[NYTr] Neocons seek to justify action against Teheran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Telegraph - Oct 1, 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=RBEWRFDBC3XHJQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/09/30/wiran230.xml

Neocons seek to justify action against Teheran

By Tim Shipman

American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing
Iran's violations of international law that some fear could be used to
justify military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear
programme. # US trains Gulf air forces for war with Iran

Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier
this month to begin "searching for things that Iran has done wrong",
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. advertisement

Some US diplomats believe the exercise — reminiscent of attempts by
vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald
Rumsfeld to build the case against Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war —
will boost calls for military action by neo-conservatives inside and
outside the administration.

One diplomat revealed the plans for an Iran dossier to Steven Clemons,
a fellow with the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, who
has previously revealed attempts by Mr Cheney's allies to pressurise
President George W Bush into war.

He said: "There are people more beholden to the Cheney side who have
people searching for things that Iran has done wrong — making the case.
They've been given instructions to build a dossier. They've been
scouring around for stuff over the last couple of weeks." He recently
exposed how a member of Mr Cheney's office used private meetings with
neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise think- tank to reveal the
vice-president's frustration that Mr Bush had authorised a diplomatic
strategy against Iran by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Last week, Newsweek magazine went further, claiming that David Wurmser,
until last month Mr Cheney's Middle East adviser, had told fellow
neo-conservatives that Mr Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch
limited missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. The
intention, it was said, would be to provoke a reaction from Teheran
that would help justify wider US air strikes.

Mr Wurmser, an analyst in the Pentagon unit that tried to link Saddam
Hussein to the September 11 attacks, denied the claims, saying, "That
conspiracy is unrecognisable to anything I have ever seen or heard or
done." But he refused to discuss Mr Cheney's views.

Opponents of military action were further alarmed last week when it
emerged that Norman Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of
neo-conservatism, used a 45-minute meeting with Mr Bush at the White
House to lobby for the bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.

Mr Podhoretz disclosed that, when he said Mr Bush was just "giving
futility its chance" by pursuing diplomacy, the president and his
former aide Karl Rove had burst out laughing. "It struck me," Mr
Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance
for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have
laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, 'No, no, it's not
futile, there's a very good chance'." He said he believed "Bush is
going to hit" Iran before his presidency ends.

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams,
Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US
officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of
withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the
1980s.

Concern is also growing in the CIA and the Pentagon that the White
House exaggerated intelligence used to justify an Israeli air raid on a
suspected nuclear facility in Syria earlier this month, which some
neo-conservatives hope is a precursor to war with Iran.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Middle East desk officer, said the
neo-conservatives realised their influence would wane rapidly when Mr
Bush left office in just over 15 months. "Whatever crazy idea they have
to try to transform the Middle East, they have to push now. The real
hardline neo-conservatives are getting desperate that the door of
history is about to close on them with an epitaph of total failure."