Larvatus Prodeo

It’s hard to think of genuine foreign policy successes of the Bush administration – apparently the right-wing blogosphere in the US is touting “improved relations with Australia” as an achievement… The deals with Libya and North Korea were perhaps success, though the deal with North Korea remains horribly shaky. It seems, however, that the Bush White House did have the sense to not pour petrol on one hotspot. According to today’s New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

Continue reading ‘White House restrained Israel from attacking Iran’