Fomenting a War on Iran
Juan Cole
08/29/04 "ICH" -- Here is my take on the Lawrence
Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.
It is an echo of the
one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of
Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then
Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included.
These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche
to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on
behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the
Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase
Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone
else's boys did the dying).
Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and
former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. He was an attache at the US embassy
in Tel Aviv at one point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold
War ended, Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the US,
and learned a little Persian (not very much--I met him once at a conference and
he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian). Franklin has a strong
Brooklyn accent and says he is "from the projects." I was told by someone at the
Pentagon that he is not Jewish, despite his strong association with the
predominantly Jewish neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul
Wolfowitz. He seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave
documents to AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have
suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by
half.
Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became
the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for
Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the "go to" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since
Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways
to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been
taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise,
Michael Ledeen, for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some
way. Franklin was also close to Harold Rhode, a
long-time Middle East specialist in the Defense Department who has
cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or less establishing
a cell within the Department of Defense.
UPI via Dawn reports,
' An UPI report said another under-investigation official Mr Rhode
"practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office". Intelligence sources said
that CIA operatives observed Mr Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to
Israel, discussing US plans, military deployments, political projects and a
discussion of Iraq assets. '
Josh
Marshall et al. have just published a piece in the Washington Monthly
that details Franklin's meetings with corrupt Iranian arms dealer and con man
Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, who had in the 1980s played a key role in the Iran-contra
scandal. It is absolutely key that the meetings were attended also by Rhode,
Ledeen and the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, Nicolo
Pollari, as well as Rome's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino.
The
rightwing government of corrupt billionnaire Silvio Berlusconi, including
Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know that the forged
documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger
originated with a former SISMI agent. Watch the reporting of Josh Marshall for more on this
SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.
But journalist Matthew
Yglesias has already tipped us to a key piece of information. The Niger
forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint
Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the
Intelligence and Research division of the US State Department suspicious of the
forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were
noticed. Yglesisas quotes from the Senate report on the alleged Iraqi attempt to
buy uranium from Niger:
' The INR [that's State Department intelligence] nuclear analyst told the
Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the [forged]
documents was that a companion document -- a document included with the Niger
documents that did not relate to uranium -- mentioned some type of military
campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military
campaign included both Iraq and Iran and was, according to the documents,
being orchestrated through the Nigerien [note: that's not the same as
Nigerian] Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as "completely
implausible." Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the
uranium document [the stamp was supposed to establish the documents bona
fides], the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The
analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents
or inconsistencies with the names or dates. '
Journalist
Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:
SISMI has long been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings.
According to Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in
numerous plots against Italy�s democratic government, including the 1980
Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200 injured.
Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi,
the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other extreme rightist groups trying to
destabilize Italy, the Washington neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the
Iran-Contra conspirators. SISMI works hand in glove with US, British and
Israeli intelligence. In the 1960�s and 70�s, SISMI reportedly carried out
numerous operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian
president�s palace, and foreign embassies. Italy�s civilian intelligence
service, SISDE, associated with Italy�s political center-left, has long been a
bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected the Niger file, it was eagerly
snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were
urgently seeking any reason, no matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney
passed the phony data to Bush, who used it in his January, 2003 address to the
nation in spite of warnings from CIA . . .
So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just happen
to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false Niger uranium
story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against the rest of the world)
and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be revolutionary, Ghorbanifar, in
Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is that they were conspiring together
about the Next Campaign after Iraq, which they had already begun setting in
train, which is to get Iran.
But now The
Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite specific
with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:
The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal
that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the
time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaida operatives in exchange
for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel
Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State
Department.
The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly
promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs
in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization,
there were howls of outrage from scholars associated with the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as Patrick Clawson and
Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the
term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the
Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had
allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the
US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The
pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship
with the MEK and using it against Tehran.
So it transpires that the
Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had
captured, in return for MEK members.
Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired
with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better
US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged
their proteges, the MEK.
Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil
and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the
whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly
endangered the United States.
The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a
draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the
Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to
it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving
the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost
certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you
like this? Should it be changed in any way?" And, he might also have been
prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when
Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least
covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive
over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is,
AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had
played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.
With both Iraq and Iran in
flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear
of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to
Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing
southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long
coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think,
once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed
character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing
American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so
they thought).
Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing
conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the
benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East,
and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It
is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power
or powers.
Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan
Reprinted with permission www.juancole.com
