THE LAST BIG DECISION

05/23/2008

President Bush faces a choice about Iran's nuclear ambitions. The situation is delicate.


By STEVE ANDREASEN
Published in the Star Tribune
May 21, 2008


The Bush administration's foreign-policy legacy is almost complete. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be handed down to our next president, with each conflict requiring immediate decisions regarding objectives and strategy. Barring an unforeseen crisis, only one major foreign-policy judgment is left for President Bush, one that could dramatically alter the national-security landscape: whether to take military action against Iran's nuclear program.

Ever since the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded last November that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons program, the conventional wisdom has held that the NIE removed any prospect of a near-term U.S. strike against Iran's infrastructure for producing enriched uranium (which Iran claims is being built to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors, not bombs). In short: Certainly President Bush would not order military action against Iran in the waning months of his administration when America's spy agencies had concluded that Tehran had stopped working on a bomb.

That hope, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of the NIE and -- perhaps -- on a misreading of President Bush.

While the NIE's conclusion that Iran ordered a halt to its nuclear weapons program grabbed the headlines, the NIE also made clear that:

(1) Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons;
(2) Iran is continuing to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons -- in particular, Tehran's overt civilian uranium enrichment program; and
(3) convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult.

As stated in the NIE, "only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons -- and such a decision is inherently reversible." On the question of when Iran would be able to make enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, the NIE judged probably sometime between 2010 and 2015, with the earliest date -- albeit very unlikely -- being late 2009.

Thus even as written, the NIE was hardly a wet blanket over suspicions that Iran remains intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon. Moreover, recent events suggest that a more urgent story line is being constructed.

On May 6, the Jerusalem Post published an article based on sources within the Israeli government stating that Israel believes Iran will be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, so that Iran could have a bomb by the middle of 2009. While one might question Israel's motivations for suggesting so urgent a threat, it is worth noting that Israeli intelligence reportedly was the first to unmask Syria's secret nuclear reactor. Add to this increasing tensions -- and public warnings by the Bush administration -- over Iran's support for Shiite extremists in Iraq, and the issue of whether to deal decisively with Tehran's nuclear program (and perhaps targets in Iran that are fueling the insurgency in Iraq) may be back in President Bush's wheelhouse.

An attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure would be nothing like the Israeli raid that destroyed Syria's nuclear reactor last year -- a limited strike against a single target. Instead, it would involve strikes over a period of many days against Iranian air and coastal defense facilities, key military and training centers and the industrial nuclear infrastructure.

Moreover, the length and extent of the conflict may well be determined by Iran's response. That could include an escalation of the conflict in Iraq, attacks against U.S. forces and allies in the Middle East and -- perhaps most ominous -- the green light from Tehran to terrorist cells located in the region and elsewhere to strike American interests. Thus, the aftereffects of an attack against Iran this year could easily spill over into the next administration.

How Bush evaluates this tradeoff -- between military actions that might buy more time before Iran gets the bomb and the negative fallout from such an attack -- is the last question mark in front of this president. In the past, he has used the word "unacceptable" to describe Iran's nuclear ambitions. Some will note that the region was not engulfed in flames after Israel bombed Syria's nuclear reactor last fall -- or Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 -- and that America has more than enough military power in the Persian Gulf to deal with any Iranian response. Thus, the president may be tempted to act to keep Iran from acquiring the bomb -- at least on his watch.

And therein lies the problem. A military strike in 2008 -- even if it bought the next president a few years to advance U.S. interests without facing a nuclear-armed Iran -- would almost certainly prompt Tehran to recommit to getting the bomb and doom any hope of a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. Moreover, whatever time was bought might come at the price of a wider conflict on many fronts -- including Iran, Iraq and the war on terror. Better to leave the next president a narrow window for diplomacy with Tehran -- and the decision of what to do if diplomacy fails -- than to strike now.


Steve Andreasen, the director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council from 1993 to 2001, teaches at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.