De eerdere berichtgeving in deze serie dat op Iraans grondgebied voorbereidingen voor een oorlog worden getroffen door Amerikaanse, Israëlische en Koerdische troepen, wordt nu opgevolgd door informatie dat diverse eenheden van de Marine paraat moeten staan op 1 oktober en dat de planning met betrekking tot Iran van het Pentagon is doorgestuurd naar het Witte Huis. Sam Gardiner: 'I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran'.

Meerdere Marine-eenheden zijn verordonneerd zich klaarmaken voor vertrek richting Iran: 'The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast.' Time schrijft: '[...] a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters [...] said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. [...] Coupled with the CNO's [Chief of Naval Operations] request for a blockade review [of most likely the Strait of Hormuz], a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.'

Militairen met bange vermoedens waarschuwen critici
Het is de vraag of het prepareren van de troepen een voorbode is voor een langverwachte aanval op Iran. Sommigen nemen het zekere voor het onzekere en proberen strijd te voorkomen. Dit doen zij bijvoorbeeld door te wijzen op de fenomenen van de oefening-die-plotseling-werkelijkheid-wordt en de false flag operation (een eigen aanslag waarvan de vijand de schuld krijgt), situaties die soms worden gecombineerd, zoals mogelijk op 9/11 en 7/7. In het geval van Iran wordt een derde element ingezet: het waarschuwen door betrokken militairen van enkele kritische volgers van het nieuws rond de oorlogsbewegingen van de VS. '[Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst ...] being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned [on 17 September], "We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening"', schrijft The Nation. De deadline waar McGovern aan refereert, betreft de Amerikaanse tussentijdse verkiezingen op 7 november.
'According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21. [...] The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress. "This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment orders', schrijft The Nation. '"Planners always plan," says a Pentagon official' tegen Time.

Onwettige oorlog tegen Iran toch geoorloofd volgens Bush
Presentator Wolf Blitzer vraagt [video, transcript] in zijn CNN-programma The Situation Room aan luchtmachtkolonel b.d. Sam Gardiner: 'How close in your opinion is the U.S., the Bush administration to giving that go- ahead order? GARDINER: It's been given. In fact we have probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least 18 months. The evidence is overwhelming... [...] They probably have had two objectives going back 18 months. The first was to gather intelligence, where's the Iranian nuclear program. The second has been to prepare dissident groups for phase two, which will be the strike, which will come as the next phase I think.' Zie hierover Amerikaanse troepen al op de grond in Iran in deel 9 van deze Iran-serie.
Gardiner tegen Blitzer: 'Number one, we have learned from "TIME" magazine today that some U.S. Naval forces have been alerted for deployment. That is a major step. That's first. The second thing is the sources suggest the plan's not in Pentagon. The plan has gone to the White House. That's not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House that means we've gone to a different [phase]'. Gardiner zegt tegen The Nation: '"I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against US law and it's against international law, but I think they've decided to do it."'
President Bush zal met andere ogen naar de situatie kijken: 'In his revised version [of the national security strategy], Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption policy, saying it "remains the same" and defending it as necessary for a country in the "early years of a long struggle" akin to the Cold War', schrijft The Washington Post eerder dit jaar. The Nation schrijft: 'Given the President's assertion that the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is Commander in Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending "war on terror."' 'President Bush considers the Iranian regime “fundamentally illegitimate”', zegt 'Flynt L. Leverett, who served in senior posts at the National Security Council, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency' tegen de Council on Foreign Relations. Intussen werkt de Amerikaanse bondgenoot Saoedie-Arabië 'in het diepste geheim aan een eigen kernprogramma', schrijft Elsevier. Dit dankzij medewerking van een andere Amerikaanse bondgenoot, Pakistan.

Oorlog moet leiden tot wijziging Iraans regime
In het rapport [PDF]The End of the ‘Summer of Diplomacy': Assessing U.S. Military Options on Iran waarschuwt Sam Gardiner 'that some in the Bush administration are making the case for air strikes aimed not only at setting back Iran's nuclear program, but also at toppling the country's government. He says that these officials are undeterred by the concerns of military leaders about whether such attacks would be effective. [...] According to Gardiner's report, the administration is not seriously seeking diplomatic solutions to the Iran nuclear issue. “From diplomacy to sanctions, the administration is not making good-faith efforts to avert a war so much as going through the motions, eliminating other possible strategies of engagement, until the only option left on the table is the military one,” he writes.'
Time: 'Whatever the order of battle, a U.S. strike would have a lasting impression on Iran's rulers. U.S. officials believe that a campaign of several days, involving hundreds or even thousands of sorties, could set back Iran's nuclear program by two to three years. Hit hard enough, some believe, Iranians might develop second thoughts about their government's designs as a regional nuclear power. Some U.S. foes of Iran's regime believe that the crisis of legitimacy that the ruling clerics would face in the wake of a U.S. attack could trigger their downfall, although others are convinced it would unite the population with the government in anti-American rage.' Dit sentiment is al in de aanloop naar de Irak-oorlog gebruikt om te vergulden wat later een bittere pil bleek; opmerkelijk is dat het nogmaals wordt ingezet.
The Washington Post schrijft: '"The message [from the Bush administration] that we received is that they are in favor of separating the Iranian people from the regime," said Esmail Amid-Hozour, an Iranian American businessman who serves on the Hoover board. [...] Members of the Hoover Institution's board of overseers who met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley two weeks ago emerged with the impression that the administration has shifted to a more robust policy aimed at the Iranian government. [...] "The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy," said Richard N. Haass, who as State Department policy planning director in Bush's first term was among those pushing for engagement.' Haass is president van de Council on Foreign Relations.
Het zou niet voor het eerst zijn dat de VS een verkozen Iraans leider vervangen. In 1953 maakte de CIA een einde aan de regering Mossadeq: 'TIME reported: "This was no military coup, but a spontaneous popular uprising." It was anything but', schrijft Time vijftig jaar later: 'When Mossadegh delayed settling with Anglo-Iranian on the takeover of the company [and subsequently nationalized this British oil company], the British approached the CIA with a plan to remove the Premier and get Britain's oil back. The British could not do it alone, since they had left Iran. Allen Dulles, the CIA director, and his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, agreed. The Dulles brothers assigned the task of overseeing the clandestine venture to Kermit Roosevelt, a longtime intelligence operative and the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. [...] The American-friendly Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had earlier fled the country, returned triumphantly, resumed the throne and reasserted his control', met alle bekende excessen tot gevolg. Het artikel van Time maakt verder duidelijk dat het verdrijven door de VS van de Soviet-Unie uit Afghanistan net als in het geval van Iran was gemotiveerd door olie.