Bush Blocked Israeli Air War on Iran?

The Guardian is reporting that George w. Bush derailed Israeli plans for air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year. Bush is said to have told Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that Washington didn’t believe that Israel could take out Iran’s nuclear plants without a prolonged air campaign that would ignite a major Middle East war. He also said it would likely spark Iranian attacks against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and on oil shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The newspaper’s account is third hand. They’re relying on statements from two aides of a European head of state who informed them of what Olmert had told him during a visit to Israel. So, Olmert reportedly revealed this to the European head of state who subsequently related the account to his aides who, in turn, let it slip to the English paper.

Does this rule out an American air campaign against Iran? That remains an open question. There is some speculation that, should Obama win the November election, Cheney might pressure Bush to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office.

 

Why Not Make It an Even 60?

Iraqi legislators are falling all over each other in the race to leak details of the “status of forces” agreement the US is trying to negotiate with the Maliki government.

The latest pearl is that the Pentagon wants to maintain 58-permanent bases in Iraq. Now, what does that mean? Where’s the perspective? Here’s an idea. Up till now, US forces have operated out of 30-bases. 58, of course, would be just shy of double that.

The next question is why? Why would Washington want to double its military installations in another country especially when it’s boasting how everything is settling down there. Why would it be asking for absolute control of Iraqi airspace up to 30,000 feet? Why negotiate for immunity for American military personnel and private contractors? Must be some explanation, right? There is but don’t hold your breath waiting for the Americans to admit it.

State Department spokesmen have hastened to tell reporters from America’s largest embassy on the planet that the US has no plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq. Just hearing that in a diplomatic complex bigger than the entire Vatican must be surreal.

This capitulation of sovereignty, if the Maliki government accepts it, will undermine all the progress that’s been made in Iraq. It will set Sunni against Shiite all over again. It will empower the nationalists like Muqtada al Sadr anhd weaken the already feeble Baghdad government. It will generate a pushback by Iran which might be enough to make Washington pull the trigger.

 

Israel Threatens Iran, Tehran Says Thanks!

Here’s the premise. One of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies announces that an Israeli strike on Iran might be “unavoidable” if Tehran continues to pursue its nuclear weapons programme, i.e. nuclear enrichment.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Washington kick-started Iran’s ascendancy in the Muslim world by going to war against Iraq. That allowed Iraq to fall under Shiite control, enormously boosting Iran’s influence and prestige. Then Iran bankrolled Hezbollah and Hamas, extending its sphere of influence from the Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

Lately Iran has picked up a couple of new patrons – Russia and China. China wants a secure source of oil, an energy “leg up” over India and the U.S. Russia wants to manage the control of Iranian oil and natural gas to help it tighten its control over Europe’s energy supplies. Both want to put a dent in American hegemony over the area. To this end, Russia has supplied Iran with some of its latest surface-to-air missile batteries while China has delivered what may be the most sophisticated and capable anti-ship cruise missiles on the planet.

Who would benefit from airstrikes against Iranian nuclear installations? Here’s a clue – it’s not Israel, it’s not the United States, it’s not the Sunni Arab states. The winner would be – Iran!

The Mullahs and Ayatollahs in Tehran face greater threats from within than from without. Iran’s younger generation clamours for secular and democratic reforms. Yet these very same reformers warn anyone who’ll listen that an attack on their homeland would drive them right behind the Tehran government in support of their country. Attacking Iran, in effect, could unify Iran, bolster solidarity for Tehran throughout the Muslim world and cause the Shia regions to coalesce ever more strongly behind it. That could play proper hell with American forces in a seemingly more tranquil Iraq and could also impact on the war in Afghanistan.

If Israel attacks it’s a fair bet that Iran will retaliate against the West. It could withhold its own oil exports and block most other oil shipments through the Persian Gulf with its anti-ship missiles. That could be enough to collapse many Western economies. It could likewise drive a wedge between the Israeli/American coalition and Europe while simultaneously improving Russia’s and China’s hands in the region and elsewhere.

So, what’s the answer? I don’t know but it certainly isn’t resort to airstrikes. That route is a temporary solution, at best, but fraught with so many downsides as to make it ludicrous. Do we really need Israel doing for Iran the same favour it did for Hezbollah in Lebanon?

The solution might just lie in taking Washington and Israel out of the equation altogether and entrusting the problem to more effective intermediaries, Russia perhaps, while contenting ourselves with sanctions and containment.

I only wish that the United States and Israel weren’t, at this critical moment, saddled with two of their most inept leaders in history.

 

One More Roll of the Dice – Iran

Asia Times Online reports that Bush will launch a bombing campaign against Iran before the end of August.

“Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC’s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds’ stated mission is to spread Iran’s revolution of 1979 throughout the region. “

Asia Times has identified the senators who’ve threatened to go public as Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana.

The idea of American air strikes on Iran gives everyone cause for concern. Air raids are unlikely to have much effect and could even backfire. Many experts believe bombing could cause the Iraqi people, including dissenters, to rally behind Tehran’s hard-liners. It’s also widely thought that an American attack on yet another Muslim country, the third, could strengthen the hand of Islamist radicals throughout the Muslim world. Then there’s the issue of the West’s dependence on Persian Gulf oil routes. Iran is well stocked with modern, anti-ship missiles which could easily shut down Persian Gulf tanker routes. With the American and world economies already reeling from the subprime mortgage meltdown, a closure of the Persian Gulf oil routes could have a massive effect on world markets and global oil prices.

Day by day the prospect of military confrontation grows stronger. ABC News reports that Pakistan may now be aiding Iran by agreeing to hand over members of the tribal militant group Jundullah who Iran claims are working as spies for the CIA.

Jundullah, a Baloch insurgent movement, is known to have been carrying out attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers. According to ABC, US intelligence officers frequently meet with and advise Jundullah leaders. It also claims that the United States is using Iranian exiles to funnel money to Jundullah without requiring White House acknowledgement and Congressional oversight.

“Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.”

 

William Fallon – Milestone to War on Iran?

Yesterday’s resignation of US Admiral William Fallon has set Washington pundits scurrying to cast bones and read the entrails.

Fallon had most recently served as the top US commander in the Middle East. The Admiral defied Bush/Cheney by publicly opposing any US attack on Iran. From the Washington Post:

“And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.”

NBC News reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, under pressure from the White House, had lately been refusing to take Fallon’s calls.

Fallon’s resignation/firing comes at an interesting time. Just a week from now General David Petraeus who Fallon has branded as an ass-kisser, will appear before Congress to testify about the wonderful progress he’s achieved in Iraq. And this Sunday, the Prince of Darkness himself, Dickster Cheney, is off to the Middle East for “talks.”

Will the US attack Iran? Cheney and Bush want to, that much is obvious. Their military leaders don’t want to but they’ve just been given a message by the impaling of Fallon what lies in store for the career of anyone who dares oppose the Evil Twins. Israel wants to go, badly. More US Navy warships are headed to take up station within striking range of Iran. Who knows what predeployments are being made for the US Air Force’s strategic bomber force? Bush/Cheney are running out of time to do this – getting awfully close to a “now or never” moment. One thing is plain – there’s nothing in these developments that suggests the US wants to focus on dialogue with Tehran.

And what if they go ahead? Well, hang onto your hats. There’ll be no conquest of Iran to rival what happened in Iraq. The US Army is simply tapped out. They’ll have to be content with airpower – bombing and cruise missile attacks. They’ll have to show a degree of competence beyond anything seen so far if the bombing campaign is to work and, by “work,” that means total reduction of Iran’s anti-shipping weaponry, submarine and land-based.

If Iran survives with a fraction of its anti-ship weaponry intact, the Persian Gulf is closed for business. Nobody will be able to ship oil out of the Gulf and, sorry to say this kiddies, but that means a meltdown in the world economy. The US economy collapses into a depression and every other developed nation gets shoved into that same hole.

But surely Bush/Cheney wouldn’t do anything that stupid, would they? How do you think they got their nation stuck in Iraq? They ignored reality, all the warnings, and went in believing they would be out within six weeks to six months. These are profoundly stupid people. Then again, that adds a certain spice to this looming peril, doesn’t it?

 

Karzai’s Kabul Uprising

Hamid Karzai is on the warpath, in revolt, and his antics could have major repercussions for the US, NATO and us too. Over the weekend Karzai shook up his Western benefactors by torpedoing the appointment of Lord Paddy Ashdown who was slotted to become the UN’s super envoy to Afghanistan. It’s a tale of grand intrigue that our media totally missed. Fortunately the story is brilliantly laid out in Asia Times:

Kabul knew for months about the impending appointment of Ashdown as a key step in a new NATO strategy spearheaded by the US and Britain, aimed at stabilizing the Afghan situation. Karzai knew detailed planning had gone into the move involving NATO, the EU and the United Nations Security Council. But Karzai waited patiently until the eleventh hour before shooting it down publicly on Saturday in a interview with the BBC while attending the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort town of Davos. The move was pre-planned and carried out in a typical Afghan way with maximum effect.

Karzai insists there has been a serious misunderstanding of motives because Kabul had never taken a “decision” on Ashdown’s appointment. He is perfectly right in saying so. But in actuality, Karzai has put on display his proud Afghan temper. He has taken umbrage that Washington and London took the decision on Ashdown’s appointment in consultation with Brussels and thereupon got UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to execute it, all the time taking Kabul’s agreement for granted.

Karzai anticipated that Ashdown, true to his reputation in the Balkans, would function like a colonial viceroy. Karzai knows that the Western agencies and organizations operating in Afghanistan lack coordination. But a “unified command” under Ashdown would create a counterpoint in Kabul to Karzai’s own authority. Karzai didn’t want that to happen.

The bottom line concerns Karzai’s political future. He sizes up that Ashdown is part of a political package leading toward a post-Karzai era. There has been persistent chatter in recent weeks that Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the UN – an ethnic Afghan – is in the mix for a run as president of Afghanistan. According to Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, Karzai took the rumor seriously and point-blank asked Khalilzad about it when the two met in London in October, but Khalilzad “didn’t give a Shermanesque response”.

The UN’s capacity to spearhead the political process in Afghanistan now stands seriously impaired. This deprives Washington of a neutral international bridge – but under its control – leading toward the Taliban camp, which is a pre-requisite for commencement of any meaningful intra-Afghan dialogue. Meanwhile, the war hangs perilously on the edge of an abyss.

Almost everyone is talking to the Taliban one way or another. Confusion is near-total. All this is happening at an awkward time when NATO lacks a counterinsurgency strategy. In particular, Britain, which lately assumed a lead role within NATO, has been embarrassed. Karzai singled out British operations in Afghanistan for criticism in an interview with the Times newspaper of London on the eve of his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Davos on Friday. Karzai alleged that Afghan people “suffered” from the coming of the British. He had little praise for the 7,800 British troops deployed in Afghanistan. He said, “Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And, when they came in, the Taliban came.”

As The Times commented, “British forces believe that, in many respects, their Afghan allies pose more of a challenge to their mission than the Taliban … It is the Afghan government that is now proving more of an obstacle to stability in an area where a mixture of official corruption, ineptitude and paranoia are stymying British efforts.”

…it remains to be seen how long Washington can keep Karzai away from the reach of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Russia and China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From the Ashdown saga, Karzai must have realized his capacity to shake up US strategy in the region. In an interview with CNN in Davos on Thursday, Karzai said, “We have opened our doors to them [Iran]. They have been helping us in Afghanistan.” Karzai then insisted that the Bush administration has “wisely understood that Iran is Afghanistan’s neighbor”.

Musharraf will know that his own defiance of Washington’s recent attempts to dictate the nature of the political set-up in Islamabad now enters a conclusive phase. He will know that with such a first-rate mess-up in the war in Afghanistan, Washington is hardly in a position to be intrusive, let alone dictate terms of engagement to him. In a curious way, Karzai has considerably smoothened for him the passage from now until the elections in Pakistan on February 8. In all probability, Pakistan, which has excellent intelligence outfits in Kabul, knew in advance that Karzai was about to give shock-and-awe treatment to Washington. Clearly, Musharraf has begun finger-pointing at anyone who will even remotely suggest the need of deploying US troops on Pakistani soil.


Timely backing from China has also strengthened Musharraf’s hands. In an extraordinary commentary titled “No more turmoil in Pakistan is permissible”, China’s People’s Daily has come out with a whole-hearted endorsement of Musharraf’s leadership. It said, “President Pervez Musharraf has resorted to a host of viable measures … Pakistani government has been making unremitting efforts in defense of the supreme national interests … Some opposition forces at home and a few powers overseas impose pressures or punitive measures against Pakistan in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘opposition to terrorism’.

Musharraf must be greatly relieved that Beijing has finally broken its silence and come down unequivocally in support of him at a crucial juncture in his desperate resistance of the US game plan to remove him from power and to disgrace the military by deploying American troops on Pakistani soil.

Increasingly, Karzai and Musharraf find themselves in a somewhat similar predicament. They cannot do without American support, but they do not accept US pressure tactics. They know US regional policies are part of their problem within their own countries and, therefore, they need to differentiate themselves for their political survival. Paradoxically, their attempt is to perpetuate the US’s dependence on them while they work at consolidating a political base of their own, which is independent of US control. In Karzai’s case, the 3-4 million votes that Musharraf can mobilize from the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan will always remain a decisive factor in his re-election as president. Besides, there are regional powers – China and Iran in particular – which are keenly watching the geopolitics surrounding Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Iranian thinking is that there is a concerted US-Israeli plot to destabilize Musharraf’s regime with the twin objective of the US establishing a base in Pakistan for its military intelligence operations directed against Russia and China and at the same time for neutralizing Pakistan’s nuclear capability.

…Both China and Iran are keen on the stability of the Karzai government. Both would like Karzai to continue to explore the parameters of a neutral, independent foreign policy free of US manipulation. Both visualize that Afghanistan can serve as a vital land bridge between them, playing a strategic role in the rapid expansion of Sino-Iranian relations.

Wheels spinning within wheels and we’re stuck debating another thousand soldiers for Kandahar so that we can prop up a guy who is working hard at cross purposes and whose country appears headed in a direction of its own. Astonishing, unbelievable. Are we really so naive, so myopic, maybe even so stupid?

 

Here We Go Again, Bush on the Rampage!

President George w. Bush isn’t one to let intelligence (his own limited supply or anyone else’s) get in his way. It sure didn’t stop him in his obsessive quest to conquer Iraq.

The latest Newsweek reports that Bush isn’t about to let a bothersome National Intelligence Estimate on Iran get in his way now either.

“…in private conversations with Israeli prime minister Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

Bush’s behind-the-scenes assurances may help to quiet a rising chorus of voices inside Israel’s defense community that are calling for unilateral military action against Iran. Olmert, asked by NEWSWEEK after Bush’s departure on Friday whether he felt reassured, replied: “I am very happy.” A source close to the Israeli leader said Bush first briefed Olmert about the intelligence estimate a week before it was published, during talks in Washington that preceded the Annapolis peace conference in November. According to the source, who also refused to be named discussing the issue, Bush told Olmert he was uncomfortable with the findings and seemed almost apologetic.”

“Bush’s national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters in Jerusalem that Bush had only said to Olmert privately what he’s already said publicly, which is that he believes Iran remains “a threat” no matter what the NIE says. But the president may be trying to tell his allies something more: that he thinks the document is a dead letter.”

 

Showdown In The Gulf – Clumsy Propaganda?

The Bush/Cheney regime’s contentions about a provocative charge against three US Navy, “armed to the teeth” warships by plainly gunless Iranian “gunboats” is beginning to spring a lot of leaks.

The US Navy’s own video shows a small flotilla of speedboats, not gunboats, as is apparent from this Navy close-up of one of the boats released to the media. But the navy also released a video on which someone with a heavy accent is supposed to have threatened the US warships, saying “I am coming to you… you will explode …after minutes.”

From the New York Times:

The audio includes a heavily accented voice warning in English that the Navy warships would explode. However, the recording carries no ambient noise — the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind — that would be expected if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small boats that sped around the three-ship American convoy.

A commentator who claimed to be a former US Navy officer with experience in the Gulf wrote to the paper warning against putting much reliance on anything heard in that region on Channel 16 UHF:

“But over in the Gulf, Ch. 16 is like a bad CB radio. Everybody and their brother is on it; chattering away; hurling racial slurs, usually involving Filipinos (lots of Filipinos work in the area); curses involving your mother; 1970’s music broadcast in the wee hours (nothing odder than hearing The Carpenters 50 miles off the coast of Iran at 4 a.m.)

“On Ch. 16, esp. in that section of the Gulf, slurs/threats/chatter/etc. is commonplace. So my first thought was that the “explode” comment might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility.”

This episode is beginning to sound an awful lot like the Bush/Cheney agitprop that has been the signature of this administration. We know Cheney is squirming in his pants to get at Iran and we know these charlatans are entirely willing to lie right into the faces of the American people to get their way.

 

Washington Sticking to its Guns

The United States is insisting that five “armed Iranian gunboats,” one shown in the picture below taken by the US Navy during the incident, really did charge and threaten a flotilla of three, massively armed, state of the art warships in the Straits of Hormuz over the weekend.

Iran says the claims are a total hoax conjured up to coincide with US president George w. Bush’s trip to the Middle East. The Iranians point out that the soundtrack on the video released by the US Navy doesn’t match the images. That got the Navy and Pentagon backpeddling with the explanation that the audio and video were recorded separately and matched up later.

“We viewed it as a provocative act,” Mr. Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, just hours before he left for the weeklong trip to the Middle East. “It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it, pure and simple.”

The US has all but formally acknowledged overflying Iranian territory and actually deploying special forces teams into Iran. Fortunately those aren’t provocative acts.

 

Showdown in the Gulf – Very, Very Scary

Okay, a little more information is coming out regarding the supposed Iranian provocation of US warships in the Persian Gulf yesterday. The incident involved what were described as Iranian gunboats that closed with three US Navy warships including the Ticonderoga-class, Aegis guided missile cruiser, USS Port Royal shown below.

Now the Port Royal, all 567 feet of her, is armed to the teeth with an unrivalled electronics warfare suite, all manner of missiles, deck guns and, for close-in defence, the Mk. 15 Phalanx gatling gun that can spew out 12.75 mm. depleted uranium rounds at the respectable rate of 4,500 rounds per minute. The Phalanx is designed to take out all manner of threats including supersonic, sea skimming anti-ship missiles.

So what about those lethal Iranian gunboats? Here’s a picture of one of them taken with a telephoto lens from one of the US warships:

If you don’t see any guns on this gunboat, maybe that’s because there don’t seem to be any. It’s a speedboat and, given the lifejackets worn by the crew, it seems they weren’t looking to die that day in a suicide attack either. Video released by the navy shows these tiny boats surfing about in the wakes of the US warships but always keeping a respectable distance away.