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US is inching closer to military action on Iran Gethin Chamberlain 14 April 2006, The Scotsman IF ANYONE thinks for a moment that President George Bush is not seriously considering a military attack on Iran, this might be the time to reconsider. Operation Persian Freedom is not just the stuff of Jack Straw's nightmares; if Iran continues down the path it is taking, it is virtually inevitable. For all the talk of the need for a diplomatic solution, there can be no doubt that military minds in the United States and Israel have been hard at work for years trying to come up with a way of destroying, or at the very least crippling, Iran's nuclear weapons programme. Neither should it be possible any longer to entertain doubts about the existence of that programme or the intent of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to acquire a nuclear weapon. The bizarre song-and-dance presentation he laid on to announce the arrival of Iran as a nuclear nation, complete with performers waving around shiny vials of radioactive material, was intended to show the world that Iran had no intention of taking its foot off the accelerator. Mel Brooks must be kicking himself that he didn't think of that one. But what should be providing food for thought is the discovery that, for once, it appears to be the American military which is trying to step on the brakes. What has alarmed them is the insistence from the White House that nothing, including the use of tactical nuclear warheads to penetrate hardened Iranian bunkers, should be ruled out when drawing up their plan of attack. The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claims senior officers are urging Bush to take "this nuclear craziness" off the table. Bush, however, is showing no signs of listening. No-one should underestimate the apocalyptic religious zeal of the two protagonists. Bush is determined to stop Iran getting its hands on nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad is equally determined that it will. What is needed is some extraordinary act of diplomacy to persuade Iran to abandon its weapons quest in return for the US and its allies dropping their objections to a civil nuclear programme. No-one would be happy, but perhaps no-one would be so unhappy that they would risk a military confrontation. But here is the problem: Ahmadinejad is holding most of the cards. He does not need to negotiate. Once he gains weapons-grade plutonium, he will be in an almost unassailable position. Some US observers think it is already too late. They argue that Iran's facilities are too numerous, well protected and scattered. Even those who claim to know about Israel's contingency plans don't seem to think they could get everything in one go. Iran's major regional rival is in turmoil. Also, it finds itself surrounded by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Israel a short bomber flight away. It has every reason to feel threatened and to look to defend itself. If that was all it wanted to do, negotiations still might work. But it already has the missiles; it will not be too long before it has enough plutonium for warheads. And there seems little reason to think that it will not try to manufacture them. (Bizarrely, it seems that the US may actually have helped. In his new book, State of War, James Risen mentions an extraordinary CIA plan to hand over plans for a nuclear weapon to Iran. The idea was to incorporate in the plans serious design flaws which meant they would never work. Unfortunately, the scientist recruited to deliver the plans spotted this, and pointed it out.) Will the US and Israel allow that to happen? It is hard to see how they could. Ahmadinejad is a difficult character. On one hand, he talks of his love of football and his plans to go to the World Cup. He looks more westernised than, for example, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Yet in many ways he is the most dangerous leader Iran has had. He talks of wiping Israel from the map and denies the Holocaust. AND then there is the inevitability of Iran's response to consider. It will hit back and through the terrorist groups it funds, and it has the capacity to do so in asymmetric ways that will make the Iraqi insurgency look like a little local turf war. So commentators are saying that Bush - who likened Ahmadinejad to Hitler - is stuck, that he doesn't know what to do. He can't attack and he can't sit on his hands. Yet he has to make a decision. In fact, Bush knows exactly what to do. He just does not know how, or when. He knows negotiations are unlikely to work. He knows Russia and China will drag their heels on sanctions. He knows that every minute that is lost in searching for a diplomatic solution, Iran moves a little closer to possession of a working bomb. He also knows that none of Iran's neighbours is too comfortable with a nuclear-armed Tehran and that as long as it is not Israel that delivers the blow, they will not mind too much. He can't stand again for election. Why not, he may think, go out with a bang? The reality is that even George Bush is unlikely to sanction a nuclear strike. It is simply unacceptable. Jack Straw said it would be "completely nuts; the US would be an international pariah". But a conventional attack? It seems a real possibility. Will Britain join in? It might be better sitting this one out. We might be able to offer come intelligence help, perhaps a little clandestine special forces assistance on the ground with targeting, but any RAF contribution would inevitably be negligible. Tony Blair might go for it, but Gordon Brown, if he has wrested the leadership away by then, might feel it is not worth the trouble from his own supporters. He's seen how Blair has been dragged down by Iraq; he could do without the inevitable drawn-out backlash against military action. Whatever the US says in public, don't be surprised to wake up one morning and discover that Iran's nuclear programme is a smoking hole in the ground. Then it will be time to batten down the hatches and weather the terrorist storm. At least, if the US strikes sooner rather than later, the response may not come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
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