Iran 'accused of attacks in Iraq to bolster US strategy'

A leading British think tank has stated what we all suspect anyway, that the Bush administration may be highlighting accusations that the Iranian government is behind attacks in Iraq in order to strengthen its hand in preparing for military strikes on Iran.

The independent think-tank Basic cast doubt on the US claims of links between attacks in Iraq and the government of Iran, claiming that the intelligence this was based on was "sketchy".

It has always seemed ludicrous to me that the Shia government of Iran would aid and fund the Sunni elements in Iraq who are actually the people fighting the coalition forces. Indeed, they are actually killing Iraqi Shias, which is what makes the Bush administrations accusations so nonsensical.

The UK and US governments have frequently accused Iran of aiding militant groups in Iraq who are attacking coalition forces. However, the report said that "despite efforts by the Bush administration to confirm the strength of evidence presented, doubt still surrounds the case against Iran, particularly with regard to the degree of direct involvement of the Iranian leadership.

"Whatever the true extent and nature of Iranian military action in Iraq, few independent analysts believe Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency," said the report.

Turning to the US strategic motivation for highlighting the Iranian role in Iraq, Basic (British American Security Information Council) suggested that Iran could be a "useful scapegoat to divert the blame" for failures in Iraq away from the occupying powers. But also, "if Tehran can be cast as a source of regional instability in the eyes of the international community, then the US administration's hand will be strengthened as it seeks support for stronger measures to oppose Iranian nuclear ambitions".

In order to facilitate this new policy of turning logic on it's head, the administration set out a new strategic alignment in January of this year.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.”

She made this bizarre statement at the very moment that US soldiers are being killed by a Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Seymour Hersh has already reported on this earlier this year:

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

So, in order to facilitate an attack on Iran the administration are turning logic on it's head, insisting that Iran is behind attacks on US troops in Iraq.

The real reason they are doing this is because they are refusing to enter into negotiations with Iran regarding her nuclear ambitions, which are, of course, perfectly legal under the nuclear non proliferation treaty as long as they remain for civilian purposes only. The US ultimately want Iran to desist from any nuclear development, which is why I suspect Bush is avoiding negotiations and is, instead, attempting to bully and cajole Iran into stopping it's nuclear programme.

In any negotiations the legality of Iran's civilian nuclear programme would have to be taken as a given under the nuclear non proliferation treaty and we would have to enter into an agreement of inspections to ensure that Iran had no plans to develop a nuclear weapon. Bush would be reluctant to go down this path and would simply prefer a non-nuclear Iran.

One of the consequences of Bush's demands that Iran suspend all nuclear enrichment before talks can begin - and the subsequent sanctions that were imposed because Iran refused to do so - is that the IAEA has been prevented from verifying how far down the line Iran's nuclear programme is.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned that there will be "major confrontation" unless a way is found to end this dispute.

I suspect that Dick Cheney and some Likud supporters would love a "major confrontation" with Iran, and Bush is certainly leaving himself with a diminishing set of options. Indeed, there may be some in the administration who would prefer attacking Iran rather than negotiating with her.

Let's be honest, Bush could easily meet the Iranians without them suspending uranium enrichment and arrange for inspectors to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but what he wants is for the nuclear club to be reserved for the US and it's allies.

Indeed, if the Iranians were to suspend nuclear enrichment in order to facilitate negotiations I think Bush would find himself in a corner. For how could the US, as a signatory to NNPT, tell Iran that it actually wanted that country to forego all it's rights to nuclear energy? Now, most of the planet have already worked out that the NNPT is a sham, as none of the nuclear powers who are signatories have made any attempt to disavow themselves of these weapons, which is their obligations under the treaty. No, they are rather using the treaty as a way of maintaining a nuclear club and reserving membership of that club for the select few.

So rather than attempting to solve this problem diplomatically, Bush - as always - is simply upping the ante.

President George Bush said he was instructing the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press for tougher sanctions against Iran. "The world has spoken and said ... no nuclear weapons programmes. And yet they're constantly ignoring the demands," he said.

Of course, none of us know if Iran is developing a nuclear weapons programme, so Bush has no idea whether Iran is ignoring the world's demands. What he is doing here is conflating demands that Iran suspend it's perfectly legal uranium enrichment with his fear that she might develop a nuclear bomb and presenting one as proof of the other. It's the kind of linguistic sophistry that has come to define this administration.

However, unlike the situation that existed before the invasion of Iraq, when Bush was last issuing similar threats, the military options open to the US regarding Iran are much more limited.

The only serious options open to the US are air strikes, and they are almost guaranteed not to work.

Senior United States military commanders have told the Bush administration that military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would probably fail to destroy them, the New Yorker magazine reported on Sunday.

"The target array in Iran is huge, but it's amorphous," the magazine quotes one unidentified general as saying.

And not only would they fail to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons, but the price for the US would be huge:

The senior commanders also warned that any attack could have "serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States," the article says, citing unidentified U.S. military officials.

Perhaps Bush is hoping against hope that Ahmadinejad is going to back down under the pressure of further sanctions, because otherwise - by refusing to negotiate unless Iran suspends uranium enrichment - Bush is backing himself into a very tight corner.

It's true, as always, that the US have a very large gun; but, in this instance, firing it might do more damage to their long term interests in the region than to their opponents.

Click title for full article.