The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media. The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week quoted ”NATO intelligence sources” who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the Iranian government into line, including military options. This ”all options are open” line has been President George W Bush`s publicly stated policy throughout the past 18 months. But the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes ”What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year.” The German news agency DDP cited ”Western security sources” to claim that CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkey`s premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. Goss, who visited Ankara and met Erdogan on Dec. 12, was also reported to have to have asked for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation. But other NATO sources have told United Press International that ”all this may be mood music, a bluff to step up the diplomatic pressure on Tehran.” It is possible that leaks from NATO and German security sources are part of a ploy to convince the Iranian government that the Americans and their NATO allies are in dead earnest when they say a nuclear-armed Iran would not be tolerated, and that Iran had better start negotiating seriously. But the German media speculation about the supposed U.S. plans has been fueled by a number of high-profile visits to Turkey this month, including trips by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, by the CIA`s Porter Goss and by the FBI Director Robert Mueller. There have also been some significant Turkish visits to Washington, as reported by Der Spiegel.