From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 8:08
PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Scanning the
Horizon
In addition to getting acquainted and conducting
‘velvet hammer’ diplomacy in person, my guess is that Sec of State
Rice is doing a lot of foreign travel now to areas where it won’t be
advisable later, just in case.
Wonder what the threshold will be, what will determine
the point of no return?
See related items below. kwc
The Iran War Buildup
by
Michael T. Klare, The Nation,
posted online July 21, 2005
There
is no evidence that President Bush has already made the decision to attack Iran if Tehran
proceeds with uranium-enrichment activities viewed in Washington as precursors to the manufacture
of nuclear munitions. Top Administration officials are known to have argued in
favor of military action if Tehran goes ahead with these plans--a step
considered more likely with the recent election of arch-conservative Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad as Iran's president--but Bush, so far as is known, has not yet made
up his mind in the matter.
One
thing does appear certain, however: Bush has given the Defense Department
approval to develop scenarios for such an attack and to undertake various
preliminary actions. As was the case in 2002 regarding Iraq, the building blocks for an attack in Iran are
beginning to be put into place.
We may
never know exactly when President Bush made up his mind to invade Iraq--some
analysts say the die was cast as early as November 2001; others claim it was
not until October 2002--but whatever the case, it is beyond dispute that
planning for the invasion was well advanced in July 2002, when British
intelligence officials visited Washington and issued what has come to be known
as the Downing Street memo, informing Prime Minister Tony Blair that war was
nearly inevitable.
What
these officials undoubtedly discovered--as was being reported in certain
newspapers at the time--was that senior officers of the US Central Command
(CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida,
had already been developing detailed scenarios for an invasion of Iraq and that
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been deeply involved in these
preparations. On July 5, 2002, for example, the New York Times revealed that "an American military
planning document calls for air, land, and sea-based forces to attack Iraq from three
directions--the north, south, and west." Further details of this document
and other blueprints for war appeared in the Washington
Post and the Wall Street Journal.
At the same time, moreover, the Pentagon reportedly stepped up its aerial and
electronic surveillance of military forces in Iraq.
This record is worth
revisiting because of the many parallels to the current situation. Just as Bush gave ambiguous signals about his intentions
regarding Iraq in 2002--denying that a decision had been made to invade but
never ruling it out--so, today, he is giving
similar signals with respect to Iran. "This notion that the United States is getting ready
to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush declared in Belgium on
February 22. He then added: "Having
said that, all options are on the table." And, just as Bush's
2002 denials of an intent to invade Iraq
were accompanied by intense preparations for just such an outcome, so, today,
one can detect similar preparations for an attack on Iran.
Just
what form such an attack might take has probably not yet been decided. Just as
he considered several plans for an invasion of Iraq
before settling on the plan described in the Times,
Rumsfeld is no doubt considering a variety of options for action against Iran. These
could range from a burst of air and missile attacks to a proxy war involving
Iranian opposition militias or a full-scale US invasion. All have obvious
advantages and disadvantages. An air and missile attack would undoubtedly
destroy some key nuclear centers but could leave some hidden facilities intact;
it would also leave the hated clerical regime in place. The use of proxy forces
could also fail in this regard. An invasion might solve these problems but
would place almost intolerable demands on the deeply over-stretched US Army.
It is
these considerations, no doubt, that are preoccupying US military planners
today. But while a final decision on these options may be put off for a time,
the Defense Department cannot wait to make preparations for an assault if it
expects to move swiftly once the President gives the go-ahead. Hence, it is
taking steps now to prepare for the implementation of any conceivable plan.
The
first step in such a process is to verify the location of possible targets in Iran and to
assess the effectiveness of Iranian defenses. The identification of likely
targets apparently began late last year, when the Central Intelligence Agency
and US Special Operations Forces (SOF) began flying unmanned
"Predator" spy planes over Iran and sending small
reconnaissance teams directly into Iranian territory. These actions, first
revealed by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker
in January, are supposedly intended to pinpoint the location of hidden Iranian
weapons facilities for possible attack by US air and ground forces. "The goal," Hersh explained, "is to identify and isolate three dozen, and
perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision [air] strikes
and short-term commando raids."
It is
also probable, says military analyst William
Arkin, that CENTCOM is probing Iran's air and
shore defenses by sending electronic surveillance planes and submarines
into--or just to the edge of--Iranian coastal areas. "I would be greatly surprised if they're not doing
this," he said in an interview. "The intent would be to 'light up' Iranian radars and
command/control facilities, so as to pinpoint their location and gauge their
effectiveness." It was precisely this sort of aggressive
probing that led to the collision between a US
EP-3E electronic spy plane and a Chinese fighter over the South
China Sea in April 2001.
As this
information becomes available, it is no doubt being fed into the various
"strategic concepts" and "strike packages" being developed
by US strategists for possible action against Iran. That such efforts are indeed under way is confirmed by reports in
the international press that Pentagon officials have met with their Israeli
counterparts to discuss the possible participation of Israeli aircraft in some
of these scenarios. Although no public
acknowledgment of such talks has been made, Vice President Dick Cheney declared in January that "the
Israelis might well decide to act first" if Iran proceeded with the development of nuclear
weapons--obviously hinting that Washington
would look with favor upon such a move.
There
are also indications that the CIA and SOF officials have met with Iranian
opposition forces--in particular, the Mujaheddin-e
Khalq (MEK)--to discuss their possible involvement in commando raids inside Iran or a
full-scale proxy war. In one such report, Newsweek
disclosed in February that the Bush Administration "is seeking to cull
useful MEK members as operatives for use against Tehran." (Although the MEK is listed on
the State Department's roster of terrorist groups, its forces are "gently
treated" by the American troops guarding their compound in eastern Iraq, Newsweek revealed.)
Given the immense stress
now being placed on US ground forces in Iraq, it is likely that the Pentagon's
favored plan for military action in Iran involves some combination of airstrikes
and the use of proxy forces like the MEK. But
even a small-scale assault of this sort is likely to provoke retaliatory action
by Iran--possibly entailing
missile strikes on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf or covert aid to the
insurgency in Iraq.
This being the case, CENTCOM would also have to develop plans for a wide range
of escalatory moves.
Repeating
what was said at the outset, there is no evidence that President Bush has
already made the decision to attack Iran. But there are many
indications that planning for such a move is well under way--and if the record of Iraq
(and other wars) teaches us anything, it is that such
planning, once commenced, is very hard to turn around. Hence, we should not wait until after relations with Iran have
reached the crisis point to advise against US military action. We should begin
acting now, before the march to war becomes irreversible.
Michael T. Klare is the
defense correspondent of The Nation and a professor of peace and world security
studies at Hampshire
College. His latest book
is 'Blood and Oil: The
Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported
Petroleum'.
Article found at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0722-20.htm
Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050801&s=klare
Related
Defense
Dept admits rate of attacks by insurgency will continue unabated for another 6
months: Increasingly violent suicide and roadside attacks are
expected to continue at a rate of 65 day/500 per week. Senior officers continue to
speak out in contrast to Cheney’s “last throes” reassurances.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002397618_iraq23.html
Dept of
Defense quietly asks Congress to raise the maximum age for recruits to 42 for
all branches of military service http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-983408.php
Now US accuses Iran of
complicity on 9/11
“According to testimony received by the 9/11 commission - based on
information from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and about 100 electronic
intercepts by the National Security Agency - an alliance of convenience was
established between the Shia Muslim Iranian leadership and the Sunni terrorist
organisation, well before September 11, 2001. The report is expected to confirm
the claim by Thomas Kean, its chairman, last month that "there were a lot more
active [al-Qa'eda] contacts, frankly, with Iran
and Pakistan, than there
were with Iraq".
Some Bush officials are privately contemplating a possible
military strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities before Russian fuel rods are delivered next year. Teheran
said yesterday that it had arrested an unspecified number of Iranian al-Qa'eda
supporters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wiran18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/18/ixportaltop.html
US ‘bulking up” missile defense in Asia http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102356.html
