PRESIDENT George Bush rejected a secret request by Israel last year for specialised bunker-busting bombs the country wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex, and told the Israelis he had authorised new covert action intended to sabotage Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons.
According to inside sources, White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was trying to goad the Whi
te House into more decisive action before Mr Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country's only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed down, at least temporarily.
This account of the expanded American covert programme and the Bush administration's efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in a series of off-the-record interviews over the past 15 months with current and former US officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials.
The interviews also suggest that, while Mr Bush was extensively briefed on options for an overt US attack on Iran's facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, contrary to what some critics have suggested.
Late last year, international inspectors estimated that Iran had 3,800 centrifuges spinning, but American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000, enough to produce about one weapon's worth of uranium every eight months or so.
Israel's plan for an attack on Iran grew out of anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier.
The report's conclusion also stunned Mr Bush's national security team and the president himself, who was deeply suspicious of the conclusion, according to officials.
Early in 2008, the Israeli government signalled it might be preparing to take matters into its own hands. In a series of meetings, Israel asked Washington for weaponry capable of blowing up a deep underground plant, refuelling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach Iran and return to Israel and for the right to fly over Iraq.
One of his top aides said that Mr Bush deflected the first two requests, but "we said, 'Hell no' to the overflights". At the White House and the Pentagon, there was concern that a political uproar in Iraq about the use of its US-controlled airspace could result in the expulsion of American forces from the country.
Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea. Analysis by Pentagon officials concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equalled the distance between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. "This really spooked a lot of people," one White House official said.
The Bush administration identified two specific objectives: to slow progress at Natanz and other known and suspected nuclear facilities, and to keep the pressure on a little-known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a scientist described in classified portions of US intelligence reports as deeply involved in an effort to design a nuclear warhead for Iran.
Several years ago, foreign intelligence services tinkered with power units that Iran bought in Turkey to drive its centrifuges, the equipment used to enrich uranium for use in power stations or, with additional enrichment, nuclear weapons. A number of centrifuges blew up, prompting public declarations of sabotage by Iranian officials.
ANALYSIS
THE covert American programme, started in early 2008, aims to penetrate Iran's nuclear supply chain abroad, and undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. This could delay the production of the weapons-grade fuel and designs Iran needs to create a workable nuclear weapon.
One senior intelligence official argued that the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped.
Others point out the Israelis would not have been dissuaded from conducting an attack if they believed that the American effort would not prove effective.
The full article contains 709 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
