In Visit to Israel, Bush Can Prevent A War With Iran

When President Bush visits Israel next week, he should offer to bring that ally fully into the U.S. missile defense network - a step that might forestall an Israeli attack on Iran this year.

Two of the most strategically minded Members of Congress I know - Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.) - have enlisted 63 colleagues to urge the move as Bush prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding.

Specifically, the bipartisan group is calling on Bush to give Israel the advanced X-band radar system that would enable Israel to knock down Iranian missiles early in flight.

"It would be an appropriate birthday gift," Harman told me in an interview, "and would help ensure that Israel survives to celebrate its 120th."

Equally important in the short run, Kirk said, "it would lower everyone's temperature around Iran's nuclear and missile programs" and reduce the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran - or a joint attack with the U.S. - that would could have devastating worldwide repercussions.

Middle East experts I've talked to say the chances are 50-50 that Israel will try to destroy Iran's nuclear installations - or ask that the United States join it in doing so.

The attack would come this year, these experts say, because Israel fears that a new U.S. president, especially a Democrat, would engage in drawn-out diplomacy with Iran, whose regime would use the time to continue developing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

Separate from the nuclear issue, several Mideast experts I trust - moderates, not super-hawks - also think that the chances of a U.S.-Iran war are greater if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) gets elected than Sens.

Lest anyone thin Ms Harman is reliable on military affairs, here's what she said in the Summer of 2006

Four days after the killing of top terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi brought the U.S. its most stunning military success of the Iraq war, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be fired because the military effort is failing.

"I don't think we're succeeding militarily," Rep. Jane Harman told "Fox News Sunday."

"Continuing the same course, you know, is not getting us anywhere," she insisted. "What would help with doubters - and there are doubters in both parties all over the country - [would be] if the president decided that Rumsfeld should go."

Harman credited the Zarqawi take-out to "wonderful police work" but added: "It won't reduce the insurgency, I don't believe."

The California Democrat criticized the strategy of going after terrorist leaders like Zarqawi as "playing whack-a-mole."

"We kill one person, ten arise," she complained. "That's just not the strategy that can work."

Harman called the formation of a unity government "a great achievement," and said the U.S. should focus on bringing about a political solution to sectarian violence.

"But while we're part of the political solution, we're also part of the military problem," she insisted. "And having us continue to stay there, I don't think will achieve our objectives."

Harman called on President Bush to "start moving [U.S. troops] out of Iraq . . . We should have an over-the horizon force, no question."

"I'm not talking about cutting and running," the top House Democrat insisted moments later. "I'm talking about how do we win. We win politically, we don't win militarily."

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