Bush and Ahmadinejad: Will they or Won't They?
More from Barnett Rubin on signs of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran at the Global Affairs blog.
He quotes Alex Debat from the Times of London: "the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days."
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/02/2007 02:20:00 PM
13 Comments:
They wont! The USA would lose the Gulf and its oil. Also, although a large scale attack would make half-men like Cheney feel good, it serves no useful purpose. It will make Iran yet another unstable country in the world' energy heartland, and you can kiss goodbye to its 4m+ barrels a day simply because Iran will not be secure enough to maintain production. The US Army and Marines can't "help" here because they are stuck in Iraq.
The sabre rattling has a practical purpose: a better deal for the USA at the running negotiaing table with Iran which is asking for the moon and then some.
In his earlier posting, Rubin said:
“I am putting [these reports] into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed.”
Well, lots of luck.
The only chance the sane people of the world have to stave off this impending catastrophe is to drive poll numbers below even the 35-40 percent approval rating the War Party is said to feel it needs to pull off a war against Iran.
If one thinks about the 35-40 percent of the population that is in question here, it is clear this won’t be easy to do, since it will be the same 35-40 percent who still think that Bush and Cheney are doing a "good job." This means that we are dealing here with a segment of the population (comprised mostly of die hard right wing neocon Republicans) that is apparently impervious to all logic and evidence.
However, as stupid and uninformed as they mostly are, there is one--and no doubt only one--argument that might impress them: that a military misadventure like the one that is in the making would pose an immediate, mortal danger to our troops in the field in Iraq. Of course, analysts understand that a military confrontation with Iran would do just that, but like everything about the Middle East, this simple fact does not seem to have gotten through to the public.
I do not see how this juggernaut can be stopped unless there is a clear message to the American people from the region of what the consequences would be if the War Party is able to follow through with its plans.
Perhaps a fatwa or threatened fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would make the American public wake up and come to its senses before it is too late. (It is of course too much to hope that anything in heaven and earth could make that happen to the neocons who have commandeered our ship of state.)
If somebody doesn't tell al-Sistani that, God help us, because I do not think anything short of that would work.
As Pat Buchanan--who, unlike most conservatives, has been neither stupid nor uninformed about our post-9/11 world--said recently, "This escalator is going up."
Shock and Awe?
DOD has war plans for many potential enemies. We have likely had and have been updating plans for an Iran attack since the Carter years. that does not make attack imminent. i doubt that the bushies will get another hall pass to go to war. their record and all.......
Further to Robert Fisk's reported observation of increased warplane activity in North Carolina, a caller to Air America Radio reports (via a commenter on my blog) a similar increase in air activity near Phoenix, Arizona.
Bush is supposed to be flying out to Sydney for APEC tomorrow, and even a political editor in the Murdoch press here has speculated that Bush will make a last-minute cancellation due to urgent problems needing his attention (ie a hit on Iran?).
Prime Minister al-Maliki clearly believes that he represents a sovereign government which undertakes it's own diplomacy. That was the point of his official visits to Iran and Syria. For example al-Maliki recently referred to a UN resolution that apparently expires sometime after the end of this year which governs US military power in Iraq.
The Prime Minister also offered a long-term security agreement to the US, dependent no doubt on the Bush administration ideologues acknowledging the governments of Iraq ability to handle it's own foreign affairs. However the Bush administration failed to acknowledge that proposal, because apparently they think they occupy Iraq and so can attack Iraq's neighbors as they see fit.
I'm not excusing Iran or Syria, because al-Maliki clearly said both countries materially interfere in Iraq's internal affairs. Congress must therefore reign in the belligerent Bush administration ideologues by passing a law or resolution that puts the Iraqi government firmly in charge of it's military, foreign relations and it's destiny.
Bush administration ideologues have no right to interfere in the legitimate foreign policy of the Iraqi government - NONE!
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-timeline.htm
Global Security Blog lists 3,000 centrifuges as a tripwire of sorts in its 'target iran countdown timeline':
"On 12 November 2006 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Iran intended to install 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges by March 2007. Hosseini said Iran was doing all the work to install the centrifuges under control of the UN nuclear watchdog, adding that two cascades of 164 centrifuges were already in operation in the country. The 3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges would give Iran the capability of producing enough Highly Enriched Uranium for about one atomic bomb annually.
Either one of these events might be regarded as a "Red Line" by either Israel and/or the United States. That both would take place nearly simultaneously would seem to significantly raise the probability of strkes against Iran's WMD facilities in this timeframe."
Iran has reached 3,ooo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090200415.html
Hopefully,
diplomacy will prevail.
There was a lot of warplane activity here in Jacksonville about 2 weeks ago but it has stopped. I have never seen/heard anything like it before.
Gee, and do only the US and Israel draw red lines? What about China, India and Russia?
The Pentagon has detailed plans for attacking Belgium, and updating attack plans on Iran would be part of its duties, if we are to take their dire warnings about the threat from Iran seriously.
Whether those attack plans will be implemented are another thing. We do not that Bush is an idiot and Cheney is a loon, which means we shouldn't be too certain they wouldn't push the button on this one, in a last minute, desperation hail-Mary pass.
However, let's just pretend that reason will prevail, and not go too far off the radar in our own speculations. If they do attack Iran, then we will all be learning how to till the soil and grow subsistence crops soon - i.e. those of us able to do that kind of work.
Well, Bush is now on the plane to Oz (via Baghdad) so maybe Cheney thinks he can handle the attack on Iran by hisself? Or has the Cheney camp been kept in check again? Or is it all just sabre-rattling?
When you cannot trust either your government or the media, whatcha gonna do??? Read Juan!
:-)
"Anonymous" said that Israel has a "Red Line" blah blah woof woof regarding the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to have before Israel/US launches a "morally justified" air strike with pinpoint accuracy which, regrettably, will have collateral damage, i.e. unnamed and uncounted civilian militants..
We have heard all this before. There is another "Red Line" and it goes like this: If the US and it's ally continue to wage war on other nations, the gas gauge will go to the red (empty) line and stay there until aforementioned bellicose states learn to stop drawing "red lines" in someone else's sand.
Uh James, go to the link. "red line" is a quote from an analysis of US and Israel sucurity policy in relation to Iran nuclear fuel development. It is not advocating nor is 'anonymous'.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-timeline.htm
Read the timeline and the other links at global security regarding this issue. They could be an idealogical shop but I've never seen them sabre rattle. They're analysts.
I don't understand the heading for this post. One inference may be that President Ahmadinejad is actively provoking war with the US, as if he has a choice.
If the "face of evil," richard bruce cheney, decides to attack Iran, then the US will. The Iranians and their president have no say in the matter.
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