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If All Else Fails, U.S. Will Hit Iran in 2013, Say Former Top Advisers to Obama and Bush
(Times of Israel) Haviv Rettig Gur - If the standoff over the Iranian nuclear program is not resolved diplomatically, it will be resolved militarily by the end of 2013, two top U.S. foreign policy officials told the Times of Israel on Thursday. "I think there's the stomach in this administration, and this president, that if diplomacy fails - to use force," said Dennis Ross, until November 2011 President Obama's top advisor and planner on Iran in the National Security Council. James Jeffrey, a former deputy national security advisor and, for the past two years, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, agreed. "I think [Obama's] first choice will be a negotiated settlement. Failing that, I think that we're going to strike." "One way or the other, these guys are either going to stop their program or, before we're halfway through 2013, they're going to have enough [enriched nuclear materiel] to go critical in a few weeks." "If we don't get a negotiated settlement, and these guys are actually on the threshold [of weaponization capability], as Obama said during the campaign, then the president is going to take military action."