World must consider war on Iran, Bolton says

Posted Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:00am AEST
Updated Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:21am AEST

Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has said a pre-emptive strike on Iran would be preferable to allowing the Islamist state to attain nuclear weapons, and says Israel has the capability to carry out such a strike.

Mr Bolton, who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the ABC's Lateline program he agrees with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who has said the world should prepare for war with Iran.

"Life is about choices, and if the choice is between a nuclear capable Iran and the pre-emptive use of force - I might say a limited use of force - to break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle, I don't think there's any question that's what you have to look at," he said.

Referring to a BBC report, Mr Bolton says Tehran is mistaken if it believes the US has no capacity to attack Iran because of the deployment in Iraq.

"The Iranian statement obviously reflects no comprehension of what our global disposition of forces is or our capabilities," he said.

"Nobody thinks the use of force is an attractive option. But let's come down to the real question: is the use of force as an alternative preferable to Iran having nuclear weapons? No question about it, in my view."

Mr Bolton says any attack on Iran would be a limited air strike against uranium enrichment facilities, rather than a conflict similar to Iraq.

And he says he does not agree with General John Abizaid, the former US commander in the Middle East, who says he could live with a nuclear-armed Iran and that the West is already living with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

"The notion that living under the threat of a possible use of Iranian nuclear weapons ... may appeal to some people but it's not the kind of life I want to live and I don't think it's the kind of life that people in Israel, for example, or other American friends and allies in the region are happy to live with," he said.

Israeli strike

Mr Bolton says he believes the US would not oppose an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

"We're not entirely sure of the details of the recent Israeli strike against Syria, but I don't hear any loud objections coming out of the administration here in Washington to that and if the Israelis were able to accomplish something similar to what they did against Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor the early 1980s, I think the world would be a safer place," he said.

And he says there is no doubt Israeli has the military capacity to hit and destabilise or destroy Iran's nuclear program.

"In fact it's so clear that on the MIT website there's a paper by two individuals that detail from open sources just exactly how the Israelis could do it," he said.

He says the prospect of military action against Iran is unattractive, but not as unattractive as the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.