A satellite view of Iran's uranium research and enrichment facility at Natanz, 400 kilometres south of Tehran. Western intelligence reports estimate that several hundred nuclear centrifuges are in use at the lab, with plans to install more than 3,000 others. The facility is thought to be at least 25 metres underground with heavily reinforced concrete and steel barriers to prevent damage from aerial bombardment. (Ikonos satellite image/GeoEye/Associated Press)

With just a third of Americans approving of his handling of the Iraq war, could President George W. Bush be planning another military campaign, this time aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear facilities?

Britain's former ambassador in Tehran, Sir Richard Dalton, thinks so. He's added his voice to a coalition of charities, think tanks and trade unions in Britain calling for the U.S. to give diplomacy a chance to resolve nuclear differences with Iran.

So do three retired U.S. military commanders who sent a letter to the editor of the London Sunday Times on Feb. 4 that "strongly cautions" against an attack.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says UN sanctions will never stop his country from realizing its "peaceful" nuclear ambitions. Ahmadinejad was elected in a controversial election in 2005, in which his reformist opponents were largely disqualified by Iran's powerful clergy. (Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)

Bombing Iran, the former officers write, would have "disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces in Iraq, and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions."

In the pages of the U.S. press, a parade of foreign policy analysts and commentators are warning that plans to attack Iran are in an advanced stage. The March edition of the magazine Vanity Fair has a lead article titled "From the same people who brought you Iraq." It says Vice-President Dick Cheney and prominent neo-conservatives in Washington are demonizing Iran to justify military strikes, just as Iraq was accused of ties to al-Qaeda and having weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, quoting sources in the military and intelligence agencies, has been reporting for more than two years that the U.S. government is planning to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. American special forces units are already operating inside Iran, Hersh reported a year ago in the New Yorker, and Air Force bombers have been flying simulated missions over Iranian territory. Hersh is the writer who broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story.

Not in the crosshairs: administration

Bush administration officials, and their overseas allies, categorically deny that Tehran is in the crosshairs. On Feb. 2, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the United States has no intention of attacking Iran. Less than a week later, Prime Minister Tony Blair was telling a British parliamentary committee the same thing.

"Nobody is talking about military intervention in respect of Iran," Blair said, "but people are increasingly alarmed and concerned at [Tehran's] strategy."

Blair was referring to Iran's continuing defiance of European diplomatic efforts to convince Tehran to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium at a nuclear laboratory at Natanz, about 400 kilometres south of the capital. Iran says its nuclear program is for generating power, not making bombs, but the process used at Natanz to produce reactor fuel can also make weapons-grade uranium.

The Israelis are particularly worried about Iran's nuclear intentions. The U.S. shares Israel's concern and has said that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. Just how far the Americans are prepared to go to prevent that is uncertain.

They're certainly upping the ante. Two aircraft carrier battle groups are deployed in the Persian Gulf, and mine-sweepers are on the way. That's seen as indication that Washington is worried about Iran possibly mining the Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.

Right of self-defence: U.S.

Iraq is a complicating factor. In his state of the union address last month, Bush said Tehran was helping Shia militias in Iraq attack U.S. and British troops. Though the evidence presented so far is sketchy, military commanders and diplomats echo the president's words and warn that America has the unqualified right to defend itself from attacks by a foreign power. American forces have arrested five Iranians in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, accusing them of spying, though Iran says they were consular officials. More action against Iranians operating inside Iraq can be expected, officials say.

An Iranian technician walks through the uranium conversion facility at Natanz where Iran says it's enriching radioactive fuel for a peaceful energy program. The U.S. and others say the Iranians are producing weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Iran has been resisting international inspections of the facility, and defied UN Security Council resolutions calling for it to suspend enrichment. (Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)

Taken together, all of these factors probably explain higher levels of concern about U.S. intentions towards Iran, rather than any new inside information. Those who analyze America's Iran policies largely agree that military strikes can't be ruled out, but they're not likely anytime soon.

"The United States is kind of an aircraft carrier," says Reuel Marc Gerecht of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, "it takes months and months to get it going, and nothing, but nothing happens in secret."

Gary Sick agrees. He's a former U.S. National Security Council member who teaches international relations at Columbia University in New York. There is no consensus within the Bush administration, he says, on what to do about Iran.

"There's a huge debate," Sick says, "some believe in diplomacy, even talking directly to Tehran. Those who don't want to talk either want to create trouble right now, whether an attack or something more clandestine. And there's a third group that's in favour of building alliances with Israel and the conservative Arab states to force Tehran to be more pliable."

Ambiguity and defiance

Last year, as the United Nations Security Council struggled with its own set of options on the Iranian nuclear issue, U.S. military action seemed a distant prospect at best. The Americans offered to join multi-country talks involving Iran and the Europeans, but only if Tehran suspended uranium enrichment immediately. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, offered Iran co-operation on nuclear technologies and fuel supplies if it agreed to suspend enrichment. At the same time, the Security Council passed a resolution threatening to impose sanctions.

Iran has responded ambiguously to the EU offer and has been openly defiant of UN sanctions, which are opposed by Russia and China. At same time, there have been frequent indications that uranium enrichment at Natanz is intensifying. Best estimates put Tehran two to three years away from having enough material for a bomb, but even supporters of diplomacy say time may be running out.

"Last year we might have been able to convince them [Iran] to stop enrichment in exchange for security guarantees and some nuclear fuel from Russia," says Flynt Leverett, an Iran specialist at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C., "but now they're way ahead of us and any diplomatic solution might have to include allowing them to enrich. That's way out of line with current [American and EU] thinking."

So the question remains: Is a U.S. military strike on Iran imminent? Probably not. But it can't be ruled out sometime in the future. Nor can Israeli fears of a nuclear-capable Iran be ignored. Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 when it seemed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of acquiring an atomic arsenal.

It's over to the diplomats, for now.

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