Fishing
In Troubled waters
By Gareth Porter
17 January, 2007
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON - US
President George W Bush's seemingly aggressive policy of taking direct
action against alleged Iranian "networks" involved in attacks
on US troops in Iraq, combined with the deployment of a second aircraft-carrier
group off Iran's coast, has triggered speculation that it is related
to a plan for an attack.
But the revelation by Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice that the campaign against Iranian officials
had already been in effect for several months before Bush's speech last
Wednesday indicates that the new rhetoric is aimed at serving the desperate
need of the White House to shift the blame for its failure in Iraq to
Iran, and to appear to be taking tough action.
Rice told the New York Times
in an interview on Friday that Bush had ordered the US military to target
Iranian officials in Iraq allegedly linked to attacks on US forces some
time last autumn. Bush and Rice had previously created the impression
that the US administration had launched a new initiative against Iran
in connection with its proposed increase in troop strength in Iraq.
The Bush speech coincided
with an attack by an unidentified US military unit on the building used
by Iranian consular officials in Irbil and the seizure of six Iranian
officials in the compound. But all indications are that the US military
has no real intelligence on any Iranian direct involvement in supplying
lethal weapons to insurgents.
The statement issued by the
US military but clearly written in the White House said the detainees,
who were not identified as Iranians, were "suspected of being closely
tied to activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces". That
statement shows that the seizure was not based on any prior evidence
of the officials' complicity in insurgent attacks. US troops also seized
documents and computers, indicating that the attack was really nothing
more than an intelligence operation, launched in the hope of finding
some evidence that could be used against Iran.
The only other such US military
raid came late last month and targeted four Iranian officials visiting
Baghdad at the invitation of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. That operation
bore similar evidence of being a fishing expedition against Iranians,
based on nothing more than the "suspicion" that they were
connected with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Contrary to the impression
conveyed by the Bush administration, therefore, it is not targeting
those it knows to be involved in supplying insurgents with weapons but
is still trying to find some evidence to justify its tough rhetoric
against Iran.
The initial rhetoric from
Bush suggesting a possible intention to expand the Iraq war into Iran
or Syria in response to alleged Iranian and Syrian support for anti-coalition
insurgents had been followed by clarifications and new details that
point to a very carefully calibrated propaganda offensive aimed at rallying
his own political base.
Bush's identification in
his January 10 speech of Iran and Syria as "allowing terrorists
and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq"
and the more specific reference to Iran as "providing material
support for attacks on American troops" seemed to hint at such
a plan to expand the war into Iran.
Rice seemed to be dropping
even more pointed hints of such a plan in television interviews on Thursday.
On the National Broadcasting Co's Today show, Rice vowed, on behalf
of Bush, "We are going to make certain that we disrupt activities
that are endangering and killing our troops and that are destabilizing
Iraq." And when asked if that meant that "attacks inside Iran
and Syria" were "on the table", she responded that Bush
"is not going to take options off the table".
Rice went on to declare,
"The Iranians need to know, and the Syrians need to know, that
the United States is not finding it acceptable and is not going to simply
tolerate their activities to try and harm our forces or to destabilize
Iraq."
Asked in an interview with
Fox and Friends whether Bush's speech could mean "going over the
border to chase down those who are providing the technology and possibly
the training", Rice coyly replied, "Well, I don't want to
speculate on what kinds of operations the United States may be engaged
in," as if to leave that possibility open. Then she added, "But
I think you will see that the United States is not going to simply stand
idly by and let these activities continue."
In testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee last week, Rice refused to answer a question
from chairman Joe Biden on whether the president has the authority to
conduct military missions in Iran without congressional approval. That
provoked expressions of alarm from both Democratic and Republic senators.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said this ambiguity reminded him of the
Richard Nixon administration's policy toward Cambodia in 1970 during
the Vietnam War.
Some analysts viewed Rice's
rhetoric as evidence of a Bush administration plan to justify an air
offensive against Iran on the basis of alleged Iranian complicity in
attacks on US forces in Iraq, rather than on the more abstract threat
of Iranian progress toward a possible nuclear-weapons capability.
But the careful wording used
and the explicit caveats issued by administration officials belied the
impression of menace against Iran that Bush and Rice had clearly sought
to convey. Bush's reference to the issue in his Wednesday-night speech
avoided any actual threat to Iran. Instead, he said, "We will seek
out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training
to our enemies in Iraq." That formulation was carefully chosen
to limit the scope of US actions.
The next day, even though
Rice was provoking congressional fears of a wider war, the whole Bush
team was qualifying that rhetoric in remarks to reporters by specifying
that US actions to stop the alleged Iranian interference in Iraq will
be confined to Iraq itself.
General Peter Pace, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is considered a full member of the
Bush administration team, limited the threatened aggressive US actions
to "those who are physically present trying to do harm to our troops".
He concluded, "We can
take care of the security of our troops by doing the business we need
to do inside of Iraq."
And National Security Council
spokesman Gordon Johndroe, after repeating the new line that the administration
would "not tolerate outside interference in Iraq", went on
to say that the actions would be taken only inside Iraq, not across
the border. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also said on Friday that
the US had no intention of going into Iranian territory.
The contrast between the
general impression of steely resolve toward Iran conveyed by Bush and
the unusual clarity about the limited geographical scope of the response
points to a sophisticated two-level communications strategy prepared
by the White House.
For those who get their news
from television, the message conveyed by Rice was one of effective action
against the Iranians supposedly causing harm to US troops; for Congress
and the media, the message conveyed to reporters was much more cautious.
The two-level communications
strategy suggests, in turn, that the White House was acutely aware that
a single message of menace toward Iran could have triggered a negative
congressional response that would have defeated the purpose of the tough
rhetorical line.
Ironically, therefore, the
net effect of the new tough line toward Iran may actually have been
to force the Bush administration to admit, if only tacitly, that it
is not free under present circumstances even to threaten to go to war
against Iran.
Gareth Porter is a historian
and national-security policy analyst. His latest book is Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
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