Pentagon eyes Iran, but takes tack of diplomacy

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

The Pentagon is updating its options for attacking Iran to set back Tehran's nuclear program, but there is no immediacy to the planning as the Bush administration stays committed to a diplomatic track for now.

Administration officials and Pentagon advisers say they do not think Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, which would lead an attack, has presented formal military options to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"They don't want anything like that to leak. It would upset Europe," a Pentagon adviser said. "The generals in the building won't talk about Iran. The message is diplomacy."

A second adviser who has frequent access to the Pentagon said that a senior policy-maker remarked in private, "I guess we're going to have to learn to live with a nuclear Iran."

This source said the remark came out of frustrations that the Bush administration would receive little or no public support from any other nation for military air strikes on Iran.

"There is not much they can do. They are tied up in Iraq," the adviser said. "I don't think the president wants to stick his neck out again."

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Iran except to say, "We are on a diplomatic track."

Mr. Rumsfeld, at a press conference Tuesday, was asked whether the CIA's faulty intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction spurred doubts on how much the U.S. knows about Iran's nuclear program.

"You're dealing with a closed society there. And so, clearly, one has to be very careful," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Senior administration officials declined to discuss military options for Iran with The Washington Times. But others confirmed that more than routine war planning is under way at the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and Central Command in Tampa, Fla. They said President Bush is far from deciding on military action even if diplomacy fails in the next year or two.