Following the Baker report and the Blair visit to Washington, Iraq is on everybody’s minds. But – behind the scenes – almost as urgent a debate is taking place about Iran.

The excellent Swoop foreign policy analysis site points out that there is complete disagreement between James Baker and Vice-President Cheney about the idea of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. Swoop reveals an interesting little detail – that Cheney actually has a signed photograph in his office from the Israeli air-force team that bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

The Israeli factor is obviously critical to the whole debate. One former American spook, who knows President Bush well, reckons that in the aftermath of the mid-term elections and the Baker report, the chances of an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has fallen from around 30% to around 15%.

But Israel is the wild card.

Israeli ministers are talking openly about taking action on their own, if necessary. Maybe this is bluff. The Israelis apparently reckon they would have to hit some 500 targets both to neutralise Iran’s nuclear programme – and to inhibit Iranian ability to retaliate. It is far from clear that the Israeli air force is capable of doing all this on its own. So in Washington, a large part of the debate is what the United States should do, if the Israelis announce that they are planning to take unilateral action against Iran? There are many Americans who believe that, in such a case, the United States would be more or less obliged to take supporting action.

This sounds like a classic tail/dog issue to me. But in any case, there are influential Americans – the vice-president among them – who seem to believe that the United States should take action itself. The question is where will President Bush – the self-styled “decider” – come down on all this?

It seems to me that the chances of him choosing the military option are actually greater than 15%. Bush after all, is now in the legacy business. His reaction to the Baker report has bordered on the bellicose. Does he want to be the president whose major foreign policy “achievement” was a disastrous war in Iraq? Or might he convince himself that he could, at least, claim to be the president who stopped Iran going nuclear? Of course, there will be many in his inner circle who will argue that bombing Iran would simply further escalate the mess that has already been created in Iraq. It sounds like Bob Gates, the new defence secretary, takes that line. In which case he and Cheney will have some interesting discussions.

And when will all this come to a head? My assumption had been that it is probably 18 months before it comes to the boil – in other words the last few months of the Bush administration. But I’ve heard well-informed people who reckon that in fact the crisis point will be reached much sooner – perhaps by the middle of 2007.

December 8th, 2006 in Iran | Permalink