John Bolton: Israel "Will Attack Iran" Before Inaugaration Day

Former Ambassador to the United Nations (and author of "Surrender Is Not An Option") John Bolton recently spoke with the London Telegraph. He said he thinks the Bush administration will not carry out an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. He said that "it's clear that the administration has essentially given up that possibility. I don't think it's serious any more. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards." Conversely he thinks that Israel will do what may be necessary after the U.S. presidential election but before the next president is sworn in. "The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations. They're also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there's no telling what impact it could have on the election," says Bolton. He points out that "an Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy" and even "with McCain they might still be looking at a delay. Given that time is on Iran's side, I think the argument for military action is sooner rather than later absent some other development." Though Bolton also believes that McCain's approach to Iran was "much more realistic than the Bush administration's stance." Bolton also disputed IAEA head Mohammed Al-Baradei's assertion that an Israeli attack would create a "fireball" in the region arguing that "the key point would be for the Israelis to break Iran's control over the nuclear fuel cycle and that could be accomplished for example by destroying the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan or the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. That doesn't end the problem but it buys time during which a more permanent solution might be found.... How long? That would be hard to say. Depends on the extent of the destruction."

Meanwhile Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, argued that Bush might be willing to attack Iran if Barack Obama were elected to become the next president.



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