Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
Rumors of War: Is Bush Gearing Up to Attack Iran?
Share and save this post:
AlterNet Social Networks:
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation
Dean Starkman
DrugReporter:
The Supreme Court Resists Drug War Hysteria
Krystal Quinlan
Environment:
Summer Downsizing: 31 Ways to Jumpstart Your Local Economy
Sarah van Gelder
Health and Wellness:
10 Dangerous Household Products You Should Never Use Again
Immigration:
Huron, California May not Exist in a Year
Viji Sundaram
Media and Technology:
Michael Jackson's Death Was Tragic, But He Was Little More Than an Icon of Mediocrity
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Movie Mix:
Up: This Time, Pixar Has Gone Too Far
Eileen Jones
Politics:
Hunter Thompson Knew It Well: Robert McNamara's Vision for America Was Imperial and Elitist
Joe Costello
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
My First Abortion Party
Byard Duncan
Rights and Liberties:
Why the FBI Squelched an Investigation of a Post-9/11 Meeting Between White Supremacist and Islamic Extremists
Mark Levine
Sex and Relationships:
Why the Left Looks Like a Big Hypocrite in the Sanford Affair
JoAnn Wypijewski
Take Action:
Ending Indefinite Detention is AlterNet's Top Take Action Campaign of the Week
Byard Duncan
Water:
Energy Industry Threatens Water Quality, Sways Congress With Misleading Data
Abrahm Lustgarten
World:
Robert McNamara Was Never Really in Touch with His Role in Causing Atrocity in Vietnam
Andrew Lam
The May 8 letter from U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to George W. Bush received virtually no media coverage, in spite of the fact that it warned the president that an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be grounds for impeachment. Rumor has it several senators have been briefed about the possibility of war with Iran.
Something is afoot.
Just what is not clear, but over the past several months, several moves by the White House strongly suggest that the Bush administration will attack Iran sometime in the near future. According to the Asia Times, "a former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community" said an air attack will target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force garrisons. Not even the White House is bonkers enough to put troops on the ground amid 65 million Iranians.
There is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given December's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its program to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence services. At the time, the report seemed to shelve any possibility of war with Iran.
However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old "into Iraq gang" went to work undermining it.
According to Newsweek, during his Middle East tour in January, Bush "all but disowned the document" to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A "senior administration official" told the magazine, "He [Bush] told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views."
Neither do they reflect the views of Vice President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
In an interview with ABC during his recent 10-day visit to the region, Cheney downplayed the NIE: "We don't know whether or not they've [the Iranians have] restarted." Cheney also said Iran was seeking to build missiles capable of reaching the United States sometime in the next decade.
On April 21, Gates said that Iran was "hell-bent" on acquiring nuclear weapons, and that, while he was not advocating war with Iran, the military option should be kept on the table.
A month before Gates' comment, the White House quietly extended an executive order stating that Iran represented an "ongoing threat" to U.S. national security. The Bush administration claims that the 2002 resolution that led to the war in Iraq gives it the right to strike at "terrorists" wherever they are. Last September, the Kyl-Lieberman Sense of the Senate resolution designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "terrorist organization."
The administration has sharply increased its rhetorical attacks on Iran in a way that is disquietingly similar to the campaign that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Take the current charge that the Quds Force is arming anti-American groups in Iraq and providing them with high-tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets.
Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Committee on Armed Services that "special groups" are "funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran's Quds Force. … It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq's seat of government" in the Green Zone.
Patraeus replaced Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, who had openly opposed a military confrontation with Iran.
But the United States has never presented any evidence to back up those charges. U.S. officials say the rockets pounding the Green Zone have Iranian markings on them, but they have yet to show any evidence to that effect. And, as for the special roadside bombs, or the explosively formed penetrators (EFP), the evidence is entirely deductive.
The United States argues that the copper cores used in these bombs requires using a heavy machine press and that Iraq has no such presses. But before the invasion, Iraq was the most industrialized Arab country, with a sophisticated machine tool industry, and a study by Time magazine says the cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf "may indeed have such presses."
See more stories tagged with: iran, bush, white house, threats, beligerance
Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
EMAIL
PRINT
243 COMMENTS
