Prelude to an attack on Iran

This is from Time.
Although Baer talks of neo-con illusions, he also quotes CIA operatives on IEDs and notes the other grievances against the Revolutiionary Guards in effect presenting quite strongly the case against them. Baer is probably right though that any threats against the regime will harm rather than help reformers. There is already a reaction against any Iranians with western contacts.


Prelude to an Attack on Iran
Saturday, Aug. 18, 2007 By ROBERT BAER
Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.



...


As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration's case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most sophisticated version, explosive formed projectiles or shape charges, are capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank, disabling the tank and killing the crew.

A former CIA explosives expert who still works in Iraq told me: "The Iranians are making them. End of story." His argument is only a state is capable of manufacturing the EFP's, which involves a complicated annealing process. Incidentally, he also is convinced the IRGC is helping Iraqi Shia militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone. "The way they're dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me all I need to know that the Shia are getting help. And there's no doubt it's Iranian, the IRGC's," he said.

A second part of the Administration's case against the IRGC is that the IRGC has had a long, established history of killing Americans, starting with the attack on the Marines in Beirut in 1983. And that's not to mention it was the IRGC that backed Hizballah in its thirty-four day war against Israel last year. The feeling in the Administration is that we should have taken care of the IRGC a long, long time ago.

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

— Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down

Obstructing the war on Iran

This is an interesting article that ranges over much more than the possible attack on Iran. I am always happy to find an article reflecting a viewpoint outside of the mainstream. This article has a wealth of detail. Of course now France has a new president who seems to click with Bush its policy may change. Akleh has an interesting take on part of the new arms deal with Gulf states.


Obstructing the War on Iran



By: Dr. Elias Akleh





Many military officials, political analysts, and strategy study groups anticipated the war against Iran to be launched at the beginning of 2007, sometime between mid January and late April, when weather conditions would be ideal for aerial sorties and naval invasion. The signs were apparent with the heavy naval traffic in the Arabian Gulf, and the number of the conducted war games on both sides.

Yet, we are now in August and war did not start. Did the Bush administration cancel its war plans after all the aggressive war-mongering rhetoric and threats, and after spending millions of Dollars sending American nuclear aircraft carriers with their battle groups to the gulf? Did Cheney’s fiery threats and promises to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities lose their flames? Or maybe Israel and its AIPAC had stopped pressuring the Administration to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities observing the statement of Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on 28th February 2007 that Israel can deal with Iranian nuclear threat alone if necessary. “We can face the country (Iran) even if we’re left to face them one-on-one”, he stated.

The decision to attack (nuke) Iran was not cancelled but obstructed.

Iran is different than Iraq. It is a larger country and has more natural resources than Iraq. Although the US had imposed economical sanctions on Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and had pushed Iraqi Saddam Hussain into an eight-year war against Iran to exhaust the country, the Iranians grew more independent and industrious instead.

The economic sanction was not unanimous and many countries continued trading with Iran. Many European and Asian countries were dependent on Iranian oil and gas supplies for their own energy. They also had the large Iranian consumer market for their own goods. The sanctions against Iran were in effect sanctions against these other countries, which were in competition against American companies for consumer markets. European countries, led by France, had always been in economical and political competition against the US since its independence. This competition is apparent in France’s positions towards American policies in the Middle East. France opposed American invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq. The French President, Jacques Chirac, stated in March 2003 “Iraq today does not represent an immediate threat that justifies an immediate war.” This drew a lot of opposition: the American administration dubbed France “Old Europe” and tried to change the name of the “French fries” to “freedom fries” in an attempt to belittle France. France feels it is loosing its footage in the Middle East due to American aggressive policies that is why it is keeping close contact with the Lebanese to counter the American meddling in Lebanon. Recently France had entered into agreement to build a peaceful nuclear reactor in Libya in an attempt to gain footage there.

Iran Sanction Act, expected to be passed by the congress, is calling for American disinvestment in any foreign energy company that invest more than $20 million in Iran. This Act is facing a fierce opposition from European countries such as France, Germany and UK, among others, who had sent their diplomats to lobby against the Act on Capitol Hills. The Act would hurt major European energy companies such as French Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol of Spain. The latter two are involved in $10 billion investment to produce Iran’s liquefied natural gas. American divestment in such companies would adversely affect American public sector pension funds especially Calpers and Calstrs; giant California pension plans. Sanctions against Iran hurt the US itself more than anybody else.

Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq had really strengthened the Iranian military, who bought more advanced weaponry mainly from US competitor Russia, and who started building their own military equipments such as armored tanks, navy vessels, submarines, un-manned drones and missiles. Iran had also re-started its nuclear program under the supervision and help of Russia. This infuriated the American administration, who launched a political campaign to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions accusing them of manufacturing nuclear bombs.

The real reason of the conflict is not the bomb itself for the US, itself, is building more nuclear bombs – tactical bombs-, and Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea, all non-members of the NPT, had built their own nuclear bombs but the US did not send its nuclear carriers to their shores. Instead the US is turning its eyes away from the Israeli bombs, has effective control of Pakistani bomb through controlling the Pakistani leader Perves Musharraf, gained control over Indian nuclear facilities after entering recently into agreement to supply India with nuclear fuel, and finally has neutralized North Korean nuclear facilities through negotiations and economical bribes. The real reason of the conflict is the competition for exclusive monopoly of the perceived future energy resources (nuclear fuel) to rake in money, and to indirectly control other countries.

American violations of international law and invasion of Iraq gave a warning to all the countries of the world that US intends to take advantage of the global unipolar power situation to expand its influence over the global vital natural resources especially oil in order to subjugate the rest of the world. Countries, especially Iran, started forming economical and political alliances to counter the global bully – USA. The European Union invited Eastern Bloc states, separated now from Soviet Union, to join in. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia, Brunei, and Tobago had launched a Gas OPEC in April 9th 2007 to counter American control over Oil OPEC. Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an Asian regional organization to enhance security, economic and cultural cooperation, was launched by China and Russia and encompasses central Asian states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran has applied to enter this organization as a member to gain more support.

India, Russia, and China had entered into a trilateral cooperation agreement in February 2007 intended to promote international harmony and understanding. No doubt that the cooperation of these three Asian big powers is intended to counter the American influence in the region. Both China and Russia are allies of Iran, involved in extensive military cooperation agreements. They are major actors in Central Asian oil and have significant strategic and economic interests in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea basin.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a very busy President. He traveled to many countries to build bilateral relations and to gain political support. He visited the US to explain his country’s position concerning its nuclear program. He visited Venezuela and formed alliance with Chavez. He attended the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Cuba in September 2006. He visited Sudan in February 2007 and met with President Omar Al-Bashir in an attempt to improve political relations and criticized the West for meddling with Sudanese affairs in Darfur. He visited Gulf States including Saudi Arabia last March explaining that Iran has no conflict with them, yet advising them to expel the American military bases in their countries. He warned that in case of American war against Iran his country would strike these military bases that might result in some collateral damages to their countries. This visit led Kuwait to announce that it would not allow its country to be used as a launching pad for a war against Iran. Ahmadinejad had also visited Belarus last May to improve bilateral cooperation between the two countries. Monday, August 6th, Ahmadinejad visited Algeria, who had always stood against isolating Iran, to strengthen bilateral relations. Iran has also offered to share peaceful nuclear technology with Algeria; a clear statement that Iran has become a nuclear country, and a challenge to other nuclear technology exporting countries. Nicaragua has also singed an agreement with Iran on August 8th to export food stuff to Iran for Iranian help to build hydraulic power plants. Ahmadinejad’s visitations are clear proof of American failure to isolate Iran.

Iran has robust military capabilities as was demonstrated during August 2006 war games. Participating in the war games of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Iran had demonstrated large scale military capabilities. Iran has Russian sophisticated early warning radar stations, anti aircraft missile launchers, stealth long range Fajr and Shahab missile bases that could hit Israel, cruise missile sites scattered along Iranian borders, submarines and missile launching speed boats that could easily sink an aircraft carrier and block the Strait of Hormuz, and atop of all that Iran has 14 military airfields housing sophisticated Russian as well as Iranian air fighters. It was also revealed that Iran has produced pilotless stealth drones with a range of 700km that are undetected by radars. Iran is adding to its air power 250 advanced long-range Russian made Sukhoi-30 multi mode fighter jets that could function as air patrol, air defense, ground attack, and air-to-air combat.

The most feared and effective Iranian weapon is the carrier destroying supersonic Russian-built SS-N-27B missile, know to American military as the sizzler. This missile has the potential of performing high defensive maneuvers including sharp-angled dodges. This missile could not be detected until it hits its target. The American navy has no assurances that its Aegis system is capable of detecting, tracking and intercepting this sizzler.

Iran is capable of defending itself and would inflict large casualties on its attackers.

On the other side the American/Israeli position is getting weaker. Bush’s lies to attack Iraq were exposed, atrocities perpetrated by American soldiers against Iraqis filled foreign media, CIA’s illegal renditions and tortures became well known around the world, and the Israeli murders of Palestinian civilians, the destruction of their homes, the usurpation of their land, and Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights and their intent to wipe Palestinians off existence are being globally recognized and opposed by so many nations and political organizations. The world no longer trust the US nor Israel.

Americans themselves had lost confidence in their administration and in their decisions. The US army is having trouble meeting their recruiting goals, so it is offering $20,000 bonus to new and prior recruits, who would ship out to Iraq and Afghanistan within 30 days after training. The Administration finds it very expensive to replace cheap regular soldiers with the very expensive “Blackwater” professional mercenaries.

Arab governments allied with the US, such as Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States are afraid that war on Iran would engulf and consume their countries and results in their loss of leaderships. US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, had accused Saudi Arabia and other Iraqi neighboring countries (CNN interview Sunday 7/29) of destabilizing Iraq and opening their borders to terrorists to enter Iraq. Iraqi officials had also accused Saudi Arabia of funding Sunni fighters in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates needed to exercise arms twisting during their visits to Egypt and Saudi Arabia (end of July) to put these governments back in line.

The Administration is still having trouble drawing and implementing plans to create an emergency oil reserve in case Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz. Oil prices are swinging up and down every week.

The neoconservative Bush administration, and its supporting military complex, considers war on Iran as the fuse that will explode the whole Middle Eastern region into a state of “constructive chaos” that would allow them to implement their “New Middle East” plans. Unlike the war on Iraq, which was merely a testing experiment, the war on Iran, as was discovered lately, needs thorough planning due to anticipated long lasting effects on global economy, and reshaping of global political structures especially in the Middle Eastern region.

Although Iran is a member of the NPT and it keeps emphasizing that its nuclear program is peaceful and had offered international monitoring of its nuclear facilities, there is still fear that Iran might one day develop a bomb. Such bomb would tip the power balance in the Middle East and become a deterrent to Israeli aggression and expansion, and might force Israel to accept a peace treaty with the Arabs. It could also form an obstacle to the American expansion in the Middle East and South East Asia. The French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, at the time, stated that Iran wants to have the bomb as a self-defense deterrent weapon, while French President, Jacques Chirac, stated that “nuclear Iran does not pose any threat on world peace”. He, later, was pressured to withdraw this statement. Israeli officials, on the other hand, keep threatening to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if the US does not do it.

Continuously threatening to strike Iran, Cheney keeps urging Bush to directly confront Iran by launching air strikes against alleged Iranian terrorist training camps. Despite Afghan President, Hamid Karzai’s declaration during his interview on CNN Sunday August 8th that “So far, Iran has been a helper (in the fight against terrorism)”, President Bush keeps threatening Iran of consequences of “… transporting, delivering EFPs (explosively formed penetrators), highly sophisticated IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that kill Americans in Iraq”. Bush ignores the fact that the British Independent had revealed on March 5th 2006 that these alleged Iranian explosive devices were initially created by the British Security Services in the early 1990s, and that when the military provided reporters with pictures of theses explosives they had names, specifications and manufacturing dates in English not in Farsi.

The Administration is spreading fear of expanding nuclear Iran in the Gulf States. To allegedly counter and contain the growing power of Iran in oil Gulf region the Administration is seeking a congressional approval of an arm sale package to the Gulf States; Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and UAE, totaling to $20 billions. This sale would include advanced weaponry such as advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to fighter planes, and new naval vessels.

These advanced weapons would be stored in the desert for the use of the American military if and when a 911 or a Gulf of Tonken similar attack happens against an American base or naval vessel in the Gulf. Then the Administration would claim it its duty to retaliate against Iran in self-defense. Such a scenario might take place at the end of Bush’s presidency, when his administration would start the war and leave the mess to the next administration to clean up.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.

Chomsky: The Iranian situation in context

It has always struck me as totally bizarre that reports of US officials that Iran is meddling in Iraq are met with straight faces. No one ever says: Didn't the US- not exactly a neighbour of Iraq= invade Iraq and manage to have its leader executed!


What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
Putting the Iran Crisis in Context
By Noam Chomsky

Unsurprisingly, George W. Bush's announcement of a "surge" in Iraq came despite the firm opposition to any such move of Americans and the even stronger opposition of the (thoroughly irrelevant) Iraqis. It was accompanied by ominous official leaks and statements – from Washington and Baghdad – about how Iranian intervention in Iraq was aimed at disrupting our mission to gain victory, an aim which is (by definition) noble. What then followed was a solemn debate about whether serial numbers on advanced roadside bombs (IEDs) were really traceable to Iran; and, if so, to that country's Revolutionary Guards or to some even higher authority.

This "debate" is a typical illustration of a primary principle of sophisticated propaganda. In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed – or else. What you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy. The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief; the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.

The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.

In this case, however, even ridicule – notably absent – would not suffice, because the charges against Iran are part of a drumbeat of pronouncements meant to mobilize support for escalation in Iraq and for an attack on Iran, the "source of the problem." The world is aghast at the possibility. Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country. From what limited information we have, it appears that significant parts of the U.S. military and intelligence communities are opposed to such an attack, along with almost the entire world, even more so than when the Bush administration and Tony Blair's Britain invaded Iraq, defying enormous popular opposition worldwide.

"The Iran Effect"

The results of an attack on Iran could be horrendous. After all, according to a recent study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, the Iraq invasion has already led to a seven-fold increase in terror. The "Iran effect" would probably be far more severe and long-lasting. British military historian Corelli Barnett speaks for many when he warns that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the U.S.? We cannot know. Such state planning is, of course, kept secret in the interests of "security." Review of the declassified record reveals that there is considerable merit in that claim – though only if we understand "security" to mean the security of the Bush administration against their domestic enemy, the population in whose name they act.

Even if the White House clique is not planning war, naval deployments, support for secessionist movements and acts of terror within Iran, and other provocations could easily lead to an accidental war. Congressional resolutions would not provide much of a barrier. They invariably permit "national security" exemptions, opening holes wide enough for the several aircraft-carrier battle groups soon to be in the Persian Gulf to pass through – as long as an unscrupulous leadership issues proclamations of doom (as Condoleezza Rice did with those "mushroom clouds" over American cities back in 2002). And the concocting of the sorts of incidents that "justify" such attacks is a familiar practice. Even the worst monsters feel the need for such justification and adopt the device: Hitler's defense of innocent Germany from the "wild terror" of the Poles in 1939, after they had rejected his wise and generous proposals for peace, is but one example.

The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam – fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers, that they might need them for civil-disorder control.

Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis. It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites – nuclear and otherwise – in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?

It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."

Surely no sane person wants Iran (or any nation) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.

As it happens, this solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who generally are in agreement on nuclear issues. The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force. In brief, if public opinion were to have a significant influence on state policy in the U.S. and Iran, resolution of the crisis might be at hand, along with much more far-reaching solutions to the global nuclear conundrum.

Noam Chomsky is the author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (Metropolitan Books), just published in paperback, among many other works.


Copyright 2007 Noam Chomsky