A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.
The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn’t end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean’s western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China’s options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence. (are western military puppet governments)
The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn’t receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and “focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants”, according to the US military. Obama’s main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.
A new great game begins
First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi’ite awakening in the region. The Shi’ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi’ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen’s history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi’ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.
More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states – and Israel – is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi’ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi’ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi’ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia’s highly restive Shi’ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country’s fabulous oil wealth.
Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi’ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi’ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi’ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.
The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies – as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context – ironically, in the Arab context – would involve Shi’ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.
Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn’t want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only “democratic” system operating in that entire region.
Iran’s shadow over the Yemeni Shi’ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn’t finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.
Israel moves in
But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.
The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen – just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.
Islamism doesn’t deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn’t have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.
Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the “pro-West” Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.
Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi’ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn’t done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.
It’s all about China
Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the “great game” of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China’s economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.
In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China’s influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.
China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.
An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China’s efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites – civilian and military – and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently “pro-Western” (even when they are “anti-American”) and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.
The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?
US-India-Israel axis
On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama’s political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US’s global strategy – of which containment of China is a core template.
The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.
United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India’s longstanding quest for “dual-use” technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China’s growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.
Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.
All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be “change”, has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the “revisionism” in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.
Arguably, this sort of “return of the native” by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama’s presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be “steered”, the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.
Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.
The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?
The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran’s Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports.
We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world’s largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.
US-Backed Terrorist Group Kills Iran Military Officers
Bankrolling and arming Al-Qaeda offshoot part of 2007 White House directive to destabilize Iranian government
The U.S. government effectively attacked Iran yesterday after its proxy terror group Jundullah launched a suicide bomb attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at their headquarters in Pishin, near the border with Pakistan.
Leaders of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni terrorist group Jundullah have claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Iran that killed over 40 people yesterday. The group is funded and trained by the CIA and is being used to destabilize the government of Iran, according to reports out of the London Telegraph and ABC News.
In the aftermath of the attack, which killed at least five commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard along with scores of others, media reports have swung between Iranian accusations of US and British involvement and blanket denials on behalf of the U.S. State Department.
However, the fact that Jundullah, who have since claimed responsibility for the attack and named the bomber as Abdol Vahed Mohammadi Saravani, are openly financed and run by the CIA and Mossad is not up for debate, it has been widely reported for years.
“President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert “black” operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs,” reported the London Telegraph in May 2007.
Part of that destabilization campaign involved the the CIA “Giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan,” stated the report.
Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot organization that was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The fact that it is being directly supported by the U.S. government under both Bush and now Obama destroys the whole legitimacy of the “war on terror” in an instant.
The group has been blamed for a number of bombings inside Iran aimed at destabilizing Ahmadinejad’s government and is also active in Pakistan, having been fingered for its involvement in attacks on police stations and car bombings at the Pakistan-US Cultural Center in 2004.
The group also produces propaganda tapes and literature for al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab, which is in turn closely affiliated with the military-industrial complex front IntelCenter, the group that makes available Al-Qaeda videos to the western media.
In May 2008, ABC News reported on how Pakistan was threatening to turn over six members of Jundullah to Iran after they were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities.
“U.S. officials tell ABC News U.S. intelligence officers frequently meet and advise Jundullah leaders, and current and former intelligence officers are working to prevent the men from being sent to Iran,” reported ABC news, highlighting again the close relationship between the terror group and the CIA.
Abdolhamid Rigi, a senior member of the group and the brother of the group’s leader Abdolmalek Rigi, who was one of the six members of the organization extradited by Pakistan, told the court that Jundullah was being trained and financed by “the US and Zionists”. He also said that the group had been ordered by America and Israel to step up their attacks in Iran.
Jundullah is not the only anti-Iranian terror group that US government has been accused of funding in an attempt to pressure the Iranian government.
Multiple credible individuals including US intelligence whistleblowers and former military personnel have asserted that the U.S. is conducting covert military operations inside Iran using guerilla groups to carry out attacks on Iranian Revolution Guard units.
It is widely suspected that the well known right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), once run by Saddam Hussein’s dreaded intelligence services, is now working exclusively for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and carrying out remote bombings in Iran.
After a bombing inside Iran in March 2007, the London Telegraph also reported on how a high ranking CIA official has blown the whistle on the fact that America is secretly funding terrorist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.
A story entitled, US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran, reveals how funding for the attacks carried out by the terrorist groups “comes directly from the CIA’s classified budget,” a fact that is now “no great secret”, according to a former high-ranking CIA official in Washington who spoke anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.
Former US state department counter-terrorism agent Fred Burton backed the claim, telling the newspaper, “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime.”
John Pike, the head of the influential Global Security think tank in Washington, said: “The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity.”
The timing of the bombing that targeted Iranian Revolutionary Guard members yesterday was clearly orchestrated to coincide with talks between representatives from Iran, Russia, France, the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna today concerning Iran’s nuclear intentions.
US marines, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, patrol in the town of Garmser in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
Barack Obama yesterday pledged to increase US troops in Afghanistan by a third if he becomes president, sending 10,000 more to reinforce the 33,000 already there.
He was speaking after the US lost nine soldiers at the weekend in the deadliest attack on its forces in the country since 2005.
Obama has promised, soon after becoming president in January, to begin scaling back the 156,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and to shift the focus to Afghanistan.
Obama lays out his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan in an op-ed for The New York Times. It reveals on full display a proposed foreign policy of confusion and contradiction.
With the notable exception of calling for a “residual force” to fight Al Qaeda and train troops, Obama sensibly argues that the best policy is to wean the Iraqis from dependence on the United States and create “a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country.”
Not recognizing the contradiction, however, Obama proposes the exact opposite solution for Afghanistan. Instead of letting the Afghans take “responsiblity for the security of their country,” he wants to make them even more dependent on American welfare:
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.
Former Pakistan Army Chief General ’’Retd’’ Mirza Aslam Baig on Tuesday said that Iran and Pakistan are under siege of western conspiracies. He said that intelligence agencies of allied forces are very active in Afghanistan and working against the interests of Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia.
“There are set-ups of United States in Jiwani and Kot Kalmat, in Balochistan province from where they carry out different operations in the area,” he said.
He said that the United States is also providing training facilities to the people of Jundallah, in Balochistan so that these people could create unrest in the area and affect Iran-Pakistan relations.
General (Retd) Baig termed the act of the United States as a conspiracy and said that this should be stopped.
He lauded the decision of the Pakistan government for handing over the people of Jundallah to Iran and said that those who are working against the interests of both countries should be dealt with with iron fist.
He said that the activities of people of Jundallah should be stopped and for this Iran and Pakistan have to tighten the security at Pakistan-Iran border.
He believed that in past both Pakistan and Iran had made mistakes but now it is right time to look forward and build strong relations.
General (Retd) Baig said that Pakistan should have supported the stance of Iran during Iran-Iraq war.
He was of the view that Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan should have worked together after the withdrawal of Russian army from Afghanistan.
He stressed the need for making a comprehensive strategy to strengthen Iran-Pakistan relations.
“We should forget the past and make a strategy to guard our national interests,” he said.
He said the richness of Balochistan in mineral resources is one of the attractions for the international powers but the strategic location of Balochistan is more important to the US and its allies.
General (Retd) Baig said that it is the responsibility of both countries to make the area free of danger and take the conspiracies as a challenge.
He said the American policy-makers are very much active in Balochistan since 2001 while India too has gained considerable influence in the province since then.
Former Pakistan General: U.S. Supports Jundullah Terrorists in Iran
According to Pakistan’s former Army Chief, retired General Mirza Aslam Baig, the U.S. supports the Jundullah terrorist group and uses it to destabilize Iran. Baig knows what he is talking about, as he was on the inside track when the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI created al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Both Baig and former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul were part of the Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic conference held near Peshawar on January 9, 2001, significant because the conference was hosted by CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Baig rubs elbows with Pakistan’s ruling oligarchs, so he knows something about what goes down in South and Central Asia and the Greater Middle East.
“He said that the US is providing training facilities to Jundullah fighters–located in eastern areas of Iran–to create unrest in the area and affect the cordial ties between Iran and its neighbor Pakistan,” reports Iran’s Press TV. “The intelligence agencies of the coalitional forces are very active in Afghanistan and work against the interests of Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia in the region, he said as quoted by Pakistan Daily newspaper.”
In other words, the neocons are busy at work on their plan, active now for well over a decade, to foment chaos in the region and ultimately reduce it to a smoldering ruin. Iran has long figured prominently on the neocon hit list.
“Jundullah is a terrorist group, headed by Abdolmalek Rigi, which operates in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan and Pakistan’s Baluchistan,” notes Press TV. In fact, the Sunni terrorist group is a creature of the CIA, a fact confirmed last May when the Sunday Telegraph reported that the CIA was “supplying money and weapons” to Jundullah as part of Bush’s not so covert black op designed to “achieve regime change in Iran,” that is to say reduce the country to a smoldering ruin on par with Iraq and install a brutal dictatorship, more than likely a return of the the dreaded Pahlavi monarchy, long favored by neocons. Rigi fought with another CIA-ISI spawned group, the Taliban, in Afghanistan.
“Jundullah has close ties with Al-Qaeda,” Tariq Jamil, chief of the Karachi police, told Newsline in 2004. In 2005, according to ABC News, U.S. officials began encouraging and advising Jundullah and in February, 2007, Dick Cheney flew to Pakistan to parlay with dictator Pervez Musharraf on Jundullah operations against Iran. It is said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, supposedly the al-Qaeda operational commander of the September 11 terrorist attacks, headed up the group at one point.
In short, the U.S. is using al-Qaeda to attack and destabilize Iran. However, according to Bush and the neocons, Iran is supporting al-Qaeda. “President Bush yesterday accused Iran of harboring and aiding top al Qaeda terrorists, but he stopped short of charging that Tehran was directly involved in the September 11 attacks,” the Washington Times reported on July 20, 2004. Prior to this, the 9/11 whitewash commission accused al-Qaeda and Iran of collusion by way of Hezbollah, never mind that Hezbollah is a Shi’ite group and al-Qaeda Sunni, thus enemies.
Seymour Hersh: US Training Jondollah and MEK for Bombing preparation
In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power, about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.
Hersh explains that the aim of the US covert operations inside Iran is to create a pretext for attack with the goal of regime change. “The strategic thinking behind this covert operation is to provoke enough trouble and chaos so that the Iranian government makes the mistake of taking aggressive action which will give the impression of a country in acute turmoil”, he said. “Then you have what the White House calls the ‘casus belli’, a reason to attack the country. That is the thinking and it is very crazy.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect on Monday of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.
It was the first time the U.S.-backed Shi’ite-led government has floated the idea of a timetable for the removal of American forces from Iraq. The Bush administration has always opposed such a move, saying it would give militant groups an advantage.
The security deal under negotiation will replace a U.N. mandate for the presence of U.S. troops that expires on December 31.
“Today, we are looking at the necessity of terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty,” Maliki told Arab ambassadors in blunt remarks during an official visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.
“One of the two basic topics is either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces, so that we know (their presence) will end in a specific time.”
Senior Iraqi government officials said Saturday that a U.S. Special Forces counterterrorism unit conducted the raid that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki , touching off a high-stakes diplomatic crisis between the United States and Iraq .
U.S. military officials in Baghdad had no comment for the second day in a row, an unusual position for a command that typically releases information on combat operations within 24 hours.
The raid occurred at dawn Friday in the town of Janaja near Maliki’s birthplace in the southern, mostly Shiite Muslim province of Karbala . Ali Abdulhussein Razak al Maliki , who was killed in the raid, was related to the prime minister and had close ties to his personal security detail, according to authorities in Karbala .
The incident puts an added strain on U.S.-Iraqi negotiations to draft a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term security pact that will govern the conduct of U.S. forces in Iraq . Members of the Iraqi government and security forces said the raid only deepened their reluctance to sign any agreement that did not leave Iraqis with the biggest say on when and how combat operations are conducted.
The U.S. military handed Iraqi forces control of Karbala security in October 2007 . By the end of 2007 the U.S. military had transferred nine of the country’s 18 provinces to Iraqi control.
“We are afraid now of signing the long-term pact between Iraq and America because of such unjustified violations by the troops. Handing over security in provinces doesn’t mean anything to the American troops,” said Mohamed Hussein al Musawi , a senior Najaf-based member of the prime minister’s Dawa Party . “We condemn these barbaric actions not only when they target a relative of Maliki’s, but when any Iraqi is targeted in the same way.”
Outrage over the mysterious operation has spread to the highest levels of the Iraqi government, which is demanding an explanation for how such a raid occurred in a province ostensibly under full Iraqi command.
“This is a Special Forces operation, an antiterrorism unit that operates almost independently so there’s been no coordination with the local forces on the ground,” said a high-ranking member of the Iraqi government who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue. “That’s why it’s so important to have a Status of Forces Agreement to regulate this relationship. As long as it’s vague and open, these incidents will continue to happen.”
U.S. and Iraqi officials have been in difficult negotiations to draft a Status of Forces Agreement. Among the main sticking points are whether the U.S. military can stage combat operations without the consent of the Iraqi government and whether to grant immunity to American troops and security contractors.
Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman called Friday’s operation “unacceptable” and had strained relations between the countries.
“This is a big embarrassment for Prime Minister Maliki because he was in that area two days before the incident, telling his people that we are the masters in our country and the decisions were ours to make,” Othman said. “This is why we are afraid of agreements and immunity. … If there are wanted people in any area, why not send an Iraqi force to do the job?”
Iraqi officials in Karbala said the operation began at dawn Friday with U.S. aircraft delivering dozens of American troops to the rural Shiite Muslim town of Janaja, which is populated mostly by members of the Maliki tribe. Authorities said the raid apparently was aimed at capturing what the military calls a “high-value target,” often a reference to the leader of a militant cell.
Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, told journalists Friday that the Americans had acted on faulty intelligence. He said four U.S. military helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area that morning. About 60 U.S. ground forces then stormed the town, “terrifying the families,” Jowdet said. At least one man was detained, though some Iraqi authorities said more were taken into custody.
President Bush on Monday signed a $162 billion war funding bill that includes doubling college benefits for troops and veterans and provides a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits.
The spending plan also provides $2.7 billion “to help ensure that any state facing a disaster like the recent flooding and tornadoes in the Midwest has access to needed resources.”
“With this legislation we send a clear message to all who are serving on the front lines that the nation continues its support,” Bush said of troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reporter Details Congressionally Approved Covert Funding Of Terrorists In Iran Military, intelligence, and congressional sources say secret war is vamped to bring down Iranian leadership
Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has detailed a move by the Bush administration, with Congressional backing, which represents a “major escalation” in covert military operations aimed at destabilizing the Iranian leadership.
Hersh also details how The CIA and the United States Special Operations Forces have long-standing ties to the PEJAK, the outlawed breakaway faction of the PKK terrorist group in Iran, as well as other Sunni fundamentalists that former intelligence officials say “can also be described as Al Qaeda.”
Hersh describes how the neocon White House has vamped up secret efforts to work with the same terrorist groups that were once populated with figures such as Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was fingered as one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks.
“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money,”Hersh reveals, quoting an unnamed “person familiar with its contents.”
Congress, under Democratic leadership, approved a $400 million request for funding late last year, according to Hersh’s sources, military, intelligence, and congressional officials with direct knowledge of the top secret Presidential Finding, which by law must be issued when covert intelligence operations get underway.
The corporate media has somewhat downplayed the revelations, which essentially highlight once again how the so called “war on terror” is a complete fiction, as US elites are funding Sunni extremists intent on destroying the Shiite Iranian leadership.
Hersh spoke about the article in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley:
“Well, one of the basic points is no matter what we say about diplomacy, you know, carrot and stick, the stick is working pretty hard and the stick is working overtime. This president did escalate the secret war inside Iran. We’ve been doing stuff inside Iran since ‘05 pretty heavily, Looking at the nuclear facilities, collecting intelligence and trying to undermine the regime, et cetera, et cetera but there was a significant escalation this year.” Hersh said.
“They got a great deal of authorization to spend up to $400 million. That doesn’t mean he’s spent it all yet but he’s got that kind of authorization. The secret committees — anyone who saw “Charlie Wilson’s war,” — Charlie Wilson was able to generate a lot of money secretly. That’s what happens in Congress and the other major thing is we’ve sent in a special task force that operates out of Afghanistan into Iran.”
“I did notice what Ambassador Crocker said about ‘not cross-border’ and I have a lot of respect for him and I don’t want to challenge him. But the fact is were inside but not necessarily cross-border. We have teams inside Iran. These include joint special operations forces (JSOC), the most elite commando units and basically they’re guys go after high-value targets around the world. They capture them or kill them so it’s a significant increase in American potential for damage inside Iran.”
Hersh went on to state that one of the reasons former Commander of the U.S. Central Command Admiral Fallen was forced out and purged by the Bush administration was that he was unable to find out the full scope of clandestine operations inside Iran. Hersh also stated that the endgame for Bush and Cheney is to ensure that they do not leave office without first having eliminated Iran’s nuclear program, whether that be by attacking the country or forcing regime change inside the country.
We have previously carried reports of how the US and Britain are already at war with Iran, have been at war with Iran for a number of years now and are funding anti-Iranian terrorist groups inside Iran in preparation for the fallout that will occur after overt military action is commenced.
High ranking CIA officials, Defense department officials, former UN officials and retired US air force Colonels have gone on record with the specific details.
In an article entitled The US war with Iran has already begun, written back in June 2005, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter described how intelligence gathering, direct action and the mobilizing of indigenous opposition is all being carried out already by CIA backed US special forces.
Ritter stated:
As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah’s to an “axis of evil” (together with the newly “liberated” Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of “democracy” to the Iranian people.
But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.
As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool’s dream.
The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
The violation of a sovereign nation’s airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.
President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.
Ritter goes on to describe how Iranian opposition groups, including the well known right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), once run by Saddam Hussein’s dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, are carrying out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.
He also describes how to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.
Ritter is not alone in his assertions.
During an interview on CNN in 2006, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations were already ’underway’ inside Iran.
“I would say — and this may shock some — I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way,” Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy.
“The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year,” Gardiner said. “I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, ’Hey, I hear you’re accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.’ He said, quite frankly, ’Yes, we know they are. We’ve captured some of the units, and they’ve confessed to working with the Americans,’” said the retired Air Force colonel.
The full seven minute CNN segment can be viewed below:
Around the same time that Gardiner revealed this, RAW story ran an exclusive, which also revealed that, according to counterintelligence officials, covert operations were underway that included CIA co-option and use of right wing terror groups:
“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”
The MEK were notorious in Iraq, indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
MEK has been linked with numerous bombings inside Iran over the course of the last few years. The organization has also killed U.S. troops and civilians since the 70’s, yet the Bush cabal continues to fund them.
According to Global Security.org, “In the early 1970s, angered by U.S. support for the pro-Western shah, MEK members killed several U.S. soldiers and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. MEK members also supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.”
After a bombing inside Iran in February 2007, the London Telegraph also reported on how a high ranking CIA official blew the whistle on the fact that America is secretly funding terrorist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.
The claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, who said: “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime.”
John Pike, the head of the influential Global Security think tank in Washington, said: “The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity.”
More recently, this May, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry busted a CIA-backed terror group that was planning to bomb scientific, educational, and religious centers, and carry out assassinations, according to a report in the Tehran Times. The arrests came weeks after Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney urged the U.S. to carry out terror bombings in Iran.
McInerney publicly called for the U.S. government to support groups like MEK and carry out deadly bombings in Iran:
Here’s what I would suggest to you. Number one, we take the National Council for Resistance to Iran off the terrorist list that the Clinton Administration put them on as well as the Mujahedin-e Khalq at the Camp Ashraf in Iraq,” said McInerney.
“Then I would start a tit-for-tat strategy which I wrote up in the Wall Street Journal a year ago: For every EFP that goes off and kills Americans, two go off in Iran. No questions asked. People don’t have to know how it was done. It’s a covert action. They become the most unlucky country in the world,” he added.
Top Neo-Cons have been calling for the US to back terror groups in Iran and other reports clearly indicate that this program has already been in place for years.
Last November, Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade openly called for US support for acts of terrorism, such as car bombings, in Tehran. Colonel David Hunt, who has over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in Special Operations, Counter Terrorism and Intelligence Operations, agreed with Kilmeade, stating “absolutely” in response to Kilmead’s question about whether cars should start blowing up in Tehran.
“The CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan,” the London Telegraph reported last year.
The group has been blamed for a number of bombings inside Iran aimed at destabilizing Ahmadinejad’s government and is also active in Pakistan, having been fingered for its involvement in attacks on police stations and car bombings at the Pakistan-US Cultural Center in 2004.
As Seymour Hersh himself also reported back in 2004, U.S. intelligence and Israel’s Mossad are busy at work stirring up trouble in Iran in preparation for an attack on that country. In early 2005, the Guardian reported that “American special forces have been on the ground inside Iran scouting for US air strike targets for suspected nuclear weapons sites.”
If this all sounds a little familiar, it’s because it is. The fact is that the US has a long history of provocation and covert action inside Iran.
The In 1953 the CIA and MI6 carried out Operation Ajax (officially TP-AJAX), a covert operation by the United Kingdom and the United States to remove the democratically elected nationalist cabinet of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power, to support the Pahlavi dynasty and consolidate the power of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in order to preserve the Western control of Iran’s hugely lucrative oil infrastructure.
In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force incase the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly “Top Secret” documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.
The conspiracy centered around having the increasingly impotent Shah dismiss the powerful Prime Minister Mossadegh and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans after careful examination for his likeliness to be pro-British.
Zahedi was installed to succeed Prime Minister Mossadegh. The deposed Mossadegh was arrested, given a show trial, and condemned to death. The Shah commuted this sentence to solitary confinement for three years in a military prison, followed by house arrest for life.
“If there had not been a military coup, there would not have been 25 years of the Shah’s brutal regime, there would not have been a revolution in 1979 and a government of clerics,” Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and leading member of a political party that traces its origins to Mossadegh’s National Front, told the Christian Science Monitor on the 50th anniversary of the coup and installation of the Shah. “Now it seems that the Americans are pushing towards the same direction again. That shows they have not learned anything from history.”
“For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth,” Dan De Luce writes for the Guardian. “Beyond Iran, America remains deeply resented for siding with authoritarian rule in the region.”
Alex Jones’s latest film Terrorstorm covers the ousting of Mossadegh in depth.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the US again found itself sparring with Iran. Again we find a history of provocation and aggression. In particular, a fierce assault known as Operation Praying Mantis, is renowned. The operation began after a US warship had entered mined Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
On April 14 1988, the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine while sailing in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will, the 1987-88 convoy missions in which U.S. warships escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks. The explosion put a 25-foot hole in the Roberts’ hull and nearly sank it. But the crew saved their ship with no loss of life, and Roberts was towed to Dubai on April 16.
After the mining, U.S. Navy divers recovered other mines in the area. When the serial numbers were found to match those of mines seized along with the Iran Ajr the previous September, U.S. military officials planned a retaliatory operation against Iranian targets in the Gulf.
The battle, the largest for American surface forces since World War II,[1] sank two Iranian warships and as many as six armed speedboats. It also marked the first surface-to-surface missile engagement in U.S. Navy history.
The US also attacked and destroyed several Iranian oil platforms in a full out military assault. At the time the Chicago Sun Times reported:
U.S. naval forces on Monday attacked Iranian targets in the Persian Gulf to show the Iranians that “if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” President Reagan said.
In fighting conducted over nine hours, the U.S. forces knocked out two Iranian oil platforms, and then sank or disabled a fast-attack missile patrol boat, two frigates, and three speedboats when Iran attempted to fight back.
Note Reagan’s comments. Hence the name ’Operation Praying Mantis’ was a reference to the fanning of the wings used to make the mantis seem larger and to scare the opponent.
On November 6, 2003 the International Court of Justice dismissed Iran’s claim for reparation against the United States for breach of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the two countries. The court also dismissed a counter-claim by the United States, also for reparation for breach of the same treaty. As part of its finding the court did note that “the actions of the United States of America against Iranian oil platforms on 19 October 1987 (Operation Nimble Archer) and 18 April 1988 (Operation Praying Mantis) cannot be justified as measures necessary to protect the essential security interests of the United States of America.”
The fallout of Praying Mantis also resulted in the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian civilian commercial airliner,Iran air flight 655, between Bandar Abbas and Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time of the shoot-down.
The On the morning of July 3, the Vincennes crossed into Iranian territorial waters during clashes with Iranian gunboats. Earlier in the day, the Vincennes – along with Iranian gunboats – had similarly violated Omani waters until challenged by an Omani warship.
According to the U.S. government, the Iranian aircraft was mistakenly identified as an attacking military fighter. The Iranian government, however, maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft.
According to the Iranian government, the shooting down of IR 655 by the Vincennes was an intentionally performed and unlawful act. Even if there was a mistaken identification, which Iran has not accepted, it argues that this constituted gross negligence and recklessness amounting to an international crime, not an accident.
Newsweek reporters John Barry and Roger Charles wrote that Rogers acted recklessly and without due care. Their report accused the U.S. government of a cover-up. An analysis of the events by the International Strategic Studies Association described the deployment of an Aegis cruiser in the zone as irresponsible and felt that the expense of the ship had played a major part in the setting of a low threshold for opening fire.
George H.W. Bush, at the time Vice President said “I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don’t care what the facts are” in reference to the incident.
It took four years for the US administration to admit officially that the USS Vincennes was in Iranian waters when the skirmish took place with the Iranian gunboats. Subsequent investigations have accused the US military of waging a covert war against Iran in support of Iraq. In February 1996 the US agreed to pay Iran $61.8 million in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed, plus the cost of the aircraft and legal expenses.
So we see that Britain and the US have a long history of covert action against and provocation of Iran in their bid to aggressively control the region. Nothing has changed.
Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’
Bolton predicts “likely period” for Israel strike on Iran is between November 4, 2008 and January 20, 2009
This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:
I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.
Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.
Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:
I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
Bolton: Israel Would Be “Delighted” If U.S. Strikes Iranian Training Camps
In a Fox News interview this afternoon, former UN Ambassador John Bolton discussed his desire to bomb camps inside Iran that are reportedly training and arming Shiite insurgents who fight in Iraq. Fox host Martha McCallum asked, “Can you imagine a scenario where President Bush would do that before the end of his term?” Bolton responded, “I think so, definitely.” He added later, “This is entirely responsible on our part.”
Asked by McCallum whether Israel would be supportive of the strikes given the possibility of Iranian retaliation, Bolton responded, “I think they’d be delighted.”
Fox News claims Iranian missile could ‘hit some military installations’ in the U.S.
The L.A. Times’ Babylon & Beyond blog reports on “a serious recommendation made by two neoconservatives in case sanctions fail to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons or fuel for peaceful energy production.” Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, described as two “scholars” working for the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, have suggested taking out Iran’s oil infrastructure.
Because the ultimate goal of prevention is to influence Tehran to change course, effective strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure may play an important role in affecting Iran’s decision calculus. Strikes that flatten its nuclear infrastructure could have a demoralizing effect, and could influence Tehran’s assessment of the cost of rebuilding. But the most effective strikes may not necessarily be against nuclear facilities. Iran is extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks on its oil export infrastructure…. The political shock of losing the oil income could cause Iran to rethink its nuclear stance — in ways that attacks on its nuclear infrastructure might not.
Or it may move Iran’s “decision calculus” in a different direction — deadly missile salvos against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and smoldering oil tankers clogging up passage of the Persian Gulf. If these two criminal minds have their way, you will be paying $10 a gallon or more at the pump for gasoline. No problem for the WINEP “scholars,” who write:
To be sure, in a tight world oil market, attacking Iran’s oil infrastructure carries an obvious risk of causing world oil prices to soar and hurting consumers in the United States and other oil-importing countries…. If the choice is between higher oil prices and a Middle East with several nuclear powers, higher oil prices and reduced economic growth are not clearly the greater evil.
Talk about hubris. But then neocons are more than comfortable with imposing economic hardship on you, considered a lowly commoner and easily distracted chump by the neocons and their globalist associates. It should be remembered that the neocons consider themselves “philosopher-kings,” a self-appointed elite, and advocate benevolent dictatorship – a process well underway — although it remains to be seen how benevolent it would be to freeze to death thousands of people unable to heat their homes or starve them to death because the cannot afford to drive to work.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused U.S. forces in Iraq of planning to kidnap and assassinate him when he visited the country in March, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said.
Ahmadinejad, 51, refused to reside in Baghdad’s Green Zone, protected by U.S. forces, the news agency cited the president as saying during a seminar today. According to reliable information, they intended to detain and kill him, IRNA cited Ahmadinejad as saying.
The U.S. has repeatedly accused predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran of passing weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a charge denied by the government in Tehran. The U.S. has also accused Iran of seeking to build an atomic bomb under cover of a nuclear energy program, an allegation also dismissed by Ahmadinejad’s administration.
“Based on reliable intelligence, the enemies had planned to kidnap and kill the servant’’ of the Iranian nation during the Iraq trip, Agence France-Presse cited Ahmadinejad as saying on state television today. “But with the change of one or two of our plans, their willpower was shaken.’’
The costs on American taxpayers may reach $2.7 trillion by the time the Iraq war ends, according to a Congressional testimony.
In a hearing held by the Joint Economic Committee Thursday, members of the Congress heard testimony about the current costs of the war and the future economic fallout from returning soldiers.
At the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the Bush administration gave Congress a cost estimate of $60 billion to $100 billion for the entirety of the war. However, the battle has been dragging on much longer than most in the government expected.
William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, told the Congress that the Iraq war has already cost taxpayers $646 billion.
That’s only accounting for five years, and with the conflict expected to drag on for another five years, the figure is expected to more than quadruple, Beach added.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the war costs taxpayers about $430 million per day.
“It is long past time for the administration to come clean and account for the real costs of the war in Iraq,” said Schumer. “If they want to disagree with our estimates or with other experts … fine – they should come and explain why.”
The Bush administration, which was invited to give testimony, declined to participate.
The Pentagon has previously said that the war costs approximately $9.5 billion a month, but some economists say the figure is closer to $25 billion a month when long-term health care for veterans and interest are factored in.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki suggested that US forces might be asked to leave if the two countries cannot agree on the new status of forces agreement, McClatchy reported Friday.
Maliki, seen above, made the comment after pressure from Shiite lawmakers who feel that Iraq’s sovereignty is threatened by US forces and after talks over the status of forces agreement “reached an impasse,” according to McClatchy.
“Iraq has another option that it may use,” Maliki said during a visit to Amman, Jordan. “The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the U.N. terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said that although talks over the security pact are struggling, Baghdad and Maliki are committed to concluding the agreement, Reuters reported Friday.
“I think it’s too early really to judge this agreement that it is dead or there is no way out,” he said after attending a U.N. Security Council meeting on Iraq.
The U.N. mandate for a US presence in Iraq expires at the end of the year, McClatchy reported.
An excerpt from the McClatchy story details the nations’ conflict over the status of forces agreement:
“Maliki acknowledged that talks with the U.S. on a status of forces agreement “reached an impasse” after the American negotiators presented a draft that would have given the U.S. access to 58 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution for both U.S. soldiers and private contractors.
The Iraqis rejected those demands, and U.S. diplomats have submitted a second draft, which Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told McClatchy included several major concessions. Among those would be allowing Iraq to prosecute private contractors for violations of Iraqi law and requiring U.S. forces to turn over to Iraqi authorities Iraqis that the Americans detain.”
A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security, Gulf News has learned.
Senior Iraqi military sources have told Gulf News that the long-term controversial agreement is likely to include three major items.
Under the agreement, Iraqi security institutions such as Defence, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, will be under American supervision for ten years.
The agreement is also likely to give American forces permanent military bases in the country, as well as the right to move against any country considered to be a threat against world stability or acting against Iraqi or American interests.
The military source added, “According to this agreement, the American forces will keep permanent military bases on Iraqi territory, and these will include Al Asad Military base in the Baghdadi area close to the Syrian border, Balad military base in northern Baghdad close to Iran, Habbaniyah base close to the town of Fallujah and the Ali Bin Abi Talib military base in the southern province of Nasiriyah close to the Iranian border.”
The sources confirmed that the American army is in the process of completing the building of the military facilities and runways for the permanent bases.
He added that the American air bases in Kirkuk and Mosul will be kept for no longer than three years. However, he said there were efforts by the Americans to include the Kirkuk base in the list of permanent bases.
The sources also said that a British brigade was expected to remain at the international airport in Basra for ten years as long as the American troops stayed in the permanent bases in Iraq.
Iraqi analysts said that the second item of the controversial agreement which permits American forces on Iraqi territories to launch military attacks against any country it considers a threat is addressed primarily to Iran and Syria.
Iran has raised serious concerns in the past few days over the Iraqi-American security agreement and followed it with issuing religious fatwas and called for demonstrations, mainly by the powerful Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr movement, who is close to Iran, against the agreement.
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military “surge” began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create “a permanent occupation”. He added: “The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.”
Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.
US issues threat to Iraq’s $50bn foreign reserves in military deal
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.
US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.
Iraq’s foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq’s funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq’s independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new “strategic alliance” with the United States.
The threat by the American side underlines the personal commitment of President George Bush to pushing the new pact through by 31 July. Although it is in reality a treaty between Iraq and the US, Mr Bush is describing it as an alliance so he does not have to submit it for approval to the US Senate.
Iraqi critics of the agreement say that it means Iraq will be a client state in which the US will keep more than 50 military bases. American forces will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens and conduct military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government. American soldiers and contractors will enjoy legal immunity.
Anti-American Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Saturday to defy government orders to surrender their weapons, as U.S. jets struck Shiite extremists near Basra to bolster a faltering Iraqi offensive against gunmen in the city.Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive, which began Tuesday, provoked in areas of Baghdad and other cities where Shiite militias wield power.Government television said the round-the-clock curfew imposed two days ago on the capital and due to expire Sunday would be extended indefinitely. Gunfire and explosions were heard late Saturday in Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.The U.S. Embassy tightened its security measures, ordering all staff to use armored vehicles for all travel in the Green Zone and to sleep in reinforced buildings until further notice after six days of rocket and mortar attacks that left two Americans dead.Despite the mounting crisis, al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, vowed to remain in Basra until government forces wrest control from militias, including the Mahdi Army. He called the fight for control of Basra “a decisive and final battle.”British ground troops, who controlled the city until handing it over to the Iraqis last December, also joined the battle for Basra, firing artillery Saturday for the first time in support of Iraqi forces.
But a defiant al-Sadr called on his followers Saturday to ignore the order, saying that his Mahdi Army would turn in its weapons only to a government that can “get the occupier out of Iraq,” referring to the Americans.
The order was made public by Haidar al-Jabiri, a member of the influential political commission of the Sadrist movement.
Al-Sadr, in an interview aired Saturday by Al-Jazeera television, said his Mahdi Army was capable of “liberating Iraq” and maintained al-Maliki’s government was as “distant” from the people as Saddam Hussein’s.
Residents of Basra contacted by telephone said Mahdi militiamen were manning checkpoints Saturday in their neighborhood strongholds. The sound of intermittent mortar and machine gun fire rang out across the city, as the military headquarters at a downtown hotel came under repeated fire.
An Iraqi army battalion commander and two of his bodyguards were killed Saturday night by a roadside bomb in central Basra, military spokesman Col. Karim al-Zaidi said.
The fight for Basra is crucial for al-Maliki, who flew to Basra earlier this week and is staking his credibility on gaining control of Iraq’s second-largest city, which has essentially been held by armed groups for nearly three years.
In a speech Saturday to tribal leaders in Basra, al-Maliki promised to “stand up to these gangs” not only in the south but throughout Iraq.
Iraqi officials and their American partners have long insisted that the crackdown was not directed at al-Sadr’s movement but against criminals and renegade factions — some of whom are allegedly tied to Iran.
Al-Maliki told tribal leaders that the offensive in Basra “was only to deal with these gangs” — some of which he said “are worse than al-Qaida.”
Without mentioning the Sadrists by name, al-Maliki said he was “surprised to see that party emerge with all the weapons available to it and strike at everything — institutions, people, departments, police stations and the army.”
Al-Sadr’s followers have accused rival Shiite parties in the national government of trying to crush their movement before provincial elections this fall. The young cleric’s lieutenants had warned repeatedly that any move to dislodge them from Basra would provoke bloodshed.
But al-Maliki’s comments appeared to reinforce suspicions that his government failed to foresee the backlash, including a sharp upsurge in violence throughout the Shiite south and shelling of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, the nerve center of the Iraqi leadership and the U.S. mission.
Two American soldiers were killed Saturday when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in mostly Shiite east Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
The growing turmoil threatens to undermine White House efforts to convince a skeptical Congress and the American public that the Iraqis are making progress toward managing their own security without the presence of U.S. troops.
Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra.
His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the other side without a second thought.
Such turncoats are the thread that could unravel the British Army’s policy in southern Iraq. The military hoped that local forces would be able to combat extremists and allow the Army to withdraw gradually from the battle-scarred and untamed oil city that has fallen under the sway of Islamic fundamentalists, oil smugglers and petty tribal warlords. But if the British taught the police to shoot straight, they failed to instil a sense of unwavering loyalty to the State.
“We know the outcome of the fighting in advance because we already defeated the British in the streets of Basra and forced them to withdraw to their base,” Abu Iman told The Times.
“If we go back a bit, everyone remembers the fight with the US in Najaf and the damage and defeat we inflicted on them. Do you think the Iraqi Army is better than those armies? We are right and the Government is wrong. [Nouri al] Maliki [the Iraqi Prime Minister] is driving his Government into the ground.”
The reason for his apparent switch of sides was simple: the 36-year-old was already a member of the al-Mahdi Army which, like other militias, has massively infiltrated the British-trained police force in the southern oil city. He claimed that hundreds of others from the 16,000-strong force have also defected to the rebels’ ranks.Abu Iman joined the new Iraqi police force after the invasion, joining the Mugawil, a special police unit infamous for brutality, kidnapping and sectarian murders.
“We already heard two weeks ago that we were going to attack the Mahdi Army, so we were ready,” he said. “I decided to take off my uniform and join my brothers and friends in the Mahdi Army. All these years, we were like a scream in the face of the dictator and the occupation.” He said: “I joined the police because I believed we have to protect Basra and save it with our own hands. You can see we were the first fighters to take on Sadd-am and his regime, the best example being the Shabaniya uprising.”
Abu Iman said that the fighting raging in Basra yesterday was intense because the al-Mahdi Army was operating on its own turf. He was confident that the Shia militia would prevail because its cause was just.
“The Iraqi Army is already defeated from within. They come to Basra with fear in their hearts, knowing they have to fight their brothers, the sons of Iraq, because of an order from Bush and his friends in the Iraq Government. For this reason, all of the battles are going in the Mahdi Army’s favour.”
Major-General Abdelaziz Moham-med Jassim, the director of operations at the Ministry of Defence, played down reports of defections in the Basra police force. “The problem of one policeman doesn’t make up for the whole of the force,” he said.
In recent months Major-General Abdul Jalil Khalaf, Basra’s police chief, has tried to shake up the force and drive out militia infiltrators, who have wrought havoc in the past, often turning police stations into torture cells in which factions settled vendettas and power struggles with murder and abuse. But he only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a suicide car bomb attack in Basra killed three of his policemen. A local tribal leader said the police directorate building was later gutted by fire.
Mahdi Army holds firm as Iraqi PM risks all in battle of Basra
THE arrival of the Iraqi army supported by US warplanes did little to dent the defiance of Abu Sajad and his 22 comrades in a Shi’ite militia cell holed up in a mosque in Basra.
Alerted by a mobile phone call to the arrival of US military reinforcements, Abu Sajad calmly selected eight fighters and dispatched them to plant roadside bombs packed into red plastic fruit crates.
“We are to plant them throughout the Qaziza neighbourhood to welcome the army when they try to enter the area,” he told his men. He sent the bombers away on scooters and motorcycles which, he explained, were “quicker to move and less conspicuous . . . We have a great surprise for the army”.
As night fell after a fifth day of heavy fighting around Basra yesterday, Iraqi forces controlled by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, were still struggling to subdue renegade Shi’ite fighters whose shifting loyalties and challenges to Baghdad rule have begun to pose a serious threat to American and British strategy.
Ragtag members of the Mahdi Army, a heavily armed militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric with close links to Iran, vowed to fight to the death to prevent Maliki from imposing government control on the southern port at the heart of Iraq’s potentially hugely profitable oil industry.
“We have received a shipment of Strela antiaircraft rockets,” Abu Sajad boasted to a Sunday Times reporter.
“We intend to use them to prove to the world that the Mahdi Army will not allow Basra to be turned into a second Falluja [the former centre of anticoalition resistance that was crushed by US-led assaults].” President George W Bush praised Maliki and described the clashes as a “defining moment” for the Baghdad government’s attempts to curb Sadr’s influence and assert its own authority. But despite Bush’s approval, American officials are concerned that Maliki’s military gamble may cause serious embarrassment for the coalition forces.
US officials said the Iraqi prime minister had launched the assault on Tuesday without consulting Washington, but yesterday it was the Americans under fire again after claims that eight civilians had been killed in a US bombing raid.
The SAS was in Basra alongside Iraqi commanders, calling in attacks from RAF and US aircraft on “enemy combatants” as the death toll from five days of fighting across Iraq rose above 300, with hundreds wounded.
British artillery units destroyed a militia mortar position in support of Iraqi forces yesterday, a spokesman said. The mortar, in the al-Hala district of northern Basra, was positively identified by the British before they opened fire from their base at Basra international airport.
Basra’s hospitals filled with civilian casualties and the violence continued to spread through other cities, including the suburbs of Baghdad. The coalition’s five-year effort to bolster Iraqi democracy was under threat from factional strife on a difficult urban battlefield where rebel gunmen have long held sway on streets too narrow for armoured vehicles.
Maliki had flown to Basra to take personal control of the military operation. But instead of sweeping to a decisive victory with American guns at his side, he was stumbling into something that looked dangerously like stalemate yesterday.
Having originally imposed a 72-hour deadline for rebels to hand in their weapons, he was forced to extend it until April 8. Yesterday he vowed to remain in Basra until the resistance was crushed. “This is a decisive and final battle,” he said.
Sadr issued an equally robust directive, ordering his fighters to ignore Maliki’s ultimatum.
At stake in Basra was not just the prime minister’s reputation, his prospects for provincial elections this autumn and control of the Iraqi oil fields, but also an entire coalition strategy of reduced troop levels, steady withdrawal and the turning over of Iraqi security to local troops.
If Maliki’s crackdown fails, both London and Washington may have to reassess Iraqi army capabilities and the risk of future disaster if coalition forces continue to withdraw. “This is a precarious situation,” one US official said yesterday. “There’s a lot to be gained and a lot to lose.”
Already this weekend there were reports that police officers and soldiers had left their posts, changed their uniforms and joined the Mahdi Army.
When a local journalist left his home in Basra this weekend to visit the city’s main hospital, he found the streets deserted except for cruising police vehicles whose occupants were randomly firing in the air.
He eventually hitched a ride with an ambulance carrying a 14-year-old boy whose leg had nearly been severed by a burst of machinegun fire. “Most of the injured are being hurt by gunshots and rocket shrapnel that hits their homes,” the driver said.
Inside the hospital, blood-stained bandages were scattered across the floor. A 50-year-old woman was sobbing. Doctors said she had been told three hours earlier that her daughter had died from gunshot wounds and she had not stopped crying.
In a ward on the first floor, patients were groaning in pain. Doctors had run out of pain-killers and many pharmacies in the city were closed.
“The stench was awful in the wards and corridors,” the journalist said. “Patients and family members were cursing the government in both Basra and Baghdad and some were even lamenting the ‘good old days’ of Saddam Hussein.”
The situation at another hospital was so dire that Leith Chasseb, a 36-year-old civil servant, could not find a doctor to treat his father, who had a shrapnel wound to his leg.
In the al-Tamimiyeh district, Um Hiba, a 38-year-old mother of three, was standing with two of her daughters in the garden when a mortar exploded nearby, injuring all three of them. “We called the ambulance but they couldn’t get to us,” she said. “The neighbours supplied us with bandages.”
Dr Salah Amad, director of the city’s medical operations, said hospitals were about to collapse because of exhausted doctors and a lack of supplies. “Ambulances are unable to distribute medical supplies stocked in warehouses,” he said.
There were conflicting accounts of the incident in Basra’s Hananiyah district, where two women and a child were reportedly among eight civilians killed by an air strike. Iraqi police claimed that a US aircraft had carried out the strike, but British planes were also seen in the area.
There was no immediate comment from either British or US military spokesmen. American aircraft carried out further raids yesterday, dropping two precision-guided bombs on a suspected militia stronghold north of Basra.
In a separate raid, Iraqi special forces were said to have stormed a house in Basra, killing a father and his three sons, the youngest aged 13, in front his wife.
Maliki’s decision to crack down on Basra followed at least three years of rebel subversion that British troops had quelled for long periods but never eradicated. US officers often criticised their British counterparts for their hands-off approach in Basra, but nobody in Washington was inclined last week to blame London for a crisis rooted in internal Shi’ite rivalries and almost certainly beyond any coalition-imposed solution.
Yet the British withdrawal from Basra – leaving the city effectively in the hands of Maliki’s opponents – presented the prime minister with a difficult challenge. He could ill afford to allow Iraq’s second city to remain in the hands of extremist factions. “Basra has been a mess for a long time,” one US official in Baghdad told The Washington Post yesterday, “and everyone has said to Maliki, ‘What are you doing about it?’ ” With provincial elections looming in October and his authority on the line, Maliki took advantage of the security lull spawned by the so-called “surge” – the increased US military presence directed by General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq. Under pressure to demonstrate that Iraqi forces were capable of operating without US officers holding their hands, he sent his army into battle.
Some national and local officials complained that the offensive had come as an unpleasant surprise. “Maliki did not consult the president, he did not consult the cabinet, he did not consult the parliament,” said a senior member of the government. “Nobody is happy with what’s happening.”
It was not long before US aircraft were reported to be mounting air strikes on Basra and US troops in armoured vehicles appeared to be taking the lead against Mahdi Army fighters in their vast Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.
As rockets fell on Baghdad’s Green Zone, the comparative calm that had enveloped the city for weeks – allowing residents to sit in street cafes – was shattered. US officials insisted that this was not their fight and their only role was to provide Maliki with back-up if he needed it.
Some officials even suggested that the Basra operation would prove a model for future cooperation, with Iraqis taking the leading role and American troops adopting what Petraeus once described as “overwatch” mode.
Yet as the week wore on the American unease was palpable, not least because nobody seemed entirely sure who was fighting whom and what was the ultimate prize.
While some officials interpreted the offensive as Maliki’s “first salvo in upcoming elections”, others saw a simple power grab for oil. The intricate differences between rival Shi’ite groups in Basra and their presumed links to Iran were all minutely examined by intelligence officers. Yet on Friday one administration official admitted: “We can’t quite decipher what’s going on.”
If Maliki can somehow crush the resistance of the Mahdi Army, he may well prove to be the answer to America’s prayers for a leader with the muscle and authority to keep a lid on Sunni-Shi’ite rivalries and ultimately to allow the US military to withdraw.
Yet Mahdi warriors such as Haidar Abdul Abbas did not look too worried about defeat last week. A 24-year-old expert at firing rocket-propelled grenades, Abbas was wearing funeral shrouds, signalling his willingness to die in combat.
“The Maliki government is now fighting on behalf of the [coalition] occupiers, forgetting that history is never kind to those who oppress,” he said. “Their fate will be the same as that of Saddam.
During another photo-op flying visit to Iraq, John McCain told reporters that it is well known that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists, a patently ludicrous claim that had to be immediately corrected by his traveling circus.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the conflict in Iraq and middle eastern politics knows, the insurgents now endlessly referred to as “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” are composed of mostly Sunni militants pitched in violent battle against Shi’ites and, by proxy, U.S. forces.
The reigning leaders in Iran are Shi’ite and have welcomed the emergence of a Shi’ite-led government in Iraq. To suggest they would also somehow train Sunni militants is totally backwards.
Indeed, Al Qaeda affiliated right wing terror groups in Iran are very much allied against the Ahmadinejad government and routinely carry out attacks aimed at Iranian soldiers and state figures.
Furthermore, the Bush administration has long asserted that elements of the Iranian security forces have been training and supplying weapons to Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, a claim Iran vigorously denies.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, said Tuesday that any hasty pullout from Iraq would be a mistake that would favor Iran and al-Qaida.
McCain, who has linked his political future to U.S. success in Iraq, was in the wartorn country on Monday for meetings with Iraqi and U.S. diplomatic and military officials.
“We were very encouraged by the success of the surge and the reduction in U.S. casualties,” McCain told reporters in Jordan, where he stopped on the next leg of a congressional visit that will also take him to Israel, Britain and France.
It was the senator’s eighth visit to Iraq, and his first since emerging as the presumed Republican candidate. He is accompanied by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., two of his top supporters in the race for president.
“We are succeeding, but we still have a long way to go,” McCain said, pointing at what he described as al-Qaida’s residual power in Iraq and at Iran’s growing influence, as the major remaining threats.
Western public opinion has been misled. Unfolding events and realities on the ground in the former Yugoslavia have been carefully manipulated.
Germany and the U.S. have deep-seated geo-strategic interests in dividing Yugoslavia. Washington, D.C. and Berlin have also been the first governments to recognize the secessionist states, which resulted from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.
The Broader Implications of Kosovo “Independence”
The February 2008 declaration of independence of Kosovo is a means towards legitimizing the dissolution and breaking up of sovereign states on a global scale.
Eurasia is the main target. Kosovar “independence” is part of a neo-colonial program with underlying economic and geo-political interests. The objective is to instate a New World Order and establish hegemonic control over the global economy.
In this sense Kosovo provides a blueprint and a “dress-rehearsal” which can now be applied to restructuring the economies and borders of the Middle East, under the Project for a “New Middle East.”
The restructuring model that is being applied in the former Yugoslavia is precisely what is intended for the Middle East — a process of balkanization and economic control.
Kosovo’s Pseudo-Declaration of Independence On February 17, 2008, the secessionist province of Kosovo declared unilateral independence from the Republic of Serbia. The occasion was declared through an extraordinary gathering of the Kosovar Parliament and its executive bodies. Belgrade has not had any control over Kosovo since 1999, when NATO went to war with Serbia to impose control over Kosovo under humanitarian arguments.
President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, and the Speaker of Parliament Jakup Krasniqi all marked the occasion with speeches inside and outside of the Kosovar Parliament.
Many in Kosovo’s ethic Albanian majority celebrated what they believed was a shift towards self-determination. The truth of the matter is that the Kosovar declaration of independence was a declaration of dependency and the surrounder of Kosovo to colonial forces.
Without any remorse Kosovar leaders have transformed their land into a colonial outpost of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. February 17, 2008 also marked the day that Kosovo further entrenched itself as a NATO-E.U. protectorate. Under the so-called independence” roadmap, NATO and E.U. troops and police officers will formally administer Kosovo.
In reality, Kosovo would have had greater independence as an autonomous province in an agreement of autonomy with Serbia, which had been envisaged in bilateral talks between Belgrade and Pristina. The majority of Kosovars would have been satisfied under such an agreement.
However, the talks were never meant to succeed for two obvious reasons:
1) the leadership of Kosovo are agents of foreign interests that do not represent the Kosovar populaiton;
2) the U.S. and E.U. were determined to establish another protectorate in the former Yugoslavia.
Kosovo: Another phase in the Economic Colonization of the former Yugoslavia
One of the leading global academic figures who has thoroughly documented the foreign-induced disintegration of Yugoslavia and the situation in Kosovo is Michel Chossudovsky. He has documented the economic and geo-strategic motives that have acted as the fingers pulling the strings that have caused the collapse of Yugoslavia and the drive for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. His work unmasks the truth behind the downfall of Yugoslavia and the tactics being used to divide nations and peoples who have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.
A glance at the restructuring of Bosnia-Herzegovina must be made before further discussing the case of Kosovo.
Bosnia’s constitution was written at a U.S. Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio by U.S. and European “experts.”
Chossoduvsky appropriately labels Bosnia-Herzegovina as a neo-colonial entity. NATO troops have dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina, closely followed by the imposition of a new political and economic framework and model.
Chossudovsky’s work also reveals that the real head of the Bosnian government, the High Representative, and the head of the Bosnian Central Bank are both foreigners that are hand-picked by the European Union, the U.S., and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). [1] This is a clear re-enactment of a colonial administration.
This model has also been replicated with some variations in several of the former republics of the Yugoslav federation. The major obstacle to the full implementation of this agenda is the popular will of the local people in the former Yugoslavia, especially the Serbs.
Serbia, like an island of resistance, is the last bastion of independence left in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans, but even in Serbia a modus vivendi exists where the local people have made a one-sided accommodation with the foreign economic agenda to allow their way of life to go on for a little longer. However, this accommodation is not meant to last.
The same Political and Socio-Economic Model is being applied in the Balkans and the Middle East
The process in Iraq is no different than the model applied in the former Yugoslavia. Divisions are fueled by foreign catalysts, the economy is destabilized, national dissolution is induced, and a new politico-socio-economic order is established.
Foreign interference and military intervention have also been justified on bogus humanitarian grounds. It is no coincidence that a “High Representative” was appointed by the American-led coaltion to govern occupied Iraq, thereby replicating the Bosnia-Herzegovina model, which is characterised by a E.U. appointed “High Representative.” The pattern should start becoming startlingly familiar!
The parallels between Iraq and the former Yugoslavia are endless.
In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and Britain established the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which evolved into the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority was also called “Special Representative,” “Governor,” “Special Envoy,” and “Consul.”
The justifications for setting up the occupying administration in Iraq, similarly to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where originally humanitarian and national stabilization. However, the main objectives of the Coalition Provisional Authority were to decentralize the state and implement a mass privatization program of Iraqi resources and wealth.
It is no coincidence that Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided alongside ethnic and religious lines: Serb, Croat, and Bosniak; Christians and Muslims. To these various ethnic-religious divisions further sectarian divisions were also added amongst the Christians: Eastern Orthodoxy versus Roman Catholicism.
A similar strategy of “divide and rule” was applied in Iraq. In Iraq the same pattern is being replicated alongside ethnic and sectarian lines: Arabs, Kurds, Turcoman, Assyrian, and others; Shiites versus Sunnis. Just like in the former Yugoslavia the centralized economic system of Iraq was also shattered by the occupying administration. Under the Anglo-American occupation and its Coalition Provisional Authority foreign corporations entered Iraq in a second wave of foreign invasion, an economic takeover.
This neo-colonial project is based on two inderdependent building blocks: a military stage executed by NATO and a process of political, social, and economic restructuring executed by the U.S. and E.U. with the help of corrupt local leaders in the occupied countries. The shock and awe of war opens the door for destabilization followed by “nation building” or the restructuring process, which even attacks the cultural and social roots of the target nation-state. The important cultural and historic aspects unifying the occupied nation-states have also been systematically attacked and errased.
US forces boasted of successfully completing the aerial bombing “blitz” which flattened the Baghdad suburb of Arab Jabour, as Iraqis mourned the more than 500 civilians killed when 114,500 pounds of bombs rained down for ten days on the residential area home to more than 120,000 people.
While Iraqi politicians, both Sunni and Shiite, condemned the air raids which also forced thousands of other civilians to flee their homes, the US commanders justified the aerial bombardment on the grounds that “drop was designed to eliminate al Qaeda’s tactical advantage,” ahead of a ground assault to flush out militants from the area.
“The strikes that we concluded (Jan. 20) were focused on IEDs and caches that we have targeted, that will allow us to get our ground troops further into the zone,” Army Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, with responsibility for the Arab Jabour portion of Multinational Division Center, said.
But Iraqi authorities in the area said described the bombing was “random and indiscriminate”, and claimed that at least 500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed by the air raids in the Sunni majority town.
Ferrell rejected the claim, saying that great care was taken in selecting targets, as the Army worked side by side with the Air Force to prevent collateral damage to civilians and property.
“The process that we go through to orchestrate an event of this magnitude, or any targeting cycle that we work together with the Air Force, is a very detailed, deliberate process,” Ferrell said. “We identify the targets, and they sit beside us, and through detailed and thorough analysis, we target it, they help analyze it, describe what effects we want to achieve, and then they work back through the Air Force system to get the desired effects.”
“This heinous crime show to the whole world the extent of the viciousness of the perpetrators who are targeting lives of the people, and not to respect the rights and honor of the human being having a place in all heavenly religions,” Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI), the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, stated last week.
The scholars called upon the international community, Arab League and all human right organizations in the world, requesting them to “get out of the circle of silent killers, and to have a role even if at minimal degree to stand against the perpetrators of these crimes.”
US forces carried out a similar massacre in Fallujah in November 2004, which killed more around 3,000 civilians, in one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq war.
80 Killed in Clashes in Iraq
Followers of a Shiite messianic cult clash with police in Basra and Nasiriya as thousands of pilgrims mark Ashura, the most important holiday for the sect.
Members of an obscure messianic cult fought Iraqi security forces Friday in two southern cities, leaving at least 80 people dead and scores injured, while spreading panic among worshipers marking Shiite Islam’s most important holiday.
The clashes, which erupted as Shiites marched, chanted and beat their chests in Basra and Nasiriya, represented the first major test for Iraqi security forces since Britain completed a transfer of responsibility for security in the region last month. They also pointed to dangerous divisions within Iraq’s majority Shiite population at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are claiming progress in curbing attacks by Sunni militants.
Members of the cult, which calls itself the Supporters of the Mahdi, mingled with the crowds in at least three sections of Basra and in Nasiriya, then fired shots at worshipers and the security forces, police and witnesses said.
Police said the cult’s leader, Ahmed Hassan, who called himself “the Yemeni,” was killed along with nearly 50 of his followers in the fighting in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. About 60 gunmen were arrested and large quantities of weapons were seized from a mosque linked to the group, said the Basra police chief, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf.
US president George W. Bush is to promise $20 billion in advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia as he travels through the Gulf states to garner support for further sanctions against Iran.
Yet even that gesture will not be enough to convince moderate Arab states to shun Iran, in a sign of its growing status as a Muslim world superpower.
The weapons deal, which is to include precision-guided missiles, first surfaced last autumn but was postponed over opposition in the US Congress.
Now the Bush administration is to notify Congress on Monday of its intent to conclude the deal, as Mr Bush lands in Riyadh.
The deal comes as America’s top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, revealed that attacks in Iraq linked to Iranian explosive devices had sharply increased in recent days.
He said violence caused by “explosively formed projectiles” was up by a factor of two or three in recent days.
“Frankly, we are trying to determine why that might be,” he said.
Speaking while visiting US troops in Kuwait, Mr Bush singled out Iran and Syria for their involvement in attacks in Iraq.
He said Syria “needs to further reduce the flow of terrorists, especially suicide bombers” while Iran had to stop supporting the militia groups that attacked Iraqi and coalition forces, and kidnapped and killed Iraqi officials.
“Iran’s role in fomenting violence has been exposed – Iranian agents are in our custody, and we are learning more about how Iran has supported extremist groups with training and lethal aid,” he said.
However, Arab diplomats warn that even the most loyal US allies face rising Islamist sympathies in their own countries and a concerted effort by Teheran to boost diplomatic and trade links with its near neighbours.
The Gulf states’ mostly pro-western rulers recognise the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose, but are reluctant to risk infuriating its fundamentalist regime, or be seen siding with Israel in the dispute over Teheran’s nuclear programme.
“We know Iran is a threat,” said one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It is by no means a friendly country to the Arab world. But President Bush has to give us something to be in this camp of so-called moderation.”
Riad Kahwaji, director of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said Mr Bush “will have to sell himself as the real superpower, with a real vision,” in order to regain influence lost over the last few years.
“Nobody in the region here is happy about what Iran is doing,” he said.
“But at the same time nobody is willing to put his neck out for the Americans.”
The Gulf states, which face Iran across the stretch of water through which much of the world’s oil is shipped, are ruled by Sunni Muslim governments, but Iran’s religious Shia regime is widely seen as the guardian of the millions of Shia who also live in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon – the so-called “Shia crescent”.
Now Teheran is enjoying a thawing in relations in the region as the Sunni-ruled states adjust to life in the shadow of an increasingly powerful Iran.
The Iranian regime has trading relationships worth £10bn a year with its neighbours and appears to be pushing to strengthen those ties.
There is also growing tolerance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, who was last month formally invited by Saudi Arabia – a key US ally – to attend the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage.
Saudi’s foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said last week that relations with Iran would continue regardless of US demands.
“We have relations with Iran and we talk with them, and if we felt any danger we have links… that allow us to talk about it,” he said. “So we welcome any issue the president raises, and we will discuss them from our point of view.”
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York (more…) for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?
Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it’s been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei (more…) and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA’s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they’ve been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn’t enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?
Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he’s not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?
Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That’s just their game.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?
Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You’d think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can’t possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren’t there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?
Hersh: Oh no. We’re going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can’t have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I’d actually be relieved because I’d know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he’s doing God’s work.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?
Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?
Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the “Surge” (eds. The “Surge” refers to President Bush’s commitment of 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.) as if it’s going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We’ve basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They’ve simply split.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?
Hersh: I think that’s a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.
Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he’s talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He’s not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You’re going to have a Kurdistan. You’re going to have a Sunni area that we’re going to have to support forever. And you’re going to have the Shiites in the South.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?
Hersh:The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn’t know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don’t care. They see it but they don’t care.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?
Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of the media. Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?
Hersh: Oh yeah. They’ve done a better job since. But back then, they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who’s going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock forward, and he’s going to put everybody in jeopardy and he’s secretive and he doesn’t tell Congress anything and he’s inured to what we write. In such a case, we (journalists) become more important. The First Amendment failed and the American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing. I’m asked the question all the time: What happened to my old paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They missed the biggest story of the time and they’re going to have to live with it.
WASHINGTON — Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of “shock and awe” with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.
Although air strikes don’t seem imminent as the U.S.-Iranian drama unfolds, planning for a bombing campaign and preparing for the geopolitical blowback has preoccupied military and political councils for months.
No one is predicting a full-blown ground war with Iran. The likeliest scenario, a blistering air war that could last as little as one night or as long as two weeks, would be designed to avoid the quagmire of invasion and regime change that now characterizes Iraq. But skepticism remains about whether any amount of bombing can substantially delay Iran’s entry into the nuclear-weapons club.
Attacking Iran has gone far beyond the twilight musings of a lame-duck president. Almost all of those jockeying to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush are similarly bellicose. Both front-runners, Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani, have said that Iran’s ruling mullahs can’t be allowed to go nuclear. “Iran would be very sure if I were president of the United States that I would not allow them to become nuclear,” said Mr. Giuliani. Ms. Clinton is equally hard-line.
Nor does the threat come just from the United States. As hopes fade that sanctions and common sense might avert a military confrontation with Tehran – as they appear to have done with North Korea – other Western leaders are openly warning that bombing may be needed.
Unless Tehran scraps its clandestine and suspicious nuclear program and its quest for weapons-grade uranium (it already has the missiles capable of delivering an atomic warhead), the world will be “faced with an alternative that I call catastrophic: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned.
Bombing Iran would be relatively easy. Its antiquated air force and Russian air-defence missiles would be easy pickings for the U.S. warplanes.
But effectively destroying Iran’s widely scattered and deeply buried nuclear facilities would be far harder, although achievable, according to air-power experts. But the fallout, especially the anger sown across much of the Muslim world by another U.S.-led attack in the Middle East, would be impossible to calculate.
Israel has twice launched pre-emptive air strikes ostensibly to cripple nuclear programs. In both instances, against Iraq in 1981 and Syria two months ago, the targeted regimes howled but did nothing.
The single-strike Israeli attacks would seem like pinpricks, compared with the rain of destruction U.S. warplanes would need to kneecap Iran’s far larger nuclear network.
“American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear centre in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq,” said John Pike, director at Globalsecurity.org, a leading defence and security group.
“Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States,” along with warplanes from land bases in the region and carriers at sea, at least two-dozen suspected nuclear sites would be targeted, he said.
Although U.S. ground forces are stretched thin with nearly 200,000 fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the firepower of the U.S. air force and the warplanes aboard aircraft carriers could easily overwhelm Iran’s defences, leaving U.S. warplanes in complete command of the skies and free to pound targets at will.
With air bases close by in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, including Kandahar, and naval-carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, hundreds of U.S. warplanes serviced by scores of airborne refuellers could deliver a near constant hail of high explosives.
Fighter-bombers and radar-jammers would spearhead any attack. B-2 bombers, each capable of delivering 20 four-tonne bunker-busting bombs, along with smaller stealth bombers and streams of F-18s from the carriers could maintain an open-ended bombing campaign.
“They could keep it up until the end of time, which might be hastened by the bombing,” Mr. Pike said. “They could make the rubble jump; there’s plenty of stuff to bomb,” he added, a reference to the now famous line from former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Afghanistan was a “target-poor” country.
Mr. Pike believes it could all be over in a single night. Others predict days, or even weeks, of sustained bombing.
Unidentified Pentagon planners have been cited talking of “1,500 aim points.” What is clear is that a score or more known nuclear sites would be destroyed. Some, in remote deserts, would present little risk of “collateral damage,” military jargon for unintended civilian causalities. Others, like laboratories at the University of Tehran, in the heart of a teeming capital city, would be hard to destroy without killing innocent Iranians.
What would likely unfold would be weeks of escalating tension, following a breakdown of diplomatic efforts.
The next crisis point may come later this month if the UN Security Council becomes deadlocked over further sanctions.
“China and Russia are more concerned about the prospect of the U.S. bombing Iran than of Iran getting a nuclear bomb,” says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Tehran remains defiant. Our enemies “must know that Iran will not give the slightest concession … to any power,” Iran’s fiery President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday. For his part, Mr. Bush has pointedly refused to rule out resorting to war. Last month, another U.S. naval battle group – including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman with 100 warplanes on board and the Canadian frigate HMCS Charlottetown as one of its screen of smaller warships – left for the Persian Gulf. At least one, and often two, carrier battle groups are always in the region.
Whether even weeks of bombing would cripple Iran’s nuclear program cannot be known. Mr. Pike believes it would set back, by a decade or more, the time Tehran needs to develop a nuclear warhead. But Iran’s clandestine program – international inspectors were completely clueless as to the existence of several major sites until exiles ratted out the mullahs – may be so extensive that even the longest target list will miss some.
“It’s not a question of whether we can do a strike or not and whether the strike could be effective,” retired Marine general Anthony Zinni told Time magazine. “It certainly would be, to some degree. But are you prepared for all that follows?”
Attacked and humiliated, Iran might be tempted, as Mr. Ahmadinejad has suggested, to strike back, although Iran has limited military options.
At least some Sunni governments in the region, not least Saudi Arabia, would be secretly delighted to see the Shia mullahs in Tehran bloodied. But the grave risk of any military action spiralling into a regional war, especially if Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to make good on his threat to attack Israel, remains.
“Arab leaders would like to see Iran taken down a notch,” said Steven Cook, an analyst specializing in the Arab world at the Council on Foreign Relations, “but their citizens will see this as what they perceive to be America’s ongoing war on Islam.”
Micah Brose, privately contracted interrogator working for US forces in Iraq.
Photograph: David Smith
US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.
Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is ‘gold’. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards’ alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.
Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there’s clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I’ve had, I’d say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.’
‘It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran’s not involved, it’s a let down.’ He added: ‘I’ve had people say to me, “They’re really pushing the Iran thing. It’s like, shit, you know.” ‘
Brose said that reports about Washington’s increasingly hawkish stance towards Tehran, including possible military action, chimed with his experience. ‘My impression is they’re just trying to get every little bit of ammunition possible. If we get something here it fits the overall picture. The engine needs impetus and they’re looking for us to find the fuel – a particular type of fuel.
‘It now really depends on who gets elected President in the US. If nothing changes in the current course, I’d say military action is inevitable. But we have to hope there will be a change of course.’
He denied ever being asked to fabricate evidence, adding: ‘We’re not asked to manufacture information, we’re asked to find it. But if a detainee wants to tell me what I want to hear so he can get out of jail… you know what I’m saying.’
Other military intelligence officials in Iraq refused to comment, but one said: ‘The message is, “Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran.” It’s sickening.’
Last week in Baghdad the US military showed journalists a recently discovered cache of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and bomb-making materials it claims are of Iranian origin. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, spokesman for Multi-National Force Iraq, said it was possible they crossed the border before a recent promise by Iran to stop the flow of munitions into Iraq.
He said: ‘Iran has had a historic malign influence here in Iraq. They have financed many of the activities of Shia extremist groups. In many cases they have done training, they have actually deployed some of their personnel here in theatre. The Qods Force (Iranian Revolutionary Guards) have come here – we know that, we’ve got some in detention. They have said in many cases they were not here and intend to support a more peaceful outcome in Iraq and we look for their excellence in achieving that.’
Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi insurgents are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles, which fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armoured military vehicle. The number two US commander in Iraq, Lt Gen Ray Odierno, said there has been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq in the last three months.
Head of the US Central Command Admiral William Fallon has said the Pentagon is not preparing for a pre-emptive attack against Iran.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Adm. William Fallon said while resolving the Iranian issue is a ‘challenge’ for Washington, a military strike is not ‘in the offing’.
“Another war is just not where we want to go,” said Adm. Fallon, who oversees military operations in the Middle East.
He added that attacking Iran as a means to force Tehran to alter its nuclear policies is not ‘the first choice in [his] book’.
According to several senior active and retired military officers, the Pentagon believes striking Iran would be ‘a strategic mistake’.
The US and its allies have accused the Islamic Republic of pursuing nuclear weaponry, while Iran and UN nuclear watchdog have repeatedly rejected the allegations as ‘baseless’.
Amid Washington’s increasing bellicose rhetoric against Tehran, analysts have raised the question whether Washington plans to wage a war against Iran.
Washington society has been chattering about the risk of war with Tehran. It’s an open secret that Vice President Dick Cheney has made bombing plans, but even high-ranking military experts think an attack would lead to world economic chaos, or even what George W. Bush calls ‘World War III.’
A member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard fires a rocket during a maneuver in a central desert area of Iran in 2006.
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.
OVER THE NORTH SEA (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday characterized U.S. military planning for a strike on Iran as “routine”.
“I would characterize it as routine,” Gates told reporters on a flight en route to Washington, when asked about any U.S. planning for military action against Iran.
The Pentagon plans for hundreds of potential scenarios that could involve military force in a variety of roles ranging from offensive operations to disaster response.
Tensions between Washington and Iran have climbed this year. The United States and others accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons under cover of a peaceful nuclear energy program.
The United States also accuses Iran of providing weapons, training and other support to insurgents in Iraq.
Iran has denied those charges.
Gates said the United States was focused on diplomatic and economic pressure against Iran.
“The focus that we all have is on using diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions to persuade the Iranian government that they are isolated, they need to alter their policies and ambitions,” he said.
noworldsystem.com note: The man who predicted “Bush is going to hit“ Iran before presidential term is up tells audience member to ‘shut up’ after asking tough questions about the possibility of a War with Iran.
Neo-Con Podhoretz Tells Audience To ‘Shut Up’ After Tough Questions
Giuliani’s foreign policy advisor Implies Iran should be bombed because it carried out 9/11
Arch-Neo Con Norman Podhoretz’s book reading at a recent Barnes and Noble appearance in New York turned into a hostile affair after he told the audience that Iran should be bombed because “We were attacked by Islamofascists on 9/11,” before being bombarded with accusatory questions and eventually telling the crowd to “shut up”.
Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy advisor was subject to walkouts by individuals disgusted at the fact that Podhoretz openly called for air strikes on Iran, labeling Podhoretz a “fascist” who would have blood on his hands.
Asked whether there should be a fresh investigation into 9/11, Podhoretz simply dismissed the suggestion as “paranoia” and refused to answer the question.
He later defended the fact that he signed the infamous Project For a New American Century documents, a Neo-Con manifesto for world domination that includes advocating the use of race-specific bio-weapons, and claimed that the PNAC had been “misrepresented”.Podhoretz then admitted that the CIA had overthrown the U.S.-friendly Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadegh in the 50’s, but called it “ancient history.”
He then went on to make a case that Iran was behind the violence in Iraq and had formed an alliance with Al-Qaeda, despite the fact that the two are Shia and Sunni respectively and as such are arch-enemies. He was then educated about how in fact it was the U.S. government that is funding Al-Qaeda affiliated groups to attack Iran. This mattered little to Podhoretz, who was then asked why we should “fight back” against Iran by bombing them when they had never attacked us?
Podhoretz’s answer was to state that, “We were attacked by Islamofascists on 9/11,” clearly implying that Iran attacked the U.S. on 9/11. Such unmitigated and bellicose propaganda might fly on Fox News, but many members of the audience were having none of it, asking why they should trust Bush and the Neo-Cons after being lied to for six years.
“Why don’t you shut up,” barked Podhoretz, seemingly having abandoned his ceaseless regurgitation of warmongering rhetoric and finally losing his temper.
Several members of the audience were kicked out of the store by cops but as Podhoretz left he was heckled again as protesters chanted “No Iran war,” before ducking into a vehicle and scurrying away.
The incident was another example of the sterling efforts of We Are Change NYC, who have made headlines this year for their prolific confrontations of numerous public figures from Hillary Clinton, to David Rockefeller, to Alan Greenspan.
Giuliani enlisted Podhoretz as his foreign policy advisor back in July. In September, Podhoretz met secretly with President Bush and Karl Rove and encouraged them to bomb Iran. Podhoretz is widely considered to be one of the few remaining hardcore Neo-Con loyalists, while a sizeable majority of the rest begin to flee the sinking ship as public opinion turns ferociously against the Neo-Con’s anti-American agenda and incessant warmongering.
A report by Iraq’s parliament confirms that the US military had cooperated with terrorists in a raid on a village in Diyala province.
Ali Adib, an MP form the United Iraqi Alliance, in a report to the Iraqi National Assembly on Sunday said that a probe launched by the parliament into the incident had proved that the US army helped terrorists attack the Shia village of Jizani al-Imam on October 15.
At least 26 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the raid, one of the bloodiest massacres since the US invasion of Iraq.
According to IRNA, after the report, Iraqi MP’s considered a bill to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq.
The report and the decision by the MPs represent another challenge to the embattled Bush’s administration which is under fire over the unpopular war in Iraq.
The Iraqi parliament also condemned an attack on Baghdad’s Sadr city by the US military which left 49 civilians dead.
British special forces have carried out several operations inside Iran in recent months in an attempt to prevent the Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds force from shipping weapons to Iraq, the Sunday Times reported.
The British and Australian SAS forces are reportedly working with American special forces to patrol the border to prevent weapons – including surface-to-air missiles and parts for IEDs (improvised explosive devices) – from reaching the hands of Iraqi insurgents.
According to the article, the SAS have engaged in at least six “intense firefights” with both Iranian and Iraqi Shi’ite arms smugglers. The fighting has reportedly taken place on both sides of the Iran-Iraq border, and Iran has fired mortar shells across the border.
The Times said that officials have stated that while the British troops are working to prevent arms smuggling, they do not cross the border into Iran.
As of last week, the report said, UK armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth could not say whether any Iranians had been killed or captured as part of the special forces operations.
Meanwhile, ongoing reports have come out that American special forces are operating inside Iran in an attempt to preempt a possible attack. British and American forces share intelligence on Iranian activity.
A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.
The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The U.S. government effectively attacked Iran yesterday after its proxy terror group Jundullah launched a suicide bomb attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at their headquarters in Pishin, near the border with Pakistan.
Former Pakistan Army Chief General ’’Retd’’ Mirza Aslam Baig on Tuesday said that Iran and Pakistan are under siege of western conspiracies.
In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power, about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect on Monday of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.
Senior Iraqi government officials said Saturday that a U.S. Special Forces counterterrorism unit conducted the raid that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki , touching off a high-stakes diplomatic crisis between the United States and Iraq .
Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has detailed a move by the Bush administration, with Congressional backing, which represents a “major escalation” in covert military operations aimed at destabilizing the Iranian leadership.
The L.A. Times’ 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused U.S. forces in Iraq of planning to kidnap and assassinate him when he visited the country in March, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said. 
The costs on American taxpayers may reach $2.7 trillion by the time the Iraq war ends, according to a Congressional testimony.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki suggested that US forces might be asked to leave if the two countries cannot agree on the new status of forces agreement, McClatchy 
A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security, Gulf News has learned. 
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement
US forces boasted of successfully completing the aerial bombing “blitz” which flattened the Baghdad suburb of Arab Jabour, as Iraqis mourned the more than 500 civilians killed when 114,500 pounds of bombs rained down for ten days on the residential area home to more than 120,000 people.
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