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Iran Strategy Stirs Debate at White House
Published on Saturday, June 16, 2007 by the New York Times
by Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON - A year after President Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a
behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over
whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran's nuclear program,
according to senior administration officials.
The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be
winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the
administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney's office
who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are
pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian
nuclear facilities.
In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United
States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to
suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than
a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic
Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of
the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems.
Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the
administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran's leaders that he
will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones,
leaving the implication that a military strike on the country's
facilities is still an option.
Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing
source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the
insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has
provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group
Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.
Even so, friends and associates of Ms. Rice who have talked with her
recently say she has increasingly moved toward the European position
that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for
Mr. Bush, even though it has so far failed to deter Iran from enriching
uranium, and that a military strike would be disastrous.
The accounts were provided by officials at the State Department, White
House and the Pentagon who are on both sides of the debate, as well as
people who have spoken with members of Mr. Cheney's staff and with Ms.
Rice. The officials said they were willing to explain the thinking
behind their positions, but would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Bush has publicly vowed that he would never `tolerate' a nuclear
Iran, and the question at the core of the debate within the
administration is when and whether it makes sense to shift course.
The issue was raised at a closed-door White House meeting recently when
the departing deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch, told
senior officials that President Bush needed an assessment of how the
stalemate over Iran's nuclear program was likely to play out over the
next 18 months, said officials briefed on the meeting.
In response, R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state who is the
chief American strategist on Iran, told the group that negotiations
with Tehran could still be going on when Mr. Bush leaves office in
January 2009. The hawks in the room reported later that they were
deeply unhappy - but not surprised - by Mr. Burns's assessment, which
they interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that the Bush administration
had no `red line' beyond which Iran would not be permitted to step.
But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private
to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside
government are voicing publicly. `Regime change or the use of force are
the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear
weapons capability, if they want it,' said John R. Bolton, the former
United States ambassador to the United Nations.
Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney's top aides, David Wurmser,
told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington
that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice's diplomatic strategy was
failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether
to take military action.
The vice president's office has declined to talk about Mr. Wurmser's
statements, and says Mr. Cheney is fully on board with the president's
strategy. In a June 1 article for Commentary magazine, the
neoconservative editor Norman Podhoretz laid out what a headline
described as `The Case for Bombing Iran.'
`In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be
prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to
the actual use of military force - any more than there was an
alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938,' Mr.
Podhoretz wrote.
Mr. Burns and officials from the Treasury Department have been trying
to use the mounting conservative calls for a military strike to press
Europe and Russia to expand economic sanctions against Iran. Just last
week, Israel's transportation minister and former defense minister,
Shaul Mofaz, visited Washington and told Ms. Rice that sanctions must
be strong enough to get the Iranians to stop enriching uranium by the
end of 2007.
While Mr. Mofaz did not threaten a military strike, Israeli officials
said he told Ms. Rice that by the end of the year, Israel `would have
to reassess where we are.'
The State Department and Treasury officials are pushing for a stronger
set of United Nations Security Council sanctions against members of
Iran's government, including an extensive travel ban and further moves
to restrict the ability of Iran's financial institutions to do business
outside of Iran. Beyond that, American officials have been trying to
get European and Asian banks to take additional steps, outside of the
Security Council, against Iran.
`We're saying to them, `Look, you need to help us make the diplomacy
succeed, and you guys need to stop business as usual with Iran,' ' an
administration official said. `We're not just sitting here ignoring
reality.'
But the fallout from the Iraq war has severely limited the Bush
administration's ability to maneuver on the Iran nuclear issue and has
left many in the administration, and certainly America's allies and
critics in Europe, firmly against military strikes on Iran. On
Thursday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the international nuclear
watchdog agency, warned anew that military action against Iran would
`be an act of madness.'
The debate over `red lines' is a familiar one inside the Bush White
House that last arose in 2002 over North Korea. When the North Koreans
threw out international inspectors on the last day of that year and
soon declared that they planned to reprocess 8,000 rods of spent fuel
into weapons-grade plutonium, President Bush had to decide whether to
declare that if North Korea moved toward weapons, it could face a
military strike on its facilities.
The Pentagon had drawn up an extensive plan for taking out those
facilities, though with little enthusiasm, because it feared it could
not control North Korea's response, and the administration chose not to
delivery any ultimatum. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last
October, and American intelligence officials estimate it now has the
fuel for eight or more weapons.
Iran is far behind the North Koreans; it is believed to be three to
eight years away from its first weapon, American intelligence officials
have told Congress. Conservatives argue that if the administration
fails to establish a line over which Iran must not step, the enrichment
of uranium will go ahead, eventually giving the Iranians fuel that,
with additional enrichment out of the sight of inspectors, it could use
for weapons.
To date, however, the administration has been hesitant about saying
that it will not permit Iran to produce more than a given amount of
fuel, out of concern that Iran's hard-liners would simply see that
figure as a goal.
In the year since the United States made its last offer to Iran, the
Iranians have gone from having a few dozen centrifuges in operation to
building a facility that at last count, a month ago, had more than
1,300. `The pace of negotiations have lagged behind the pace of the
Iranian nuclear program,' said Robert Joseph, the former under
secretary of state for international security, who left his post partly
over his opposition to the administration's recent deal with North
Korea.
Published on Saturday, June 16, 2007 by the New York Times
by Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON - A year after President Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a
behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over
whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran's nuclear program,
according to senior administration officials.
The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be
winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the
administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney's office
who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are
pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian
nuclear facilities.
In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United
States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to
suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than
a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic
Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of
the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems.
Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the
administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran's leaders that he
will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones,
leaving the implication that a military strike on the country's
facilities is still an option.
Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing
source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the
insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has
provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group
Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.
Even so, friends and associates of Ms. Rice who have talked with her
recently say she has increasingly moved toward the European position
that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for
Mr. Bush, even though it has so far failed to deter Iran from enriching
uranium, and that a military strike would be disastrous.
The accounts were provided by officials at the State Department, White
House and the Pentagon who are on both sides of the debate, as well as
people who have spoken with members of Mr. Cheney's staff and with Ms.
Rice. The officials said they were willing to explain the thinking
behind their positions, but would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Bush has publicly vowed that he would never `tolerate' a nuclear
Iran, and the question at the core of the debate within the
administration is when and whether it makes sense to shift course.
The issue was raised at a closed-door White House meeting recently when
the departing deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch, told
senior officials that President Bush needed an assessment of how the
stalemate over Iran's nuclear program was likely to play out over the
next 18 months, said officials briefed on the meeting.
In response, R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state who is the
chief American strategist on Iran, told the group that negotiations
with Tehran could still be going on when Mr. Bush leaves office in
January 2009. The hawks in the room reported later that they were
deeply unhappy - but not surprised - by Mr. Burns's assessment, which
they interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that the Bush administration
had no `red line' beyond which Iran would not be permitted to step.
But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private
to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside
government are voicing publicly. `Regime change or the use of force are
the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear
weapons capability, if they want it,' said John R. Bolton, the former
United States ambassador to the United Nations.
Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney's top aides, David Wurmser,
told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington
that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice's diplomatic strategy was
failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether
to take military action.
The vice president's office has declined to talk about Mr. Wurmser's
statements, and says Mr. Cheney is fully on board with the president's
strategy. In a June 1 article for Commentary magazine, the
neoconservative editor Norman Podhoretz laid out what a headline
described as `The Case for Bombing Iran.'
`In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be
prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to
the actual use of military force - any more than there was an
alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938,' Mr.
Podhoretz wrote.
Mr. Burns and officials from the Treasury Department have been trying
to use the mounting conservative calls for a military strike to press
Europe and Russia to expand economic sanctions against Iran. Just last
week, Israel's transportation minister and former defense minister,
Shaul Mofaz, visited Washington and told Ms. Rice that sanctions must
be strong enough to get the Iranians to stop enriching uranium by the
end of 2007.
While Mr. Mofaz did not threaten a military strike, Israeli officials
said he told Ms. Rice that by the end of the year, Israel `would have
to reassess where we are.'
The State Department and Treasury officials are pushing for a stronger
set of United Nations Security Council sanctions against members of
Iran's government, including an extensive travel ban and further moves
to restrict the ability of Iran's financial institutions to do business
outside of Iran. Beyond that, American officials have been trying to
get European and Asian banks to take additional steps, outside of the
Security Council, against Iran.
`We're saying to them, `Look, you need to help us make the diplomacy
succeed, and you guys need to stop business as usual with Iran,' ' an
administration official said. `We're not just sitting here ignoring
reality.'
But the fallout from the Iraq war has severely limited the Bush
administration's ability to maneuver on the Iran nuclear issue and has
left many in the administration, and certainly America's allies and
critics in Europe, firmly against military strikes on Iran. On
Thursday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the international nuclear
watchdog agency, warned anew that military action against Iran would
`be an act of madness.'
The debate over `red lines' is a familiar one inside the Bush White
House that last arose in 2002 over North Korea. When the North Koreans
threw out international inspectors on the last day of that year and
soon declared that they planned to reprocess 8,000 rods of spent fuel
into weapons-grade plutonium, President Bush had to decide whether to
declare that if North Korea moved toward weapons, it could face a
military strike on its facilities.
The Pentagon had drawn up an extensive plan for taking out those
facilities, though with little enthusiasm, because it feared it could
not control North Korea's response, and the administration chose not to
delivery any ultimatum. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last
October, and American intelligence officials estimate it now has the
fuel for eight or more weapons.
Iran is far behind the North Koreans; it is believed to be three to
eight years away from its first weapon, American intelligence officials
have told Congress. Conservatives argue that if the administration
fails to establish a line over which Iran must not step, the enrichment
of uranium will go ahead, eventually giving the Iranians fuel that,
with additional enrichment out of the sight of inspectors, it could use
for weapons.
To date, however, the administration has been hesitant about saying
that it will not permit Iran to produce more than a given amount of
fuel, out of concern that Iran's hard-liners would simply see that
figure as a goal.
In the year since the United States made its last offer to Iran, the
Iranians have gone from having a few dozen centrifuges in operation to
building a facility that at last count, a month ago, had more than
1,300. `The pace of negotiations have lagged behind the pace of the
Iranian nuclear program,' said Robert Joseph, the former under
secretary of state for international security, who left his post partly
over his opposition to the administration's recent deal with North
Korea.