Excerpts from an editorial in The Boston Globe on Tuesday:
President Bush made the right decision last year when he refused Israel’s requests for bunker-busting bombs, aerial refueling equipment and permission to fly through US-controlled Iraqi airspace to reach nuclear sites in Iran. Had Bush enabled Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, he could have exposed US troops in Iraq to Iranian retaliation and risked American involvement in yet another war.
Bush, however, bears responsibility for allowing a situation to develop in which the US, Israel, Iran’s Arab neighbors and Turkey now confront the likelihood that Iran will soon have enough enriched uranium to build a weapon.
Bush obtusely refused to enter into a dialogue with the Iranian regime in 2003 — when Iran’s rulers offered to put everything on the table including their nuclear program. So, Iran has had six years to master the technical challenges of enriching uranium.
For most of those years, the Bush policy was to rely on spotty economic sanctions rather than direct diplomatic engagement with Iran. Those sanctions were not only ineffective; they also seemed to spur Iran to plunge ahead with its enrichment activities.
It was the failure of Bush’s policy that led Israel and some US officials to contemplate the bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. Such an act of desperation could have caused the Iraqi government to demand the immediate withdrawal of all US forces. And the most it could have accomplished would have been to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a few short years. Fortunately, President-elect Barack Obama says his approach to Iran will include “a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk, but also a clarity about what our bottom lines are.” This approach may or may not work. But it is a road that should have been taken years ago.
