Israel's Other War: US Rejected Aid for Attack on Iran

Throughout the Gaza conflict, its supporters --- both in the Government and in the media --- have insisted that it is part of a wider fight against Iran. Turns out that Gaza might be a substitute: the Israelis wanted to use the bunker-busting bombs, now being dropped on the Gaza Strip, on an Iranian site. From David Sanger in The New York Times:

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

While the Israelis didn't get their raid, "the White House [did] step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama."