Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

And as the Senate discovers how the Bush administration lied and manipulated intelligence in order to justify attacking Iraq, we have the news that the Bush regime are at the advanced stage of preparations for a strike against Iran, with only the timing under question.

Some say they could attack this spring whilst others say they'll leave it to next year so that Bush can attack Iran just before he leaves office. He not only has no plans to clean up the mess he has created in Iraq before he slinks out the door, he's actually thinking about opening up a whole new Middle Eastern nightmare before he slips the keys under the doormat.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Cannistrano points out that no actual decision has been taken, but one only has to listen to the hardening of Bush's language towards Iran to realise in what direction his decision is leaning.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

The people cheer leading Bush towards a strike on Iran are the same people who cheer led the case for the war with Iraq. The American Enterprise Institute appeared to be out of favour as Iraq descended into chaos, however, Bush recently took their advice over the advice of James Baker and the Iraq War Study Group when he decided to implement his "surge and accelerate" policy as opposed to Baker's proposal for dialogue with Iran and Syria.

Indeed, Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the American Enterprise Institute is vocal in calling for such a strike:

I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

And then, of course, there is the small matter of Bush's legacy.

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

This was always the problem of having a US President with so little interest in foreign affairs. Bush seems not to realise that Iran achieved superpower status the very moment he invaded Iraq. The reason that Reagan, Kissenger and others hoped that Iraq and Iran would fight themselves to stalemate was precisely because if either was victorious then they would have superpower status in the region.

Bush made Iran a regional superpower by removing Iran's enemies in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he made them a superpower without Iran having to fire a single shot.

It is also highly unlikely that any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will succeed and any attack will certainly not remove Iran's status as a regional superpower.

Bush has created his own monster, and if he thinks he can put what he has created back into the box by a few air strikes over Tehran then he is even more seriously deluded than I had previously thought.

Iran is a new regional superpower and it is aligned to the Maliki government in Iraq that Bush supports. That is simply the reality that Bush has created. All of these facts are interrelated and interconnected. Bush's spectacular lack of curiosity seems to have blinded him to the fact that you can't pull this particular piece of string without unravelling the whole tapestry.

If Bush thinks things are bad in Iraq now, just wait until he attacks Iran and enrages Iraq's Shia population. At the moment it's mostly Iraq's Sunni's that are lined up against his forces, when he sets Iraq's Shia's against the US it really will be reminiscent of the American exit from Saigon when soldiers scrambled to get on to fleeing helicopters.

Bush, and his neo-con advisers, seem to believe that each of these things exist in isolation and can be dealt with separately. This is a fatal error. But it's an error that Bush is on the brink of making.

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tag: Bush, James A Baker, Iran, Maliki, American Enterprise Institute, air strikes, neo-conservatives, Cheneywar study group, Dick Cheney, nuclear proliferation, Shia, Sunnis, US State Department, Afghanistan, Taliban