Bush Administration Planning "Surgical Strikes" On Iran

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report

The president is connecting Iran to attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Cheney's rhetoric is becoming more strident. Senate Republicans and a few too many Dems have labeled Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as "terrorists." Freedom's Watch is considering a national advertising campaign focused on Iran

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh explains that this isn't an accident. If his sources are right, plans for a military confrontation with Iran are moving forward apace.

This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran's known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on "surgical" strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism. [...]

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British "were on board." [...]

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, "Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives." The former intelligence official added, "There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, 'You can't do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we're only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.' But Cheney doesn't give a rat's ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President."

It's not as if these guys have rushed into military confrontations in the Middle East based on ridiculously optimistic military scenarios and dubious intelligence before, right?