U.S. President George W. Bush turned down an Israeli request last year to supply bunker-buster bombs for an attack on a key Iranian site housing potential nuclear-weapon development activities, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 9).
(Jan. 12) -
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly asked for U.S. bunker-buster bombs and permission for military aircraft to fly through Iraqi airspace (Gali Tibbon/Getty Images).
The United States also denied appeals to let Israeli warplanes fly over U.S.-occupied Iraq to launch a strike on Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment complex, high-level U.S. and international officials said. The enrichment process can produce a key nuclear-weapon ingredient, but Iran has insisted it only wants to manufacture nuclear power plant fuel.
Bush officials expressed measured opposition to the bunker-buster proposal, but "we said 'hell no' to the overflights," a senior White House aide said. White House and Defense Department officials expressed strong concern that permitting Israel to use Iraqi airspace could prompt Baghdad to ban U.S. military personnel from the country.
Leaders in Washington also worried that such a move by Israel would have minimal effect and might lead Tehran to become even more secretive about its nuclear operations. There was also talk that an attack might provoke conflict across the Middle East, ultimately drawing in U.S. military personnel deployed in Iraq.
The refusals led Israel to set aside strike plans for the immediate future. The Bush administration remained unsure whether Tel Aviv had actually intended to press ahead with an attack or if it was only pushing Washington to take more aggressive action against Iran.
The requests led the United States to give Israel details on clandestine efforts Bush authorized early last year to subvert Iran's global nuclear supply network as well as critical electrical components, computer systems and other infrastructure that its nuclear program needs.
“It was not until the last year that they got really imaginative about what one could do to screw up the system,” one official said. He added, though, that that "none of these are game changers."
In one effort, the United States recruited a Switzerland-based engineer affiliated with a global nuclear smuggling ring to include defective equipment among nuclear components purchased by Iran.
The covert action caused several Iranian enrichment centrifuges to explode. U.S. officials believe that Iran is currently operating between 4,000 and 5,000 of the machines, up from an estimate of 3,800 provided in late 2008 by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The clandestine program also aims to subvert the work of Mohsen Fakrizadeh, an Iranian professor named in a 2007 U.S. intelligence assessment as the leader of alleged Iranian efforts to modify a missile to accommodate a nuclear warhead.
Several U.S. officials expressed skepticism about the covert activities, though; one source brushed them off as "science experiments," while a high-level intelligence official said an Iranian nuclear-weapon production capability was nearly inevitable (David Sanger, New York Times I, Jan. 11).
Meanwhile, Iran has used front companies over the last two years to import U.S. equipment prohibited under export bans, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The imports, which include circuitry, computer programs and Global Positioning System equipment, were stalled in 2006 after Washington banned trade with several Iranian front firms in the United Arab Emirates. However, Iran soon created new companies that it based deeper inside Asia, according to officials.
"Without doubt, it is still going on," said a former U.S. intelligence official involved in work on Iranian trade.
"The schemes are so elaborate, even the most scrupulous [U.S.] companies can be deceived," added David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security. The front firms often purport to be benign entities such as private research groups, according to Justice Department documents.
Contraband U.S. equipment has contributed to improvised explosive devices used in Iraq, but it potentially could also reach into the nuclear sphere, Albright said. "That's where the stakes are the highest. ... If Iran is successful, it ends up not with an IED but with a nuclear weapon," he said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Jan. 11).
Elsewhere, U.S. authorities and the state of New York said Friday that a major British bank helped conceal Iranian funds moving through the U.S. financial system over the last several years, the Times reported.
Lloyds TSB Group "stripped" details from the transactions that would have linked them to Iranian entities, said Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. The bank has agreed to pay a $350 million settlement over the allegations.
Morgenthau's office was scrutinizing nine additional financial institutions that might have engaged in similar activity, hiding amounts that could total billions of dollars.
The district attorney said that one of the hidden deals enabled Iran to buy a large supply of tungsten, a material used to produce long-range missiles, and additional money might have contributed to Iranian nuclear activities.
Through a deal with the British bank, Morgenthau's office would only prosecute bank workers who were likely aware of funds being channel to terrorist entities or "proliferators of weapons of mass destruction" (Bajaj/Eligon, New York Times II, Jan. 10).
In Washington, President-elect Barack Obama reaffirmed his intention to address the Iranian nuclear dispute through diplomatic engagement.
“We are going to have to take a new approach,” Obama told ABC News. “My belief is that engagement is the place to start.”
He added that he intends to place “a new emphasis on respect and a new willingness on being willing to talk” to Tehran, while stressing “that we also have certain expectations" (Brian Knowlton, New York Times III, Jan. 12).
Iran today cautioned Obama against repeating what it considered false U.S. statements about its intentions, Reuters reported.
"We have to see whether or not this change in orientation (by Obama) is in practice and whether it will bring about fundamental change in the behavior and stance of America in relation to Iran," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters, adding that the next president should not "repeat past statements and instances whose falsehood has been demonstrated by Iran."
"This is a very important point and undoubtedly Iran will undertake an appropriate and timely measure proportionate with the new U.S. behavior and action," he said (Jaseb/Kalantari, Reuters, Jan. 12).