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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech in Mashhad, Iran's holiest city, on April 11. In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad called on the West 'not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians' by trying to force Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. (AP Photo/Mehr News Agency) |
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The United States has dropped Israel as a potential partner in any attack against Iran.
Sources close to the administration said that instead the White House has been discussing a joint military campaign with two European states to destroy Iran's nuclear program. They identified the states as Britain and France.
“Whatever happens, Israel will not be part of an operation,” a source close to the administration said. “There will be other players.”
The sources said Israel was located too far from Iran to provide significant support for an air strike on the nuclear facilities of the Islamic republic. They said Tehran's neighbors, including Turkey, would not allow Israeli fighter-jets to enter their air space on any mission against Iran.
Over the next three months, the sources said, the United States and its allies would seek to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution that would pave the way for military force against Iran. The resolution would invoke Chapter 7, which calls for sanctions or military force should Iran continue to enrich uranium in violation of demands by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA was scheduled to submit a report on Iran by April 28.
“If Iran does not comply with the demand in the presidential statement we adopted on March 28 to come into compliance with the existing IAEA resolutions, we would consider at that point a resolution under Chapter VII which would make the IAEA resolutions binding on Iran,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on April 12.
The sources said the discussions on Iran have taken place in several departments. They cited U.S. Central Command, which has been drafting a range of military responses, the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
At one point, Mr. Cheney suggested an Israeli air strike on Iran. On Jan. 20, 2006, the vice president said, “Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.”
Britain and France were also working on contingency plans, the sources said. Both countries have a significant presence in the Gulf, with Britain maintaining the deployment of more than 8,000 troops in Iraq.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again attacked Israel on Friday, vowing that it was “heading toward annihilation.” These blistering comments came just days after Iran increased international concerns about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.
Ahmadinejad denounced Israel as a “permanent threat” to the Middle East that will “soon” be liberated.
“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,” he said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”
The Iranian president engendered international condemnation from world leaders in October when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
The Bush administration charges that Tehran is using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build an atomic weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is intended only to produce civilian energy.
“We are engaged in a diplomatic process with our European partners and the United Nations to keep them from developing such a weapon,” Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove said on April 12. “It's going to be difficult. It's going to be tough because they are led by ideologues who have a weird sense of history.”
So far, Central Command has spent the last year probing Iranian air and ground defenses. The U.S. military has sent numerous unmanned aerial vehicles and other assets to determine Iranian vulnerabilities as well as close-up reconnaissance of several potential targets.
“We're not close to a presidential decision on a military strike,” a source said. “We're at the stage of drafting plans at the military command level and their review by the Joint Chiefs.”
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has released a report that raised a scenario in which the United States would “encourage Israel to openly declare its strike options as a deterrent” to Iran's nuclear weapons program. The report, authored by Anthony
Cordesman and Khalid Al Rodhan, however, said Israel has few options in launching a major strike on Iran.
“There is no doubt that such a strike would face problems,” the report said. “The Israelis do not have conventional ballistic missiles or land/sea-based cruise missiles suited for such a mission. The shortest flight routes would be around 1,500-1,700 kilometers through Jordan and Iraq, 1,900-2,100 kilometers through Saudi Arabia, and 2,600-2,800 kilometers in a loop through Turkey.”
“All such missions would probably be detected relatively quickly by the radars in the countries involved, and very low-altitude penetration profiles would lead to serious range-payload problems,” said the report, entitled “Iranian Nuclear Weapons? The Options if Diplomacy Fails.”
“The countries over flown would be confronted with the need to either react [or have] limited credibility in claiming surprise,” the report said. | 
