| Sunday, April 02, 2006 |
| The next bomb to drop? |
Even as the war in Iraq has continued to go south, the chatter about the U.S. and Britain possibly opening up a second front with Iran have never really gone away. Today, the Telegraph digs in a little deeper (HT to AllahPundit in his last day as the substitute Malkin)... Says the Telegraph:
he Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.
A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.
It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme. ...
...The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support. British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment.
But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, insisted, during a visit to Blackburn yesterday, that all negotiating options - including the use of force - remained open in an attempt to resolve the crisis.
Could this be one reason for Condi Rice's surprise confab with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Baghdad? Perhaps a bid to sort out the situation in Iraq and do some planning ahead of a new round of war games?
WaPo has some of the scary possible implications of an attack on Iran, which btw made a big show of testing its new under water missile this past week... to the Iran threat (hint: it ain't nuclear...):
As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.
Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.
U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said.
Citing prohibitions against discussing classified information, U.S. intelligence officials declined to say whether they have detected preparatory measures, such as increased surveillance, counter-surveillance or message traffic, on the part of Iran's foreign-based intelligence operatives.
But terrorism experts considered Iranian-backed or controlled groups -- namely the country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security operatives, its Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah -- to be better organized, trained and equipped than the al-Qaeda network that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Iranian government views the Islamic Jihad, the name of Hezbollah's terrorist organization, "as an extension of their state. . . . operational teams could be deployed without a long period of preparation," said Ambassador Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.
The possibility of a military confrontation has been raised only obliquely in recent months by President Bush and Iran's government. Bush says he is pursuing a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but he has added that all options are on the table for stopping Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Speaking in Vienna last month, Javad Vaeedi, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, warned the United States that "it may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll," although he did not specify what type of harm he was talking about. And Al-Jazeera (english) asks pointedly: are we headed for another 9/11 if the U.S. attacks Iran?
To those who think that the U.S. (with help from Britain) starting yet another war in the Mideast is unthinkable, the Telegraph has the following:
There will be no invasion of Iran but the nuclear sites will be destroyed. This is not something that will happen imminently, maybe this year, maybe next year. Jack Straw is making exactly the same noises that the Government did in March 2003 when it spoke about the likelihood of a war in Iraq.
"Then the Government said the war was neither inevitable or imminent and then attacked." John Bolton and the neocons aren't done, folks, and as Richard Clarke has said, they really haven't learned a thing from Iraq. Besides, nothing boosts a president's approval ratings and shuts up the media like a war.
I for one believe it's entirely possible that this crowd will start one or more new conflicts in the region before Mr. Bush's term is up. The neocons know they have a limited time, and no real public opinion window left. And they have a big agenda: Taking down the Iranian and Syrian regimes, recapturing Lebanon, controlling Iraq and then finding some way to stave off conflict with North Korea, all while the Russians and Chinese are at our backs, and not to pat them in friendship.
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Tags: Neocons, Bush, Iran, News, Nukes, Foreign policy, |
posted by JReid @ 3:46 PM   |
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