Ex-CIA official: Israel will attack Iran on its own
Pastor Dale Morgan
Ex-CIA official: Israel will attack Iran on its own*
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 22, 2007
"I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel
would attack Iran," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and senior
adviser to three US presidents, George W. Bush among them, told the
American Newsweek magazine in an article published Friday.
Citing conversations he had in Israel with officials in Mossad and the
Israeli defense establishment, Riedel concluded that "Israel is not
going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened."
While some US experts doubt Israel's ability to tackle Iran alone, David
Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security in
Washington, was quoted by Newsweek as saying that although information
on the exact location of Iran's nuclear facility is incomplete, Israel's
air strike on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility on September 6, widely
discussed in foreign media outlets, could be seen as a test run for any
future strike on Iran's facilities, as well as a direct warning to Teheran.
Riedel told the magazine his impression that Israel would venture a
strike on Iran on its own was formed before the publication of the joint
US intelligence agencies' report, the National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE). "This [the NIE] makes it [a strike on Iran] even more likely," he
said.
Since the publication of the NIE, which reversed a previous American
assessment by concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in
2003, leaders worldwide have been adjusting their publicly stated
positions on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Even inside the US, President Bush attempted some damage control by
stating a day after the report's publication that "Iran was dangerous,
Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous."
In Israel, responses to the report ranged from subtle criticism of the
report's conclusions to outright slamming of the US intelligence
community's capabilities, so much so that on last Sunday's cabinet
meeting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed his ministers to refrain
from commenting any further on the report.
In the international scene, Russia's decision to renew fuel shipments to
Iran main nuclear facility at Bushehr was interpreted by many anlysts as
stemming directly from the NIE's publication; another development
possibly stemming from the report is Russia and China's hardened
position on further sanctions against Teheran.
In Teheran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quick to capitalize on the
NIE, calling it an "Iranian victory" and demanding that the United
States publicly apologize for its previous bellicose stance.
Uzi Arad, a former Mossad official and adviser to opposition leader
Binyamin Netanyahu, told Newsweek that on a recent trip to Moscow, a
Russian general poked fun at the naiveté of the NIE, commenting that if
the Iranians had halted weapons development in 2003 it was partly
because they were satisfied with progress there and wanted to devote
investment to harder parts of the nuclear equation, like enrichment.
"The irony is that the effect of this report may be self-negating - by
itself it will accelerate Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons," Arad
told the magazine.