No major gain seen if Israel hits Iran

WASHINGTON – An Israeli bombing attack might set back Iran’s nuclear development program by one to two years, America’s top intelligence official told a Senate committee Thursday, indicating that viable military options are far more limited than Israeli leaders have suggested.

James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, said he does not believe that Israel has decided to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment and other nuclear facilities. Clapper added that the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran’s leaders have not decided to build nuclear weapons but are pursuing technology that might allow them to do so.

Clapper’s appraisal comes as the standoff with Iran has raised concerns in Washington and other capitals that Israel may launch a pre-emptive airstrike, as it has done in the past against nuclear targets in Iraq and Syria. Some U.S. officials have suggested that an attack could be carried out this spring.

In recent months, the West has tightened economic sanctions against Iran’s oil and banking sectors, and unidentified assailants have killed half a dozen nuclear scientists in Iran, suggesting a covert campaign to derail the program. This week, Israel accused Tehran of ordering assassination attempts on Israelis living in Thailand, India and Georgia.

Clapper’s comments largely echoed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who recently downplayed the likelihood of an Israeli knockout blow.

“At best,” Panetta said at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center in December, an Israeli attack “might postpone (Iran) maybe one, possibly two years. It depends on the ability to truly get the targets that they’re after. Frankly, some of those targets are very difficult to get at.”

Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. intelligence agencies cannot calculate with precision how much damage, or delay, an Israeli strike might achieve. “There’s a lot of imponderables,” he said, including the targets chosen, how ordnance is used and how quickly Iran might recover.

Most experts argue that Iranian scientists now possess enough technological know-how so that no air campaign, not even sustained bombing by U.S. forces, could destroy Iran’s ability to someday produce a nuclear weapon should it choose to do so.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told a group of foreign policy experts last month that Israel is not capable of inflicting significant damage on Iran’s nuclear sites. Some are situated at the outer range of Israeli bombers, and others are underground, he said.