War
Signals?
By Dave
Lindorff
The Nation
Monday 25 September
2006
As reports circulate of
a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action
against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has
learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the
deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear
aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate,
submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off
Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current
issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships
capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for
the Persian Gulf by October 1.
As Time writes in its
cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of the forward
deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations
had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors
"suggest that a much discussed - but until now largely theoretical -
prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with
Iran."
According to Lieut. Mike
Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in
Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk
cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a
little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office
of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada
is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October
21.
The Eisenhower had been
in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing
and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to
depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly
not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into
the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and
parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch
of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several
angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like
retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being
sent to attack Iran without any order from the
Congress.
"This is very serious,"
said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early
word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment
orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in
2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to
exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency
critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who
has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the
carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October
21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He says, "I know that
some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders'
[PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1.
Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those
forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any
possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews
should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go,
by a certain date - in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner
notes, "You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's
a very significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise."
This point was also made in the Time article.
So what is the White
House planning?
On Monday President Bush
addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening session, and while
studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran's President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered a two-pronged
message. Bush told the "people of Iran" that "we're working toward a
diplomatic solution to this crisis" and that he looked forward "to the
day when you can live in freedom." But he also warned that Iran's
leaders were using the nation's resources "to fund terrorism and fuel
extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." Given the President's assertion
that the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is
Commander in Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran
regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his
right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the
2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the
invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending "war
on terror."
Even as Bush was making
not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack on Iran, was in
Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further diplomatic
efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program - itself tantalizing
evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that
those favoring an attack may be winning that
struggle.
"I think the plan's been
picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says Gardiner. "It's a terrible
idea, it's against US law and it's against international law, but I
think they've decided to do it." Gardiner says that while the United
States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles,
"the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate
Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including
Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting
nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia
militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and
shut the Persian Gulf." Most of the major oil-producing states in the
Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a
concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers,
given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran's
religious rulers.
Of course, Gardiner
agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness
could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining
with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast
reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles,
and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against
which the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy
would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with
such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush MO to
date.
Commentators and
analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on Bush's talk about
dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from
confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his
National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN
resolution supporting military action, and rumors of "hushed back doors"
being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a
unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn
Kessler saw in Bush's UN speech evidence that "war is no longer a viable
option" in Iran. Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush
Administration's judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam
Chomsky and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an
attack is being planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington's
leaders aren't crazy, and would not take such a step - though more
recently, he has seemed less sanguine about Administration sanity and
has suggested that leaks about war plans may be an effort by military
leaders - who are almost universally opposed to widening the Mideast war
- to arouse opposition to such a move by Bush and war advocates like
Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for the online journal
TomPaine.com, focuses on the talk of diplomacy in Bush's Monday UN
speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means "the realists
have won" and that there will be no Iran attack.
But all these war
skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be
recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the
whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation
is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United
States, according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special
forces operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking
ominous.
Representative Maurice
Hinchey, a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War, informed about the
Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower Strike Group to
head out to sea, said, "For some time there has been speculation that
there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in order to
exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has cultivated
now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will be a
very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US. It would only make
worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope
this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible." He adds,
"Military people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the
military already."
Calls for comment from
the White House on Iran war plans and on the order for the Eisenhower
Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National Security Council
press office, which declined to return this reporter's phone
calls.
McGovern, who had first
told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in
Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called "Camp Democracy," about
his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, "We have about
seven weeks to try and stop this next war from
happening."
One solid indication
that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force buildup would be
if the carrier Enterprise - currently in the Arabian Sea, where it has
been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and
which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour - is kept on
station instead of sent back to the United States. Arguing against
simple rotation of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower's refurbishing
and its dispatch were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from
the Enterprise on the Navy's official website referred to its ongoing
role in the Afghanistan fighting, and gave no indication of plans to
head back to port. The Navy itself has no comment on the ship's future
orders.
Jim Webb, Secretary of
the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a Democratic
candidate for Senate in Virginia, expressed some caution about reports
of the carrier deployment, saying, "Remember, carrier groups regularly
rotate in and out of that region." But he added, "I do not believe that
there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without
a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002
authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend
to Iran."
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