Strike Iran? US can't be serious

Linda S. Heard
Apr. 13, 2006

As occupied Iraq is now arguably in a state of civil war, the Taliban regroups in Afghanistan and Palestine is under a Western-led economic siege, a growing number of Washington insiders say Iran is next on the list of death and destruction.

They say the Bush administration plans to take out underground Iranian nuclear sites using tactical bunker busting nuclear weapons. Have they lost their marbles? Could this possibly be true?

Seymour Hersh, an investigate journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib story and earlier won a Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the Mai Lai horrors, believes it might well be.

Writing in the current issue of the New Yorker, he says: "President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot programme, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium," and that "saving Iran" is to be his legacy.

Naturally, "Saving Iran" in this context is an euphemism for bombing the hell out of it and forcing a regime change. Hersh quotes a "high ranking diplomat in Vienna" as saying, "The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next 10 years."

He's right. It is common knowledge that Asia's rising stars, China and India, are both on the lookout for oil and gas to fuel their growing economies. Furthermore, Iran is keen to push ahead with its oil bourse that will discard the petrodollar for the euro; a threat to the dollar's global hegemony.

A Pentagon adviser is also quoted. He warns that "bombing Iran could provide a chain reaction of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world," and asks "what will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day that we attack Iran?"

We already know what Muslims will think. But does anyone in the White House really care? After all, they are the ones with the nukes, daisy cutters, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, napalm and depleted uranium tank shells. They are the ones with billions of dollars in their war chest. And they are the ones with a long-held agenda, which it appears nothing but nothing is allowed to thwart.

For their part, Muslim countries are divided into camps, while some are afflicted by sectarian divisions, which, frankly is just how the Anglo alliance likes it and always has.

It is surely ironic that while Bush and his British sidekick throw up their hands in horror at any thought that Iran might be developing a nuclear weapons programme, they might be considering an imminent nuclear assault themselves.

On April 2, the Daily Telegraph's defence correspondent Sean Rayment reported: "The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran."

Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has denied there is any such option on the table as far as his country is concerned. At the same time, his boss is going around making speeches falsely linking the Iranian mullahs with al Qaida and preparing his audiences for an endless war scenario based on conflicting ideologies.

Active

The British Defence Secretary John Reid has also been active in preparing us for a new not-so-brave world asking in a column, published in the Guardian, for armed forces to be released from shackles put upon them by the Geneva Conventions and for Western powers to be afforded a "first strike" option.

These snippets of neo-wisdom elicited a barrage of criticism from the British press with critics pointing to the dangers of preemption working both ways.

There is little doubt that they are up to something.

Here, it may be pertinent to point out that Blair has done an about face on his stated plan to leave office mid-way through his third term in the hopes of bequeathing his seat to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Blair has come under an enormous amount of pressure to fulfill his promise, yet he has recently made it clear that he intends to hang on until the 2008 election. Apparently, the prime minister still has things to do. Could these include war with Iran? And what part, if any, has Washington played in this unpopular decision?

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is certainly taking the current mood seriously. Lately he's been engaged in a massive show of military strength, testing sophisticated near-stealth missiles and radar-evading torpedoes, while opening a training centre for would-be suicide squads to be dispatched around the world in case of conflict.

Caught up in this game of political chess, is IAEA Director Mohammad ElBaradei, who insisted, during a visit to Spain on April 7, that his nuclear watchdog has seen no indication that nuclear material in Iran has been diverted to develop nuclear weapons.

The actual state of the party may be clarified at the end of this month. On March 29, urged by the US, the UN Security Council issued a non-binding statement urging Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment within 30 days. This toothless document wasn't what the US wanted but came about as a result of China and Russia applying the brakes.

Crucially for Iran and the region, will China and Russia apply those same brakes to prevent another US-UK-led unprovoked aggression? With a jumble of mixed-messages being put out by both those countries it's hard to say.

Is the US bluffing? Is Iran? Will one or other side back down when push comes to shove? Or are we facing a sequel to "shock and awe?" Time, or the indomitable Seymour Hersh, will tell.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at [email protected].