The Obama administration is engaged in a full-court press to persuade Israel that Iran’s nuclear threat can be contained short of war.
The U.S. lobbying has received a mixed reception from Israel, where the Netanyahu government has not ruled out a unilateral strike on Iran.
Iran, meanwhile, is taking an aggressive stance in response to mounting sanctions.
Last week the Iranian naval chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Western sanctions intensified. The threat to close the strait — the passageway for oil from the Persian Gulf states — could presage a war, experts said.
“We may be further along the road to war than most people believe,” said Michael Adler, an Iran scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Experts are divided as to the seriousness of the threat to cut off the strait and whether it will lead to war.
Adler said that a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran may be inevitable, and that the two countries are headed down that road in “slow motion.”
“Don’t underestimate what the Americans have been saying,” he said, referring to the longstanding U.S. line that all options for dealing with Iran are on the table.
Stephen Rademaker, a former top nuclear arms negotiator in the administration of President George W. Bush, said the blowback Iran would suffer for shutting down the strait suggests that Sayyari was bluffing.
“It would be extremely difficult for them to close the strait for more than a brief period of time,” said Rademaker, now a principal at the Podesta Group, a lobbying shop and think tank. “The U.S. Navy knows how to keep waterways open.”
The resultant war also would give the U.S. a pretext to attack suspected Iranian nuclear sites, he said.
