“Hobbling somewhat pathetically out of the limelight”, as his presidency draws to a close, George Bush came to Slovenia for summit discussions with EU leaders this week, says Peter Walker in The Guardian. And top of the agenda was how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. “All options are on the table”, was his conclusion.
Coming just a week after Israel’s Transport Minister, Shaul Mofaz, raised the possibility of a direct attack on Iranian nuclear sites, that comment was designed to add to the international pressure on President Ahmadinejad. For now, though, sanctions are the preferred option, says The New York Times.
“An attack on Iran would be a disaster.” Although “military action shouldn’t be taken off the table, it shouldn’t be at the head of it, either” added USA Today. “If diplomacy fails, a fateful decision will have to be made over which is worse: attacking Iran or allowing it to have nuclear weapons.
That point has not been reached.” That’s partly because many hope that mounting domestic criticism of Ahmadinejad, as inflation and unemployment soar, may bring defeat at next year’s elections. In the Iranian newspaper Kargozaran, economist Saeed Leylaz warned that pressure on him would mount if the authorities pursued aggressive isolationist policies at a time when the economy was highly dependent on imports.
Undeterred, Ahmadinejad threw down a “daring challenge to Iran’s ruling establishment” – an aide accused 44 leading members of Iran’s old guard of corruption, “among them several prominent ayatollahs”, reports Michael Theodoulou in The Times. Indeed, commentators “are mistakenly writing off” the ferociously ambitious President, says Gary Sick of Columbia University – he remains a “threat to the entire establishment.”