- Dec 6, 1999
- 10,575
- 292
- 126
Below are snips from the article:
THE IRAN PLANS
Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-04-17
Posted 2006-04-08
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There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush?s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change.
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that ?a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.? He added, ?I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ?What are they smoking?? ?
He added, ?People think Bush has been focused on Saddam Hussein since 9/11,? but, ?in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his focus all the way along, it was Iran.?
?This is much more than a nuclear issue,? one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. ?That?s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.?
A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. ?This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,? he said. The danger, he said, was that ?it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.?
?There?s no pressure from Congress? not to take military action, the House member added. ?The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.? Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, ?The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.?
Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions?rapid ascending maneuvers known as ?over the shoulder? bombing?since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.
...provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran?s nuclear program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit. He added: I don?t think a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. . . . We?d want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special Operations units.
One of the military?s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.
...conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.
There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for ?continuity of government??for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. ?The ?tell? ??the giveaway??was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,? the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that ?only nukes? could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. ?We see a similarity of design,? specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.
The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. ?Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,? the former senior intelligence official said. ? ?Decisive? is the key word of the Air Force?s planning. It?s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.?
The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that ?allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It?s just too dangerous.? He added, ?The whole internal debate is on which way to go??in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans?and forestall the American action. ?God may smile on us, but I don?t think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.?
?The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war.? He noted several parallels: The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism.
Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. officials on what it said was new and alarming information about Iran?s weapons program which had been retrieved from an Iranian?s laptop. The new data included more than a thousand pages of technical drawings of weapons systems. The Washington Post reported that there were also designs for a small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment process. Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of stories in the Times and elsewhere. The stories were generally careful to note that the materials could have been fabricated, but also quoted senior American officials as saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline in the Times? account read, ?RELYING ON COMPUTER, U.S. SEEKS TO PROVE IRAN?S NUCLEAR AIMS.?
I was told in interviews with American and European intelligence officials, however, that the laptop was more suspect and less revelatory than it had been depicted. The Iranian who owned the laptop had initially been recruited by German and American intelligence operatives, working together. The Americans eventually lost interest in him. The Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is today. Some family members managed to leave Iran with his laptop and handed it over at a U.S. embassy, apparently in Europe. It was a classic ?walk-in.?
A European intelligence official said, ?There was some hesitation on our side? about what the materials really proved, ?and we are still not convinced.? The drawings were not meticulous, as newspaper accounts suggested, ?but had the character of sketches,? the European official said. ?It was not a slam-dunk smoking gun.?
In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting earlier this year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.?s director-general, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. Joseph?s message was blunt, one diplomat recalled: ?We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that will undermine us. ?
A discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at this point, ?there?s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It?s a dead end.?
Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, ?Why would the West take the risk of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We?re low-cost, and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its cards on the table.? A Western Ambassador in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House?s dismissal of the I.A.E.A. He said, ?If you don?t believe that the I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system?if you don?t trust them?you can only bomb.?
The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. ?Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change,? a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, ?The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don?t have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don?t want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable.?
?The Brits think this is a very bad idea,? Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution?s Saban Center, told me, ?but they?re really worried we?re going to do it.? The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in Washington but that, ?short of a smoking gun, it?s going to be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.? He said that the British ?are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with no compromise.?
Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. ?The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,? the European intelligence official told me. ?He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.? An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. ?Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it,? he said. ?If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.?
A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several officials that the White House?s interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad?s hostility toward Israel as a ?serious threat. It?s a threat to world peace.? He added, ?I made it clear, I?ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.?
However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.
The diplomat went on, ?There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking.? He added, ?The window of opportunity is now.?
God will send him to b!tch slap "Al Dajal" (otherwise known in english as "the anti Christ"). He is supposed to come down with someone else (Al Mahdi I beleive...I might be wrong here because its 3AM and I stopped studying because I added 20 and 35 wrong three times). The Sunni branch just take it as the Mahdi whoever that is, but Shi'ite branch say that it is Ali (I BELEIVE...I could be really tired right now) who was the martyred grandson of the Prophet...
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