DECLARATION OF WAR UNLIKELY

 

 

U.S. planning
massive attack on Iran

 

Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran
The Sunday Times, London Sunday, 2 September 2007

By SARAH BAXTER

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive
airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate
the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a
national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the
Nixon Center, said last week that U.S. military planners were not
preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organized by The National
Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday
Times that the U.S. military had concluded: “Whether you go for
pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the
Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate
strategic calculus.”

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last
week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the
shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” He warned that the US and its
allies would confront Iran “before it is too late.”

Atomic energy agency reports Iranian cooperation

One Washington source said the “temperature was rising” inside
the administration. Bush was “sending a message to a number
of audiences”, he said — to the Iranians and to members of the
United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough
third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban
on uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported
“significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear program and
said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised
to answer most questions from the agency by November, but
Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran
continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran
is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one
well-placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use
rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said
to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

Neo-conservative institute manufacturing pretext

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush
administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq.
But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with
the Americans in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by
Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term “proxy war” and claims
that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly
under control.” Iranian intervention is the “next major problem the
coalition must tackle.”

Bush noted that the number of attacks on U.S. bases and troops by
Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months — “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq.”

It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians.
But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would
seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.