In a story out of the UK’s Guardian, it’s being reported that President Bush refused to support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites earliier this year:
Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.
The then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used the occasion of Bush’s trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the state’s founding to raise the issue in a one-on-one meeting on May 14, the sources said. “He took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office”, they added.
The sources work for a European head of government who met the Israeli leader some time after the Bush visit. Their talks were so sensitive that no note-takers attended, but the European leader subsequently divulged to his officials the highly sensitive contents of what Olmert had told him of Bush’s position.
Bush’s decision to refuse to offer any support for a strike on Iran appeared to be based on two factors, the sources said. One was US concern over Iran’s likely retaliation, which would probably include a wave of attacks on US military and other personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The other was US anxiety that Israel would not succeed in disabling Iran’s nuclear facilities in a single assault even with the use of dozens of aircraft. It could not mount a series of attacks over several days without risking full-scale war. So the benefits would not outweigh the costs.
If the facts relayed here are accurate, the President deserves our appreciation for it. I have little doubt that a conflict of this nature will eventually come to a head between Israel and Iran, but it’s not one that we can support.
I have little doubt that a conflict of this nature will eventually come to a head between Israel and Iran, but it’s not one that we can support.
Now this makes no sense whatsoever. I can understand, if not necessarily agree with, the notion that an Israel-Iran war is not in US interests and/or that the US should restrain rather than encourage Israel.
But how can one possibly believe BOTH that such a war is inevitable (”will eventually come to a head”) AND that the US should not support Israel in that event.
Are you under some sort of illusion that if we simply say we don’t support Israel the day that such a strike happens that Iran will believe us? That Iran will not undertake whatever anti-US actions are within its power but which it is somehow not doing now (that would be what exactly … supporting terrorists or something)? The Muslim world is simply psychotic about Israel and the US as being the same thing and there’s no point in pretending this is something we can influence by calibrating our level of support to X, Y, and Z but not A, B, and C (where the first group might be diplomatic recognition, UN votes and military sales, while A, B, and C would include West Bank annexation, an Osiraq-like strike on Iran or a US troop presence in Israel).
Remember how Iraq responded to Gulf War I to the aerial start of the counteroffensive? By attacking Israel, of whom any presence in the US-led coalition already had been absolutely scrubbed clean, and this is the funny part, **at the insistence of the other anti-Saddam Arabs** (Syria, Saudi Arabia et al). Didn’t matter one iota.
Naturally, Bush will give the greenlight after McCain/Palin win the election in November.
We have to take out Iran’s nukes and who better to do it than Israel?
As far as I am aware, there is no provision within just war doctrine for pre-emptive acts of war. If there were, that would change the nature of this question. Since there isn’t, it seems to me the other considerations are academic, barring certain knowledge of an impending attack.
Sooner or later Iran is going to have be dealt with. If Israel does it, rather than us I’d be delighted.