There are signs Washington has stopped seriously considering an attack on Iran. One of American Vice President Dick Cheney’s aides declared that 2007 was to be “Iran Year.” But that was before the financial crisis, before President Bush became a lame-duck President, and the surge in Iraq seemed to have somehow energized public opinion. That was when the risk for a serious clash with Iran was at its height. But no war horns were sounded.
In 2008, more than ever, a plethora of military experts, Middle East pundits and global think tanks stressed that bombing Iran stood little chance of preventing its nuclear drive. First, Iranian nuclear facilities are spread across their large country and some of them are buried deep underground. Second, even if it were possible to destroy all of them, Iranian scientists’ technological know-how is not susceptible to being destroyed by bombs. Iran’s sense of insecurity can hardly be addressed by bombing it. Any attack will only further Iranians’ consensus that a nuclear deterrent is indispensable.
Many experts also rightly warned that the security, political and economic reverberations of such an attack are too frightening to contemplate. It would destabilize the region, strengthen the Iranian regime and disrupt supplies of energy. It would expose Western targets to assaults by empowered proxies such as Hezbollah. Most importantly, it would deprive the West of its best potential ally to address the region’s issues.

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