New York: US President George Bush last year rejected a secret Israeli request for specialized bunker- busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex and told them that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, a media report said today.
White House officials, the New York Times said, never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the US protested, or whether Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before 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, the paper said.
The White House, the Times reported quoting American officials, denied that request outright. The Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily, it added.
But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert programme that Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
This account of the expanded US covert programme and the Bush administration's efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran, the Times said, emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials.
Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations, the paper said.
