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Will President Bush bomb Iran?
Tim Shipman
London
Telegraph
Monday Sept 3, 2007
In a nondescript room, two blocks from the American Capitol
building, a group of Bush administration staffers is gathered
to consider the gravest threat their government has faced this
century: the testing of a nuclear weapon by Iran.
The United States, no longer prepared to tolerate the risk that
Iranian nuclear weapons will be used against Israel, or passed to
terrorists, has already launched a bombing campaign to destroy known
Iranian nuclear sites, air bases and air defence sites. Iran has
retaliated by cutting off oil to America and its allies, blockading
the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf bottleneck, and sanctioned
an uprising by Shia militias in southern Iraq that has shut down
60 per cent of Iraq's oil exports.
The job of the officials from the Pentagon, the State Department,
and the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, who have
gathered in an office just off Massachusetts Avenue, behind the
rail terminus, Union Station, is to prevent a spike in oil prices
that will pitch the world's economy into a catastrophic spin.
(Article continues below)
The good news is that this was a war game; for those who fear
war with Iran, the less happy news is that the officials were
real. The simulation, which took four months, was run by the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative think tank with close links to the
White House. Its conclusions, drawn up last month and seen by
The Sunday Telegraph, have been passed on to military and civilian
planners charged with drawing up plans for confronting Iran.
News that elements of the American government are working in
earnest on how to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come
at a tense moment.
On Tuesday, President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of
words with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the
US government accuses of overseeing a covert programme to develop
nuclear weapons. In a speech to war veterans, Mr Bush said: "Iran's
active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons
threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence
under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."
He went on to condemn Iranian meddling in Iraq, where America
increasingly blames the deaths of its soldiers on Iranian bombs
and missiles. Mr Bush made clear that he had authorised military
commanders to confront "Iran's murderous activities".
This was widely taken to mean that he is set on a confrontation
with Iran that will culminate in a bombing campaign to destroy
Iranian nuclear facilities, just as Israel bombed Saddam Hussein's
Osirak reactor in 1981.
The president's intervention came just weeks after leaks from
a White House meeting suggested that Vice-President Dick Cheney,
who is understood to favour the use of force, has regained the
upper hand over the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence
Secretary Robert Gates, who both advocate diplomacy and sanctions
to isolate Iran. Mr Cheney reacted with fury when the State Department
suggested that negotiations might continue past January 2009,
when Mr Bush leaves the White House.
So the question is: did Mr Bush last week set America inexorably
on a path to the next war?
Washington officials, with close links to the Pentagon, the State
Department and the National Security Council, say that the speech
was designed as a threat not just to Iran, but to America's Western
allies, along with Russia and China, who have been slow to support
- or who have opposed - UN sanctions against Iran. James Phillips,
a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation, who helped devise
the war-game scenario, said: "It is simultaneously a shot
across Iran's bows and an appeal for the international community
to do more to stop or slow Iran's nuclear programme."
A former White House aide added: "If this creates in the
Iranians' mind a state of fear such that they back off, that helps
your diplomacy. Bush is a political poker player. To play poker,
you have to know when to bluff."
Mr Bush had another reason for speaking out, too. With General
David Petraeus due before Congress on September 11 to report on
progress on his "surge" in Iraq, Mr Bush wanted to make
the case that a withdrawal from Iraq would boost Iranian influence
there - in the hope that this would increase domestic support
for his policies.
In Teheran, Mr Ahmadinejad was also quick to make the Iraq connection,
but as an impediment, not impetus, to American adventurism. "We
have an expression in Farsi which says, 'Bring up the one that
you have given birth to first, then go for another one',"
he said. "Let them do what they started in Afghanistan and
Iraq then think of other countries." He dismissed threats
of military action as "more of a propaganda measure than
factual".
Read the full article here.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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