[lit-ideas] Plans for bombing Iran
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:56:46 -0800 (PST)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2021434,00.html
US accused of drawing up plan to bomb Iran
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday February 26, 2007
The Guardian
President George Bush has charged the Pentagon with
devising an expanded bombing plan for Iran that can be
carried out at 24 hours' notice, it was reported
yesterday.
An extensive article in the New Yorker magazine by the
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh describes the
contingency bombing plan as part of a general overhaul
by the Bush administration of its policy towards Iran.
It said a special planning group at the highest levels
of the US military had expanded its mission from
selecting potential targets connected to Iranian
nuclear facilities, and had been directed to add sites
that may be involved in aiding Shia militant forces in
Iraq to its list.
Article continues
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That new strategy, intended to reverse the rise in
Iranian power that has been an unintended consequence
of the war in Iraq, could bring the countries much
closer to open confrontation and risks igniting a
regional sectarian war between Shia and Sunni Muslims,
the New Yorker says.
Elements of the tough new approach towards Tehran
outlined by Hersh include:
· Clandestine operations against Iran and Syria, as
well as the Hizbullah movement in Lebanon - even to
the extent of bolstering Sunni extremist groups that
are sympathetic to al-Qaida
· Sending US special forces into Iranian territory in
pursuit of Iranian operatives, as well as to gather
intelligence
· Secret operations are being funded by Saudi Arabia
to avoid scrutiny by Congress. "There are many, many
pots of black money, scattered in many places and used
all over the world on a variety of missions," Hersh
quotes a Pentagon consultant as saying.
As in the run-up to the Iraq war, the vice-president,
Dick Cheney, has bypassed other administration
officials to take charge of the aggressive new policy,
working along with the deputy national security
adviser, Elliott Abrams, and the former ambassador to
Kabul and Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad.
Mr Cheney is also relying heavily on Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, who spent
22 years as ambassador to the US, and who has been
offering his advice on foreign policy to Mr Bush since
he first contemplated running for president.
The New Yorker revelations, arriving soon after Mr
Cheney reaffirmed that war with Iran remained an
option if it did not dismantle its nuclear programme,
further ratcheted up fears of a military confrontation
between Washington and Tehran.
Such concerns deepened further with the warning from
the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that there
could be no stopping or rolling back of his country's
nuclear programme. "The train of the Iranian nation is
without brakes and a rear gear," Iranian radio
reported Mr Ahmadinejad as saying.
Hersh, who made his reputation by breaking the story
of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, was
among the first US journalists to report on the prison
abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. Although the most
explosive material was supplied by unnamed sources,
his status in US journalism made his latest report an
immediate talking point on yesterday's TV chatshows.
His assertion that the Bush administration was
actively preparing for an attack on Iran was denied by
the Pentagon. "The United States is not planning to go
to war with Iran. To suggest anything to the contrary
is simply wrong, misleading and mischievous," the
Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, told reporters.
Hersh was just as adamant. "This president is not
going to leave office without doing something about
Iran," he told CNN. Hersh claims that the former
director of national intelligence, John Negroponte,
resigned his post to take a parallel job as the deputy
director of the state department because of his
discomfort with an approach that so closely echoed the
Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s.
In seeking to contain Iranian influence - and that of
its most powerful protege, the Hizbullah leader,
Hassan Nasrallah - the US has worked with the
governments of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both countries
see a powerful Iran as an existential threat, and the
Saudis suspect Tehran's hand behind rising sectarian
tensions in its eastern province, as well as a spate
of bombing attacks inside the kingdom.
One prime arena for the new strategy is Lebanon where
the administration has been trying to prop up the
government of Fouad Siniora, which faces a resurgent
Hizbullah movement in the aftermath of last summer's
war with Israel.
Some of the billions of aid to the Beirut government
has ended up in the hands of radical Sunnis in the
Beka'a valley, Hersh writes. Syrian extremist groups
have also benefited from the new policy. "These
groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to
Hizbullah; at the same time, their ideological ties
are with al-Qaida," Hersh writes.
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