“The nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons,” Mr. Bush said in February 2006. The United States is prepared to use its naval power “to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region,” Mr. Cheney said in 2007 from a Navy carrier in the Persian Gulf.
But with seven months left in this administration, Iran appears ascendant, its political and economic influence growing, its historic foes in Iraq and Afghanistan weakened, and its nuclear program continuing to move forward. So the question now is: Are Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney resigned to leaving Iran more powerful than they found it when they came to office?
The evidence is mixed. For all the talk to the contrary, Bush administration officials appear to have concluded that diplomatic efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions will not yield any breakthroughs this year.
Despite a recent flurry of efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran, top officials on both sides of the Atlantic, in recent interviews, had no expectations that Iran’s rulers would make any concessions, particularly on the critical issue of suspending the enrichment of uranium, while Mr. Bush remained in office.
On the military front, the picture is fuzzier. Two senior administration officials said that barring a move by Israel, which one characterized as “the wild card” on the Iranian issue, this administration would not be likely to pursue military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.
Mr. Bush himself seemed to signal as much at the start of his European tour last week in Slovenia, when he said of Iran that he expected to “leave behind a multilateral framework to work on this issue,” a statement that seemed to suggest that military action against Iran may no longer be on the table.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/wa...html?th&emc=th
Bush Unlikely To Strike Iran
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