Israel's Raid on Syria: Prelude to a Nuke Crisis?

By Dan Ephron and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek/MSNBC

 

Oct.
1, 2007 - Sam Gardiner plays war for a living. A former Air Force
colonel who helped write contingency plans for the U.S. military,
Gardiner has spent the 20 years since his retirement staging
war-simulation exercises for military and policy wonks within and on
the fringes of government (he keeps his client list confidential).

 

Lately, more of his work has focused on Iran
and its nuclear program. Gardiner starts by gathering various experts
in a room to play the parts of government principals—the CIA director,
the secretary of State, leaders of other countries—and presents them
with a scenario: Iran,
for example, has made a dramatic nuclear advance. Then he sits back and
watches the cycle of action and reaction, occasionally lobbing new
information at the participants.

 

In Gardiner's war games, the conduct of Iran's nemesis, Israel, is often the hardest to predict.

 

Are Israeli intelligence officials exaggerating when they say Iran will have mastered the technology to make nuclear weapons by next year? Will Israel stage its own attack on Iran if Washington does not? Or is it posturing in order to goad America into military action? The simulations have led Gardiner to an ominous conclusion: though the United States is now emphasizing sanctions and diplomacy as the means of compelling Tehran to stop enriching uranium, an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could end up dragging Washington into a war.

 

"Even if Israel goes it alone, we will be blamed," says Gardiner. "Hence, we would see retaliation against U.S. interests."

 

How far will Israel go to keep Iran from getting the bomb? The question gained new urgency this month when Israeli warplanes carried out a mysterious raid deep in Syria
and then threw up a nearly impenetrable wall of silence around the
operation. Last week opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu chipped away
at that wall, saying Israel did in fact attack targets in Syrian territory.

 

His top adviser, Mossad veteran Uzi Arad, told NEWSWEEK: "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."

 

Official silence has prompted a broad range of speculation as to what exactly took place. One former U.S.
official, who like others quoted in this article declined to be
identified discussing sensitive matters, says several months ago Israel presented the Bush administration with reconnaissance images and information from secret agents alleging North Korea had begun to supply nuclear-related material to Syria. Some U.S. intelligence reporting, including electronic signal intercepts, appeared to support the Israeli claims. But other U.S. officials remain skeptical about any nuclear link between Syria and North Korea. One European security source told NEWSWEEK the target might have been a North Korean military shipment to Iran that was transiting Syria. But a European intelligence official said it wasn't certain Israel had struck anything at all.

 

While the Bush administration appears to have given tacit support to the Syria raid, Israel and the United States are not in lockstep on Iran.

 

For Israel, the next three months may be decisive: either Tehran succumbs to sanctions and stops enriching uranium or it must be dealt with militarily. (Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes only.)

 

"Two thousand seven is the year you determine whether diplomatic efforts will stop Iran,"
says a well-placed Israeli source, who did not want to be named because
he is not authorized to speak for the government. "If by the end of the
year that's not working, 2008 becomes the year you take action."

 

In Washington,
on the other hand, the consensus against a strike is firmer than most
people realize. The Pentagon worries that another war will break America's already overstretched military, while the intelligence community believes Iran
is not yet on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough. The latter
assessment is expected to appear in a secret National Intelligence
Estimate currently nearing completion, according to three intelligence
officials who asked for anonymity when discussing nonpublic material.

 

The report is expected to say Iran will not be able to build a nuclear bomb until at least 2010 and possibly 2015. One explanation for the lag: Iran is having trouble with its centrifuge-enrichment technology, according to U.S. and European officials.

 

Twice in the past year, the United States has won U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran.
More measures might come up at Security Council discussions later this
year, and recently French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned that
European nations might impose their own sanctions.

 

One U.S.
official who preferred not to be identified discussing sensitive policy
matters said he took part in a meeting several months ago where
intelligence officials discussed a "public diplomacy" strategy to
accompany sanctions. The idea was to periodically float the possibility
of war in public comments in order to keep Iran off balance. In truth, the official said, no war preparations are underway.

 

______

 

 

There are still voices pushing for firmer action against Tehran,
most notably within Vice President Dick Cheney's office. But the steady
departure of administration neocons over the past two years has also
helped tilt the balance away from war.

 

One official who pushed a particularly hawkish line on Iran was David Wurmser, who had served since 2003 as Cheney's Middle East
adviser. A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to NEWSWEEK that
Wurmser left his position last month to "spend more time with his
family."

 

A
few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources,
Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the
idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian
nuclear site at Natanz—and perhaps other sites—in order to provoke
Tehran into lashing out.

 

The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran. (Wurmser's remarks were first reported last week by Washington
foreign-policy blogger Steven Clemons and corroborated by NEWSWEEK.)
When NEWSWEEK attempted to reach Wurmser for comment, his wife, Meyrav,
declined to put him on the phone and said the allegations were untrue.
A spokeswoman at Cheney's office said the vice president "supports the
president's policy on Iran."

 

[See Bush, Cheney (Wurmser) on Iran [1] - An engineered provocation, an "end run", an "accidental war"]

 

______

 

 

In Iran,
preparations for war are underway. "Crisis committees" have been
established in each government ministry to draw up contingency plans,
according to an Iranian official who asked for anonymity in order to
speak freely. The regime has ordered radio and TV stations to prepare
enough prerecorded programming to last for months, in case the studios
are sabotaged or employees are unable to get to work. The ministries of
electricity and water are working on plans to maintain service under
war conditions. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also sent
envoys to reach out to European negotiators recently, in the hopes of
heading off further sanctions or military action.

 

The question may not be whether America is ready to attack, but whether Israel is.

 

The
Jewish state has cause for worry. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
vows regularly to destroy the country; former president Hashemi
Rafsanjani, considered a moderate, warned in 2001 that Tehran could do
away with Israel with just one nuclear bomb. In Tel Aviv last week,
former deputy Defense minister Ephraim Sneh concurred. Sneh, a dovish
member of Israel's Parliament and a retired brigadier general, took a NEWSWEEK reporter to the observation deck atop the 50-story Azrieli Center. "There is Haifa
just over the horizon, Ben-Gurion airport over there, the Defense
Ministry down below," he said, to show how small the country is. "You
can see in this space the majority of our intellectual, economic,
political assets are concentrated. One nuclear bomb is enough to wipe
out Israel."

 

• But
  can the Israelis destroy Iran's nuclear program? Gardiner, the
  war-gamer, says they would not only need to hit a dozen nuclear sites
  and scores of antiaircraft batteries; to prevent a devastating
  retaliation, they would have to knock out possibly hundreds of
  long-range missiles that can carry chemical warheads. Just getting to
  distant Iran will be tricky for Israel's squadrons of American-made
  F-15s and F-16s. Danny Yatom, who headed Mossad in the 1990s, says the
  planes would have to operate over Iran for days or weeks. Giora Eiland,
  Israel's former national-security adviser, now with Tel Aviv's
  Institute of National Security Studies, ticked off the drawbacks:
  "Effectiveness, doubtful. Danger of regional war. Hizbullah will
  immediately attack [from Lebanon], maybe even Syria." Yet Israelis
  across the political spectrum, including Eiland and Yatom, believe the
  risk incurred by inaction is far greater. "The military option is not
  the worst option," Yatom says. "The worst option is a nuclear Iran."

 

The idea of a pre-emptive strike also has popular support. When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the raid on Syria
earlier this month, his approval rating was in the teens. Since then,
it has jumped to nearly 30 percent. And though Olmert may not believe
Israeli warplanes can get to all the targets, he might be willing to
gamble on even a limited success. "No one in their right mind thinks
that there's a clinical way to totally destroy the Iranian nuclear
facilities," says the well-placed Israeli source. "You strike at some
and set the project back. You play for time and hope Ahmadinejad will
eventually fall."

 

Alternatively, Israel might count on Tehran to retaliate against American targets as well, drawing in the superpower.

 

To avoid that outcome, Gardiner believes, Washington must prevent Israel from attacking in the first place. "The United States does not want to turn the possibility of a general war in the Middle East over to the decision making in Israel," he says. Does not want to, certainly—but might not have a choice.