Fallon's Resignation Is Not Seen as Step Toward Attack on Iran

The abrupt resignation of the Pentagon's top Middle East commander has silenced one of the Bush administration's fiercest opponents of a unilateral military strike against Iran, yet top administration officials themselves do not see real prospects for military action before the end of President Bush's term, current and former U.S. officials say.

Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon, who announced Tuesday that he is quitting as head of the U.S. Central Command, had irked the White House in recent months by publicly opposing possible military action against Iran. But support for a military strike within the administration has eroded steadily in recent months, and Fallon's departure will do little to change that, the officials said.

Instead, absent an unforeseen precipitating event, the current policy of seeking multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions against Iran as punishment for its nuclear-weapons-related work will continue until Bush leaves office and beyond, according to administration officials and independent experts.

Bush has publicly maintained that he wants to use diplomacy to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, but he has pointedly refused to take the military option off the table. Some experts cautioned that Bush's views could still trump his advisers' contrary opinions.

Yet, the administration's ability to execute such a strategy has been weakened in recent months, said former officials and Iran experts, in large measure because a November intelligence estimate on Iran lessened anxieties that the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons capability is imminent.

"The way [White House officials] see Iran has not gone away," said Vali Nasr, an authority on Iran at Tufts University. "Their capacity to do something has been cut down."

The intelligence report -- a consensus document reflecting the views of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- concluded that Iran had frozen its research on nuclear weapons design in 2003, even though it has steadily increased its capacity to make enriched uranium, an essential ingredient in both nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

Fallon, the officer in charge of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the past year, had been seen by administration critics as a powerful check against White House hawks who have pushed for a military confrontation against Iran's ruling clerics. In an article released this week in Esquire magazine, Fallon's opposition was depicted as the chief reason Bush had not decided to launch a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Esquire article said that if Fallon left his job, it would signal an impending attack against Iran. Administration officials, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, have publicly rejected the article's contention as absurd.

"Our policy towards Iran has been set out very clearly and very publicly, most recently in successfully obtaining a third Security Council resolution," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. He said the president has "made it clear, as have other senior officials, and there's no change in that: Iran needs to comply" with the international demands.

While officials have reiterated that the NIE said Iran could eventually produce nuclear arms, former and current officials said the White House is aware that many hold that there is plenty of time for diplomacy to work. Unlike the situation in 2003, when the administration invaded Iraq without the backing of many allies, action against Iran would need both congressional and allied support not evident now, the officials said.

Many outside experts say the war in Iraq has empowered Iran, but some senior Bush administration officials insist that Iran has never been more isolated. They contend that financial sanctions have begun to pinch the Iranian elite and that Tehran's diplomats are nervously roaming the Arab world seeking to forestall a U.S.-inspired, anti-Iranian alliance.