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Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack
Robert Dreyfuss
Asia Times
Thursday, December 4, 2008
What, exactly, does president-elect Barack Obama’s mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neo-conservatives who want to bomb Iran?
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners and neo-cons expects Obama’s proposed talks with Iran to fail – and they’re already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of US strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.
Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a US Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country’s oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.
It’s tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the George W Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Obama and the announcement on Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neo-cons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect’s plans to talk with Iran, withdraw US forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless “war on terror” rhetoric of the Bush era.
‘Kinetic action’ against Iran
When it comes to Iran, however, it’s far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama – including Tony Lake, United Nations ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to vice president-elect Joe Biden or secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton – have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.
Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP “2008 Presidential Task Force” study which resulted in a report entitled, “Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen US-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge”. The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP’s executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.
Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran’s nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal US-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for “preventive military action”). It drew attention to Israeli fears that “the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of ‘living with an Iranian nuclear bomb’,” and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the US ought to give undue weight to Israel’s inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, at some time in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.
WINEP is correct that the US must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a US-Israeli dialogue over Iran’s “nuclear challenge” will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP’s agenda. First, the US must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran.
Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the US would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel’s aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the US deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.
Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the US hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for president George H W Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Republican Daniel Coats and Democrat Chuck Robb, and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP’s David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neo-cons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neo-cons’ channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward’s latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a “surge” in Iraq.
The report of the Coats-Robb task force – “Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development” – went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, “It must be clear that any US-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to ‘run out the clock’.”
Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged “prepositioning military assets” coupled with a “show of force” in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran’s economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, “kinetic action”.
That “kinetic action” – a US assault on Iran – should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran’s nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps facilities, key parts of Iran’s military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran’s naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the US would also have to attack Iran’s ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and “manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc”.
This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran’s economy and infrastructure, and cause havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these – and mean it – can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.
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18 Responses to “Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack”
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December 4th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Go ahead —attack.
Beware the BEAR.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I was called a ‘neo-con’ once from a left-winger on annoy.com/gibe forum…..
I though he was calling me a neo-Nazi…….come to find out that it was nothing more than a left-wing name for people like me that want to kill half the planet because half the planet wants to kill me……
Hell, I never knew all we had to do was sit by eachother playing footsees while drinking gensing induced tea……..and everything would be alright……
How ignorant of me…….
‘neoconservative’………
wow, that really hurt…..
but I had to quit going there because, at first I was the one inciting bullshit, but as the days came and went…….I got older…..and the thought of hurtling insults back and forth got to be…….shall I say elementary……
and I graduated into 1st grade……while theyre still in the sandbox…..
and some of you here would do great on that site…….
http://www.annoy.com
click on gibe and take off!!…….
they talk about things that would suit some of you here…….
they love and adore obama…….
December 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I have to know though……..if the world wants to kill us……HOW IN THE HELL is sitting at a table with them going to make it better??……..
I say you fight evil with evil……….not marshmallows and peanuts…….
Damn!!…….I guess I AM a neo!!………
December 4th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
jeez if the Neo Cons ain’t sacrificng Christians on the Battlefield for War profits
their buds at the FED are jerking your money around. What Great and Brave Americans
the Neo Cons are. I wish they would move all they do is cause War and DEbt just
like in WW 1. I guess that is where you get the name WARBURG from.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
which is worse?
american piece of shit minions doing genocide on 1200 arabs per DAY in the middle east or 120 bitchy gays who are making out in the streets of Iran and offending people getting hanged every YEAR for breaking the law?
GENOCIDE IS WORSE, SAY NO TO AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
December 4th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
This is all getting to be BULLSHIT people. Time we DEMAND a News bulletin to be posted all Over this United States and Europe where this crap is happening. Time newsmen and women who believe there was more to 9/11 as the rest f us do, should all come together and demand a National REPORT what these Neocons are up to. Then, and IF the Government comes into shut them down to stop them speaking the truth whats happening, It will spark off to the rest of the AMERICAN PEOPLE that we Come to the fight, If thats whats needed to put a stop to this New World Order. people would flock to Break there Heads from all over this country. There plans and support from military won\t be enough even in this country,all 50 states at one time. Time we FINALLY make OUR stand. We need to By GOD and FOR GOD’S SAKE!! There PLANNING death if need be, to control us. Thats Premeditated MURDER People. Thats YOUR Leaders Planning this on all of us! I dn’t care One Minute bit, if they see this. You can bet, I’ll have my sights on least One of them. They started this inner country war on planning all this Bullshit. Then cover it up, and go WAYYY over bounds and attack other countrys if they don’t ablige them. Who The Hell do they think to God They are? If your NOT all as upset over all of this as i am, YOU sure as hell will be in a few more short months when this economy Falls FLAT on its face. Bush already Bought land in Paraguay so he can’t be Brought back for any judgements against him if they find anything on him to be a Treasonist Leader. Someone somewhere will put a Bullet in his Head He can bet his life on that! People are getting not only worried whats happening, there getting scared whats happening. Once they get over being scared, there going to GET Terribly angry. To BUY water is one thing, Then to Make it ILLEGAL too, I swore i’d never see the day that would happen. I often wondered it, But that was 35-40 years ago I was a Young Kid when i dreamed of such so-called Fiction! But, Here it is in front of us! this government allowed OIL to be there source to control the world. Oil control would be the worlds currency. Make since does it now? And Iraq didnt sign there agreement to Pay off our National Debt, and we Hung Hussein. Iran was the other country who wouldn’t sign so Now its there turn to be invaded By the United States.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
The US has every right to strike first! If you want to split hairs about how Iran has done nothing to warrant this, then think about all of the covert trouble they have caused in Iraq!
The US has a sovereign right to protect itself and that includes going after those that mean us harm. BRING BACK THE DRAFT and get all of those Ritalin taking children finally doing something with their lives!!!
Start this war and let’s get the cash rolling back into the economy!
I say we keep Bush and his team in place for another 8 years! They’ll get it done!!
December 4th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Just remember Iran and 1953, I end my case. And to the ones in this group who want to fight Iran, just remember what happened in Lebanon to the Israelis. They fought a rag tag group of Shi’a and ended up retreating. I don’t know why we in America have so much bravado fighting nations like Iraq and Vietnan, using all the technology money can buy and still not getting the job done and then think we will just walk into a nation like Iran like cow boys. You think Russia and China are not watching our failures in Iraq?
December 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Wow… Obama’s Admin. is just swarming with AIPAC and WINEP!
It’s really sad to hear my buddy, who voted for Obama, call of these Republicans “AIPAC zealots” when Obama has sworn to follow the AIPAC agenda and surround himself with the most anti-Iranian zealots ever.
But, doublespeaking Obamaniac’s still completely ignore that Obama is a AIPAC tool, also.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/b5b124cd
A song about the Cherokee Indians, One tribe who had there country Ripped away from them by white settlers here in what we call The United States. Ask one of them how they feel today? They tell you Robbed and abused. they have to be Proud to be able to still walk this country which use to be there Fathers. In my opinion they have more pride in them then most those in Washington could ever have. Maybe its why i respect a culture once as theirs! They had Faith in “A Higher Power”. It sure isn’t man or this new world Order
December 4th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
hell this is the end! that is what i fear and i believe that all of this has been forseen . nostordomis told of the twin towers he told of the year 2012 that the people of earth would cease because of greed and coruption. this is it the greed of the only thing i can call it earth’s pulse”fuel”, is substantialy growing . acouple of months ago a storm came in and took out the sea oil drills and there was no gas except at one gas station in bowdon georgia and it was $20.00 limit to a car . that proves that they are not stocking fuel for americans their drawing just enough to run the country continously nothing more nothing less this shows that it’s all fucked. 9/11 was the match head aganist the box to start this war and now we have to babysit all the countries over there and for what so we can use there fuel and hang on to ours as our ace in the hole. the threat of nuclear war I SAY VERY REAL!! because they need not the techno, equipment, and knowledge to make . they can just buy it there is black markets on this planet and for everyone there is a price because there is GREED! so who will be the one to start a nuclear fallout ? who will be the one to sell out everyone ? who knows but heres another twists there also the talk of the antichrist a great seemly person who is going to solve everyones problems and seem wonderful to all. ‘dad always said if it seems to good to be true than it is ,and displace ur self from it . plus new plans to put micro chips in the back of everyones hands with serial codes to bank accounts and social secrurity all that is basis of a wallet full of info but no carry on , this idea is expected to hit all banks and there is no doubt in my mind that it will soon after be maditory for all infants shortly after the fact sounds like the MARK OF THE BEAST and that the system no longer works for you. you work for it , any who there is also the fact of the bible says the mason will be the downfall of man ,who are they talking about free masons who run this countrie undercover of govt will there be the antichrist amongst them and will he trick them into fueling a nuclear war?Or mason: artisan of block, leader of group or collectance of people. will the president be the antichrist in 2012 or one of his council be antichrist ,the birdy in his ear to sound the wave of death.
think on this and remember the past has many wonders of ancient buildings and technology not comprehinded or understood maybe you should look in the past for the answer to the future.
mak
contact me me for futher confersation.
simperfy_mf@yahoo.com
December 4th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
SOCIAL VIABILITY
WHY WOULD YOU ACCEPT FIAT IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR NEW INFLATION PROOF CURRENCY, THAT IS ALL I WANT TO ASK??????????
December 4th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Here is a video alex , that I edited and added infowars.com on the screen ,on an address to the nation by stephen harper on dec 3 2003.I posted it on Youtube to raise awareness.To this date Harper has rejected a stimulis package of 2 percent or 30 billion as recommended by the G 20 summit.
I notced that since the bailouts in the Usa have began they now total 8.3 trillion well its funny that harper has to this date refused a stimulis package from the banks . he has a minority government
and the 3 parties have turned on him because he has not introduced a stimulis package. I am demanding a referendum to determine who should be prime minister , in my opinion the 3 opposing parties will introduce a stimulis package. Parliment has been suspended until Jan 27 2009.I have a feeling harper is gone unless he introduces a stimulis package ! The only way i feel it could be stopped is if there was a referendum to allow him legitamacy to continue as Prime Minister. I know they can rig elections and pull a dealy plaza as well but what other options are there to stop this banking coup in canada.
Conservative party 143 seats
Liberal party 76 seats
Ndp 37 seats
Bloq Quebecois 50 seats 163 seats vs 143 seats conservative party
http://posmedprod.webs.com/canadiannews.htm
December 6th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Mr. Alex Jones ——
When are you going to visit Peter. S. Ruckman? Speak with the man that knows what’s really up!!!!! He is getting old…. Alex you speak with all the other dings and clowns out there. How about Peter. S. Ruckman! A real 1611 King James Bible believer! You want to know what is going on and more check him out.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Alex you and Mike Savage of Savage Nation need to work together!!!!! He is right on about the the rag heads and you are right on about the government tyranny. I see the truth in what you both say and believe!!! Mike exposes the bad teachers, attornies, judges, homo’s, abortion, feminst men haters and the invasion by rag heads. The red doper diaper babies as well! Alex exposes big brother tyranny and global slave government….Alex exposes bad laws, police and military, and the loss of our freedoms and rights. I see you both doing your best for God, America and Americans. Why don’t you guys get over the ego crap and work together????
December 7th, 2008 at 7:55 am
ALEX JONES IS A JOKE!
HE IS A VATICAN/JESUIT & A CIA AGENT!
HE IS GETTING IS ORDERS FROM THE BLACK POPE!
THIS GUY IS A MORON!
It is just half the truth what he is telling us!
Pretty much the same for David Icke!
He is as well a Vatican/Jesuit & SIS Agent!
I was really shocked and very disappointed when I found out the truth about Alex Jones, David Icke and the GCN-Radio!
January 6th, 2009 at 11:03 am
In the eigth paragraph of the article, Mr. Dreyfuss writes:
“And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, at some time in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.”
The whole point of taking action now, sanctions or otherwise, is to prevent Iran from aquiring an atomic weapon in the first place. Though it would seem true that they currently, “[have] no nuclear weapon” as he writes, that does not preclude them from aquiring one in the future. Does the assumption that they do not have a nuclear bomb or “may not have the know-how” (although I would add that they “may” ,in fact, DO have the know-how and we just don’t know about it) mean that we should stand idly by and do nothing? Then, when Iran does have the ability to deliver on it’s threat of Israel’s destruction ,and does, what would Mr. Dreyfuss have us do after it is far too late?
January 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I would like to add another comment. Although in my previous comment it would seem that I disagree with the US policy being favored in the article (a less hawkish stance towards Iran), I do agree that all options must be tried before war against Iran. The US has no business doing so at this time. However, I don’t see any reason why Israel could not do it for themselves if neccessary. I think that the US should support their efforts but not directly participate with the commitment of troops. We could provide material support and airspace if need be (and then publicly deny that we have done so). I am not a fan of lying, but I suspect that Iran has not been entirely truthful either. (do two wrongs make a right? No, but I feel in this instace it is warranted).