http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2546888920070304
Would Israel attack Iran? Depends who you ask
Sun Mar 4, 2007 9:36AM EST
By Dan Williams - Analysis
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has long been the wild card in debates on
the Iranian nuclear program -- a country that while formally outside
negotiations, has lobbying clout given its strategic fears and
penchant for pre-emptive strikes.
But Israeli officials, once quick to project military menace in the
face of what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called an "existential
threat", are increasingly taking a softer public line on how to meet
Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
It appears that many Israelis have grudgingly decided that Iran is too
tough an enemy for their armed forces to take on alone -- and that the
international community senses this too.
"The last thing Israel is interested in is an escalation or some
military action against Iran," said Avigdor Lieberman, the usually
ultra-hawkish Israeli strategic affairs minister.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who suggested a year ago that
Israel consider attacking Iran in a mission akin to its 1981 air
strike on Iraq's atomic reactor, is now redirecting his rhetoric to
calls for crippling Western sanctions on Tehran.
"There's no question that if stiffer measures are needed, it's better
that the United States lead the way," Netanyahu told foreign reporters
last month.
Like its U.S. ally, Israel refuses to rule out pre-emptive strikes as
a last-ditch means of curbing a nuclear program that Iran insists is
peaceful.
But unlike with Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran's nuclear facilities
may be too distant, numerous and fortified for Israel to tackle. The
sense of tactical limitation was reinforced, throughout the region and
beyond, by last year's inconclusive Israeli war against Lebanese
Hezbollah guerillas.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel has no viable military
option on Iran, and is pinning its hopes on some sort of solution by
the Americans," said Alon Ben-David, Israel analyst for Jane's Defense
Weekly.
"But there are also a growing number of Israelis who think the country
will just have to live with a nuclear-armed Iran," he said.
Resigning itself to an Iranian bomb could spell a major credibility
crisis for Israel, which was founded on the promise of preventing a
"second Holocaust" and, to that end, is believed to have procured the
Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fueled fears of a
catastrophic regional conflict by denying the Nazi genocide took place
and urging that the Jewish state be "wiped off the map", though Tehran
officials said this did not constitute a threat.
FAIT ACCOMPLI?
The tension is especially felt in war-wary Europe, which has robust
trade ties with Iran. There have been recent European proposals for
accommodating Iran by allowing it limited uranium enrichment,
something anathema to the United States and Israel.
"The possibility of a preventive Israeli strike helps to concentrate
European thinking on options for resolving the impending crisis before
it would get to that stage," said Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for
nuclear non-proliferation at London's International Institute for
Strategic Studies.
At least one European leader, French President Jacques Chirac, has
already spoken of a nuclear-armed Iran as a possible fait accompli. In
a late-January interview that he later tried to retract, Chirac said
Iran would not attempt a nuclear attack on Israel for fear that Tehran
would be "razed" in response.
Went unmentioned in Chirac's newspaper comments was the possibility
that Israel might launch pre-emptive strikes on Iran.
Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. air force colonel turned strategic
analyst, noted that such preemption would only apply to Iran's
potential nuclear weaponry. It would not put paid to conventional
Iranian arms such as long-range missiles capable of targeting Israel
as well as U.S. interests in the Gulf.
"Israel is probably capable of attacking the main nuclear facilities,"
Gardiner said. "The problem is that they could not also attack the
Iranian retaliation capabilities."
"My sense is that U.S. thinking is moving more and more in the
direction of believing that if you are going to strike, you have to
also take the stinger from the bee," he said.
Foreign analysts agree that, given Israel's close U.S. ties, it would
have to coordinate any attack on Iran with Washington.
Whether U.S. approval would be forthcoming is in doubt. Perceived
adventurism by Israel would risk undermining the Arab coalition that
the Bush administration, already mired in Iraq, is trying to cobble
together against Iran's nuclear program.
Then again, if Israel is seen to have gone it alone it could serve
U.S. interests while limiting the diplomatic fallout.
"I'd rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If
America does it, we will be blamed," the New Yorker magazine quoted a
former Saudi diplomat as saying.
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