[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.
____________________