Iran issue unlikely to be settled during Bush's tenure: Report

New York, Jun 21 (PTI) - U.S. officials appear to have
concluded that diplomatic efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear
ambitions will not yield any breakthrough this year while the
military strikes are unlikely to be pursued against the Gulf
state's atomic targets, a media report said on Saturday.
That would effectively leave the issue to be dealt with
the next U.S. administration as the term of President George
W. Bush expires in January 2009.
On the military front, two senior administration officials
told the New York Times that barring a move by Israel, which
one characterised as "the wild card" on the Iranian issue,
this administration would not be likely to pursue military
strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.
Despite a recent flurry of efforts to tighten sanctions on
Iran, the Times said top officials on both sides of the
Atlantic, in recent interviews, had no expectations that
Iran's rulers would make any concessions, particularly on the
critical issue of suspending the enrichment of uranium, while
Bush remained in office.
With seven months left in this administration, Iran
appears ascendant, its political and economic influence
growing, its historic foes in Iraq and Afghanistan weakened,
and its nuclear programme continuing to move forward, the
Times noted.
Bush, the paper said, himself seemed to signal as much at
the start of his European tour last week in Slovenia, when he
said of Iran that he expected to "leave behind a multilateral
framework to work on this issue," a statement that seemed to
suggest that military action against Iran may no longer be on
the table.
But there remains the possibility that Israel could force
the hand of the Bush administration, foreign policy analysts
and diplomats were quoted as saying.
Israel carried out a three-day military exercise this
month that U.S. intelligence officials say appeared to have
been a rehearsal for a potential strike on nuclear targets in
Iran.
Israeli officials, the Times said, have tried to put
pressure in recent months on the Bush administration to
consider such a strike if Iran did not abandon its nuclear
programme, and the exercise may have been intended as a new
signal that Israel might be willing to act alone if the U.S.
did not.
"Israel prefers this threat be dealt with peacefully, by
dramatically increasing sanctions and maintaining a credible
resolve to keep all options on the table," Sallai Meridor, the
Israeli ambassador to the United States, told the paper. "But
time is running out."
Iran, he said, "should understand that under no
circumstances will the world allow it to obtain a nuclear
capability."
But Mohamad ElBaradei, director of International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), told Al Arabiya television that he would
quit his job in the event of a military strike on Iran.
Israeli officials, the Times said, have expressed fear to
the Bush administration that a new administration would take
months, if not years, to decide on its approach to Iran. The
consensus in the United States and Europe is that Iran is
still at least two years away from a nuclear weapon.
Israeli officials say they believe the threshold is closer
to a year, the report said.
An Israeli military strike on Iran, the Times said, would
almost certainly require American help. For one thing,
Pentagon officials say, it would take hundreds of sorties to
take out a big swath of Iranian air defence.
For another, the United States controls much of the
airspace around Iran. Beyond that, Iran would hold the United
States accountable for an Israeli strike, and could retaliate
against American troops in Iraq.