“Bush may strike Iran near end of term”
By Steve Linde
Jerusalem Post
While arguing that economic sanctions against Teheran still have a chance of bearing fruit, a top strategic expert predicted on Tuesday that the Bush administration could conduct a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities toward the end of its term in office.
“I, for one, don’t exclude the possibility that the US will act,” Shai Feldman, currently director of the Crown Center for Middle East studies at Brandeis University, told an editorial meeting of The Jerusalem Post. “My feeling, though, is that if it will act, it will act in the last months of the administration, mostly because I think that they are inclined to try to give the other options the fullest possible chance.”
US President George W. Bush, still embroiled in the war in Iraq, would be reluctant to take action against Iran until the the latter part of his term, which concludes on January 20, 2009, Feldman said.
“The paradox of this is that the closer you are to a position of being a lame-duck president, the more freedom of action you have,” he said.Feldman, a former head of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said he believed that international sanctions were taking their toll on the Iranians.
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