Iran hints at nuclear talk progress, but world still wary of possible conflict

The more upbeat diplomatic overtures from Tehran come as both President Bush and the Pentagon expressed interest in avoiding armed conflict with Iran. The Los Angeles Times reports that when asked at a White House press conference Wednesday whether he would try to discourage Israel from a rumored preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, Bush said that "the first option ought to be to solve this problem diplomatically." Shortly after Bush's press conference, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, who recently returned from a meeting with Israeli military leaders, told reporters at the Pentagon that an attack on Iran by Israel would have very negative consequences for the US.

"Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful for us," [Admiral Mullen] said, referring to the prospect of a direct clash with Iran while fighting continues in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable."

In his trip to Israel, Mullen met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of the Israeli defense staff. Mullen declined to say whether an air strike was broached in his meetings but acknowledged that the Iranian threat was discussed and said he agreed that Tehran was a destabilizing force in the region.

Mullen has expressed his concerns for several months about the risks posed to U.S. troops in Iraq by a strike on Iran, Defense Department officials said, but those warnings have been made mostly in private. Mullen declined to say whether he had delivered his assessment to the White House in recent days.

The comments from both Iranian and US officials Wednesday follow heated rhetoric from both sides. Agence France-Presse reports that earlier this week, Iran threatened to close off the Strait of Hormuz, choking the world's oil supply, should any attack be made against it. But Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, said that the US "will not allow Iran to close" the Strait and would regard such an attempt to be an act of war. The Associated Press reports that if Iran were attacked, OPEC Secretary General Abdallah el-Badri said the price of oil would likely surpass $145 per barrel, since "it is difficult to replace [the] 4.1 or 4.2 million barrels a day" that Iran produces.

This week also saw the release of a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh that warned the US may be preparing to invade Iran by increasing covert operations within the country. Mr. Hersh wrote that at Bush's request, Congress approved a $400 million funding increase of such operations, which "are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership" and "involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations" as well as further intelligence gathering on Iran's nuclear activities. Agence France-Presse reports that the White House declined to comment on Hersh's report.

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