Turkish President Abdullah Gul urged his Iranian counterpart to accept the new incentives package of the Western countries and warned on a possible U.S. military operation, Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday.
Turkey urges Iran to accept incentives, warns on U.S. attack Gul and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met on Thursday to discuss the international row over Tehran’s nuclear works and bilateral relations.
Two leaders, however, failed to sign agreements on multi-billion dollars energy agreement, a move came after the U.S. pressure who seeks to increase the isolation of Iran, some media reports earlier suggested.
Following a meeting this weekend between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah, Iran was told not to allow the U.S. and Israel to create a pretext for a military attack, a warning interpreted by Tehran that an impending attack is on the horizon.
“Iran should not present on a silver platter the justifications and the pretexts for those who want to drag the region down a dangerous slope,” Egypt’s presidential spokesman Suleiman Awwad said on Saturday.
“Middle East sources report that the Iranian satellite carrier space launch Sunday, Aug. 17, was prompted by a joint caution to Tehran from Saudi King Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak,” reports Debka File.
“This warning was interpreted by the London Arabic daily Al Quds as a warning to Tehran that an attack is impending by the US, some European nations and Israel.”
The warning follows last week’s decision on behalf of Kuwait to activate its highest priority Emergency War Plan in response to thelargest U.S. naval deployment since 1991 as three more U.S. warships steamed towards the Persian Gulf in what observers described as an “unprecedented” build-up.
Finding and even staging a suitable pretext for a military attack on Iran has been a preoccupation amongst top Neo-Cons for months if not years.
Last month, New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh sensationally revealed that during a meeting held in the Vice President’s office concerning the creation of a justification to attack Iran, Dick Cheney proposed dressing up Navy Seals as Iranians, putting them on fake Iranian PT speedboats and starting a shoot up.
The plan was purportedly rejected but Hersh noted that the incident in the Straight of Hormuz, in which tiny Iranian speedboats on patrol inside Iranian waters were said to have threatened three U.S. warships with suicide attacks (a ridiculous claim completely fabricated by the U.S. and lapped up by the western media) taught the Bush administration that “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.
On today’s show, Alex talks with former LA County district attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi, who recently appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of Bush.
Cheney considered idea to dress-up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats and have other Seals shoot at them to trigger “World War 4”.
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.
“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”
Transcript:
HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…
There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.
And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.
But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.
…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.
Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.
The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world’s largest oil-exporting region.
“The aim of Exercise Stake Net is to practise the tactics and procedures of protecting maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations,” Commodore Peter Hudson said in a U.S. Fifth Fleet statement.
The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in remarks published late last month that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its nuclear programme has risen since a report last month said Israel had practised such a strike.
Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said last week the United States would not allow Iran to block the Gulf.
Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, has helped propel oil prices over $140 a barrel.
Two U.S. vessels were taking part in the exercise alongside a British warship and one from Bahrain, a Gulf Arab ally which hosts the Fifth Fleet. “Stake Net seeks to help ensure a lawful maritime order as well as improve relationships between regional partners,” the fleet’s statement said.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards began military maneuvers on Monday, news agencies said, the same day the U.S. Navy said it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf.
The war games were conducted by missile units of the Guards’ naval and air forces, the Fars and Mehr news agencies said. They said the exercises, which began a few hours ago, were aimed at improving combat readiness and capability.
The reports did not give details of where the exercise was taking place. The Guards often conduct maneuvers in the Gulf.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its disputed nuclear program has risen since the New York Times newspaper reported last month that Israel’s armed forces had practiced such a strike.
Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.
The Iraqi government’s main allies are the US and Iran, whose governments openly detest each other. The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran. Iraqi leaders have to continually perform a balancing act in which they seek to avoid alienating either country.
The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran. The most effective of these opponent groups is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which enraged the Iraqi government by staging a conference last month at Camp Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad. It demanded the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of all Iranian agents in Iraq. “It was a huge meeting” said Dr Othman. “All the tribes and political leaders who are against Iran, but are also against the Iraqi government, were there.” He said the anti-Iranian meeting could not have taken place without US permission.
The Americans disarmed the 3,700 MEK militants, who had long been allied to Saddam Hussein, at Camp Ashraf in 2003, but they remain well-organised and well-financed. The extent of their support within Iran remains unknown, but they are extremely effective as an intelligence and propaganda organisation.
Though the MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, the Pentagon and other US institutions have been periodically friendly to it. The US task force charged by Mr Bush with destabilising the Iranian government is likely to co-operate with it.
In reaction to the conference, the Iraqi government, the US and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have started secret talks on the future of the MEK with the Iraqi government pressing for their expulsion from Iraq. Dr Othman, who speaks to the MEK frequently by phone, said: “I pressed them to get out of Iraq voluntarily because they are a card in the hands of the Americans.”
An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein. The MEK even played a role in 1991 in helping to crush the uprising against the Baathist regime at the end of the Gulf war. The dissidents from Arab districts in southern Iran around Ahwaz were funded by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence organisations, which orchestrated the seizure of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 which was supposedly carried out by Arab nationalists from Iran.
The one community in Iran most likely to oppose the Tehran government is the Iranian Kurds. There have been an increasing number of attacks by PJAK, the Iranian wing of the Turkish PKK, which claims to be a separate party. Based in the Kandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan, PJAK has carried out frequent raids into Iran and has reportedly been able to win local support. But it would be extremely dangerous for the US to be seen as a supporter of PJAK as this would offend the Turks who have a military co-operation agreement with Iran against terrorism
Iranian army soldiers march during the Army Day military parade in Tehran – April 18, 2007
Iran’s military chiefs warned on Saturday that the Islamic republic would shut down the Strait of Hormuz vital for oil exports and use “blitzkrieg tactics” in the Gulf if it came under attack.
“All the countries should know that if Iran’s interests in the region are ignored, it is natural that we will not allow others to use it (the strait),” said army chief General Hassan Firouzabadi, quoted by the Fars news agency.
However, Iran’s armed forces joint chief of staff stressed his country’s priority was that the Strait of Hormuz remain open.
Speculation has been rife that Israel could be planning a military strike against Iranian nuclear sites, using force to halt Tehran’s controversial atomic activities.
The chief of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards militia, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, meanwhile, warned that his forces would use “blitzkrieg tactics” in the Gulf if his country came under attack.
“The Guards are equipped with the most advanced missiles that can strike the enemies’ vessels and naval equipment with fatal blows,” Fars quoted the Guards chief as saying.
In case of attack, “blitzkrieg tactics and operations of the Guards’ boats will not leave a chance for the enemies to run away.”
“These words do not mean that the prerequisites of war are being set but these are the strategies that our alert armed forces have prepared for any hypothesis,” he added.
The new commander of the US Fifth Fleet, Vice Admiral William Gortney, said on Saturday that the American naval presence in the region was “a very clear message that we are here to maintain security and to provide stability.”
“The chief of naval operations wanted me here, I think, because of my experience,” Gortney, who was navy chief during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, told reporters in Bahrain where the fleet is based.
His predecessor, Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff, has warned that Fifth Fleet would not allow Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.
The strait between Iran and Oman is a vital conduit for energy supplies, with as much as 40 percent of the world’s crude passing through the strategic waterway.
US President George W. Bush has not ruled out using force in the nuclear standoff between Iran and the West, but emphasised that he preferred a diplomatic solution.
Iran insists its atomic drive is peaceful, but Western powers fear Tehran is using the programme to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran Says Attack on Atomic Sites to Be `Start of War’
Iran will view an attack on its nuclear facilities as an act of war and will respond, the head of the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said.
“Any act on Iran will be considered the start of war,” General Mohammad Ali Jaafari told reporters yesterday in response to questions about the threat of an Israeli strike on Iranian atomic sites, according to remarks carried today on the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Jaafari also said he thought it is unlikely such an attack would be carried out.
The U.S. and many of its allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists the program is aimed at producing electricity. Iran today will present its response to incentives from world powers intended to persuade the country to suspend work to enrich uranium, Agence France-Presse reported. The material can fuel a power station or arm a nuclear weapon.
Reports that Israel may attack Iran have boosted oil prices. If attacked, Iran will “impose control” on the Strait of Hormuz, Jaafari said on June 28. About 20 percent of the world’s daily supply of oil passes through the strait. Crude for August delivery rose $5.08, or 3.6 percent, to $145.29 a barrel this week on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures reached $145.85 a barrel yesterday, the highest since trading began in 1983.
Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari, who was in Madrid for the World Petroleum Congress, yesterday reiterated his nation’s pledge to respond to any strike.
Impact on Markets
“Iran’s stance in this connection against enemies is clear, vivid and strong,” Nozari told the Iranian news agency before leaving Madrid. “Oil is an energy and industry for peace and its durability depends on peace and security. So, any tension in any region, especially in the Persian Gulf, which is the major supplier of the main part of the world’s energy, will have an impact on the energy market which is principally unpredictable.”
An Iranian commander says the global community turned a blind eye to the downing of a passenger jet by the US navy in the Persian Gulf.
The Deputy Head of Iran’s Armed Forces Headquarters, Brigadier General Seyyed Masoud Jazayeri, said Saturday that July 3 is a ’shameful day’ for the so-called US democracy.
Iran Air Flight 655 was destroyed by the US Navy’s guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes between Bandar Abbas and Dubai on Sunday July 3, 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz.
The US warship patrolling Iran’s maritime territory killed all 290 passengers, including 66 children, and crewmembers.
The White House claims the incident was an honest mistake on behalf of the US Navy. Iran, however, says there is no way that an Airbus A300 can be mistaken for an F-14 Tomcat fighter.
“What is most disgraceful and shameful is that the criminal commander of the ship was awarded the Legion of Merit medal,” Gen. Jazayeri continued.
Lieutenant Commander Scott Lustig, air-warfare coordinator on the Vincennes, received the Commendation Medal for ’heroic achievement’, noting his ’ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire’ that enabled him to ’quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure’.
The Iranian commander added that the UN Security Council did not take reasonable measures against the US over targeting the civilian aircraft within Iranian airspace.
Gen. Jazayeri called on the international community to never forget Washington’s atrocities in the Persian Gulf, the US government’s refusal to claim responsibility for the incident, and its refusal to apologize to the Iranian nation.
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.
A respected American Journalist has accused a Pentagon spokesman of falsifying events surrounding the recent encounter between Iranian patrol boats and a US navy vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, which was eventually labeled a “provocation” by the White House.
Gareth Porter, a journalist who previously broke a story regarding a secret Iranian peace overture to the Bush Administration in 2006, writing for the Asia Times states that the event was hyped up into a major incident after the original press release described the event as somewhat routine and did not refer to any threat to “explode” US ships or any similar confrontation.
the release reported that the Iranian “small boats” had “maneuvered aggressively in close proximity of [sic] the Hopper [the lead ship of the three-ship convoy]. But it did not suggest that the Iranian boats had threatened the boats or that it had nearly resulted in firing on the Iranian boats.
On the contrary, the release made the US warships handling of the incident sound almost routine,” Porter adds. “‘Following standard procedures,’ the release said, “Hopper issued warnings, attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering.’
The release did not refer to a US ship being close to firing on the Iranian boats, or to a call threatening that US ships would “explode in a few minutes”, as later stories would report, or to the dropping of objects into the path of a US ship as a potential danger.
That press release was ignored by the news media, however, because later that Monday morning, the Pentagon provided correspondents with a very different account of the episode.
The fact that several mainstream reports then emerged at the same time all carrying almost identical accounts of the incident, including the details of threats to explode vessels and dropping white boxes, can be traced back to a press briefing by a top Pentagon official in charge of media relations, Porter divulges.
He identifies Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman’s off the record comments to journalists as the catalyst for the ensuing pandemonium. Porter states that Whitman hadn’t wished to be identified as the source:
In an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away – a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official.
Three days later, at the height of the hype, the Pentagon released a video of the incident into which had been inserted audio of a strange voice threatening to “explode” the US vessel.
Porter reveals that according to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros of the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office the decision on what to include in the video was “a collaborative effort of leadership here, the Central Command and navy leadership in the field”. Porter also reveals that according to an official in the US Navy Office of Information in Washington, who asked not to be identified, the decision was made in the office of the Secretary of Defense.
Shortly after Iranian officials had denounced the video as a fake and had released alternative footage of their boats in contact with the US warship, it became apparent that the audio spliced into the video had not originated from the boats themselves but must have instead come from hecklers, often referred to as the “Filipino Monkey”, who cut in on VHF ship-to-ship radios and make rude comments or threats.
The Pentagon then backed away from claims that it knew the source of the audio or had ever known the source.
By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. “No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats,” said Morrell.
No one said it but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they spliced the audio into the video of an unrelated incident!
The story then essentially fell apart altogether and dropped off the radar as Navy officials began to discredit the rest of the distortions perpetuated by the Pentagon.
Porter also spoke to a Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified who told him that many officers have experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are “just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination”.
These revelations show just how easy it is for a non event to be hyped to serve an agenda and how the mainstream media is eager to swallow whole whatever the government feeds them.
The event mirrors that of the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where an attack on US warships by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam. However Tonkin was revealed as a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes featured discussions on how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes. In addition, the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost. This information was again reiterated in a report released last week.
Fox News Reverses Course After Initially Calling For U.S. Navy To Blow Iran Boats ‘Out Of The Water’
On January 7, the media reported that five Iranian speedboats had harassed three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz, almost instigating a military confrontation. The next day, Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade angrily claimed the Navy should have blown the Iranian boats out of the water. Speaking on the morning show Fox & Friends, Kilmeade said the following:
KILMEADE: Was this a mistake not to blow these other Iranian speedboats out of the water? […] Why did we not destroy these speedboats? […] We had an opportunity to send a message to a nation that has been needling us for 20 years.
Today, a week after his call for war with Iran, Brian Kilmeade was forced to concede that the verbal threats made against the U.S. ships are “a possible hoax from a man called the ‘Filipino Monkey.'” Kilmeade’s co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed that she knew it all along. “I remember sitting in my office thinking, you gotta be kidding me? That voice does not sound to me like an Iranian accent.” She didn’t say that on-air, however, prior to this morning.
Kilmeade’s other co-host, Steve Doocy, piped in with this comment:
DOOCY: But can you imagine, had we blown those little boats out of the water to find out, you know, that they didn’t have bombs and in fact it was the Filipino Monkey who was somewhere on shore pulling a prank?
Indeed, we would have have, if Fox News had its way. Watch a compilation:
During the Faux News “debate,” actually a tightly scripted soap opera, the Huckster said Iran would see the “gates of Hell” if it dared confront U.S. warships parked off its coastline in the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr. Law and Order, faux good ol’ boy Fred Thompson, agreed whole heartedly. “Mr Huckabee has faced grave doubts about his foreign policy experience, his greatest vulnerability, but got one of the biggest cheers of the night when asked about the incident last week when Iranian boats swarmed US navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz,” reports the Times Online.
Asked whether the American commanders on the scene were right in not attacking the Iranian boats, Mr Huckabee said he backed their decisions, before warning Iran: “Be prepared, first, to put your sights on the American vessel. And then be prepared that the next thing you see will be the gates of Hell, because that is exactly what you will see after that.”
Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star who is banking all on victory in South Carolina to revive his campaign, said of the Iranian boat crews: “I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they’re looking forward to seeing.” The crowd cheered.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said: “I think an incident like this reminds us that we shouldn’t be lulled into some false sense of confidence about Iran.”
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor seeking to become America’s first Mormon president, said: “I believe it was a very serious act.”
Indeed, the “crowd cheered,” as they are accustomed to celebrating lies, sort of the same way a well trained monkey dances to an organ grinder. As Gareth Porter notes for Inter Press Service, the entire incident is little more than a boatload of hooey. “Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a ‘battle at sea’, new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.”
In fact, it appears the neocon propaganda spinners exploited the fact “that in the Persian Gulf, the ‘bridge-to-bridge’ radio channel used to communicate between ships ‘is like a bad CB radio’ with many people using it for ‘hurling racial slurs’ and ‘threats.'” Porter writes that a “veteran U.S. naval officer who had served as a surface warfare officer aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Gulf sent a message to the New York Times” indicating that his “first thought” was that the message “might not have even come from one of the Iranian craft.” Pentagon officials later sheepishly admitted to the New York Times that they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from another source, not the Revolutionary Guard.
In other words, it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the entire affair was made up, as the neocons are infamous for making things up as a pretext for mass murder.
Of course, none of this matters because, thanks to the corporate media, a lot of people now believe Iran was ready to attack our precious warships. All it takes to “catapult the propaganda,” as the neocon tool Bush would have it, is to run a few hours of sensationalistic and bogus sound bites on Faux and CNN, rerun file footage of destroyers and fast boats, and of course ominous images of mullahs and fanatical Revolutionary Guards marching in formation.
Bingo, zingo — you have another Gulf of Tonkin, or something perilously close.
Thus serious catapulting as a matter of course occurred during the “debate,” with the selectees pounding their chests like primates and making not so veiled threats against a country that has done absolutely nothing to the American people, not that any actual threat is the reason the neocons have made so much noise about Iran. It has nothing to do with reality. It has everything to do with the neocon plan to deconstruct the Muslim Middle East by way of bunker buster and cruise missile.
The U.S. Navy said Friday that one of its ships fired warning shots at a small Iranian boat in the Strait of Hormuz in December during one of two serious encounters that month.
The USS Whidbey Island fired the warning shots on Dec. 19 in response to a small Iranian boat that was rapidly approaching it, said a U.S. Navy official.
“One small (Iranian) craft was coming toward it, and it stopped after the Whidbey Island fired warning shots,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
It was the first official confirmation that the United States had fired warning shots in any recent confrontation with Iran in the Gulf.
Doubts intensified last night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.
Several news sources reported that senior navy officials had conceded that the voice threatening to blow up the US warships in a matter of minutes could have come from another ship in the region, or even from shore.
The concession came on the day that a formal American complaint was lodged with Iran over the incident, and just 24 hours after President George Bush, on tour in the Middle East where he will be discussing policy towards Iran, warned Tehran to desist from such aggression and said any repetition would lead to “serious consequences”.
The Pentagon alleges that the confrontation lasted about 20 minutes and took place in the Strait of Hormuz, where the US ships were in international waters. Five Iranian patrol boats swarmed around three US warships and came within a threatening 200 metres, prompting US personnel to be put on alert.
The US navy has said that its gunners came within seconds of firing on the speedboats.
On Tuesday, the US administration released video footage that it said showed the Iranian speedboats harassing the American vessels. A voice in English with a strong accent was heard to say: “I am coming at you – you will explode in a couple of minutes.”
Yesterday the Iranians put out their own four-minute video that showed an Iranian patrol officer in a small boat communicating with one of the US ships. “Coalition warship number 73, this is an Iranian navy patrol boat,” the Iranian said. An American naval officer replied: “This is coalition warship number 73 operating in international waters.”
The voice of the Iranian sailor in Tehran’s footage was different to the deeper and more menacing voice, threatening to blow up the warships in the US version. Nor was there any sign of aggressive behaviour by the Iranian patrol boats.
The Strait of Hormuz is a particularly sensitive stretch of water, both economically as a key shipping route for oil from the Gulf, and militarily. The location, together with memories of the arrest of 15 British sailors by the Iranians last year and their detention for two weeks, is likely to have heightened nerves on both sides.
But the mystery remains of where the voice that apparently threatened to bomb the US ships came from. The Pentagon has said that it recorded the film and the sound separately, and then stitched them together – a dubious piece of editing even before it became known that the source of the voice could not, with certainty, be linked to the Iranian patrol boats.
A post on the New York Times news blog yesterday from a former naval officer with experience of these waters said that the radio frequency used in the Strait of Hormuz was regularly polluted with interfering chatter, somewhat like CB radio. “My first thought was that the ‘explode’ comment might not have come from one of the Iranian craft, but some loser monitoring the events at a shore facility.”
Despite growing doubts about what happened, the Bush administration continued to stand by claims of Iranian hostility. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, said the concern came from the “fact that there were five of these boats and that they came as close as they did to our ships and behaved in a pretty aggressive manner”.
US President George W. Bush promised Israel’s opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu that the United States will join the Jewish state in a nuclear strike against Iran, Israel Radio reported today.
Former Prime Minister Netanyahu, opposition Likud party’s hardline chairman who opposes the US-backed Annapolis peace process, reiterated to President Bush his stance, that a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was the only way to stop the Islamic nation’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
“I told him my position and Bush agreed,” Netanyahu told Israel Radio.
During their 45-minute meeting at King David hotel in Jerusalem Netanyahu also told Bush that “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”
President Bush issued a stark warning to Iran over Strait of Hormuz incident, saying that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”
“There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple,” Bush said during the joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. “And my advice to them is, don’t do it.”
Bush criticized those who interpret the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, as a sign that Iran was no longer a threat.
“Let me remind you what the NIE actually said,” Bush stold reporters. “It said that as far as the intelligence community could tell, at one time the Iranians had a military — covert military program that was suspended in 2003 because of international pressure. My attitude is that a non-transparent country, a country which has yet to disclose what it was up to, can easily restart a program.”
Israel is keeping all options on the table if economic and diplomatic pressure fails to halt archfoe Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said on Thursday.
“In assessing the threat from Iran we see in sync and think similarly. Both America and Israel understand the severity of the threat, the implication of the threat if it grows,” Israel’s US Ambassador Sallai Meridor said.
He spoke a day after visiting US President George W. Bush met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem at the start of his regional visit for talks that focused on the Islamic republic.
“Both the US and Israel would prefer seeing this threat removed through diplomatic-economic means without any need to take other steps,” he said.
Asked if a military strike was a realistic option, Meridor said “both the US and Israel haven’t removed any option from the table,”
“All options are on the table, not only in the future. They are on the table if we get to the point, and I hope we don’t get to the point, that diplomactic and economic preferred alternatives will fail to produce the hoped for results.”
International support for new sanctions on Iran has been waning since a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in early December said that the Islamic republic had halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
Israel considers the Islamic republic its main regional threat in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements for it to be wiped off the map.
Widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel along with the US suspects that Tehran’s nuclear programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies.
Iran broadcast video Thursday of its boats and U.S. naval ships in the Persian Gulf in an apparent attempt to show that there was no confrontation between the vessels.
The grainy 5-minute, 20-second video showed a man speaking into a handheld radio, with three U.S. ships floating in the distance. It appeared to be shot from a small boat bobbing at least 100 yards from the American warships.
The footage did not show any Iranian boats approaching the U.S. vessels or any provocation. But the short clip likely did not show Sunday’s entire encounter, which U.S. Navy officials described as threatening, and said lasted about 20 minutes.
Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.
The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.”
The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else. We’re saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there,” said the spokesperson. “It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”
The Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying U.S.-released video is fabricated. Today, the Iranian government aired its own video of the event on state-run TV there. On the audio, the voice that the Iranians say is the communication from their vessel can be heard identifying itself to the American ship, “Coalition warship No. 73 this is an Iranian navy patrol boat.”The incident ended without shots being fired, but senior defense officials told ABC News that the USS Hopper’s gunners were within seconds of firing on the Iranians.
Desperate for a Gulf of Tonkin style incident to reinvigorate momentum for an attack on Iran after the National Intelligence Estimate derailed the push for war, the Pentagon is crying foul over the alleged hostile intent of Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats after an incident in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend.
In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels, reports the Associated Press.U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. “It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we’ve seen yet,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
Of course, the hyping of such an incident is directly timed to correlate with Bush’s visit to the middle east this week in which he will make a desperate attempt to resurrect the boogeyman of Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.
He will also be briefed by Israeli security officials about “Iran’s nuclear programme – and how it could be destroyed,” reports the London Times.
But that matters not to war junkie Neo-Cons who will use any pretext to send more American boys and girls into the imperial meat-grinder in the interests of middle eastern hegemony and corporate blood money.
Numerous respected public figures, from Ron Paul to Zbigniew Brzezinski have warned that a Gulf of Tonkin style stunt could be pulled as a pretext for air strikes on Iran.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Bush administration has considered staging incidents as a justification for war. During Bush’s January 31 2003 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a scenario whereby Saddam Hussein would be goaded into shooting down a U2 spy plane painted in UN colors was discussed.
An Iranian official has dismissed Washington’s claims that IRGC speedboats harassed three US navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The US vessels approached the Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, warning they were in the red zone, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Press TV on Monday.
He added that the Iranians had asked the warships to identify themselves, as such radio communications are usual between vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Although the Pentagon claimed that US sailors were given orders to open fire on the Iranian boats, the official confirmed no hostile encounter took place.
Speaking at the 
The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world’s largest oil-exporting region. 
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards began military maneuvers on Monday, news agencies said, the same day the U.S. Navy said it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf.
Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.
Iran will view an attack on its nuclear facilities as an act of war and will respond, the head of the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said.
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.
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