Cheney eyed Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear reactor - mag

BY BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, September 24th 2007, 4:00 AM

 

Even as Iran's president insists he's not looking for a fight with the United States, a new report claims Vice President Cheney had mulled provoking one with an Israeli missile strike.

Cheney allegedly considered asking Israel to do the dirty work of attacking a central Iranian nuclear facility in hopes of inciting a war, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday.

The revelation of the White House's alleged hawkish behind-the-scenes thinking comes just days after Iran's deputy air force commander warned his country was prepared to retaliate if Israel "makes a silly mistake."

Still, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the annihilation of Israel, publicly rejects the notion his country is headed for a faceoff with the United States.

"It's wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing," Ahmadinejad said in an interview aired last night on CBS' "60 Minutes."

When asked if he was hellbent on getting a nuke, Ahmadinejad answered with a "firm no."

"You have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb," said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York yesterday to speak at the UN General Assembly. "We don't need that. What need do we have for a bomb?"

U.S. officials have suggested Iran's main goal is to develop killer nukes while hiding behind a bogus claim that its uranium-enrichment program is for civilian energy purposes only.

The White House has also accused Iran of supplying Iraqi militants with training and weapons to fight American troops.

Newsweek reported that Cheney's former Middle East adviser David Wurmser told a small group several months ago that the vice president had brainstormed ways to quash Iran's nuclear hopes by luring it into war.

"Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz - and, perhaps, other sites - in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out," Wurmser, who stepped down from his advisory post last month, reportedly told the group.

Such a strike would give the White House an excuse to launch attacks against military and other nuclear targets in Iran.

Citing two unidentified sources, Newsweek claimed it has corroborated Wurmser's remarks.

Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser of the neoconservative Hudson Institute think tank, told the magazine its claims were untrue.

A spokeswoman for Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, insisted the vice president "supports the President's policy on Iran," which calls for sanctions to pressure the country into giving up its ambitions for nuclear weapons.

"He makes it very clear that this is a situation that we're trying to handle diplomatically, and he supports the President's policy," McBride told the Daily News.

The UN Security Council members met on Friday for "serious and constructive" talks aimed at forcing Iran to halt its uranium-enrichment activities.

Ahmadinejad countered that "the time of the bomb is passed."

"Our plan and program is very transparent," he said in the "60Minutes" interview. "In political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use."

However, he danced around the question of whether his country is arming Iraqi militants.

"We don't need to do that," he said. "It's very clear, the situation. The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."