BBC
Reports On US Military
Plans To Strike Iran
By Peter Symonds
22 February, 2007
World
Socialist Web
Despite
its menacing naval build up in the Persian Gulf, the US has repeatedly
denied any plans for war against Iran. Last Thursday Defence Secretary
Robert Gates brazenly told a Pentagon press conference: “For the
umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran.
We are not planning a war with Iran.” The statement is another
of the Bush administration’s lies.
A BBC report on Monday made
clear that the Pentagon has completed contingency planning for extensive
air strikes on Iran that go “beyond nuclear sites and include
most of the country’s military infrastructure”. The article
continued: “It is understood that any such attack—if ordered—would
target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control
centres.”
The Bush administration insists
it is pursuing diplomatic means to force Iran to shut down its enrichment
facilities. But as the BBC explained: “Diplomatic sources have
told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command
in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran. That
list includes Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities
at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list.”
The BBC report is not the
first to leak details of the Pentagon’s preparations for war against
Iran. Citing senior Pentagon, State Department and intelligence sources,
veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh has published several detailed articles
in the New Yorker over the past year outlining the US plans for attacking
Iran, including the possible use of nuclear weapons. Several British
newspapers, including the Times, have described advanced US and Israeli
military preparations against Tehran.
An article in the British-based
New Statesman on Monday also detailed the US plans. “American
military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be
implemented any day. They extend far beyond suspect WMD facilities and
will enable President Bush to destroy Iran’s military, political
and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.
“British military sources
told the New Statesman, on condition of anonymity, that ‘the US
military switched its whole focus to Iran’ as soon as Saddam Hussein
was kicked out of Baghdad. It continued this strategy, even though it
had American infantry bogged down in fighting the insurgency in Iraq.
The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans
and spent four years building bases and training for ‘Operation
Iranian Freedom’.”
What is significant about
the BBC report is that it identified two “triggers”, demonstrating
that an attack on Iran is under active discussion. According to security
correspondent Frank Gardner, the first was “any confirmation that
Iran was developing a nuclear weapon”. This trigger provides a
sweeping excuse for military action, as the Bush administration insists
that Tehran already has a nuclear weapons program, despite the lack
of definite proof and repeated denials by the Iranian regime.
As in the lead up to the
2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is quite capable of
fabricating evidence to provide “confirmation” of an Iranian
nuclear weapons program. To use this trigger, however, the White House
would, formally at least, need to seek approval for a new war from the
Democratic-controlled Congress and also the UN Security Council, raising
the prospect of opposition, even if very limited, and delays.
The second trigger would
provide an excuse for immediate action on the grounds of defending US
troops in Iraq. As reported by the BBC: “Alternatively, our correspondent
adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could
also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.”
President Bush has already laid the basis for such a provocation, accusing
Iranian and Syrian networks of arming and training anti-US insurgents
in Iraq. Over the past month, the US media has published increasingly
lurid accounts of the alleged activities of Iranian agents inside Iraq.
The BBC account echoes the
remarks of former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1. In a stinging
attack on the Bush administration’s policies in the Middle East,
Brzezinski suggested that a “plausible scenario” for war
with Iran would be: “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed
by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some
provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran; culminating
in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges
a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually
ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei,
the two top UN weapons inspectors dealing with Iraq prior to the 2003
US invasion, have joined growing chorus of voices warning of the dangers
of a US war against Iran.
In an article in the International
Herald Tribune on Monday, Blix asked: “Will the United States
use armed force against Iran? Hardly any foreign policy issue is hotter
right now. American planes are reported to be patrolling along the borders
between Iraq and Iran, and US forces have been authorised to kill Iranian
agents in Iraq. Two US aircraft carriers are in the Gulf and missile
defences have been installed in Gulf states. The military build up is
either to scare Tehran or to prepare for American attacks on Iran.”
Blix noted that Iran had
refused to abide by the UN Security Council resolution passed in December
calling for the suspension of its uranium enrichment and other nuclear
programs. “Iran is thus on collision course with the resolution
adopted by the council. While Washington declares that diplomacy rather
than military action is on the agenda, the administration evidently
believes that naval demonstrations may have an impact. A recent column
in the Washington Times suggested an even more explicit demonstration:
the launching of a missile on the former US embassy in Tehran—now
used by the Iranian revolutionary guards.”
Retired US Admiral James
Lyons, former commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet, called in
the February 9 issue of the right-wing Washington Times for a tomahawk
missile strike to send “a swift and unmistakable” signal
to Tehran. “The fact that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards use
our embassy is immaterial. The message would be clear to all and serve
notice to Iran what will happen if they don’t stop meddling in
Iraq and come instead to the negotiating table on all issues. The alternative
for Iran would be unimaginable devastation.”
While Blix has retired as
a UN weapons inspector, ElBaradei, as head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), is at the centre of the confrontation between
the US and Iran over its nuclear programs. The deadline for Iran to
meet the demands of the UN resolution expires today. Earlier this month,
ElBaradei appealed for both sides to take a “time out” to
negotiate an end to the standoff. The Bush administration, however,
has adamantly refused to enter into talks with Iran unless it shuts
down its nuclear programs—i.e., concedes to US demands in advance
of any negotiations. Senior Iranian officials declared yesterday they
would not suspend their uranium enrichment activities.
In a lengthy interview yesterday
with the British-based Financial Times, ElBaradei was deeply pessimistic
about the prospect for negotiations. He is due to present a report to
the UN Security Council on Iran’s compliance with the December
resolution. While noting Iran may be as close as six months to industrial
scale enrichment, ElBaradei explained that it was five to ten years,
according to British and US intelligence, from producing a nuclear bomb.
Iran continues to insist that its enrichment plant is solely to fuel
its power reactor at Bushehr.
Commenting on “the
perpetual rumbles that Washington or Israel might yet contemplate the
use of force,” ElBaradei replied: “[E]ven if [the Iranians]
were not going to develop a nuclear weapon today, this would be a sure
recipe for them to go down that route... Go for the military option
and then either you’ll have a repeat of North Korea [which has
developed nuclear weapons] or you have a repeat of Iraq, and these are
not our greatest achievements as civilised human beings.”
The Bush administration’s
hostility to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programs and alleged
support for anti-US insurgents in Iraq stems from the fact that these
issues are pretexts for the pursuit of broader US ambitions for economic
and strategic dominance throughout the energy-rich regions of the Middle
East and Central Asia. The Bush administration’s “diplomacy”
is simply a smokescreen behind which it is preparing for military action
against Iran to achieve these ends.