Mayday Alert - Terror Drills Could Go Live!

Frank,

It's not clear that Iran would be an aggressive threat. Although proliferation is bad, if Iran is actually seeking nuclear weapons, it's most likely for defensive purposes a la MAD, with a threat to nuke Israel if attacked by the US or Israel. Of course, actual use of a nuclear bomb would be disastrous for Iran under any circumstances, even without the total annihilation threatened by Hillary Clinton.

I agree that deploying from Iraq is the thing to do. That and getting back to the agenda of nonproliferation and nuclear weapons reduction and elimination. That means dealing with the problem of Israel's nukes as well as starting to eliminate our own.

On the other hand, although we both want the hardliners out of power in Iran, I think that's not something the USA can do directly or should attempt to do. Practical "applied Christianity" should lead us to support a different kind of policy. Direct aggressive or subversive interference is fundamentally illegal and immoral, as well as generally counterproductive. We shouldn't support strategies and tactics that we would ferociously reject if they were tried on us. Trying "to get the hardliners out of power" is a great way to keep building Iranian-nationalist support for the hardliners.

Sanctions and containment are just a continuation of the Bill Clinton "dual containment" policy directed against Iraq and Iran. Clinton rejected Iranian attempts to build a relationship with the US and didn't follow up on Bush 1's promise to build "good will" as a reward for Iran's intervention on behalf of US hostages in Lebanon.

There'll be fewer hardliners when we do all we can to change the international policies which tend to produce and maintain hardliners. Iran was cooperative with the US in Afghanistan, as it fit with their agenda. Iran supports the same government in Iraq that the USA does. Iran has a natural leading role to play in its region. The USA needs to come to terms with that.

Bill

That's right, 'ops', not 'oops'. "Oops" is for later, after the formal collapse of what's laughingly called 'our democracy' and we are fully revealed as Fubar Nation, thus ending the post-World-War-2 oscillation between Snafu Nation and Tarfu Nation.

Stories about Bush authorizing covert ops in Iran were circulating in 2005 and last year. It appears that the pace is picking up, so here we go again:

Democrats Okay Funds for Covert Ops / Secret Bush "Finding" Widens War on Iran
By ANDREW COCKBURN
May 2, 2008

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

for the rest of the story: http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html

...you and I seem to be reading from the same play book again. I, too, am deeply suspicious of the administration's intentions concerning Iran, the possibility of martial law, and the possible suspension of elections if an attack on Iran doesn't sufficiently raise McCain's poll numbers via a burst of reflexive patriotic aggressiveness. And I'm not temperamentally inclined to paranoia. I'm just in the Rev. Wright's camp of thinking that there's nothing our government isn't capable of doing even in the best of times -- and this administration beats all previous ones.

What makes it especially worrisome to me is that our government knows full well that, as you pointed out, Iran is also close to the official Iraqi Shiite leadership. Ahmedinejad met with Maliki openly in a rather relaxed security environment while Bush had to sneak around when he met with Maliki in Baghdad.

So the line that Iran is messing around with insurgent Shiite groups or 'special groups' intentionally overlooks the fact that Iran is involved with as many Iraqi Shiite groups as possible, so as to hedge their bets. At this point, Iran seems to be on the side of tamping down internal conflicts in Iraq. Different analysts come to different conclusions about whether Iran was being more responsive to Sadr's or Maliki's needs when they brokered the recent failed ceasefire. It's likely that their perception of their own needs for relative stability in Iraq was the major consideration. One interesting line of thought is based on unofficial reports that when Ahmadinejad was in Baghdad, he met secretly with US officials. The story is that he offered to help the US stabilize Iraq in exchange for US guarantees of Iran's security.

The fact that the Maliki government, with US help, then renewed the attack on Sadr's forces might indicate that our government has rejected Iran's possible cooperativeness. The constant propaganda about Iran being a prime source of aggression against US troops seems to support our fears that Bush/Cheney et al have made up what's left of their minds and are dead set on attacking Iran soon.

The alarms have been raised before, especially last spring by the Russians, by Scott Ritter, and by some Israelis. There isn't much time left for Bush, so this time we'll find out pretty soon, one way or the other.

Bill