WASHINGTON - Although neither President Bush nor Sen. John Kerry says much about it, whoever wins the White House Nov. 2 will likely face a hostile Iran moving quickly toward developing nuclear weapons as American troops continue to battle a stubborn insurgency in neighboring Iraq.
Bush and Kerry insist that Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. But each would have to work with a limited range of diplomatic tools and the knowledge that military strikes would merely delay Iran's becoming a nuclear weapons state, analysts say.
Tehran is widely suspected of being capable of producing a nuclear weapon in a few years, posing a threat to Israel, Iraq and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, and giving Iran powerful new leverage to achieve regional dominance. The most pessimistic U.S. assessment is that Iran could have the know-how for a bomb by next summer.
"Iranian acquisition is nearing an inevitability," said a Bush administration official familiar with recent intelligence reports who declined to be named.
Iran says its nuclear program is for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity.
U.S. military officers in Iraq have expressed growing concern about how Iran is taking advantage of the chaos and supporting insurgents, particularly the Shiite Muslim forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who recently signed a truce with Iraqi officials after a bloody standoff in the holy city of Najaf.
"Proponents of the war said that one of its benefits would be to intimidate other countries. But the positive effect has since become a negative," said Gary Samore, a specialist in weapons proliferation at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
Ammo for Kerry
Iran's defiance has handed political ammunition to the Kerry campaign, which accuses the Bush administration of sitting on the sidelines as the threat from Tehran grew.
"While these developments have been under way, the Bush administration has had no Iran policy because of the deep divisions that exist between the State Department on the one hand and the Defense Department and the vice president's office on the other," Kerry adviser Wendy Sherman said in a recent speech. "We cannot afford this kind of a vacillation any longer."
The Bush diplomacy
Bush administration officials reject the criticism, saying that they have been working steadily to convince Europe and Russia that Iran's nuclear program poses a serious threat to the Middle East and to Southern Europe.
