HERZLILYA, Israel, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Former CIA director James Wollsey Monday recommended using force if there is no other way to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
"If we need to use force, we should do it decisively, not some surgical (attack) on some single, or two or three facilities," he said at the Herzliya conference, near Tel Aviv.
Wollsey regretted Israel did not attack Syria during the summer's war against Hezbollah, in neighboring Lebanon. Syria and Hezbollah are allied with Iran.
"It's a shame that Israel did not, and the United States did not help and participate in moving against Syria last summer when Hezbollah gave the opportunity," he said. Hezbollah sparked those hostilities in July when it kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation.
The background for the debate was set by Princeton University's Prof. Bernard Lewis, a renowned expert on Muslim history, who said Muslims are now in their "third and final attempt to bring the true faith to the world." The earlier attempts were made when the Muslims reached Spain and the Turks reached Vienna.
Wollsey maintained the defeat of "Islamic totalitarianism...is the great challenge of our age, just as the defeat of Nazism and the defeat of Communism."
He claimed the world should not tolerate a nuclear weapons capability in Iran, though "I do not believe we are yet at the point where we have to use force against Iran."
Analysts were divided on how long it would take Iran to produce a bomb -- Israeli experts have been talking of the end of the decade -- but Woolsey said he saw no reason why North Korea, which exports counterfeit American money, heroin and ballistic missile technology, would not be happy to make several hundred million dollars by shipping a few kilograms of plutonium or highly enriched uranium if it already has that.
