[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 119 (Thursday, September 21, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1781-E1789]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CONDEMNING THE REPRESSION OF THE IRANIAN BAHA'I COMMUNITY AND CALLING 
                FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF IRANIAN BAHA'IS

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 19, 2006

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record.

                  [From Time Magazine, Sept. 17, 2006]

                       What Would War Look Like?

                           (By Michael Duffy)

       The first message was routine enough: a ``Prepare to 
     Deploy'' order sent through naval communications channels to 
     a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two 
     mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships 
     out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. 
     But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than 
     usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of 
     Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing 
     U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian 
     Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of 
     those strategic targets might work. When he didn't like the 
     analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash 
     up once again.
       What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing dues. 
     There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers 
     top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, 
     petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of 
     the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide 
     bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of 
     the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the 
     CNO's request for a blockade review, 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.
       No one knows whether--let alone when--a military 
     confrontation with Tehran will come to pass. The fact that 
     admirals are reviewing plans for blockades is hardly proof of 
     their intentions. The U.S. military routinely makes plans for 
     scores of scenarios, the vast majority of which will never be 
     put into practice. ``Planners always plan,'' says a Pentagon 
     official. Asked about the orders, a second official said only 
     that the Navy is

[[Page E1782]]

     stepping up its ``listening and learning'' in the Persian 
     Gulf but nothing more--a prudent step, he added, after Iran 
     tested surface-to-ship missiles there in August during a two-
     week military exercise. And yet 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--over its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, 
     its threats against Israel and its bid for dominance of 
     the world's richest oil region--may be impossible to 
     avoid. The chief of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), 
     General John Abizaid, has called a commanders conference 
     for later this month in the Persian Gulf--sessions he 
     holds at least quarterly--and Iran is on the agenda.
       On its face, of course, the notion of a war with Iran seems 
     absurd. By any rational measure, the last thing the U.S. can 
     afford is another war. Two unfinished wars--one on Iran's 
     eastern border, the other on its western flank--are daily 
     depleting America's treasury and overworked armed forces. 
     Most of Washington's allies in those adventures have made it 
     clear they will not join another gamble overseas. What's 
     more, the Bush team, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza 
     Rice, has done more diplomatic spadework on Iran than on any 
     other project in its 5\1/2\ years in office. For more than 18 
     months, Rice has kept the Administration's hard-line faction 
     at bay while leading a coalition that includes four other 
     members of the U.N. Security Council and is trying to force 
     Tehran to halt its suspicious nuclear ambitions. Even Iran's 
     former President, Mohammed Khatami, was in Washington this 
     month calling for a ``dialogue'' between the two nations.
       But superpowers don't always get to choose their enemies or 
     the timing of their confrontations. 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.''
       So what would it look like? Interviews with dozens of 
     experts and government officials in Washington, Tehran and 
     elsewhere in the Middle East paint a sobering picture: 
     military action against Iran's nuclear facilities would have 
     a decent chance of succeeding, but at a staggering cost. And 
     therein lies the excruciating calculus facing the U.S. and 
     its allies: Is the cost of confronting Iran greater than the 
     dangers of living with a nuclear Iran? And can anything short 
     of war persuade Tehran's fundamentalist regime to give up its 
     dangerous game?


                              ROAD TO WAR

       The crisis with Iran has been years in the making. Over the 
     past decade, Iran has acquired many of the pieces, parts and 
     plants needed to make a nuclear device. Although Iranian 
     officials insist that Iran's ambitions are limited to nuclear 
     energy, the regime has asserted its right to develop nuclear 
     power and enrich uranium that could be used in bombs as an 
     end in itself--a symbol of sovereign pride, not to mention a 
     useful prop for politicking. Iran's President Mahmoud 
     Ahmadinejad has crisscrossed the country in recent months 
     making Iran's right to a nuclear program a national cause and 
     trying to solidify his base of hard-line support in the 
     Revolutionary Guards. The nuclear program is popular with 
     average Iranians and the elites as well. ``Iranian leaders 
     have this sense of past glory, this belief that Iran 
     should play a lofty role in the world,'' says Nasser 
     Hadian, professor of political science at Tehran 
     University.
       But the nuclear program isn't Washington's only worry about 
     Iran. While stoking nationalism at home, Tehran has 
     dramatically consolidated its reach in the region. Since the 
     1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has sponsored terrorist groups 
     in a handful of countries, but its backing of Hizballah, the 
     militant group that took Lebanon to war with Israel this 
     summer, seems to be changing the Middle East balance of 
     power. There is circumstantial evidence that Iran ordered 
     Hizballah to provoke this summer's war, in part to 
     demonstrate that Tehran can stir up big trouble if pushed to 
     the brink. The precise extent of coordination between 
     Hizballah and Tehran is unknown. But no longer in dispute 
     after the standoff in July is Iran's ability to project power 
     right up to the borders of Israel. It is no coincidence that 
     the talk in Washington about what to do with Iran became more 
     focused after Hizballah fought the Israeli army to a virtual 
     standstill this summer.
       And yet the West has been unable to compel Iran to comply 
     with its demands. Despite all the work Rice has put into her 
     coalition, diplomatic efforts are moving too slowly, some 
     believe, to stop the Iranians before they acquire the makings 
     of a nuclear device. And Iran has played its hand shrewdly so 
     far. Tehran took weeks to reply to a formal proposal from the 
     U.N. Security Council calling on a halt to uranium 
     enrichment. When it did, its official response was a mosaic 
     of half-steps, conditions and boilerplate that suggested 
     Tehran has little intention of backing down. ``The 
     Iranians,'' says a Western diplomat in Washington, ``are very 
     able negotiators. ``
       That doesn't make war inevitable. But at some point the 
     U.S. and its allies may have to confront the ultimate choice. 
     The Bush Administration has said it won't tolerate Iran 
     having a nuclear weapon. Once it does, the regime will have 
     the capacity to carry out Ahmadinejad's threats to eliminate 
     Israel. And in practical terms, the U.S. would have to 
     consider military action long before Iran had an actual bomb. 
     In military circles, there is a debate about where--and 
     when--to draw that line. U.S. intelligence chief John 
     Negroponte told TIME in April that Iran is 5 years away from 
     having a nuclear weapon. But some nonproliferation experts 
     worry about a different moment: when Iran is able to enrich 
     enough uranium to fuel a bomb--a point that comes well before 
     engineers actually assemble a nuc1ear device. Many believe 
     that is when a country becomes a nuclear power. That red 
     line, experts say, could be just a year away.


                         WOULD AN ATTACK WORK?

       The answer is yes and no.
       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.
       A Pentagon official says that among the known sites there 
     are 1,500 different ``aim points,'' which means the campaign 
     could well require the involvement of almost every type of 
     aircraft in the U.S. arsenal: Stealth bombers and fighters, 
     B-ls and B-2s, as well as F-15s and F-16s operating from land 
     and F-18s from aircraft carriers.
       GPS-guided munitions and laser-targeted bombs--sighted by 
     satellite, spotter aircraft and unmanned vehicles--would do 
     most of the bunker busting. But because many of the targets 
     are hardened under several feet of reinforced concrete, most 
     would have to be hit over and over to ensure that they were 
     destroyed or sufficiently damaged. The U.S. would have to 
     mount the usual aerial ballet, refueling tankers as well as 
     search-and-rescue helicopters in case pilots were shot down 
     by Iran's aging but possibly still effective air defenses. 
     U.S. submarines and ships could launch cruise missiles as 
     well, but their warheads are generally too small to do much 
     damage to reinforced concrete--and might be used for 
     secondary targets. An operation of that size would hardly be 
     surgical. Many sites are in highly populated areas, so 
     civilian casualties would be a certainty.
       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 2 to 3 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.
       But it is also likely that the U.S. could carry out a 
     massive attack and still leave Iran with some part of its 
     nuclear program intact. 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 al1.''


                         WHAT WOULD COME NEXT?

       No one who has spent any time thinking about an attack on 
     Iran doubts that a U.S. operation would reap a whirlwind. The 
     only mystery is what kind. ``It's not a question of whether 
     we can do a strike or not and whether the strike could be 
     effective,'' says retired Marine General Anthony Zinni. ``It 
     certainly would be, to some degree. But are you prepared for 
     all that follows?''
       Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who taught strategy 
     at the National War College, has been conducting a mock U.S.-
     Iran war game for American policymakers for the past 5 years. 
     Virtually every time he runs the game, Gardiner says, a 
     similar nightmare scenario unfolds: the U.S. attack, no 
     matter how successful, spawns a variety of asymmetrical 
     retaliations by Tehran. First comes terrorism: Iran's initial 
     reaction to air strikes might be to authorize a Hizballah 
     attack on Israel, in order to draw Israel into the war and 
     rally public support at home.
       Next, Iran might try to foment as much mayhem as possible 
     inside the two nations on its flanks, Afghanistan and Iraq, 
     where more than 160,000 U.S. troops hold a tenuous grip on 
     local populations. Iran has already dabbled in partnership 
     with warlords in western Afghanistan, where U.S. military 
     authority has never been strong; it would be a small step to 
     lend aid to Taliban forces gaining strength in the south. 
     Meanwhile, Tehran has links to the main factions in Iraq, 
     which would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to 
     strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally 
     believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a 
     dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on 
     U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric 
     and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, ``America owns the

[[Page E1783]]

     sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground.''
       Next, there is oil. The Persian Gulf, a traffic jam on good 
     days, would become a parking lot. Iran could plant mines and 
     launch dozens of armed boats into the bottleneck, choking off 
     the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and causing a 
     massive disruption of oil-tanker traffic. A low-key Iranian 
     mining operation in 1987 forced the U.S. to reflag Kuwaiti 
     oil tankers and escort them, in slow-moving files of one and 
     two, up and down the Persian Gulf. A more intense operation 
     would probably send oil prices soaring above $100 per bbl.--
     which may explain why the Navy wants to be sure its small 
     fleet of minesweepers is ready to go into action at a 
     moment's notice. It is unlikely that Iran would turn off its 
     own oil spigot or halt its exports through pipelines 
     overland, but it could direct its proxies in Iraq and Saudi 
     Arabia to attack pipelines, wells and shipment points inside 
     those countries, further choking supply and driving up 
     prices.
       That kind of retaliation could quickly transform a 
     relatively limited U.S. mission in Iran into a much more 
     complicated one involving regime change. An Iran determined 
     to use all its available weapons to counterattack the U.S. 
     and its allies would present a challenge to American prestige 
     that no Commander in Chief would be likely to tolerate for 
     long. 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.'' 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.''


                           can it be stopped?

       Given the chaos that a war might unleash, what options does 
     the world have to avoid it? One approach would be for the 
     U.S. to accept Iran as a nuclear power and learn to live with 
     an Iranian bomb, focusing its efforts on deterrence rather 
     than pre-emption. The risk is that a nuclear-armed Iran would 
     use its regional primacy to become the dominant foreign power 
     in Iraq, threaten Israel and make it harder for Washington to 
     exert its will in the region. And it could provoke Sunni 
     countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to 
     start nuclear programs of their own to contain rising Shi'ite 
     power.
       Those equally unappetizing prospects--war or a new arms 
     race in the Middle East--explain why the White House is 
     kicking up its efforts to resolve the Iran problem before it 
     gets that far. Washington is doing everything it can to make 
     Iran think twice about its ongoing game of stonewall. It is a 
     measure of the Administration's unity on Iran that 
     confrontationalists like Vice President Dick Cheney and 
     Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have lately not wandered 
     off the rhetorical reservation. Everyone has been careful--
     for now--to stick to Rice's diplomatic emphasis. ``Nobody is 
     considering a military option at this point,'' says an 
     Administration official. ``We're trying to prevent a 
     situation in which the President finds himself having to 
     decide between a nuclear-armed Iran or going to war. The best 
     hope of avoiding that dilemma is hard-nosed diplomacy, one 
     that has serious consequences.''
       Rice continues to try for that. This week in New York City, 
     she will push her partners to get behind a new sanctions 
     resolution that would ban Iranian imports of dual-use 
     technologies, like parts for its centrifuge cascades for 
     uranium enrichment, and bar travel overseas by certain 
     government officials. The next step would be restrictions on 
     government purchases of computer software and hardware, 
     office supplies, tires and auto parts--steps Russia and China 
     have signaled some reluctance to endorse. But even Rice's 
     advisers don't believe that Iran can be persuaded to 
     completely abandon its ambitions. Instead, they hope to tie 
     Iran up in a series of suspensions, delays and negotiations 
     until a more pragmatic faction of leadership in Tehran gains 
     the upper hand.
       At the moment, that sounds as much like a prayer as a 
     strategy. A former CIA director, asked not long ago whether a 
     moderate faction will ever emerge in Tehran, quipped, ``I 
     don't think I've ever met an Iranian moderate--not at the top 
     of the government, anyway.'' But if sanctions don't work, 
     what might? Outside the Administration, a growing group of 
     foreign policy hands from both parties have called on the 
     U.S. to bring Tehran into direct negotiations in the hope of 
     striking a grand bargain. Under that formula, the U.S. might 
     offer Iran some security guarantees--such as forswearing 
     efforts to topple Iran's theocratic regime--in exchange for 
     Iran's agreeing to open its facilities to international 
     inspectors and abandon weapons-related projects. It would be 
     painful for any U.S. Administration to recognize the 
     legitimacy of a regime that sponsors terrorism and calls 
     for Israel's destruction--but the time may come when 
     that's the only bargaining chip short of war the U.S. has 
     left. And still that may not be enough. ``[The Iranians] 
     would give up nuclear power if they truly believed the 
     U.S. would accept Iran as it is,'' says a university 
     professor in Tehran who asked not to be identified. ``But 
     the mistrust runs too deep for them to believe that is 
     possible.''
       Such distrust runs both ways and is getting deeper. Unless 
     the U.S., its allies and Iran can find a way to make 
     diplomacy work, the whispers of blockades and minesweepers in 
     the Persian Gulf may soon be drowned out by the cries of war. 
     And if the U.S. has learned anything over the past 5 years, 
     it's that war in the Middle East rarely goes according to 
     plan.
                                  ____


                   [From antiwar.com, Feb. 11, 2005]

                       Iran War Drums Beat Harder

                             (By Jim Lobe)

       Despite the Bush administration's insistence that, at least 
     for now, it remains committed to using diplomatic means to 
     halt Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, war drums 
     against the Islamic Republic appear to be beating more loudly 
     here.
       Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Europeans on 
     her trip this past week that Washington does indeed support 
     the efforts of France, Britain, and Germany (EU-3) to reach a 
     diplomatic settlement on the issue. However, she also made it 
     clear that Washington has no interest in joining them at the 
     negotiating table or extending much in the way of carrots.
       And her consistent refusal to reiterate former Deputy 
     Secretary of State Richard Armitage's flat assertion in 
     December that Washington does not seek ``regime change'' in 
     Tehran has added to the impression that the administration is 
     set firmly on a path toward confrontation.
       Whether the administration is pursuing a ``good cop/bad 
     cop'' strategy--in which Washington's role is to brandish the 
     sticks and the EU-3 the carrots--remains unclear, but the 
     voices in favor of an ``engagement'' policy are being drowned 
     out by crescendo of calls to adopt ``regime change'' as U.S. 
     policy.
       The latest such urging was released here Thursday by the 
     Iran Policy Committee (IPC), a group headed by a former 
     National Security Council staffer Ray Tanter, several retired 
     senior military officers, and a former ambassador to Saudi 
     Arabia.
       The 30-page document, ``U.S. Policy Options for Iran'' by 
     former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Clare Lopez, 
     appears to reflect the views of the administration's most 
     radical hawks among the Pentagon's civilian leadership and in 
     the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
       It was Cheney who launched the latest bout of saber-
     rattling when he told a radio interviewer last month that 
     Tehran was ``right at the top of the list'' of the world's 
     trouble spots and that Israel may strike at suspected Iranian 
     nuclear sites even before the U.S.
       The study echoes many of the same themes--mainly support 
     for the Iranian exiled and internal opposition against the 
     government--as another policy paper released by the mainly 
     neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) in 
     December, but it is also much harsher.
       Both papers favored military strikes against suspected 
     nuclear and other weapons facilities if that was the only way 
     to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and 
     endorsed ``regime change'' as U.S. policy.
       But the CPD paper, which had the influential backing of 
     former Secretary of State George Shultz, called for a 
     ``peaceful'' strategy that involved elements of both 
     engagement and nonviolent subversion similar to that pursued 
     by Washington in Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe, 
     particularly during the 1980s.
       The latest report does grant a role for ``carrots'' in 
     achieving a delay in Iran's nuclear ambitions and even in 
     regime change, although the IPC's members expressed greater 
     skepticism that the EU-3 talks will be effective or even 
     desirable.
       ``Negotiations will not work,'' said Maj. Gen. (ret.) Paul 
     Vallely, chairman of the military committee of the 
     neoconservative Center for Security Policy, who described the 
     Iranian regime as a ``house of cards.''
       Instead, the IPC's main emphasis is on more aggressive 
     actions to bring about the desired goals, including military 
     strikes and active efforts to destabilize the government, in 
     major part through the support and deployment of what it 
     calls ``indisputably the largest and most organized Iranian 
     opposition group,'' the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK)--an idea that 
     many Iran specialists here believe is likely to prove 
     exceptionally counterproductive.
       ``[A]s an additional step [in a strategy of 
     destabilization],'' the paper states, ``the United States 
     might encourage the new Iraqi government to extend formal 
     recognition to the MEK, based in Ashraf [Iraq], as a 
     legitimate political organization. Such a recognition would 
     send yet another signal from neighboring Iraq that the noose 
     is tightening around Iran's unelected rulers.''
       The MEK fought on Iraq's side during the Iran-Iraq war and 
     has been listed as a ``terrorist group'' by the State 
     Department since 1997 as a result of its assassination of 
     U.S. officials during the Shah's reign and of Iranian 
     officials after the Revolution.
       However, it has long been supported by the Pentagon 
     civilians and Cheney's office, and their backers in Congress 
     and the press as a possible asset against Iran despite its 
     official ``terrorist'' status.
       Indeed, there have been persistent reports, most recently 
     from a former CIA officer,

[[Page E1784]]

     Philip Giraldi, in the current edition of the American 
     Conservative magazine, that U.S. Special Forces have been 
     directing members of the group in carrying out reconnaissance 
     and intelligence collection in Iran from bases in Afghanistan 
     and Balochistan, Pakistan, since last summer as part of an 
     effort to identify possible targets for military strikes.
       After bombing MEK bases in the opening days of the Iraq 
     invasion in March 2003, the U.S. military worked out a cease-
     fire agreement that resulted in the group's surrender of its 
     heavy weapons and the concentration of about 4,000 of their 
     members, some of whom have since repatriated voluntarily to 
     Iran, at their base at Ashraf.
       The State Department, which was then engaged in quiet talks 
     with Iran about dispersing the group in exchange for Tehran's 
     handing over prominent al-Qaeda members in its custody, 
     clashed repeatedly with the Pentagon over the MEK's 
     treatment.
       After State was forced by the White House to break off its 
     dialogue with Tehran following al Qaeda attacks in Saudi 
     Arabia, allegedly ordered from somewhere on Iranian 
     territory, the administration determined that MEK members in 
     Iraq should be given Geneva Convention protections.
       The IPC now wants the State Department to take the MEK off 
     the terrorist list, a position backed by several dozen 
     members of Congress who have been actively courted by the 
     group and believe that a confrontation with Iran is 
     inevitable.
       ``Removing the terrorist designation from the MEK could 
     serve as the most tangible signal to the Iranian regime, as 
     well as to the Iranian people, that a new option is now on 
     the table,'' according to the report.
       ``Removal might also have the effect of supporting 
     President Bush's assertion [in his State of the Union 
     address] that America stands with the people of Iran in their 
     struggle to liberate themselves.''
       But most Iran specialists, both inside and outside the 
     government, who agree that the regime is deeply unpopular, 
     also insist that Washington's endorsement of the MEK will 
     actually bolster the regime in Tehran.
       ``Everybody I've ever talked to in Iran or who have gone to 
     Iran tell me without exception that these people are 
     despised,'' said Gary Sick. who handled Iranian policy for 
     the National Security Council under former President Jimmy 
     Carter.
       When they invaded Iran from Iraq in the last year of the 
     Iran-Iraq war, according to Sick, who teaches at Columbia 
     University, they had expected to march straight to Tehran 
     gathering support all along the way.
       ``But they never got beyond a little border town before 
     running into stiff resistance. It was a very ugly incident. 
     They had a chance to show what they can do, and the bottom 
     line was nothing very much. I've seen nothing since then to 
     change my estimate,'' he said.
                                  ____


                  [From the New Yorker, Apr. 17, 2006]

                             The Iran Plans

                         (By Seymour M. Hersh)

       The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating 
     diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear 
     weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and 
     intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current 
     and former American military and intelligence officials said 
     that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of 
     targets, and teams of American combat troops have been 
     ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and 
     to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority 
     groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined 
     to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot 
     program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.
       American and European intelligence agencies, and the 
     International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that 
     Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce 
     nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of 
     how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or 
     military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists 
     that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with 
     the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be 
     delayed or deterred.
       There is a growing conviction among members of the United 
     States military, and in the international community, that 
     President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation 
     with Iran is regime change. Iran's President, Mahmoud 
     Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and 
     said that Israel must be ``wiped off the map.'' Bush and 
     others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf 
     Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. ``That's 
     the name they're using. They say, `Will Iran get a strategic 
     weapon and threaten another world war?' ''
       A government consultant with close ties to the civilian 
     leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was ``absolutely 
     convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb'' if it is not 
     stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do 
     ``what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, 
     would have the courage to do,'' and ``that saving Iran is 
     going to be his legacy.''
       One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive 
     issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military 
     planning was premised on a belief that ``a sustained bombing 
     campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and 
     lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.'' He 
     added, ``I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 
     'What are they smoking?' ``
       The rationale for regime change was articulated in early 
     March by Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy 
     director for research at the Washington Institute for Near 
     East Policy and who has been a supporter of President Bush. 
     ``So long as Iran has an Islamic republic, it will have a 
     nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely,'' Clawson 
     told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd. 
     ``The key issue, therefore, is: How long will the present 
     Iranian regime last?''
       When I spoke to Clawson, he emphasized that ``this 
     Administration is putting a lot of effort into diplomacy.'' 
     However, he added, Iran had no choice other than to accede to 
     America's demands or face a military attack. Clawson said 
     that he fears that Ahmadinejad ``sees the West as wimps and 
     thinks we will eventually cave in. We have to be ready to 
     deal with Iran if the crisis escalates:'' Clawson said that 
     he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine 
     activities, such as ``industrial accidents.'' But, he said, 
     it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, ``given the 
     way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to 
     invade Quebec.''
       One military planner told me that White House criticisms of 
     Iran and the high tempo of planning and clandestine 
     activities amount to a campaign of ``coercion'' aimed at 
     Iran. ``You have to be ready to go, and we'll see how they 
     respond,'' the officer said. ``You have to really show a 
     threat in order to get Ahmadinejad to back down.'' He added, 
     ``People think Bush has been focused on Saddam Hussein since 
     9/11,'' but, ``in my view, if you had to name one nation that 
     was his focus all the way along, it was Iran.'' (In response 
     to detailed requests for comment, the White House said that 
     it would not comment on military planning but added, ``As the 
     President has indicated, we are pursuing a diplomatic 
     solution''; the Defense Department also said that Iran was 
     being dealt with through ``diplomatic channels'' but wouldn't 
     elaborate on that; the C.I.A. said that there were 
     ``inaccuracies'' in this account but would not specify them.)
       ``This is much more than a nuclear issue,'' one high-
     ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. ``That's just a rallying 
     point, and there is still time to fix it. But the 
     Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they 
     control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is 
     who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the 
     next ten years.''
       A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a 
     similar view. ``This White House believes that the only way 
     to solve the problem is to change the power structure in 
     Iran, and that means war,'' he said. The danger, he said, was 
     that ``it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the 
     only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear 
     capability.'' A military conflict that destabilized the 
     region could also increase the risk of terror: ``Hezbollah 
     comes into play,'' the adviser said, referring to the terror 
     group that is considered one of the world's most successful, 
     and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties 
     to Iran. ``And here comes Al Qaeda.''
       In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a 
     series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and 
     members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A 
     senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did 
     not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content 
     with his colleagues, told me that there had been ``no formal 
     briefings,'' because ``they're reluctant to brief the 
     minority. They're doing the Senate, somewhat selectively.''
       The House member said that no one in the meetings ``is 
     really objecting'' to the talk of war. ``The people they're 
     briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At 
     most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the 
     sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?'' (Iran 
     is building facilities underground.) ``There's no pressure 
     from Congress'' not to take military action, the House member 
     added. ``The only political pressure is from the guys who 
     want to do it.'' Speaking of President Bush, the House member 
     said, ``The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a 
     messianic vision.''
       Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating 
     Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical 
     aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have 
     been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions--
     rapid ascending maneuvers known as ``over the shoulder'' 
     bombing--since last summer, the former official said, within 
     range of Iranian coastal radars.
       Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East 
     security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst 
     who taught at the National War College before retiring from 
     the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be 
     needed to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Working from 
     satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner 
     estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be 
     hit. He added:
       I don't think a U.S. military planner would want to stop 
     there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We 
     would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range 
     ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer 
     to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered 
     aircraft. . . . We'd want to get rid of that threat. We would 
     want to hit the assets that could be

[[Page E1785]]

     used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the 
     cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . 
     Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even 
     with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special 
     Operations units.
       One of the military's initial option plans, as presented to 
     the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the 
     use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the 
     B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is 
     Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred 
     miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under 
     I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space 
     to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and 
     workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the 
     surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough 
     enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. 
     (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence 
     of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, 
     but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the 
     Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be 
     a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the 
     conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure 
     the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of 
     earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with 
     concrete.
       There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep 
     underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early 
     nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community 
     watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge 
     underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that 
     the underground facility was designed for ``continuity of 
     government''--for the political and military leadership to 
     survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in 
     Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The 
     Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows 
     about it remains classified. ``The `tell'--`the giveaway'--
     was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,'' 
     the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, 
     he said, it was determined that ``only nukes'' could destroy 
     the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts 
     believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their 
     underground facility. ``We see a similarity of design,'' 
     specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.
       A former high-level Defense Department official told me 
     that, in his view, even limited bombing would allow the U.S. 
     to ``go in there and do enough damage to slow down the 
     nuclear infrastructure--it's feasible.'' The former defense 
     official said, ``The Iranians don't have friends, and we can 
     tell them that, if necessary, we'll keep knocking back their 
     infrastructure. The United States should act like we're ready 
     to go.'' He added, ``We don't have to knock down all of their 
     air defenses. Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles 
     really work, and we can blow fixed things up. We can do 
     things on the ground, too, but it's difficult and very 
     dangerous--put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and put them to 
     sleep.''
       But those who are familiar with the Soviet bunker, 
     according to the former senior intelligence official, ``say 
     `No way.' ''
       You've got to know what's underneath--to know which 
     ventilator feeds people, or diesel generators, or which are 
     false. And there's a lot that we don't know.'' The lack of 
     reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the 
     goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to 
     consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. ``Every other 
     option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a 
     gap,'' the former senior intelligence official said. `` 
     `Decisive' is the key word of the Air Force's planning. It's 
     a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.''
       He went on, ``Nuclear planners go through extensive 
     training and learn the technical details of damage and 
     fallout--we're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass 
     casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an 
     underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth 
     raised a little bit. These politicians don't have a clue, and 
     whenever anybody tries to get it out''--remove the nuclear 
     option--``they're shouted down.''
       The attention given to the nuclear option has created 
     serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of 
     Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about 
     resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought 
     to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for 
     Iran--without success, the former intelligence official said. 
     ``The White House said, `Why are you challenging this? The 
     option came from you.' ''
       The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that 
     some in the Administration were looking seriously at this 
     option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in 
     tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in 
     policy circles. He called it ``a juggernaut that has to be 
     stopped.'' He also confirmed that some senior officers and 
     officials were considering resigning over the issue. ``There 
     are very strong sentiments within the military against 
     brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,'' the 
     adviser told me. ``This goes to high levels.'' The matter may 
     soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint 
     Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal 
     recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to 
     considering the nuclear option for Iran. ``The internal 
     debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,'' the adviser 
     said. ``And, if senior Pentagon officers express their 
     opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it 
     will never happen.''
       The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical 
     nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from 
     the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members 
     are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 
     ``They're telling the Pentagon that we can build the B6l with 
     more blast and less radiation,'' he said.
       The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William 
     Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan 
     Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared 
     to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on 
     nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public 
     Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel's report 
     recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential 
     part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability ``for 
     those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of 
     high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of 
     conventional weapons.'' Several signers of the report are now 
     prominent members of the Bush Administration, including 
     Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen 
     Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and 
     Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control 
     and International Security.
       The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. 
     ``The Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very 
     well, and we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It 
     could even be out of the country,'' he said. He warned, as 
     did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke ``a chain 
     reaction'' of attacks on American facilities and citizens 
     throughout the world: ``What will 1.2 billion Muslims think 
     the day we attack Iran?''
       With or without the nuclear option, the list of targets may 
     inevitably expand. One recently retired high-level Bush 
     Administration official, who is also an expert on war 
     planning, told me that he would have vigorously argued 
     against an air attack on Iran, because ``Iran is a much 
     tougher target'' than Iraq. But, he added, ``If you're going 
     to do any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well 
     improve your lie across the board. Maybe hit some training 
     camps, and clear up a lot of other problems.''
       The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, 
     the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in 
     Iran but that ``ninety-nine percent of them have nothing to 
     do with proliferation. There are people who believe it's the 
     way to operate''--that the Administration can achieve its 
     policy goals in Iran with a bombing campaign, an idea that 
     has been supported by neoconservatives.
       If the order were to be given for an attack, the American 
     combat troops now operating in Iran would be in position to 
     mark the critical targets with laser beams, to insure bombing 
     accuracy and to minimize civilian casualties. As of early 
     winter, I was told by the government consultant with close 
     ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also 
     working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, 
     in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, 
     in the northeast. The troops ``are studying the terrain, and 
     giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and 
     recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,'' the 
     consultant said. One goal is to get ``eyes on the ground''--
     quoting a line from ``Othello,'' he said, ``Give me the 
     ocular proof.'' The broader aim, the consultant said, is to 
     ``encourage ethnic tensions'' and undermine the regime.
       The new mission for the combat troops is a product of 
     Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's long-standing interest in 
     expanding the role of the military in covert operations, 
     which was made official policy in the Pentagon's Quadrennial 
     Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if 
     conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a Presidential 
     Finding and would have to be reported to key members of 
     Congress.
       `` `Force protection' is the new buzzword,'' the former 
     senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the 
     Pentagon's position that clandestine activities that can be 
     broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting 
     troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are 
     therefore not subject to congressional oversight. ``The guys 
     in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of 
     uncertainties in Iran,'' he said. ``We need to have more than 
     what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do 
     everything we want.''
       The President's deep distrust of Ahmadinejad has 
     strengthened his determination to confront Iran. This view 
     has been reinforced by allegations that Ahmadinejad, who 
     joined a special-forces brigade of the Revolutionary Guards 
     in 1986, may have been involved in terrorist activities in 
     the late eighties. (There are gaps in Ahmadinejad's official 
     biography in this period.) Ahmadinejad has reportedly been 
     connected to Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who has been 
     implicated in the deadly bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the 
     U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983. Mughniyeh was then 
     the security chief of Hezbollah; he remains on the F.B.I.'s 
     list of most-wanted terrorists.
       Robert Baer, who was a C.I.A. officer in the Middle East 
     and elsewhere for two decades, told me that Ahmadinejad and 
     his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government 
     ``are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it 
     at Israel. They're apocalyptic Shiites. If you're sitting in 
     Tel Aviv and you believe they've got nukes and missiles--
     you've got to take them out. These

[[Page E1786]]

     guys are nuts, and there's no reason to back off.''
       Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded 
     their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the 
     end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants 
     with their own members. One former senior United Nations 
     official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted 
     the turnover as ``a white coup,'' with ominous implications 
     for the West. ``Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are 
     out; others are waiting to be kicked out,'' he said. ``We may 
     be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger 
     than ever since the revolution.'' He said that, particularly 
     in consideration of China's emergence as a superpower, Iran's 
     attitude was ``To hell with the West. You can do as much as 
     you like.''
       Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is 
     considered by many experts to be in a stronger position than 
     Ahmadinejad. ``Ahmadinejad is not in control,'' one European 
     diplomat told me. ``Power is diffuse in Iran. The 
     Revolutionary Guards are among the key backers of the nuclear 
     program, but, ultimately, I don't think they are in charge of 
     it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear 
     program, and the Guards will not take action without his 
     approval.''
       The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that 
     ``allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We 
     cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. 
     It's just too dangerous.'' He added, ``The whole internal 
     debate is on which way to go''--in terms of stopping the 
     Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran 
     will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans--and forestall 
     the American action. ``God may smile on us, but I don't think 
     so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-
     weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that 
     only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves 
     against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.''
       While almost no one disputes Iran's nuclear ambitions, 
     there is intense debate over how soon it could get the bomb, 
     and what to do about that. Robert Gallucci, a former 
     government expert on nonproliferation who is now the dean of 
     the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, told me, ``Based 
     on what I know, Iran could be eight to ten years away'' from 
     developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Gallucci added, ``If 
     they had a covert nuclear program and we could prove it, and 
     we could not stop it by negotiation, diplomacy, or the threat 
     of sanctions, I'd be in favor of taking it out. But if you do 
     it''--bomb Iran--''without being able to show there's a 
     secret program, you're in trouble.''
       Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence 
     agency, told the Knesset last December that ``Iran is one to 
     two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium. 
     From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is 
     simply a technical matter.'' In a conversation with me, a 
     senior Israeli intelligence official talked about what he 
     said was Iran's duplicity: ``There are two parallel nuclear 
     programs'' inside Iran--the program declared to the I.A.E.A. 
     and a separate operation, run by the military and the 
     Revolutionary Guards. Israeli officials have repeatedly made 
     this argument, but Israel has not produced public evidence to 
     support it. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State 
     in Bush's first term, told me, ``I think Iran has a secret 
     nuclear-weapons program--I believe it, but I don't know it.''
       In recent months, the Pakistani government has given the 
     U.S. new access to A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of the 
     Pakistani atomic bomb. Khan, who is now living under house 
     arrest in Islamabad, is accused of setting up a black market 
     in nuclear materials; he made at least one clandestine visit 
     to Tehran in the late nineteen-eighties. In the most 
     recent interrogations, Khan has provided information on 
     Iran's weapons design and its time line for building a 
     bomb. ``The picture is of `unquestionable danger,' '' the 
     former senior intelligence official said. (The Pentagon 
     adviser also confirmed that Khan has been ``singing like a 
     canary.'') The concern, the former senior official said, 
     is that ``Khan has credibility problems. He is 
     suggestible, and he's telling the neoconservatives what 
     they want to hear''--or what might be useful to Pakistan's 
     President, Pervez Musharraf, who is under pressure to 
     assist Washington in the war on terror.
       ``I think Khan's leading us on,'' the former intelligence 
     official said. ``I don't know anybody who says, `Here's the 
     smoking gun.' But lights are beginning to blink. He's feeding 
     us information on the time line, and targeting information is 
     coming in from our own sources--sensors and the covert teams. 
     The C.I.A., which was so burned by Iraqi W.M.D., is going to 
     the Pentagon and the Vice-President's office saying, `It's 
     all new stuff.' People in the Administration are saying, 
     `We've got enough.' ''
       The Administration's case against Iran is compromised by 
     its history of promoting false intelligence on Iraq's weapons 
     of mass destruction. In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy 
     Web site, entitled ``Fool Me Twice,'' Joseph Cirincione, the 
     director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for 
     International Peace, wrote, ``The unfolding administration 
     strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful 
     campaign for the Iraq war.'' He noted several parallels:
       The vice president of the United States gives a major 
     speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the 
     Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Congress that 
     the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The 
     Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter 
     of global terrorism.
       Cirincione called some of the Administration's claims about 
     Iran ``questionable'' or lacking in evidence. When I spoke to 
     him, he asked, ``What do we know? What is the threat? The 
     question is: How urgent is all this?'' The answer, he said, 
     ``is in the intelligence community and the I.A.E.A.'' (In 
     August, the Washington Post reported that the most recent 
     comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate predicted that 
     Iran was a decade away from being a nuclear power.)
       Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. 
     officials on what it said was new and alarming information 
     about Iran's weapons program which had been retrieved from an 
     Iranian's laptop. The new data included more than a thousand 
     pages of technical drawings of weapons systems. The 
     Washington Post reported that there were also designs for a 
     small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment 
     process. Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of 
     stories in the Times and elsewhere. The stories were 
     generally careful to note that the materials could have been 
     fabricated, but also quoted senior American officials as 
     saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline in 
     the Times' account read, ``Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to 
     Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims''.
       I was told in interviews with American and European 
     intelligence officials, however, that the laptop was more 
     suspect and less revelatory than it had been depicted. The 
     Iranian who owned the laptop had initially been recruited by 
     German and American intelligence operatives, working 
     together. The Americans eventually lost interest in him. The 
     Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian 
     counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is 
     today. Some family members managed to leave Iran with his 
     laptop and handed it over at a U.S. embassy, apparently in 
     Europe. It was a classic ``walk-in.''
       A European intelligence official said, ``There was some 
     hesitation on our side'' about what the materials really 
     proved, ``and we are still not convinced.'' The drawings were 
     not meticulous, as newspaper accounts suggested, ``but had 
     the character of sketches,'' the European official said. ``It 
     was not a slam-dunk smoking gun.''
       The threat of American military action has created dismay 
     at the headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency's 
     officials believe that Iran wants to be able to make a 
     nuclear weapon, but ``nobody has presented an inch of 
     evidence of a parallel nuclear-weapons program in Iran,'' the 
     high-ranking diplomat told me. The I.A.E.A.'s best estimate 
     is that the Iranians are five years away from building a 
     nuclear bomb. ``But, if the United States does anything 
     militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter 
     of Iranian national pride,'' the diplomat said. ``The whole 
     issue is America's risk assessment of Iran's future 
     intentions, and they don't trust the regime. Iran is a menace 
     to American policy.''
       In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting 
     earlier this year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.'s 
     director-general, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, 
     and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms 
     Control. Joseph's message was blunt, one diplomat recalled: 
     ``We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran 
     is a direct threat to the national security of the United 
     States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want 
     you to give us an understanding that you will not say 
     anything publicly that will undermine us.''
       Joseph's heavy-handedness was unnecessary, the diplomat 
     said, since the I.A.E.A. already had been inclined to take a 
     hard stand against Iran. ``All of the inspectors are angry at 
     being misled by the Iranians, and some think the Iranian 
     leadership are nutcases--one hundred percent totally 
     certified nuts,'' the diplomat said. He added that El 
     Baradei's overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders 
     ``want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other 
     side''--in Washington. ``At the end of the day, it will work 
     only if the United States agrees to talk to the 
     Iranians.''
       The central question--whether Iran will be able to proceed 
     with its plans to enrich uranium--is now before the United 
     Nations, with the Russians and the Chinese reluctant to 
     impose sanctions on Tehran. A discouraged former I.A.E.A. 
     official told me in late March that, at this point, ``there's 
     nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive 
     outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if 
     they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe 
     them. It's a dead end.''
       Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, ``Why would the West 
     take the risk of going to war against that kind of target 
     without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We're low-cost, 
     and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its 
     cards on the table.'' A Western Ambassador in Vienna 
     expressed similar distress at the White House's dismissal of 
     the I.A.E.A. He said, ``If you don't believe that the 
     I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system--if you don't 
     trust them--you can only bomb.''
       There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush 
     Administration or among its European allies. ``We're quite 
     frustrated with the director-general,'' the European diplomat 
     told me. ``His basic approach has been to describe this as a 
     dispute between two sides

[[Page E1787]]

     with equal weight. It's not. We're the good guys! ElBaradei 
     has been pushing the idea of letting Iran have a small 
     nuclear-enrichment program, which is ludicrous. It's not his 
     job to push ideas that pose a serious proliferation risk.''
       The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing 
     perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney 
     believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their 
     real goal is regime change. ``Everyone is on the same page 
     about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime 
     change,'' a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, 
     ``The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don't 
     have to choose between going along with the Russians and the 
     Chinese or going along with Washington on something they 
     don't want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in 
     something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable.''
       ``The Brits think this is a very bad idea,'' Flynt 
     Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who 
     is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban 
     Center, told me, ``but they're really worried we're going to 
     do it.'' The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that 
     the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in 
     Washington but that, ``short of a smoking gun, it's going to 
     be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.'' He said 
     that the British ``are jumpy about the Americans going full 
     bore on the Iranians, with no compromise.''
       The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, 
     given its record, had admitted to everything it was doing, 
     but ``to the best of our knowledge the Iranian capability is 
     not at the point where they could successfully run 
     centrifuges'' to enrich uranium in quantity. One reason for 
     pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran's essential pragmatism. 
     ``The regime acts in its best interests,'' he said. Iran's 
     leaders ``take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and 
     they want to call the American bluff,'' believing that ``the 
     tougher they are the more likely the West will fold.'' But, 
     he said, ``From what we've seen with Iran, they will appear 
     superconfident until the moment they back off.''
       The diplomat went on, ``You never reward bad behavior, and 
     this is not the time to offer concessions. We need to find 
     ways to impose sufficient costs to bring the regime to its 
     senses. It's going to be a close call, but I think if there 
     is unity in opposition and the price imposed''--in 
     sanctions--''is sufficient, they may back down. It's too 
     early to give up on the U.N. route.'' He added, ``If the 
     diplomatic process doesn't work, there is no military 
     `solution.' There may be a military option, but the impact 
     could be catastrophic.''
       Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush's 
     most dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 
     invasion of Iraq. But he and his party have been racked by a 
     series of financial scandals, and his popularity is at a low 
     point. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said last year that 
     military action against Iran was ``inconceivable.'' Blair has 
     been more circumspect, saying publicly that one should never 
     take options off the table.
       Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about 
     the value of an American bombing campaign. ``The Iranian 
     economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape 
     politically,'' the European intelligence official told me. 
     ``He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can 
     do it, but the results will be worse.'' An American attack, 
     he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those 
     who might be sympathetic to the U.S. ``Iran is no longer 
     living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have 
     access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it,'' he said. 
     ``If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would 
     be in trouble in the long run.''
       Another European official told me that he was aware that 
     many in Washington wanted action. ``It's always the same 
     guys,'' he said, with a resigned shrug. ``There is a belief 
     that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short.''
       A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, 
     whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any 
     attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no 
     return. I was told by several officials that the White 
     House's interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim 
     country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, 
     was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational 
     planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, 
     President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad's hostility toward 
     Israel as a ``serious threat. It's a threat to world 
     peace.'' He added, ``I made it clear, I'll make it clear 
     again, that we will use military might to protect our ally 
     Israel.''
       Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, 
     would have to consider the following questions: ``What will 
     happen in the other Islamic countries? What ability does Iran 
     have to reach us and touch us globally--that is, terrorism? 
     Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure on Israel? What does 
     the attack do to our already diminished international 
     standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the 
     U.N. Security Council?''
       Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil 
     a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the 
     world's oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of 
     Hormuz, the 34-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern 
     oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently 
     retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences 
     of such actions. He told me that the U.S. Navy could keep 
     shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting 
     minesweepers to work. ``It's impossible to block passage,'' 
     he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon 
     also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, 
     pointing out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic 
     reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, 
     those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; 
     one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would 
     immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred 
     dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the 
     duration and scope of the conflict.
       Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and 
     former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian 
     retaliation might be focused on exposed oil and gas fields in 
     Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. 
     ``They would be at risk,'' he said, ``and this could begin 
     the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy 
     world.''
       Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq 
     and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the 
     Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such 
     attacks ``is consuming a lot of time'' at U.S. intelligence 
     agencies. ``The best terror network in the world has remained 
     neutral in the terror war for the past several years,'' the 
     Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. 
     ``This will mobilize them and put us up against the group 
     that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against 
     Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the 
     Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us.'' 
     (When I asked the government consultant about that 
     possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into 
     northern Israel, ``Israel and the new Lebanese government 
     will finish them off.'')
       The adviser went on, ``If we go, the southern half of Iraq 
     will light up like a candle.'' The American, British, and 
     other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of 
     attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating 
     on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly 
     Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in 
     Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the 
     eight thousand British troops in the region, ``the Iranians 
     could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.''
       ``If you attack,'' the high-ranking diplomat told me in 
     Vienna, ``Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the 
     Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You 
     must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.''
       The diplomat went on, ``There are people in Washington who 
     would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still 
     banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful 
     thinking.'' He added, ``The window of opportunity is now.''
                                  ____

                                              International Atomic


                                                Energy Agency,

                                               September 12, 2006.
     Hon. Peter Hoekstra,
     Chairman, House of Representatives, Permanent Select 
         Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC.
       Sir: I would like to draw your attention to the fact that 
     the Staff Report of the House Permanent Select Committee on 
     Intelligence, Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy, dated 23 
     August 2006, entitled ``Recognizing Iran as a Strategic 
     Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States'', 
     contains some erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated 
     information.
       The caption under the photograph of the Natanz site on page 
     9 of the report states that ``Iran is currently enriching 
     uranium to weapons grade using a 164-machine centrifuge 
     cascade''. In this regard, please be informed that 
     information about the uranium enrichment work being carried 
     out at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz, 
     including the 3.6% enrichment level that had been achieved by 
     Iran, was provided to the IAEA Board of Governors by the 
     Director General in April 2006 (see GOV/2006/27, paragraph 
     31). The description of this enrichment level as ``weapons 
     grade'' is incorrect, since the term ``weapon-grade'' is 
     commonly used to refer to uranium enriched to the order of 
     90% or more in the isotope of uranimum-235. The Director 
     General's April 2006 report, as well as all of his other 
     reports on the implementation of the safeguards in Iran, are 
     posted on the IAEA's website at http://www.iaea.org/
 NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran.
       The first bullet on page 10 states that ``Iran had covertly 
     produced the short-lived radioactive element polonium-210 
     (Po-210), a substance with two known uses; a neutron source 
     for a nuclear weapon and satellite batteries''. The use of 
     the phrase ``covertly produced'' is misleading becasue the 
     production of Po-210 is not required to be reported by Iran 
     to the IAEA under the NPT safeguards agreement concluded 
     between Iran and the IAEA (published in IAEA document 
     INFCIRC/214). (Regarding the production of Po-210, please 
     refer to the report provided to the Board of Governors by the 
     Director General in November 2004 (GOV/2004/83, paragraph 
     80)).

[[Page E1788]]

       Furthermore, the IAEA Secretariat takes strong exception to 
     the incorrect and misleading assertion in the Staff Report's 
     second full paragraph of page 13 that the Director of the 
     IAEA decided to ``remove'' Mr. Charlier, a senior safeguards 
     inspector of the IAEA, ``for allegedly raising concerns about 
     Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program and 
     concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear programme is to 
     construct weapons''. In addition, the report contains an 
     outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might 
     have been for ``not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy 
     barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the 
     Iranian nuclear program''.
       In this regard, please be advised that all safeguards 
     agreements concluded between a State and the IAEA in 
     connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of 
     Nuclear Weapons require the IAEA to secure acceptance by the 
     State of the designation of IAEA safeguards inspectors, 
     before such inspectors may be sent to the State on 
     inspection (INF-CIRC/153 (Corr.), paragraphs 9 and 85). 
     Under such agreements, each State has the right to object 
     to the designation of any safeguards inspector, and to 
     request the withdrawal of the designation of an inspector, 
     at any time, for that State (http://www.iaea.org/
 Publications/Docments/Infeircs). Accordingly, Iran's 
     request to the Director General to withdraw the 
     designation of Mr. Charlier authorizing him to carry out 
     safeguards inspections in Iran, was based on paragraph 
     (a)(i) of Article 9 and paragraph (d) of Article 85 of 
     Iran's Safeguards Agreement. I should also like to note 
     here that Iran has accepted the designation of more than 
     200 Agency safeguards inspectors, which number is similar 
     to that accepted by the majority of non-nuclear weapon 
     States that have concluded safeguards agreements pursuant 
     to the NPT.
       Finally, it is also regrettable that the Staff Report did 
     not take into account the views of the United Nations 
     Security Council, as expressed in resolution 1696 (2006), 
     which inter alia, ``commends and encourages the Director 
     General of the IAEA and its secretariat for their ongoing 
     professional and impartial efforts to resolve all remaining 
     outstanding issues in Iran within the framework of the 
     Agency.''
       While it is unfortunate that the authors of the Staff 
     Report did not concult with the IAEA Secretariat stands ready 
     to assist your Committee in correcting the erroneous and 
     misleading information contained in the report.
           Yours sincerely,

                                              Vilmos Cserveny,

                            Director, Office of External Relations
     and Policy Coordination.
                                  ____


               [From washingtonpost.com, Sept. 14, 2006]

           U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report by House Panel

                           (By Dafna Linzer)

       U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program 
     angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a 
     Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House 
     committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the 
     document ``outrageous and dishonest'' and offering evidence 
     to refute its central claims.
       Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic 
     Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some 
     ``erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements.'' The 
     letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was 
     addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the 
     House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy 
     was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador 
     to the IAEA in Vienna.
       The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on 
     pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 
     Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the 
     White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear 
     program on forged documents.
       After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came 
     under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on 
     Iran, which the White House says is trying to building 
     nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration 
     orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director 
     general, Mohamed El Baradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel 
     Peace Prize last year.
       Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The 
     Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly 
     disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The 
     agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page 
     report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more 
     advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.
       Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing 
     weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. 
     The IAEA called that ``incorrect,'' noting that weapons-grade 
     uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran 
     has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.
       When the congressional report was released last month, 
     Hoekstra said his intent was ``to help increase the American 
     public's understanding of Iran as a threat.'' Spokesman Jamal 
     Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA 
     letter.
       Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the 
     report was ``clearly not prepared in a manner that we can 
     rely on.'' He agreed to send it to the full committee for 
     review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before 
     then, he said in an interview.
       The report was never voted on or discussed by the full 
     committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told 
     Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report 
     ``took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the 
     Iran threat as more dire--and the Intelligence Community's 
     assessments as more certain--than they are.''
       Privately, several intelligence officials said the 
     committee report included at least a dozen claims that were 
     either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. 
     Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office 
     of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
       Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement 
     that his office ``reviewed the report and provided its 
     response to the committee on July 24, '06.'' He did not say 
     whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about 
     Iran's capabilities.
       ``This is like prewar Iraq all over again,'' said David 
     Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the 
     Washington-based Institute for Science and International 
     Security. ``You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun 
     up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report 
     that trashes the inspectors.''
       The committee report, written by a single Republican 
     staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA 
     and other agencies for not providing evidence to back 
     assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.
       It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it 
     impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the 
     committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative 
     Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State 
     Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians 
     under certain conditions.
       The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA 
     officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the 
     administration's former point man on Iran at the State 
     Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United 
     Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's 
     first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected-talks 
     with Tehran.
       Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that 
     ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran 
     investigation because he raised ``concerns about Iranian 
     deception regarding its nuclear program.'' The agency said 
     the inspector has not been removed.
       A suggestion that ElBaradei had an ``unstated'' policy that 
     prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's 
     program was particularly ``outrageous and dishonest,'' 
     according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos 
     Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a 
     former Hungarian ambassador.
       Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about 
     North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. 
     A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several 
     assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the 
     intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, 
     including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.
       The intelligence community believes North Korea is trying 
     to acquire an enrichment capability but has no proof that an 
     enrichment facility has been built, the officials said.
                                  ____

                                    Congress of the United States,


                                     House of Representatives,

                               Washington, DC, September 15, 2006.
     Hon. Christopher Shays,
     Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats 
         and International Relations, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: According to the Washington Post (``U.N. 
     Inspectors Dispute Iran Report by House Panel,'' September 
     14, 2006), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) 
     conducted a prepublication review of a House Intelligence 
     Committee staff report on Iran which has come under scrutiny 
     for making false, misleading and unsubstantiated assertions 
     about Iran's nuclear program.
       In the article, a spokesperson for the DNI confirmed that 
     the agency did review the report prior to its publication. 
     Yet, the final committee staff report ``included at least a 
     dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or 
     impossible to substantiate,'' including the gross 
     exaggeration that the level of uranium enrichment by Iranian 
     nuclear plants has now reached ``weapons-grade'' levels of 90 
     percent when in reality the correct enrichment level found by 
     the International Atomic Energy Agency was 3.6 percent. 
     (Letter from IAEA Director of External Relations and Policy 
     Coordination Vilmos Cserveny to Chairman Peter Hoekstra, 
     September 12, 2006.)
       The publication of false, misleading and unsubstantiated 
     statements by a House Committee is regrettable, but the role 
     of the DNI raises important questions:
       (1) Was the text of the report given to DNI for review 
     identical to the text later released to the public by the 
     Committee?
       (2) Did the DNI recognize those claims made in the report 
     that were wrong or impossible to substantiate at the time DNI 
     conducted its prepublication review?
       (3) During its review, did DNI also note the same false, 
     misleading and unsubstantiated statements as those deemed by 
     the IAEA in its letter to the Committee to be wrong or 
     impossible to substantiate?
       (4) In its response to the Committee, did DNI state the 
     inaccuracies it found, and seek correction or clarification 
     of those parts of the prepublication report?

[[Page E1789]]

       (5) Did the DNI approve the report, in spite of false and 
     exaggerated claims made in the report?
       There are troubling signs, which this Subcommittee has 
     attempted to investigate, that the Administration is leading 
     the U.S. toward a military conflict with Iran.
       In June, our Subcommittee held a classified members 
     briefing, at my request, to investigate independent reports 
     published in the New Yorker magazine and the Guardian that 
     U.S. military personnel have been or are already deployed 
     inside and around Iran, gathering intelligence and targeting 
     information, and reports published in Newsweek, ABC News and 
     GQ magazine, that the U.S. has been planning and is now 
     recruiting members of MEK to conduct lethal operations and 
     destabilizing operations inside Iran.
       Unfortunately, neither the Department of State nor the 
     Department of Defense chose to appear for the classified 
     briefing. Nearly three months later, the Subcommittee has 
     been unable to question State or DOD directly on those 
     reports. However, this Subcommittee was briefed by the Office 
     of the Director of National Intelligence, and I believe that 
     the Subcommittee should use its oversight authority to 
     compare the statements and information provided to Members 
     about Iran's nuclear program at the briefing, with 
     information provided to the House Intelligence Committee for 
     their report.
       These are precisely the sort of questions this Subcommittee 
     is designed to pursue. The latest report implicating DNI 
     passivity or complicity in embellishing the danger of the 
     Iranian nuclear program should be aggressively investigated 
     by our Subcommittee immediately. We cannot and must not 
     permit this Administration to build a case for war against 
     Iran on falsehoods and pretext. We have seen similar patterns 
     with the twisting of intelligence to create a war against 
     Iraq and we must not let this happen again. I ask that the 
     Subcommittee invite the DNI to appear immediately before the 
     Committee. It is imperative that our questions be answered in 
     an expeditious manner.
           Sincerely,
                                               Dennis J. Kucinich,
     Ranking Minority Member.

                          ____________________