Eye On U.S.A

[Rasputin]

President Nixon, a very good poker player, once defined the art of brinkmanship as persuading your opponent that you are insane and, unless appeased by pledges of surrender, quite capable of blowing up the planet.

By these robust standards George Bush is doing a moderately competent job in suggesting that if balked by Iran on the matter of arming the Shi'a in Iraq or pursuing its nuclear program he'll dump high explosive, maybe even a couple of nukes, on that country's relevant research sites, or tell Israel to do the job for him.

In Washington there are plenty of rational people in Congress, think tanks and the Pentagon who think he's capable of ordering an attack,-- albeit not a nuclear one -- with bombers carrying conventional explosive and with missiles from US ships in the Persian Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardner, who's taught at the National War College recently sketched out on this site the plan as it could unfold: already the second naval carrier group has been deployed to the Gulf area, joined by naval mine clearing ships. "As one of the last steps before a strike, we'll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we'll only be days away from a strike."

Gardiner cautioned that "It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we'll see a few more steps unfold.

"First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led_group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff."

As regards "the outrage stuff", here on cue comes the New York Times' Michael Gordon with a front page story today, February 10, headlined "Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says", and beginning "The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran."

It's no doubt true that Iran has been arming the Shi'a. What Gordon fails to mention is that over 90 per sent of the IEDs used against US troops in Iraq have been detonated by the Sunni insurgents , who of course are not supplied by Iran. More generally, the prime point of interest of the intelligence briefings given to Gordon and other journalists is the timing. At any point in the past couple of years the US could have gone public with roughly the same accusations.

Shades of the Ho Chi Minh trail! Year after year first Johnson then Nixon would claim that the resistance in south Vietnam was not indigenous but created and armed by North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China--which these days has flourishing economic ties with Iran, particularly in the field of energy.

Another tripwire for escalation would be the UN Security Council Feb 21 deadline for Iran to suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA," the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There's certainly disquiet in Congress, particularly after Bush's State of the Union address January 17 where he reprised his notorious "Axis of Evil" address of January 2002, identifying Iran as the number one troublemaker and fomenter of terror in the region.

"Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without Congressional approval?" the Virginia Democrat, Senator James Webb recently asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice said she'd get back to him.

The Bush administration is capable of almost any folly, but is it likely that it would bomb Iran's nuclear research labs? Would it really prod Israel into taking on the job?

Israel of course has been making plenty of quite predictable hay out of President Ahmadinejad's crack about how "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." Of course the let's-stay- calm types say it was just a stale old one-liner from the Ayatollah Khomeini and please to note he used the word "regime", not "Israel". Plant that one in the graveyard of wimpy rationalizations. Along with the recent"holocaust conference", it's probably the biggest leg-up for Israeli bond drives since the Yom Kippur war. Prime minister Olmert quotes it on an almost daily basis, echoed by his rival, Netanyahu.

Aside from the rhetorical haymaking, the notion of Israel nuking Iran's N-plants is very far-fetched. Indeed, the military wisdom here is that as a practical enterprise, it can't, since among many technical limitations Israel's bombers would require refueling over hostile territory.

Aside from this, Israel still won't officially admit to having a nuclear arsenal. It would a stupefying jump, from that disingenuous posture to being the first power in the region to explode a nuclear device. The point of having a nuclear deterrent is to deter, not to use. Iran is well aware that in 1999 and 2004 Israelis bought Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles. As President Chirac asked in his recent press conference, what good it would do Iran to have a nuclear bomb, or even two. "Where would it fire that bomb? At Israel? It wouldn't have traveled 200 meters through the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

(Reservations among Irael's elites about attacks on Iran are the topic of an excellent piece by Gabriel Kolko on this site today.)

So the job of attacking would fall to the US Air force and US Navy and there are certainly generals, particularly in the Air Force, telling Bush it would be a snap, just as Curt LeMay, at that time head of the Strategic Air Command, told President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that SAC could "reduce the Soviet Union to a smouldering irradiated ruin in three hours".

But Air Force credibility is low at the moment. LeMay's heirs told Bush that "shock and awe" bombing in 2003 would prompt Saddam to run up the white flag. It didn't. US ground forces carried the day--at least at the outset. But there aren't any US ground forces available to invade a country many times bigger than Iraq, filled with a large population mostly loyal to the regime. After sorties against Iran with bombs and missiles what would the US do?

The problem is that brinkmanship suits everyone's book. Ahmadinejad, facing serious political problems, can posture about standing up to the Great Satan. Olmert can say Ahmadinejad wants to finish off Israel and kill all the Jews. Bush sees Iran as a terrific way of changing the subject from the mess in Iraq and putting the Democrats on the spot.

[Rasputin]

US aim in prodding Iran: negotiation?

The US may be trying to achieve a difficult balance regarding Iran: pushing the Iranians hard enough so they will negotiate over their nuclear program, yet not so hard as to increase tensions in a part of the world that's already aflame.

That's the conclusion some experts draw from the recent US attempt to lay out evidence that officials say links Iran to attacks against US troops in Iraq.

For weeks the White House had promised that it would present proof that Tehran is meddling in Iraq by providing arms and training to Shiite militias. Yet when the presentation came, it was somewhat low-key. It took place in Baghdad, not Washington. It focused almost entirely on a type of dangerous roadside bomb that Iran is allegedly supplying to its Iraqi allies.

Washington "is not claiming this is decisive, and they're not blaming the [Iraqi] insurgency on Iran," says George Perkovich, a nuclear nonproliferation scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This is part of a bigger diplomatic strategy, which is genuinely designed to try to put more pressure on Iran so it will want to negotiate, and will be more forthcoming when it does."

The presentation last weekend involved three US officials who briefed reporters on the condition they not be identified. They said that since June 2004, more than 170 US troops have been killed by a special type of bomb called an "explosively formed projectile."

These weapons are capable of blowing a hole in a heavily armored M-1 Abrams tank, according to the officials. US intelligence believes the bombs are made in Iran and that they are smuggled into Iraq by rogue elements of the Shiite Mahdi Army.

The smuggling routes pass through the Iranian border city of Meran, Amareh, Iraq, and the southern Iraqi region around Basra, according to the officials.

Officials at the Baghdad briefing claimed these deliveries are sanctioned by the highest levels of the Iranian government. However, on Tuesday the top US uniformed military officer said that he was not sure that Iranian leaders were behind the shipments.

"That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in comments to reporters while traveling in Indonesia. "What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."

Critics of the administration's policies in the region generally were unconvinced by the evidence that Iran is playing a substantial role in the Iraq conflict.

That Iranian weapons are found in Iraq is unsurprising, some said. After all, Iran is next door to a hot war, has longstanding ties with some of the combatants, and fears a collapse of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as much as does the US.

But establishing the complicity of Iranian leaders such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, is another matter.

"Some of it is true," says Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and author of a new book on the Shiite revival, of the US allegations.

Considering the scale of the violence in Iraq, however, Iranian involvement might be considered something of a sideshow, in military terms, says Mr. Nasr.

"Where do the weapons that bring down the US helicopters come from?" he asks. "Not Iran."

Iranian aid surely is not a decisive issue in Iraq, agrees Mr. Perkovich. Even if Iran did not exist, the violence in Iraq would be much the same as it is today.

Nor are the US allegations part of a plan to justify the administration's refusal to enter into talks with Iran over Iraq's future, according to Perkovich. The recent report of the Iraq Study Group suggested that the White House open talks with Iran and Syria as a way to quell the violence.

Not that the Iranians necessarily want to talk to the US about Iraq.

"The Iranians may not want to work with us on Iraq," says Perkovich. "If they negotiate, they will get pushed to make things better, and they know they don't have too much control there."

Instead, the US presentation of evidence perhaps should be seen as part of the larger effort by Washington to manage its relations with Tehran, especially in light of Iran's apparent intention to press ahead with a uranium- enrichment program.

"This is all about pushing back on the Iranians, shining light on them in ways that can engender debate in Tehran," says Perkovich.

Reportedly, the evidence presented over the weekend represented a pared-down version of a military briefing that details allegations of wider Iranian activities inside Iraq's borders.

Mindful of charges that intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was inflated for political reasons prior to the Iraq war, the administration may have decided that a low-key approach was the best way to go.

"We're not getting ready for war in Iran, but what we are doing is we're protecting our own people," said White House spokesman Tony Snow on Monday.

[Rasputin]

Top Democrats in the US Congress have warned President George W Bush that he does not have the authority to go to war with Iran.
Washington is in dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme, and senior US officials have accused it of supplying weapons to Shia insurgents in Iraq.

The warning came ahead of a House of Representatives vote likely to condemn the recent surge of US troops in Iraq.

The Senate is due to vote on the troop plan in an unusual Saturday session.

Iran rhetoric

There has been concern recently over the president's rhetoric on Iranian activity in Iraq.

House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged Mr Bush has said he wants a diplomatic solution to the rift with Iran, saying: "I take him at his word."

There is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran

Nancy Pelosi

But she also said that Congress should assert itself "and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran".

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is on Friday expected to vote on a non-binding resolution opposing Mr Bush's decision to send an extra 21,500 US troops to Iraq to try to restore stability.

The vote comes after days of fierce debate on the issue in what has been the first full debate in the House since the Democrats took control of Congress in November.

Double threat

The resolution states that the House "will continue to support and protect" troops in Iraq but that it "disapproves" of the troop increase.

The Senate is holding its own vote - in an unusual Saturday session - on whether to begin debate on the resolution.


Mr Bush plans to send 21,500 additional US troops to Iraq
Previous Senate attempts to debate the anti-troop surge resolution have been met with delaying tactics from Republican members.

Mr Bush faces the possibility that both chambers of Congress will repudiate his Iraq policy says the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington.

Although the upcoming Congressional votes are non-binding, the president needs the legislators to support his $93bn (£48bn) emergency troop funding measure.

"Our men and women in uniform are counting on their elected leaders to provide them with the support they need to accomplish their mission," he said on Thursday.

"Republicans and Democrats have a responsibility to give our troops the resources they need."

But in the debate, Ms Pelosi said there should be "no more blank cheques".

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner criticised the Democrats' attempts to derail Mr Bush's plans for Iraq.

"While American troops are fighting radical Islamic terrorists thousands of miles away," he said, "it is unthinkable that the United States Congress would move to discredit their mission, cut off their reinforcements and deny them the resources they need to succeed and return home safely".

[Rasputin]

قطعنامه عليه استراتژى جنگى جديد رئيس*جمهورى آمريكا در مجلس سنا رأى نياورد.
خبرگزارى فرانسه گزارش داد: ,پس از شكست قطعنامه عليه استراتژي*هاى جنگى جديد ,جورج بوش, رئيس*جمهورى آمريكا در مجلس سنا، سناتورهاى اين كشور قسم خوردند تا به فشارها بر دولت بوش براى توقف جنگ عراق ادامه دهند.,
بنابراين گزارش، براى تصويب اين قطعنامه به 60 رأى از 100 كرسى مجلس سنا احتياج بود كه در جلسه روز جمعه 56 سناتور از جمله هفت سناتور جمهوري*خواه، تنها چهار رأى كمتر از حد نصاب تصويب اين لايحه، به اين قطعنامه رأى دادند. ,هرى ريد, رهبر اكثريت مجلس سنا آمريكا پس يك دقيقه از شكست اين قطعنامه، در جمع خبرنگاران گفت: ,جمهوري*خواهان از اين قطعنامه رهايى يافتند ولى همان طور كه پيش از اين گفته شد، آنان نمي*توانند از اين مساله فرار كنند.,
سناتور ريد قسم خورد كه دموكرات*ها با وجود شكست اين قطعنامه، به فشارهاى خود ادامه خواهند داد. وى افزود: ,اين قطعنامه در سنا تصويب نشد، ولى موضوع مهم ادامه مسير است.,
طبق اين گزارش، ,هيلارى رودهام كلينتون,، ,باراك اوباما,، ,جو بايدن, و ,كريس داد, از كانديداهاى دموكرات انتخابات رياست*جمهورى به اين طرح راى مثبت دادند.

[Rasputin]

Once George Bush has got hold of a bad idea he just can't let it go

On December 20 1954, a woman known as Marion Keech gathered her followers in her garden in Lake City, Illinois, and waited for midnight, when flying saucers were supposed to land and save them from huge floods about to engulf the planet.
Keech had received news of the impending deluge from Sananda, a being from the planet Clarion, whose messages she passed on to a small group of believers. Unbeknown to her, the group had been infiltrated by a University of Minnesota researcher, the social psychologist Leon Festinger.

As dawn rose on December 21 with no flying saucer in sight, Keech had another revelation. Sananda told her that the group's advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet. They rejoiced and called a press conference. "A man with a conviction is a hard man to change," wrote Festinger in his book on the cult, When Prophecy Fails. "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."
George Bush is a man of conviction and clearly a hard man to change. When reality confronts his plans he does not alter them but instead alters his understanding of reality. Like Keech and her crew, he stands with a tight band of followers, both deluded and determined, understanding each setback not as a sign to change course but as further proof that they must redouble their efforts to the original goal.

And so we watch the administration's plans for a military attack against Iran unfold even as its official narrative for the run-up to the war in Iraq unravels and the wisdom of that war stands condemned by death and destruction. As though on split screens, we pass seamlessly from reports of how they lied to get us into the last war, to scenes of carnage as a result of the war, to shots of them lying us into the next one.

One moment we see the trial of Dick Cheney's former deputy, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, revealing how the administration sought to discredit critics of the plans to invade Iraq; the next we see them discrediting critics of their plans to attack Iran. On one page, newly released documents reveal how the defence department contorted evidence to justify bombing Baghdad; on the next, the administration is using suspect evidence to justify bombing Iran.

"It is absolutely parallel," Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, told Vanity Fair magazine. "They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux."

The administration, of course, denies this. Despite the fact it has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled and has just sent a second aircraft carrier as well as more patriot missiles and minesweepers to the Gulf, they swear these allegations are groundless. Robert Gates, the new defence secretary, recently insisted: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

The sad fact is Gates can say it as many times as he likes because no one believes him. In April 2002, Bush told Trevor McDonald: "I have no plans to attack [Iraq] on my desk." An $8 cab ride to the Pentagon and Bush would have found the plans on Donald Rumsfeld's desk. He knew this because he put them there four months earlier. On November 21 2001, he asked Rumsfeld: "What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?"

True they are pursuing diplomatic avenues to derail Iran's nuclear programme, but we now know that this may be little more than a sideshow. The day before Iraq was due to let in UN weapons inspectors, Bush told Rumsfeld and the head of central command, General Tommy Franks, to "dissociate a big deployment or build-up from what Colin [Powell] is doing on the diplomatic front ... Don't make it look like I have no choice but to invade".

The aim here isn't to reprosecute the case against the Iraq war - in almost every venue but the White House and Downing Street that has been won - but to illustrate that the duplicities from that war and a possible next one are playing out concurrently. Whatever excuses people make for backing an attack on Iran, what they can't say is they didn't know.

Nor does it mean America will attack tomorrow. But it does mean they are almost ready to attack today. "Targets have been selected," says Vincent Cannistraro, a US intelligence analyst. "For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place. We are planning for war."

These plans run not in historical parallel with the period before the attack on Iraq, but rather in lockstep with the current situation there. They do not so much replicate the preparations as seek to exploit the dire situation caused by the invasion.

For the time being, US focus has shifted from Iran's desire to acquire a nuclear bomb - a development that should be resisted by diplomatic means, because it will undermine prospects of stability and peace in the region - to its involvement in Iraq. The accusation is that the Iranians are supplying insurgents with a bomb known as the "explosively formed penetrator", which, the Pentagon says, is responsible for killing at least 170 US military personnel and wounding a further 620. Bush claims these weapons were provided by Quds, an elite branch of the Iranian military. He admits he has no idea whether the Iranian government is involved or not.

There are a few problems with this. First, the US is in no position to condemn other countries for meddling in the foreign affairs of Iraq. Second, the administration's credibility, like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, is non-existent. Recently, the Pentagon's inspector general, Thomas Gimble, slammed Rumsfeld underling Douglas Feith for wilfully contorting intelligence about links between Iraq and al-Qaida in order to justify the Iraq war. Feith compiled a briefing that was "inappropriate" with conclusions that were "not fully supported by the available intelligence", concluded Gimble, who fell just short of branding Feith an outright liar.

But most importantly, the region's biggest obstacle to peace and stability is not Iran but the US. The invasion of Iraq has both bolstered Iran's standing by installing a friendly Shia regime in Baghdad, and given Iran every reason to arm itself for fear of imminent attack from US bases now embedded on its border. Each time the White House issues threats against Iran, it strengthens the crude, anti-semitic prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can rally the nation around a foreign enemy - a strategy with which Bush is all too familiar.

"We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq," says Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target. "It is an air operation."

Like Keech before him, it seems once Bush has got hold of a bad idea he just can't let it go. Just because it is irresponsible, irrational, unpopular and unconscionable doesn't mean he won't do it.

"History does not repeat itself," Mark Twain once wrote. "But it does rhyme."

[Rasputin]

In recent weeks the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and many other politicians have said over and over that they are not planning to attack Iran, yet they keep sending more specialized troops, aircraft carriers, and other attack units to the region. US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice. Two carriers in the region, the USS John C Stennis and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, could quickly be joined by three more now at sea: USS Ronald Reagan, USS Harry S Truman and USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by USS Nimitz. Each carrier force includes hundreds of cruise missiles. Even presidential candidates are in a race to outperform each other on their toughness towards Iran, emphasizing that NO OPTION is off the table.

From a rational point of view, one would question if the administration is serious about this threat, and how and why they could carry it out. I will try to answer these questions below. This is not just a guessing game, deploying troops at this level is by all means more than what would be needed for psychological warfare.

Although Iran played supportive roles in both, Afghanistan and Iraq, it could never convince Neo-cons that it is trustworthy. When Saddam‚s statue came down, some people around the White House were not satisfied and advocating going to Tehran. In my opinion there are four blocks of interest who could benefit from such action, they are:

Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the region
During the past 5 years, starting with the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan and the later collapse of the Saddam Hussein‚s regime in Iraq, the power vacuum has given Iran the opportunity to rise to become a regional power more than any time since the departure of the Shah in 1979. In Iraq and Lebanon Shia Muslims are now enjoying roles that they have never had. The four weeks of Israeli engagement in Lebanon last year helped Hizb-allah to emerge as a champion that is respected not only by Shia Lebanese but also by other Arabs in the streets of the Middle East.

A recent poll by Zogby International and Shibly Telhami conducted in six Arab states, shows that Hassan Nasrillah, leader of Hizb-allah is the most favorite leader in the ME. Ironically the exaggeration about Iranian support of Hizb-allah added to the credibility of Iran with the Arab streets. During this military conflict, however, Saudi Arabia issued a statement and distanced itself from the Israeli operation by saying that this is not an Arab problem, rather it is between Hizb-Allah and Israel.

The establishment of Shia as major power block in Iraq also added to the perception that a Shia crescent is shaping and will threaten the Sunnni domination over state power in the region. Sectarian conflicts in Iraq after the assassination of several Shia clerics and finally the bombing of the grand Mosque in Samarra, became all but the sign of a civil war between 60% Iraqi Shia and 20% Iraqi Sunnis. One should note that although the current fights are between Iraqi Shia and Sunni groups, this is not necessarily a religious sectarian war. Rather it is a political fight between sects in line with the US presence and those against it. No need to say that Kurdish Sunnis are by far closer to Shia Arabs than they are to Arab Sunnis, and Shia Hizb-allah in Lebanon is an ally of Sunni Hammas in the Palestinian territories.

Nevertheless, Neo-Cons who had their eyes on Iran from the beginning, were able to successfully transfer this fear of Shia on the rise to the capitals of Saudi Arabia, Arab States in the Persian Gulf, Egypt, and Jordan. In November of last year, following Jordan‚s King Abdullah‚s warnings against the emergence of the Shia Crescent, Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser close to Prince Bandar bin Sultan (former Saudi Ambassador to the US and close friend of President Bush), in an op ed piece in the Washington Post, warned that Saudi Arabia would intervene militarily in Iraq "to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraq Sunnis," if the United States withdrew. He also wrote that Saudi Arabia would increase oil production to drive down prices and pressure the Iranians, a tactic used successfully in the 80s during Iran-Iraq war.

Later in the year Prince Bandar, who serves as the national security advisor to the King, privately traveled to Washington and Texas several times. These trips were without the knowledge of then Saudi Ambassador Turki al-Feysal, who was a supporter of collaboration in the Middle East and champion of normalizing Saudi-Iran relations after the Iran-Iraq war. Consequently Prince Turki abruptly resigned and left the government service altogether. As the Baker-Hamilton report was due to be released, Vice President Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for a private visit and upon his return we were informed that the Bush administration will not accept the Iraq Study Groups‚s recommendation to seek engagement of Iran and Syria in resolving the Iraq problem. In addition to Saudi Arabia, other Arab states in the Persian Gulf and Egypt and Jordan have stated their support for any option that would eliminate Iran‚s threat or influence over Arab Sunnis in Iraq. This fear in fact coincides with the existence of a significant Shia population in some of these countries, such as Bahrain and to the less extent in Saudi Arabia.

United States of America
Despite the obvious results of the Iraq war, and the predominant NO vote to war during 2006 elections, the administration still beats the drum of war and even expanding it to Iran. The Middle East democracy project, as was laid out by Neo-conservatives, could not completely change the Middle East as long as a defiant state like Iran was in the region. Democracy was supposed to spread into other countries like an oil stain, but this did not materialize and now the Bush administration has to put the blame on someone other than itself. Who would better play that role than Iran, a country that does not even have an official representation in the US to defend itself? All independent observers state that by far the majority of American troops are attacked, injured and killed by Sunni insurgents, yet Iran is equated with al-Qaeda in the president‚s State of the Union speech as the major reason for the US losses in Iraq.

Iran offered an olive branch several times through the Swiss Embassy in Iran (in 2003, according to Flynt Leverett, a former top advisor to Condolezza Rice), Iraqi President, Jalal Talebani (twice in 2006 according to BBC), and Abdul-Aziz Hakim, SCIRI chairman (2006), all to be ignored. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently had this to say about America's negotiating position vis-à-vis Iran: "Frankly, right at this moment there's really nothing the Iranians want from us, and so in any negotiation right now we would be the supplicant." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also dismissed talking to Iran about Iraq: "The only reason to talk to us would be to extract a price, and that's not diplomacy, that's extortion." The fact that US administration has not engaged with Iran in a diplomatic way, when it had the upper hand in 2003 and now that it does not have a strong position, shows that this administration or elements thereof are not willing or not capable of negotiating with a defiant party, period.

On the other hand, an escalation to US presence in the region by way of attacking Iran would certainly distract attention from Iraq, where the problem is, to a new territory. As Henry Kissinger presents it in a recent article, "They [U.S. troops] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend."

Israel
Israel has years of collaborations with Iran and long standing relations of Jews with the country goes back couple of thousands years to times of Cyrus the great. In recent decades, however, Israel has had serious concerns with Iran due to the support of Islamic Republic of major Palestinian resistance group. In the immediate present time of course the rhetoric exercised by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has fueled this fear to a point that Israel considers Iran an existential threat to the state of Israel. Iranian financial support of Hammas and Hizb-allah has added additional layers to this notion that Iran wants to wipe Israel out of the map.

As we know, during the first Gulf war the US insisted that Israel should stay away, and despite the Iraqi attacks on Israeli cities, the latter did not retaliate. The purpose of this containment was to prevent a break in the coalition that included Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Arab Gulf states, Syria, and Jordan. Considering events of recent years, however, this distancing becomes less necessary, and reports that Saudis have met Israeli delegates to discuss joint defense strategies supports the idea that Arab countries might be indifferent in the case of the Iran.

[Rasputin]

Although Middle East experts such as Gary Sick, a senior National Security staff during presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, believe that "Israelis based on the history are not going to directly interfere with this situation, but indirectly are playing a major role with: Keeping international attention focused on the Iranian threat as a uniquely dangerous situation that may even demand Israeli military intervention; and using their long-standing contacts, especially with the Kurds in Iraq and Iran, to foment opposition to the Tehran government;" there are indications that Israelis are preparing for more involvement. The Israeli government and especially Likud Party advocates in the US and Europe have worked significantly on fueling fear of Iran in the public opinion, based on it‚s so called existential threat Meanwhile Israeli Defense Forces have drawn serious plans to attack Iran and as a minimum surgically remove the nuclear sites with low yield nuclear bombs.

Iranian Hardliners
The fourth group that may benefit tremendously from an attack, undoubtedly, would be the extremist faction within the Islamic Republic itself. The US invasion of Iraq was indeed a God given gift to the fundamentalists in the government. They were able to capitalize on the instability in the region and present themselves as the only viable option that can save Iran in dangerous situations. They are primarily coming with Revolutionary Guard and/or Intelligence background; in addition they portrayed themselves as populists with economic ideas that can deliver to the poor and more traditional families. This false image, however, is now totally disappeared, and the majority of people see that election campaign promises were not delivered, yet international relations have been severed and sanctions and financial troubles are underway. A better standard of living and less state interference in people‚s private life, a result of 16 years of neo-liberal and reform agenda, is fading out and consequently hardliners are loosing ground. This attitude shift was clearly observed during the recent municipal and city council elections.

An Israeli-American attack could certainly advance the hardliners in the public eyes, and contrary to what Neo-cons are trying to sell, solidify the public behind the government‚s position. According to most observers Iranians are very proud of their country and heritage and are expected to defend it with enthusiasm. In a situation that lacks any plausible alternative to the Islamic Republic, the nation will most probably gather around the status quo and become a defender of the existing system despite all the maladies that it carries. Notwithstanding the problems that Iran has in regards to Human Rights, women rights, ethnic minority discrimination and financial and economic prospects, I believe that sovereignty of the country plays a major role in an Iranian response to this attack. This has been voiced over and over by Iranian intellectuals such as Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Laureate of 2003, to the point that some of the grass root democracy movement activities in Iran are on hold in the fear to be seen by anyone as an invitation for a foreign interference.

Possible Scenarios
Invading Iran and a "Regime Change" was the ideal goal of the office of the Vice President and the secretary of Defense up to a year ago and was supported by the Neo-Con‚s analysis. Similar to the Iraq‚s "Cake-Walk", pundits were calculating the cost of a regime change as low as 20 million dollars (i.e. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute). Some Iranian opposition groups such as the loyalists to the former Shah, his Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and also the People‚s Mujahedin Organization (MKO) have helped to shape the illusion that people in Iran will welcome the occupation or will topple the Islamic Republic once the US attacks. The fallacy of similar assertions about Iraq is now common understanding and hence discredits the proposal.

Regardless, these entities then tried meddling with ethnic minority issues in Iran by escalating tensions between ethnic groups and the central government. Investments were made to fuel these tensions towards a possible break up of the country from within. For this purpose Baluchistan, a predominantly Sunni ethnic region close to Pakistan‚s borders in the Southeast of the country, Khusistan, an oil rich Southwestern state with Arab minorities close to the Iraqi border, and finally Azerbaijan, which consists of the second largest ethnic population in the country in the Northwestern part of Iran close to Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, were prime candidates to start an uprising against the Islamic Republic. Of course these activities also take place in the Kurdish areas of Western Iran, which has always been considered as a potential break away region. Thus far, none of these activities have been completely fruitful.

The hawks further came to the realization that if a regime change has to happen, it shall be with forces totally from the outside. But ... , it is a fact that at this time the President‚s plan for troop surge and sending 21,500 soldiers to Iraq has faced strong congressional opposition and technical obstacles. Most analysts suggest that based on differences in Iran and Iraq‚s population, natural terrain, sophistication, military power, etc. an invasion of Iran would require close to 1 million booths on the ground in order to achieve regime change, a number that even the most optimist supporters of the administration would not dare to commit.

Considering the lack of sufficient troops the question is; what other options are feasible for the administration to pursuit if they want to deal with Iran before Bush‚s term is over? In my opinion the scenario which has gained momentum recently and especially after the developments in Lebanon and Iraq, is to take care of the Islamic Republic by destroying the infrastructure of the country: roads, bridges, electric plants, railroad, airports, refineries, oil platforms, and anything that would strategically support the regime‚s stability and financial power. This way the Iranian Shia-regional-super-power, defiant to the US, Israel, and the leading role of Saudis in the Middle East, will be in effect wiped off the map.

This scenario is similar to the 1991 Iraq war, it would be a shock and awe operation with air strikes and Cruise Missiles fired at up to 4000 targets that are already identified and located. Deployment of two aircraft carriers already in Persian Gulf and having another one close to the theatre, assigning a navy admiral to command the forces in the region-as oppose to an army or marine general, deployment of patriot missiles to the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, and doubling of the emergency oil reserve in the US are all indications for the possibility of such operation.

As we know, Congress has stated that it will not tolerate an extension of the war to Iran without a re-authorization by Congress. Others suggest that for this reason it is possible that the attack will start by an Israeli bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites. In return it is plausible to expect some Iranian retaliation by way of firing mid-range missiles over the Gulf and other sensitive targets. Consequently the US would have to intervene and finish the job as was mentioned above. In this scenario obviously the major issue would be that the involvement of Israel would limit congressional defiance and break the opposition to president‚s action into half or even one third.

[Rasputin]

Final words
Regardless of from what vantage point one looks at it, the future of the Middle East and especially Iran and the Persian Gulf is very dark if any of these scenarios take place. From a rational and pragmatic stand point and if lessons learned from Iraq are of any value, destabilizing Iran would amount to decades of chaos in the exact same region that Kissinger refers to as "a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend."

The former neoconservative theorist and Director of Johns Hopkins University's International Development Program, Professor Francis Fukuyama, described Iranian foreign policy as pragmatic and rational, and announced that a comprehensive political agreement between the US and Iran was still possible, in spite of the Bush administration's present confrontational approach to the Middle East. "The Grand Bargain may still be there... Our hand is weaker than it was three or four years ago," he said at a National Iranian American Council's (NIAC) and New America Foundation (NAF) Capitol Hill event on US-Iran relations last week. A proposal by Muhammad al-Baradai, the IAEA director general, has proposed a formula to simultaneously halt uranium enrichment and the Security Council sanctions on Iran. Javier Solana, the EU foreign affairs secretary, has also offered limited (dry) enrichment activity by Iran under IAEA‚s supervision during the negotiations. The Iranian side has shown some interests in these scenarios, and meanwhile despite hardliner resistance there are indications that more pragmatists and reformist in the power structure of the country have joined forces to decrease the tension and save face.

Let us just hope that the troops from both sides sitting eye to eye in the Persian Gulf don‚t cause a disaster by mistake. And let us pray that the Apocalyptic leaders of the two countries don‚t attempt to expedite the rapture intentionally, to fulfill what they perceive to be God‚s wish!

[Rasputin]

Doesn't it bother you that the news media take it upon themselves to tell you if a candidate to potentially become the next president is a woman or black or gay or vegetarian? Do they think that people can't see for themselves that Hillary Clinton is a woman? These days we keep hearing the generic description of 2008 presidential candidates:

"If Hillary Clinton wins the election she will be the first 'female' president"

Or:

"If successful senator Barak Obama will be the first 'black' President"

Don't you agree that this style of categorizing presidential candidates is more or less stereotyping of such candidates and seems like a reminder to the public as buyers beware?

If there are things to be said about the presidential candidates it has to be about their education, their past credentials and accomplishments and not the color of their skin. We prefer to find out about specific international and national accomplishments of candidates and not their anatomical identifications.

Here is Fox News' latest shortlist of candidates for the 2008 presidential election. You will see why I am concerned about this style of reporting. Please note that some names are changed to create mass confusion:

Senator Dan Roberts
If he wins he will be the first Mormon President who had anal sex during a senate filibuster.

Senator Hillary Clinton
If she wins the election she will be the first President whose husband had already consummated oral sex in the White House.

Former Federal Judge Sandra Tomlinson
If successful she will be the first president who slept with the entire class of 69.

New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson
If Richardson wins he will be the first Hispanic president and has vowed he will hire an entire mariachi band to play everyday on the White House lawn.

Senator Lloyd Jensen
If he wins the 2008 election he will be the first president with diagnosed post-mortem depression.

Governor Samuel Johnson
If successful he will be the first president with a penis smaller than 5 inches.

Rudy Giuliani
If New York mayor Giuliani wins he will be the first President who fought prostate cancer before fighting any Middle Eastern oil producing country. He is also known for being able to count backward from 100 to zero fairly fast.

Shane Gibson
Currently unemployed but a Vice President hopeful, Gibson will be the first black Vice President as well as the first black that claims to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter.

Senator Robert Sandman
If successful he will be the first president with genital herpes.

[Rasputin]

DOHA, Qatar -- "Are you on the road, or in the ditch?" Back when I covered labor negotiations 30 years ago, that was the question reporters would ask to get a sense of how contract talks were going. The phrase came back to me last weekend as I listened to a series of relentlessly negative presentations at a conference here on America's relations with the Muslim world.

We are in the ditch in the Middle East. As bad as you think it is watching TV, it's worse. It's not just Iraq but the whole pattern of America's dealings with the Arab world. People aren't just angry at America -- they've been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What's worse is that they're giving up on us -- on our ability to make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest broker.

Let's start with some poll numbers presented at the Doha conference by Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and a fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, which co-sponsored the conference with the Qatari foreign ministry. The polling was done last year by Zogby International in six countries that are usually regarded as pro-American: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In these six "friendly" countries, only 12 percent of those surveyed expressed favorable attitudes toward the United States. America's leaders have surpassed Israel's as objects of anger. Asked which foreign leader they disliked most, 38 percent named George Bush; Ariel Sharon was a distant second at 11 percent; and Ehud Olmert was third with 7 percent.

The poll data show a deep suspicion of American motives: 65 percent of those surveyed said they didn't think democracy was a real U.S. objective in the Middle East. Asked to name two countries that had the most freedom and democracy, only 14 percent said America, putting it far behind France and Germany. And remember, folks, this is coming from our friends.

During the Doha conference, speakers put into words the attitudes summarized by the poll numbers. Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a fiery Sunni preacher who appears regularly on al-Jazeera, said that America acted as if "some people were created to lead and others to be led," and that America had "lost the trust and confidence" of Muslims. Well, okay, he's notorious for his anti-American and anti-Israeli views. But I heard the same thing from Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, who said Arabs were "losing confidence in the U.S. role" as a peace broker.

And my friend Rami Khouri, who is one of most balanced journalists in the Arab world, warned that a broad popular front is emerging to challenge American hegemony. Iraq "discredits what America tries to do in the Mideast," he said. Khouri explained that Arabs admire Hezbollah because it represents "the end of docility, the end of acquiescence."

You don't have to agree with these Muslim critics to recognize that the anger they express represents a serious national security problem for the United States. That's what President Bush seems not to understand in his surge of troops into Iraq, his bromides about democracy and his strategy of confrontation with Iran. It isn't a tiny handful of people in the Arab world who oppose what America is doing. It's nearly everyone.

To get out of the ditch, America must change its Iraq policy, soon. That doesn't mean pulling out of Iraq quickly, as many Democrats in Washington seem to favor. I found few people here who thought a quick American pullout made sense. But it does mean shifting the American focus -- so that we are talking with Iraq's neighbors and negotiating with the Iraqis on a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Tellingly, the one American who got loud, sustained applause here was Chris Kojm, a senior adviser on the Baker-Hamilton report.

And to get back on the road, for real, America must broker a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I winced when I heard Prime Minister Olmert say last weekend in Jerusalem that "the American and Israeli positions are totally identical" on the terms for recognizing a Palestinian unity government. The Israelis are right in insisting that Hamas must recognize Israel's right to exist. But how to get there? What if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had responded: America is a mediator in this conflict. Its positions are independent of either side, and it is willing to talk to all parties to achieve peace.

I would have loved to see the looks of astonishment from the America-bashers here.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The aircraft carrier, backed by its sister vessel, a handful of destroyers and a shoal of support ships, has placed a maritime ring of steel around an increasingly unstable region.

While the Eisenhower is ostensibly assisting US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the looming threat of Iran that increasingly occupies its attention.

Recent tensions between America and Iran over Teheran's attempts to develop a nuclear weapon have raised the prospect of its third regional war in a decade.

The addition of a second aircraft carrier to its strike groups has fuelled the belief that America is gearing up for a fight with Iran. Not since the Iraq war in 2003 has America amassed so much fire power around the Gulf.

advertisementAs flagship of the Fifth Fleet, the Eisenhower welcomed the arrival of a second Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, and its accompanying destroyers on Tuesday.

Captain Dan Cloyd, the Eisenhower's commanding officer, compared the situation with the international tension of the Cold War.

"There was a time when we had two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean," he told The Daily Telegraph. "The world changes and we adapt."

The quiet-spoken Capt Cloyd embraced the suggestion that the dual deployment is at the forefront of efforts to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, pointing out that his maritime assets have been tasked to quash any challenge to global security.

"Our presence here is an affirmation of our resolve in this area to engage with the nations of the region either where we share common goals or where we face challenges."

Every hour and fifteen minutes a handful of jets scream north across the ocean. The range of missions an aircraft carrier as big as the Eisenhower - it has more than 5,000 people onboard - can carry out is virtually limitless.




The Eisenhower is not only the flagship of the carrier group that protects The Gulf through which one-fifth of the world's oil is shipped. It has also helped overthrow a hard-line Islamic regime in Somalia during a stint off the Horn of Africa.

Its fighter jets now offer close support to Nato and US forces in Afghanistan.

Lieutenant Commander Matt Pothier returned yesterday from Afghanistan having delivered air support to British soldiers. He said: "Right now I have more opportunities than I've ever had to use weapons where we know there aren't any friendly people. In combat that's very rewarding."

In the carrier's Combat Direction Centre, Warrant Officer Michael Myers can spot anything untoward in a 256 mile radius from his radar screen. He can identify objects as small as wooden boats on the open sea and small aircraft in a swathe of countries from the Arabian peninsula to the northern shore of the Sea of Arabia.

Should Lieutenant Commander Craig Stapleton, the tactical operations officer, give the order, WO Myers can put up Hawkeye, an EP2 surveillance plane with massive radar capable of establishing American air traffic control across half a continent. "Those planes alone extend our radar horizon to a huge circle of the sky. I could see for 1,000 miles if I wanted to."

As it patrols the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the Eisenhower ensures the safe passage of oil tankers. It also prevents the trading routes being used to transport materials that would help rogue nations build a nuclear weapon.

Capt Cloyd said: "Our maritime security mission is about denying the use of the seas to any potential spread of weapons of mass destruction."

Iran's belligerent posture has increased the challenges facing the Eisenhower since it deployed to the Middle East last October. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, issued a stark warning that Iran risks triggering an "accidental war" during aggressive military maneuvres.

During the Great Prophet 2 missile test in November, the Islamic Republic fired a Shabab missile into the six mile corridor of shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz. In such a constricted corridor, the results could have been disastrous.

With Teheran's real strategic intentions unclear, the US takes the threats it has made very seriously.

"They threaten to use oil as a weapon. They threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz," Adml Walsh said.

"And so it is the combination of the rhetoric, the tone, and the aggressive exercises in very constrained waters that gives us concern."

US commanders ascribe the increase in instability to increasingly aggressive actions by Teheran. For that reason the deployment of the carriers in the region is designed to intensify the pressure on Iran to step back from the brink.

"In the past year and a half it [Iran] has become much more strident, more vocal and in your face," said Walsh. "What concerns me is miscalculation."

Capt Cloyd said his personnel, 70 per cent of whom have never participated in a long term mission before, are aware that the workload could grow more intense before the deployment is over.

"We're aware of the environment and the need to respond to the environment so that we can protect regional security and stability.

We're aware of what other countries could do.

"We're busy but we would move to a higher tempo if need be."

[Rasputin]

A STRATEGIC SHIFT

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”

After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”

“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”

[Rasputin]

The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this approach. “These two regimes”—Iran and Syria—“are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” Bush said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.

The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. “The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can,” a former senior intelligence official said. “They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.

“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

[Rasputin]

The US Pentagon has set up a special planning group to co-ordinate possible attacks on Iran, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported.
In the weekly New Yorker magazine, Hersh said the group would plan raids to be carried out within 24 hours of a presidential order for military action.

A Pentagon spokesman said he knew of no such group and denied that the US was planning war with Iran.

Any suggestion of this was "wrong, misleading and mischievous", he said.

The Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the president

New Yorker article
The article, quoting unnamed sources, added that covert intelligence-gathering inside Iran had been stepped up in recent months, with special operations groups entering from Iraq to pursue Iranians suspected of working against US interests.

The operations were co-ordinated by Vice-President Dick Cheney and relied heavily on support from Saudi Arabia, the sources said.

But the fact that Sunni groups were receiving US backing meant that militants hostile to US interests were benefiting from the policy, they added.

'New targets'

Quoting a senior former intelligence official, Hersh wrote that a group had been set up within the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a contingency bombing plan which could be implemented within 24 hours.

"The Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the president," he wrote.

The group had recently acquired a new assignment, he said, to identify targets in Iran that could be supplying or aiding militants in Iraq.

Previously the focus had been on the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities and regime change, the reporter added.

But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told the Associated Press news agency he did not know of the existence of the group, adding that the US was not planning to go to war with Iran.

"To suggest anything to the contrary is simply wrong, misleading and mischievous," he said.

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter also played down the reports.

"We have contingency plans around the world," he said, quoted by AP.

"We had contingency plans with the Soviet Union, and we had specific targets. That didn't mean that we were planning to strike the Soviet Union."