[Peace-discuss] Cheney leaks war plan

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From the right-wing magazine Der Spiegel, Europe's largest newsweekly. 
--CGE]

	White House Leak: Cheney's Plan for Iran Attack
	Starts With Israeli Missile Strike 	
	Published on Saturday, October 27, 2007.

US Vice President Dick Cheney -- the power behind the throne, the 
eminence grise, the man with the (very) occasional grandfatherly smile 
-- is notorious for his propensity for secretiveness and 
behind-the-scenes manipulation. He's capable of anything, say friends as 
well as enemies. Given this reputation, it's no big surprise that Cheney 
has already asked for a backroom analysis of how a war with Iran might 
begin.

In the scenario concocted by Cheney's strategists, Washington's first 
step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran's uranium 
enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, 
providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear 
facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. 
Cheney himself hasn't denied engaging in such war games. For years, in 
fact, he's been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member 
of US President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil," is inevitable.

Given these not-too-secret designs, Democrats and Republicans alike have 
wondered what to make of the still mysterious Israeli bombing run in 
Syria on Sept. 6. Was it part of an existing war plan? A test run, 
perhaps? For days after the attack, one question dominated conversation 
at Washington receptions: How great is the risk of war, really?

Grandiose Plans, East and West

In the September strike, Israeli bombers were likely targeting a nuclear 
reactor under construction, parts of which are alleged to have come from 
North Korea. It is possible that key secretaries in the Bush cabinet 
even tried to stop Israel. To this day, the administration has neither 
confirmed nor commented on the attack.

Nevertheless, in Washington, Israel's strike against Syria has revived 
the specter of war with Iran. For the neoconservatives it could 
represent a glimmer of hope that the grandiose dream of a democratic 
Middle East has not yet been buried in the ashes of Iraq. But for 
realists in the corridors of the State Department and the Pentagon, 
military action against Iran is a nightmare they have sought to avert by 
asking a simple question: "What then?"

The Israeli strike, or something like it, could easily mark the 
beginning of the "World War III," which President Bush warned against 
last week. With his usual apocalyptic rhetoric, he said Iranian 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lead the region to a new world war 
if his nation builds a nuclear bomb.

Conditions do look ripe for disaster. Iran continues to acquire and 
develop the fundamental prerequisites for a nuclear weapon. The mullah 
regime receives support -- at least moral support, if not technology -- 
from a newly strengthened Russia, which these days reaches for every 
chance to provoke the United States. President Vladimir Putin's own 
(self-described) "grandiose plan" to restore Russia's armed forces 
includes a nuclear buildup. The war in Iraq continues to drag on without 
an end in sight or even an opportunity for US troops to withdraw in a 
way that doesn't smack of retreat. In Afghanistan, NATO troops are 
struggling to prevent a return of the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists. 
The Palestinian conflict could still reignite on any front.

In Washington, Bush has 15 months left in office. He may have few 
successes to show for himself, but he's already thinking of his legacy. 
Bush says he wants diplomacy to settle the nuclear dispute with Tehran, 
and hopes international pressure will finally convince Ahmadinejad to 
come to his senses. Nevertheless, the way pressure has been building in 
Washington, preparations for war could be underway.

In late September, the US Senate voted to declare the 125,000-man 
Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. High-ranking US 
generals have accused Iran of waging a "proxy war" against the United 
States through its support of Shiite militias in Iraq. And strategists 
at the Pentagon, apparently at Cheney's request, have developed detailed 
plans for an attack against Tehran.

Instead of the previous scenario of a large-scale bombardment of the 
country's many nuclear facilities, the current emphasis is, once again, 
on so-called surgical strikes, primarily against the quarters of the 
Revolutionary Guards. This sort of attack would be less massive than a 
major strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Conservative think tanks and pundits who sense this could be their last 
chance to implement their agenda in the Middle East have supported and 
disseminated such plans in the press. Despite America's many failures in 
Iraq, these hawks have urged the weakened president to act now, accusing 
him of having lost sight of his principal agenda and no longer daring to 
apply his own doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.

Sheer Lunacy?

The notion of war with Iran has spilled over into other circles, too. 
Last Monday Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the US House of 
Representatives, made it clear that the president would first need 
Congressional approval to launch an attack. Meanwhile, Republican 
candidates for the White House have debated whether they would even 
allow such details to get in their way. Former Massachusetts Governor 
Mitt Romney said he would consult his attorneys to determine whether the 
US Constitution does, in fact, require a president to ask for 
Congressional approval before going to war. Vietnam veteran John McCain 
said war with Iran was "maybe closer to reality than we are discussing 
tonight."

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has also adopted a hawkish 
stance, voting in favor of the Senate measure to classify the 
Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Her rivals criticized 
Clinton for giving the administration a blank check to go to war.

The US military is building a base in Iraq less than 10 kilometers 
(about six miles) from Iran's border. The facility, known as Combat 
Outpost Shocker, is meant for American soldiers preventing Iranian 
weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. But it's also rumored that Bush 
authorized US intelligence agencies in April to run sabotage missions 
against the mullah regime on Iranian soil.

Gary Sick is an expert on Iran who served as a military adviser under 
three presidents. He believes that such preparations mark a significant 
shift in the government's strategy. "Since August," says Sick, "the 
emphasis is no longer on the Iranian nuclear threat," but on Iran's 
support for terrorism in Iraq. "This is a complete change and is 
potentially dangerous."

It would be relatively easy for Bush to prove that Tehran, by supporting 
insurgents in Iraq, is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. 
It might be harder to prove that Iran's nuclear plans pose an immediate 
threat to the world. Besides, the nuclear argument is reminiscent of an 
embarrassing precedent, when the Bush administration used the claim that 
Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- which he didn't 
-- as a reason to invade Iraq. Even if the evidence against Tehran 
proves to be more damning, the American public will find it difficult to 
swallow this argument again.

The forces urging a diplomatic resolution also look stronger than they 
were before Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants the next 
step to be a third round of even tighter sanctions against Iran in the 
UN Security Council. Rice has powerful allies at the Pentagon: Defense 
Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral William Fallon, head of US Central 
Command, which is responsible for American forces throughout the region.

Rice and her cohorts all favor diplomacy, partly because they know the 
military is under strain. After four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 
US lacks manpower for another major war, especially one against a 
relatively well-prepared adversary. "For many senior people at the 
Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department, a war would be sheer 
lunacy," says security expert Sick.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and now a Middle East expert at the 
Brookings Institution, agrees. A war against Tehran would be "a disaster 
for the entire world," says Riedel, who worries about a "battlefield 
extending from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent." 
Nevertheless, he believes there is a "realistic risk of a military 
conflict," because both sides look willing to carry things to the brink.

On the one hand, says Riedel, Iran is playing with fire, challenging the 
West by sending weapons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq. On the other hand, 
hotheads in Washington are by no means powerless. Although many 
neoconservative hawks have left the Bush administration, Cheney remains 
their reliable partner. "The vice president is the closest adviser to 
the president, and a dominant figure," says Riedel. "One shouldn't 
underestimate how much power he still wields."

'Is it 1938 Again?'

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last week also played 
into the hands of hardliners in Washington, who read it as proof that 
Putin isn't serious about joining the West's effort to convince Tehran 
to abandon its drive for a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the countries 
bordering the Caspian Sea, including Central Asian nations Washington 
has courted energetically in recent years, have said they would not 
allow a war against Tehran to be launched from their territory.

Cheney derives much of his support from hawks outside the administration 
who fear their days are as numbered as the President's. "The neocons see 
Iran as their last chance to prove something," says analyst Riedel. This 
aim is reflected in their tone. Conservative columnist Norman Podhoretz, 
for example -- a father figure to all neocons -- wrote in the Wall 
Street Journal that he "hopes and prays" that Bush will finally bomb 
Iran. Podhoretz sees the United States engaged in a global war against 
"Islamofascism," a conflict he defines as World War IV, and he likens 
Iran to Nazi Germany. "Is it 1938 again?" he asks in a speech he repeats 
regularly at conferences.

Podhoretz is by no means an eccentric outsider. He now serves as a 
senior foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate 
Rudolph Giuliani. President Bush has also met with Podhoretz at the 
White House to hear his opinions.

Nevertheless, most experts in Washington warn against attacking Tehran. 
They assume the Iranians would retaliate. "It would be foolish to 
believe surgical strikes will be enough," says Riedel, who believes that 
precision attacks would quickly escalate to war.

Former presidential adviser Sick thinks Iran would strike back with 
terrorist attacks. "The generals of the Revolutionary Guard have had 
several years to think about asymmetrical warfare," says Sick. "They 
probably have a few rather interesting ideas."

According to Sick, detonating well-placed bombs at oil terminals in the 
Persian Gulf would be enough to wreak havoc. "Insurance costs would 
skyrocket, causing oil prices to triple and triggering a global 
recession," Sick warns. "The economic consequences would be enormous, 
far greater than anything we have experienced with Iraq so far."

Because the catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran are obvious, 
many in Washington have a fairly benign take on the current round of 
saber rattling. They believe the sheer dread of war is being used to 
bolster diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis and encourage hesitant 
members of the United Nations Security Council to take more decisive 
action. The Security Council, this argument goes, will be more likely to 
approve tighter sanctions if it believes that war is the only alternative.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan