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To wait - or to strike? By Amir Oren Tags: Israel, U.S., nuclear program  A volley of missiles fired offensively by Iran at Israel, noted James "Sandy" Winnefeld this week, "is by far the most likely employment of ballistic missiles in the world today, and it demands our immediate attention in the event of a need for a U.S. or NATO response." Admiral Winnefeld, whose warning appears in the July 2008 issue of the U.S. Navy monthly "Proceedings," is a fighter pilot, and former commander of an aircraft carrier and of a task force involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. At present, he is commander of the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet, which is expected to participate - in Haifa Bay and with the help of Herev Magen (the Arrow missile) and Yahalom (the Patriot missile) - in the interception of Shahab-3 missiles. Winnefeld did not describe a scenario that would cause Iran to attack Israel. He made do with calling Iran an "unpredictable adversary" and noted that the stimulus for its action could be "an isolated, and perhaps seemingly unimportant, event." Implicitly, this constitutes yet another admission of an ongoing Western intelligence failure relating to Iran. Iran's regime is not about to fall, so the media are recycling already-familiar details about Israeli and American intentions to take action against it, while adding a little color of their own. The real news is swallowed up in the melee. One such bit of news, largely ignored, was provided at a June 10 briefing to Pentagon correspondents, given on a U.S. Air Force plane en route to Washington. Advertisement The person giving the briefing was Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is opposed to a U.S. attack on Iran. Under the guise of making a formal announcement, Gates stated that he had asked a group of advisers - retired generals and respectable civilians with high security clearance - to prepare updated files to assist in the transition in about 200 days from the administration of George W. Bush to that of his successor: John McCain or Barack Obama. In their respective countries, Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are main advocates of the militant approach toward Iran. But their political power has expired, their respective publics are leery of their motives, and the ministers in charge of their defense establishments, Gates and Ehud Barak, each for his own reasons, are not volunteering to help them turn an attack on Iran into their private legacy. The same goes for the two foreign ministers, Condoleezza Rice and Tzipi Livni. Iran first Gates does not delude himself about the prospects of engaging the ayatollah regime in a dialogue, or about vanquishing it by sanctions or a display of petulance by European countries that are loath to forgo business with Iran. His objection to a military operation at this time is anchored in the practical consideration of concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan. For him, everything is measured in terms of influence - positive or negative - on the campaign in those two arenas. Gates went from being from bureau chief for the head of the CIA during the Carter administration to heading the CIA himself during George Bush Sr.'s administration. Rice pushed the current president left on the question of North Korea; Gates is blocking him on the runway to Iran. Since the Republican defeat in the November 2006 Congressional elections, when Bush yielded to demands to dump Donald Rumsfeld in favor of Gates, the Gates-Rice axis has triumphed over Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney. Bush's heart is still with Cheney, but on the ground, the moves powered by Rice and Gates that count. When stipulating the priorities in the security-related transition between the administrations during his authorization of the Defense Department Policy Board Advisory Committee last month, Gates did place Iran first - ahead of Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, collecting intelligence and supervision over nuclear armament. The sting lies in the committee's composition. The board will be chaired by John Hamre, a deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, who is close to Sam Nunn, a former Democratic senator. If Obama wins, Nunn could be defense secretary or fill another key post in the foreign affairs or defense realms. For the past eight years, Hamre has headed a highly regarded policy research institute in Washington, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His approach to the Iran issue is similar to Gates' and reflects mutual feedback. Last fall, Gates made him the head of a council of advisers including former secretaries of state and defense, who - along with other government officials and scientists - are invited to high-level meetings and generally enjoy direct access to the secretary of defense. Hamre's appointment as head of this group affected the thrust of the recommendations in the transition files that he will convey to Obama or McCain via Gates. In November, during the annual CSIS evaluation, Hamre described the beliefs of "the leadership in the Defense Department" - namely, Gates - in an article entitled "War with Iran in 2008?" Hamre's own answer was negative, albeit couched in cautious terms: "on balance," "not likely," and "obviously all bets are off if we have some accident or military provocation." In the early days of the Bush administration, the widespread belief was that Iran would "collapse of its own weight" at the sight of America's success in establishing a "vibrant democracy" in neighboring Iraq, Hamre wrote, but the Iranian problem continued to fester, from its nuclear project to its rejection of Israel's right to exist, to deadly subversion in Iraq. "Will the U.S. attack Iraq during the coming year?" he asked, and listed the differences between Iraq of 2003 - particularly the "[climate of] fear caused by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," and the fact that "no one offered a coherent opposing view" to that of the neoconservatives - and the current titanic clash between advocates and opponents of war with Iran. Despite Bush's declaration that a nuclear Iran is "unacceptable," Hamre noted, the president has refrained from laying down a red line that would demarcate the threshold of unacceptable developments. Thus, "open conflict is not likely" this year. Increased apprehension These sharp warnings were intended to push diplomacy, yet they have also increased apprehension that the economic sanctions and political pressures are only first steps on the path to war. An even more formidable problem Hamre identified was "that the U.S. cannot [emphasis in original] invade Iran. The Pentagon is seriously winded now after four and a half years of conflict in Iraq and six years of conflict in Afghanistan. The U.S. military lacks the depth to support the surge in Iraq past April. Using ground forces against Iran is out of the question. Attacking Iran with airplanes - the only plausible course of action - poses the challenge of efficacy, especially against covert supply networks of people and small items of equipment. Attacking suspected warehouses will not likely staunch the flow of materiel and personnel. And U.S. intelligence forces believe that Iran can introduce far more serious weaponry into Iraq to complicate our mission there considerably." Finally, Gates' voice emerged from Hamre's mouth: "In addition, widening the conflict in Iraq by attacking Iran does not fit the current strategic thinking. The leadership in the Defense Department believes that we are currently on a more positive trajectory in Iraq. We must withdraw 5 of the 20 U.S. brigades during the first six months of 2008, and the Pentagon hopes to withdraw another 5 brigades during the second half of the year ... With this overarching objective, attacking Iran only seems to add oxygen to a fire we hope is dying out." This line of thought may win the day, but therein lies its weakness. Given the intertwined stance of Washington and Jerusalem, an Israeli appraisal that the prospects for a U.S. attack on Iran this year are nonexistent will encourage those who believe the IDF must be dispatched to the east. The internal Israeli debate over the timing will have many dimensions: political (who will bear responsibility for this fateful decision - Olmert, who is on his way out, or a new and perhaps broader government), military (does the passage of time benefit the IDF in allowing it to be better prepared, or the Iranians, allowing them to improve nuclear weapons and infrastructure defense with surface-to-air missiles), diplomatic (is it best to first prove the ineffectiveness of the sanctions; should action be taken now or is it preferable to wait for a new administration), and even judicial (waiting for Iran to go nuclear is important for demonstrating the threat and justifying an operation against it, but acting against an active nuclear facility, which will endanger the surrounding population, may be considered a violation of international law). A senior legal expert in the IDF was asked recently if anyone had considered the idea that, to deter Iran from using nuclear weapons against it, Israel could threaten that in reprisal it will destroy Islamic holy sites, such as the Iranian cities of Najaf and Karbala, or the Kaaba Stone in Mecca. The jurist was appalled. "That would be a war crime," he said. Even if that opinion is ignored on D-day, the threat will come too late, because at most it will deter against the use of nuclear weapons, not against their acquisition. Of the three countries involved in the oncoming crisis, at least two will not deviate from their course of action. One of the two is Iran. The second could be the United States, or Israel. The third will absorb the reaction of the first for the action taken by the second. That is liable to be, in the spirit of the title of Admiral Winnefeld's article, a time of "blood and belief." Bookmark to del.icio.us   A photoshopped launch Did Iran doctor an image of its provocative missile test launch? Local threat The Shin Bet arrests two Bedouin, accused of supplying information to al-Qaida.

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