The Bush Legacy: A Nuclear Iran?

Steve Yuhas

The New York Times is reporting that the Bush Administration scuttled plans for an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz. The Times’ report says that Israel requested and was denied permission to fly through Iraqi airspace in order to rid the world of a nuclear facility that will surely be used to produce a militant Islamic nuclear weapon.

Israel was forced to act on her own once before and the world saw her foresight a decade later and it would do us well to heed a lesson of history.

On June 7, 1981 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to strike the French-built Osirak reactor, located 18 miles south of Baghdad. The air strike was criticized by the entire world, including the United States, and the UN Security Council called the strike a “clear violation” of the UN Charter.

Not surprisingly a decade after the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor the world leaders wrote letters of thanks to the Israeli government for ridding Saddam Hussein of his ability to achieve a nuclear weapon. One thing that must be said of Israeli intelligence – it’s good. Compared to that of our own and the world Israel’s robust espionage program runs circles around that of Western nations, including the United States.

The USA had our security apparatus neutered many espionage programs in order to please the political left at the expense of missing the human intelligence that is vital when conducting war and public diplomacy. The world knows that Iran is producing nuclear material – that is a fact and is not disputed by even Iran. What is disputed is how to deal with Iranian ambitions and thus far the world decided that chatting about it at the United Nations and the European Union is how best to deal with a nuclear threat.

If the Times’ piece is accurate and the Bush Administration is itself skeptical that the unconventional manner it is taking to stop the almost certain creation of an Islamic fundamentalist bomb will fail. Interruption of the supply chain to Tehran, sabotage of the materials used for the reactor (including parts and supplies) and other covert actions are having no effect on the mullahs who issue fatwas and prayers for the destruction of the Jewish state.

What did Israel want? According to the report she wanted to purchase bombs capable of destroying, totally, the nuclear facility in Iran and the ability to fly over Iraq to get to the site. She did not ask for American bombers or pilots (although I know a few who would have volunteered), Israel did not ask for American support in what would surely be a diplomatic nightmare that would follow. What Israel wanted was for America to allow her to do what the entire world is too frightened or timid to do itself.

Israel wanted to destroy a nuclear reactor that is producing the material aimed at her destruction and the Bush Administration said no. The rejection of an Israeli plan to rid the world of what is perhaps the single largest military threat is nothing short of disaster and we cannot blame President-elect Barack Obama if Iran develops a bomb within months of taking office.

There are few things that can plunge the world into a world conflagration, but one of them is an exchange of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. There is the continued threat of an arms race in that region because of the instability that a nuclear Iran would create in a region where stability is the only thing that keeps one country from invading another.

Bush should have allowed Israeli planes to fly over Iraq and the Administration should have provided Israel with the weapons she needed to do what the world will not. Now we sit on the precipice of an Iran capable of destroying Israel and creating a conflict that will make the current operation in Gaza look like a picnic.

The legacy of the Bush Administration will be left to history and one can only hope that historians do not have to footnote every mention of a nuclear Iran with a footnote that it happened on the watch of a President of the United States who coined the term “war on terror.”

Steve Yuhas is a radio talk show host on AM 600 KOGO www.kogo.com in southern CA. He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com