[NYTr] So will Bush nuke Iran?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dave Muller - southnews

Daily Mail (UK) - Nov 17, 2007


So will Bush nuke Iran?

By MICHAEL BURLEIGH

Increasingly powerful voices in the U.S. are urging war against Iran to 
stop the country acquiring nuclear weapons. This week, in his Mansion 
House foreign policy speech, Gordon Brown declared the U.S. to be 
Britain's greatest ally and stressed that Iran's nuclear programme was
a matter of concern. But how could the West actually destroy Iran's 
nuclear capability? Here, one of our leading academics on war and 
terrorism warns that some in the Bush camp are considering a very 
dangerous option...

To see how an attack on Iran might begin and then play out is not
difficult.

Sceptical public opinion in the West simply won't buy any 
intelligencebased claims of an imminent Iranian nuclear threat after
the lies that were presented at the UN to justify the 2003 invasion of
Iraq.

And since 2004, the CIA has virtually no agents operating in Iran 
anyway, certainly-none able to substantiate intelligence derived from 
electronic surveillance and satellites.

Any attack is therefore likely to be justified by an IED (Improvised 
Explosive Device) going off somewhere in Iraq, which kills a
significant number of U.S. servicemen, and has the hallmark of Iranian
involvement all over it.

A parallel might be the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia
which killed 19 U.S. soldiers and was shown to be backed by Iran.

Strenuous efforts will be made to link any such bomb to the Iranian 
Revolutionary Guard - the elite force of Iranian President Ahmadinejad
- in order to justify air strikes to suppress Iran's Russian-made air 
defence systems.

These consist of about 14 airbases, and the missiles Iran has stationed 
to command the Straits of Hormuz, the waterway south of Iran through 
which some 20 per cent of the world's oil supply passes.

These attacks would be the prelude to raids on the Revolutionary Guard 
bases and installations, which, after the Iranians respond, will 
escalate into a sustained air assault on Iran's many nuclear facilities.

This is where things will get very dangerous. The main target at
Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, consists of chambers 75ft below
ground in which centrifuges are being produced to make the nuclear
cascade which is essential for bomb-making.

One American option is to drop Big Blu, a 30,000lb penetration bomb 
whose shock waves would destroy everything inside. Another is the 
B-61-11 bunker-busting nuclear bomb.

Anyone who imagines something akin to the "boomf" of an underground 
nuclear test with no apparent effect on the surface above the test site 
would be wrong.

There will be mushroom clouds and huge numbers of radiation victims,
far exceeding the 20,000 civilian casualties experts have calculated
would ensue from conventional bombing of Iran.

Meanwhile, Special Forces troops would be trying to stoke up tribal and 
regional uprisings.

Some are already in Iran distributing what is called "walk around"
money to the people who might help stimulate rebellion, whether the
cash is used to recruit tribal chiefs, scouts or even shepherds.

But Iran will not sit idly by as all this goes on. Since the 1979 
Islamic revolution, Iran has been a major state sponsor of terrorism, 
reaching out through surrogates as far away as Argentina where Jewish 
and Israeli targets have been attacked.

In response to the attacks, Iran will step up its support for Shiite 
insurgents in Iraq, perhaps contributing manpower as well as the 
sophisticated weaponry already supplied.

One U.S. officer said: "If we go [to war against Iran], the southern 
half of Iraq will light up like a candle."

He added that ten Mullahs simply armed with a loudspeaker truck to call 
locals to action could take Basra from the tiny force left there by the 
British. The Iranians could also stoke up their fellow Shias in Saudi 
Arabia and Afghanistan.

They will also play the Hezbollah card, activating one of the most 
deadly terrorist organisations in the world. This would result in 
Hezbollah attacking targets in the West which its operatives are
already known to have "pinged" - that is, targets they have already
recced and checked for vulnerability.

Iran will encourage the Palestinian Hamas to strike at Israel from
Gaza. And while the U.S. will insist Israel does not respond - just as
in the first Gulf War when Saddam's rockets fell on Israeli cities -
this time they might easily react to such provocation.

Scroll down for more... {R}

In the meantime, the U.S. might attack Syria, too, in a 
two-for-the-price-of-one deal - for like Iran, Syria is an egregious 
state-sponsor of terrorism.

The risk of terrorism everywhere would increase. Western intelligence 
has no idea whether Iranian spies have established covert "black 
stations" to carry out terrorist atrocities in our cities, but such 
attacks are all too likely.

They do not know either what the Iranians might do with hundreds of al 
Qaeda operatives, including two sons of Osama Bin Laden, whom they
claim to have under housearrest in Tehran.

What if Iran threw its weight behind al Qaeda?

An al Qaeda assisted with the resources of a major state is a more 
terrifying prospect than an al Qaeda financed as it is by millionaire 
Gulf Arabs or the chickenfeed it rakes in peddling jihadist videos 
outside Pakistani mosques and madrassas.

War against Iran would be disastrous and long-lasting. So we should be 
encouraged by the fact that, instead of going down this route to an 
unknown destination, Gordon Brown has called for enhanced sanctions, a 
step the Tories have been advocating for some time.

The international community has already imposed sanctions on
individuals and organisations - notably the Revolutionary Guard, which
was branded a terrorist organisation by the U.S.

But these can be bolstered by restrictions on Iran's access to 
international capital markets and to the refined petroleum which, 
paradoxically, it requires despite being one of the world's major 
oil-rich nations.

Existing sanctions have so downgraded Iran's refineries that it has to 
import 40 per cent of its petrol.

Harsh secondary sanctions could be introduced against Western firms 
which continue to trade with Iran - their greed is effectively helping 
to ratchet up the possibility of war.

Sanctions are not something the Iranians will take lying down either, 
although blocked bank accounts will elicit a different response from
the Iranians than Western bombing raids. At a time when oil prices are 
nudging $100 a barrel, the Iranians may curb oil exports, or at least 
redirect them away from the West.

While Britain, France and Germany import little Iranian oil, we would, 
nevertheless, be affected by higher global oil prices. Other countries 
such as Japan and Italy - which respectively import 12 and nine per
cent of their oil from Iran - and would be even harder hit.

Moreover, these enhanced sanctions depend on the Chinese and Russians 
playing ball at the UN Security Council. Both countries will, of
course, want to cause the over-mighty Americans maximum embarrassment.
The hope is that Putin's own concerns about Iran's capacity to cause
mischief among the Muslim populations of southern Russia and its
neighbouring countries might encourage him to put political power-play
aside for the sake of global stability.

Sanctions may be slow and imperfect, but the existing ones against Iran 
are already having a political effect.

Opposition to Iran's President Ahmadinejad has spread beyond the 
students in Iran to conservative "traitors" who feel he is taking their 
country over a precipice, or are embarrassed by his pronouncements
about wiping out Israel.

Such "traitors" are influential individuals and include two former 
presidents as well as the country's top nuclear negotiator, who this 
week resigned abruptly over policy differences with the President.

If these rifts are the result of the pressure the West has peacefully 
applied, then it seems insane to further inflame Iranian - and Syrian - 
hackles through a war that will be launched because of suspicions about 
Iran's nuclear intentions rather than certainties, and which will hence 
be illegal in the eyes of the UN.

Besides, yesterday's International Atomic Energy Agency report
indicates that Iran has begun to play ball with the inspectors.

Unpopular as it might sound, it is very difficult to argue that Iran 
should be denied nuclear power for use in a civic capacity. They want
it to underline Persian cultural superiority over the neighbouring
Arabs and to sell more of their lucrative oil by generating electricity
from atomic power.

Both Russia, and now the Gulf states, have already offered to supply 
Iran with enriched uranium, from plants based in either Russia or 
Switzerland.

Of course, I acknowledge that some elements of Iran's current regime 
undoubtedly also want a bomb, although they would need 200 of them to 
match Israel's nuclear capacity.

But, if it was possible to hammer out a deal with North Korea's Kim 
Jong-Il to abandon his quest for a bomb, it must be possible to find a 
diplomatic solution that enables Iran to generate electricity from 
nuclear power while abandoning a project that will immediately trigger 
an Arab nuclear arms race from Cairo to Riyadh.

For other countries in the Middle East are not going to tolerate much 
longer the major unintended result of the Iraq war, namely Iran's 
emergence as the regional big power.

The possibility that Iran might be reintegrated into the international 
community in return for abandoning its suicidal quest for nuclear 
weapons is exactly the strategy Gordon Brown should explore before the 
West ends up plunging yet another part of the Muslim world into the 
chaos from which terrorism flows.

Every option needs to be exhausted before anyone contemplates a war 
whose effects will make the aftermath of the Iraq war look like a walk 
in the park.

* Michael Burleigh's Blood And Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism 
will be published in February.

Find this story at 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=494612&in_page_id=1811

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opinion

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/339833_iranwaronline18.html

Last updated November 16, 2007 5:32 p.m. PT
Chances of attacking Iran between slim and none

ALBERT R. HUNT
GUEST COLUMNIST

President Bush raises the specter of World War III if Iran goes
nuclear. Vice President Dick Cheney threatens military action.
Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz urges the U.S. to bomb the country.
And the Senate passes a resolution that critics say is a blank check
for war.

This is, in the phrase of the malaprop-prone former American baseball 
great Yogi Berra, "deja vu all over again."

Except it isn't. The military, economic and political climate for
action against Iran is infinitely less hospitable than five years ago,
when the U.S. was preparing for war with Iraq. The prospects for an
attack on Iran in the final 14 months of the Bush administration are
somewhere between slim and none.

"No one seriously argues that Iran will be capable of deploying a 
nuclear force within the next few years," says American defense scholar 
Anthony Cordesman. "Without that, there simply is not a case for going 
to war."

Yet the Senate approved a silly, politically inspired measure declaring 
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group. It was 
supported by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Her Democratic presidential 
opponents, acting equally silly, say she provided Bush with a 
justification for an attack.

If the U.S. should have deployed twice the roughly 150,000 troops it
has sent to Iraq to fight that war, just think what it would take for a
more powerful country with almost three times the population. The
American military is overstretched.

Thus, the most serious alternative discussed is a massive air strike by 
U.S. cruise missiles and jet fighters loaded with "smart weapons." They 
would destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, disrupt the country and 
perhaps, according to the most optimistic neoconservatives, spark a 
revolution.

If, as some suggest, this is the view of the Cheney camp, here's an 
inconvenient reminder: It was the vice president who assured Americans, 
unequivocally and repeatedly, that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction, and was on the verge of having a nuclear weapon, in 2002.

Cheney also was the hardheaded geopolitical realist who, according to 
Robert Draper's semi-authorized book on Bush, assured then-House 
Republican leader Dick Armey that the Iraqis are "going to welcome us. 
It'll be like the American army going through the streets of Paris. 
They're sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will
be so happy with their freedoms that we'll probably back ourselves out
of there within a month or two."

That may have been one of the most flawed assessments in modern
American history.

Most Iranian experts doubt any surgical strike would be effective 
against whatever the Iranians possess -- and there's little reason to 
think American intelligence is any better today than five years ago.
The attacks would have to be persistent and repeated; countless
civilians would be killed.

This would produce retaliation from Iran and its Hezbollah terrorists,
a more lethal and pervasive threat than al-Qaida; it would escalate 
anti-American tensions in the region and possibly destabilize several 
regimes.

Last month, the London-based Oxford Research Group issued a report on 
the problems facing the U.S. in Iraq and in the war on terrorists. 
"Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly 
into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence 
across the region," warned the author, Paul Rogers, a professor at the 
University of Bradford.

This analysis is shared by many leading American military, diplomatic 
and intelligence experts.

Among the retaliatory capabilities of the Iranians, American 
intelligence officials fear, would be the use of the 2,000 mines they 
are believed to possess, to cripple shipping through the Strait of 
Hormuz, where more than one-fifth of the world's oil shipments flow. If 
you think $100-a-barrel oil threatens the global economy, imagine what 
$200 might do. International financial guru Nouriel Roubini says that's 
precisely what would happen.

Conversations with several Republican members of Congress, a couple of 
current administration officials and former top national security 
advisers yield the same view. Indeed, it's not even clear the vice 
president is an advocate of action, as opposed to tough talk, on Iran.

Moreover, unlike 2002 when the neoconservative war hawks, led by the 
Pentagon and the vice president's office, were dominant, other leading 
figures in the administration -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates,
Admiral William Fallon, the head of Central Command for the Middle
East, and probably Condoleezza Rice all think military engagement with
Iran is a recipe for disaster.

Like all presidents in the homestretch, Bush thinks about his legacy
and would like to add some finishing touches; he has almost no domestic 
options, so foreign policy is the focus. Perhaps a deal with North 
Korea, maybe some progress in the Middle East and a few trade deals.

In our system, a major military action of choice isn't done without a 
consensus, and certainly not in the final months of a presidency. That 
reality is being ignored by even otherwise- smart analysts, such as 
Chicago economist David Hale, who last week suggested that if the 
Democrats win the election next November, the president will strike
Iran before he leaves office.

Instead, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, in a critical speech 
on the administration's Iranian policy, said: "One of the most 
significant and potentially lasting contributions that this president 
could leave the United States and the world would be to begin to
reverse the dangerous slide of America's global standing and influence."

That wouldn't be easy. Last year William F. Buckley Jr., the most 
influential American conservative during the past half- century, was 
asked about the Bush legacy: "Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune
that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq," he said. "If he'd
invented the Bill of Rights, it wouldn't get him out of his jam."

Neither would an ill-advised attack on Iran.