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.
ZAHEDAN: A top Sunni rebel who is awaiting execution in Iran said on Tuesday that his militant group received orders from the United States to launch terror attacks in the Islamic republic.
Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group leader Abdolmalek Rigi, told reporters his brother was an Al-Qaeda point man in Iran six years ago but that later the group broke off ties with him.
‘The United States created and supported Jundallah and we received orders from them,’ Rigi said in Iran’s restive southeastern city of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
‘They (US officials) told us whom to shoot and whom not to. All orders came from them. They told us that they would provide us with everything we need like money and equipment.’
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.”
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.
The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent.
Over 180,000 payments, mostly since the war started in 2003, were made by the defense department to contractors for everything from bottled water to vehicles to transportation services.
In her testimony, Ugone also revealed that $135 million were given to forces from three countries UK, South Korea and Poland to facilitate their participation in the war. This is the first time that the US has officially admitted paying its allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing that invaded Iraq in March 2003.
In his opening statement, Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said that wounded soldiers are getting notices from the Pentagon to return signing bonuses with interest since they had not completed the full term. “There is something very wrong when our wounded troops have to fill out forms in triplicate for meal money while billions of dollars in cash are handed out in Iraq with no accountability,” he said.
In an earlier report released in November 2007, the Inspector General had concluded that the Defense Department couldn’t properly account for over $5 billion in taxpayer funds spent in support of the Iraq Security Forces. It said that thousands of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were unaccounted for, and millions of dollars had been squandered on construction projects that did not exist.
Ugones testimony gave detailed examples of the bizarre manner in which US defense officials doled out huge amounts of money without recording where it was going. In one case a sum of $320 million was paid an Iraqi official for paying salaries with only an incompletely filled voucher signed by one official. Since no details of the spending plan were attached as required by Pentagon rules the auditors have no clue as to where the money went. This payment was made from assets seized from Iraq.
Auditors found that the Pentagon gave away $1.8 billion from seized Iraqi assets. There were 53 vouchers noting these payments but not even one adequately explained where the money went.
In another instance, two vouchers, one for $5 million and the other for $2.7 million showed payments to a vendor for goods and services provided except that there were no details of what goods or services were actually delivered.
Over $2.7 billion was spent on providing equipment and services to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The auditors found that $2 billion of this was not properly accounted for. For example, 31 heavy tracked recovery vehicles costing $10.2 million were given to the ISF, but 18 of them could not be traced because identification numbers were not recorded.
It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.
Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.
This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn’t raise the total number of U.S. soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.
The real purpose of the “surge” was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack U.S. forces. That’s right, 80,000 members of an “Awakening group,” the “Sons of Iraq,” a newly formed “U.S.-allied security force” consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack U.S. troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al-Qaeda.
This is a much cheaper way to fight a war. We can only wonder why Bush didn’t figure it out sooner.
The “surge” was also timed to take account of the near completion of neighborhood cleansing. Most of the violence in Iraq during the past five years has resulted from Sunnis and Shi’ites driving each other out of mixed neighborhoods. Had the two groups been capable of uniting against the U.S. troops, the U.S. would have been driven out of Iraq long ago. Instead, the Iraqis slaughtered each other and fought the Americans in their spare time.
In other words, the “surge” has had nothing to do with any decline in violence.
With the Sunni insurgents now on Uncle Sam’s payroll, with neighborhoods segregated, and with Sadr’s militia standing down, it is unclear who is still responsible for ongoing violence other than U.S. troops themselves. Somebody must still be fighting, however, because the U.S. is still conducting air strikes and is still unable to tell friend from foe.
On Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Times reported that a U.S. air strike managed to kill nine Iraqi civilians and three Sons of Iraq.
The Sunnis are abandoning their posts in protest, demanding an end to “errant” U.S. air strikes. Obviously, the Sunnis see an opportunity to increase their daily pay for not attacking Americans. Soon they will have consultants advising them how much they can demand in bribes before it pays the Americans to begin fighting the war under the old terms. If Sunnis are smart, they will split the gains. Currently, the Sunnis are getting shafted. They are only collecting $800,000 of the $275,000,000 it costs the U.S. to fight the war for one day. That’s only about three-tenths of one percent, too much of a one-sided deal for the Americans.
If the Sunnis negotiate their cut to between one-quarter and one-half of the daily cost to the U.S. of the war, the Sunnis won’t need to share in the oil revenues, thus helping the three factions to get back together as a country. Even 20 percent of the daily cost of the war would be a good deal for the Sunnis. A long-term contract in this range would be expensive for Uncle Sam, but a great deal cheaper than John McCain’s commitment to a 100-year Iraqi war.
If Bush’s war turns out to be as big a boon for the Sunnis as it has for Tony Blair, we might have a modern-day version of The Mouse That Roared – a movie about an impoverished country that attacked the U.S. in order to be defeated and receive foreign aid – only this time the money comes as a payoff for not fighting the occupiers.
As the world now knows, Blair’s “dodgy dossier” about the threat allegedly posed by Iraq was a contrivance that allowed Blair to put British troops at the service of Bush’s aggression in the Middle East. Now that Blair is out of his prime minister job, he has been rewarded with millions of dollars in sinecures from financial firms such as JP Morgan and millions more in speaking engagements. As part of the payoff, the Bush Republicans have even put Mrs. Blair on the lucrative lecture circuit.
Ask yourself, do you really think Blair knows enough high finance to be of any value as an adviser to JP Morgan, or enough about climate change to advise Zurich Financial on the subject? Do you really believe that after hearing all the vacuous speeches Blair has delivered in those many years in office anyone now wants to pay him huge fees to hear him give a speech? Even when it was free, people were sick of it.
Blair is simply collecting his payoff for selling out his country and sending British troops to die for American hegemony.
The Sunnis seem inclined to do the same thing if Bush will pay them enough.
Is the next phase of the Iraq war going to be a U.S.-Sunni alliance against the Shi’ites?
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 come weeks after Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney urged the U.S. to carry out terror bombings in Iran.
“The Intelligence Ministry on Saturday released details of the detection and dismantling of a terrorist network affiliated to the United States,” reports the newspaper.
“The United States Central Intelligence Agency comprehensively supported the terrorist group by arming it, training its members, and sponsoring its inhumane activities in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry stated.”
The attack on a religious center in Shiraz last month which killed thirteen people and wounded 190 was blamed on the same group and according to the report, “it also had plans to carry out similar attacks on the Tehran International Book Fair, the Russian Consulate in Gilan Province, oil pipelines in southern Iran, and other targets.”
The CIA is protecting an Al-Qaeda linked terror group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11 from being extradited to Iran according to an ABC News report, which also reveals that U.S. intelligence has been meeting and advising the group that has been blamed for bombings in Iran.
As the London Telegraph reported last year, “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.”
Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot terrorist group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, reported the Asia Times 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.
IntelCenter was caught last year adding their logo to alleged Al-Qaeda tapes at the same time as the Al-Qaeda media brand, stoking suspicions that the Pentagon affiliated IntelCenter was directly releasing fake Al-Qaeda videos.
Jundullah 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.
“In another sign of growing tensions with the United States, Pakistan is threatening to turn over to Iran six members of a tribal militant group Iran claims are “spies” for the CIA,” reports ABC News.
“The group, Jundullah, operates in Baluchistan on both sides of the border between Iran and Pakistan and has carried out a number of violent attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers inside the country.”
“The CIA has denied any direct ties with the group, but 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.”
The fact that the highest echelons of the U.S. intelligence apparatus are meeting, advising and funding Sunni Al-Qaeda groups as a means of facilitating terrorist bombings and regime change in Iran completely invalidates the “war on terror” as a fabled fraud and renders ludicrous Bush administration rhetoric about fighting Al-Qaeda cells in Iraq.
As if to underscore neocon retired general Thomas McInerney’s call for terror attacks against Iran (see Paul Joseph Watson, Neo-Con General Calls For Terror Attacks In Iran) , the Russian news and information agency RIA Novosti reports “Iran has arrested a terrorist group that planned to blow up the Russian consulate building in the town of Rasht near the Caspian Sea, the Iranian intelligence and security minister said on Wednesday.”
It appears the neocons are attempting to drag Russia into the coming conflagration, particularly because Russia has cooperated with Iran, specifically in regard to Iran’s light water reactor at Bushehr. In late 2005, Russia proposed an arrangement under which Iran would end its uranium enrichment activities in return for a Russian guarantee to enrich, in Russia, all uranium needed for Iranian nuclear power plants, an arrangement permitted under the NPT. It appears the neocons and their terrorist proxies are now targeting Russia for its perceived impertinence.
As award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh 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, according to the renowned US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.”
Obviously, as the foiled attack on the Russian consulate demonstrates, this operation has expanded from simply targeting nuclear facilities — again, entirely legal under the term of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty — and now includes directing terrorist groups against civilian and government targets.
Earlier in the week, Iran’s intelligence minister said “those behind a bomb blast in a mosque that killed 14 people last month also planned to target a Russian consulate in the Islamic state,” according to Reuters. “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States, Israel and Britain on Tuesday of being responsible for the blast in the southern city of Shiraz that also wounded 200 people.” Intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said his “ministry last week said it had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States, who it said were involved in the explosion” at the mosque.
McInerney’s comments on Fox News were intended to dovetail with this increasing “covert” U.S. and Israeli sponsored violence in Iran. It appears the targeting of a Russian consulate is designed to ratchet up the tension. In the future, if MEK or “al-Qaeda” terrorist groups successfully kill Russians, this may very well start a Third World War, or as the neocons fondly call it, World War Four.
The Bush administration is planning to carry out air strikes against Iran by August and two U.S. Senators have already been briefed on the attack according to a report in the highly respected Asia Times, which cites a former assistant secretary of state and U.S. career diplomat as its source.
Muhammad Cohen’s article claims that Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, were informed of the attack plan and planned to voice their opposition to it in a New York Times editorial in an attempt to offset the air strike. The editorial is yet to materialize.
According to Cohen’ source, the Neo-Cons believe that they can perpetrate a “limited” air strike aimed more at sending a message than destroying Iran’s supposed nuclear program, but the consequences of such a move are likely to provoke a massive Iranian retaliation, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has consistently warned.
The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.
Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.
The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC’s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds’ stated mission is to spread Iran’s revolution of 1979 throughout the region.
The source said the White House views the proposed air strike as a limited action to punish Iran for its involvement in Iraq. The source, an ambassador during the administration of president H W Bush, did not provide details on the types of weapons to be used in the attack, nor on the precise stage of planning at this time. It is not known whether the White House has already consulted with allies about the air strike, or if it plans to do so.
Speculating on whether such a strike will benefit either McCain or Obama on the eve of the presidential election, the report points out that McCain has built his candidacy around an aggressive foreign policy therefore would be the likelier to take advantage.
“A strike on Iran could rally American voters to back the war effort and vote for McCain,” states the article.
“On the other hand, an air strike on Iran could heighten public disenchantment with Bush administration policy in the Middle East, leading to support for the Democratic candidate, whoever it is.”
Iran’s inevitable response would send oil prices skyrocketing towards $200 dollars a barrel as global instability threatened to boil over into numerous different regions in the aftermath of any attack. McCain’s ability to grandstand as a tough war leader would no doubt be amplified by a compliant corporate media and a sizable proportion of the American public would rally behind the Arizona Senator, especially if American interests were the subject of terrorist attacks on behalf of Hezbollah and Hamas.
China’s response to any attack, with the Communist nation being Iran’s biggest customer for oil, would also be key. Any inkling of a hostile reaction would place the world under the greatest threat since the height of the cold war.
Lugar and Feinstein’s public opposition to the plan “would likely create a public groundswell of criticism that could induce the Bush administration reconsider its plan,” states the article but, “Given their obligations to uphold the secrecy of classified information, it is unlikely the senators would reveal the Bush administration’s plan or their knowledge of it.”
The impending invasion of Iran has been on the grapevine for the past three summers running and many are beginning to fear that the “boy who cried wolf” mentality is starting to discredit those who repeatedly warn of the coming attack. However, rhetoric has notably heated in the past few months.
During a recent news conference at Israel’s parliament, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House majority leader Steny Hoyer stated that the military option against Iran was still on the table.
Prominent political figures such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Gary Hart have warned that an attack on Iran won’t arrive absent a staged provocation or a new Gulf of Tonkin style incident.
During a 2007 Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, Brzezinski alluded to the potential for the Bush administration to manufacture a false flag Gulf of Tonkin type incident in describing a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran,” which would revolve around “some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
In an open letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former Senator and current CFR member Hart warned the Iranian President that he would be, “Well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964,” two false flag events manufactured by the U.S. itself to kick start a war.
Neo-Con General Calls For Terror Attacks In Iran McInerney urges U.S. government to support terrorist organization MEK, Bush administration already bankrolling Al-Qaeda-linked Jundullah groupPaul Joseph Watson Prison Planet May 16, 2008
Fresh off the revelation of Donald Rumsfeld’s 2006 audio tape admission that a method to reinvigorate the Neo-Con agenda would be another terror attack, Neo-Cons like Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who was part of the Pentagon’s “message force multipliers” propaganda program, have been calling for the Bush administration to commit acts of terror in Iran.
According to the Crooks and Liars blog, McInerney has appeared on Fox News 144 times since Jan 2002. In one of his recent appearances he publicly called for the U.S. government to support groups like MEK, which is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization, and carry out deadly bombings in Iran.
McInerney: 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. 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. …
McInerney’s frothing desire to see women and children blown to bits in the streets of Tehran may have something to do with the fact that “McInerney is on the Board of Directors for several companies with defense-related contracts that would seem to benefit from his pro-war propaganda. For example, Alloy Surfaces Company (ASC), whose contracts for “ammunition and explosives” with the Department of Defense appear to have grown from $15 million in 2002 to more than $169 million in 2006. A conflict of interest, perhaps?”
McInerney “tit-for-tat” strategy, to support MEK-run terror bombings in Iran in retaliation for Iran supposedly killing U.S. troops in Iraq, a baseless claim in itself, is all the more horribly ironic when one considers the fact that MEK “has killed US troops and civilians before back in the 1970s”.
As Crooks and Liars points out, the U.S. government is already funding MEK and the group has been linked with numerous bombings inside Iran over the course of the last few years.
“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.
Crooks and Liars documents White House efforts to censor reports about MEK and other Iranian terror groups in the U.S. corporate media.
In Dec 2006, just days after Rumsfeld was forced to step down, the NYT published a heavily redacted op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann. Though none of the info was classified, all of which had previously “been extensively reported in the news media,” much of their article was blacked out because the “White House intervened” before it went to print. In response, Leverett and Mann followed up with an accompanying piece “What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran“ where they provided citations to previously reported sources for all of the redacted info. Raw Story compiled those sources in their “The redacted Iran op-ed revealed” and, surprise, many of the articles refer directly to the MEK terrorist group, but there had been nary a mention in the portions the White House allowed.
So, to recap: One of the Pentagon’s propaganda TV analysts who has clear ties to defense industries that would likely stand to benefit from any increased hostilities is advocating that the US ought to use a terrorist organization to commit acts of terrorism against Iran in response to alleged Iranian involvement in attacks against US forces in Iraq, which might be true, or maybe not. And if that wasn’t outrageous enough, it seems that Bush may have been authorizing such tactics already.
In November 2007, 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.
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.
According to Gideon Polya, based on UNESCO data, the US invasion of Afghanistan has led to as many as 6.6 million unnecessary deaths. According to Washburn University law professor Liaquat Ali Khan, the “crime of genocide applies to the intentional killings that NATO troops commit on a weekly basis in the poor villages and mute mountains of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban.” The occupation forces, which ironically include former Axis powers Germany and Japan, have created the New Auschwitz.
Power failures and maintenance have disrupted running water supplies to almost half of the capital, Baghdad, home to nearly 6 million people.
A Baghdad Municipality source said the project supplying drinking water to Rasafa, the eastern half of Baghdad, was temporarily idle.
The source, refusing to be named, said running water supplies may not resume for a few days.
He attributed the stoppage, which has caused large-scale popular resentment, to blackouts which have recently even affected essential utilities like water.
The stoppage has led to the closure of bakeries and restaurants in Rasafa, aggravating the suffering of Baghdad residents.
Water resumed intermittently and in inadequate quantities through household taps for half a day after a three-stoppage on Thursday. Then the taps dried once again.
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.
On December 5, the CIA’s director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.
Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, “quite important.”
In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, “The Interrogation.” There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called “fake flag” operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.
Instead, when confronted by his “Saudi” interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. “He will tell you what to do,” Zubaydah assured them
That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd’s nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.
American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk — they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the “Rosetta Stone” of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.
He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan’s air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King’s nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.
It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King’s 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh’s top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, “of thirst.” The head of Pakistan’s Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up — suspected as sabotage — in February 2003. Pakistan’s investigation of the explosion — if one was even done — has never been made public.
Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America’s closest allies in the war on terror — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah’s confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA’s destruction of Zubaydah’s interrogation tapes.
The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.
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.”
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.
Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who chairs the Senate committee responsible for government oversight, says he has no plans to investigate Blackwater and other Iraq war contractors accused of potentially criminal wrongdoing. Roll Call reports (sub req’d):
Though Lieberman said he gets “angry when I hear about fraud or corruption in the spending of American dollars,” he said he in part chooses what to have hearings on by “watching who else is doing what,” noting that [House oversight chairman Henry] Waxman has held several hearings on Iraq oversight, as have the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. “You’ve got to set your own priorities, and it was clear to me that other committees were going to pick this up,” said Lieberman.
Roll Call notes that on the day Iraq revoked Blackwater’s license after the shooting of 17 civilians, Waxman immediately announced hearings on private security contractors. Lieberman “announced two firefighting grants for the towns of Bolton and Willington in his home state.”
Lieberman has held only one hearing all year on “reconstruction challenges in both Iraq and Afghanistan,” compared to eight hearings on Iraq and contracting abuses in the House.
BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is holding nearly 25,000 people in its prisons in Iraq, 860 of whom are under the age of 16, the general in charge of their detention said on Wednesday.
Eighty-three percent of inmates are Sunnis and 16 percent are Shiite, General Douglas Stone told a press conference in Baghdad.
Egyptians, Iranians, Saudis and Syrians number among 280 foreign nationals imprisoned by the US military in Iraq, he said.
There are two prisons run by the Americans on Iraqi soil: one at their Camp Cropper base outside Baghdad, the other at Camp Bucca near the southern port of Umm Qasr.
These prison receive an average of 60 news inmates each day, according to Stone, while the average length of time for incarceration of a detainee is 300 days.
Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-September, the US military has freed around 50 to 60 prisoners every day.
US, Iraqis Differ on Raid on Shiite Town
Conflicting Reports: Military Officials say the 25 Killed were Shiite Militants while Iraqi Local Leaders and Hospital Officials say the victims were civilians
MSNBC
October 5, 2007 BAGHDAD – U.S. airstrikes killed at least 25 people Friday after troops met a fierce barrage while hunting suspected arms smuggling links between Iran and Shiite militiamen. The military described the dead as fighters, but village leaders said the victims included children and men protecting their homes.
In a separate incident, the U.S. military said it was investigating the deaths of three civilians shot by American sentries near an Iraqi-manned checkpoint. Iraqi officials said the victims were U.S.-allied guards and were mistakenly targeted.
While details could not be independently confirmed, both reports reflected rising concerns about possible friendly fire killings as more viligante-style groups join the fight against extremists and fill the vacuum left by Iraq’s collapsing national police force.
Such claims could hinder crucial U.S. efforts to draw Sunni and Shiite leaders into alliances against insurgent factions such as al-Qaida in Iraq. In a series of raids around Iraq, U.S. troops killed 12 suspected insurgents linked to al-Qaida, the military said.
Meanwhile, four American soldiers were reported killed _ three Friday in roadside bombings in Baghdad and near Beiji to the north, and one Thursday in a small-arms attack in the capital.
At least 3,813 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The two versions over the airstrike deaths emerged following a U.S. mission in the violence-wracked province of Diyala.
U.S. forces launched a mission seeking the commander of a Shiite militia group linked to members of the Quds Force, an elite branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Intelligence indicated he was helping smuggle weapons from Iran to Baghdad, the military said.
Ground forces called for air support as they faced an onslaught by gunmen armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in Khalis, a Shiite enclave surrounded by Sunni areas, the military said. At least one man was carrying what appeared to be an anti-aircraft weapon, it added.
An American attack helicopter and a warplane destroyed two buildings, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a military spokesman in Baghdad. The military said 25 militiamen were killed. Danielson said no civilian deaths had been confirmed.
But a different account was offered by local leaders and hospital officials.
They said U.S. aircraft bombed the neighborhood repeatedly, killing at least seven children and local men who organized watches to guard against extremist attacks.
“We were on a night watch in the village because we were afraid of possible al-Qaida attacks. There were no militias, we were trying to protect our families,” said 28-year-old Muntasir Abbas, who was wounded in his left leg.
The mayor of Khalis, Odai al-Khadran, said “locals were protecting themselves by guarding their village. They are not militias.”
Mahmoud Khazim said he had just left a guard post to get tea when it was hit by an airstrike, killing his son and several other men.
“I saw huge fire coming from the sky and gunfire. I ran toward the post to see several bodies on the ground, including that of my son,” he said from his hospital bed in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Iraqis routinely assert that civilians are killed in raids by U.S. forces targeting militants, particularly Shiite militia fighters who usually live among the population and serve as protectors for the local community. But Friday’s claim was among the largest in terms of numbers.
In the checkpoint shooting dispute, the military said it was looking into the incident near Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad.
The brief announcement did not provide other details. But a local police spokesman said those killed were Shiite members of the North of Hillah Awakening Council, a group of Iraqis who have turned against extremists in the area.
Those killed were three members of the council who were guarding a deserted road leading to their village, the spokesman said, declining to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information.
In Washington, Iraq’s chief national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, predicted that U.S. troops could leave Iraq earlier than suggested by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Al-Rubaie told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that he expects the extra 30,000 troops deployed last year will be able to leave by April.
Al-Rubaie also predicted significant reductions by the end of 2008, possibly even before the November elections.
“By the end of next year, the (Iraqi) logistics will be in place and we’ll be ready,” he said.
Al-Rubaie said the Iraqi government’s predictions are more optimistic than the U.S. government’s because it is more confident of its security forces. Iraq also expects an “acceleration” of training and equipment efforts in coming months, he said.
On the Blackwater scandal, al-Rubaie said he wants to wait until the investigation is complete but wants the White House to revisit its order giving U.S. personnel immunity from Iraqi prosecution.
“It’s a huge sovereignty issue we need to sort out and sort out quickly,” he said.
David Wurmser: ‘If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot’
America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
“We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep,” said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser.
“That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary.” He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.
Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran’s theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
Iran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.
“It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now.”
Both countries were part of a “proliferation consortium”, possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.
If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran’s prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union’s was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was “weak and rattled” while Iran had adopted a “go-for-broke strategy” of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that “the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile”.
A situation such as last year’s attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser’s recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran’s intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.
Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. “Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
“If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill it.”
Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.
It was “fantastical” to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would “try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn’t want”, he said. “Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them.”
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. “Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn’t really play it very well.
“Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking…. everybody’s looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area.”
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. “It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran’s] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we’ll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground.”
Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. “While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.
“It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from.”
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. “If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.
“I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that’s what we decided to do, things can be done.”
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.
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.
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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