[Peace-discuss] The situation in Iran

[C. G. Estabrook]

I have in mind less the internal political situation in Iran -- complex enough, 
e.g. a political rival to President Ahmadinejad, the well-spoken Ali Larijani,
was just elected speaker of Iran's Parliament by an overwhelming majority, which 
implies the backing of Supreme Leader Khamenei -- than the even more complex 
machinations amongst the invaders, under the palsied hand of the Bush 
administration.

Below, Rumsfeld's biographer assesses the position of the new head of CENTCOM.

But now the commander of the US Fifth Fleet has stepped forward to counter the 
apparent views of his boss, the CENTCOM commander, and echo the views of the 
former CENTCOM commander, Adm. Fallon (and it's important that they're both navy 
-- any serious attack on Iran would involve the navy).

Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff commands the US Fifth Fleet, responsible for naval 
forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea and coast off East Africa as 
far south as Kenya -- a component command of, and reporting to, CENTCOM.  He 
chooses now to tell ABC News that war with Iran would be "pretty disastrous," 
with "echoes and aftershocks" reverberating throughout the region, and that "we 
have years" to deal with Iran's nuclear program because "It's going to take them 
a while to do all it will take to finish all the work that needs to go into 
developing a weapon" -- but he fears that a miscalculation or misunderstanding 
could lead to military conflict. (Is he cautioning his boss?)

He also says Iran's build-up of its naval forces in the Persian Gulf remains 
consistent and doesn't suggest any short-term intent to confront the US Navy or 
disrupt oil traffic. Cosgriff urges the public, including oil-industry analysts, 
not to "hyperventilate" over naval encounters with Iran.

It looks to me as though the vicious fight within the USG between the Neocon/War 
Party and the Foreign Policy Establishment/Permanent Government is paralleled by 
a fight among senior military officers -- with Petraeus' "military philosophers" 
opposing a less belligerent cadre establishment, including much of the JCS and 
the Navy brass.

Meanwhile former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Gen. William 
Odom write in the Washington Post that current US policy toward Iran will almost 
certainly result in an Iran with nuclear weapons -- that the US would do better 
to abandon its threats of military action and its calls for regime change.

One of Israel’s leading historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote in the 
International Herald Tribune that if Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons, 
they’re crazy: he wrote that the US invasion of Iraq meant that the US was 
telling the world that it would attack anybody who was defenseless. Iran is now 
surrounded by aggressive US forces on two of their borders.  What would any sane 
and responsible government do in that situation?

And -- far more opaque -- what will the US commanders, the sanity and 
responsibility of whom is hardly certain, do?  --CGE

================================

	Petraeus' Iran Obsession
	By ANDREW COCKBURN

Seven weeks ago, as exclusively reported in CounterPunch, President Bush signed 
what was formally designated as a "lethal finding" authorizing stepped-up covert 
actions on various fronts against Iran.  The campaign was to cover a wide area 
of operations, from Lebanon to Afghanistan, wherever the hated Ayatollahs 
challenged American power.  So far, according to former officials with knowledge 
of the finding, the results have been in line with most other U.S. initiatives 
in the region, i.e. the strengthening of Iran.

In Lebanon, the ambitious effort to get the Siniora government to hit at 
Hezbollah by ripping up the latter’s  fiber-optic communications system (immune 
to US/Israeli electronic interception) ended with the U.S. surrogates in 
headlong retreat in the face of Hezbollah's efficiently swift occupation of 
Beirut, not only withdrawing their earlier demarche, but caving in to 
longstanding political demands by the Iran-allied group.

Washington may be drawing a little more encouragement from reports of activity 
inside Iran itself.  In the north, PJAK, the U.S.-assisted Iranian Kurdish group 
killed six Iranian Revolutionary Guards within the last few days, while the 
bombing of the Martyrs Hossenieh mosque in Shiraz on April 12 that killed twelve 
people is now being blamed by the Iranians on U.S. funded groups.

Whatever spice such bloodletting adds to President Bush's morning intelligence 
briefing, these pinprick attacks are essentially insignificant, especially when 
compared to the recent arrest in Pakistan of  six leading lights of  Jundullah, 
the \ U.S.-sponsored Balochi Jihadist group in south-west Iran.  According to 
one former U.S. intelligence official recently returned from Pakistan, these 
include the group's leader, Abdel-Malik Regi.   Despite urgent representations 
from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, the Pakistanis are fully intent on handing 
the prisoners over to the Iranians, who will promptly hang them.  Given 
Pakistan's immediate and pressing need for supplies of Iranian natural gas, 
American pleas on behalf of the arrestees never stood much of a chance, a 
telling indicator of the general shift of power in the region.

Among by-products of this development may be a truncated term of office as 
Commander of CENTCOM for the master military politician, General David Petraeus. 
  Petraeus, according to well informed members of the army fraternity, had had 
his eye on the Nato command.  As supreme commander in Europe he could perform as 
statesman and proconsul without the embarrassment of presiding over several wars 
where the US is headed for defeat.  His reputation thus further enhanced, he 
could retire at a suitable moment and commence his campaign for the White House 
in 2012.  (He is certainly smart enough to know that whoever gets the job this 
time will enjoy four years of catastrophe on numerous fronts.)  However, the 
hurried termination of Admiral Fallon following his public denigration of Bush’s 
policy of confronting Iran meant that Petraeus had to stay in the middle east, 
even if he hands in his papers in time to get clear before the going gets really 
rough.

In the meantime, it would therefore make sense for Petraeus to lean against any 
expansion of hostilities with Iran.  However, those who have encountered him 
recently in private conversation report that he appears obsessed with the notion 
that Tehran is responsible for any and all U.S. setbacks in Iraq, and must be 
punished for it, soon.

	###