Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran

The Cheney Cabal's Latest Target: Iran's Revolutionary Guard

There are going to be a lot of unhappy right wingers, space cowboys, commentators and bloggers if at the end of the day the U.S. does not bomb Iran. A virtual garden industry has grown up around writing about and speculating on the supposed White House intrigues over whether to send a few well-aimed cruise missiles Tehran's way, what justification would be used and what supposedly provocative act would trigger such a response.

There is no question that the Bush administration, having worn out sundry other rationales for the war in Iraq, has been busy reframing that conflict as a strategic battle between the U.S. and Iraq.

That is the lynchpin of investigative ace Seymour Hirsh's latest 5,000-plus word thumbsucker in The New Yorker, which in the interests of brevity and short attention spans is excerpted here:

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. 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.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

* * * * *

Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran . . . Iran is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any "proxy war" could be as much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush Administration’s strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene.

* * * * *

The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.

"Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes," [a] former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. "The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf." There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. "We’ve got to get a path in and a path out," the former official said.

* * * * *

The revised bombing plan "could work—if it’s in response to an Iranian attack," [a] retired four-star general said. "The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, 'Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.' It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks." There is, he added, "a widespread belief in London that Tony Blair’s government was sold a bill of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So if somebody comes into Gordon Brown’s office and says, 'We have this intelligence from America,' Brown will ask, 'Where did it come from? Have we verified it?' The burden of proof is high."

* * * * *

In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130 Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130 had come from Iran—especially since SA-7s are available through black-market arms dealers.

Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: "The Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incident—in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran." The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.

The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence "was worried" about passing the information along. "The Brits don’t trust the Iranians," the retired general said, "but they also don’t trust Bush and Cheney."

Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.

(Throat clearing)

As probably is obvious, excerpting Hersh is a cheap way for me to not deal with the whole 'arama, which I have no appetite for after staying on top of the Blackwater drama up on Capitol Hill all day yesterday.

But Fifth Estate, blogging at NewsHoggers, isn't sitting out this one out and has a terrific roundup to conclude his three-part series on Why Bush Can/Will Attack Iran. Read it and weep.

Photograph by Agence-France Presse