'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Anyone want to bomb Iran?

Well, foaming-at-the-mouth neocon Joshua Muravchik wants the US to do it, as he argued in this overwrought op-ed in today's LA times. Muravchik's main argument was that Iran seemed poised to become as great a threat to world peace as the Soviet Union, and its progress towards possession of a nuclear arsenal would only accelerate this trend...

He also, amazingly, blamed the rise of fascism and Nazism on the Soviet Union:

Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II. Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.

Well, as I said, the piece was more than a little overwrought in its argumentation.

No word from Muravchik, either, on what the US should do on the day after it has bombed Iran... Um, hasn't the US citizenry been led down this path of launching an ill-thought-through war before??

For his part, Sy Hersh has another good piece out today in The New Yorker. He writes that one of the problems the Bushites have encountered in the push that some of them-- most notably, Unca Dick Cheney-- have pursued, toward launching a military attack on Iran, has been the CIA's production of,

a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency...

The C.I.A.’s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.

A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it...

So, the professionals at the CIA can't find the "evidence" needed to justify a US attack on Iran. But wait! Somebody else apparently has.

Hersh:

As the C.I.A.’s assessment was making its way through the government, late this summer, current and former military officers and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial. “The problem is that no one can verify it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We don’t know who the Israeli source is. The briefing says the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms”—simulating a zero-yield nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials—“but there are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often have they done it? How big is the warhead—a breadbox or a refrigerator? They don’t have that.” And yet, he said, the report was being used by White House hawks within the Administration to “prove the White House’s theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive track, which is why we can’t find it.”

Over at HaAretz, meanwhile, Aluf Benn notes that during his most recent visit to the US, Israeli PM Olmert has been "beating the drums of war"-- particularly in a speech he gave to the General Assembly of the Jewish Communities of North America in Los Angeles.

Olmert told that audience, ""We have reached the pivotal moment of truth regarding Iran... Our integrity will remain intact only if we prevent Iran's devious goals, not if we try our best but fail."

This was understood, not surprisingly, as a declaration that Israel itself would go ahead and bomb Iran if it considered that to be necessary, without waiting for the US to do the job.

Benn writes this about the political context of Olmert's declaration:

Olmert stepped up his attacks on Iran's nuclear program without consulting any professionals. His declarations last month have broken his "low profile" policy on Iran that Israel adopted in its effort to present Tehran's bomb as an international problem. As late as last month, Olmert held talks in Israel on the Iranian nuclear program, and decided to stick with the low-profile approach.

So what happened to change his position?

"A weak prime minister who is dropping in the opinion polls suddenly found himself faced with Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Effi Eitam, who are politicizing the issue, and with a public that does not have faith in the prime minister due to his lack of security experience," senior officials in Jerusalem explained.

"Olmert is under attack for not being able to deal with the Qassam rockets, so he is under pressure and is moving away from the low-profile approach," they added.

These officials also said that the Iranian issue had been taken out of their hands and had been placed on podiums and television shows.

Therein lies Olmert's problem: After he made his bold statements, Netanyahu's warnings that Israel is faced with a situation similar to that faced by European Jewry when threatened by Hitler in 1938, and Shimon Peres' description of Ahmadinejad as "a Farsi-speaking Hitler," the moment of truth for Israel's political leadership is nearing.

The public will justifiably want to know what has been done to prevent the threat to its existence posed by Iran, and to stop the possible mass exodus of Jews from Israel, as described by Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. Domestic pressure calling for military action will intensify...

Benn, who is an experienced diplomatic reporter, noted that if Olmert does go ahead and order military strikes on Iran, this would require:

Diplomatic coordination with the Americans. The U.S. forces in the region could become targets of Iranian retaliation, just like Israel, and therefore there is no way that an independent Israeli action can take place without authorization from Bush. Did Olmert get such a go-ahead and is this why he was pleased with his visit to the White House?

You bet there had better be diplomatic "coordination" with Washington over any attack-- that is, a clear and unequivocal US order restraining Israel from launching it. Because even if Israel does launch such an attack without consulting Washington, no-one in the Middle East, or elsewhere, would ever believe this was done without a US "green light", and the retaliation against the US forces' extremely vulnerable troop concentrations and supply lines in the Gulf area would be speedy indeed.

Benn has this slightly sad little description of the policy Israel (and the Bushites) had been pursuing toward Iran until recently:

International pressure and sanctions were supposed to delay the Iranians, at least until the regime there fell, or some miracle happened. [And they call this a "policy"???] However, it is not working out.

In another article in Monday's HaAretz, Yossi Verter writes that "several weeks ago", Bush told French President Chirac that an Israeli attack against against Iran was quite possible. Verter adds,

Bush also said that if such an attack were to take place, he would understand it. According to European diplomats who later met with Rice, the secretary of state did not express the same willingness to show understanding for a possible Israeli strike against Iran.

Phew! It's good to have at least one sentient being working in the administration...

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I would just like to note that over the past few months, on the numerous occasions when people had raised the possibility that Bush might order an attack against Iran as part of a machiavellian, pre-election political ploy, I always said I did not think such an attack was likely. Basically, that was was because I did not believe that even this president could be so blind to the quite predictable bad consequences of such an action.

So I was right on that.

But how about now, in the post-election phase? Is there a chance that, in the US just as in today's Israel, a politically leader seriously chastened by recent political setbacks might try to play the "wardrums card" as a way to regain some reputation of political strength at home?

Within the US, I should note, the President might expect to win considerable support for such a belligerent policy from powerful figures within the Democratic Party-- including just about all the Congressional Democrats who have spoken out on the question of Iran, from Hillary Clinton to (particularly sadly, for me) Howard Dean... Nearly all the congressional Democrats have good ties with, and a legacy of nontrivial financial backing from, the strongly pro-Israel groups in this country; and they have lined up like lemmings to support Olmert and Co. in their whipping up of popular sentiments against Iran.

(Of course, none of these people tell us what will happen the day after the bombing starts... Mega-oops, I would say.)

So is there a possibility that-- in the context of the US governmental leadership (administration plus Congress) moving toward some kind of a half-workable exit strategy from Iraq-- they might also be tempted to launch a last-minute bombing of Iran? Kind of like Henry the K bombing Cambodia as a cover for the drawdown of US troops from Vietnam... or Reagan suddenly taking it into his mind to "liberate" Grenada as a way to 'cover' the fairly ignominious withdrawal of US troops from Lebanon...

I imagine some people in positions more powerful than Josh Muravchik's may well be tempted to explore this option. But almost immediately, they would surely come up against these two big issues: (1) Iran is not Cambodia, and nor is it Grenada; and (2) the same old question, of what do you do the day after the bombing???

At the end of Hersh's piece, he writes a little about some recent (inconclusive) diplomatic pussyfooting the French have been engaged with, with Iran, over the nuclear issue. But he indicates clearly that there still seems to be some considerable reluctance in the Bush administration to trying to engage with the Iranians over Iraq. This, despite the fact that doing this-- within the content of a broader outreach program to Iraq's neighbors-- may well be one of the principal recommendations to be issued in early December by Jim Baker's Iraq Study Group.

Hersh writes,

One problem with the proposal that the Administration enlist Iran in reaching a settlement of the conflict in Iraq is that it’s not clear that Iran would be interested, especially if the goal is to help the Bush Administration extricate itself from a bad situation.

I disagree with this judgment. There are things that the Iranian regime wants very badly from the US... and they are eager (though always very tough and smart) negotiators. So for a price, I imagine they would be willing to engage with some plan to get the US out of Iraq. They would probably insist on a much broader drawdown of the US troop presence in the whole Gulf region as well, and perhaps also some tangible progress toward making the whole Middle East a Zone Free of WMDs-- as well as, of course, a promise of non-belligerency from the US, and the ending of both the sanctions regime and Washington's well-funded attempts at regime change inside Iran...

Does this look like an outcome that would represent a serious diminsihment of US power in the region? Yes. (And we should note that it was the neocons' disastrous attempt at imperial over-reach in Iraq that has brought us to this day.) But if a political deal allowing for a quick and orderly withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is concluded, then this outcome would be its own considerable reward for the American people. In addition, the conclusion of such a deal would surely also signal a new balance of decision-making power in that part of the world, between a diminished Washington and a newly invigorated United Nations. Within that new balance of power, some much more serious attempt could be made to stabilize the extremely damaging and threatening situations within both Iraq and Afghanistan-- and also, to resolve all the outstanding portions of the Arab-Israeli peace agenda.

Maybe it is that prospect-- of a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli, Syrian-Israeli, and Lebanese-Israeli conflicts on the basis of UN resolutions and through a more strongly UN-dominated negotiation process-- that is really driving Olmert and his landgrabbing friends in Israel to try to keep regionwide tensions high? After all, if it were "just" a matter of some claimed Iranian progress toward acquisition of nuclear weapons, in itself, that need not concern the generously nuclear-armed Israel that much: Israel could certainly threaten to respond to any foreseeable Iranian nuclear threat against it with a retaliation many hundreds of times more damaging... But the "threat" of the UN gaining power within the Israeli-Arab peacemaking orbit? Now that is truly a prospect that Olmert and his allies in the settler movement may feel they need to work hard to repel.