The Administrations plan for Iran
By Seymour M. Hersh
09/30/07 "The New Yorker" -- -
October 8, 2007 - - In a series of public statements in recent
months, President Bush and members of his Administration have
redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic
battle between the United States and Iran. Shia extremists, backed
by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and
the Iraqi people, Bush told the national convention of the
American Legion in August. The attacks on our bases and our troops
by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . The Iranian
regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take
actions necessary to protect our troops. He then concluded, to
applause, I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to
confront Tehrans murderous activities.
The Presidents position, and its corollarythat, if many of
Americas problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then
the solution to them is to confront the Iranianshave taken firm
hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by
the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint
Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on
Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The
focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets
including Irans known and suspected nuclear facilities and other
military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on
surgical strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in
Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been
the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented
primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived
as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the
President and his senior advisers have concluded that their
campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an
imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign
before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough
popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second
development is that the White House has come to terms, in private,
with the general consensus of the American intelligence community
that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And,
finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and
throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the
geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer,
the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that
he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and
that the British were on board. At that point, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed
carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by
instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it
would face American retribution.
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a
former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited
strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off
criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save
soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could
say, Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes
in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American
lives. The former intelligence official added, There is a
desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran
as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, You
cant do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and
were only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq. But Cheney
doesnt give a rats ass about the Republican worries, and neither
does the President.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, The President has made
it clear that the United States government remains committed to a
diplomatic solution with respect to Iran. The State Department is
working diligently along with the international community to
address our broad range of concerns. (The White House declined to
comment.)
I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has
yet to issue the execute order that would be required for a
military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be
issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of
attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters
that the Administration intended to declare Irans Revolutionary
Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior
officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency
had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations
Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, The C.I.A. does not, as a
rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational
components.)
Theyre moving everybody to the Iran desk, one recently retired
C.I.A. official said. Theyre dragging in a lot of analysts and
ramping up everything. Its just like the fall of 2002the months
before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became
the most important in the agency. He added, The guys now running
the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In
the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will
react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way
through.
That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former
national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions
of the White Houses more limited bombing plans for Iran.
Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack
by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan,
their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck
in a regional war for twenty years.
In a speech at the United Nations last week, Irans President,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was defiant. He referred to America as an
aggressor state, and said, How can the incompetents who cannot
even manage and control themselves rule humanity and arrange its
affairs? Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of
God. (The day before, at Columbia, he suggested that the facts of
the Holocaust still needed to be determined.)...
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