US considers air strikes on Iran

Washington is abuzz about new reports that the Bush administration is preparing to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons. This past week, lengthy articles detailing planning for aerial attacks on as many as 400 nuclear and military targets have appeared in the Washington Post, the London Sunday Times, The Forward, the main weekly of the US Jewish community, and The New Yorker. The New Yorker account, written by legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who two years ago was the first to disclose US abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, was the most spectacular. Among other assertions, Hersh's article alleged that US combat forces have already entered Iran to collect target data and make contact with "anti-government ethnic-minority groups." It also claimed that efforts by senior military officials to get the administration to eliminate contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against specific hardened targets had been "shouted down" by the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Without denying any of Hersh's assertions, Bush said that the reports constituted "wild speculation" and that his administration remained committed to "diplomacy." At the same time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that military force remained an option. But the reports suggest that the US is planning military action against Iran because the Bush administration is intent on regime change in Tehran–and not because of counterprolifera-tion motives and as a contingency if diplomatic efforts fail. One government consultant is quoted by Hersh as saying Bush believes he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do" and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy." "The word I'm hearing is 'messianic,'" Hersh said on CNN. "He really thinks he has a chance and this is his mission." Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism operations chief, said covert military action, in the form of special forces troops identifying targets and aiding dissident groups, is already under way. Undercover units are also said to be working with ethnic minorities in Iran, including the Kurds, Baluchis and Azeris. While one goal was to have "eyes on the ground," the broader aim was to "encourage ethnic tensions" and undermine the regime. "It's been authorized, and it's going on to the extent that there is some lethality to it," said Cannistraro. "Some people have been killed." He said US-backed Baluchi Sunni guerrillas had been involved in an attack in Sistan-Baluchistan last month in which over 20 Iranian government officials were killed and the governor of the provincial capital was wounded. The Iranian government had blamed British intelligence for the incident. Some operations include "simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions" by US navy aircraft operating from carriers. The Washington Post reported that the possible targets went beyond suspected nuclear installations and included the option of a "more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets." According to Hersh, the plans aimed at engineering regime change in Tehran have split the Pentagon top brass to such an extent that some officers have threatened to resign their posts. A senior Pentagon adviser on the "war on terror" is quoted as saying that "this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war." One former defense official is quoted as saying the planning was based on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." Another Pentagon adviser warns, as do many others, that bombing Iran could provoke "a chain reaction" of attacks on US facilities and citizens throughout the world. "What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?" he asks. In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told Hersh that no one in the meetings "is really objecting" to the talk of war. "The people they're briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. "There's no pressure from Congress" not to take military action, the House member added. "The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it." The sudden spate of detailed stories has raised the question of whether the administration really intends such an attack–if not imminently, then before it leaves office–or if it is carrying out a psychological warfare campaign designed to persuade the Iranians and Washington's friends, especially in Europe, that it will indeed take action unless Tehran agrees to US demands to abandon its enrichment program. There is no consensus on this question. To some experts, the potential costs of such an attack–from an Iranian-inspired Shiite uprising in Iraq to missile attacks on Saudi oil fields and skyrocketing energy prices (not to mention a rise in anti-US sentiment in Europe and the Islamic world)–so clearly outweigh the possible benefits that Bush's top political aides would recognize them as exorbitant. Other analysts, however, do not see the administration as bluffing. "For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran," Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote last week. "In the last few weeks, I have changed my view," he went on. "In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran." "In recent months, I have grown increasingly concerned that the administration has been giving thought to a heavy dose of air strikes against Iran's nuclear sector without giving enough weight to the possible ramification of such action," Wayne White, the State Department's top Middle East analyst until 2005, told The Forward. The rhetoric of Vice President Dick Cheney and UN Ambassador John Bolton has been particularly threatening in recent weeks, with Cheney vowing "meaningful consequences" and Bolton "tangible and painful consequences" in speeches last month to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee if Iran did not freeze its nuclear program. The controversy over the disclosures were quickly followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iranian scientists had achieved the goal of enriching uranium for its nuclear power program and that the nation was determined to develop production on an industrial scale. To reiterate Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is being developed for industrial and power purposes alone, Ahmadinejad said his country "does not get its strength from nuclear arsenals" and that other countries must respect Iran's right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program. Tehran said the news reports of a US nuclear strike plan were part of Washington's psychological warfare campaign. United Nations inspectors are still trying to unravel the history of Iran's nuclear know-how and have not proved without a doubt that the Iranians are working on a bomb. The difference between enriched uranium for a nuclear power plant and for a weapon lies in the level of enrichment. Fuel for a civilian reactor requires two to three percent uranium-235–precisely the amount Iran has announced it has successfully produced. A nuclear bomb needs 90 percent or more, a range known as highly enriched uranium. But "this is much more than a nuclear issue," one high-ranking diplomat told Hersh. "That's just a rallying point. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next 10 years." "There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution," the diplomat went on. "The window of opportunity is now." The Pentagon adviser on the "war on terror" said that "God may smile on us, but I don't think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the US. Something bad is going to happen."