Washington
25 June 2008
Iran is coming under increasing pressure over its nuclear ambitions.The West has offered new incentives to coax Iran into halting uraniumenrichment, while the European Union has levied new economicsanctions. As VOA Correspondent Gary Thomas reports, hovering over thediplomatic process is the implied threat of military action.
TheBush administration continues to maintain the Iran nuclear issue can beresolved diplomatically. But the threat of military action, whilenever explicitly stated, appears to hang over the diplomaticmaneuvering. Talk of an attack on Iran, which seemed to ebb and flowin recent months, has again surfaced.
Details of a recentmilitary exercise by the Israeli air force were leaked to U.S. andBritish newspapers, and unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials were quotedas saying the maneuvers appeared to be a possible dress rehearsal forair strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Some analysts believe the Israeli exercises were aimed at putting pressure on the United States to act against Iran.
AnIran affairs analyst at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service,Ken Katzman, says Israel is getting increasingly impatient over thefailure to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue.
"Now, obviously,Israel is getting progressively more serious by the day, and that hasto be factored in. I think, Israel is trying to say, 'Well, somebodybetter do something. Otherwise, we are going to have to do it. So whydo not you all go ahead and do it?' I mean, I think Israel isbasically signaling that something is going to have to start workingvery soon," he said.
Military analysts say Israel cannot strikeIran without American cooperation. A former senior State Departmentintelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, Wayne White,points out that Iran is out of the range of Israeli bombers, at leastwithout midair refueling.
"The Israelis at that range have aproblem. Their [air] strike package is limited. And they would beable to hit certain key nodes of the nuclear infrastructure, but theywould not really be able to take it out to a degree that it would beset back many years," he said.
An analysis by the privateintelligence firm Stratfor says midair refueling would in alllikelihood have to take place over Iraq, and Iraqi airspace is stillunder U.S. control. That means, Stratfor says, that the United Stateswould be complicit, even if the official version was that it was aunilateral Israeli strike.
Most analysts concur that attackingIran would not be a matter of a one-time strike against its nuclearfacilities, as Israel did in Iraq in 1981 and more recently in Syria.
TheU.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen isheaded to Israel, where a Pentagon spokesman says he will discuss Iranwith Israeli officials, but that that would be one of many issues underreview. The spokesman emphasized a preference for diplomatic andeconomic pressures over military options.
The WashingtonInstitute for Near East Policy just published a paper called "The LastResort". It is the first policy paper by a major non-governmental U.S.research institution to publicly examine the strategy and consequencesof what it calls preventive military action against Iran.
In aforum introducing the paper, co-author Michael Eisenstadt, emphasizedthat they do not advocate what he calls "preventive military action"against Iran. But should it occur, he added, it is likely to be aprotracted affair.
"Prevention would entail significantchallenges, significant uncertainties, and probably would requiremultiple strikes over time, if it is to impose significant damage anddelay on Iran's program, because different aspects of itsinfrastructure are running on a different timeline, and becausepresumably there is a good chance they will try to rebuild. And,therefore, to ensure the success of the policy, you might have to hitagain," he said.
Wayne White, now with the Middle EastInstitute, says hitting the nuclear facilities would not happen in afirst strike.
"We know that the op [operations] plan calls for a hugeaerial campaign of 1,500 to 2,000 sorties [aerial missions], whichprobably in its early stages would be not hitting the nuclear targets. It would be taking out all of Iran's retaliatory capabilities in theGulf - anti-ship missiles, the air force, submarines, stuff like that -in order to make sure they do not fire back and start hammering theGulf states or our fleet units and things like that," he said.
Eisenstadtsays success of an aerial campaign cannot be judged merely on thephysical damage inflicted. "To measure the success of the policy, thecriteria, the real factor, is whether Iran decides to rebuild or not. That is really the crucial consideration," he said.
White sayssuch an outcome is far from assured, and that an attack may onlyre-inforce Iran's ambitions to be a nuclear-weapons power.
"TheIranians may be taking a lot of lab equipment, a lot of expertise,planning, things that they can take away, and pocketing it somewherefor the very purpose of reconstituting and going for a nuclear weaponif they are hit," he said.
Analysts add that Iran couldretaliate in any number of ways, including through terrorist attacks onU.S. and Israeli civilian targets and attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.