| Posted By Emma Sabry June 15, 2008 Recent media reports suggest that Iran may come under attack because of its nuclear program. According to an article on the BBC, fears of an Israeli or American military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites have cooled last December after the release of a report by American intelligence agencies which said that Iran had stopped trying building nuclear weapons in late 2003. Many analysts all over the world believe that a military strike against the facilities that Iran has built for what it insists is a purely peaceful nuclear program would have disastrous consequences in a region already suffering from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. An attack on Iran would also drive up the already high oil prices. But negotiations with Tehran - and sanctions against it - have not stopped its uranium enrichment activities, which its critics claim are aimed at making an atomic bomb. That’s why talks of war against Iran have started again. - “Dangerous military conflict”
Israel, believed to be the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power, has never believed that Iran has stopped trying to build nuclear weapons. In his speech to AIPAC last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert used some of his toughest public language about Iran. "The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating," he said. And last week, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz told Yediot Aharonot: “If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it". "Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme," said Mofaz, stressing that such an operation could only be conducted with U.S. support. Some analysts believe that President George W Bush and Prime Minister Olmert want to remove what they believe is a present danger before they face their own political oblivion. Mr Bush is finishing his presidential term still dogged by the disaster of Iraq - and Mr Olmert is facing resignation calls over a corruption scandal. Talks of an attack against Iran have alarmed the Germany’s former Foreign Minister, Joshka Fischer. Fishcher wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz this week that Messrs Bush and Olmert seem to have been planning to end the Iranian nuclear program "by military, rather than by diplomatic means". Mr Fischer also expressed fears that the Middle East is drifting towards a new great confrontation in 2008. "Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is high time for serious negotiations to begin," he said. According to the BBC, one scenario being discussed by Israeli analysts is that there could be an American or Israeli attack against Iran after the U.S. presidential election in November and before the new president is inaugurated in January, with the tacit consent of the incoming president. That might be easier if the new American president is Republican nominee John McCain, who once sang “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beachboys' classic Barbara Ann. During his presidential campaign, McCain also said that the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be to allow it to have nuclear weapons. Even Barack Obama, who favours negotiations with Iran, had used strong language about Iran’s nuclear program. In one of his first acts after he secured the Democratic nomination for president, Obama told AIPAC, the U.S.’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby, that he would do everything in his power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. He repeated the word "everything" several times. Raising more fears of a military strike against Iran are arguments by some pro-Israeli U.S. analysts that Iran's response to an attack would not be as harsh as many have predicted, even though Iran had threatened several times that it would retaliate by hitting U.S. targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, such speculations do not mean that war against Iran is imminent. They only mean that an attack is being discussed. | 
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