Will President Bush bomb Iran?
By Tim Shipman in Washington , Sunday Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/02/wiran102.xml&page=3snip>>>>>
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.
snip>>>>>
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.
snip>>>>>>
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
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."
snip>>>>>>>>
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 administrationdoes 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.
snip>>>>>>
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."
snip>>>>>>>>
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.
snip>>>>
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."
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"The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes from the blockade."---WOW! These people have some nerve.
Iraq is not a big enough fuck up for them!
Makes me sick!
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