By
Aditya Ganapathiraju
May 19, 2008
War with Iran increasingly possible
A new column by Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative titled, “War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think,” revealed a fundamental shift in White House policy.
The former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officer learned that the National Security Council recently decided to implement “actual preparations” to target Iranian al-Qods camps near Tehran, which Washington claims are training Iraqi Shia militants.
This is not the usual planning the Pentagon has for “everyone,” Giraldi told an interviewer, but these plans are intended for implementation.
“The U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise,” John H. Richardson wrote in Esquire in 2007. “It’ll be Iraq all over again.”
The change in policy was sparked by developments in Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah defeated the U.S. and Saudi-backed central government, according to Robert Fisk of The Independent and Pepe Escobar of The Real News Network.
“As a Tehran versus Washington conflict, Iran has won, at least for now,” Fisk said.
The U.S. government then contacted Tehran via Kurdish channels and demanded that they halt “interference” in Lebanon and support for militant groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran responded by immediately denying the charges and demanding that Washington stop its support for dissident groups operating inside their country, Giraldi wrote.
Journalist Alexander Cockburn reported that there was a secret presidential finding several weeks ago — “unprecedented in its scope,” according to officials familiar with the document — that authorized further covert U.S. military actions against the Iranian regime.
The finding, along with congressional approval for funding, cleared ongoing support for groups like Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group on the State Department’s terrorist list, and other local terrorist and dissident groups trying to destabilize the Iranian government, according to Cockburn, Giraldi and others.
As some argue that retaliation for alleged Iranian “meddling” inside Iraq is warranted, the administration’s plan of unveiling evidence of Iranian involvement in arming Shi’ite militias suffered two major setbacks last week, both of which were virtually unreported, said Gareth Porter in Asia Times.
A planned exhibition in Karbala to show the captured Iranian arms was cancelled after it was learned that none of the arms were in fact of Iranian origin.
The United States’ munitions experts concluded that the weapons, including the much touted explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), were manufactured inside Iraq, not Iran.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki then refused to back U.S. allegations that Iran was supplying arms to Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, taking U.S. officials by surprise.
These developments undercut the official U.S. storyline about Iranian involvement and disrupted a planned set of events meant to “build domestic U.S. political support for a possible strike against Iran,” Porter said.
5 Comments
#1 Miriam
on May 19, 2008 at 10:22 a.m.(Tehran, Iran, Islamic Republic of | Unverified Name)
Exctracts From: "Bush and Olmert planning naked aggression against Iran"
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
"On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.
Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting-duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.
It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like Adolf Hitler blustering and threatening. It is Bush’s American Brownshirts, the neocons, who express the view, “What’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.”
It is the US that is funding assassination teams inside Iran and using taxpayer dollars to fund dissident and violent organizations opposed to the Iranian government. Iran is doing no such thing here.
It is members of the Bush Regime and US generals who continue to lie through their teeth about Iranian support for insurgents, for which they can supply no evidence, and about Iranian nuclear weapons programs, for which the IAEA inspectors can find no sign.
It is the US print and TV media that serves the Bush Regime as propaganda ministry for its lies of aggression.
All the war crimes that are being planned are being planned by Bush and Olmert."
"But the White House Moron says diplomacy is appeasement. He learned this false equivalence from the neocon Brownshirts whose control over his administration has made America despised throughout the world, with the exception of Israel."
"After broadcasting false claims for weeks from US generals and Bush Regime spokespersons that the US has “definite proof” in the form of captured Iranian weapons that Iranians were “responsible for killing American troops,” the great free American media went silent when LA Times correspondent Tina Susman reported from Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.”
"What is the difference between Hitler’s concocted excuses for his acts of naked aggression and the Bush Regime’s plan to use a briefing by General Petraeus, with "captured Iranian weapons" as props, as proof of Iranian complicity in US deaths in Iraq as a means to break down public and congressional resistance to an attack on Iran?"
"For the Bush Regime is there any limit on its lawless behavior?
How many strikes? A dozen? Thirty? Three hundred?
Is there a limit?"
#2 Sgt. Bailey (Disabled)
on May 19, 2008 at 11 a.m.(Pine Bluff, AR | Unverified Name)
Dear Sir,
Just as you can sit there and say,"There is no proof that Iran is meddling in Iraq, I can sit here and say," There is no proof that their not. See, you and many Americans (mostly Democrats)sit at home and take a peice of information here and some there, and make a mountain out of a mole hill. If you think that Iran does not have a hand in Iraq, then you are not a very attentive man. Just a few weeks ago Iran called down the Mahdi Army. Told them to stand down, and be calm. As they can calm the Mahdi Army, they can also direct them to fight and who to fight. Now, why do you think that Iran has the POWER to do such a thing? Money? Material? General Influence? Make NO mistake, Iran has something to do with the violence in Iraq. Now, it may not be to the extent that some think, but Iran can't have a Country (Iraq) next door be of such power and have such BIG friends (United States). So !! They MUST create as much trouble for us and the Iraqi Government as they can. Indirectly ! Wear us down. The Iraqi Government has already wanted to pull out the white flag and cut a bargain. That is JUST what they want. For the U.S. and Iraqi Government to talk to them. THEN the Iranian Government will feel emboldened by the thought of the GREAT USA and its puppet (as they say)kneeling to them and basically saying...okay...we give, what do you want us to do. You know what...we are NOT going to do that. And if I were Commander and Chief, I wouldn't do it either. So...George Bush is not a dumb man. And he is not a moron. He is a man that is doing his level best to make the world a safer and more stable place. Sometimes there needs to be a storm, before the calm. And Sir...Don't badmouth our Commander and Chief. regardless of him being a Republican or Democrat. It's okay to disagree but it's not very becoming of you to speak of our Head of State in an open letter with such words. Makes you look like you are for the other side. Oh..and if you are, try going there and living for a while. You might change your mind.
Kelley
Disabled Desert Storm Veteran 1991
#3 Arthur Lancelot Ballow
on May 19, 2008 at 11:24 a.m.(Schaffhausen, Switzerland | Unverified Name)
American, go home.
YOU make the world a dangerous place, YOU kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians all over the planet, YOU would like to use your nukes, YOU irradiate countries with radioactive depleted uranium (for thousands of years), YOU live at the expense of all other humans, YOU don't sign the Kyoto Protocoll, YOU and only YOU are the cause the really BIG problems on this planet.
Shut up and go home for a while. And stay there, get fat and resolve YOUR problems with YOUR government. And try to have an election that is not faked with YOUR neocon voting machines, you democracy blasphemators.
SHAME ON YOU.
#4 Concerned
on May 19, 2008 at 2:33 p.m.(Chicago, IL | Unverified Name)
Sgt Bailey,
My respect to you and your loss in Desert Storm, Sir.
While it may be hard to accept that what you've suffered has been on account of greed, it is nevertheless a road to recovery.
"You know what...we are NOT going to do that. And if I were Commander and Chief, I wouldn't do it either." <- See, this kind of aggression is a flaw of humanity which can return nothing positive, at all. You may subdue them by force, yet you gain contempt.
The same is happening with Israel's influence here in the US; the more they propagate their looped slogans and indoctrinate the populace for their aims, the more they risk an uprising by the people. No one feels good after finding they've been Shysted. Goyish Kop is not eternally dumb, and will and is waking up to the pro-Israel prententions of Jews who are in their face, daily alarming Americans of 'dangers' from Iran: Alice Cooper on CNN, Ted Koeppel on ABC, Ben Stein on commentary, Paul Wolfowitz planning strategy, Ari Fleisher relentlessly selling the previous war.
Sgt, there is no end to involvement in the Middle East. Just as Iran is looking at it's next door neighbor's destruction, so will Saudi Arabia start wondering if it is next; and so forth. We are harboring the rage of millions of Muslims. No one likes our presence there except the ones benefitting: Israel, and the Muslim world does not like them, either.
Seeing that we depend on Muslims, not Jews, for oil, it would make sense that we develop friendly political stances with those nations, instead of alligning ourselves with Israel's advice to us: Just take their oil and conquer the region. Then give it to us.
All the energy being spent in that region and lost lives seem ill-invested, especially when considering the money we spend on war may be used for alternative-energy research and deployment. Do you have anything against this idea Sgt?
Or do you have a vendetta? Do you want kids to go to war so they can return disabled as you did in 1991? Would that make you feel better? I can find no other explanation for your die-hard allegiance to your heroic "Commander in-Chief" who is best prepared to do this, as opposed to signing allegiance the United States Constitution, which was violated when Iraq was invaded.
Further, Sgt Bailey, after having served this country, it is expected that your allegiance remain for your own flag, and not that of Israel's who is clearly the most interested in this confrontation.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=N294FMDok98
#5 sina Dashti
on May 20, 2008 at 1:08 a.m.( | Unverified Name)
The articel has very fundamental bias. It says:
"Journalist Alexander Cockburn reported that there was a secret presidential finding several weeks ago — “unprecedented in its scope,” according to officials familiar with the document — that authorized further covert U.S. military actions against the Iranian regime.
The finding, along with congressional approval for funding, cleared ongoing support for groups like Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group on the State Department’s terrorist list, and other local terrorist and dissident groups trying to destabilize the Iranian government, according to Cockburn, Giraldi and others. "
As far sa PMOI= MEK concerns, it is the only organisation that iranian goverment wanted to be placed on blacklist in US and Europa. Clinton admininstration did it 1997 and British government did the same 2000 and EU 2001( based on British desicion on that matter).
Now the highest judge og England ruled against this inclusion in Britain and orderde the labour government to remove PMOI name from the black list. Lord Philips , having ALL governmentdocuments in his hand , ruled that there is no evidence that PMOI is a terrorist organisation. It ended a 7 yeras old battel between Britisg Government and iranian PMOI.
The fact is that PMOI has its own agenda of a democratis change in iran by iranian people AND NOT BY FORIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION.
They(PMOI) reject policy of appeasment toward iranian mullahs. Removing PMOI from State Department list of foriegn terrorist organisation is not an act of war but indeed a policy to aviod tha war. If iranian peopel and iranian resitance recieve POLITICAL recognition of their rights , they are abel to counter the iranian regime without any new war in the region. Appeasment policy by US and European governments put we iranian in danger of war.It is due to nature of iranian regime and its inability to make political reforms inside iran and reduce tensions outside Iran, as it has shown in Lebanon.As an iranian political activist I beg the honourabel leftist american writers to recognize our wisedom and historical experience.Lot of us support PMOI because of their heroic resistance resistance and thier emancipation of womens rights.Any misperception that PMOI acts like Chalabi in Iraq or Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is merely caused by 2 reasons.
1- Missing differnces in history of Iran , agenda and political strucure and impact of PMOI in current political process in Iran and
2: being missguided by the lobby of iranian regime in US like Ray Takye, Amir ahmadi and Gary Sick ,...
The great threat to iranian nation and all nations in middel east is posed by iranian regime that cleverly took adventage of current adiminstrations strategical mistakes. to neutralize that treat so: 1. No appeasment polict 2- No forigen war , Just support democratic movement in Iran headed by PMOI.
Thanks
Sina Dashti MD - Sweden
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