress. This
fall, I was told, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, the ranking
Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that finances classified
military activity, pointedly asked, during a closed meeting of House and
Senate members, whether "anyone has been briefing on the Administration's
plan for military activity in Iran." The answer was no. (A spokesman
for Obey confirmed this account.)
-
- The Democratic victories this month led to a surge of
calls for the Administration to begin direct talks with Iran, in part to
get its help in settling the conflict in Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair broke ranks with President Bush after the election and declared that
Iran should be offered "a clear strategic choice" that could
include a "new partnership" with the West. But many in the White
House and the Pentagon insist that getting tough with Iran is the only
way to salvage Iraq. "It's a classic case of 'failure forward,'"
a Pentagon consultant said. "They believe that by tipping over Iran
they would recover their losses in Iraq - like doubling your bet. It would
be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle
East by creating one new model state."
-
- The view that there is a nexus between Iran and Iraq
has been endorsed by Condoleezza Rice, who said last month that Iran "does
need to understand that it is not going to improve its own situation by
stirring instability in Iraq," and by the President, who said, in
August, that "Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping
democracy from taking hold" in Iraq. The government consultant told
me, "More and more people see the weakening of Iran as the only way
to save Iraq."
-
- The consultant added that, for some advocates of military
action, "the goal in Iran is not regime change but a strike that will
send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals. Even if it does
not destroy Iran's nuclear network, there are many who think that thirty-six
hours of bombing is the only way to remind the Iranians of the very high
cost of going forward with the bomb - and of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr
and his pro-Iran element in Iraq." (Sadr, who commands a Shiite militia,
has religious ties to Iran.)
-
- In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik,
a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little
choice. "Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran's
nuclear facilities before leaving office," he wrote. The President
would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik
said, and so neoconservatives "need to pave the way intellectually
now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes."
-
- The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President's staff
is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the
invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington,
Wurmser "believes that, so far, there's been no price tag on Iran
for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention
inside Iraq," the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration
who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney's office
"want to end the regime," the consultant said. "They argue
that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in
Iran."
-
- The Administration's planning for a military attack on
Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified
draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House's assumptions
about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found
no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program
running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the
International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on
this story.)
-
- The C.I.A.'s analysis, which has been circulated to other
agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by
overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements
of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and
power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources
told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices
that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons
facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of
radioactivity were found.
-
- A current senior intelligence official confirmed the
existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had
been hostile to it. The White House's dismissal of the C.I.A. findings
on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides
discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said.
"They're not looking for a smoking gun," the official added,
referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. "They're
looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish
the mission." The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency also challenged
the C.I.A.'s analysis. "The D.I.A. is fighting the agency's conclusions,
and disputing its approach," the former senior intelligence official
said. Bush and Cheney, he added, can try to prevent the C.I.A. assessment
from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate
on Iranian nuclear capabilities, "but they can't stop the agency from
putting it out for comment inside the intelligence community." The
C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to
conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran
merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former
senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the
Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American
intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their
long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White
House, including in Cheney's office, had made just such an assumption -
that "the lack of evidence means they must have it," the former
official said.
-
- Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty,
under which it is entitled to conduct nuclear research for peaceful purposes.
Despite the offer of trade agreements and the prospect of military action,
it defied a demand by the I.A.E.A. and the Security Council, earlier this
year, that it stop enriching uranium - a process that can produce material
for nuclear power plants as well as for weapons - and it has been unable,
or unwilling, to account for traces of plutonium and highly enriched uranium
that have been detected during I.A.E.A. inspections. The I.A.E.A. has complained
about a lack of "transparency," although, like the C.I.A., it
has not found unambiguous evidence of a secret weapons program.
-
- Last week, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced
that Iran had made further progress in its enrichment research program,
and said, "We know that some countries may not be pleased." He
insisted that Iran was abiding by international agreements, but said, "Time
is now completely on the side of the Iranian people." A diplomat in
Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. has its headquarters, told me that the agency
was skeptical of the claim, for technical reasons. But Ahmadinejad's defiant
tone did nothing to diminish suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
-
- "There is no evidence of a large-scale covert enrichment
program inside Iran," one involved European diplomat said. "But
the Iranians would not have launched themselves into a very dangerous confrontation
with the West on the basis of a weapons program that they no longer pursue.
Their enrichment program makes sense only in terms of wanting nuclear weapons.
It would be inconceivable if they weren't cheating to some degree. You
don't need a covert program to be concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
We have enough information to be concerned without one. It's not a slam
dunk, but it's close to it."
-
- There are, however, other possible reasons for Iran's
obstinacy. The nuclear program - peaceful or not - is a source of great
national pride, and President Ahmadinejad's support for it has helped to
propel him to enormous popularity. (Saddam Hussein created confusion for
years, inside and outside his country, about whether Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction, in part to project an image of strength.) According to
the former senior intelligence official, the C.I.A.'s assessment suggested
that Iran might even see some benefits in a limited military strike - especially
one that did not succeed in fully destroying its nuclear program - in that
an attack might enhance its position in the Islamic world. "They learned
that in the Iraqi experience, and relearned it in southern Lebanon,"
the former senior official said. In both cases, a more powerful military
force had trouble achieving its military or political goals; in Lebanon,
Israel's war against Hezbollah did not destroy the group's entire arsenal
of rockets, and increased the popularity of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
-
- The former senior intelligence official added that the
C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran
could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations.
"An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world,
and we'll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against
us - and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West.
It's an analyst's worst nightmare - for the first time since the caliphate
there will be common cause in the Middle East." (An Islamic caliphate
ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth
century.)
-
- According to the Pentagon consultant, "The C.I.A.'s
view is that, without more intelligence, a large-scale bombing attack would
not stop Iran's nuclear program. And a low-end campaign of subversion and
sabotage would play into Iran's hands - bolstering support for the religious
leadership and deepening anti-American Muslim rage."
-
- The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his
colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons
capability. But he added that the Bush Administration's options for dealing
with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence
and also because "we've cried wolf" before.
-
- As the C.I.A.'s assessment was making its way through
the government, late this summer, current and former military officers
and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from
Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and
tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance
of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial. "The problem
is that no one can verify it," the former senior intelligence official
told me. "We don't know who the Israeli source is. The briefing says
the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms" - simulating a zero-yield
nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials - "but there
are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often
have they done it? How big is the warhead - a breadbox or a refrigerator?
They don't have that." And yet, he said, the report was being used
by White House hawks within the Administration to "prove the White
House's theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive
track, which is why we can't find it." Still, he said, "The agency
is standing its ground."
-
- The Pentagon consultant, however, told me that he and
other intelligence professionals believe that the Israeli intelligence
should be taken more seriously. "We live in an era when national technical
intelligence" - data from satellites and on-the-ground sensors - "will
not get us what we need. HUMINT may not be hard evidence by that standard,
but very often it's the best intelligence we can get." He added, with
obvious exasperation, that within the intelligence community "we're
going to be fighting over the quality of the information for the next year."
One reason for the dispute, he said, was that the White House had asked
to see the "raw" - the original, unanalyzed and unvetted - Israeli
intelligence. Such "stovepiping" of intelligence had led to faulty
conclusions about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction during the buildup
to the 2003 Iraq war. "Many Presidents in the past have done the same
thing," the consultant said, "but intelligence professionals
are always aghast when Presidents ask for stuff in the raw. They see it
as asking a second grader to read 'Ulysses.' "
-
- HUMINT can be difficult to assess. Some of the most politically
significant - and most inaccurate - intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons
of mass destruction came from an operative, known as Curveball, who was
initially supplied to the C.I.A. by German intelligence. But the Pentagon
consultant insisted that, in this case, "the Israeli intelligence
is apparently very strong." He said that the information about the
trigger device had been buttressed by another form of highly classified
data, known as MASINT, for "measuring and signature" intelligence.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is the central processing and dissemination
point for such intelligence, which includes radar, radio, nuclear, and
electro-optical data. The consultant said that the MASINT indicated activities
that "are not consistent with the programs" Iran has declared
to the I.A.E.A. "The intelligence suggests far greater sophistication
and more advanced development," the consultant said. "The indications
don't make sense, unless they're farther along in some aspects of their
nuclear-weapons program than we know."
-
- In early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary
of State for Arms Control (he is now the United Nations Ambassador), privately
conveyed to the I.A.E.A. suspicions that Iran was conducting research into
the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives needed to trigger
a nuclear warhead at Parchin, a sensitive facility twenty miles southeast
of Tehran that serves as the center of Iran's Defense Industries Organization.
A wide array of chemical munitions and fuels, as well as advanced antitank
and ground-to-air missiles, are manufactured there, and satellite imagery
appeared to show a bunker suitable for testing very large explosions.
-
- A senior diplomat in Vienna told me that, in response
to the allegations, I.A.E.A. inspectors went to Parchin in November of
2005, after months of negotiation. An inspection team was allowed to single
out a specific site at the base, and then was granted access to a few buildings
there. "We found no evidence of nuclear materials," the diplomat
said. The inspectors looked hard at an underground explosive-testing pit
that, he said, "resembled what South Africa had when it developed
its nuclear weapons," three decades ago. The pit could have been used
for the kind of kinetic research needed to test a nuclear trigger. But,
like so many military facilities with dual-use potential, "it also
could be used for other things," such as testing fuel for rockets,
which routinely takes place at Parchin. "The Iranians have demonstrated
that they can enrich uranium," the diplomat added, "and trigger
tests without nuclear yield can be done. But it's a very sophisticated
process - it's also known as hydrodynamic testing - and only countries
with suitably advanced nuclear testing facilities as well as the necessary
scientific expertise can do it. I'd be very skeptical that Iran could do
it."
-
- Earlier this month, the allegations about Parchin reëmerged
when Yediot Ahronot, Israel's largest newspaper, reported that recent satellite
imagery showed new "massive construction" at Parchin, suggesting
an expansion of underground tunnels and chambers. The newspaper sharply
criticized the I.A.E.A.'s inspection process and its director, Dr. Mohamed
ElBaradei, for his insistence on "using very neutral wording for his
findings and his conclusions."
-
- Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran who is the deputy
director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
a conservative think tank, told me that the "biggest moment"
of tension has yet to arrive: "How does the United States keep an
Israeli decision point - one that may come sooner than we want - from being
reached?" Clawson noted that there is evidence that Iran has been
slowed by technical problems in the construction and operation of two small
centrifuge cascades, which are essential for the pilot production of enriched
uranium. Both are now under I.A.E.A. supervision. "Why were they so
slow in getting the second cascade up and running?" Clawson asked.
"And why haven't they run the first one as much as they said they
would? Do we have more time?
-
- "Why talk about war?" he said. "We're
not talking about going to war with North Korea or Venezuela. It's not
necessarily the case that Iran has started a weapons program, and it's
conceivable - just conceivable - that Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons
program yet. We can slow them down - force them to reinvent the wheel -
without bombing, especially if the international conditions get better."
-
- Clawson added that Secretary of State Rice has "staked
her reputation on diplomacy, and she will not risk her career without evidence.
Her team is saying, 'What's the rush?' The President wants to solve the
Iranian issue before leaving office, but he may have to say, 'Darn, I wish
I could have solved it.' "
-
- Earlier this year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert created a task force to coördinate all the available intelligence
on Iran. The task force, which is led by Major General Eliezer Shkedi,
the head of the Israeli Air Force, reports directly to the Prime Minister.
In late October, Olmert appointed Ephraim Sneh, a Labor Party member of
the Knesset, to serve as Deputy Defense Minister. Sneh, who served previously
in that position under Ehud Barak, has for years insisted that action be
taken to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. In an interview this month
with the Jerusalem Post, Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness
of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran:
-
- The danger isn't as much Ahmadinejad's deciding to launch
an attack but Israel's living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader
committed to its destruction... . Most Israelis would prefer not to live
here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis
who can live abroad will ... I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill
the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That's why we must prevent
this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.
-
- A similar message was delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu,
the Likud leader, in a speech in Los Angeles last week. "It's 1938
and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,"
he said, adding that there was "still time" to stop the Iranians.
-
- The Pentagon consultant told me that, while there may
be pressure from the Israelis, "they won't do anything on their own
without our green light." That assurance, he said, "comes from
the Cheney shop. It's Cheney himself who is saying, 'We're not going to
leave you high and dry, but don't go without us.' " A senior European
diplomat agreed: "For Israel, it is a question of life or death. The
United States does not want to go into Iran, but, if Israel feels more
and more cornered, there may be no other choice."
-
- A nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel.
It could trigger a strategic-arms race throughout the Middle East, as Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt - all led by Sunni governments - would be compelled
to take steps to defend themselves. The Bush Administration, if it does
take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as
well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh,
of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have
warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that - as Clinton
said earlier this year - "we cannot take any option off the table."
Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also
endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when
he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, "A nuclear
Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which
terrorists live and die - the mass destruction of innocent human life.
This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West
cannot afford to fail."
-
- Despite such rhetoric, Leslie Gelb, a former State Department
official who is a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations,
said he believes that, "when push comes to shove, the Israelis will
have a hard time selling the idea that an Iranian nuclear capability is
imminent. The military and the State Department will be flat against a
preëmptive bombing campaign." Gelb said he hoped that Gates's
appointment would add weight to America's most pressing issue - "to
get some level of Iranian restraint inside Iraq. In the next year or two,
we're much more likely to be negotiating with Iran than bombing it."
-
- The Bush Administration remains publicly committed to
a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear impasse, and has been working
with China, Russia, France, Germany, and Britain to get negotiations under
way. So far, that effort has foundered; the most recent round of talks
broke up early in November, amid growing disagreements with Russia and
China about the necessity of imposing harsh United Nations sanctions on
the Iranian regime. President Bush is adamant that Iran must stop all of
its enrichment programs before any direct talks involving the United States
can begin.
-
- The senior European diplomat told me that the French
President, Jacques Chirac, and President Bush met in New York on September
19th, as the new U.N. session was beginning, and agreed on what the French
called the "Big Bang" approach to breaking the deadlock with
Iran. A scenario was presented to Ali Larijani, the chief Iranian negotiator
on nuclear issues. The Western delegation would sit down at a negotiating
table with Iran. The diplomat told me, "We would say, 'We're beginning
the negotiations without preconditions,' and the Iranians would respond,
'We will suspend.' Our side would register great satisfaction, and the
Iranians would agree to accept I.A.E.A. inspection of their enrichment
facilities. And then the West would announce, in return, that they would
suspend any U.N. sanctions." The United States would not be at the
table when the talks began but would join later. Larijani took the offer
to Tehran; the answer, as relayed by Larijani, was no, the diplomat said.
"We were trying to compromise, for all sides, but Ahmadinejad did
not want to save face," the diplomat said. "The beautiful scenario
has gone nowhere."
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- Last week, there was a heightened expectation that the
Iraq Study Group would produce a set of recommendations that could win
bipartisan approval and guide America out of the quagmire in Iraq. Sources
with direct knowledge of the panel's proceedings have told me that the
group, as of mid-November, had ruled out calling for an immediate and complete
American withdrawal but would recommend focussing on the improved training
of Iraqi forces and on redeploying American troops. In the most significant
recommendation, Baker and Hamilton were expected to urge President Bush
to do what he has thus far refused to do - bring Syria and Iran into a
regional conference to help stabilize Iraq.
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- It is not clear whether the Administration will be receptive.
In August, according to the former senior intelligence official, Rumsfeld
asked the Joint Chiefs to quietly devise alternative plans for Iraq, to
preëmpt new proposals, whether they come from the new Democratic majority
or from the Iraq Study Group. "The option of last resort is to move
American forces out of the cities and relocate them along the Syrian and
Iranian border," the former official said. "Civilians would be
hired to train the Iraqi police, with the eventual goal of separating the
local police from the Iraqi military. The White House believes that if
American troops stay in Iraq long enough - with enough troops - the bad
guys will end up killing each other, and Iraqi citizens, fed up with internal
strife, will come up with a solution. It'll take a long time to move the
troops and train the police. It's a time line to infinity."
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- In a subsequent interview, the former senior Bush Administration
official said that he had also been told that the Pentagon has been at
work on a plan in Iraq that called for a military withdrawal from the major
urban areas to a series of fortified bases near the borders. The working
assumption was that, with the American troops gone from the most heavily
populated places, the sectarian violence would "burn out." "The
White House is saying it's going to stabilize," the former senior
Administration official said, "but it may stabilize the wrong way."
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- One problem with the proposal that the Administration
enlist Iran in reaching a settlement of the conflict in Iraq is that it's
not clear that Iran would be interested, especially if the goal is to help
the Bush Administration extricate itself from a bad situation.
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- "Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle
East," I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration
official. "With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout
the region, it's basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate
with us over Iraq?" He recounted a recent meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
who challenged Bush's right to tell Iran that it could not enrich uranium.
"Why doesn't America stop enriching uranium?" the Iranian President
asked. He laughed, and added, "We'll enrich it for you and sell it
to you at a fifty-per-cent discount."
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