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De komende oorlog tegen Iran - Deel 13
Diverse eenheden van de Amerikaanse Marine is te verstaan gegeven paraat te staan op 1 oktober. De planning van het Pentagon met betrekking tot Iran is doorgestuurd naar het Witte Huis. Sam Gardiner concludeert: 'I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran'. De Amerikaanse president Bush zei recentelijk: 'It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.' Charles Krauthammer noteert in een column in The Washington Post: '"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option. The costs will be terrible'. Dit artikel is een direct vervolg op deel 12 in deze serie.
De Israelische premier Olmert in een recent interview: '"Israel can't accept the possibility of Iranians having nuclear weapons and we will act together with the international forces, starting with America, in order to prevent it. And as I also said, I believe that President Bush is absolutely determined to prevent it, and America has the capabilities to actually prevent it."' Bush heeft al eerder aangegeven een Iran met een nucleair wapen 'niet te tolereren'. 'Reagan conservative' Paul Craig Roberts schrijft: 'The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of US (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East. [...] Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed US war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran.' 'Eighteen hundred of our fellow physicists have joined in a petition [PDF] opposing new U.S. nuclear- weapons policies that open the door to the use of nuclear weapons for situations like Iran. As members of the profession that brought nuclear weapons into existence, we urge the administration to abandon such policies, which would have grave consequences for America and for the world', aldus een ingezonden brief in de Herald. Luchtoorlog met Iran kan verworden tot landoorlog Time Magazine concludeert wat ook valt te concluderen uit deze DeepJournal-serie over Iran: 'No one is talking about a ground invasion of Iran. Too many U.S. troops are tied down elsewhere to make it possible, and besides, it isn't necessary. If the U.S. goal is simply to stunt Iran's nuclear program, it can be done better and more safely by air. An attack limited to Iran's nuclear facilities would nonetheless require a massive campaign. Experts say that Iran has between 18 and 30 nuclear-related facilities. The sites are dispersed around the country - some in the open, some cloaked in the guise of conventional factories, some buried deep underground. [...] It's possible that U.S. warplanes could destroy every known nuclear site - while Tehran's nuclear wizards, operating at other, undiscovered sites even deeper underground, continued their work. "We don't know where it all is," said a White House official, "so we can't get it all." [...] [Retired Marine General Anthony] Zinni, for one, believes an attack on Iran could eventually lead to U.S. troops on the ground. "You've got to be careful with your assumptions," he says. "In Iraq, the assumption was that it would be a liberation, not an occupation. You've got to be prepared for the worst case, and the worst case involving Iran takes you down to boots on the ground." All that, he says, makes an attack on Iran a "dumb idea." [General John] Abizaid, the current Centcom boss, chose his words carefully last May. "Look, any war with a country that is as big as Iran, that has a terrorist capability along its borders, that has a missile capability that is external to its own borders and that has the ability to affect the world's oil markets is something that everyone needs to contemplate with a great degree of clarity." Over een lucht- en/of grondoorlog met Iran schrijft journalist Seymour Hersh: 'The Israeli plan [to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon], according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)'. De verloren Israëlische oorlog tegen Hezbollah kan mogelijk dienen als waarschuwing voor de VS niet aan een oorlog te beginnen tegen Iran: 'Cheney's point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it's really successful? It'd be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.” [...] The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.” Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”' VS slaan aanbiedingen af voor vredesonderhandelingen Time Magazine schrijft in What Would War Look Like?: '[...] from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran [...] may be impossible to avoid. [...] The fact that all sides would risk losing so much in armed conflict doesn't mean they won't stumble into one anyway. And for all the good arguments against any war now, much less this one, there are just as many indications that a genuine, eyeball-to-eyeball crisis between the U.S. and Iran may be looming, and sooner than many realize. "At the moment," says Ali Ansari, a top Iran authority at London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank, "we are headed for conflict."' Toch had het mogelijk heel anders kunnen lopen, schrijft The Washington Post: 'Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.' De Amerikaanse regering ging niet in op het aanbod; 'the Iranian approach was swiftly rejected because in the administration "the bias was toward a policy of regime change"', aldus 'Richard N. Haass, head of policy planning at the State Department at the time and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations. [...] The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," [Trita] Parsi ['a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace'] said.' Voorafgaand aan de Irakoorlog is de VS een gelijksoortig aanbod gedaan, schrijft onderzoeksjournalist James Risen in The New York Times: 'As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March [2003] and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. [...] Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction."' Niet alleen werden de handreikingen van Iran geboycot, er werd zelfs in het geheim en illegaal geijverd voor een aanval op Iran. Onderzoeksauteur James Bamford schrijft in een artikel van zijn hand voor Rolling Stone, juli 2006: 'At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications that a rogue group of senior Pentagon officials were already conspiring to push the United States into another war—this time with Iran. [...] War with Iran has been in the works for the past five years, shaped in almost complete secrecy by a small group of senior Pentagon officials attached to the Office of Special Plans.' Lees meer over het OSP in dit artikel van DeepJournal. Een voorbeeld uit het artikel van Bamford: 'Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member [of the OSP] was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran [...]; the document called, in essence, for regime change in Iran.' In het verleden waren de VS niet zo verlegen als het aankwam op onderhandelen met Iran. In verband met de komende Amerikaanse verkiezingen zijn sommigen bang voor een October Surprise. De eerste October Surprise vond plaats in oktober 1980, gebaseerd op onderhandelingen tussen het Iraanse regime en het verkiezingsteam van Ronald Reagan, meer specifiek George Bush, de vader van de huidige president. Lees er alles over in dit artikel dat ik schreef voor Esquire. Grote gevolgen bij aanval op Iran
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