Authors: Elliott Abrams
This discussion left even more ground in doubt. If Olmert really believed Abu Mazen “cannot make serious decisions,” what was he himself doing? Trying to prove to Bush that he had tried, so that he could then go ahead unilaterally? But he could not do that, I thought; there would be no support in Israel for unilateral withdrawals in the West Bank just after Gaza had fallen to Hamas, and especially not when the unilateral decisions were being taken by such a discredited government. Did Olmert not see this – or did he not care? Was he just trying to act, to assert leadership, thereby defying the political obituaries and trying to recover lost ground? Did he think boldness would win him wider public support and the backing of the key newspapers and (mostly left-wing) reporters who were now jumping all over him?
After Olmert left town, the argument about a major presidential speech was joined again. Within it was the battle over the great international conference, which I also opposed. And this argument was happening against the background of our deliberations over the Syrian reactor. Round after round of analyses had been refined, describing all the realistic options we and the Israelis had. The debates were vigorous in our secret meetings in the White House Situation Room; at my level, when the Principals met in Hadley's office; and, ultimately, before the president when we met secretly in the Residence wing of the White House to escape attention. In the Situation Room, individuals expressed their own views and those of their boss – which did not always match. But our role was not to decide what was to be done about the reactor; it was merely to be sure every issue had been thoroughly debated and was covered
in the memos we drafted for Principals and for the president. The Principals – Hadley and
Rice, Defense Secretary Gates, CIA Director Hayden, Director of National Intelligence McConnell, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace, and Vice President Cheney – debated at length and repeatedly. Again, this was an excellent example of how policy should be made; several of us noted that when all the memos were declassified, this ought to be a model, studied by schools of government. Several times Principals trooped over to the president's living room in the Residence to have it out before him, answer his questions, and see what more information he sought. I attended all these meetings as note taker, and the notes are under lock and key at the National Archives. The day I left those notes on the floor under my chair in the president's living room and, discovered when back at the NSC that I no longer had them, remains locked in my mind. These were among the most sensitive notes then existing in the U.S. government, amazing precautions for secrecy had been taken, and I had left them on the floor. Pale and drenched with sweat I ran back to the Residence, where the butler graciously let me back in and accompanied me to the Yellow Oval Room where we had met. There was my portfolio, under the chair, untouched. Well, I thought, if the butler keeps his mouth shut, I may actually not be shot after all.
The facts about al-Kibar were soon clear, and about them there was no debate: It was a nuclear reactor that was almost an exact copy of the Yongbyon reactor in North Korea, and North Koreans had been involved with Syria's development of the site. Given its location and its lack of connection to any electrical grid, it was evident that this reactor was part of a nuclear weapons program rather than created to produce electric power. The options were clear as well: overt or covert, Israel or United States, military or diplomatic. The United States and Israel both had a clear military option
: Bomb the site and destroy the reactor. This was not much of a military challenge, General Pace assured the president. Whether anything short of a military strike could destroy the reactor was another question, and the difficulties with such an option were obvious: Just how would you get the needed explosives to the site except through a military attack? It was soon agreed that a covert option did not exist, and military options were quickly designed to make the reactor disappear; as Dagan had said when he first visited us, the Israelis clearly believed it had to go away. We developed elaborate scenarios for U.S. and Israeli military action addressing these issues: Who would you inform when, what would you announce and what keep secret, and what if anything would you say to the Syrians?
But a diplomatic option
existed as well and we did draw up elaborate scenarios for it as well. We would begin by informing the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) of the facts and making them public in a dramatic session before the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna. We would demand immediate inspections and that Syria halt work on the reactor. If it refused, we would go to the UN Security Council and
demand action. If there was no action, the military option in theory remained open.
However, this diplomatic option seemed faintly ridiculous to me. For one thing, it would never be acceptable to Israel, whose experience with the United Nations was uniformly bad. It would never trust its national security to the UN. For another, it would not work; Syria's friends in the UN, especially Russia, would protect it. At the IAEA, we had plenty of experience with Director General Mohammed el-Baradei, who was an Egyptian. He was redefining the director general's role from that of inspector and cop to that of peacemaker and diplomat; he would seek a deal with Syria rather than concerted action against it. Moreover, taking the reactor issue to the UN and the IAEA meant handing it over to the State Department, and I thought an issue of this importance should be handled right in the White House.
Finally, the argument that there would always remain a military option
as a last resort was misleading at best. Once we made public our knowledge of the site, Syria could put a kindergarten right next to it or take some similar move using human shields. Military action required secrecy, and once we made our announcement, that option would be gone.
The vice president thought we should bomb the site. Given our troubles in Iraq and the growing confrontation with Iran, this would be a useful assertion of power and would help restore our credibility. As he later wrote, “I made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor. Not only would it make the region and the world safer, but it would also demonstrate our seriousness with respect to non-proliferation.…But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”
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My hand did not go up (and as we left the president's living room that day, June 17, I apologized to the vice president for leaving him isolated) because I thought the Israelis should bomb the reactor, restoring their credibility after the Second Lebanon War and the Hamas takeover of Gaza. It seemed to me that Israel would suffer if we bombed it because analysts would point out that Israel had acted against the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 but was now paralyzed. Such an analysis might embolden Iran and Hamas, a development that would be greatly against American interests. Moreover, hostile reactions in the Islamic world against the bombing strike might hurt us at a time when we were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, another argument for letting Israel do the job. (I did not think there would be any such reactions, but this was an argument worth deploying in our internal debate.)
Secretaries Gates and Rice argued strenuously for the diplomatic option. Gates also argued for preventing Israel from bombing the reactor and urged putting the whole relationship between the United States and Israel on the line; his language recalled the “agonizing reappraisal” of relations John Foster Dulles had once threatened for Europe. I thought I understood why Gates did not want the United States to bomb Syria: As a steward of wars in two Islamic countries already, striking a third one seemed terribly unattractive to him. Why he was almost equally insistent that we prevent Israel from bombing it was never comprehensible to me, nor was Rice's similar position. It seemed
clear to me that if we could not prevent Syria from undertaking a nuclear weapons program, our entire position in the Middle East would be weakened, just as it was being weakened by our inability to stop the Iranian program. If there were too many risks and potential complications from striking Syria ourselves, we should not only allow but encourage Israel to do it; a Syrian nuclear program in addition to Iran's should be flatly unacceptable to the United States.
I tried to think my way through Rice's reasoning but came up with only one theory. As with her opposition to announcing a new and increased program of military aid to Israel, she had an underlying strategy: She did not want Israel feeling stronger, but rather she wanted it and especially Olmert feeling more dependent on the United States. That way she would be able to push forward with plans for a conference and for final status talks. I hoped this was not her intention because it seemed to me sure to fail. An Israel that was facing Hamas in Gaza and now
two
hostile nuclear programs, in Iran and just across the border in Syria, would never take the risks she was asking it to take. I thought we had learned that lesson with Sharon as Clinton had learned it with Rabin: Wrap your arms around Israel if you want it to take more risks, so it feels more secure, not less.
The arguments for going to the IAEA and UN seemed so flimsy to me, despite the length and detail of the planning memos and scenarios to which they gave rise, that I did not much worry about them. Who could believe these organizations would act effectively? Who could believe we would not be sitting there five years later entangled in the same diplomatic dance over the Syrian program that we were in when it came to Iran?
But in the end, our near-perfect policy process produced the wrong result. At a final session with the president in the gracious Yellow Oval Room over at the Residence, he came down on Rice's side. We would go to Vienna, to the IAEA; he would call Olmert and tell him what the decision was. I was astounded and realized I had underestimated Rice's influence – even after all this time. The president had gone with Condi in the end. Soon he would tell Olmert.
I tried to figure this one out and could not. Perhaps it was the same worry that Gates had about making another American military strike in the Islamic world. The president had decided, despite some very powerful moral arguments for action, not to bomb Sudan's tiny air force to stop mass murder in Darfur. He did not lose sleep over decisions made in past years, and that decision not to bomb Sudan was one of the very few I had ever heard him doubt. But that would not explain why he bought the IAEA/UN strategy lock, stock, and barrel; instead, he could have said, “Let the Israelis do what they want; let's just tell them we will not do it.” Years later I asked him if he thought he had been wrong; he said no. Yet I could not figure it out then or later. In his memoir, he explains one key consideration: The CIA told him it had “high confidence” that the facility in Syria was a nuclear reactor but “low confidence” that Syria had a nuclear weapons program because it could not locate the other components
of the program. The president thought that “low confidence” judgment would leak, as it surely would have, and the United States would have been attacked for conducting the bombing raid despite the “low confidence” report. That is a reasonable argument, but it explains only why we did not bomb – not why he urged the Israelis not to do so.
On July 10, I gave Hadley a memo explaining my views on where we stood with the Israelis. First, we were on the verge of telling the Israelis that we considered which of us should act against the reactor and decided that neither of us should use force. Moreover, we would pressure them not to do so even if they disagreed. Hamas had just taken over Gaza, Hizballah was back fully rearmed in Lebanon despite all those UN Security Council resolutions we told the Israelis would work, Iran was moving toward a nuclear capability, and now Syria was building a reactor that could only be part of a nuclear weapons program – and we were telling the Israelis not to act. Second was the forthcoming international conference. It looked as if we would soon be telling them we are about to call for an international meeting on the Palestinians that they do not want and that in fact they fear – and we will be doing so in a presidential speech that talks about negotiations for Palestinian statehood “soon” – that word was in the NEA drafts. How could the president deliver that speech three days before delivering his al-Kibar statement (which under some of the scenarios was planned for July 13), announcing what we knew and calling for IAEA action as if there were no relationship between the two speeches and the two issues?
The editorial comment from our friends on the right, I told Hadley, will be that we have taken leave of our senses: Hamas takes over Gaza, Syria and Iran build nukes, and we are handing things over to the UN and then pushing final status talks? I still did not think there was a need for any speech, but if there is to be one, it should be sober about the situation and supportive of Fayyad, I concluded. At that point, he had been prime minister for about a month, and already the PA was changing. It now had a serious, talented, incorruptible executive at the top of the government. This had never been tried before. The least we could do was to back him, firmly and fully, and not spend all our political capital on great conferences. Every time we pushed the Israelis into some concession related to the conference, we were wasting an asset we could have used to help Fayyad in the real world – or, better put, to help Fayyad improve how Palestinians were actually living in the West Bank. If we wanted Palestinians to see that in Gaza there was disaster while in the West Bank there was progress, practical matters and not conferences were the way to do so.
It was, as I recall it, a terrific memo, well written and well reasoned, yet like all the wonderful memos about the Syrian reactor, it had no impact whatsoever. On July 16, the speech that Condi had wanted to be delivered on June 24 was given. “Bush Calls for Middle East Peace Conference,” the headlines read. In his remarks, the president first reviewed the past and then spoke of the next steps: