Pentagon prepares for attack on Iran

" The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Apr. 16. William Arkin, who served as the US Army's top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as TIRANNT, an acronym for "Theater Iran Near Term." It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps and a global strike plan, Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and British planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations, the scholar said. "According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander of Centcom, in 2002," Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US Central Command. But preparations under TIRANNT began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan has since been updated. Air Force planners have modeled attacks against Iranian air defenses, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal targets and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz. The Marines, meanwhile, have come up with their own document called "Concept of Operations" that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore without establishing a beachhead first. "Though the Marine Corps enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is–with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth–unmistakably meant to be Iran," Arkin said. In June 2004, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld alerted the US Strategic Command in Omaha to be prepared to implement "CONPLAN 8022," a global strike plan that includes Iran and that was designed to be implemented on a 12-hour notice. "The new task force mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver 'prompt' global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances, the president might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one," Arkin wrote. "To think today that the gamers put nukes away is naive, and to think that nuclear weapons don't play a role in the Bush administration's strategy is wildly wrong." "The United States military is really, really getting ready, building war plans and options, studying maps [and] shifting its thinking," Arkin said. Arkin's revelations were published in the wake of alarming reports earlier this month that US military planning for attacks, including nuclear strikes, against Iran have moved beyond its contingency phase. The now well-established cycle of threat and counter-threat between the US and Iran makes the possibility of their sitting down together for a negotiation of all outstanding issues appear more remote than ever. As diplomats meeting in Moscow failed to reach agreement on how best to raise pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, the US and Iranian presidents, both using tough language, staked out unyielding positions. The rhetoric appeared to get even more heated on Apr. 18 when President George W. Bush, asked explicitly about the recently published reports that the US is planning for a possible nuclear strike against targets in Iran, refused to rule it out, even as he stressed that his administration wants "to solve this issue diplomatically, and we're working hard to do so." "All options are on the table," he declared in what one expert described as a virtually unprecedented threat by a US president to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. Bush's remarks followed a threat voiced earlier that day by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during an annual military parade. The Iranian army, he said, "will cut off the hands of any aggressors and will make any aggressor regret it." Iran defied UN demands by declaring last week it had enriched uranium to a level used in power stations and was aiming for industrial-scale production, sending oil prices to record highs above $72 a barrel. Iran says it will not drop its right to enrich uranium for peaceful use but that it will work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The UN nuclear watchdog says it still has found no hard proof of efforts to build atomic weapons. Notably disturbed by the Bush administration's possible attack schemes, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke came forward, arguing armed conflict with Iran could backfire and prove even more damaging to US interests than the war with Iraq. Iran would probably respond with terrorist attacks against the US and could also hamper efforts in Iraq, he wrote in an article for the New York Times, co-authored with Steven Simon, a former State Department official. Far from toppling the government in Tehran, bombing would also be likely to guarantee the regime's survival for "decades more." Although Bush has dismissed reports of war planning as wild speculation, the article warned: "The parallels to the run-up to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was 'no war plan on my desk,' despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. "Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well."