Did President Bush Stop Israel From Attacking Iran's Nuclear Facilities?

Bushehr nuclear power plant ... John Bolton says both the US and Israel are capable of disrupting Iran's nuclear program. (File photo) (AFP: AFP PHOTO STR)

U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site
-- New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White 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 off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.

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Update: New York Times: U.S. spurned Israel plan for Iran reactor attack -- Haaretz

My Comment: The New York Times is recycling an old news story from last year. Bottom line .... there are too many Iranian facilities that would need to be destroyed in order to have any appreciable impact on Iran's nuclear program. To be successful, Israel would need the cooperation of the United States to assist in destroying Iran's nuclear program .... but the U.S. has made it very clear that the costs for such an attack would be too high, and would not support it.

This dead and unreliable story is only going to inflamed a bad situation in the Middle East to something that is even worse. Shame on the New York Times (again).