Countdown To War With Iran?

[fastpat]

Another excellent article by mideast expert Eric Margolis on the coming Bush'ist attack on Iran. As I stated previously, the US government will reduce most of the Iranian infrastructure to ashes if they can. That will include 2,300 “high value” targets such as its dispersed nuclear infrastructure and, worryingly, operating reactors, air and naval bases, ports, telecommunications, air defenses, military factories, energy networks, and government buildings. Iran’s water and sewage systems, bridges, food storage, and bomb shelters(don't want any children hiding below ground to be missed). Please note that most of these targets are civilian manned by civilians, just like the ones in Iraq. The outrage this should cause in America hopefully will topple the Bush'ist regime once and for all.

Countdown To War With Iran?

by Eric Margolis

In spite of being hopelessly bogged down in $700 billion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush/Cheney administration appears set on a collision course with Tehran. In recent weeks, the White House’s war of words against Iran has sharply intensified, and grown increasingly bellicose.

What is the White House up to? Either trying to bluff Tehran into abandoning its entirely legal but worrisome civilian nuclear power program, which would allow the administration to claim a major victory after so many reverses.

Or, the lame duck Bush/Cheney Administration is attempting to divert attention from the worsening debacle in Iraq and intends to provoke an air and naval war against Iran as a last desperate, ideologically driven assault against its foes in the Muslim world. One is reminded of the suicidal banzai charges of cornered Japanese troops during World War II.

Time is running out for the pro-war neocons: Bush has less than two years left in office and is facing a revolt in Congress. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to leave office by the end of April – or earlier if he is engulfed by a raging scandal over selling titles. The arrest of Lord Levy, Blair’s principal fund raiser and pro-war mentor on the Mideast, has seriously undermined the faltering Blair government.

Evidence continues to accumulate that the Bush/Cheney Administration is planning an air and naval war against Iran in spite of a rising chorus of protests by serving and retired senior US military officers and diplomats.

The heaviest concentration of US naval strike forces since the 2003 war against Iraq is concentrating off Iran. In a disturbing replay of that conflict, CIA drones and US Air Force recon aircraft, along with US and British Special Forces are overflying Iran and probing its nuclear and military installations.

CIA and Britain’s MI6 are stirring unrest among Iran’s Kurds and Azerbaijanis, and arming Iranian Marxist and royalist exiles.

In a clear provocation, President George Bush ordered US forces in Iraq to “kill” Iranians officials or diplomats who appear “threatening.” US troops in northern Iraq broke into an Iranian liaison office and arrested its military staff. Bush warned Iran not to “meddle” in neighboring Iraq.

Pentagon sources accused Iran of smuggling weapons and explosive to “Iraqi insurgents” – though the “insurgents” are in fact Shia militiamen allied to the US-installed Baghdad regime. Accusations that Iran is behind attacks on US forces are clearly designed to lay the groundwork for a “casus belli” – justifying war.

Half the 21,000 additional US troops headed to Iraq may be positioned to block an Iranian threat to the vulnerable main US Kuwait-Baghdad supply line in the event of war with Iran. US anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are being airlifted to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman.

New contingents of US Air Force personnel and warplanes are arriving at key forward air bases in Bulgaria and Romania that link the US to the Mideast and Central Asia. US bases in Britain, Germany, Diego Garcia, the Gulf, Central Asia, and Pakistan are reported on heightened alert. Turkey is being pressed to allow US and Israeli strike aircraft to use its air space to attack northern Iran.

The Pentagon’s latest strike plan against Iran includes over 2,300 “high value” targets such as its dispersed nuclear infrastructure and, worryingly, operating reactors, air and naval bases, ports, telecommunications, air defenses, military factories, energy networks, and government buildings. Iran’s water and sewage systems, bridges, food storage, and bomb shelters could also be targeted, as were Iraq’s in 2001.

A swift “surgical strike” is not likely. Given the large number of potential targets in Iran, and its efforts to defend and disperse some of the high value ones; it is very probable the US would have to launch multiple air and missile strikes against many of them to assure destruction. Iranian ground forces moving toward Iraq and Kuwait would also come under repeated attack, along with their long-ranged artillery and mobile tactical missiles.

The US Treasury has mounted a highly effective campaign to strangle Iran financially, seriously hurting its foreign banking connections, retarding industrial growth and energy production, and scaring off foreign investment.

The Bush Administration and close ally Israel have sharply intensified their war of words against Iran, claiming, implausibly, it poses a nuclear threat to the entire world, though Tehran has no nuclear weapons or long-range delivery systems. Nor do Washington’s fear-mongering neoconservatives explain why on earth Iran would want to threaten the rest of the world – even if it could.

The real neocon objective, of course, is not to rid the world of a potential threat, but to get America into attacking and seriously damaging the nation now regarded as Israel’s primary foe, Iran. With Egypt sidelined and under tight US control, Iraq demolished and occupied, Syria isolated and petrified, only Iran remains a threat to Israel and seriously challenges its continued occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Politicians in Israel are in dangerous emotional overdrive and make open threats to attack Iran – even with nuclear weapons. Israeli rightists and their American supporters absurdly claim Iran is a new Nazi Germany and Israel faces a second Holocaust.

The fact that Israel possesses a powerful triad of air, land, and sea-based nuclear forces that can survive any surprise attack is never mentioned. At any given time, Israel has at least one Dolphin-class submarine on station in the northern Arabian Sea that can hit Iran with nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Though UN inspectors find no evidence Iran is producing nuclear weapons, Tehran, like Saddam’s Iraq, is being told to prove an impossible negative – that it has no nuclear weapons or secret programs hidden away. Ironically, there are persistent reports that Iran’s nuclear program is moving at a snail’s pace and has encountered serious technical problems.

With disturbing déjà vu, the US Congress and American media are swallowing the administration’s torrent of unproven accusations against Iran precisely the way they lapped up grotesque White House lies about Iraq.

Amid growing war fever in North America, last week France’s President Jacques Chirac sensibly observed, in an off the record interview, that even if Iran had a few nuclear weapons, they would be only for self-defense, and “not very dangerous.”

Iran would be obliterated by US and Israeli nuclear counter-strikes if it ever used its nukes against Israel, noted Chirac with Cartesian logic, and are unlikely to commit national suicide.

After his candid comments became public, Chirac retracted them after a storm of protests from Washington, Israel, and even members of his own government who toe the US party line that Iran is a grave threat to world security. Chirac, who is a lame duck, was simply telling a truth that few cared to hear.

February 6, 2007

Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World.

[fastpat]

The war drums are being beaten looudly by the neocons in the White House, but Americans aren't buying it.

Iran's role in Iraq met with skepticism

Updated 2/5/2007 7:42 AM ET
By Barbara Slavin and David Jackson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials from commanders in Iraq to President Bush have stepped up claims that Iran has been supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons and training to kill U.S. troops.

"Iranian lethal support for select groups of Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq," said a U.S. intelligence assessment of Iraq released Friday.

Such claims, however, are being met with denials from Iran and skepticism at home. Faulty U.S. intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which Bush used to justify in part the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has eroded much of the administration's credibility, military expert Anthony Cordesman said.

"I'm not sure they understand how little credibility these statements have," said Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The great risk is that what may be a real issue will not be seen as real outside the United States."

"There is no truth whatsoever in the allegations that Iran has been supplying weapons to the Iraqi insurgents," said Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, a spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations.

Instead, Mohammadi said, the United States is producing allegations on "a large scale (to) justify a discredited and indeed dangerously flawed policy" in Iraq.

The declassified version of the national intelligence estimate on Iraq released last week included little detail on Iran. National security adviser Stephen Hadley said the administration plans to release a report detailing its evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraqi fighting but is withholding it "to try and put out the facts as accurately as we can."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said administration officials "want to make sure that the briefing … is dominated by facts: serial numbers, technology and so on. And so we just want to make sure that the briefing that is provided is completely reliable."

In recent weeks, Iraqi and U.S. forces have raided Iranian offices in Iraq, including one in the northern city of Irbil. Computers, files and other equipment were seized during the Irbil raid, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

To date, here are some of the administration's allegations of Iran's influence in Iraq and the evidence backing up the charges:

•Charge:

Iranian weapons, identical to those seized by Israel in 2002, have been found in Iraq.

Evidence: The chartered ship Karine A, which was registered in the Pacific island nation of Tonga, was carrying rockets, grenades and sniper rifles from Iran to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea for delivery to the Palestine Liberation Organization in Gaza, according to the Israeli government. It also carried the powerful plastic explosive known as C-4, Army Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner said in September. C-4 found in Baghdad had identical labels to that found on the ship, he said. Zahner, a top military intelligence official, said the government of Iran controls military-grade explosives.

•Charge:

Weapons with Iranian serial numbers have been seized in Iraq.

Evidence: Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. military's No. 2 general in Iraq, told USA TODAY last week that Iran had supplied Iraqi insurgent groups with Katyusha rockets and RPG-29, a rocket-propelled grenade that can fire armor-piercing rounds. Odierno did not provide details on the serial numbers.

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Iran alleges U.S. involvement in deadly attack
By Kim Murphy
Times Staff Writer

5:54 PM PST, February 18, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran — Bullet cartridges bearing a U.S. insignia and English lettering were among the weaponry seized last week from Sunni militants suspected of killing 11 members of Shiite-dominated Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, Iranian officials said Sunday.

A photograph of the cartridge box, along with an array of other ammunition, was published by Iranian newspapers and agencies.

The Iranians did not provide direct access to the weapons and explosives, drawing skepticism from analysts, and there was no way to evaluate the claims independently. But Iran is worried that the United States is quietly helping Iranian opposition groups foment internal instability, even while the Bush administration is directly confronting Iran over its nuclear program and its alleged arming of Shiite militants in Iraq.

The Iranian allegations, in the latest incidents of a wave of non-Shiite minority unrest, came a week after U.S. officials laid out what they said was evidence of Iranian-made weaponry in Iraq. That evidence also was inconclusive, and Iran denied supplying arms to Iraqi combatants.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Marine Maj. Rebecca Goodrich-Hinton, said Sunday that officials had no comment in response to the allegations from Tehran.

Iranian officials in the southeastern region of Sistan-Baluchestan, where a bus carrying the troops was struck by explosives from a booby-trapped car Wednesday, announced the allegations of U.S. and British involvement in the attack.

"Washington and London are facing serious challenges as their interests in the Middle East region have been endangered. Since the Islamic Republic is the main center of anti-U.S. struggles, they are seeking to trouble Iran through a series of challenges, including terrorist attacks and unrests," an unnamed local official, identified as the political director of the Sistan-Baluchestan province, told the semi-official Fars news agency.

He said weapons used in the attack, which also wounded 31 people, were U.S. and British-made. "Moreover, the arrested terrorist agents have confessed that they have been trained by English-speaking people," the official said.http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes836.html

[kach22i]

History forgotten, the "what if's" of history.

http://www.saipa.us/crash.html
.... .‘We would make a preemptive strike,’ said the shah, ‘and have the Persian Gulf in our hands before the Americans find out’...

The Crash of 79
I was at the U.N. when this article in the now defunct "New York" came out.
It is dated dated December 2, 1974 and was part of a campaign against
my brother the Shah of Iran that began following the increase in oil prices.
Judge for Yourself.