United States Central Command (CENTCOM) Adm. William “Fox” Fallon announced his resignation two weeks ago; insiders said he was forced out for speaking out against the troop surge in Iraq and an attack on Iran.

“If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran,” wrote Thomas P.M. Barnett in an Esquire article, “it'll all come down to one man.”

Barnett portrays Fallon as the only man stopping World War III.

“The president and vice president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way,” Barnett said.

Fallon has since rejected the Esquire article, saying it was “really disrespectful and ugly,” according to The Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that Fallon's resignation is a sign of an upcoming attack, according to The Associated Press.

Retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi offered alternate explanations for Fallon’s departure.

Giraldi said that Dick Cheney influenced the timing of the firing and didn’t want Fallon’s opposing views to undercut Cheney’s trip to the region, where he likely took a hard line on Iran with Saudi Arabia, in addition to trying to convince the Saudis to pump more oil before the next election cycle.

Fallon reportedly said behind closed doors that an attack on Iran “isn't going to happen on my watch,” former Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East specialist Colonel W. Patrick Lang told the Post.

“There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box,” Lang said reportedly, referring to unanimous opposition to an Iran strike by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as confirmed by Time’s Joe Klein and Inter Press Service.

“This constant drumbeat of conflict … is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war,” Fallon told Al Jazeera last year.

Administration officials were also upset at Fallon’s encounter with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak that led to the headline “U.S. rules out strike against Iran,” in the Egyptian Gazette.

In addition to retiring the phrase “Long War” as “not likely and unhelpful,” Fallon also met resistance with the White House and Gen. David Petraeus by calling for a drawdown of troops from Iraq and opposing the “surge.”

While the conservative Washington Times, Wall Street Journal and NY Sun editorial boards praised the “good news,” Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot said in the L.A. Times, “Fallon’s very public assurances that America has no plans to use force against Iran embolden[s] the mullahs,” and his goal for an immediate troop drawdown in Iraq was “undermining” the president’s plans in the region.

Others were troubled by the developments even if they had reservations about Fallon’s openly dissenting views; Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst, was “truly alarmed” at the resignation and confirmed Col. Lang’s comments. McGovern told radio host Charles Goyette that he believed the Bush administration will find someone else to replace Fallon and “do their bidding,” in relation to attacking Iran.

Fallon’s resignation, along with other developments such as Cheney’s trip to the region, provocative comments by Israeli officials and the stationing of U.S. warships off the coast of Lebanon were also worrying signs, wrote Terry Atlas in an article in the U.S. News & World Report.

McGovern was also alarmed by Cheney’s trip, observing that it was reminiscent of the trip the vice president took just before the Iraq invasion in order to foment alliances for the attack.

The real danger, McGovern said, is that “Elliot Abrams or Cheney could give Israel a ‘wink and a nod’ to start this thing,” which could “lead to a regional war.”

“Stop hyperventilating” was the title of Washington insider Steve Clemons’s column on his influential blog, The Washington Note. “If there was a real chance we were flipping into war mode,” one source told Clemons, “there would be six Fallons commenting — and six fired.”

Other Middle East analysts and foreign-policy experts have grown alarmed at the string of recent developments and say the likelihood of aggressive military action on Iran will not pass after Bush leaves office and may very well come before.

Director of National Intelligence Adm. Mike McConnell briefed the president in August last year that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, according to CNN.

In October Bush warned Americans, “If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Fallon was not first to resist an aggressive administration, IPS reporter Gareth Porter said.

In Pulitzer Prize-winning Post reporter Dana Priest’s book The Mission, it was reported that former CENTCOM Gen. Tony Zinni was asked by the Clinton administration to use his fighter planes to draw fire in the no-fly zone to provoke a conflict with Iraq.

The plan was later dropped after Zinni pressed for a formal request, Porter said.

[Reach columnist Aditya Ganapathiraju at news@thedaily.washington.edu]