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Zondag, 28 Oktober, 2007

High-ranking militaire deskundigen zeggen een aanval zou leiden tot wereld economische chaos, of zelfs welk Bush Oorlog van de Wereld `III.' roept

Door Gregor Peter Schmitz en Cordula Meyer, Der Spiegel

De V.S. Ondervoorzitter Dick Cheney - de macht achter de troon, de uitmuntendheid grise, glimlacht de man met (zeer) occasioneel grandfatherly - is bekend voor zijn tendens voor geheimzinnigheid en achter-de-scènesmanipulatie. Hij is geschikt voor om het even wat, zegt vrienden evenals vijanden. Gezien deze reputatie, is het geen grote verrassing dat Cheney reeds om een discrete analyse heeft gevraagd van hoe een oorlog met Iran zou kunnen beginnen.

In het scenario dat door de strategen van Cheney wordt verzonnen, zou de eerste stap van Washington Israël te overtuigen zijn om raketten bij de installatie van de het uraniumverrijking van Iran in Natanz in brand te steken. Teheran zou met zijn eigen staking wraak nemen, die de V.S. voorziet van een verontschuldiging om militaire doelstellingen en kernfaciliteiten in Iran aan te vallen.

Deze informatie werd gelekt door een ambtenaar dicht bij de ondervoorzitter. Cheney zelf heeft het in dienst nemen in dergelijke oorlogsspelen niet ontkend. Jarenlang, in feite, is hij open over zijn advies dat een aanval op Iran, een lid van de V.S. President George W. geweest As van Bush de „van Kwaad,“ is onvermijdelijk.

Gezien deze niet-ook-geheimontwerpen, zijn de Democraten en de Republikeinen benieuwd geweest wat van nog het geheimzinnige Israëlische bombarderen te maken in Syrië op Sept. lopen. 6. Was het een deel van een bestaand oorlogsplan? Een testlooppas, misschien? Voor dagen na de aanval, overheerste één vraag gesprek bij de ontvangsten van Washington: Hoe groot is het risico van oorlog, werkelijk?

Grandioze Plannen, het Oosten en het Westen

In de staking van September, waren de Israëlische bommenwerpers waarschijnlijk richtend een kernreactor in aanbouw, de delen waarvan om uit Noord-Korea worden beweerd gekomen te zijn. Het is mogelijk dat de zeer belangrijke secretaresses in het kabinet van Bush zelfs probeerden om Israël tegen te houden. Aan deze dag, heeft het beleid noch bevestigd noch op de aanval commentaar gegeven.

Niettemin, heeft de staking in van Washington, Israël tegen Syrië het spook van oorlog met Iran doen herleven. Voor neoconservatives kon het glimmer van hoop dat vertegenwoordigen de grandioze droom van het democratisch Midden-Oosten nog niet in de as van Irak is begraven. But for realists in the corridors of the State Department and the Pentagon, military action against Iran is a nightmare they have sought to avert by asking a simple question: “What then?”

The Israeli strike, or something like it, could easily mark the beginning of the “World War III,” which President Bush warned against last week. With his usual apocalyptic rhetoric, he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lead the region to a new world war if his nation builds a nuclear bomb.

Conditions do look ripe for disaster. Iran continues to acquire and develop the fundamental prerequisites for a nuclear weapon. The mullah regime receives support — at least moral support, if not technology — from a newly strengthened Russia, which these days reaches for every chance to provoke the United States. President Vladimir Putin’s own (self-described) “grandiose plan” to restore Russia’s armed forces includes a nuclear buildup. The war in Iraq continues to drag on without an end in sight or even an opportunity for US troops to withdraw in a way that doesn’t smack of retreat. In Afghanistan, NATO troops are struggling to prevent a return of the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists. The Palestinian conflict could still reignite on any front.

In Washington, Bush has 15 months left in office. He may have few successes to show for himself, but he’s already thinking of his legacy. Bush says he wants diplomacy to settle the nuclear dispute with Tehran, and hopes international pressure will finally convince Ahmadinejad to come to his senses. Nevertheless, the way pressure has been building in Washington, preparations for war could be underway.

In late September, the US Senate voted to declare the 125,000-man Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. High-ranking US generals have accused Iran of waging a “proxy war” against the United States through its support of Shiite militias in Iraq. And strategists at the Pentagon, apparently at Cheney’s request, have developed detailed plans for an attack against Tehran.

Instead of the previous scenario of a large-scale bombardment of the country’s many nuclear facilities, the current emphasis is, once again, on so-called surgical strikes, primarily against the quarters of the Revolutionary Guards. This sort of attack would be less massive than a major strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Conservative think tanks and pundits who sense this could be their last chance to implement their agenda in the Middle East have supported and disseminated such plans in the press. Despite America’s many failures in Iraq, these hawks have urged the weakened president to act now, accusing him of having lost sight of his principal agenda and no longer daring to apply his own doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.

Sheer Lunacy?

The notion of war with Iran has spilled over into other circles, too. Last Monday Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made it clear that the president would first need Congressional approval to launch an attack. Meanwhile, Republican candidates for the White House have debated whether they would even allow such details to get in their way. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said he would consult his attorneys to determine whether the US Constitution does, in fact, require a president to ask for Congressional approval before going to war. Vietnam veteran John McCain said war with Iran was “maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight.”

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has also adopted a hawkish stance, voting in favor of the Senate measure to classify the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Her rivals criticized Clinton for giving the administration a blank check to go to war.

The US military is building a base in Iraq less than 10 kilometers (about six miles) from Iran’s border. The facility, known as Combat Outpost Shocker, is meant for American soldiers preventing Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. But it’s also rumored that Bush authorized US intelligence agencies in April to run sabotage missions against the mullah regime on Iranian soil.

Gary Sick is an expert on Iran who served as a military adviser under three presidents. He believes that such preparations mark a significant shift in the government’s strategy. “Since August,” says Sick, “the emphasis is no longer on the Iranian nuclear threat,” but on Iran’s support for terrorism in Iraq. “This is a complete change and is potentially dangerous.”

It would be relatively easy for Bush to prove that Tehran, by supporting insurgents in Iraq, is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. It might be harder to prove that Iran’s nuclear plans pose an immediate threat to the world. Besides, the nuclear argument is reminiscent of an embarrassing precedent, when the Bush administration used the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — which he didn’t — as a reason to invade Iraq. Even if the evidence against Tehran proves to be more damning, the American public will find it difficult to swallow this argument again.

The forces urging a diplomatic resolution also look stronger than they were before Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants the next step to be a third round of even tighter sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. Rice has powerful allies at the Pentagon: Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral William Fallon, head of US Central Command, which is responsible for American forces throughout the region.

Rice and her cohorts all favor diplomacy, partly because they know the military is under strain. After four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US lacks manpower for another major war, especially one against a relatively well-prepared adversary. “For many senior people at the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department, a war would be sheer lunacy,” says security expert Sick.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and now a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, agrees. A war against Tehran would be “a disaster for the entire world,” says Riedel, who worries about a “battlefield extending from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent.” Nevertheless, he believes there is a “realistic risk of a military conflict,” because both sides look willing to carry things to the brink.

On the one hand, says Riedel, Iran is playing with fire, challenging the West by sending weapons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq. On the other hand, hotheads in Washington are by no means powerless. Although many neoconservative hawks have left the Bush administration, Cheney remains their reliable partner. “The vice president is the closest adviser to the president, and a dominant figure,” says Riedel. “One shouldn’t underestimate how much power he still wields.”

‘Is it 1938 Again?’

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran last week also played into the hands of hardliners in Washington, who read it as proof that Putin isn’t serious about joining the West’s effort to convince Tehran to abandon its drive for a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the countries bordering the Caspian Sea, including Central Asian nations Washington has courted energetically in recent years, have said they would not allow a war against Tehran to be launched from their territory.

Cheney derives much of his support from hawks outside the administration who fear their days are as numbered as the President’s. “The neocons see Iran as their last chance to prove something,” says analyst Riedel. This aim is reflected in their tone. Conservative columnist Norman Podhoretz, for example — a father figure to all neocons — wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he “hopes and prays” that Bush will finally bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees the United States engaged in a global war against “Islamofascism,” a conflict he defines as World War IV, and he likens Iran to Nazi Germany. “Is it 1938 again?” he asks in a speech he repeats regularly at conferences.

Podhoretz is by no means an eccentric outsider. He now serves as a senior foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. President Bush has also met with Podhoretz at the White House to hear his opinions.

Nevertheless, most experts in Washington warn against attacking Tehran. They assume the Iranians would retaliate. “It would be foolish to believe surgical strikes will be enough,” says Riedel, who believes that precision attacks would quickly escalate to war.

Former presidential adviser Sick thinks Iran would strike back with terrorist attacks. “The generals of the Revolutionary Guard have had several years to think about asymmetrical warfare,” says Sick. “They probably have a few rather interesting ideas.”

According to Sick, detonating well-placed bombs at oil terminals in the Persian Gulf would be enough to wreak havoc. “Insurance costs would skyrocket, causing oil prices to triple and triggering a global recession,” Sick warns. “The economic consequences would be enormous, far greater than anything we have experienced with Iraq so far.”

Because the catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran are obvious, many in Washington have a fairly benign take on the current round of saber rattling. They believe the sheer dread of war is being used to bolster diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis and encourage hesitant members of the United Nations Security Council to take more decisive action. The Security Council, this argument goes, will be more likely to approve tighter sanctions if it believes that war is the only alternative.

See More:Iran USA News 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 6:46 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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