[Marxism] Is US ready to bomb Iran? UK Telegraph sizes up the signals

[Fred Feldman]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/02/wiran102.xml


Will President Bush bomb Iran?

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007


In a nondescript room, two blocks from the American Capitol building, a
group of Bush administration staffers is gathered to consider the gravest
threat their government has faced this century: the testing of a nuclear
weapon by Iran.
 	
George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Will president Bush bomb Iran?
President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The United States, no longer prepared to tolerate the risk that Iranian
nuclear weapons will be used against Israel, or passed to terrorists, has
already launched a bombing campaign to destroy known Iranian nuclear sites,
air bases and air defence sites. Iran has retaliated by cutting off oil to
America and its allies, blockading the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf
bottleneck, and sanctioned an uprising by Shia militias in southern Iraq
that has shut down 60 per cent of Iraq's oil exports.

The job of the officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the
Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, who have gathered in an office
just off Massachusetts Avenue, behind the rail terminus, Union Station, is
to prevent a spike in oil prices that will pitch the world's economy into a
catastrophic spin.

The good news is that this was a war game; for those who fear war with Iran,
the less happy news is that the officials were real. The simulation, which
took four months, was run by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think
tank with close links to the White House. Its conclusions, drawn up last
month and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, have been passed on to military and
civilian planners charged with drawing up plans for confronting Iran.

News that elements of the American government are working in earnest on how
to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come at a tense moment.


On Tuesday, President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the US government accuses of
overseeing a covert programme to develop nuclear weapons. In a speech to war
veterans, Mr Bush said: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead
to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability
and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

He went on to condemn Iranian meddling in Iraq, where America increasingly
blames the deaths of its soldiers on Iranian bombs and missiles. Mr Bush
made clear that he had authorised military commanders to confront "Iran's
murderous activities".

This was widely taken to mean that he is set on a confrontation with Iran
that will culminate in a bombing campaign to destroy Iranian nuclear
facilities, just as Israel bombed Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981.

The president's intervention came just weeks after leaks from a White House
meeting suggested that Vice-President Dick Cheney, who is understood to
favour the use of force, has regained the upper hand over the Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who both advocate
diplomacy and sanctions to isolate Iran. Mr Cheney reacted with fury when
the State Department suggested that negotiations might continue past January
2009, when Mr Bush leaves the White House.

So the question is: did Mr Bush last week set America inexorably on a path
to the next war?

Washington officials, with close links to the Pentagon, the State Department
and the National Security Council, say that the speech was designed as a
threat not just to Iran, but to America's Western allies, along with Russia
and China, who have been slow to support - or who have opposed - UN
sanctions against Iran. James Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage
Foundation, who helped devise the war-game scenario, said:
"It is simultaneously a shot across Iran's bows and an appeal for the
international community to do more to stop or slow Iran's nuclear
programme."

A former White House aide added: "If this creates in the Iranians' mind a
state of fear such that they back off, that helps your diplomacy. Bush is a
political poker player. To play poker, you have to know when to bluff."

Mr Bush had another reason for speaking out, too. With General David
Petraeus due before Congress on September 11 to report on progress on his
"surge" in Iraq, Mr Bush wanted to make the case that a withdrawal from Iraq
would boost Iranian influence there - in the hope that this would increase
domestic support for his policies.

In Teheran, Mr Ahmadinejad was also quick to make the Iraq connection, but
as an impediment, not impetus, to American adventurism. "We have an
expression in Farsi which says, 'Bring up the one that you have given birth
to first, then go for another one'," he said. "Let them do what they started
in Afghanistan and Iraq then think of other countries." He dismissed threats
of military action as "more of a propaganda measure than factual".

But European observers, and some in the American government, believe that Mr
Bush has resolved to "do something" about Iran before he leaves office.
A State Department source said: "If we get closer to the end of this
administration and we are not seeing suitably tough diplomatic action at the
UN, and other members of the P5 [the five permanent members of the Security
Council] are still resistant to anything amounting to more than a slap on
the wrist to the Iranians, then people will start asking the
question: how do we stop our legacy being a nuclear-armed Iran?"

Mr Bush's escalation of the rhetoric was deliberate. A former White House
aide said that the reference to a "nuclear holocaust" was a precise attempt
to bracket Mr Ahmadinejad's quest for nuclear weapons and stated desire to
wipe Israel off the map with Hitler's destruction of the Jews.

"By using that word 'holocaust', Mr Bush has provided a moral reason to
allow the Jewish state to do what it needs to do," said the former aide.
"He is reinvoking the notion of 'never again'. If you believe that there
could be another Holocaust, it becomes morally indefensible to stand back.
It is a powerful and loaded term. Those people in Europe who believed that
the neo-cons have gone away and shrunk under a rock had better wise up
fast."

British and American military officials believe that Mr Bush's ideal
scenario is to bring about regime change in Iran, whose mullahs humiliated
the US government during the hostage crisis, 28 years ago. "Unless you live
here, it is difficult to understand how much the hostage crisis - is burnt
into the psyche of Washington," said a Western diplomat in Washington.
"They were made to look weak and the people who did it are still in power."

There are credible reports that the US has stepped up clandestine activities
in Iran over the past 18 months, using special forces to gather intelligence
about military targets - nuclear infrastructure and air bases, and
Revolutionary Guard command centres from which Iran could coordinate attacks
in Iraq.

The Pentagon has made contact with a Kurdish group called the Party for Free
Life in Kurdistan, which has been conducting cross-border operations in
Iran, and with Azeri and Baluchi tribesmen in northern and south-eastern
Iran, who oppose the theocratic regime. By using military special forces,
rather than the CIA, the administration does not have to sign a Presidential
Finding, required for covert intelligence activity, or report to oversight
committees in Congress.

Information on US targets has leaked from the Pentagon. B2 bombers and
cruise missiles would strike up to 400 sites, only a few dozen of which are
linked to the nuclear programme. B61-11 bunker-busting tactical nuclear
weapons would be the ultimate weapon against the heavily fortified
installations; first in the crosshairs would be the main centrifuge plant at
Natanz, 200 miles south of Teheran.

A Pentagon source said: "We have a targeting list and there are plans, but
then there are also plans for repelling an invasion from Canada. We don't
know where everything is but we do know where enough is to cause them enough
damage to set back the programme."

But there are grave doubts that bombing would work. Davoud Salhuddin, a US
dissident and Muslim convert living in Iran, said: "The US will not have the
ability to change the regime here. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed
Ali Khamenei has been preparing himself for a US attack for the past 30
years. If they attack Iran, the problem of terrorism that they are trying to
solve will get 100 times bigger than it is now. Americans will not feel safe
in their own homes."

The other problem is that the CIA, apparently, does not have enough
intelligence to guarantee that the nuclear programme could be permanently
crippled, and little way of knowing after the event how much time they have
bought with a raid. International estimates of how long it would take Iran
to get a bomb vary between a year and 10 years.

The latest polls show that just one in five Americans would support the
bombing of Iran now, but about half would do so if their government
considered it necessary: clearly a position from which Mr Bush could build a
case for war. Three out of four voters want to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons.

Just as crucially, US government officials say that the CIA has failed to
come up with a "smoking gun" that would persuade the international community
to back military action. Last autumn, the CIA told the White House that
while it believes Iran is running a clandestine nuclear weapons programme,
it does not have conclusive proof. Radioactivity detection devices placed
near suspect facilities did not find the expected results.
Stung by criticism of their performance over Saddam Hussein's weapons
programmes, CIA bosses warned Mr Bush and Mr Cheney that this did not prove
that Iran had successfully concealed the programme from inspectors.

The diplomatic case against Iran suffered another blow when the
International Atomic Energy Agency last week gave an upbeat assessment of
Iranian co-operation with weapons inspectors. It found that Iran continued
to enrich uranium - necessary for a bomb, but also for civil nuclear power
- in violation of UN Security Council demands, but at a slower rate than was
expected.

A State Department source said a new push would be made to advance the case
for sanctions this autumn, but the hopes of progress were mixed. "The
Russians and Chinese are still stonewalling, and the Europeans don't want to
get involved," he said.

The one bright light for American hawks was a speech from the French
President Nicolas Sarzoky, fast becoming Washington's favourite European,
who, while ruling out French involvement in air strikes, did warn that Iran
could face military action unless it abandoned the enrichment programme,
presenting the world with a "catastrophic choice" between "an Iranian bomb
or the bombing of Iran".
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Complicating everything is President Bush's weak ratings in public opinion
and on Capitol Hill, and the fact that some of his closest allies, including
the political strategist Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
have jumped ship.

Only Congress has the power to declare war, and Mr Bush would need
Congressional approval for military action against Iran within 60 days.
Some think he might struggle to win that approval. "I don't think there is
any real fight left in this White House. And no one in Congress wants to
help them," said one Republican.

But critics fear that if Mr Bush cannot advocate confrontation with Iran, he
might yet seek to provoke it. Joseph Cirincione, of the Centre for American
Progress, accuses Mr Bush of "taunting Iran". He said: "Like the similar
campaign for war with Iraq, this effort seems to be designed to find a casus
belli, perhaps by provoking Iran into some action that could justify a
military assault."

In the meantime, administration officials are studying the lessons of the
recent war game, which was set up to devise a way of weathering an economic
storm created by war with Iran. Computer modelling found that if Iran closed
the Straits of Hormuz, it would nearly double the world price of oil, knock
$161 billion off American GDP in a single quarter, cost one million jobs and
slash disposable income by $260 billion a quarter.

The war gamers advocated deploying American oil reserves - good for 60 days
- using military force to break the blockade (two US aircraft carrier groups
and half of America's 277 warships are already stationed close to Iran),
opening up oil development in Alaska, and ending import tariffs on ethanol
fuel. If the government also subsidised fuel for poorer Americans, the
war-gamers concluded, it would mitigate the financial consequences of a
conflict.

The Heritage report concludes: "The results were impressive. The policy
recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes from the
blockade."

James Carafano, a former lecturer at West Point, the American military
academy, who led the war game, said: "It's not about making the case for
war. I have yet to meet a government official who says: 'I've just come from
a fierce debate about whether to bomb Iran'."

But in Teheran they are waiting. Abbas Abdi, one of the US embassy hostage
takers in 1979, now a reformist political activist, said: "The style of the
Americans is that they go forward with the political dialogues, get a couple
of resolutions and then they wait to see what the circumstances are.
They have no problems in attacking Iran, for sure."
# Additional reporting by Kay Biouki in Teheran