Israel Asked US For Green Light To Bomb Nuclear Sites In Iran

A view of the nuclear enrichment plant of Natanz in central Iran. Photograph: EPA

From The Guardian:

US president told Israeli prime minister he would not back attack on Iran, senior European diplomatic sources tell Guardian

Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.

The then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used the occasion of Bush's trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the state's founding to raise the issue in a one-on-one meeting on May 14, the sources said. "He took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office", they added.

The sources work for a European head of government who met the Israeli leader some time after the Bush visit. Their talks were so sensitive that no note-takers attended, but the European leader subsequently divulged to his officials the highly sensitive contents of what Olmert had told him of Bush's position.

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My Comment: President Bush has never been comfortable with the notion of attacking and destroying Iran's nuclear facilities. His advisers have clearly convinced him that to insure the destruction of Iran's nuke facilities, a sustained and prolonged air war would have to be initiated. The United States does not have the assets in the region to perform such an operation. The possibility of engaging Iran into a full scale war was also probably not an appealing prospect.