Will They Nuke Iran?

Intelligence Briefings to NYT Notch Up Tension

By Alexander Cockburn 02/11/07 "Counterpunch" -- -- 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 Israel'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.

The Democrats take the lead of their presidential hopefuls, who have no intention of being corralled by the Republicans as symps of holocaust deniers who want to destroy Israel. These days, to be a player, any candidate for the US presidency has to raise about $100 million, of which a large tranche will come from American Jews.

Barack Obama and John Edwards call for swift withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. When it comes to Iran they roar in unison with Hillary Clinton that no option can be left off the table. In other words, if it comes to it, nuke 'em .Is there room for sanity here? The best hope will be for Iran to finish its testing cycle, declare mission accomplished and figure out some sort of face-saving halt in its program by February 21.

Can we hope for prudence from the White House? Who knows? Bush is a nutty guy. It was his insistence on democratic elections in Iraq that put the Shi'a in control. Now he's blaming Iran for trying to capitalize on the consequences. This is not a regime that thinks things through very sensibly.


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Clinton refuses to take military option off the table

At a speech Friday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said "no option can be taken off the table" when dealing with Iran, RAW STORY has learned.

Clinton tempered her remarks by saying she's advocated engagement with "our enemies and Israeli's enemies," adding, "I believe we can gain valuable knowledge and leverage from being part of a process again that enables us to get a better idea of how to take on and defeat our adversaries."

Her quotes were reported by the Associated Press.

The dinner was held by the nation's largest pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC is widely believed to the most powerful lobbying group in Washington and routinely sees major politicians from both sides of the aisle -- also in attendance Friday was former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

AIPAC tends to take a more hawkish stance on foreign policy, and has routinely labeled Iran a serious threat. In a Dec. 6 memo, the group labeled Iran "The Core of Instability in the Middle East."

'No option can be taken off the table'

Clinton told some 1,700 AIPAC supporters that the US must take any step to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," she said. "In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table."

"To deny the Holocaust places Iran's leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists," she added. Clinton excoriated the Iranian administration's "pro-terrorist, anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric."

"We need to use every tool at our disposal, including diplomatic and economic in addition to the threat and use of military force," she added.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a vehement critic of Israel, and according to various media reports Israel has prepared strike plans to target Iran's nuclear enrichment sites.
In October 2005, Ahmadinejad said he concurred with Ayatollah Khomeini's remarks on Israel that the "occupying regime" had to be removed, calling it a "disgraceful stain [on] the Islamic world" that must be "wiped off the map," according to a translation published in the New York Times.

Ahmadinejad did not use Israel by name in his speech.

Some Middle East experts disagree with the translation, which was widely used by the Associated Press and other news agencies. saying, "all official translations" of the comments, including the foreign ministry and president's office, "refer to wiping Israel away." He did, however, agree that "map" was not the most suitable translation.

Iran continues nuclear development

Iran continues to develop its nuclear program despite protestations from its European neighbors and the United States. Diplomats said this week that the Persian nation would begin installing more than 3,000 cetrifuges at their underground nuclear enrichment site at Natanz.
Analysts disagree over the timeframe in which Iran might develop a nuclear bomb. Most place an estimate somewhere between 3-5 years. Iran has said they intend to use the program for "peaceful" civilian power needs.

According to New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, a classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House.

Still, Iran's plans to install as many as 50,000 centrifuges comes in direct defiance of the UN Security Council, which called on Iran last summer to suspend uranium enrichment.
Iran opened the doors of its enrichment plant to 'non-aligned' nations Saturday in an effort to give ambassadors "the opportunity to see for themselves what is going on in the peaceful nuclear activities of Iran," said Iran's envoy to the UN Atomic Watchdog, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
With Wire Services.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to Israel as the "Zionist state." A more accurate translation of his remarks were, "occupying regime." The updated version of this article also includes a more detailed discussion of the translation.

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.