Sunday, September 2, 2007
The Sunday Times of London reports from Washington a
story I have not seen in any U.S. media: that "the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days." The source of this report was Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center.
Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the journal National Interest, edited by Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol Debate stated:
US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
As in the run-up to the war in Iraq, President Bush is maintaining the fiction that he is "committed for now to the diplomatic route," but many signs indicate that the decision to attack has been taken as irrevocably as the decision to attack Iraq in the fall of 2002.
The legal argument to bypass the U.S. Congress has already been
floated. As I noted in my
DailyKos post:
The U.S. cannot mount a ground invasion or occupation of Iran, but it might be capable of an air attack and sea embargo. The administration has prepared a legal justification by floating
its plan to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Since the IRGC is under the command of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the administration, with its usual legal acuity, could claim legal authority for an attack on Iran under Senate Joint Resolution 23 of
September 18, 2001,which authorized the use of military force against "those who plan, authorize, commit, or aid terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests -- including those who harbor terrorists."
There has been much speculation about how Iran would respond, mostly in Iraq, Lebanon, or against Israel. I would add that Iran is prepared to respond in Afghanistan as well. For nearly a year Iranian officials dealing with Afghanistan have been been signaling danger. Under the Khatami administration, they told me, Iran's policy was, "If the U.S. attacks Iran, Iran will not react in Afghanistan," because of Iran's overriding interest in keeping the country stable as a bulwark against Taliban and al-Qaida. Under President Ahmadinejad, priorities have changed.
The Iranian government has been preparing for the possible collapse of the much weakened Karzai government. They have been doing so mainly by providing extensive military and political assistance to the former Northern Alliance, the grouping of commanders supported by Iran, Russian, and India that was funded by the U.S. to occupy the territory vacated by Taliban and al-Qaida fleeing U.S. air strikes in the fall of 2001. Iran denies the charges by the U.S. that it is aiding the Taliban, but it may well be doing so despite longstanding enmity because it now gives a higher priority to creating problems for a U.S. that it sees as bent on forcible regime change.
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