WarSclerotic

The drumbeat of an approaching war with Iran reverberates through U.S. diplomatic documents leaked by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

Eighteen months ago, in May 2009, Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak, met with a U.S. congressional delegation and insisted the world had just six to 18 months “in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable.”

After that, Mr. Barak said, “any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage.”

With that deadline fast approaching, time indeed is running out. And, for the first time, the WikiLeaks’ trove of stolen U.S. diplomatic cables shows, in unprecedented ways, the growing pressures being put on Washington to find a military solution to Iran’s growing nuclear threat.

Before he rushed to New York for emergency medical treatment last week, Saudi King Abdullah repeatedly pressed the United States to attack Iran, at one point urging U.S. officials to “cut off the head of the snake,” several diplomatic memos say.

As early as 2006, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the defence chief of the United Arab Emirates, was urging Washington to take action against Iran “this year or next.”

In November last year, King Hamad of Bahrain told U.S. General David Petraeus Iran’s nuclear program “must be stopped . . . by whatever means necessary.”

According to a February 2010 diplomatic cable, Kuwait’s Interior Minister, Jaber Kahled al-Sabah, believes “the U.S. will not be able to avoid a military conflict with Iran, if it is serious in its intention to prevent Tehran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability.”

Israel has long threatened military attacks on Iran to derail its nuclear arms program. But it is only now, because of the diplomatic leaks, that Arab states in the Middle East are publicly on the record as having reached the same conclusion.

The implications of this unusual and unintended common cause could see Arab states simply look the other way, if Israel finally decides to launch a preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It has been rumoured for months that Saudi Arabia and Jordan have already cut secret deals with Israel to allow Israeli long-range bombers quick and easy access to southern Iran by flying through their air space.

Israeli pilots are also said to have conducted bombing-run drills in the Negev desert against a scale model of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf coast.

And two years ago, Israel staged a full dress rehearsal for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities by flying more than 100 F-16 and F-15 fighters and refueling tanker planes on an exercise over Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.

But, then, as now, U.S. officials have cautioned restraint and pleaded for time to let international sanctions drive Iran to surrender its weapon’s program voluntarily.

U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has repeatedly tried to defuse the talk of war in the Persian Gulf by saying any strike against Iran will have unpredictable and dangerous consequences.

Experts predict the Middle East would become a fireball.

Iran could launch retaliatory missile strikes on Israel; move to halt international oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz; bombard Saudi oil refineries that produce 25% of the world’s energy and incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to unleashing terrorist violence around the world.

Ideally, the Arab states want the United States, not Israel, to launch any attack on Iran. Washington is far more powerful and likely to inflict far more damage on Iran’s nuclear program.

But the WikiLeaks documents show U.S. officials believe Israel is capable of staging a raid single-handed.

In February this year, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates met with French Defence Minister Herve Morin, who asked if Israel could strike Iran without U.S. support.

Mr. Gates replied “that he didn’t know if they would be successful, but that Israel could carry out the operation,” a memo of the meeting says.

He also added that any strike “would only delay Iranian plans by one to three years, while unifying the Iranian people to be forever embittered against the attacker.”

About the same time, when he visited Rome and met with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, Mr. Gates issued a warning: “Without progress in the next few months, we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, war, prompted by an Israeli strike, or both,” he told the Italian.

The result could be earthshaking, he said, predicting “a different world” in four to five years.