Iran in bombsights?

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As the Bush administration concludes it cannot risk Iranian retaliation against a fragile Iraq under U.S. occupation, Israel is dusting off contingency plans to take out Iran's nuclear installations.

On June 24, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (41), asked the key question: "Are we serious in our efforts to prevent [Iranian] nuclear proliferation, or will we watch the world descend into a maelstrom where weapons-grade nuclear material is plentiful, and unimaginable destructive capability is available to any country or group with a grudge against society?"

It did not require an overwhelming effort of imagination for Israel's national security establishment to conclude the Jewish state would be the first threatened by Iranian nukes.

One scenario now bruited would involve a joint U.S.-Israel precision-guided strike against the Bushehr, Natanz and Arak nuclear projects in Iran. But the Bush administration has concluded a U.S. air attack against Iran would trigger a major Iranian campaign to destabilize Iraq. The two countries share a 1,458-kilometer (906-mile) border stretching from Turkey to the Shatt al Arab terminal on the Gulf. Iran also enjoys wide grass-roots support among Iraq's dominant Shi'ite population.

A U.S. House of Representatives resolution last May 6 authorized "all appropriate means" to end Iranian nuclear weapons development. The Senate is yet to vote on the resolution. But it leaves no doubt it is a green light for offensive military strikes against Iran's three nuclear facilities.

The worldwide reaction against a U.S. attack on Iran's theocratic regime would almost certainly put an end to growing moderate dissent. Rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet) would close ranks against U.S. interests. America's allies would denounce a return to dangerous U.S. unilateralism after President Bush's recent moves back to multilateral diplomacy.

While an "October surprise" of U.S. air strikes to rid the world of Iran's looming nuclear threat might help President Bush Nov. 2, the blowback of unintended consequences would further destabilize the world's most volatile region -- the Middle East.

U.S. air strikes at this juncture would quickly be equated with the CIA-engineered coup that overthrew Iran's socialist leader Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, which many Iranians say led to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 that overthrew the monarchy, forced the late shah into exile, and allowed obscurantist mullahs to rule the country. The mullahs made the excesses of the shah's Savak secret police seem like child's play compared to the tens of thousands executed by the religious extremists and their Revolutionary Guards.

Israeli leaders concluded years ago that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and the world's biggest nuclear proliferator, had sold bomb-making wherewithal to Iran and nothing would reverse this capability short of air strikes, similar to the one Israeli fighter-bombers conducted in 1981 against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. It had been built with French assistance, including 27.5 pounds of 93 percent weapons-grade uranium.

When Israeli intelligence confirmed Iraq's intention of producing weapons at Osirak, Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided military action was the only remedy. Elections then and now were a consideration. Mr. Begin feared his party would lose the next election, and the opposition Labor Party would fail to pre-empt prior to production of the first Iraqi nuclear bomb. Iraq was believed to be two years from its first nuclear weapon.