Worries mount over blowback of attack on Iran By Barbara Slavin

By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON - A former senior adviser on the Middle East to the past four United States presidents says that "the negatives far outweigh the positives" of war with Iran and the United States should augment Israel's nuclear weapons delivery systems to dissuade it from attacking the Islamic Republic.

Bruce Riedel, who served on the White House National Security Council and dealt extensively with both Israel and Iran, told an audience on Tuesday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank, that while an Iran with nuclear weapons would be a significant strategic setback for the United States and Israel, deterrence and containment were preferable to military force.

He criticized those, including all but one Republican presidential

 

candidate, who discuss an attack on Iran's nuclear installations as though it would be "over in an afternoon or a couple of weeks".

"I don't use the term 'military strike'," Riedel said. "We will be at war with Iran. Once we begin it, the determination of when it ends will not be a unilateral one. This could become another ground war in Asia."

The global economy would suffer a huge blow from spiking oil prices, and US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan would be likely targets of Iranian retaliation, Riedel said.

The consequences would be especially dire for Afghanistan because Iran could become a second sanctuary, after Pakistan, for Taliban militants. In that event, "the chances of success in Afghanistan on the timeline the [Barack Obama] administration has laid out is virtually nil," he said.

While the US military and intelligence establishment appears solidly against a war with Iran, Israel's attitude has been ambivalent. A major concern for US policymakers is that Israel might attack Iran without giving the United States warning - and thus the opportunity to try to veto the action.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in December that this was a possibility. Dempsey was due in Israel on Thursday for discussions about Iran.

The US and Israel were to have staged this spring a massive new joint maneuver to practice intercepting incoming missiles, "Austere Challenge 12", but have put off the exercise. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday said he had asked for the delay, but it is also possible that the Obama administration made the decision to convey US displeasure over Israel's more aggressive posture toward Iran.

Michael Eisenstadt, a specialist on Iran and nuclear proliferation at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Atlantic Council session on Tuesday that while a war is risky, so is a policy of containment and deterrence when it comes to Iran.

Both men predicted that 2012 would be "the year of decision for Israel" on Iran, as Iran steadily amasses enriched uranium and moves enrichment into a hardened site at Fordow near Qom.

At the same time, Eisenstadt suggested Iran might be dissuaded from building nuclear weapons by continuing a covert campaign that includes assassinations of Iranian scientists and sabotage of centrifuge parts and computers. READ MORE