Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bacasper]

Published on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by Asia Times

Bush �Plans Iran Air Strike by August�

by Muhammad Cohen

NEW YORK - The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.

Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC�s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds� stated mission is to spread Iran�s revolution of 1979 throughout the region.

Targets could include IRGC garrisons in southern and southwestern Iran, near the border with Iraq. US officials have repeatedly claimed Iran is aiding Iraqi insurgents. In January 2007, US forces raided the Iranian consulate general in Erbil, Iraq, arresting five staff members, including two Iranian diplomats it held until November. Last September, the US Senate approved a resolution by a vote of 76-22 urging President George W Bush to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization. Following this non-binding �sense of the senate� resolution, the White House declared sanctions against the Quds Force as a terrorist group in October. The Bush administration has also accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, though most intelligence analysts say the program has been abandoned.

An attack on Iraq would fit the Bush administration�s declared policy on Iraq. Administration officials questioned directly about military action against Iran routinely assert that �all options remain on the table�.

Rockin� and a-reelin�
Senators and the Bush administration denied the resolution and terrorist declaration were preludes to an attack on Iran. However, attacking Iran rarely seems far from some American leaders� minds. Arizona senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain recast the classic Beach Boys tune Barbara Ann as �Bomb Iran�. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton promised �total obliteration� for Iran if it attacked Israel.

The US and Iran have a long and troubled history, even without the proposed air strike. US and British intelligence were behind attempts to unseat prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who nationalized Britain�s Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company, and returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in 1953. President Jimmy Carter�s pressure on the Shah to improve his dismal human-rights record and loosen political control helped the 1979 Islamic revolution unseat the Shah.

But the new government under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned the US as �the Great Satan� for its decades of support for the Shah and its reluctant admission into the US of the fallen monarch for cancer treatment. Students occupied the US Embassy in Teheran, holding 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days. Eight American commandos died in a failed rescue mission in 1980. The US broke diplomatic relations with Iran during the hostage holding and has yet to restore them. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad�s rhetoric often sounds lifted from the Khomeini era.

The source said the White House views the proposed air strike as a limited action to punish Iran for its involvement in Iraq. The source, an ambassador during the administration of president H W Bush, did not provide details on the types of weapons to be used in the attack, nor on the precise stage of planning at this time. It is not known whether the White House has already consulted with allies about the air strike, or if it plans to do so.

Sense in the senate
Details provided by the administration raised alarm bells on Capitol Hill, the source said. After receiving secret briefings on the planned air strike, Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said they would write a New York Times op-ed piece �within days�, the source said last week, to express their opposition. Feinstein is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Senate offices were closed for the US Memorial Day holiday, so Feinstein and Lugar were not available for comment.

Given their obligations to uphold the secrecy of classified information, it is unlikely the senators would reveal the Bush administration�s plan or their knowledge of it. However, going public on the issue, even without specifics, would likely create a public groundswell of criticism that could induce the Bush administration reconsider its plan.

The proposed air strike on Iran would have huge implications for geopolitics and for the ongoing US presidential campaign. The biggest question, of course, is how would Iran respond?

Iran�s options
Iran could flex its muscles in any number of ways. It could step up support for insurgents in Iraq and for its allies throughout the Middle East. Iran aids both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Israel�s Occupied Territories. It is also widely suspected of assisting Taliban rebels in Afghanistan.

Iran could also choose direct confrontation with the US in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, with which Iran shares a long, porous border. Iran has a fighting force of more than 500,000. Iran is also believed to have missiles capable of reaching US allies in the Gulf region.

Iran could also declare a complete or selective oil embargo on US allies. Iran is the second-largest oil exporter in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and fourth-largest overall. About 70% of its oil exports go to Asia. The US has barred oil imports from Iran since 1995 and restricts US companies from investing there.

China is Iran�s biggest customer for oil, and Iran buys weapons from China. Trade between the two countries hit US$20 billion last year and continues to expand. China�s reaction to an attack on Iran is also a troubling unknown for the US.

Three for the money
The Islamic world could also react strongly against a US attack against a third predominantly Muslim nation. Pakistan, which also shares a border with Iran, could face additional pressure from Islamic parties to end its cooperation with the US to fight al-Qaeda and hunt for Osama bin Laden. Turkey, another key ally, could be pushed further off its secular base. American companies, diplomatic installations and other US interests could face retaliation from governments or mobs in Muslim-majority states from Indonesia to Morocco.

A US air strike on Iran would have seismic impact on the presidential race at home, but it�s difficult to determine where the pieces would fall.

At first glance, a military attack against Iran would seem to favor McCain. The Arizona senator says the US is locked in battle across the globe with radical Islamic extremists, and he believes Iran is one of biggest instigators and supporters of the extremist tide. A strike on Iran could rally American voters to back the war effort and vote for McCain.

On the other hand, an air strike on Iran could heighten public disenchantment with Bush administration policy in the Middle East, leading to support for the Democratic candidate, whoever it is.

But an air strike will provoke reactions far beyond US voting booths. That would explain why two veteran senators, one Republican and one Democrat, were reportedly so horrified at the prospect.

[Gamecock]

The writer's name is Muhammed Cohen? A Muslim Jew? Or just trying to be cute? Either way, it doesn't inspire credibiltiy.

[bacasper]

[Kuros]

[bacasper]

Is the BBC trash, too?

Analysis: Growing talk of Iran attack

The BBC's Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, looks at increasing speculation that Iran may come under attack because of its nuclear programme.

Last December American intelligence agencies said they had "high confidence" that in late 2003 Iran had stopped trying to build nuclear weapons.

That seemed to end much of the talk about an American - or Israeli - attempt to destroy the facilities that Iran has developed for what it insists is a purely peaceful nuclear programme.

Plenty of influential people in the Middle East, Europe and the United States think an attack on Iran would have consequences potentially as disastrous as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It would also send oil prices, already through the roof, into orbit.

But the talk has started again. Negotiations with Iran - and sanctions against it - have not stopped it enriching uranium, which its critics say is being done to make a bomb.

In one of his first acts after he secured the Democratic nomination for president of the US, Senator Barack Obama told Aipac, America's most powerful pro-Israel lobby, that he would do everything in his power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

He repeated the word "everything" several times. Even allowing for the fact that he was also trying to dispel the impression that he was soft on Iran, it was strong language.

End of term

The American National Intelligence Estimate that was published in December 2007 was more nuanced than some of the headlines suggested.

It had only "moderate confidence" that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program by the summer of 2007, and said "we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons".

Israel, among others, has never accepted that Iran has stopped trying to build them.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, has been in Washington this week.

The day before Senator Obama addressed Aipac, Mr Olmert used some of his toughest public language yet about Iran to the same audience.

"The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating," he said.

The speculation is that President George W Bush and Prime Minister Olmert want to remove what they believe is a clear and present danger before they face their own political oblivion.

Mr Bush is finishing his time at the White House still dogged by the disaster of Iraq - and Mr Olmert faces disgrace over allegations of corruption.

'Dangerous conflict'

The talk has alarmed, among others, the former German Foreign Minister, Joshka Fischer.

Germany has, with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, taken the lead in talks with Iran about its nuclear plans.

He wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz this week that Messrs Bush and Olmert seem to have been planning to end the Iranian nuclear programme "by military, rather than by diplomatic means".

Mr Fischer fears that the Middle East is drifting towards a new great confrontation in 2008.

"Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is high time for serious negotiations to begin," he said.

Scenario

One scenario being discussed by Israeli analysts is that there could be an attack, by Israel or by the Americans, after the US election in November and before the new president is inaugurated in January, with the tacit consent of the incoming president.

That might be easier if it is Senator Obama's Republican rival John McCain.

During the campaign for his party's nomination, he once sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beachboys' classic Barbara Ann.

In a less jocular moment, he said that the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be to allow it to have nuclear weapons.

Some pro-Israeli US analysts are arguing that Iran's response to an attack would not be as harsh as many have predicted.

This week Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeated that Iran did not want nuclear weapons. But he said it would continue to develop nuclear energy for daily life.

Those who have made their minds up about Iran are more likely to listen to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has once again predicted Israel's doom.

None of this means an attack on Iran is coming. But it is being discussed, and that is significant.

[bacasper]

11 May 2008
Breaking: Attack on Iran Inevitable?
War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think
By Philip Giraldi / May 9, 2008

There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action. The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation.

The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran. The US demanded that Iran admit that it has been interfering in Iraq and also commit itself to taking steps to end the support of various militant groups. There was also a warning about interfering in Lebanon. The Iranian government reportedly responded quickly, restating its position that it would not discuss the matter until the US ceases its own meddling employing Iranian dissident groups. The perceived Iranian intransigence coupled with the Lebanese situation convinced the White House that some sort of unambiguous signal has to be sent to the Iranian leadership, presumably in the form of cruise missiles. It is to be presumed that the attack will be as �pinpoint� and limited as possible, intended to target only al-Qods and avoid civilian casualties.

The decision to proceed with plans for an attack is not final. The President will still have to give the order to launch after all preparations are made.

Source / The American Conservative / Information Clearing House

Also see"Bomb Bomb Iran, Surgical Strike Dept," The Rag Blog, May 4, 2008.

The Rag Blog


Posted by richard jehn at 8:04 PM
Labels: Iran, Military
1 comment:
Richard said...
New elections soon in Israel, Likud the war-mongering party will win, and Netanyahu will be prime minister. He will bomb Iran before Bush leaves. Already the "news" is reporting that Iran will ahve a nuke very soon, look for more paranoid stories over the next couple months to justify the attack.

[cangel]

It will if McCain is trailing in the polls... Nothing like a strong war-vet republican to lead us to victory...

[Kuros]

No, the BBC is not trash. Which is why it couches the talk of the possibility of an attack on Iran with reminders that 'hey, we have no evidence that this is in the works.'

[nautilus]

If iran is developing nukes and threatening to use them on israel, then what other option is there?

* diplomacy: no chance
* regime change in iran: no chance
* jettison support ofr israel: would only increase instability in the region and massively bolster islamic terrorism worldwide.

Given that, I'm all for the bomb Iran option.
many Iranians have been uncomfortable with their leader but they have not done enough to remove him. so...

[bacasper]

[bacasper]

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran", citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go -- what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks."

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD "knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question".

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. "It's clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue," he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post Jul. 20, 2007 in which he gave no hint of Cheney's proposal, but referred to "options" for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran "smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers".

Gerson cited two possibilities: "Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran." But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has "escalation dominance" in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, "in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs."

Carpenter's account of the Pentagon's position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran's ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney's proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by President Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in "the tank" at the Pentagon on Dec. 13, 2006 and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according a report by Time magazine's Joe Klein last June. After he become head of the Central Command in March 2007, Adm. William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran's nuclear programme and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney's proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons -- especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) -- and training to Shiite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with Gen. David Petraeus.

As IPS reported earlier this week, Cheney had already used Gen. David Petraeus' takeover as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney's proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shiites that would require U.S. forces beyond his control.

At that point, Adm. Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon's forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become CENTCOM chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

[bacasper]

Naval Blockade against Iran?
by Knut Mellenthin
16/06/08

The USA and the EU planning to escalate confrontation with Iran. A military blockade discussed.

In the conflict over Iran's civilian nuclear program, the United States and Europe are intensifying confrontation. At the top of the measures that are now being discussed is an international naval blockade by a "coalition of the willing." As in the Adriatic blockade against Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s, the coasts of Iran can be sealed off by a collective action by the NATO warships. This would involve the "not-so-willing" such as Germany early in a joint military operation against Iran, unlike in the Iraq War. A later exit from the military escalation would hardly be possible. Such a blockade has been favored by the Israeli government and the neo-conservative US media like the Wall Street Journal.

Also under discussion is an agreement to no longer supply the Iranian oil and gas industry with necessary technology and spare parts. The aim is to cause serious bottlenecks in production.

In principle, the US and the EU agreed to enforce their own coercive measures beyond the UN Security Council sanctions during President George W. Bush's visit to Europe. A declaration adopted last Tuesday says: "We are ready to supplement those (U.N. Security Council) sanctions with additional measures. We will continue to work together . . . to take steps to ensure Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism."

The term "terrorism" refers to Hamas, Hezbollah, and all Iraqi organizations and movements that do not conform to Washington. In agreeing to this declaration, the EU states for the first time accepted the US government's foreign policy which had long been linking Tehran's nuclear program and its foreign policy. It is now also official that what is at stake is not just the nuclear program, but the total subjection of Iran to a US-EU diktat.

Against this background, the artificially magnified importance of Javier Solana's weekend visit to Iran was only a propaganda stunt. The EU's foreign policy officer presented Tehran with an "incentive package" to which the "Iran Six" -- China, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and the US -- had agreed in mid-May. It demands that Iran stop all work on uranium enrichment. It offers nothing in return -- except the supposed readiness to continue to discuss some issues. The Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham made a statement: "If the package includes suspension it is not debatable at all. Iran's position is clear: any precondition is unacceptable."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original article in German appeared in junge Welt on 16 June 2008, under the title "Solanas �Anreizpaket� f�r Teheran" [Solana's "Incentive Package" for Tehran]. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

[agentX]

I doubt it.
Russia is not onboard, and back last year they even said they would defend Iran against "aggression" or something like that.
China sure as hell ain't on board. They need that oil.
Conyers, the Dem on the Judiciary Committee, has said that if Bush attacks Iran without Congressional approval, he's going to go ahead with impeachment. And Kucinich's articles of impeachment on both their asses are sitting right there, itching to be brought to the front.

[bacasper]

[nautilus]

Starting a war with iran could be Bush's way of ensuring America remains at the forefront of the fight against islamicism...even if the US gets an Obama era.