Subscribe..."Shifting to StratCom indicates that they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran]," says Lang. ..."If they write a plan like that and the president issues an execute order, the forces will execute it. He's got the power to do that as commander-in-chief. We set that up during the Cold War. It may, after the fact, be considered illegal, or an impeachable offense, but if he orders them to do it, they will do it." ...by the end of February the United States will have enough forces in place to mount an assault on Iran. That, in the words of former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be "an act of political folly" so severe that "the era of American preponderance could come to a premature end."From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq
What to do? Congress should not wait. It should hold hearings on Iran before the president orders a bombing attack on its nuclear facilities, or orders or supports a provocative act by the U.S. or an ally designed to get Iran to retaliate, and thus further raise war fever. ...we need Senate and House hearings now to put the Bush administration on notice that, in the absence of an imminent military attack or a verified terrorist attack on the United States by Iran, Congress will not support a U.S. military strike on that country. Those hearings should aim toward passage of a law preventing the expenditure of any funds for a military attack on Iran unless Congress has either declared war with that country or has otherwise authorized military action under the War Powers Act. The law should be attached to an appropriations bill, making it difficult for the president to veto. If he simply claims that he is not bound by the restriction even if he signs it into law, and then orders an attack on Iran without congressional authorization for it, Congress should file a lawsuit and begin impeachment proceedings.Congress must stop an attack on Iran
A debate has already begun over U.S. policy toward Iran in which AIPAC and the Israeli government have expressed interest in the United States stopping at nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Fears of a new Holocaust--made more plausible by the very real anti-Semitism of Iran's president--have been sounded. What policies are in the interest of the United States? And of Israel? These are difficult questions, but they are not made easier to answer when critics of Israel and of the Israel lobby in the United States are charged with anti-Semitism.Wikipedia also has a great article on Plans for strikes against the Iranian nuclear program.
January 29, 2007Webb to Secretary Rice: Ahem
The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Secretary Rice:
During your appearance before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 11, 2007, I asked you a question pertaining to the administration’s policy regarding possible military action against Iran. I asked, “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?”
At that time you were loath to discuss questions of presidential authority, but you committed to provide a written answer. Since I have not yet received a reply, the purpose of this letter is to reiterate my interest in your response.
This is, basically, a “yes” or “no” question regarding an urgent matter affecting our nation’s foreign policy. Remarks made by members of this administration strongly suggest that the administration wrongly believes that the 2002 joint resolution authorizing use of force in Iraq can be applied in other instances, such as in the case of Iran. I, as well as the American people, would benefit by fully understanding the administration’s unequivocal response.
I would appreciate your expeditious reply and look forward to discussing this issue with you in the near future.
Sincerely,
James Webb
United States Senator
October 8, 2006: Bombing Iran- Rove's Plan to Wag the Elephant.I'm absolutely sure plans for invading Iran exist. I'm also absolutely sure this (or any other) administration has every intention of convincing Iran it is capable and prepared to invade/bomb, etc if necessary. That's an entirely different animal than speculating that it's going to happen. I simply can't believe that this administration has any interest in taking on another war in the current political, international, and (stretched thin) military climate.
July 26, 2006: US plotted to invade Iran: explosive report, Rolling Stone adds new fuel to fire over possible Iran strike.
July 2, 2006: The Last Stand. See also Iran: war by October? See also The countdown to war. See also Iran: Consequences Of A War
April 8, 2006: The Iran Plans by Seymour Hersh.
February 12, 2006: It's on. Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites
December 31, 2005: Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against Iran. Al Jazerra says the war has already begun.
April 2, 2005: Interview with Scott Ritter on Iran June Invasion
February 25, 2005: Iran gets bombed June 2005. "George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons"
This is the hanging-off-of-the-helicopter-skid type exit we are talking about.
Historically, improved tactics in shooting down helicopters have proved to be important factors in conflicts in which guerrillas have achieved victories against major powers, including battles in Somalia, Afghanistan and Vietnam.The "Iraqi Tactics" in the headline is interesting.
Because of the immense enjoyment the irony would afford any number of the Russian elite, I come down firmly on the side of the Russians.
In Basra on September 19, British troops clashed with Iraqi police and Shi'ite militia, who had ironically welcomed the toppling of Saddam two years ago. The police had arrested two British undercover commandos who possessed suspicious bomb-making materials. British troops launched an armored raid on the jail to free their agents, fighting the same Iraqi police they had earlier trained. Iraqis had thought it strange that British agents would be caught with the types of bombs associated with insurgents attacking "Coalition" troops, and some assumed that the agents were trying to pit Iraqi religious groups against each other.I like to think the prospect of war with Iran has become less likely since then, but that might be my reality based bias, or something. I haven't been following the issue much at all lately, so I guess I have some reading to do..
Yet at the same time, bombs were going off across the border in Khuzestan. In June, a series of car bombings in Ahvaz (75 miles from Basra) killed 6 people. In August, Iran arrested a group of Arab separatist rebels, and accused them of links to British intelligence in Basra. In September, explosions hit Khuzestani cities, halting crude oil transfers from onshore wells. On October 15, two major bomb explosions in an Ahvaz market killed 4 and injured 95. A November 3 analysis in Asia Times blames Iraqi Sunni insurgents for the bombings.
According to Sam Gardiner, the most telling sign that a decision to bomb has already been made was the October deployment order of minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, presumably to counter any attempt by Iran to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. "These have to be towed to the Gulf," Gardiner explains. "They are really small ships, the size of cabin cruisers, made of fiberglass and wood. And towing them to the Gulf can take three to four weeks."A little fact-checking is in order. Advanced US Navy Avenger class
Iran's navy has 20,000 men, but they are young and inexperienced, and most of them are riflemen and marines based on Persian Gulf islands. And at higher levels, there is fierce rivalry between the IRGC and regular navies for scarce resources. Due to these shortcomings, Iran's three Kilo-class submarines would be vulnerable, and they are limited to laying mines in undefended waters. Mines, however, are one area in which Iran has made advances. It can produce non-magnetic, free-floating, and remote-controlled mines. It may have taken delivery of pressure, acoustic, and magnetic mines from Russia. Also, Iran is negotiating with China for rocket-propelled rising mines.In 1988, an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf damaged the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58), and the United States retaliated with its largest naval battle since World War II.
The first -- the bedrock faith of the Bush administration and its neocon supporters since September 12, 2001 -- is the religion of force. Our self-styled "wartime" Commander-in-Chief, and the Vice President head an administration that has long been in love not just with the American armed forces, but with the dazzling military possibilities that seemed open to them as leaders of the last standing superpower. Its high-tech destructive capabilities, they believed, gave them the power to go it alone in the world, shocking and awing a post-Cold War assemblage of lesser states into eternal submission...Over the Cliff with George and Dick?
In the case of a possible future assault on Iran, the larger fundamentalism of the Church of Force will surely combine with the only significant force the Pentagon has on hand -- air power. The belief in air power's ability to fell regimes and change the political essentials, to bring whole peoples to their knees, is long-lasting and deep-seated. Since well before World War II, we've been living with a belief system in which bombing others, including civilian populations, is a "strategic" thing to do; in which air power can, in relatively swift measure, break the "will" not just of the enemy, but of that enemy's society; and in which air power is the royal path to victory.
That this has not proven so; that, most recently, it did not prove so in Afghanistan, in shock-and-awe Iraq, or in Israel's air assault last summer on Lebanon matters little. Faith in the efficacy of air power (as opposed to its barbarism) is fundamentalist in nature and so not disprovable by the facts on the rubble-strewn, cratered ground.
As a result, the strength of the belief that "it" -- force, air power -- will do the trick the next time, if only you have the nerve not to listen to the Nervous Nellies, if only you double down on your bet, if only you commit to it, should not be underestimated.
Consecutive headlines from ABC News' Daily Investigative Report:
"Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel"
"Pentagon Says Pre-War Intel Not Illegal"
"Gates: U.S. Can Prove Iran's Iraq Role"
Last week, the CIA sent an urgent report to President Bush's National Security Council: Iranian authorities had arrested two al-Qaeda operatives traveling through Iran on their way from Pakistan to Iraq. The suspects were caught along a well-worn, if little-noticed, route for militants determined to fight U.S. troops on Iraqi soil, according to a senior intelligence official.Al-Qaeda Suspects Color White House Debate Over Iran
The arrests were presented to Bush's senior policy advisers as evidence that Iran appears committed to stopping al-Qaeda foot traffic across its borders, the intelligence official said....
Bush has given the U.S. military the authority to kill or capture Iranian government agents working with Shiite militias inside Iraq. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said serial numbers and markings on some explosives used in Iraq indicate that the material came from Iran, but he offered no evidence.
With the aim of shaking Tehran's commitment to its nuclear program, Bush also approved last fall secret operations to target Iranian influence in southern Lebanon, in western Afghanistan, in the Palestinian territories and inside Iran. The new strategy, a senior administration official said, aims to portray Iran as a "terror-producing country, instead of an oil-producing country," with links to al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and death squads in Iraq...
Since al-Qaeda fighters began streaming into Iran from Afghanistan in the winter of 2001, Tehran had turned over hundreds of people to U.S. allies and provided U.S. intelligence with the names, photographs and fingerprints of those it held in custody, according to senior U.S. intelligence and administration officials. In early 2003, it offered to hand over the remaining high-value targets directly to the United States if Washington would turn over a group of exiled Iranian militants hiding in Iraq...
...Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring
He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous..."
Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.
In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.
The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.
Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.
"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."
..."US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation" - Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
I am much more worried... about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. That's the one that deeply worries me because I've seen some of the planning and we're not talking about just so-called surgical strikes against an array of targets inside of Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to those targets by taking out probably much of the Iranian air force. We're talking about sinking the Kilov (ph) submarines, knocking out the anti-ship missiles that could attack commerce or the American fleet in the Persian Gulf. We're talking about probably even taking out, trying to take out much of the speedboat capabilities, although that would be the hardest. We may even be taking out ballistic missile capabilities in Iran.Iraq, Iran, Israel And The Eclipse of U.S. Influence: What Role For America Now ?
You're not talking about a surgical strike. You're talking about a war against Iran and the Iranians are not going to take that sitting down. They will do everything in their power to retaliate. And then once again that could rebound heavily into Iraq. But it also could hammer the region to some degree. In other words, some of the planning that I've seen in reporting relates to, and I think somebody mentioned it as well - it might have been you Ken - something that would be sort of something like 1,500 aerial sorties and Cruise missile launches stretching over a matter of days. If you think that the Iranians during those days are not going to fire off what they haven't lost yet at commerce in the Gulf and aren't going to try to, you know, launch missiles that haven't been taken out, think again. The Iranians are going to be fighting back very, very hard.
There will be no ground dimension to this campaign. This will be an aerial assault. Some people might think, well, maybe the Israelis will do it and we won't. And the United States won't be involved and that might mitigate the situation in the Gulf. It may be worse. Because in the fog of war, in the first hours of the first day of such an assault, the Iranians might not even know who the enemy is. They may assume that the Untied States is well involved and therefore the Israelis not taking out that array of retaliatory capability in the Gulf could provoke a far more dangerous scenario by doing it themselves than if the United States did it...
Wayne White
Former Deputy Director, Near East and South Asia office,
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State
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posted by y2karl at 10:29 AM on February 8, 2007