rejecting a direct military attack at that time and setting off on the initiative that led to the Stuxnet attack on Natanz, The New York Times reported last Friday.
The Times said it interviewed four officials who were involved in the debate over what to do about Iran’s nuclear program.
They said Bush asked the CIA to outline options for blowing up or disabling the centrifuge center at Natanz. All four said that when the plans arrived at the White House, all the options were swiftly rejected “for fear that any kind of obvious attack on the facilities could touch off another conflict in the Middle East just as a new American president was assuming office,” the Times wrote.
That led to a detailed exploration of the possibility of a cyber attack.
The Times said a US intelligence assessment has concluded that the Stuxnet attack delayed Iran’s nuclear weapons program by one to two years. However, many private analysts think the delay was much shorter.
Interviewed Sunday on Fox News, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he never proposed a military attack on Iran. He said he felt it was important that a military attack be held in reserve as an option, but that he never thought it was time to exercise that option while he was in office.
Cheney did say that he proposed a military attack on a Syrian reactor. He said he proposed that in a meeting of the National Security Council and that Bush asked if anyone else agree with Cheney. No one did. Months later, Israel attacked and leveled the reactor in an air raid.
Cheney said Defense Secretary Robert Gates later went to Saudi Arabia and told King Abdullah that the president would be impeached if he bombed Iran. That remark had the effect of taking the military option off the table “and I thought that was a mistake.”