US greenlighted Lebanon 'lead-up to Iran' - Hersh

Aug. 14" The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in July, according to a new article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told Hersh that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were convinced that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon could serve as a prelude to a potential US attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations. Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials traveled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hezbollah. Quoting a US government consultant, Hersh said: "Earlier this summer... several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.'" The Israeli action, current and former government officials told Hersh, chimed with the Bush administration's desire to reduce the threat of possible Hezbollah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran. "A successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign... could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations," sources told Hersh. Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel's attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran." An unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh: "It was our intention to have Hezbollah diminished and now we have someone else doing it." Hersh, a veteran investigative journalist, has a track record of breaking major stories. He was the first to write about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and made his name when he uncovered the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War. Most recently he has written about US plans for Iran, alleging that US Special Forces have already been active inside the country. The latest report quotes an unidentified US government consultant with close ties to the Israelis who said: "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran." A former intelligence officer, also quoted, said: "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'" Both Israeli and US officials say that the Israeli military operation against Hezbollah was triggered by the seizing of two Israeli soldiers. But Hersh's report adds to evidence that Israel had been anticipating a Hezbollah provocation for some time and planning its response–a response that was widely condemned for being disproportionate. Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation... by Hezbollah militants was unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago." The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan. The White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the president describing it as "patently untrue." Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: "The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and coordinated an attack on Hezbollah–and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran–is just flat wrong." But Hersh defended his piece, saying he had strong sources for the article which was thoroughly vetted by New Yorker editors. "When I did Abu Ghraib, the same kind of stuff was thrown at me–that I'm fantasizing," he said. His editors at the New Yorker, he said, "know who my sources are. In many cases, they've talked to my sources." "This White House will find a way to view what happened with the Israelis against Hezbollah as a victory, and they'll find a way to see it as a positive for any planning that is going towards Iran," he told CNN. In the magazine Hersh writes that a former senior intelligence official said some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff–a council of the president's top military advisors–remain concerned that the administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should. "There is no way that [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," Hersh quotes the former official as saying. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."