One
Washington source said the
“temperature was rising” inside the
administration. Bush was “sending a
message to a number of audiences”,
he said ? to the Iranians and to
members of the United Nations
security council who are trying to
weaken a tough third resolution on
sanctions against Iran for flouting
a UN ban on uranium enrichment.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
last week reported “significant”
cooperation with Iran over its
nuclear programme and said that
uranium enrichment had slowed.
Tehran has promised to answer most
questions from the agency by
November, but Washington fears it is
stalling to prevent further
sanctions. Iran continues to
maintain it is merely developing
civilian nuclear power.
Bush is committed for now to the
diplomatic route but thinks Iran is
moving towards acquiring a nuclear
weapon. According to one well placed
source, Washington believes it would
be prudent to use rapid,
overwhelming force, should military
action become necessary.
Israel, which has warned it will not
allow Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons, has made its own
preparations for airstrikes and is
said to be ready to attack if the
Americans back down.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for
the National Council of Resistance
of Iran, which uncovered the
existence of Iran’s uranium
enrichment plant at Natanz, said the
IAEA was being strung along. “A
number of nuclear sites have not
even been visited by the IAEA,” he
said. “They’re giving a clean bill
of health to a regime that is known
to have practised deception.”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian
president, irritated the Bush
administration last week by vowing
to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq.
But Washington believes Iran is
already fighting a proxy war with
the Americans in Iraq.
The Institute for the Study of War
last week released a report by
Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses
the term “proxy war” and claims that
with the Sunni insurgency and
Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly under
control”, Iranian intervention is
the “next major problem the
coalition must tackle”.
Bush noted that the number of
attacks on US bases and troops by
Iranian-supplied munitions had
increased in recent months ?
“despite pledges by Iran to help
stabilise the security situation in
Iraq”.
It
explains, in part, his lack of faith
in diplomacy with the Iranians. But
Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans
for military action involve the use
of so much force that they are
unlikely to be used and would
seriously stretch resources in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
