By By MICHAEL FJETLAND
There is serious consideration in the Pentagon and White House to launch an attack on Iran before President Bush leaves office – only nine months from now – in an effort to take out Iran's nuclear program before the next president assumes office.
A Washington Post article last week confirms the planning.
What would be the result of a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities? It's happened before. Recently, Israeli fighter aircraft bombed a facility in Syria last September that was thought to be a copy of a North Korean nuclear reactor.
Syria raised no verbal objections. In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed Saddam's Osiraq reactor near Baghdad.
But hitting Iran would have vastly different and extremely negative consequences for both the United States and the Middle East, despite the statements by Mr. Bush and Ms. Clinton, who think the problem will be solved with bombs instead of international pressure and diplomacy.
According to a study by the Oxford Research Group, which accurately predicted the consequences of invading Iraq: "A U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would be the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon as well as the United States and Iran, with the possibility of west Gulf States being involved as well. An attack by Israel, although initially on a smaller scale, would almost certainly escalate to involve the United States, and would also mark the start of a protracted conflict." Oxford thinks the attack, either by Israeli or U.S. fighters, would be primarily an air attack without ground troops (since we don't have another 150,000 troops).