Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs

from ABC News:

Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs
White House Bomber Request Leaves Some Wondering if U.S. Is Preparing Action in Iran

By JONATHAN KARL

Oct. 24, 2007 —

Tucked inside the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders."

What urgent need? The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command.

ABC News called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent operational need" is. CENTCOM spokesman Maj. Todd White said he would look into it, but, so far, no answer.

There doesn't appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there.

So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran's flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.

"You'd use it on Natanz," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly."

"It's kind of strange," Pike said. "It sends a signal that you are preparing to bomb Iran, and if you were actually going to bomb Iran I wouldn't think you would want to announce it like that."

The MOP is a massive bomb -- 20 feet long and encased in 3.5 inch thick high-performance steel. It is designed to penetrate up to 200 feet underground before exploding.

The bomb was developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

In an interview earlier this year with Air Force Times, Bob Hastie, the manager of the MOP program explained its purpose: "We have a mission to defeat ... hard and deeply buried targets where our adversary would have the support structure for WMD-type systems."

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Oil and social gains

Oil and social gains
WHY U.S. IS TARGETING IRAN

By Sara Flounders
StopWarOnIran.org

“The forces opposing Washington’s policy of endless war--whether waged through sanctions, coups, invasions, bombings or sabotage--should stand with Iran, recognize its accomplishments, defend its gains and oppose imperialism’s efforts to re-colonize the country.”

Why is Iran increasingly a target of U.S. threats? Who in Iran will be affected if the Pentagon implements plans, already drawn up, to strike more than 10,000 targets in the first hours of a U.S. air barrage on Iran?

What changes in policy is Washington demanding of the Iranian government?

In the face of the debacle U.S. imperialism is facing in Iraq, U.S. threats against Iran are discussed daily. This is not a secret operation. They can't be considered idle threats.

Two aircraft carriers--USS Eisenhower and USS Stennis--are still off the coast of Iran, each one accompanied by a carrier strike group containing Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, electronic warfare aircraft, anti-submarine and refueler planes, and airborne command-and-control planes. Six guided-missile destroyers are also part of the armada.

Besides this vast array of firepower, the Pentagon has bases throughout the Middle East able to attack Iran with cruise missiles and hundreds of warplanes.

In fact, the U.S. is already engaged in a war on Iran. Ever-tightening sanctions, from both the U.S. and U.N., restrict trade and the ordering of equipment, spare parts and supplies.

Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine a year ago that U.S. special operations forces were already operating inside Iran in preparation for a possible attack. U.S.-backed covert operatives had entered Iran to organize sabotage, car bombings, kidnappings and attacks on civilians, to collect targeting data and to foment anti-government ethnic-minority groups.

News articles have reported in recent months that the Pentagon has drawn up plans for a military blitz that would strike 10,000 targets in the first day of attacks. The aim is to destroy not just military targets but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communication centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals and public buildings.

It is important to understand internal developments in Iran today in order to understand why this country is the focus of such continued hatred by U.S. corporate power.

Every leading U.S. political figure has weighed in on the issue, from George W. Bush, who has the power to order strikes, to Hillary Clinton, who has made her support for an attack on Iran clear, to John McCain, who answered a reporter's question on policy toward Iran by chanting "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' song, "Barbara Ann." The media--from the New York Times to the Washington Post to banner headlines in the tabloid press to right-wing radio talk shows--are playing a role in preparing the public for an attack.

The significance of oil production and oil reserves in Iran is well known. Every news article, analysis or politician's threat makes mention of Iran’s oil. But the impact of Iran’s nationalization of its oil resources is not well known.

The corporate owners in the U.S. want to keep it a secret from the people here. They use all the power of their media to demonize the Iranian leadership and caricature and ridicule the entire population, their culture and religion.

What’s been achieved?

The focus of media coverage here is to describe Iran as medieval, backward and feudal while somehow becoming a nuclear power.

It is never mentioned that more than half the university students in Iran are women, or that more than a third of the doctors, 60 percent of civil servants and 80 percent of all teachers in Iran are women. At the time of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, 90 percent of rural women were illiterate; in towns the figure was over 45 percent.

Also ignored is the stunning achievement of full literacy for Iranian youth.

Even the World Bank, now headed by Bush's neocon appointee Paul Wolfowitz, in its development report on countries admits that Iran has exceeded the social gains of other countries in the Middle East.

According to that report, Iran has made the most progress in eliminating gender disparities in education. Large numbers of increasingly well-educated women have entered the work force.

Iran’s comprehensive social protection system includes the highest level of pensions, disability insurance, job training programs, unemployment insurance and disaster-relief programs. National subsidies make basic food, housing and energy affordable to all.

An extensive national network going from primary health and preventive care to sophisticated hospital care covers the entire population, both urban and rural. More than 16,000 "health houses" are the cornerstone of the health care system. Using simple technology, they provide vaccines, preventive care, care for respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, family planning and contraceptive information, and pre-natal care. And they monitor children’s nutrition and general health.

Since 1990, Iran nearly halved the infant mortality rate and increased life expectancy by 10 years.

Iran sets record in family planning

A national family planning program, delivered through the primary health care facilities and accompanied by a dramatic increase in contraceptive use, which is approved by Islamic law, has led to a world record demographic change in family size and maternal and child health. All forms of contraception are now available for free.

In addition promoting women’s education and employment, while extending social security and retirement benefits, has alleviated the pressure to have many children to protect security as parents grow older. The fertility rate between 1976 and 2000 declined from 8.1 births per woman to 2.4 births in rural areas and 1.8 births in urban areas.

These social programs, which cover the entire population of almost 70 million people, should be compared to conditions in countries in the region that remain under U.S. military and economic domination.

In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, only a tiny part of the population has benefited from the vast profits generated by oil and gas resources. In each of these countries the bulk of the people are not even considered citizens. Millions are immigrant workers, usually the overwhelming majority of the population, who have no rights to any representation, participation or any social, health or educational programs or union protection.

Women in these countries face much more than religious restrictions on clothing. They are barred from jobs, equal education and the right to control their own bodies or their own funds. They cannot vote or even drive a car.

In Iraq, which before U.S. attacks began in 1991 had some of the best conditions in the region for women, plus a high level of education, health, nutrition and social services, the conditions of life have now deteriorated to the level of the very poorest countries in the world. Legislation passed by the U.S.-installed puppet government has stripped women of rights that were guaranteed earlier.

Revolution made it all possible

The social gains of millions of Iranians are based on the upsurge of the Iranian masses in the 1979 revolution. The overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty broke the hold of U.S. corporate power in Iran.

The Iranian Revolution was not a socialist revolution. Bourgeois rights to own businesses, land, wealth and inheritance are still protected by law and by the state apparatus.

But the greatest source of wealth--Iran's oil and gas--was nationalized. Nationalization means the transfer of privately owned assets and operations into public ownership. The exploration, drilling, maintenance, transport, refining and shipping of oil and gas became the national property of the Iranian people. Formerly this entire process was controlled at every step by Western imperialists, particularly U.S. and British corporations.

Most of the administrators, executives, technicians and engineers who controlled the process used to be from the West. Through hundreds of thousands of contracts and sub-contracts, U.S. and British firms extracted a profit not just through the sale of oil on the world markets but at every step of its extraction and refining. The small portion of profit the Shah's government received, as in the Gulf States today, was spent on luxury items imported from Western corporations for the small ruling elite and on infrastructure and weapons systems purchased from U.S. military corporations, again at an enormous profit.

The 1979 Iranian revolution, even though it brought a religious group to power, was a profoundly radical and anti-imperialist revolution. Demonstrations of millions openly confronted the brutally repressive police apparatus called the Savak, who protected the small handful of corrupt U.S. collaborators. Religious fervor, demands for social justice and militant anti-imperialism were bound together in opposition to the U.S.-imposed Shah and the Pahlavi royal family, which was hated for its program of a glitzy modernization of the urban infrastructure alongside the growing impoverishment of both urban and rural workers, farmers and much of the middle class.

All classes of society were profoundly shaken as millions of revolutionary workers took to the streets. This was reflected not only in laws passed in Parliament but in the Iranian constitution itself. The constitution states that the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security for retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, health and medical treatment--out of public revenue.

Prior to the revolution Iran had a shortage of medical staff and of trained personnel of every kind. During the upheaval of the revolution and the years of the Iran-Iraq war, many physicians, scientific and skilled personnel emigrated.

Having broken free of U.S. corporate domination and control of its resources, Iran was able to develop education, industry and infrastructure with unprecedented speed. By 2004 the number of university students had increased by six times over 1979. There are currently 2.2 million college students. The largest and most prestigious programs encompass 54 state universities and 42 state medical schools where tuition, room and board are totally free. In addition, 289 major private universities also receive substantial funding.

Millions of scientists, engineers, technicians, administrators, military officers, teachers, civil servants and doctors have been trained.

Today Iran boasts modern cities, a large auto industry, and miles of new roads, railroads and subways. Currently 55 Iranian pharmaceutical companies produce 96 percent of the medicines on the market in Iran. This allows a national insurance system to reimburse drug expenses.

Soon to become operational is the largest pharmaceutical complex in southwest Asia, which will produce compound drugs, making Iran a pioneer in biotechnology.

Years of U.S. sanctions and pressure on international financial institutions have had an unexpected result: Iran is free of the crippling debt that has strangled so many developing countries. According to World Bank figures, Iran’s external debt is one of the lowest for its size: $11.9 billion, or 8.8 percent of the GDP. From the point of view of the imperialist world bankers, this means the loss of many billions each year in interest payments to them.

Different approaches

Since 1979 there have been deep struggles inside Iran over how to deal with the unrelenting pressure of the imperialist powers. There are differing approaches on developments plans and who is favored or benefits most from these plans. But all of the present forces are committed to maintaining Iran's control of its resources.

Iran is not a monolithic state. No state is or could be. There are contending groups even within the Muslim clergy that reflect different economic interests and class forces. This is true also in the Iranian Parliament and among various political parties and leaders.

Under President Mohammed Khatami, from 1997 to 2005, a "Reform Movement" eased religious and social restrictions. But it also allowed the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies, structural reforms and the de-nationalizing or privatizing of some social programs along with the cutting of subsidies. More joint ventures were initiated with European and Japanese capital. Programs that benefited the "private sector" or the wealthy and the middle class grew. This was the core of Khatami’s base.

The current leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's first non-cleric president in 24 years, was elected in 2005 in a landslide victory after promising to extend social security and pensions, improve the subsidies for food and housing, deal with rising unemployment and guarantee a monthly stipend.

The Iranian people are determined to protect the substantial gains they have made since the revolution. They are not interested in any effort that turns the clock back.

A Wall Street Journal Commentary by Francis Fukuyama on Feb. 1 was unusually frank in explaining the growing problem faced by U.S. corporate power on a global scale:

“What is it that leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez have in common that vastly increases their local appeal? A foreign policy built around anti-Americanism is, of course, a core component. But what has allowed them to win elections and build support in their societies is less their foreign-policy stances than their ability to promise, and to a certain extent deliver on, social policy--things like education, health and other social services, particularly for the poor….

“The U.S. and the political groups that it tends to support around the world, by contrast, have relatively little to offer in this regard.”

Past and new threats

Iran's program for nuclear power was actually initiated by the U.S. when the Shah held dictatorial power. Nuclear energy is an important part of modern industrial development. It is important in science, medicine and research. Only after the overthrow of the Shah was Iran’s continued development of the same program branded a threat by Washington.

The U.S. government has made every effort to sabotage all Iranian infrastructure and industrial development, not only nuclear energy. Modern technology--from elevators to cars, ships, jet aircraft and oil refineries--needs constant upkeep. Parts for the re-supply and maintenance of equipment the Iranians had purchased over decades from U.S. corporations were halted.

The most onerous sanctions were imposed in 1995 during the Clinton administration.

The Iranian people, despite many different political currents, are united in their determination not to lose their national sovereignty again. Washington's past use of sanctions, economic sabotage, political destabilization and regime change is well remembered in Iran today.

Sanctions, the freezing of assets and an embargo on the export of Iranian oil and all trade with Iran were first imposed in March 1951, after Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Iran was the first country in the Middle East to take the bold step of reclaiming its national wealth in the post-colonial era.

In 1953 using internal destabilization and massive external pressure, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Mossadegh's popularly elected government and placed the Shah on the Peacock Throne. Oil was back under the control of the U.S. and Britain, and 26 years of brutal repression followed.

Ever since the 1979 revolution and the decisive overthrow of the U.S.-supported military dictatorship, Iran has had not a moment of peace from the Pentagon or Wall Street.

As Iran continues to grow and develop, U.S. imperialism is becoming increasingly desperate to reverse this revolutionary process, whether through sanctions, sabotage or bombing. But today it faces a population that is stronger, more conscious and more skilled. On a world scale U.S. imperialism is more isolated. Its hated occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has left it overextended.

But the Pentagon is still capable of massive destruction. Its bases surround Iran and it has sent an armada of ships to the Gulf. U.S. government threats against Iran today must be taken as seriously as their devastating occupation of Iraq.

The forces opposing Washington’s policy of endless war--whether waged through sanctions, coups, invasions, bombings or sabotage--should stand with Iran, recognize its accomplishments, defend its gains and oppose imperialism’s efforts to re-colonize the country.



Sources of information about Iran's social development include: "Iran’s Family Planning Program: Responding to a Nation’s Needs," by Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, D.C., June 2002; "Tehran University Official Describes Iran Health Care System to Harvard School of Public Health," HSPH NOW, Jan. 24, 2003; World Bank.org--Iran--Country Brief; UNICEF--Info by Country; Food & Agriculture Organization of UN--Nutrition--Country Profiles; "Biggest Pharmaceutical Plant to Open Soon," Iran Daily, Feb. 4, 2007.

Shifting Targets - The Administration’s plan for Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh October 8, 2007

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In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism. full article

Warships, Warships Everywhere, and Many a Bomb to Drop - Persian Gulf Update

by Michael T. Klare; TomDispatch; May 04, 2007

Looking down from the captain's deck some six stories high, the flight deck of the USS Nimitz is an impressive sight indeed: 80 sleek warplanes armed with bombs and missiles are poised for takeoff at any minute, day or night. The sight of these planes coming and going from that 1,100-foot-long flight deck is almost beyond description. I can attest to this, having sailed on the Nimitz 25 years ago as a reporter for Mother Jones magazine.

Today, the Nimitz is rapidly approaching the Persian Gulf, where it will join two other U.S. aircraft carriers and the French carrier Charles De Gaulle in the largest concentration of naval firepower in the region since the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago.

Why this concentration now? Officially, the Nimitz is on its way to the Gulf to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is due to return to the United States for crew leave and ship maintenance after months on station. But the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which exercises command authority over all U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area, refuses to say when the Eisenhower will actually depart -- or even when the Nimitz will arrive.

For a time, at least, the United States will have three carrier battle groups in the region. The USS John C. Stennis is the third. Each carrier is accompanied by a small flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and support vessels, many equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (TLAMs). Minimally, this gives modern meaning to the classic imperial term "gunboat diplomacy," which makes it all the stranger that the deployment of the Nimitz is covered in our media, if at all, as the most minor of news stories. And when the Nimitz sailed off into the Pacific last month on its way to the Gulf, it simply disappeared off media radar screens like some classic "lost patrol."

Rest assured, unlike us, the Iranians have noticed. After all, with the arrival of the Nimitz battle group, the Bush administration will be -- for an unknown period of time -- in an optimal position to strike Iran with a punishing array of bombs and missiles should the President decide to carry out his oft-repeated threat to eliminate Iran's nuclear program through military action. "All options," as the administration loves to say, remain ominously "on the table."

Meanwhile, negotiations to resolve the impasse with Iran over its pursuit of uranium-enrichment technology -- a possible first step to the manufacture of nuclear weapons -- continue at the United Nations in New York and in various European capitals. So far, the Iranians have refused to give any ground, claiming that their activities are intended for peaceful uses only and so are permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it is a signatory. The United States has made vague promises of improved relations if and when Iran terminates its nuclear program, but the full burden of making initial concessions falls on Tehran.

Just this weekend, a conference in Egypt, called by Iraqi officials to explore regional approaches to stability in the region (with Iranian officials expected to be in attendance), was being viewed in Washington as yet another opportunity to pressure Tehran to be more submissive to the West's demands on a wide range of issues, including Iranian support for Shiite militias in Iraq.

President Bush keeps insisting that he would like to see these "diplomatic" endeavors -- as he describes them -- succeed, but he has yet to bring up a single proposal or incentive that might offer any realistic prospect of eliciting a positive Iranian response.

And so, knowing that his "diplomatic" efforts are almost certain to fail, Bush may simply be waiting for the day when he can announce to the American people that he has "tried everything"; that "his patience has run out"; and that he can "no longer risk the security of the American people" by "indulging in further fruitless negotiations," thereby allowing the Iranians "to proceed farther down the path of nuclear bomb-making," and so has taken the perilous but necessary step of ordering American forces to conduct air and missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. At that point, the 80 planes aboard the Nimitz -- and those on the Eisenhower and the Stennis as well -- will be on their way to targets in Iran, along with hundreds of TLAMs and a host of other weapons now being assembled in the Gulf.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum.

[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of Mission Unaccomplished (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.]

They Wouldn’t Really Attack Iran, Would They?

by Paul Street; April 18, 2007

Remember the old neoconservative half-joke that “sacking Baghdad is fine but real men go to Teheran?” We are moving into the time when many Washington watchers have thought it possible and even likely that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would order an attack on Iran (1).

They wouldn’t really do it, would they?

God knows there are a large number of reasons for a rational White House NOT to attack. United States and global public opinion is opposed to a U.S. assault on Iran. So are European and other leading and allied governments, the U.S. intelligence community and much of the nation’s military leadership. According to a February 25th London Times report, “most senior [United States] commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a strike against Iran” (1.5).

Key sections of the U.S. foreign policy establishment oppose attacking Iran. The Baker-Hamilton Commission’s Iraq Study Group advocated engaging Iran diplomatically to help de-escalate the mess in Iraq and the Middle East.

Expressing concerns that the administration will manufacture false pretexts for attacking Iran, former National Security Advisor Zgbniew Bzrezinski recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bush’s “imperial hubris” is “undermining America’s global legitimacy,” “intensifying regional instability” and putting the U.S on track for a “quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan” (2).

United States troops are overstretched and have been badly bloodied in Iraq. The American Empire’s strung-out, battered and mostly working-class soldiers are increasingly skeptical about Bush’s military adventurism (3).


As Samar Sepehri notes in the latest International Socialist Review, “Iraq is a glaring example for the U.S. (as Hezbollah was for Israel) that superior firepower and the best laid [military] plans are no guarantee of imperial success” (4).

While “Iran cannot [militarily] defend itself against U.S. attack,” Noam Chomsky recently noted, “it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting ever more havoc in Iraq. “Some issue warnings that are more grave,” Chomsky adds, noting British military historian Corelli Barnett’s judgment that “an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three” (5).

According to ZNet writer Stephen Lendman, citing a CIA assessment, “if the U.S. attacks Iran, South Shia Iraq will light up like a candle and explode uncontrollably throughout the country...expanding the Iraq conflict to a regional one with [unpredictable] consequences that would not be good for U.S. interests. It will inflame the region,” spark “a tsunami of Shia rage” and “unite the Muslim world in fierce opposition to America,” Lendman says (6).

Iran has signaled its readiness to strangle oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz – the crucial and narrow passageway between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean – and thereby to damage the global economy if the U.S. and/or Israel attack its nuclear facilities.

A military strike against Iran would be thoroughly illegal under international law and the U.S. Constitution. It would evoke horror and condemnation across the world, further tarnishing the United States’ fading “moral credentials” (Bzrezinski), especially if it employs (as it likely would) “low yield” nuclear missiles that would (as a senior U.S. intelligence official told Seymour Hersh) produce “mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties and contamination over years”(7).

The administration’s key charges against Iran are without basis. There is little evidence to support U.S. claims that predominantly Shiite Iran has been sparking the Sunni-led Iraq “insurgency” and that Iran poses a reasonably imminent “nuclear danger.”

Also lacking credibility are U.S. claims that Iraq seeks to eliminate Israel – a charge that ignores Iran foreign policy chief Ayatollah Ali Khameni’s repeated statements of support Israel’s continued existence alongside a separate Palestinian state.

As John Pilger notes, “the ‘threat’ from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’ just as the vocabulary of Saddam’s non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage”(8).

Another public relations fiasco looms, perhaps, for those who would launch yet another mass-murderous assault on a major Muslim state without credible basis for threat claims concocted to justify the brazen violation of international law and civilized norms.

A U.S. attack would likely unite the factions contesting for power inside Iran, to the detriment of the Bush administration’s declared mission of causing regime change there. That mission could be pursued without resort to massive air assault, through the intensified application of methods already being employed: economic and financial sanctions and the related promotion of ethnic, religious, factional and regional strife inside Iran.

And yet, despite all this and more, we really can’t rule out the possibility of the feared U.S. attack sometime this or next year. Bush has been preparing the ground for such an assault by making repeated, high-profile references to the alleged Iran threat. As presented in his January 23rd State of the Union Address (SOUA), the supposed menace of Iran goes beyond alleged nuclear ambitions and support for the Iraqi resistance. It includes the threat of a rising “Shia crescent” led by Iran in alliance with Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian state. Bush raised this specter “despite the fact,” as Tom Englehardt notes, “that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general War on Terror)”(9).

As Seymour Hersh shows in a recent New Yorker article titled “The Redirection,” the Bush administration’s Middle East policies has undergone a “sea change” as the U.S. seeks to enlist the region’s Arab Sunni people and regimes against Persian Iran and the danger of Shia dominance (10).

The administration’s 2006 National Military Strategy claimed that “we may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.” (11). The U.S. may have supported Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last July partly to destroy Iran-linked Hezbollah’s capacity to deter a U.S.-Israel assault on Iran.

The U.S. “Surge” in Iraq is specifically targeting forces allied with Iran, seeking to reduce Iran’s ability to respond to a U.S. attack by sparking retaliation against the U.S in Iraq. As Sepehri notes, “although the surge in U.S. troops will do little to really secure Iraq (an idea which has been ridiculed even by the administration’s supporters), it is designed to pressure, fragment and break away parts of the forces allied with Iran, pulling away forces which can be acquiesced through military pressure, while isolating and destroying those who will not submit. The aim of this is to remove many of Iran’s options to respond to an attack including retaliation against the U.S. forces in Iraq” (12).

U.S. Air Force Planning Groups have been “drawing up lists of targets” (Hersh) in Iran since at least early 2002. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have recently completed contingency plans that will permit Bush to bomb Iran on 24 hours notice.

U.S. Special Ops and CIA teams have been placed in Iran, marking targets for future air assaults, studying the terrain, and fomenting rebellion among ethnic and religious minorities.

The Pentagon has placed two full carrier groups in the Persian Gulf, giving the U.S. the capacity to sustain a month-long bombing and missile campaign against Iran. Even before the Stennis and Eisenhower groups arrived, the U.S. and the United Kingdom possessed a giant naval presence in the Gulf.

Last December, the Pentagon replaced General John Abizaid with Admiral William Fallon as the head of Centcom, the command authority developed by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to “guard oil flows” from the Persian Gulf. Abizaid had supported the ISG’s recommendation of diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iraq. The new Centcom chief is an expert coordinator of the sort of combined air and sea operations that would be involved in a confrontation with Iran.

The U.S. has been illegally sending unmanned aerial surveillance drones into Iranian air space. It recently invaded the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and seized six Iranian nationals.

The U.S. has been stockpiling oil reserves and has pressured its arch-reactionary oil-rich client state Saudi Arabia to increase petroleum production levels.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been moved to the Iraq-Iran border. In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. Air Force and Navy planes were going to be used more aggressively along that border – the point being to provoke an Iranian response that could be used (ala the Gulf of Tonkin) as a pretext for a U.S. assault.

The U.S. has installed “defensive” Patriot Missiles in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab Emirates. This is meant to defend these states against intermediate range (Shihab-3) ballistic missiles that Washington suspects Iran would launch in response to a U.S and/or Israeli attack.

On February 11, the Washington Post reported that Dick Cheney’s new national security advisor John Hanna considers 2007 “the year of Iran.” A central player in the making of the Bush administration’s deceptive case for the invasion of Iraq, Hannah said that a U.S. assault on Iran was “a real possibility” this year (13).

The Bush administration’s recent willingness to accommodate China by cutting a bargain with North Korea may in part reflect a desire to stop China from opposing a U.S. assault on Iran. As David Whitehouse notes, “the North Korea deal raises the stakes for Iran. China has been a potential obstacle to U.S. action against Iran, but progress over North Korea may make the Chinese more willing to accept a military strike…the favor the U.S. is extending to China over North Korea could be returned with Chinese acquiescence to the U.S. police role in the Middle East.”

The Bush administration knows that neither of its two closest military rivals – Russia and China – will back Iran in an armed conflict with the superpower. While they will block a force resolution against Iran at the UN, they will stand clear once U.S. attack becomes imminent (14).

Last December the Bush administration succeeded in persuading the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution imposing economic sanctions on Iran for supposedly threatening international peace with nuclear activities. This has set the stage for Bush to demand that the Security Council sanction the use of force against Iran. When Security Council members Russia and China (inevitably) reject that demand, Bush may well (on the model of the 2002-2003 run to the invasion of Iraq) cite earlier resolutions to justify direct U.S. military action. “We’ve done all we can through the inadequate channels of international law and the UN,” Bush will claim (in essence) “but now the time has come for us to act” against an Evil State that the UN itself has identified as ‘a danger to world peace’” (14.5)

The assault envisioned, it should be noted, is a “Shock and Awe” air attack, not a ground invasion or prolonged occupation that will cause mass U.S. casualties. The problem of GI burnout and casualties will not deter Washington from undertaking a month-long high-tech air war launched mainly from sea-born vessels. The White House is contemplating the use of nuclear weaponry, something that would involve an especially high ratio of “enemy” devastation to U.S. troop loss. As Alenjandro Nadal notes in La Jornada:

“Many people think that an offensive by Washington would be foolish because the Americans can hardly cope with Iraq. How are they going to attack a country that is twice as big and has double the number of inhabitants? But...Washington’s objective is not to invade and occupy Iran. The central purpose is to eliminate it as an obstacle to controlling the resources of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. And, to achieve that, it is not necessary to invade the country. It is enough to destroy its military capacity, aerial and naval, something that the armed forces of the United States and its few allies can achieve in some week of selective bombardment...In reply, Iran can unleash a nightmare for the Americans in Iraq. But the sacrifice of additional tens of soldiers in Baghdad is not something that is going to stop the...the Bush-Cheney duo...[and] the American people...will be faced with a fait accompli”(15).

The fact that the world economy could be damaged by the disruption of oil flows from the Middle East is of little concern to Washington. U.S. policymakers are concerned first and foremost that the United States continues to bolster its world domination by controlling the strategically hyper-significant energy resources of the Middle East, not that not that they or the rest of the world enjoy unimpeded access to Middle Eastern oil. Iraq’s oil production has fallen from nearly 3 million barrels to about 1.5 billion barrels since the United States invaded – something that has led the major oil companies to jack up their prices (helping them garner record profits) even as increased Saudi production has helped make up the difference (16).

The White House has made its contempt for the relevance of world and domestic opinion (and even much informed elite opinion) on numerous occasions, including the occupation of Iraq. Indifference to public opinion and law is hardly a “novel” stance on the part of U.S. policymakers, “but the statist reactionaries at the helm in Washington,” Chomsky notes, “have set new records in flaunting their credentials as international outlaws” (17).

Asked about the opposition of the Congress and the American people to the U.S. “Surge” (escalation) in (and beyond) Iraq, Darth Cheney was blunt in his response: “it won’t stop us,” he said, leading one concerned U.S. citizen to write the following to the Editors of the New York Times: “What I want to know is, Who is ‘us’? If it's not the American electorate or the United States Congress, which was elected to represent American citizens, who is it? Or maybe the question should be, Who is this administration and what has it done with my country?"(18).

It doesn’t help that the Democratic Party’s leadership and leading presidential candidates are hawkish on Iran – reflecting deeply shared doctrinal assumptions on the United States’ right and “responsibility” to exercise imperial “leadership” (global dominance) in and beyond Middle East (18.5) – even as they criticize the Bush administration’s sorry performance in Iraq. Or that dominant U.S. war and entertainment media has been willing to play much the same role regarding Iran that it played vis-à-vis Iraq in 2002 and 2003. It is dutifully relaying administration propaganda about the mythical Iran threat.

And then there’s the vicious madness of boy-king George. Bush the Second combines profound mental mediocrity with sloppy, dry-drunk Protestant Fundamentalism, an advanced case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and a sneering authoritarianism born of an especially vile and aristocratic upbringing. These toxic features and his life history blind him to his own mistakes and crimes and make him susceptible to the influence of powerful and deranged proto-fascists like Dick Cheney. They push him to respond to his Iraq fiasco by doubling down his bets on Iran - convinced that he can still “hit the jackpot” if he just keeps rambling and gambling in the oil-rich Middle East. They tell him he is endlessly free to transgress without consequence and insulate from the counsel of more rational elites within the imperial establishment. According to Bush’s own brother Jeb, as recounted in Ron Suskind’s book The One Percent Doctrine, “Dubya” appears to enjoy compelling other people to “knuckle under” and doesn’t really care about whether he’s right or wrong. He may actually find it more amusing to be wrong and still force everyone to follows his command.

How much do rational warnings of possible or likely disaster matter to George “The Decider” Bush and his dark overlord Cheney? As their “untidy” (in the lovely description of Donald “Shit Happens” Rumsfeld) fiasco deepened in Iraq, it is worth remembering, the White House claimed that neither they nor anyone else had good reasons to anticipate the chaos that lay ahead when they invaded that shattered nation. This was completely false. Beyond technically irrelevant predictions of turmoil from within the Middle East and from the U.S. and global Left, numerous key establishment figures advanced serious “elite” warnings about possibly disastrous consequences after a quick military victory over a weak regime. The agents of advance warning (to name just some of the more prominent voices) included George Bush Senior’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, retired Air Force Col. John Warden, Marine Corps consultant Frank Hoffman, National Defense University professor Daniel Kuehl, conservative Congressman Ike Skelton (the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee), and the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (19).

All of these and other voices within and beyond the foreign policy establishment issued relevant notes of caution and alarm regarding the difficulties inherent in illegally occupying Mesopotamia.

None of if it was worth a pile of West Texas horseshit. The warnings went unheeded by an administration that clung to the notion of quick and easy “victory” (20).

Four years later, to make things yet more dangerous, Bush, Cheney and others in the White House may be caught up in the “wounded predator” syndrome. Figuratively bloodied by an Iraqi quagmire so obvious and humiliating that even Bush can’t completely miss it, the injured monsters in the White House may be driven to act recklessly out of terrible desperation. As Gilbert Achcar noted in early 2006:

“They want to control the energy resources of the region. The problem is what means can they use to achieve that goal? And...they are in real disarray about what to do. When you follow closely what they do on the ground, you have a sense of shifting policies; they are pragmatically trying to react to adversity but the fact is they have no general long-term strategy. The problem is that all this is truly worrying. The Iraqi vox populi is certainly right to be worried about U.S. plans, because the wounded beast could be truly dangerous” (21).

The Iranian “vox populi” also has reasons to worry. As Chomsky noted last July, “Bush planners have created remarkable catastrophes for themselves in the Middle East. And it is conceivable that they might strike out in desperation, hitting the system with a sledgehammer to see if somehow the results will come out in their favor” (22).

The administration’s desperation could be furthered by its awareness of the remarkable strategic stakes at play in the Middle East. Cheney and Bush have sparked events that could end up significantly damaging the United States’ position in the world system. Their incompetent and delusional actions have enabled a potential decisive separation of largely Shiite-inhabited Middle East oil lands from U.S. control, something that would cost the United States critical leverage over world-capitalist rivals and significantly accelerate its demotion to the position of a “second-rate world power.” Seen from the perspective of the American Empire Project, of course, there is nothing irrational about U.S. policymakers’ longstanding obsession with the control of Middle Eastern oil (23).

Other depressing facts are that Bush and Cheney see the historical window closing on their probably cherished desire to attack Iran and could be motivated by their party’s deepening domestic political crisis to “Wag the Dog” (distract the enraged homeland populace with military actions overseas) on a large scale, looking for a domestic political twist on Chomsky’s “sledgehammer.”

If Bush and Cheney can be convinced that bearing their nuclear tipped teeth is combining with other tactics – the fanning of Sunni-Shiite conflicts, external strangulation, and the cultivation of internal Iranian rebellion, etc. – to effectively show Iran and the Middle East who’s boss, then perhaps Washington will stand down from a full-blown assault. The Godfather doesn’t always have to actually kill; sometimes he can be convinced that the demonstration of his capacity for violence was sufficient to enforce proper obedience.

Will they attack Iran sometime this or next year? If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Washington standing down. It seems like too crazy a proposition even for Bush and Chenet at this point. But who knows? I didn’t think they’d invade Iraq at first and I’m not into prognostication. It’s not about the crystal ball.

The facts that we have to work like Hell just to form educated guesses about what “our” “leaders” might do in our name – not to mention the name of “democracy” – and that the attack is a possibility are indications show the building of a serious anti-imperialist movement is long overdue inside the United States.

It shouldn’t be like this. U.S. citizens should begin building a serious Left and anti-imperial movement aiming to replace dominant domestic structures of Empire and Inequality with egalitarian institutions of justice, equality and peace. Such “radical reconstruction of society” – Martin Luther King Jr.’s declared objective by 1966 (24) – is required, among other reasons, to eliminate the chance for demented war criminals and authoritarian militarists like Bush and Cheney to become structurally super-empowered predators in the first place.

Veteran radical historian, journalist, and speaker Paul Street (paulstreet99@ yahoo.com) is a Left political commentator in Iowa City, IA. Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago, 2005) and The Empire and Inequality Report. Street’s next book Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York, 2007) will be released next June.



NOTES

1 John Pilger, “Iran: the War Begins,” ZNet Sustainer Commentary, February 3, 2007, available online at www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/03pilger.cfm; Michael T. Klare, “Bush’s Future Iran War Speech,” Tomdispatch, reproduced on ZNet, February 26, 2007, available online at http://www. zmag.org/ content/ showarticle.cfm?itemid=12218.

1.5 Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter, “U.S. Generals ‘Will Quit’ if Bush Orders Iran Attack,” London Times, 25 February 2007, available online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ news/world/iraq/article1434540.ece).

2. Bzrezinski is quoted in Stephen Lendman, “George Bush’s Sampson Option,” ZNet March 8, 2007, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/ showarticle.cfm? SectionID=67&ItemID=12284).

3. Paul Street, “ ‘ Without Question?’ On Growing Military Opposition to the Invasion of Iraq,” ZNet, January 11, 2007, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11825.

4. Saman Sepehri, “The Pressure is On: The U.S. is Gearing Up for a Fight With Iran,” International Socialist Review, (March-April 2007), p. 12.

5. Noam Chomsky, “A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded,” The Guardian, 9 March 2007, available online at www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ story/0,,2030015,00.html.

6. Lendman, “George Bush’s Samson Option.”

7. Seymour Hersh, “Annals of National Security: The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2006, available online at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/ 17/060417fa_fact

8. John Pilger, “Iran: the War Begins,” ZNet Sustainer Commentary, February 3, 2007, available online at www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/03pilger.cfm.

9. Tom Engelhardt, “The Seymour Hersh Mystery,” TomDispatch, March 13, 2006, available online at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=174764

10. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, March 3, 2007, available online at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022507Z.shtml.

11. Quotation in Lendman, “Bush’s Samson Option.”

12. Sepehri, “The Pressure is On,” p.12.

13. Karen De Young, “U.S. Keeps Pressure on Iran,” Washington Post, 11 February 2007, p. A18.

14. David Whitehouse, “Desperate for a Deal,” International Socialist Review (March-April 2007), p.10; Sepehri, “The Pressure is On.” “The Chinese know the U.S. is in a Middle East quagmire,” Whitehouse adds, “and they might not mind handing Bush a shovel to dig even deeper.”

14.5 Klare, “Bush’s Future Iran War Speech.”

15. Alenjandro Nadal, “Blitzkrieg Against Iran: Bush and Cheney’s Twisted Logic,” La Jornada, Mexico, April 4, 2007.

16. Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2006], p.58; Mathew Wald, “War and Cheap Oil: A Second Look,” New York Times, 7 January 2007, sec. 4, p. 2.

17. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, p. 232.

18. Stephanie Nicholas, Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, January 27, 2007.

18.5 On shared doctrinal assumptions, see Tony Smith’s candid commentary, “It’s Uphill for the Democrats: They Need a Global Strategy, Not Just Tactics for Iraq,” Washington Post Sunday, March 11, 2007, p. B1, available online at www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901884_pf.html

19. Paul Street, Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), pp. 57-66.

20. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York, 2006), p. 59.

21. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, p. 114.

22. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, pp. 230-231. See also Chomsky, “A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded.” The potential benefits of inflicting chaos through “sledgehammer” assault are suggested by the ironic fact that, as Sepehri notes, “the unfolding disaster in Iraq” has “provided the means for the U.S., Israel and the Arab regimes to combat Iran’s political influence through Sunni/Shiite divisions and sectarianism. While the sectarian violence in Iraq has undermined the U.S. ability to bring security or claim any control over the situation in Iraq,” Sepehri observes, “it has also provided the tool to break apart any united political opposition to the U.S. (and Israel).” See Sepehri, “The Pressure is On,” p. 12.

23. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, pp. 25-26, 53-55, 57-58, 114, 231.

24. Paul Street, “ ‘ Until We Get a New Social Order:’ Reflections on the Early Radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr.” ZNet (January 16, 2007), available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11871; Paul Street, “The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Meaning of the Black Revolution,” Black Agenda Report (March 21, 2007), available online at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 149&Itemid=34.

No One's Drinking Bush's Kool-Aid on Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
Posted on February 15, 2007, Printed on April 19, 2007


It was, President Bush must have been thinking, a heck of a lot easier five years ago. Back in 2002, the president had a smoothly running lie factory humming along in the Pentagon, producing reams of fake intelligence about Iraq, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans. Back then, he had a tightly knit cabal of neoconservatives, led by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, to carry out a coordinated effort to distribute the lies to the media. And he had a chorus of yes-men in the Republican-controlled Congress ready to echo the party line.

In 2007, Bush stands nearly alone, and he never looked lonelier than during a bumbling, awkward news conference on the Iraq-Iran tangle Wednesday.

Feith is long gone, and last week his lie factory was exposed by the Pentagon's own inspector general, who told Congress that Feith had pretty much made up everything that his rogue intelligence unit manufactured. Libby is long gone, apparently about to be sentenced to jail for lying about Cheney's frantic effort to cover up the lie factory's work. And the congressional echo chamber is gone: In six weeks, the Democrats have held more than four dozen hearings to investigate the White House's catastrophic Middle East policy, and even Hillary Clinton is warning that Bush had better keep his hands off Iran, saying: "It would be a mistake of historical proportions if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran."

Without his Orwellian apparatus behind him, the president spent most of his hour-long news conference yesterday shrugging and smirking, jutting his jaw out with false bravado, joshing inappropriately with reporters asking deadly serious questions and stumbling over his words. It was painful to listen to him trying to justify the nonsensical claims that Iran and its paramilitary "Quds Force" are somehow responsible for the chaos in Iraq:

What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

Pressed about what the "head leaders" are doing, he went on:

Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? ... What's worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?

If that makes no sense to you, well, that's because the whole thing makes no sense. It's a farcical replay of Iraq 2002, when the White House demonized Saddam Hussein with fake intelligence, turning him into a menacing al-Qaida backer armed with weapons of mass destruction. This time, however, the lie factory has been dismantled. All by himself, the president is trying to turn Iran into a scary, al-Qaida-allied, nuke-wielding menace. But he's not fooling anyone. The potent "war president" of 2002-2003 is now an incoherent, mewling Wizard of Oz-like figure, and people are paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

Unlike 2002, when the White House fired salvo after salvo of fake intelligence about Iraq, today it can't even stage its lies properly. Like the incompetents who couldn't organize a two-car funeral, the remaining Iran war hawks in the administration held a briefing in Baghdad on Sunday to present alleged evidence that Iran is masterminding the insurgency in Iraq. But it was a comedy of errors that convinced no one. Twice, at least, the administration had earlier postponed or canceled the much-promoted event, designed to reveal the supposed secrets behind Iran's actions in Iraq. When it was finally held, it was not in Washington, but in Baghdad, with not a single White House official, no U.S. diplomat, no State Department official, no CIA official and no one from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Instead, a couple of anonymous military officers held a background-only briefing, barring cameras and tape recorders, to present some blurry photographs of bomb-looking things -- and not a shred of evidence of Iranian government involvement.

It was as if Adlai Stevenson had gotten up at the United Nations during the missile crisis in Cuba and, rather than showing detailed U-2 photographs of missile emplacements, had simply said, "Ladies and gentleman, some Cuban guy we talked to said the Russians are putting missiles in Cuba."

According to The Washington Times, the effort to blame Iran was directly torpedoed by the U.S. intelligence community, through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ODNI, said the Times, "sought to play down the intelligence on Iranian involvement, fearing that the report will be used as a basis to launch an attack on Iran." Many earlier reports noted that both the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community were strongly opposed to any attempt to demonize Iran. There's nothing like a bureaucracy scorned to conduct passive-aggressive sabotage of misguided policies, and in this case the bureaucracy apparently succeeded. The dog-and-pony show on Iranian meddling in Iraq not only didn't scare anyone, it caused guffaws of laughter and ridicule.

And then there was the hilarious presidential press conference yesterday, to top it off.

There is, of course, no basis for arguing that the civil war in Iraq is caused by Iran. And there is no basis -- "not supported by underlying intelligence," as the Pentagon I.G. said about Doug Feith's 2002 work -- to argue that Iran is responsible for a significant part of American deaths in Iraq. Nearly all of the U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by the secular-Baathist Sunni-led resistance and religious Sunni extremists fighting the occupation, and none of the forces allied with the resistance have ties to Iran. Even the anonymous briefers at the dog-and-camel show in Baghdad admitted that Iran is helping the Shiite militias, not the Sunnis; in other words, Iran is helping the self-same militias that are being trained and armed by the United States.

And the spurious claim that 170 Americans have died in attacks using Iranian-supplied super-IED's since 2004 can only mean one thing: that the Pentagon is counting the numbers of U.S. soldiers and Marines who died in April and August, 2004. That was when the United States waged two mini-wars against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. It was the only time in the past four years when the United States suffered significant casualties fighting the Shiites -- though the administration presented zero evidence that Sadr's Mahdi Army gets weapons from Iran, or needs to. But if they're counting as far back as 2004 -- and, according to the Pentagon, the super-IED's started showing up in 2004 -- then the whole issue is absurd, since what happened three years ago has little or no relevance to current conditions.

Those prone to believe, along with the president, that Iran is fomenting the violence in Iraq have already drunk deep of the neocon Kool-Aid. The rest of us can only shake our heads in wonder that the president thinks he can get away with this.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/48083/

Bush's Iraq Plan - Goading Iran into War

Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - President George W. Bush's address on Iraq Wednesday night was less about Iraq than about its eastern neighbour, Iran. There was little new about the U.S.'s strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the president spelled out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the U.S.

While Washington speculated whether the president would accept or reject the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, few predicted that he would do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton advised. Rather than withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush ordered an augmentation of troop levels. Rather than talking to Iran and Syria, Bush virtually declared war on these states. And rather than pressuring Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration is fuelling the factional war in Gaza by arming and training Fatah against Hamas.

Several recent developments and statements indicate that the administration is ever more seriously eyeing war with Iran. On Wednesday, Bush made the starkest accusations yet against the rulers in Tehran, alleging that the clerics were "providing material support for attacks on American troops."

While promising to "disrupt the attacks on our forces" and "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," he made no mention of the flow of arms and funds to Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, he revealed the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf and of the Patriot anti-missile defence system to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to protect U.S. allies. The usefulness of this step for resolving the violence in Iraq remains a mystery. Neither the Sunni insurgents nor the Shia militias possess ballistic missiles. And if they did, nothing indicates that they would target the GCC states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The deployment of the Patriot missiles can be explained, however, in light of a U.S. plan to attack Iran. Last year, Tehran signalled the GCC states in unusually blunt language that it would retaliate against the Arab sheikhdoms if the U.S. attacked Iran using bases in the GCC countries. Mindful of the weakness of Iran's air force, Tehran's most likely weapon would be ballistic missiles -- the very same weapon that the Patriots are designed to provide a shield against. A first step towards going to war with Iran would be to provide the GCC states with protection against potential Iranian retaliation.

Perhaps the starkest indication of an impending war with Iran is Washington's recent arrest of Iranian diplomats in Iraq. Around the time of President Bush's speech, U.S. Special Forces -- in blatant violation of diplomatic regulations reminiscent of the hostage taking of U.S. diplomats in Tehran by Iranian students in 1979 -- stormed the Iranian consulate in Erbil in northern Iraq, arresting five diplomats. Later that day, U.S. forces almost clashed with Kurdish peshmerga militia forces when seeking to arrest more Iranians at Arbil's airport.

These operations incensed the Iraqi government, including its Kurdish components that otherwise are staunchly pro-Washington. "What happened... was very annoying because there has been an Iranian liaison office there for years and it provides services to the citizens," Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshiyar Zebari, who is himself a Kurd, told Al-Arabiya television.

The Bush administration has justified the raids -- including the arrests of several Iranian officials in December last year -- on the grounds that evidence is collected on Iranian involvement in destabilising Iraq. But if the purpose is intelligence gathering, it would make more sense to launch a simultaneous mass raid of Iranian offices rather than the current incremental approach that provides the Iranians forewarning and an opportunity to destroy whatever evidence they may or may not have in their possession.

The incremental raids and arrests may instead be aimed at provoking the Iranians to respond, which in turn would escalate the situation and provide the Bush administration with the casus belli it needs to win Congressional support for war with Iran. Rather than making the case for a pre-emptive war with Iran over weapons of mass destruction -- a strategy the U.S. pursued with Iraq that is unlikely to succeed with Iran -- the sequence of events in the provocation and escalation strategy would make it appear as if war was forced on the U.S.

Prominent Republican and Democratic Senators seem to have picked up on the president's war strategy. At Thursday's hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska drew parallels with the Richard Nixon administration's strategy of lying to the U.S. people and expanding the Vietnam war into Cambodia. "[W]hen you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here," he warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "it's very, very dangerous."

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware added that war with Iran would require congressional authority. Still, Congress is yet to pose a major challenge to Bush's war plan beyond holding hearings with heated exchanges between frustrated Senators and defensive administration officials.

The next move may be Iran's. Tehran has likely sniffed the trap and will sit idly by for now and deprive the Bush administration of a pretext for escalation. But continued provocations from the U.S. through additional raids of Iranian consulates and offices will likely lead to an intentional or unintentional response, after which escalation and war may become reality. Iran has at times failed to exhibit the discipline necessary to refrain from responding to aggressions.

While the administration's calculation may be that lethal pressure on Iran will force Tehran to compromise, faith in Iran that offering concessions will prompt a change in the U.S.'s Iran-policy is next to nonexistent due to the Bush administration's past rejections of Iranian offers.

But Tehran may be able to change the political climate and escape Bush's war trap by reinitiating talks with the European Union to address regional matters as well as the nuclear impasse. Europe's patience and faith in Iran has largely been depleted due to Tehran's failure to fully appreciate efforts by Javier Solana, high representative for the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy, to negotiate an agreement on enrichment suspension last fall.

Still, the EU understands that the tidal waves of a regional war in the Middle East will reach Europe much sooner than they reach U.S. shores. Whether Europe will stand up for its own values and security and against Bush's war plans, however, remains to be seen. Here, Tehran's offers are likely not inconsequential.

*Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Triangle -- The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" (Yale University Press, 2007). (END/2007)

Iran: The Next War

from Rolling Stone magazine

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran. BY JAMES BAMFORD >>read the Rolling Stone story here

U.S. Support for Terrorism in Iran

U.S. Support for Terrorism in Iran
Ardeshir Ommani, April 7, 2007


Apparently, the U.S. and British authorities have turned so desperate for an alibi that they readily embraced the assertion of an infamous anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalgh (MEK) group, listed as a terrorist organization of bandits by Britain, the U.S., and the European Union. A spokesman of this group, which vegetates in the shadow of the U.S. army in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, said that the British crews’ capture was planned in advance. But David Stringer of the Associated Press immediately realized that he owes it to his readers to mention that the speaker of the MEK offered no evidence to support his claims. This group, along with the old Iranian monarchists, like their financiers in the White House and Downing Street, need no evidence to fabricate stories of any size. It is noteworthy that three years ago, U.S. intelligence circles suggested re-arming MEK and using it to destabilize Iran, a recommendation that has apparently readily been implemented. The undertaking of this plan makes the U.S. government complicit in the terrorist acts that have been carried out inside Iran. The New York Times recently revealed that the camp operates under the protection of the U.S. military and American troops chauffer MEK operatives.

Another organization that carries out cross-border attacks on Iranian villages is the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which is supported with equipment and training by Israeli Special Forces. This group receives its “lists of targets inside Iran” from U.S. intelligence services.

A third terrorist organization that operates on the border between Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran and the countries of Pakistan on the south and Afghanistan on the north is called Jundallah (God’s Brigade), an extremist Sunni tribal faction. This group has been launching armed attacks on the civilian population, planting bombs and kidnapping passengers. The group has its bases in Pakistan and apparently is funded, trained and armed by the U.S. and British armies in Afghanistan and in the Iran-Pakistan border regions. According to Greg Elich of www.GlobalResearch.ca , U.S. and Israeli officials are setting up front companies to help finance the future covert local wars in Iran. An old historical statement comes to mind when thinking about how the CIA armed and financed Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahadeen fundamentalists in Afghanistan during the 1980’s to undermine the Soviet Union - History repeats itself: the first time it’s a tragedy, the second time it’s a farce.

It is now a well-known fact that U.S. special operation forces in Iraq have been given the task of kidnapping Iranian members of the diplomatic corps of individuals in Iraq and the countries where U.S. intelligence agents operate freely. For example, U.S. forces led a commando-type, helicopter-borne raid in Erbil, northern Iaq, and grabbed six Iranian liaison personnel in January 2007. These special units, operating without the permission of the Kurdish authorities, reportedly used stun guns against the men while seizing office computers, ransacking and intentionally destroying the property inside and taking down the Iranian flag from the rooftop of the raided building as a demonstration of the hatred and disrespect toward the Iranian people. The President of Iraq, Mr. Talabani, as well as one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, condemned the raid, calling it an attack on Iraq’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the United States refused to allow any communication with the detained officials until the incident with the 15 British sailors and marines was brought into a process of negotiation. Under that condition, the United States was pressured to allow communication by the Iranian government with the Iranian captives, a promise yet to be fulfilled. And worse than that, an Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary in Iran’s embassy in Baghdad who was kidnapped in Iraq by U.S. forces and held for over two months, was released this week. Mr. Sharafi told IRNA (Iran’s State News Agency) he was subjected to torture “day and night”. He said, “I was kidnapped on a Baghdad street while shopping by officials who had Iraqi defense ministry ID cards and were riding in American forces vehicles.” Mr. Sharafi said he was taken to a military base near Baghdad airport, and questioned in Arabic and English. “The CIA officials’ questions focused mainly on Iran’s presence and influence in Iraq. When faced with my responses on Iran’s official ties with the Iraqi government, they increased the torture.” Apparently, this is the customary method that the United States government, which likes to brag about its ‘love of democracy and concern for human rights’ treats foreign detainees and kidnapped individuals. What a respect for human rights! Where are the human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, to expose and condemn Washington’s routine practice of human rights violations?
Earlier this month, a former Iranian deputy defense minister, Mr. Ali Reza Asgari who was in Turkey to attend a conference, disappeared into thin air, and his family in Tehran has not heard from him since. Iranian officials said Asgari was kidnapped by western agents. These attacks, not highly nor widely publicized in the U.S. press, are part of the covert front of the U.S. and British forces.

Blitzkrieg Against Iran: Bush-Cheney’s Twisted Logic

by Alenjandro Nadal; La Jornada; April 06, 2007

The crisis of 15 British sailors captured by Iran has brought up close the matter of a possible attack by the United States on that country. Very few think it is a logical option for Washington. But wars almost never start with rational analysis. Miscalculations and malignancy are the most common ingredients in the motives for conflicts.

For the White House, the need to attack Iran becomes more urgent every day. The perception is that as the end of the Bush administration approaches, the window of opportunity for an offensive is closing. As such, although it is not very logical to think that a President of the United States could hand over to his successor a recently-started war, that is precisely what is bound to happen in the current situation in the prevailing delirium in the Oval Office. There is no doubt that all the rules have changed after September 11.

The Security Council will not be a brake for Washington. This organisation has been transformed in the most radical way since the end of the Cold War. Nine Eleven delivered a coup de grace to what at some point was the Security Council. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are almost accepted as normal though these do not have the support of that body.

The pretext in starting the offensive against Iran, its supposed nuclear project, is absurd for many reasons. To start with, there is no incontrovertible proof that Iran has a programme to arm itself with nuclear arms. The debate on this point is not closed. The installations of Natanz (enriching uranium) and Arak (heavy water) could be part of an effort to acquire an indigenous technological capacity in the civil nuclear industry, or could be the start of a military adventure. Even if a nuclear military project exists in Iran, it could not bear fruit in the coming month. Under ideal conditions, it will need at least four years to finish producing and installing 3,000 centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to military level, start the plant and carry out tests.

It is clear that there are hawks in Teheran very interested in obtaining this type of weaponry. They do not lack incentives and a look at the map gives an understanding of their motivation. To the east, Afghanistan in full-blown conflict, and a little further, Pakistan with its nuclear arms (now de facto legalised by the agreement between Washington and Islamabad). To the west, Iraq in full civil war and, further, Israel with its nuclear arsenal. Towards the north, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, Russia, the other nuclear superpower. Further to the north-east, China. Above all, the incentives of recent realpolitik: if one has nuclear arms, there will be negotiations (North Korea); otherwise there will be war (Iraq).

Many people think that an offensive by Washington would be foolish because the Americans can hardly cope with Iraq. How are they going to attack a country that is twice as big and has double the number of inhabitants?

But here is where it is outside the focus of a good part of the international debate. Washington’s objective is not to invade and occupy Iran. The central purpose is to eliminate it as an obstacle to controlling the resources of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. And, to achieve that, it is not necessary to invade the country. It is enough to destroy its military capacity, aerial and naval, something that the armed forces of the United States and its few allies can achieve in some week of selective bombardment. We should not forget that Pentagon has been preparing for decades to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to naval movement (and the Europeans, in an emergency, are going to be thankful).

In reply, Iran can unleash a nightmare for the Americans in Iraq. But the sacrifice of additional tens of soldiers in Baghdad is not something that is going to stop the dream of the Bush-Cheney duo. Within a month, the casualty figures of American soldiers in Iraq will exceed 3,300 deaths. The daily average of American casualties is about 2.3 so far in the war. The White House will not feel obliged to retire its troops from Iraq if the figure crosses four or five dead soldiers each day. The American people can react in other ways but by then they will be faced with a fait accompli.

In the twisted logic of Cheney and Bush, chaos and more casualties is what is going to oblige the United States to remain in Iraq. For these two characters, the Europeans, reluctant or otherwise, will have to accept that it is better to control the hydrocarbon riches of Central Asia and the Caspian than to abandon the region in the middle of chaos. The rules have changed, and Bush-Cheney are not prepared to let the opportunity go.

Translated from Spanish by Supriyo Chatterjee



This article was published in La Jornada, Mexico, on April 4, 2007

The Botched Raid on Arbil: US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted Hostage Taking

April 3, 2007
CounterPunch Special Report
The Botched Raid on Arbil
US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted Hostage Taking

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Arbil, Iraq.

A failed US attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that ten weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and marines.

Early in the morning of 11 January helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil -- and the angry Iranian response to it -- should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable navy search parties in the Gulf.

The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at his house beside Dokan lake and later saw Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, at his mountain headquarters at Salahudin overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he (Jafari) was there," said Mr Hussein.

Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second very senior Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard)," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad, in a separate interview. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdisan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.

The attempt by the US to seize two senior Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the official Iranian newsagency IRNA that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid. In a little noticed remark Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the agency: "The objective of the Americans was to arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq to develop cooperation in the area of bilateral security."

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, and have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces." This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there vare no Sunni Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President Bush making an Address to the Nation on 10 January in which he claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's main enemies in Iraq though the four-year old guerrilla war against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly anti-Iranian Sunni Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later complained about US allegations asking: "So far has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered country? Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks are from Arab countries in the region."

It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly flaunt the authority of both the Iraqi President Mr Talabani and the head of the KRG Mr Barzani simply to raid an Iranian liaison office that was being upgraded to a consulate, though this had not yet happened on 11 January. US officials, who must have been privy to the White House's new anti-Iranian stance, may have thought that bruised Kurdish pride was a small price to pay if the US could grab such senior Iranian officials as Mr Jafari and Gen Frouzanda.

For over a year the US and its allies have been trying to put pressure on Iran. Security sources in Iraqi Kurdistan have long said that the US is backing Iranian Kurdish guerrillas in Iran. The US is also reportedly backing Sunni Arab dissidents in Khuzestan in southern Iran who are opposed to the government in Tehran. On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, seized Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat.

But the raid on Arbil and the attempt to capture two such senior Iranian officials was a far more serious and aggressive act by the US than in any of these cases. Unlike them it was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive raid Arbil raid provokd a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between US and Iran which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.