Iran believed to be reason for CENTCOM chief's resignation

Admiral William Fallon's request to quit his position as head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and to retire from the military was apparently the result of a Bush administration decision to pressure him to resign. Announcing the resignation, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he believed it was "the right thing to do," thus indicating the administration wanted it. On Mar. 10, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, asked whether Gates still had full confidence in Fallon, would only say that Fallon "still enjoys a working–a good working relationship with the secretary of defence," and then added, "Admiral Fallon serves at the pleasure of the president." The resignation came a few days after the publication of an Esquire magazine article profiling Fallon in which he was described as being "in hot water" with the White House and justified public comments departing from the Bush administration's policy toward Iran. The publicity that followed the article accelerated the pressure on Fallon to resign. But Fallon almost certainly knew that he would be fired when he agreed to cooperate with the Esquire magazine profile in late 2006. On Mar. 11, Fallon issued a statement saying, "Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president's policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts in the CENTCOM region." The resignation brings to an end a year, during which time Fallon clashed with the White House over policy toward Iran and with Gen. David Petraeus and the White House over whether Iraq should continue to be given priority over Afghanistan and Pakistan in US policy. Fallon's greatest concern appears to have been preventing war with Iran. He was one a group of senior military officers, apparently including most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were alarmed in late 2006 and early 2007 by indications that Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were contemplating a possible attack on Iran. Gates chose Fallon to replace Gen. John P. Abizaid as CENTCOM chief shortly after a Dec. 13, 2006 meeting between Bush and the Joint Chiefs at which Bush reportedly asked their views on a possible strike against Iran. Col. W. Patrick Lang, a former intelligence officer on the Middle East for the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post last week that Fallon had said privately at the time of his confirmation that an attack on Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch." When asked how he could avoid such a conflict, Fallon reportedly responded, "I have options, you know." Lang said he interpreted that comment as implying Fallon would step down rather than follow orders to carry out such an attack. As IPS reported last May, Fallon was also quoted as saying privately at that time, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box." That was an apparent reference to the opposition by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to an aggressive war against Iran. Even before assuming his new post at CENTCOM, Fallon expressed strong opposition in mid-February to a proposal for sending a third US aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, to overlap with two other carriers, according to knowledgeable sources. The addition of a third carrier was to part of a broader strategy then being discussed at the Pentagon to intimidate Iran by making a series of military moves suggesting preparations for a military strike. The plan for a third carrier task force in the Gulf was dropped after Fallon made his views known. Fallon reportedly made his opposition to a strike against Iran known to the White House early on in his tenure, and his role as CENTCOM commander would have made it very difficult for the Bush administration to carry out a strike against Iran, because he controlled all ground, air and naval military access to the region. But Fallon's role in regional diplomacy proved to be an even greater source of friction with the White House than his position on military policy toward Iran. Personal relations with military and political leaders in the Middle East had already become nearly as important as military planning under Fallon's predecessors at CENTCOM. Fallon clearly relished his diplomatic role and did not hesitate to express views on diplomacy that were at odds with those of the administration. Last summer, as Dick Cheney was maneuvering within the administration to shift US policy toward an attack on bases in Iran allegedly connected to anti-US Shiite forces in Iraq, Fallon declared in an interview, "We have to figure out a way to come to an arrangement" with Iran. When Sunni Arab regimes in the Middle East became alarmed about the possibility of a US war with Iran, Fallon made statements on three occasions in September and November ruling out a US attack on Iran. Those statements contradicted the Bush administration's policy of keeping the military option "on the table" and soured relations with the White House. Fallon also antagonized administration officials by pushing for a faster exit from Iraq than the White House and Gen. Petraeus wanted. Fallon had a highly-publicised personal and policy clash with Petraeus, for whom he reportedly expressed a visceral dislike. Sources familiar with reports of his meetings with Petraeus in Baghdad last March told IPS last spring that he called him an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" in their first meeting. Fallon later denied that he had used such language, suggesting to Esquire that the sources of the report were probably army officers who were indulging in inter-service rivalry with the navy. In fact, however, the sources of the report were supporters of Fallon. Fallon's quarrel with Petraeus was also related to the latter's insistence on keeping US troops in Iraq, even while the NATO position in Afghanistan was growing more tenuous. Fallon was strongly committed to a strategy that gave priority to Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central security challenges to the United States in the Middle East and Asia. Fallon made his distaste for a long war in Iraq very clear from the beginning. He ordered subordinates to stop using the term "long war," which had been favored by the Bush administration. He was reported to be concerned that the concept would alienate people across the Middle East by suggesting a US intention to maintain troops indefinitely in Muslim countries. Fallon's policy positions made him unpopular among neoconservative supporters of the administration. One neoconservative pundit, military specialist Max Boot, criticized Fallon last November for his public comment ruling out a strike against Iran and then suggested in January that Petraeus should replace the "unimpressive" Fallon at CENTCOM. Fallon was playing a complex political game at CENTCOM by crossing the White House on the two most politically sensitive issues in Middle East policy. As a veteran bureaucratic infighter, he knew that he was politically vulnerable. Nevertheless, he chose late last year not to lower his profile but to raise it by cooperating fully with the Esquire article. IPS has learned that Fallon agreed to sit for celebrity photographer Peter Yang at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa on Dec. 26 for the Esquire spread, despite the near-certainty that it exacerbate his relations with White House. That may have been a signal that he already knew that he would not be able to continue to play the game much longer and was ready to bring his stormy tenure at CENTCOM to an end. No 'Iran War' line angered White House Fallon's public statements last fall ruling out war against Iran last fall were not coordinated with the White House and landed him in trouble more than once with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. In the article on Fallon in Esquire, former Pentagon official Thomas P.M. Barnett writes that Fallon angered the White House by "brazenly challenging" Bush on his aggressive threat of war against Tehran. Barnett also cites "well-placed observers" as saying Bush may soon replace Fallon with a "more pliable" commander. Barnett's account, which quotes conversations with Fallon during the CENTCOM commander's trips to the Middle East, shows that Fallon privately justified his statements contradicting the Bush policy of keeping the "option" of an unprovoked attack on Iran "on the table" as necessary to calm the fears of Egypt and other friendly Arab regimes of a US-Iran war. Barnett recalls that when Fallon was in Cairo in November, the lead story in that day's edition of the English-language daily Egyptian Gazette carried the headline "US Rules Out Strike against Iran" over a picture of Fallon meeting with President Hosni Mubarak. That story, published on Nov. 19 and not picked up by any US news media, reported that Fallon had "ruled out a possible strike against Iran and said Washington was mulling non-military options instead." Later that day, according to Barnett, Fallon told him during a coffee break in a military meeting, "I'm in hot water again," and then confirmed that his problems were directly with the White House. That was the second time in less than a week and the third time in seven weeks that Fallon had publicly declared that there would be no war against Iran. In an interview with Al-Jazeera television in September, which Fallon himself had requested, according to a source at Al-Jazeera, he had said, "This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful." And only a week before the trip to Egypt, in an interview with Financial Times, Fallon had said, a military strike was not "in the offing," adding, "Another war is just not where we want to go." These statements represented an extraordinary exercise of power by a combat commander, because it contradicted a central feature of the Bush-Cheney strategy on Iran. High-ranking Bush administration officials had been routinely repeating the administration's line that no option had been taken "off the table" since early 2005. At an Oct. 17 news conference, Bush said he had "told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." Fallon's public statements explicitly ruling out an attack on Iran thus undermined the Bush administration's threat against Iran. The willingness of the top commander in the Middle East to take the military option "off the table" was in part a reflection of the determination of uniformed military leaders to prevent what they regarded as a disastrous course. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who replaced Gen. Peter Pace in June, was even more candid about his opposition to the use of force against Iran than Pace had been, according to a Congressional staffer who had participated in private meetings with both. Pace declared publicly in late October, "We have to be mindful of the risks that would [be spawned] by engaging in a third conflict" in the region. Mullen added, however, that military options "cannot be taken off the table." But Fallon, as the commander responsible for the entire Middle East, was concerned about more than the consequences of actually exercising the military option. He was prompted to enunciate a "no-war" line on Iran by the panicky reactions of Arab states to what they thought were indications of the warlike intentions of Bush administration. In the latter half of 2007 friendly Arab regimes were upset by the possibility of a US-Iran war, which they feared would destabilize the entire region. Fallon is quoted as telling Barnett, "[I]t's all anyone wants to talk about right now. People here hear what I'm saying and understand. I don't want to get them too spun up." Fallon told Barnett that his ruling out of military action against Iran was necessary to calm the very regimes the Bush administration was hoping to enlist to support its anti-Iran line. "Washington interprets this as all aimed at them," Fallon said in Cairo, according to Barnett. "Instead, it's aimed at governments and media in this region. I'm not talking about the White House." Fallon was arguing, in effect, that it makes no sense to make the possibility of an unprovoked attack part of your declaratory policy if it merely induces confusion and panic among friendly governments without influencing the target of the threat. Barnett quotes Fallon as complaining that "they"–meaning White House officials–were asking him, "Why are you even meeting with Mubarak?" But Fallon strongly defended the diplomatic role he was playing in relations with Mubarak and other Middle Eastern leaders. "This is my center of gravity," Fallon told him. "This is my job." Fallon's sensitivity to the political-diplomatic consequences of a declaratory policy that explicitly keeps open the threat of an aggressive war as a potential option set him apart not only the White House but from the consensus among national security specialists in both parties. In early 2007, all three of the top three Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination publicly declared their support for keeping "all options on the table." Fallon is not the first CENTCOM commander to rein in aggressive White House policy toward the Middle East. In late 1997, according to Dana Priest's book, "The Mission", the Bill Clinton White House wanted CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni to order his pilots to provoke a military confrontation with Iraq in the no-fly zone by deliberately drawing fire from Iraqi planes. The request for such a provocation was conveyed to Zinni by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Ralston. But Zinni, who believed that it could lead to an unwanted war with Iraq, insisted that a formal request from the White House would have to be sent, and the plan was dropped.