http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/world/middleeast/obama-says-military-option-on-iran-not-a-bluff.html

March 2, 2012

Obama Says Iran Strike Is an Option, but Warns Israel

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON -- President Obama, speaking days before a crucial meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, stiffened his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even as he warned Israel of the negative consequences of a pre-emptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Seeking to reassure a close American ally that contends it has reached a moment of reckoning with Iran, Mr. Obama rejected suggestions that the United States was willing to try to contain a nuclear-armed Iran. He declared explicitly that his administration would use force -- a "military component," as he put it -- only as a last resort to prevent Tehran from acquiring a bomb.

The president also said he would try to convince Mr. Netanyahu, whom he is meeting here on Monday at a time of heightened fears of a conflict, that a premature military strike could help Iran by allowing it to portray itself as a victim of aggression. And he said such military action would only delay, not prevent, Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama's remarks, in a 45-minute interview with The Atlantic magazine this week, were intended to reinforce a sense of solidarity between the United States and Israel without ceding ground on differences between their two governments over the timetable or triggers for potential military action.

"I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff," Mr. Obama said in the interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent with The Atlantic. "I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are.

"But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say," the president said.

With nearly 14,000 people massing in Washington this weekend for a meeting of the pro-Israel lobbying group Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Mr. Obama was also trying to shape the narrative, anticipating days of speeches urging him to harden his policy. Mr. Obama is to speak to the group on Sunday.

On a critical timing issue -- whether any attack against Iran should come at the point it acquired the capability to develop a nuclear weapon rather than later, if it manufactured one -- Mr. Obama was conspicuously silent. The Israeli government argues that Iran cannot be allowed to achieve nuclear capability, saying there would not be enough time to prevent it from producing a bomb once its leaders decided to do so.

The White House rejects that view, although on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton slightly muddied the waters by testifying in the House that the goal of the United States was to prevent Iran from having "nuclear weapons capability." Administration officials said she misspoke.

Mr. Obama's remarks built on his vow in the State of the Union address that the United States would "take no options off the table" in preventing Iran, which says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, from acquiring a weapon. But he was more concrete in saying that those options include a "military component," although after other steps, including diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions.

Administration officials have signaled that they are not open to a "containment" strategy toward Iran, but Mr. Obama himself had not clearly stated that view. Such a strategy, he said in the interview, would run "completely contrary" to his nuclear nonproliferation policies, and raise a host of dangers the United States could do little to control.

The president spoke at length about how Iran's acquisition of a weapon would set off an arms race in the Middle East, offering a robust case for why the West could not contain Iran the way it did the Soviet Union during the cold war.

There is a "profound" danger that an Iranian nuclear weapon could end up in the hands of a terrorist organization, Mr. Obama said. Other nations in the region would feel compelled to push for nuclear weapons to shield themselves from a nuclear Iran.

While the president noted that Israel understandably felt more vulnerable because of its geography and history, he said, "This is something in the national security interests of the United States and in the interests of the world community."

Israeli officials have said that they may feel compelled to strike Iran before its nuclear program becomes impregnable by sheltering a uranium-enrichment facility in a mountainside, under hundreds of feet of granite.

Mr. Netanyahu, who was in Canada on Friday before arriving in the United States, warned that the West should not fall into the "trap" of further negotiations with Iran. He demanded that Iran dismantle the enrichment facility, near the holy city of Qum.

The president, who made outreach to Iran a hallmark of his first year in office, said he still believed Iran's leaders could make a rational calculation, under the pressure of harsh sanctions, to give up their nuclear ambitions.

"They recognize that they are in a bad, bad place right now," Mr. Obama said in the interview. "It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have, and that may turn out to be the best decision for Israel's security."

Pointing to Libya and South Africa, Mr. Obama noted that countries tended to relinquish nuclear weapons on their own, rather than as a consequence of military action. The United States, he said, is seeking a permanent, not a temporary, solution.

An American strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would be larger, less risky and far more likely to do significant, lasting damage than any strike by Israel -- though it might not be enough to completely destroy the vital underground enrichment facilities, according to military analysts.

The United States could open a broad, sustained attack with long-range B2 stealth bombers, F-18 fighter jets based on aircraft carriers and hundreds of cruise missiles launched from submarines in the Arabian Sea. The United States has plentiful refueling capability, and drone aircraft to assess damage to help direct further strikes.

But Mr. Obama said that any military action could deflect attention from other factors in the region that were eroding Iran's influence.

"At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally is on the ropes," the president said, referring to Syria, "do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim, and deflect attention from what has to be the core issue, which is their potential pursuit of nuclear weapons?"

Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.