Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies

At last the broadsheets in the UK have moved the possibility of the US conducting air strikes against Iran on to the front pages and appear to be joining the dots and saying what many of us have been saying for a while now.

From today's Guardian:

Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed."

As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute.

I also noticed that Admiral William Fallon suggested to a Senate confirmation hearing that there should be a new US approach in Iraq, which he did not specify, although he did say:

Countering Iranian influence in Iraq would be a top priority if he was given the job.

However, he said he was unaware of any contingency plans for war with Iran.

That is hardly a cast iron guarantee that a future war with Iran is off the table and it's not how the Europeans are reading this. Indeed, we are all now waiting for Bush to produce a dossier - doesn't that word alone bring the pre-Iraq war time to mind? - claiming alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq.

"Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior US official said in London yesterday.

Although the Iranians were primarily in Shia areas, they were not confined to them, the US source said, implying that they had formed links with Sunni insurgents and were helping them with booby-trap bombs aimed at Iraqi and US forces, new versions of the "improvised explosive devices".

Senior members of the US Congress have raised concerns that the US will attack Iran in retaliation for its alleged activities in Iraq. The official said there were no plans for "cross-border operations" from Iraq to Iran. But he said: "We don't want a progressively more confident and bolder Iran ... The perception that Iran is ascendant in the region and that there are no limits to what Iran can do - that's what is destabilising."

And exactly as happened prior to the invasion of Iraq, former Iranian dissidents are stoking the fire:

"The al-Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards is stepping up terrorism and encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq," Alireza Jafarzadeh, a US-based Iranian dissident who has been linked to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) resistance group, told the Washington Times this month. Mr Jafarzadeh is credited with revealing the existence of Iran's secret nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002.

"There is a sharp surge in Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and sectarian violence in the past few months," Mr Jafarzadeh told a conference organised by the Iran Policy Committee, a Washington lobby group pressing the state department to remove the MeK from its terrorist list.

And, of course, we have Israel's Netanyahu running around telling all who will listen to him that the world has a duty to prevent another Holocaust.

The similarities to the build up to the Iraq war are simply too obvious to ignore. Nor is the warmongering limited to rhetoric.

The US "push back" against Iran comprises many other elements beyond Iraq. Unconfirmed reports suggest Vice-President Dick Cheney has cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to keep oil production up even as prices fall, to undercut Iran's main source of foreign currency. Washington is pursuing expanding, non-UN global financial sanctions against Tehran; encouraging and arming a "new alignment" of Sunni Arab Gulf states; and highlighting Iran's role in "supporting terrorism" in Palestine, where it helps bankroll the Hamas government, and Lebanon, where it backs Hizbullah. The US is also deploying powerful naval forces in the Gulf that are of little help in Iraq but could more easily be used to mount air strikes on Iran.

Almost any one of these developments might produce a casus belli. And when taken together, despite official protestations, they seem to point in only one direction. The Bush administration, an American commentator suggested, is "once again spoiling for a fight".

Even Francis Fukuyama, a one-time neo-con supporter is warning that the neo-cons don't seem to have learned the lessons of Iraq:

It is easy to outline the obstacles to a negotiated end to the Iranian programme, but much harder to come up with an alternative strategy. Use of force looks very unappealing. The US is hardly in a position to invade and occupy yet another country, especially one three times larger than Iraq. An attack would have to be conducted from the air, and it would not result in regime change, which is the only long-term means of stopping the WMD programme. It is hard to have much confidence that US intelligence on Iranian facilities is any better than it was in the case of Iraq. An air campaign is much more likely to build support for the regime than to topple it, and will stimulate terrorism and attacks on American facilities and friends around the globe. The US would be even more isolated in such a war than during the Iraqi campaign, with only Israel as a certain ally.

None of these considerations, nor the debacle in Iraq, has prevented certain neoconservatives from advocating military action against Iran. Some insist that Iran poses an even greater threat than Iraq, avoiding the fact that their zealous advocacy of the Iraq invasion is what has destroyed America's credibility and undercut its ability to take strong measures against Iran.

And therein lies the rub. It was the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that has placed Iran in such a strong position, as the US has now removed it's enemies to the left and right, leaving it as some sort of regional superpower.

And, as Fukuyama points out, an air attack will not bring about regime change which is the only way of preventing Iran's nuclear programme from proceeding. So the notion of attacking Iran makes literally no sense of any kind. And yet, that is what many of us think Bush is preparing to do.

The situation we now find ourselves in is especially galling as the Iranians have already offered the US a deal which offered all that the US are now demanding, only to have Cheney refuse to countenance it. So make no mistake; war, if it came, would be a further war of choice.

It is obvious that the neo-cons have not learnt the lessons of Iraq and now seem to be considering rushing headlong into another Middle Eastern war, although this time they are facing no paper tiger like Saddam.

At last broadsheets are now discussing this, and hopefully the Democrats will start to openly question this deeply unpopular proposal. Bush is seeking war by the backdoor. His every step attempts to make it inevitable.

He must be stopped. Even if they have to impeach him in order to do so.

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tag: Bush, Iraq war, US foreign policy, pro-Israeli lobby, Bill Kristol, surge and accelerate, Netanyahu, Ahmadinejad, Iran