Senior U.S. Officials “Want to Hit Iran”

UPDATE: 4/8/06

SEYMOUR M. HERSH has written an article for the 4/17/06 edition of New Yorker magazine that claims that not only is the Bush administration actively drawing up plans for an attack on Iran, but that the use of nuclear bunker-buster weapons is a possibility.

Some statements from the article attributed to Bush make him sound like a misguided demagogue. It appears that the real reasons Bush wants to attack Iran is to control mideast oil and protect Israel.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.” [If elected?! Maybe the Bush Bust statue wasn't lying]

This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said.

The threat of American military action has created dismay at the headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency’s officials believe that Iran wants to be able to make a nuclear weapon, but “nobody has presented an inch of evidence of a parallel nuclear-weapons program in Iran,” the high-ranking diplomat told me. The I.A.E.A.’s best estimate is that the Iranians are five years away from building a nuclear bomb. “But, if the United States does anything militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter of Iranian national pride,” the diplomat said.

I was told by several officials that the White House’s interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel as a “serious threat. It’s a threat to world peace.” He added, “I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.”

“If you attack,” the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, “Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.”

End of Update
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Excerpt from Fool Me Twice By Joseph Cirincione [BIO]:

I used to think that the Bush administration wasn’t seriously considering a military strike on Iran, because it would only accelerate Iran’s nuclear program. But what we're seeing and hearing on Iran today seems awfully familiar. That may be because some U.S. officials have already decided they want to hit Iran hard.

Does this story line sound familiar? The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state tells congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks on U.S. troops. The intelligence agencies say the nuclear threat from this nation is 10 years away, but the director of intelligence paints a more ominous picture. A new U.S. national security strategy trumpets preemptive attacks and highlights the country as a major threat. And neoconservatives beat the war drums, as the cable media banner their stories with words like “countdown” and “showdown.”

The nation making headlines today, of course, is Iran, not Iraq. But the parallels are striking. Three years after senior administration officials systematically misled the nation into a disastrous war, they could well be trying to do it again.

Nothing is clear, yet. For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran.

I argued with my friends. I pointed out that a military strike would be disastrous for the United States. It would rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq. And it would accelerate, not delay, the Iranian nuclear program. Hard-liners in Tehran would be proven right in their claim that the only thing that can deter the United States is a nuclear bomb. Iranian leaders could respond with a crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.

My friends reminded me that I had said the same about Iraq—that I was the last remaining person in Washington who believed President George W. Bush when he said that he was committed to a diplomatic solution. But this time, it is the administration’s own statements that have convinced me. What I previously dismissed as posturing, I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran.
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Wednesday, April 05, 2006, from the Daily Times:

Veteran foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, writing for the United Press International, quotes a “prominent neo-con” with good White House and Department of Defence contacts, as the source of the assertion. Asked what would the US do if sanctions did not make Iran turn away from its nuclear target, the source replied, “B-2s. Two of them could do the job in a single strike against multiple targets.”
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The really disturbing part of this revelation is that the Bush administration has redefined the use of nuclear weapons in military action and put in place plans to restructure the US nuclear weapons complex. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the 2005 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, the Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 & 2006, and the proposed/partially funded Nuclear Weapons Complex Reconfiguration (Complex 2030) & Reliable Replacement (Nuclear) Warhead programs have completely undermined any moral ground from which the United States, at one point, was able to honestly advance nonproliferation. These reports do not include the recent US-India deal that many nonproliferation experts decry as demonstrating our non-commitment to the NPT.

A story published in yesterday's LA Times refered to the above mentioned nuclear complex restructuring as Tom D'Agostino [BIO], Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), was reported to have been part of a Congressional hearing on the Bush administration's blueprint for the effort. [pdf of his statement at the hearing]

The blueprint outlined by D'Agostino calls for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity. The administration wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as the Pentagon retires older bombs that it says will no longer be reliable or safe.

Whether or not the apparently imminent attack on Iran makes use of nuclear weaponry (other than the DU we know that will be used), the destabilization that such actions will cause will be felt world wide. I would expect riots, a stock crash, oil prices skyrocketing, and massive worldwide "terrorist" retaliation. Write your Congressional representatives and tell them that they need to petition George (IT'S DECLASSIFIED!!!) Bush and his staff to avoid an attack on Iran at all costs.