Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  He wasn’t the only one who observed the trend or recognized its consequences. The rising tide of democracy in the Middle East in 2005 jolted the extremists. In 2006, they fought back.

  On July 12, 2006, Laura and I stopped in Germany on our way to the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband, Professor Joachim Sauer, had invited us to the town of Stralsund, which was in Angela’s home district. Laura and I were fascinated by Angela’s description of growing up in communist East Germany. She told us her childhood was happy, but her mother constantly warned her not to mention their family discussions in public. The secret police, the Stasi, were everywhere. Laura and I thought of Angela at Camp David when we watched The Lives of Others, a movie depicting life under the Stasi. It was hard to believe that less than twenty years had passed since tens of millions of Europeans lived like that. It was a reminder of how dramatically freedom could change a society.

  In addition to serving as a staunch advocate for freedom, Angela was trustworthy, engaging, and warm. She quickly became one of my closest friends on the world stage.

  With Angela Merkel at a pig roast near her hometown in former East Germany. White House/Eric Draper

  While we were on our way to Germany, Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon launched a raid across the Israeli border, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and touched off another foreign policy crisis. Israel responded by attacking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and bombing the Beirut Airport, a transit point for weapons. Hezbollah retaliated by lobbing rockets at Israeli towns, killing or wounding hundreds of civilians.

  Like Hamas, Hezbollah had a legitimate political party and a terrorist wing armed and funded by Iran and supported by Syria. Hezbollah was behind the bombing of the American Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the murder of a U.S. Navy diver aboard a hijacked TWA flight in 1985, the attacks on the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994, and the bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

  Now Hezbollah was taking on Israel directly. All the G-8 leaders at the summit had the same initial reaction: Hezbollah had instigated the conflict, and Israel had a right to defend itself. We issued a joint statement that read, “These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict.”

  The Israelis had a chance to deliver a major blow against Hezbollah and their sponsors in Iran and Syria. Unfortunately, they mishandled their opportunity. The Israeli bombing campaign struck targets of questionable military value, including sites in northern Lebanon far from Hezbollah’s base. The damage was broadcast on television for all to see. To compound matters, Prime Minister Olmert announced that Syria would not be a target. I thought it was a mistake. Removing the threat of retaliation let Syria off the hook and emboldened them to continue their support for Hezbollah.

  As the violence continued into its second week, many of the G-8 leaders who started out supportive of Israel called for a ceasefire. I didn’t join. A ceasefire might provide short-term relief, but it wouldn’t resolve the root cause of the conflict. If a well-armed Hezbollah continued to threaten Israel from southern Lebanon, it would be only a matter of time before the fighting flared again. I wanted to buy time for Israel to weaken Hezbollah’s forces. I also wanted to send a message to Iran and Syria: They would not be allowed to use terrorist organizations as proxy armies to attack democracies with impunity.

  Unfortunately, Israel made matters worse. In the third week of the conflict, Israeli bombers destroyed an apartment complex in the Lebanese city of Qana. Twenty-eight civilians were killed, more than half of them children. Prime Minister Siniora was furious. Arab leaders viciously condemned the bombing, the carnage of which played around the clock on Middle Eastern TV. I started to worry that Israel’s offensive might topple Prime Minister Siniora’s democratic government.

  I called a National Security Council meeting to discuss our strategy. The disagreement within the team was heated. “We need to let the Israelis finish off Hezbollah,” Dick Cheney said. “If you do that,” Condi replied, “America will be dead in the Middle East.” She recommended we seek a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire and deploying a multinational peacekeeping force.

  Neither choice was ideal. In the short run, I wanted to see Hezbollah and their backers badly damaged. In the long run, our strategy was to isolate Iran and Syria as a way to reduce their influence and encourage change from within. If America continued to back the Israeli offensive, we would have to veto one UN resolution after the next. Ultimately, instead of isolating Iran and Syria, we would isolate ourselves.

  I decided that the long-run benefits of keeping the pressure on Syria and Iran outweighed the short-run gains of striking further blows against Hezbollah. I sent Condi to the UN, where she negotiated Resolution 1701, which called for an immediate end to the violence, the disarmament of Hezbollah and other militias in Lebanon, an embargo on weapons shipments, and the deployment of a robust international security force to southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government, Hezbollah, and Israel all accepted the resolution. The ceasefire took effect on the morning of August 14.

  Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was another defining moment in the ideological struggle. While it remains fragile and still faces pressure from Syria, Lebanon’s young democracy emerged stronger for having endured the test. The result for Israel was mixed. Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis’ shaky military performance cost them international credibility.

  As the instigators of the conflict, Hezbollah—along with Syria and Iran—bore responsibility for the bloodshed. The Lebanese people knew it. In the most telling analysis of the war, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah apologized to the Lebanese people two weeks after the ceasefire. “Had we known that the capture of the soldiers would have led to this,” he said, “we would definitely not have done it.”

  When Condi took her first trip to Europe as secretary of state in early 2005, she told me she expected our disagreements over Iraq to be the main issue. A week later, she reported back with a surprising message from the allies she’d met. “They’re not talking about Iraq,” she said. “They’re all worried about Iran.”

  By the time I took office, the theocratic regime in Iran had presented a challenge to American presidents for more than twenty years. Governed by radical clerics who seized power in the 1979 revolution, Iran was one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. At the same time, Iran was a relatively modern society with a budding freedom movement.

  In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group came forward with evidence that the regime was building a covert uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, along with a secret heavy water production plant in Arak—two telltale signs of a nuclear weapons program. The Iranians acknowledged the enrichment but claimed it was for electricity production only. If that was true, why was the regime hiding it? And why did Iran need to enrich uranium when it didn’t have an operable nuclear power plant? All of a sudden, there weren’t so many complaints about including Iran in the axis of evil.

  In October 2003, seven months after we removed Saddam Hussein from power, Iran pledged to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing. In return, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France agreed to provide financial and diplomatic benefits, such as technology and trade cooperation. The Europeans had done their part, and we had done ours. The agreement was a positive step toward our ultimate goal of stopping Iranian enrichment and preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

  In June 2005, everything changed. Iran held a presidential election. The process was suspicious, to say the least. The Council of Guardians, a handful of senior Islamic clerics, decided who was on the ballot. The clerics used the Basij Corps, a militia-like unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, to manage turnout and influence the vote. Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winn
er. Not surprisingly, he had strong support from the Basij.

  Ahmadinejad steered Iran in an aggressive new direction. The regime became more repressive at home, more belligerent in Iraq, and more proactive in destabilizing Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Afghanistan. Ahmadinejad called Israel “a stinking corpse” that should be “wiped off the map.” He dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.” He used a United Nations speech to predict that the hidden imam would reappear to save the world. I started to worry we were dealing with more than just a dangerous leader. This guy could be nuts.

  As one of his first acts, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would resume uranium conversion. He claimed it was part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program, but the world recognized the move as a step toward enrichment for a weapon. Vladimir Putin—with my support—offered to provide fuel enriched in Russia for Iran’s civilian reactors, once it built some, so that Iran would not need its own enrichment facilities. Ahmadinejad rejected the proposal. The Europeans also offered to support an Iranian civilian nuclear program in exchange for halting its suspect nuclear activities. Ahmadinejad rejected that, too. There was only one logical explanation: Iran was enriching uranium to use in a bomb.

  I faced a major decision point. America could not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. The theocratic regime would be able to dominate the Middle East, blackmail the world, pass nuclear weapons technology to its terrorist proxies, or use the bomb against Israel. I thought about the problem in terms of two ticking clocks. One measured Iran’s progress toward the bomb; the other tracked the ability of the reformers to instigate change. My objective was to slow the first clock and speed the second.

  I had three options to consider. Some in Washington suggested that America should negotiate directly with Iran. I believed talking to Ahmadinejad would legitimize him and his views and dispirit Iran’s freedom movement, slowing the change clock. I also doubted that America could make much progress in one-on-one talks with the regime. Bilateral negotiations with a tyrant rarely turn out well for a democracy. Because they are subjected to little accountability, totalitarian regimes face no pressure to honor their word. They are free to break agreements and then make new demands. A democracy has a choice: give in or provoke a confrontation.

  The second option was multilateral diplomacy conducted with both carrots and sticks. We could join the Europeans in offering Iran a package of incentives in return for abandoning its suspect nuclear activities. If the regime refused to cooperate, the coalition would then impose tough sanctions on Iran individually and through the UN. The sanctions would make it harder for Iran to obtain technology needed for a weapon, slowing the bomb clock. They would also make it harder for Ahmadinejad to fulfill his economic promises, which would strengthen the country’s reform movement.

  The final option was a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This goal would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily. It was uncertain what the impact on the reform clock would be. Some thought destroying the regime’s prized project would embolden the opposition; others worried that a foreign military operation would stir up Iranian nationalism and unite the people against us. I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike. Military action would always be on the table, but it would be my last resort.

  I discussed the options with the national security team extensively in the spring of 2006. I consulted closely with Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, and Tony Blair. They assured me they would support strong sanctions if Iran did not change its behavior. In May, Condi announced that we would join the Europeans in negotiating with Iran, but only if the regime verifiably suspended its enrichment. She then worked with the UN Security Council to set a deadline for Iran’s response: August 31. The summer passed, and the answer never came.

  The next challenge was to develop effective sanctions. There wasn’t much America could do on our own. We had sanctioned Iran heavily for decades. I directed the Treasury Department to work with its European counterparts to make it harder for Iranian banks and businesses to move money. We also designated the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, which allowed us to freeze their assets. Our partners in the diplomatic coalition imposed new sanctions of their own. And we worked with the UN Security Council to pass Resolutions 1737 and 1747, which banned Iranian arms exports, froze key Iranian assets, and prohibited any country from providing Iran with nuclear weapons–related equipment.

  Persuading the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese to agree on the sanctions was a diplomatic achievement. But every member faced the temptation to split off and take commercial advantage. I frequently reminded our partners about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. In October 2007, a reporter asked me about Iran at a press conference. “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War Three,” I said, “it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

  My reference to World War III produced near hysteria. Protestors showed up outside my speeches with signs that read, “Keep Us Out of Iran.” Journalists authored breathless, gossip-laden stories portraying America on the brink of war. They all missed the point. I wasn’t looking to start a war. I was trying to hold our coalition together to avoid one.

  In November 2007, the intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program. It confirmed that, as we suspected, Iran had operated a secret nuclear weapons program in defiance of its treaty obligations. It also reported that, in 2003, Iran had suspended its covert effort to design a warhead—considered by some to be the least challenging part of building a weapon. Despite the fact that Iran was testing missiles that could be used as a delivery system and had announced its resumption of uranium enrichment, the NIE opened with an eye-popping declaration: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

  The NIE’s conclusion was so stunning that I felt certain it would immediately leak to the press. As much as I disliked the idea, I decided to declassify the key findings so that we could shape the news stories with the facts. The backlash was immediate. Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as “a great victory.” Momentum for new sanctions faded among the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese. As New York Times journalist David Sanger rightly put it, “The new intelligence estimate relieved the international pressure on Iran—the same pressure that the document itself claimed had successfully forced the country to suspend its weapons ambitions.”

  In January 2008, I took a trip to the Middle East, where I tried to reassure leaders that we remained committed to dealing with Iran. Israel and our Arab allies found themselves in a rare moment of unity. Both were deeply concerned about Iran and furious with the United States over the NIE. In Saudi Arabia, I met with King Abdullah and members of the Sudairi Seven, the influential full brothers of the late King Fahd.

  “Your Majesty, may I begin the meeting?” I asked. “I’m confident every one of you believes I wrote the NIE as a way to avoid taking action against Iran.”

  No one said a word. The Saudis were too polite to confirm their suspicion aloud.

  “You have to understand our system,” I said. “The NIE was produced independently by our intelligence community. I am as angry about it as you are.”

  The NIE didn’t just undermine diplomacy. It also tied my hands on the military side. There were many reasons I was concerned about undertaking a military strike on Iran, including its uncertain effectiveness and the serious problems it would create for Iraq’s fragile young democracy. But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?

  I don’t know why the NIE was written the way it was. I wondered if the intelligence community was trying so hard to avoid repeating its mistake on Iraq that it had underestimated the threat from Iran. I certainly hoped intelligence analys
ts weren’t trying to influence policy. Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact—and not a good one.

  I spent much of 2008 working to rebuild the diplomatic coalition against Iran. In March, we were able to get another round of UN sanctions, which banned countries from trading with Iran in dual-use technologies that could be employed in a nuclear weapons program. We also expanded our missile defense shield, including a new system based in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect Europe from an Iranian launch.

  At the same time, I worked to speed the reform clock by meeting with Iranian dissidents, calling for the release of political prisoners, funding Iranian civil-society activists, and using radio and Internet technology to broadcast pro-freedom messages into Iran. We also explored a wide variety of intelligence programs and financial measures that could slow the pace or increase the cost of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

  I regret that I ended my presidency with the Iranian issue unresolved. I did hand my successor an Iranian regime more isolated from the world and more heavily sanctioned than it had ever been. I was confident that the success of the surge and the emergence of a free Iraq on Iran’s border would inspire Iranian dissidents and help catalyze change. I was pleased to see the Iranian freedom movement express itself in nationwide demonstrations after Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent reelection in June 2009. In the faces of those brave protesters, I believe we saw the future of Iran. If America and the world stand with them while keeping the pressure on the Iranian regime, I am hopeful the government and its policies will change. But one thing is for certain: The United States should never allow Iran to threaten the world with a nuclear bomb.

  Iran was not the only nation endangering the freedom agenda by seeking nuclear weapons. In the spring of 2007, I received a highly classified report from a foreign intelligence partner. We pored over photographs of a suspicious, well-hidden building in the eastern desert of Syria.