HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028257.jpg

/ BARAK / 123

operational capacity to mount such an attack, in part because we lacked the
necessary bunker-busting bombs and the tanker aircraft to get us to Iran and back. I
did seek help from the Americans. I met Defense Secretary Bob Gates, CIA
director Mike Hayden, National Security Adviser Steve Hadley and even President
Bush himself. While not explicitly mentioning that we were planning military
action against Iran, I sounded them out on the prospects of getting more heavy
munitions, and possibly leasing several US tanker aircraft.

Yet in our final meeting with President Bush, during a visit to Israel in June
2008, he made it clear to Olmert and me that he knew what we were up to. Olmert
hosted a private dinner for the President. Afterwards, Bush asked to talk privately.
Olmert poured us each a glass of whiskey and lit a cigar, and we sank into brown
leather armchairs. Smiling, the president looked straight at me, and said to Olmert:
“This guy scares the living shit out of me when he tells me what you want.”

He told Olmert how I’d asked for heavy munitions, tankers and a variety of
other military equipment. “Remember. I’m a former F-16 pilot,” he said. “I know
how to connect the dots.” Then, turning more serious, he added: “I want to tell
both of you now, as President, the formal position of the US government. We are
totally against any action by you to mount an attack on the nuclear plants.” The
effect was all the more dramatic because of his Administration’s support for our
attack on the reactor in Syria the year before. “I repeat,” Bush said, “in order to
avoid any misunderstanding. We expect you not to do it. And we’re not going to
do it, either, as long as I am President. I wanted it to be clear.”

Olmert said nothing, so I replied. “Mr President, we’re in no position to tell you
what the position of the United States should be. But I can tell you what I believe
history will have to say. I’m reminded by what we call, in field artillery,
‘bracketing and halving.’” I said that in the wake of the Al-Qaeda attack on the
Twin Towers, he had fired one shell long, in Afghanistan, and another one short, in
Iraq. “But when the time came to hit the real target – Iran – it ended up you’d
already spent two terms, and all your political capital.” He seemed neither insulted
nor unsettled by my remark. He simply nodded. Perhaps, in part, because he was
pretty sure that we lacked the ability to attack the Iranian facilities anyway.

We still lacked that capacity when I became Defense Minister in Bibi’s
government in May 2009. But the main reason I’d stayed in the job, and my main

409
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028257