VIDEO: Tensions in Iran regime

Guardian Films: Former elite officers in Revolutionary Guard reveal increasing tensions in Iran regime.
[WARNING: contains descriptions of torture and abuse.]

Pipeline Geopolitics: Major Turnaround. Russia, China, Iran Redraw Energy Map

by Amb. M. K. Bhadrakumar from Global Research 12 January 2010 The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline in early January connecting Iran's northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan's vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is "apocalypse now" for the Islamic regime in Tehran. The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony? The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran's Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports. We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world's largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy. The Turkmen-Iranian pipeline mocks the US's Iran policy. The US is threatening Iran with new sanctions and claims Tehran is "increasingly isolated". But Mahmud Ahmadinejad's presidential jet winds its way through a Central Asian tour and lands in Ashgabat for a red-carpet welcome by his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, and a new economic axis emerges. Washington's coercive diplomacy hasn't worked. Turkmenistan, with a gross domestic product of US$18.3 billion, defied the sole superpower (GDP of $14.2 trillion) - and, worse still, made it look routine. There are subplots, too. Tehran claims to have a deal with Ankara to transport Turkmen gas to Turkey via the existing 2,577km pipeline connecting Tabriz in northwestern Iran with Ankara. Indeed, Turkish diplomacy has an independent foreign-policy orientation. Turkey also aspires to be a hub for Europe's energy supplies. Europe may be losing the battle for establishing direct access to the Caspian. Second, Russia does not seem perturbed by China tapping into Central Asian energy. Europe's need for Russian energy imports has dropped and Central Asian energy-producing countries are tapping China's market. From the Russian point of view, China's imports should not deprive it of energy (for its domestic consumption or exports). Russia has established deep enough presence in the Central Asian and Caspian energy sector to ensure it faces no energy shortage. What matters most to Russia is that its dominant role as Europe's No 1 energy provider is not eroded. So long as the Central Asian countries have no pressing need for new US-backed trans-Caspian pipelines, Russia is satisfied. During his recent visit to Ashgabat, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev normalized Russian-Turkmen energy ties. The restoration of ties with Turkmenistan is a major breakthrough for both countries. One, a frozen relationship is being resumed substantially, whereby Turkmenistan will maintain an annual supply of 30bcm to Russia. Two, to quote Medvedev, "For the first time in the history of Russian-Turkmen relations, gas supplies will be carried out based on a price formula that is absolutely in line with European gas market conditions." Russian commentators say Gazprom will find it unprofitable to buy Turkmen gas and if Moscow has chosen to pay a high price, that is primarily because of its resolve not to leave gas that could be used in alternative pipelines, above all in the US-backed Nabucco project. Third, contrary to Western propaganda, Ashgabat does not see the Chinese pipeline as a substitute for Gazprom. Russia's pricing policy ensures that Ashgabat views Gazprom as an irreplaceable customer. The export price of the Turkmen gas to be sold to China is still under negotiation and the agreed price simply cannot match the Russian offer. Fourth, Russia and Turkmenistan reiterated their commitment to the Caspian Coastal Pipeline (which will run along the Caspian's east coast toward Russia) with a capacity of 30bcm. Evidently, Russia hopes to cluster additional Central Asian gas from Turkmenistan (and Kazakhstan). Fifth, Moscow and Ashgabat agreed to build jointly an east-west pipeline connecting all Turkmen gas fields to a single network so that the pipelines leading toward Russia, Iran and China can draw from any of the fields. Indeed, against the backdrop of the intensification of the US push toward Central Asia, Medvedev's visit to Ashgabat impacted on regional security. At the joint press conference with Medvedev, Berdymukhammedov said the views of Turkmenistan and Russia on the regional processes, particularly in Central Asia and the Caspian region, were generally the same. He underlined that the two countries were of the view that the security of one cannot be achieved at the expense of the other. Medvedev agreed that there was similarity or unanimity between the two countries on issues related to security and confirmed their readiness to work together. The United States' pipeline diplomacy in the Caspian, which strove to bypass Russia, elbow out China and isolate Iran, has foundered. Russia is now planning to double its intake of Azerbaijani gas, which further cuts into the Western efforts to engage Baku as a supplier for Nabucco. In tandem with Russia, Iran is also emerging as a consumer of Azerbaijani gas. In December, Azerbaijan inked an agreement to deliver gas to Iran through the 1,400km Kazi-Magomed-Astara pipeline. The "big picture" is that Russia's South Stream and North Stream, which will supply gas to northern and southern Europe, have gained irreversible momentum. The stumbling blocks for North Stream have been cleared as Denmark (in October), Finland and Sweden (in November) and Germany (in December) approved the project from the environmental angle. The pipeline's construction will commence in the spring. The $12-billion pipeline built jointly by Gazprom, Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas and BASF-Wintershall, and the Dutch gas transportation firm Gasunie bypasses the Soviet-era transit routes via Ukraine, Poland and Belarus and runs from the northwestern Russian port of Vyborg to the German port of Greifswald along a 1,220km route under the Baltic Sea. The first leg of the project with a carrying capacity of 27.5bcm annually will be completed next year and the capacity will double by 2012. North Stream will profoundly affect the geopolitics of Eurasia, trans-Atlantic equations and Russia's ties with Europe. To be sure, 2009 proved to be a momentous year for the "energy war". The Chinese pipeline inaugurated by President Hu Jintao on December 14; the oil terminal near the port city of Nakhodka in Russia's far east inaugurated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on December 27 (which will be served by the mammoth $22-billion oil pipeline from the new fields in eastern Siberia leading to China and the Asia-Pacific markets); and the Iranian pipeline inaugurated by Ahmadinejad on January 6 - the energy map of Eurasia and the Caspian has been virtually redrawn. The year 2010 begins on a fascinating new note: will Russia, China and Iran coordinate future moves or at least harmonize their competing interests?

The roots of Iran's revolt

by Lee Sustar from Socialist Worker (US) 1 July 2009 With repression silencing most street protests for the moment as hardliners tighten their grip, is a democratic transformation--or revolutionary change--possible in Iran? Answering that question requires looking at Iranian history, politics and society beyond the disputed June 12 election, in which the government made the outrageous claim that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received more than 62 percent of the vote--24.5 million, compared to 11 million votes for his leading opponent, Mir Hussein Mousavi, who was gaining growing support in the weeks before the vote. In the aftermath of the election, what began as a factional dispute between two wings of the Iranian ruling class sparked mass demonstrations in the capital city of Tehran that, according to the city's mayor, involved some 3 million people. Continue at http://socialistworker.org/2009/07/01/roots-of-irans-revolt See also Iranian workers in action for democratic rights

Rolling the Dice Once Again - in Iran

by Glen Ford from Thomas Paines Corner Tom Engelhardt, the prolific intellectual engine of the Nation Institute’s daily column TomDispatch, recently predicted that the Bush administration won’t attack Iran because…well, because they’re too sensible to launch such a mad enterprise. In a July 9 piece titled: “Why Cheney Won’t Take Down Iran,” Engelhardt acknowledged the many signs that point towards an air assault on the world’s fourth biggestoil exporter by the United States, Israel or both. “Given the Bush administration’s ‘preventive war’ doctrine,” wrote Engelhardt, “which has opened the way for the launching of wars without significant notice or obvious provocation, and the penchant of its officials to ignore reality, all of this should frighten anyone”.

Continue

New threats of war against Iran

from Stop War on Iran, a US anti-war coalition

July 2008

Recent news makes it clear why it is more important than ever that we take to the streets on August 2. According to press reports, President Bush has given the Israeli military the go-ahead to prepare for an imminent attack on Iran. Israel is also using U.S. bases in Iraq to prepare for the attack.

Continue

Israel’s threat to Iran pressures US

from British Socialist Worker
8 July 2008

The US is so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan that recent threats by Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear sites has sent waves of panic through the US military.

The top US commander Michael Mullen warned Israel at a recent high level meeting that he has serious doubts that any attack will succeed.

According to military analysts, any operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites will also have to target missile bases and other facilities. This would involve hundreds of warplanes.

Mullen is worried that an attack would rebound on the US’s troubled occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which share long borders with Iran.

To add to US woes, Iran said that it will respond to any attack by closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, choking off 20 percent of the world’s supply of oil.

Iran also warned that it will fire long range missiles at Israel, with the danger of sparking a regional war that could draw in Lebanon and Syria.

Following the meeting with Israeli military commanders, Mullen said, “Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us, very challenging, with consequences that would be difficult to predict.

“This is a very unstable part of the world and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

George Galloway: I'm Off To Iran Before Israel Bombs It

by George Galloway

30 June 2008

from DailyRecord.co.uk

By the time you read this, I will be in Iran. I've never been there before, never met an Iranian leader - I don't even like the present Iranian leadership - so remember all that, because it might become important.

Continue

Israeli Attack On Iran: "Not a matter of if, but when"

by Stefan Steinberg

from World Socialist Web Site

20 June, 2008

An Israeli military strike is not a matter of if, but when, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel. The latest edition of the news weekly carries a four-page article entitled “Plan to Attack” devoted to preparations currently underway in Israel for air strikes against Iran.

Continue

Israeli press reports US pledge of war on Iran—is Bush preparing an October Surprise?

by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site 21 May 2008 An Israeli press report that US President George W. Bush intends to launch a military attack on Iran before he leaves office at the beginning of next year prompted a heated denial from the White House Tuesday. The article, which appeared in Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, cited a report on Israeli Army Radio, quoting Israeli officials who had met with Bush and his delegation during their visit to Israel last week. “A senior member of the president’s entourage said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for,” the article quoted an Israel official as saying. The report cited the US official as stating that “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” had delayed a decision on military action against Iran. The recent crisis in Lebanon and the evident ease with which the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement seized control of Beirut, according to the report, had placed a US attack on the Islamic Republic back on the front burner.

Continue

Joint Chiefs Chairman Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran

by ANN SCOTT TYSON Washington Post Staff Writer 25 April 2008 The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference. Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said. Mullen's statements and others by Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently signal a new rhetorical onslaught by the Bush administration against Iran, amid what officials say is increased Iranian provision of weapons, training, and financing to Iraqi groups that are attacking and killing Americans. In a speech Monday at West Point, Gates said that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." He said a war with Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat." Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said. "The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way," Mullen said. He said recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been understood by the U.S. military previously. "It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn't seen before," he said. But while Mullen and Gates have recently stated that the Tehran government certainly must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, which they say are led by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, or Quds Force, Mullen said he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved in this."

Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack

by Paul Craig Roberts
ICH
5 April 2008.

Today the London Telegraph reported that "British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment."

The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney. Petraeus, together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that "the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq."

Don't expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million.

Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: "Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."

All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the US from the nightmare.

Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki US puppet government in Iraq: "Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran's efforts."

Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran.

Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim's report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker's claim is obvious as even the neocon US media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the US and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi'ite al-Sadr militias.

Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the US supply line from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iran.

Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter US helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons.

The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the US.

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to "finish the job" in the Middle East.

"Finishing the job" means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what "the war on terror" is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: "No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent."

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.

Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit US Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday.

On the other hand, the US puppet media is likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the US by sending weapons to kill US troops in Iraq.

By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the US Congress and media whether the Bush Regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.

Iran torpedoes US plans for Iraqi oil

by M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times 3 April 2008

In the highly competitive world of international politics, nation states very rarely miss an opportunity to crow about success stories. The opportunity comes rare, mostly by default, and seldom enduring. By any standards of showmanship, therefore, Tehran has set a new benchmark of reticence.

By all accounts, Iran played a decisive role in hammering out the peace deal among the Shi'ite factions in Iraq. A bloody week of human killing on the Tigris River ended on Sunday. Details are sketchy, however, since they must come from non-Iranian sources. Tehran keeps silent about its role.

The deal was brokered after negotiations in the holy city of Qom in Iran involving the two Shi'ite factions - the Da'wa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) - which have been locked in conflict with Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in southern Iraq. It appears that one of the most shadowy figures of the Iranian security establishment, General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) personally mediated in the intra-Iraqi Shi'ite negotiations. Suleimani is in charge of the IRGC's operations abroad.

US military commanders routinely blame the Quds for all their woes in Iraq. The fact that the representatives of Da'wa and SIIC secretly traveled to Qom under the very nose of American and British intelligence and sought Quds mediation to broker a deal conveys a huge political message. Iran signals that security considerations rather than politics or religion prevailed.

But the politics of the deal are all too apparent. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was camping in Basra and personally supervising the operations against the Mahdi Army, was not in the loop about the goings-on. As for US President George W Bush, he had just spoken praising Maliki for waging a "historic and decisive" battle against the Mahdi Army, which he said was "a defining moment" in the history of a "free Iraq". Both Maliki and Bush look very foolish.

But why isn't Tehran in any hurry to claim victory? After all, rubbishing the Bush presidency has been the stuff of Iranian rhetoric. Perhaps, Iranians had shut down over Nauroz new year festivities. They do take the joyful advent of spring very seriously. Or maybe, Suleimani's involvement makes the subject a no-go area for public discussion. Third, Iranians should know better than anyone that the intra-Shi'ite rivalries are far too deep-rooted to lend themselves to an amicable settlement in a day's negotiations.

The turf war in the Iraqi Shi'ite regions has several templates. Iraq's future as a unitary state; the parameters of acceptable federalism, if any; attitude towards the US; control of oil wealth; overvaulting political ambitions - all these are intertwined features of a complex matrix. Therefore, the fragility of the newfound peace is all too apparent. Tehran will be justified in estimating that it is prudent to wait and watch whether peace gains traction in the critical weeks ahead.

But the most important Iranian calculation would be not to provoke the Americans unnecessarily by rubbing in the true import of what happened. Tehran would be gratified that in any case it has made the point that it possesses awesome influence within Iraq. Anyone who knows today's anarchic Iraq would realize that triggering a new spiral of violence in that country may not require much ingenuity, muscle power or political clout.

But to be able to summarily cry halt to cascading violence, and to achieve that precisely in about 48 hours, well, that's an altogether impressive capability in political terms. In this case, the Iranians have managed it with felicitous ease, as if they were just turning off a well-lubricated tap. That requires great command over the killing fields of Iraq, the native warriors, and the sheer ability to calibrate the flow of events and micromanage attitudes.

Conceivably, Tehran would have decided with its accumulated centuries-old Persian wisdom that certain things in life are always best left unspoken, especially stunning successes. Besides, it is far more productive to leave Washington to contemplate over happenings and draw the unavoidable conclusion that if it musters the courage to make that existential choice, Iran can be an immensely valuable factor of stability for Iraq.

But it wasn't a matter of political symbolism, either. Tangible issues are involved. Questions of vital national interests. Clearly, Tehran had genuine concerns over the developing situation in southern Iraq close to its border. Tehran viewed the flare-up involving the Shi'ite factions with great disquiet. This was apparent from the speech by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who led the prayer sermon in Tehran on Friday. He bemoaned, "Iraq is currently entangled in many problems." But Jannati explicitly didn't take sides between the warring factions.

On the one hand, he advised the Mahdi Army ("Iraqi popular armed forces") and Maliki ("Iraqi popular government") to hold talks. But he also advised the "popular armed forces present in Basra" (read Badr Organization, Da'wa, the smaller Fadhila party, etc.) to intervene with the "Iraqi popular government". Third, Jannati also called on Maliki to "heed the [popular] forces' views and solve problems eventually in a way that would be to the interest of all."

Curiously, he criticized the silence on the part of the Muslim world - "especially the Organization of the Islamic Conference" (OIC) - over the "enormous brutality and oppression in Iraq". He said, "It is not clear why Muslim states, especially the OIC, do not show any reaction against so much injustice and oppression in Iraq, while such measures could be easily prevented through unity and solidarity." The remark contained a barely disguised barb aimed at Saudi Arabia for hobnobbing with the US. (US Vice President Dick Cheney had visited Riyadh and Baghdad barely one week before Maliki launched the offensive in Basra.)

Yet, all in all, Jannati politely refrained from expressing Iran's complete disapproval of the conduct of Maliki in carrying out the offensive as part of the US game plan to establish control of Basra, which is the principal artery for American oil majors to evacuate Iraqi oil. The Sadrists oppose the current plans for opening up the nationalized Iraqi oil industry to foreign exploitation.
However, the day after Jannati spoke, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini came down hard on the Maliki government. He deplored the use of American and British air power against the Sadrist militia - "waves of US-UK air raids on civilians". He called on the Shi'ite factions to end the fighting as "continued fighting only serves the interests of the occupiers ... and give pretexts to occupiers to continue their illegitimate presence" in Iraq.

Most important, he called for negotiations - which had already commenced in Qom by that time - "in a friendly and goodwill atmosphere". As for the Maliki government, Hosseini expressed the hope it would "exercise wisdom, cooperation, mutual understanding, patience, calm and contacts with Iraqi political leaders to overcome the current crisis period". Plainly put, Hosseini asked Maliki not to be dumb enough to sub-serve US interests and to realize where his own political interests lay. He pointedly drew a line of distinction between Maliki and the powerful Iraqi Shi'ite leadership.

The Iranian accounts of the fighting have shown a distinct sympathy for the Sadrist militia, highlighting that the Mahdi Army was being "unfairly singled out" for attack by government forces; that the Sadrists' quarrel with Maliki was that he "refused to set a deadline for US and coalition troops to leave"; that US troops were providing the government forces with "intelligence, surveillance and occasional air strikes and raids"; and that Iraqi troops were refusing to obey orders to fight the Sadrist militia. The Iranian official news agency quoted Muqtada as comparing Maliki to Saddam Hussein. "Under Saddam's rule, we complained about how the government distanced itself from the people and operated under dictatorial terms. Now the government is also dealing with people on such terms," he was quoted as saying.

Out of the dramatic developments of the past week, several questions arise, the principal being that the Bush administration's triumphalism over the so-called Iraq "surge" strategy has become irredeemably farcical, and, two, US doublespeak has become badly exposed. What stands out is that Washington promoted the latest round of violence in Basra, whereas Iran cried halt to it. The awesome influence of Tehran has become all too apparent. How does Bush come to terms with it?

What has happened is essentially that Iran has frustrated the joint US-British objective of gaining control of Basra, without which the strategy of establishing control over the fabulous oil fields of southern Iraq will not work. Control of Basra is a pre-requisite before American oil majors make their multi-billion investments to kick start large-scale oil production in Iraq. Iraq's Southern Oil Company is headquartered in Basra. Highly strategic installations are concentrated in the region, such as pipeline networks, pumping stations, refineries and loading terminals. The American oil majors will insist on fastening these installations.

The game plan for control of Basra now needs to be reworked. The idea was to take Basra in hand now so that the Sadrists would be thwarted from taking over the local administration in elections in October - in other words, to ensure the political underpinning for Basra. All indications are that the Sadrists are riding a huge wave of popular support. They have caught the imagination of the poor, downtrodden, dispossessed masses in the majority Shi'ite community. They are hard to replace in democratic elections. The sense of frustration in Washington and London must be very deep that Basra is not yet fastened. Time is running out for Bush to make sure that his successor in the White House inherits an irreversible process in the US's Iraq policy.

Indeed, in his first comments, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown initially refused to say on Tuesday whether the government's plans to cut the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500 from 4,000 were on course. He simply said British troops were facing "difficulties" in Basra. This was followed by Defense Secretary Des Browne saying that return of 2,500 troops from southern Iraq this spring had been placed on hold indefinitely.

Bush hasn't yet spoken. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put on a brave face, saying first-hand information was limited, but based on that, "they [Iraqi troops] seem to have done a pretty good job". To be sure, Cheney must be furious that Tehran torpedoed the entire US strategy for Big Oil. He has had a hard time shepherding the pro-West Arab regimes in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, up to this point.

Besides, nothing infuriates Cheney more than when US oil interests are hit. Thus, the most critical few weeks in the decades-long US-Iran standoff may have just begun. Last week, five former US secretaries of state who served in Democratic and Republican administrations - Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright and Colin Powell - sat at a round-table discussion in Athens and reached a consensus to urge the next US administration to open a line of dialogue with Iran.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Israeli Attack On Iran: "Not a matter of it, but when".

by Stefan Steinberg from World Socialist Web Site 20 June, 2008 An Israeli military strike is not a matter of if, but when, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel. The latest edition of the news weekly carries a four-page article entitled “Plan to Attack” devoted to preparations currently underway in Israel for air strikes against Iran. The article begins by noting that the Israeli government has rejected economic sanctions as a means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It states that “a broad consensus (in Israel) in favour of a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities — without the Americans, if necessary — is beginning to take shape.” The main propagandist for a military strike against Iran is the current Israeli Transport Minister and former defence minister Shaul Mofaz, who has been widely quoted as saying that military action against Iran is “unavoidable.” Mofaz first made this remark following recent talks with senior US officials in Washington. He repeated his comments most recently in an interview with the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper last Friday. Referring to threats made by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Israel, Mofaz declared menacingly that Iran “would disappear before Israel does.” Mofaz continued: “If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective... Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.” With his close links to the military establishment, Mofaz is regarded as a “hardliner” on the issue of Iran. Illustrating the “broad consensus” that exists in Israel for a military strike against Iran, Der Spiegel also cites the opinion of Dani Yatom, a retired major general and member of the Israeli parliament for the Labour Party. Yatom declares: “We no longer believe in the effectiveness of sanctions...A military operation is needed if the world wants to stop Iran.” The article then quotes Israeli historian Benny Morris, who also favours a military solution: “If the issue is whether Israel or Iran should perish, then Iran should perish.” Der Spiegel concludes: “In truth...there is now a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities has become unavoidable.” Agreement over a military strike against Iran is virtually unanimous in the Israeli cabinet, the article argues. The only outstanding issue is the timing of an attack: “In Israel, it is no longer a matter of whether there will be a military strike, but when.” According to Der Spiegel: “The doves argue that diplomatic efforts by the United Nations should be allowed to continue until Iran is on the verge of completing the bomb. That way, Israel could at least argue convincingly that all non-military options had been exhausted. “The hawks, on the other hand, believe time is running out. They stress that there is now a ‘favourable window of opportunity’ that will close with the US presidential election in November, and that Israel can only depend on American support for as long as current US President George W. Bush is still in charge in Washington.” The report then deals with the feasibility of an Israeli air strike, featuring a map of Iran with potential targets for Israeli aircraft. The article notes that the Israeli air force had already carried out a successful bombing raid against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and more recently in September 2007 destroyed a target identified by Israeli intelligence as a suspect nuclear site in eastern Syria. Israel recently signed a deal with Washington involving the purchase of F-22 Stealth bombers, which are ideally suited to the type of targeted bombing raids planned by the Israeli air force command. Israel’s existing fleet of F15 jet fighters could also be used to launch a multi-pronged attack on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. The article concludes by citing Middle East expert and former CIA agent Bruce Riedel, who declares that while an American president could anticipate opposition to a US-led strike, “the situation is different from Israel’s perspective...There is some risk that Israel thinks it has limited time to act and it has a green light from American politicians.” Questioned as to the consequences of such an Israeli strike, Riedel stressed that it would be seen as a US attack, and Iranian retaliation would be directed “at both Israel and the US.” The consequences, says Riedel, would be fatal. “We will see a Middle East in flames.” Israeli war plans and a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Middle East Barely a day passes without reports of new diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East—either directly or indirectly involving the Israeli government. On the same day—Thursday June 19—that the government in Jerusalem announced a cease-fire with the Hamas movement in the Gaza strip, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert also declared his government’s readiness to open direct peace talks with Lebanon. Israel has long been conducting regular military operations against Palestinians in the Gaza strip and fought a fierce border war with Hezbollah militias located inside Lebanon in 2006. Other countries, notably France, Germany together with Turkey, have also been active in pushing to re-establish improved international relations with the Syrian regime, which has long been branded by both Israel and the United States as a “pariah” nation and an original candidate for inclusion in Washington’s “axis of evil.” French President Nicholas Sarkozy recently visited Damascus, leading a large French delegation, and has invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to Paris to join in French National holiday celebrations. Sarkozy has also invited the Israeli Prime Minister and hopes that the two sworn enemies can be persuaded to shake hands and reconcile in Paris. Any close examination of the rival “peace initiatives” reveals that different strategies are being followed by the Israeli and European governments. Israel is using the propaganda campaign conducted by Washington demonising the regime in Tehran to prepare its own military strike against Iran. At the same time, Jerusalem is seeking to politically neutralise a number of traditional allies of the Iranian government—the Hamas movement in Gaza, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian government led by Assad—in order to minimise the risk of retaliation from these forces following a military strike against Iran. European governments, such as France and Germany, are certainly well aware of the threat of a military strike on Iran by either the US or Israel, which would endanger their own considerable economic and political stakes in the Middle East. Urgent warnings of the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran were already raised by Ruprecht Polenz (Christian Democratic Union), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German parliament, in November 2007, and just two weeks ago by the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. But while they are vigorously conducting their own diplomacy in the Middle East, European governments are not prepared to publicly challenge the belligerent propaganda campaign being undertaken by both Israel and America against Iran. This was the significance of the recent tour of European countries undertaken by the US president. In one country after another, George Bush was able to repeat his threats against Iran, unchallenged by a single European leader. The article in Der Spiegel makes this same point and notes that the standpoint of the Israeli hawks who are demanding rapid military action against Iran has been strengthened by the recent Bush tour. “President Bush, however, has recently been sending out signals that are suspiciously reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. Then, as today, he insisted that ‘all options are on the table.’ And then, as today, he sought to appease the Europeans by saying that all diplomatic channels would be exhausted first. But during his recent visit to Slovenia, Bush said: ‘There’s a lot of urgencies when it comes to dealing with Iran, and the Israeli political folks ... if you go to Israel and listen carefully, you’ll hear that urgency in their voice.’” The parallel drawn by Der Spiegel with the run up to the Iraq war is entirely appropriate. Prior to the launching of the military invasion in 2003, spineless European leaders faithfully supported the sanctions campaign against the regime of Saddam Hussein, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They then either remained silent (France and Germany) or complicit (Great Britain) as the Bush government trotted out a string of lies to justify its devastating assault on Iraq. In a similar fashion, the current silence on the part of European governments (and much of the European media) on the danger of a US-backed Israeli military strike on Iran is deafening. After the events of the Iraq war, no politically conscious person can claim that the consequences of a similar unilateral “pre-emptive strike” against Iran remain unclear. Another catastrophic war crime is being prepared in the Middle East under the noses of the European ruling elites, and not a single government on the continent is prepared to challenge the administrations in Jerusalem and Washington. On the contrary, they are already sending signals that they will side with the Israeli regime in the event of war with Iran. The same German politician who warned so dramatically of the consequences of Israeli action against Iran last November makes clear in the latest Der Spiegel report that Germany would unquestioningly side with Israel in the event of open hostilities. Ruprecht Polenz sums up the European role in encouraging tougher sanctions against Iran as a possible deterrent to military action—a strategy which at the same time binds European nations closer to Israel. “By issuing this warning, we are taking even more responsibility for (guaranteeing that) our favoured approach will yield results,” Polenz says. In other words, if Iran continues to pursue its nuclear program, the West will have to close ranks with Jerusalem. “Under no circumstances can the impression be created that Israel would be left alone with the possibility of an Iranian atom bomb.”

George Galloway: I'm Off To Iran Before Israel Bombs It

by George Galloway 30 June 2008 from DailyRecord.co.uk By the time you read this, I will be in Iran. I've never been there before, never met an Iranian leader - I don't even like the present Iranian leadership - so remember all that, because it might become important. I'm determined to do my bit for the anti-war effort. We need another war like Gordon Brown needs another by-election. But the Sunday papers were again full of Israeli war games and threats as speculation mounts of a massive bombardment of yet another Muslim country. I'm going for the first anniversary of Press TV, on which I present two programmes - Comment at 10.30pm on Thursdays and The Real Deal at 10.30pm on Sundays. This week I hope to meet Ali Larijani, formerly Iran's nuclear negotiator, now speaker of the Iranian parliament and, I hope, the next president. Larijani proved beyond even the CIA's attempt at contradiction that Iran is acting entirely within her legal rights to develop nuclear power. As a signatory to the treaty governing the development of nuclear weapons, Iran has done nothing wrong under it either, at least according to the watchdog maintained by the international community, the IAEA. Israel, on the other hand, refuses to sign the nuclear weapons treaty and thus, with a chutzpah which takes the breath away, claims it's not in breach of it. Yet last week, it acknowledged the truth first revealed by the Israeli hero Mordechai Vannunu, who spent nearly 20 years in solitary for telling us that they possess nuclear weapons in abundance. Their brazenness about this reached its apogee when they publicly thanked France, in the diminutive form of Nicolas Sarkozy, for the decisive help they had given them (we ourselves gave them the heavy water technology) to enable to build their nuclear arsenal. So let me run that past you. Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, seems to be planning to attack a country with none with the support of France, Britain and the US and all in the name of, er, checking the spread of nuclear weapons in that region. You couldn't make it up, but alas you don't have to. The Dr Strangeloves who've taken over the bunker have already done so. Next week's column, should I survive, will no doubt tell you about the great civilisation that is Persia, which hasn't attacked another country for more than 300 years, not a boast we can make ourselves. Iran is no broken-backed land enfeebled by decades of war and sanctions. If attacked, she most certainly will defend herself and by all means necessary. Fasten your seatbelts.

Rolling the Dice Once Again - in Iran

by Glen Ford from Thomas Paines Corner Tom Engelhardt, the prolific intellectual engine of the Nation Institute’s daily column TomDispatch, recently predicted that the Bush administration won’t attack Iran because…well, because they’re too sensible to launch such a mad enterprise. In a July 9 piece titled: “Why Cheney Won’t Take Down Iran,” Engelhardt acknowledged the many signs that point towards an air assault on the world’s fourth biggestoil exporter by the United States, Israel or both. “Given the Bush administration’s ‘preventive war’ doctrine,” wrote Engelhardt, “which has opened the way for the launching of wars without significant notice or obvious provocation, and the penchant of its officials to ignore reality, all of this should frighten anyone”. Then Engelhardt rolled off some of the many reasons the U.S., for its own good, should *not* wage war on Iran: the “global shock” of $300-$400 per barrel oil, “$12 gas at the pump”; International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei’s warning that a military strike “would turn the region into a fireball”; last year’s revolt of U.S. generals and spies, who conspired to undercut the administration’s rationale for an Iran attack; and doubts among the chattering classes as to Dick Cheney’s clout in the last months of George Bush’s regime. Engelhardt tends to believe that “the weight of reality” and the strategic presence of more “adults in the room” have brought a degree of sanity to the Bush gang, and that Karl Rove’s 2002 declaration: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” is no longer operative in the White House. “Are they still capable of creating ‘their own reality’ and imposing it, however briefly, on the planet,” asks Engelhardt? “Every tick upwards in the price of oil says no. Every day that passes makes an attack on Iran harder to pull off.” Engelhardt’s underlying assumption appears to be that an attack on Iran would be, in a word, crazy - too crazy even for the Bush men - that the risks to the United States and world order are so terrifyingly high that only madmen would take the plunge. The flaw in the argument is the assumption that the Bush men and the Lords of Capital whom they serve see the world in much the same way as the rest of us. They do not, and we know they do not based on their behavior in 2002-2003, when the same cost-benefit analysis would have argued decisively against an unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Clearly, the Bush pirates believed the consequences of failure to invade Iraq were far graver than the risks of war. The question we should be asking is: What makes relative peace so scary that American imperialists would rather gamble the fate of the planet, including their own futures, on a roll of the dice in the Persian Gulf? Imperialism’s Nightmare Vision I submit that the Lords of Capital and their servants - today, as in 2003 - understand perfectly well that the system they oversee cannot long exist under the current paths of world development; that their only hope to perpetuate themselves into future decades is to violently upset the planetary game board - as often as necessary. From the financial oligarchy’s perspective, the death of the world as they know and possess it - their world - is imminent, and can only be avoided through acts of horrific aggression, terror and barbaric reversion to primitive modes of accumulation, i.e. brute theft and pillage. That is the weight of their reality - actually, the weight of the contradictions of late stage capitalism under the hegemony of the all-powerful finance sector, which produces nothing yet seeks to monetize, commodify and buy and sell everything. So, what do the Lords of Capital see, when they survey “their” world? They see the final failure of their grand scheme to shift the centers of global production to the South and East while somehow preserving the supremacy of the de-industrializing West – an impossibility. As arch-speculator George Soros keenly understands, power must”shift in favor of the developing world, particularly China” – an unacceptable outcome to the Lords of Capital. They therefore require a military alternative to the laws of political economy and civilized relations among nations. Their continued existence depends on their capability and * willingness* to smash and rearrange the planetary reality whenever imperialism’s illogical and wildly contradictory arrangements are threatened. Raw military power – a global coercive regime – must be deployed to counter the elemental logic of political economy (and history) with the logic of terror. They must be constantly prepared to wage war against peace, because only through war can they forestall the inevitable collapse of the rule of unproductive capital - that grotesque insult to the human productive spirit and simple common sense. The grand vision of corporate globalism – the finance capitalists’ imperial heaven - cannot exist in the real world except through the application of terror. That’s why the servants of the Lords of Capital were compelled to devise the Project for a New American Century(PNAC) as a grand military strategy to buttress the terminal illogic of their planet-smothering version of corporate globalism. The PNAC’s mission was to eliminate the *capability* of any state or combination of states to mount a “deterrent to American intervention” anywhere in the world. It was a declaration of war against the world. The U.S. would develop the capability to wage four separate wars simultaneously - resistance would be rendered futile. The invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 - the first stage of a much deeper thrust into Asia that was foiled by the Iraqi resistance - must be understood in the context of U.S.-based finance capital’s imperative to rule the planet through military coercion. The rise of the euro, the approach of peak oil - let us not get lost in the bushes. The Lords of Capital will always have reasons for war, since the global regime they seek to maintain constantly creates conflicts with the productive forces of the world and threatens human existence - now, for example, diverting food production and distribution at affordable prices in favor of biofuels. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a terroristic display, a macabre kind of mega-theater designed to intimidate and straightjacket the entire world, including putative allies. As I wrote on January 30, 2003, seven weeks before the war: “The real show is in the show, itself. The people who created George Bush’s ridiculous War Face are not just playing crazy to gain transient advantage over Frenchmen and Russians. They are Hell-bent on proving to the natives (all of us) that they are capable of unimaginable destruction. We must see it to believe it - which is why this war is all but inevitable. In the aftermath of horror, the world will become malleable, ready for reshaping in the not-yet-defined New Order. That’s the plan. The pirates are confident they can improvise the post war details at their leisure, later. What we are witnessing is essentially the buildup to a global consciousness-searing U.S. military demonstration - the Mother of All War Shows. If we search for the military or economic objectives of the conflict on anything so crude as a map, we have missed the point.” Which is not to say that Washington didn’t have strategic objectives - dominance of the entire region and its resources - but that they did not achieve them and, therefore, retain every “reason” for further aggression, to continue pursuing frustrated objectives. That’s why there was no “exit strategy” in 2003. It is the most compelling reason for remaining in Iraq, and why an attack on Iran is just waiting to happen. My friend Tom Engelhardt thinks the ghastly potential consequences of a strike into Iran act as brakes to U.S. (and/or Israeli) aggression. However, if the point of the aggression is to prove to the world that the attacker is willing to risk global catastrophe to impose his will - if the strategy is to play a deadly game of chicken with the rest of the planet - then the more risky, the better. It is true, as I wrote on the day Bush’s tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border, that “the Pirates have accelerated the processes of their own ruin.” (See “They Have Reached Too Far- Bush’s Road Leads to Ruin for Himself and His Pirates,” Black Commentator, March 20, 2003.) But the accumulated contradictions of maintaining imperial hegemony are what drove Washington to invade Iraq - to attempt to upset the global game board - in the first place. The fact that the invasion “accelerated the processes” of U.S. decline simply makes another assault on world order more “necessary” from the perspective of the Lords of Capital. From their standpoint, the alternative is the demise of the system that defines their existence. What civilized people would view as behavior too risky to contemplate, *they* perceive as defensive measures to stave off systemic death. In the five years since the Iraq invasion, the euro has grown in buying power from $.93 to $1.60, fossil fuel producers lose money every time they sell oil and gas pegged to the failing dollar, and the nations of the world continue to discover more creative ways to “redline” the U.S. out of their political and economic affairs. What’s an imperialist to do? Bang the fist on the table, one more time, to upset the global game. Mr. Engelhardt believes “[e]very tick upwards in the price of oil” makes it less likely that the U.S. will attack Iran. But it is mainly U.S. war ranting that has sent the price of oil into the stratosphere - another American game of chicken in which it proves it is willing to destroy the economies of the industrial world, including its own, to somehow preserve imperial hegemony. Washington’s conduct is, if anything, crazier than pre-Iraq invasion - unless one understands the logic of the Lords of a dying system, whose remaining levers of global control are artificial, largely disconnected from the real world economy, and ultimately dependent on military coercion and the threat to bring the whole house down. U.S. threats to bring down the house may be redundant. In the past year, the world has slowly become aware that the global economic order as we have known it awaits an implosion unlike any in history. The sky really is falling in on late stage capitalism. The Big One Where has capitalism been warehousing its most fundamental contradictions during the current epoch of decay? How has finance capital managed to disconnect itself from so much of global productive enterprise and still churn out ever-increasing returns, without which it would quickly die? The answer appears in the form of the Mother of all Bubbles, the $750 trillion in “fictitious capital” that former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and other European social democrats point out “represents 15 times the gross domestic product (GDP) of all countries” on Earth, including more than $500 trillion in derivatives and other “notional” instruments. This is the “money” that capitalist financial institutions pretend is real - and whose shadowy presence overwhelms and distorts the real world’s comparatively puny $50 trillion economy (the U.S. GDP is $15 trillion). Derivatives and such instruments are not wealth, but mainly organized debt that is treated as money, and which threatens to strangle real economic activity. It is a “ticking time bomb” that no one - no one! - knows how to diffuse, much less eliminate. Apparently, that’s the monopoly money the Lords of Capital have been playing with to become “notionally” richer and richer while producing virtually nothing and threatening everyone else with ruin if they disrespect the Empire. Imperial heaven actually does rest on a foundation of clouds and other smoke - and weapons of war. It is impossible to imagine how the Lords of Capital will separate their mountains of play money from productive capital, or how the structures they lord over can survive the inevitable implosion. Back in 2002, when Washington decided to upset a disadvantageous global game board by invading Iraq, only $100 trillion in derivatives floated in the financial firmament. Now the bubble has swollen five-fold and, thanks to the U.S. sub-prime lending debacle, the world is becoming aware of the looming catastrophe. Nobody is trading the bogus instruments, which means their “value” is nil. Since no combination of oil producers’ “sovereign funds” can turn so much “shadow capital” into the real thing, there can be no effective bailout or controlled deflation of the “fictitious money” bubble. It is the end game of late stage capitalism’s terminal contradictions, the final outcome of the Lords of Capital’s futile quest to maintain global power while disconnected from, and a burden to, the productive sectors of the world. So, will the Lords of Capital accept their class extinction - their social death - as the edifices of their rule implode in utter ruin? Not likely. They’ve still got the U.S. military, bigger (or, at least, more expensive) than all the rest of the world’s armed forces, combined. The option will still remain, to seize vital sectors and regions of the planet, holding them hostage to continuing Western imperial sway. To just take stuff, in a hi-tech war of primitive accumulation. That was the goal of the greater Iraq adventure, until it got bogged down by pesky “insurgents.” From where the Lords of Capital sit, they don’t have any other choices, not any longer, if they insist on maintaining global hegemony. And they do insist. Of course, there is nothing written in stone that says Iran must be the location for the next U.S. land and resource grab - but there will be a grab. Africa is daily penetrated and subdued, and Venezuela is as good or bad a place as any to roll the dice. One thing is certain: the Lords of Capital are literally incapable of transforming themselves into productive world citizens. And they have always chosen to resolve their contradictions through war. Despite differences of temperament, Barack Obama serves the same masters as John McCain: the Lords of Capital. That’s why Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wisely refuses to differentiate between the nominees-to-be. “The two candidates for the U.S. presidency attack us equally, they attack us defending the interests of the empire,” Chavez told his socialist party. “Let’s not kid ourselves, it is the empire and the empire must fall.” Our job is to prevent them from bringing the rest of the world down with it.

Israeli press reports US pledge of war on Iran—is Bush preparing an October Surprise?

by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site 21 May 2008 An Israeli press report that US President George W. Bush intends to launch a military attack on Iran before he leaves office at the beginning of next year prompted a heated denial from the White House Tuesday. The article, which appeared in Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, cited a report on Israeli Army Radio, quoting Israeli officials who had met with Bush and his delegation during their visit to Israel last week. “A senior member of the president’s entourage said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for,” the article quoted an Israel official as saying. The report cited the US official as stating that “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” had delayed a decision on military action against Iran. The recent crisis in Lebanon and the evident ease with which the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement seized control of Beirut, according to the report, had placed a US attack on the Islamic Republic back on the front burner. Bush expressed the opinion that “the disease must be treated, not the symptoms,” according to the Israeli officials. The White House denial—issued within hours of the story appearing on the Jerusalem Post’s web site—was notably harsh in its tone. “An article in today’s Jerusalem Post about the president’s position on Iran that quotes unnamed sources—quoting unnamed sources—is not worth the paper it’s written on,” read the statement. Later on Tuesday, however, Bush’s spokesperson Dana Perino was pressed by several reporters, who expressed skepticism in regard to the denial. “Do the President and the Vice President feel that an attack is called for—whether someone said that in Israel, or not?” asked one. Dana Perino refused to answer, reiterating the official position that Washington is working to resolve its confrontation with Iran “diplomatically” but that it would not take any “options off the table.” In reality, the Jerusalem Post story is hardly the only indication that the Bush administration is preparing for a military attack on Iran. Ample physical evidence exists in the stepped up US military deployments in the region, with the Navy once again having two aircraft carrier battle groups—the USS Lincoln and the USS Harry S. Truman—within striking distance of Iran. Meanwhile, the flagship of the 6th Fleet, the USS Mount Whitney, has been deployed off the coast of Lebanon, in what the Navy has described as an “unscheduled mission.” The ship is the Navy’s most advanced command, control and intelligence vessel, capable of coordinating a major attack over a wide region. It joined the USS Cole, a missile destroyer, already there. In Washington, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before a Senate committee Tuesday to reiterate the Pentagon’s unsubstantiated charges that Iran is responsible for violence in Iraq. The lack of a US military response thus far, he stressed, “does not signal lack of resolve or capability to defend ourselves against threats.” In his speech before the Israeli Knesset last week, Bush placed Iran at the center of his pledge of unconditional support for Israel. “America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions,” he said. “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” After Bush’s visit, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the press that Olmert and Bush had agreed on the need for “tangible action” to thwart Iran’s supposed drive to develop a nuclear weapon. “We are on the same page. We both see the threat.... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon,” Olmert spokesman Mark Regev told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. Referring to diplomatic efforts to exert pressure on Iran, Regev added, “It is clearly not sufficient, and it’s clear that additional steps will have to be taken.” Even as the US and Israel stepped up the drumbeat about an alleged Iranian nuclear threat, Mohammad El-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spoke before a World Economic Forum session in Egypt Monday, declaring that the UN nuclear watchdog agency has no evidence that Iran is building a bomb. Well before the story appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz reported that “Iran’s nuclear program has held center stage” in the talks between Bush and Olmert. Israeli officials, the paper reported, presented Bush with intelligence data that supposedly contradicted the National Intelligence Estimate produced by US spy agencies last year, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. “Will this be enough to alter the position of the administration on the possibility of a US strike of the nuclear installations in Iran? It is not clear,” the paper reported. It added, however, that the Israeli government is insisting that Iran is approaching the “point of no return,” and immediate action is required. As for Bush, it commented, the closer he “comes to the end of his tenure, he is certainly thinking about the legacy of his presidency, beyond the contentious war in Iraq.” The suggestion being made is that one way to change the subject from the disastrous legacy embodied in the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the launching of yet another act of military aggression, one which would undoubtedly throw the entire region into chaos. One clue to the political thinking within the top echelons of the Bush administration came in the form of an audiotape. The tape was part of the material the Pentagon turned over recently to the New York Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for its article exposing the Defense Department’s relationship to a group of retired officers who regularly appeared on television news, promoting the administration’s line on Iraq. The tape was of a December 2006 luncheon meeting between then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a group of these “military analysts”—referred to by the Pentagon itself as “message force multipliers.” The mood at the meeting was clearly one of dismay and even anger over the results of the 2006 midterm election, in which a wave of popular antiwar sentiment delivered control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael Delong is heard noting to Rumsfeld that with the new political configuration on Capitol Hill, “you’re not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there until it [a terrorist attack] happens.” Rumsfeld agreed, responding: “We haven’t had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it’s not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment ... The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it’s a shame we don’t have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you’d think we’d be able to understand it...” The “correction” for the failure of the American people to support the war in Iraq and the global eruption of American militarism under the mantle of the “war on terrorism” is, in Rumsfeld’s view, another “attack,” along the lines of September 11, 2001. Clearly, the conception is that another round of “lethality” and “carnage” would serve to stun the public and create conditions for the administration to impose its political will by extraordinary means. Certainly, one means of making such an attack all the more likely would be the launching of a military strike against Iran. The reports from Israel and the military buildup in the region raise an obvious question: With the approach of the 2008 elections, are elements within the Bush administration preparing an “October Surprise” in the form of an unprovoked attack on Iran?

New threats of war against Iran

from Stop War on Iran, a US anti-war coalition July 2008 Recent news makes it clear why it is more important than ever that we take to the streets on August 2. According to press reports, President Bush has given the Israeli military the go-ahead to prepare for an imminent attack on Iran. Israel is also using U.S. bases in Iraq to prepare for the attack. The British Sunday Times of July 13, 2008 reported: "Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. "Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. The Jerusalem Post of July 13, 2008 reported: "On Friday, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network that IAF war planes were practicing in Iraqi airspace were landing on US airbases in the country as a preparation for a potential strike on Iran." Once again the most powerful forces of US corporate power - the military-industrial-petroleum complex -are using Israel as their proxy to threaten war on surrounding countries in the region. Israel is armed, financed, and politically and diplomatically supported by Washington. It can not act on its own or without explicit permission from Washington. U.S. tax dollars finance Israel wars against surrounding nations, and Israeli repression of the Palestinians, to keep the area "safe" for U.S. oil companies. This is why it is vital to link the struggle against the war in Iraq and a potential war against Iran with the struggle of the Palestinian people for the right to return. At the same time Washington is giving the Israeli military a go-ahead to bomb Iran, the U.S. Congress is moving ahead to escalate tensions in the region and possibly provoke an incident that would justify U.S. military action. House Resolution 362 and Senate Resolution 580 both require that the President begin blockade of Iran. The House Resolution "demands" that the President impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran." Enforcing this would require a U.S. Naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz, which is an act of war according to international law. Approximately one-fourth of the world's oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, pass through the Straits of Hormuz, which is 21 miles across at its narrowest point (the shipping channel is less than 2 miles wide). These two resolutions have received widespread bipartisan support from members of both Houses, and are expected to pass without debate or vote. A staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office said that once the Resolution hits the floor, it will "pass like a hot knife through butter." Some have speculated that the bill will be put on the floor under suspension - meaning that it will pass without even a vote. Both resolutions accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons, despite the fact that Washington's National Intelligence Estimate report last December that made it clear that every major U.S. intelligence agency believes that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Nor do the resolutions refer to the real nuclear threat in the region - the U.S., which is the only country that has used nuclear weapons and currently has a massive nuclear-armed naval armada in the region. It also does not mention the apartheid settler state of Israel, which is thought to have more than 200 nuclear weapons. At the same time, two leading Senators announced on Tuesday, July 15, that they had reached a bipartisan agreement to expand economic sanctions targeting Iran. Sens. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., called Iran "a threat to U.S. interests." Dodd, a former candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, said, "This bipartisan bill strengthens economic sanctions against Iran, and authorizes divestment from companies that do business with Iran's key oil sector." Meanwhile, the U.S. is involved in "covert operations" - acts of terrorism - inside Iran. In the July 7 New Yorker, Seymour Hersh revealed that Congress has approved $400 million to fund covert operations in Iran. These operations include: providing support to armed groups opposed to the Iranian government, kidnapping members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and taking them across the border to Iraq for interrogation, the manipulation of Iran's currency, and other acts intended to destabilize the regime. Hersh reports that these types of operations have been ongoing at least since last year, but the recent Congressional appropriation signals a significant expansion of these actions. It is clear that the Bush Administration is determined to push forward with its agenda of endless war to control the oil reserves of the Middle East. It is equally clear that members of Congress - both Democrats and Republicans - are collaborating with the Administration, just as they collaborated in authorizing and funding the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is imperative that progressive activists and organizations, particularly in the U.S., mobilize to stop another brutal war, and to demand an end to the illegal sanctions and covert operations targeting Iran. Now is the time to take to the streets, because only a massive grassroots mobilization can stop another bloody and illegal war. In the next few days and weeks, we need to do everything we can to take to the streets to Stop a War on Iran. We have a real opportunity to help build a massive grassroots movement to oppose the warmongers in Washington. Stop War on IRAN Troops Out of IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN! No to U.S. war through Israel! Money for Jobs, Housing & Healthcare, NOT War

Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq

What Bush calls “progress in Iraq”

September 7, 2007 | Socialist Worker USA

DAHR JAMAIL has spent eight months in Iraq since 2003 as an “unembedded” reporter, providing an indispensable independent analysis of the disastrous U.S. occupation. His book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq will be released this month, and Dahr will appear at meetings around the country in conjunction with its publication.

Here, he talks to ERIC RUDER about the fact and fiction of the Bush administration’s “surge” of combat troops and the future of Iraq.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

GEORGE BUSH seems to have already concluded, even before he gets the report from Gen. David Petraeus, that his troop “surge” has produced good results. What’s your assessment?

I THINK that all we need to do is look at the statistics. These hard facts counter the Bush administration’s propaganda that the surge is working.

More Iraqis have fled their homes during the period of the surge. There has been a 50 percent increase in the number of Iraqis detained in all U.S. detention facilities in Iraq. The number of U.S. troops killed has increased dramatically during the surge. Same with the number of soldiers wounded.

A majority of Baghdad remains out of the control of the U.S. military. And as usual, having one focused giant military push in one main area--that is, in Baghdad (although a few troops have gone to Anbar province)--has essentially spread the resistance all around the country to places where it didn’t have a strong presence before.

What else to read Dahr Jamail’s articles and commentary on the Middle East are available at Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches Web site, along with images by Jeff Pflueger. His book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, will be published later this year by Haymarket Books. You can preorder it now through Amazon.com. For daily news updates and analysis of Iraq, see the Electronic Iraq Web site, as well as Juan Cole’s Informed Comment Web site. The crucial book on Iraq for antiwar activists is Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, now republished in an updated paperback edition from the American Empire Project with a foreword by Howard Zinn. Two other books that provide valuable information and analysis about the U.S. occupation and the ensuing civil war are Patrick Cockburn’s The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Nir Rosen’s In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of Martyrs.

And of course, access to clean water, electricity and other services are still below pre-invasion levels.

WHAT DO you make of the withdrawal proposals from Democrats?

LET’S BE clear--none of the mainstream Democratic candidates (basically, everyone except Kucinich and maybe one of the other fringe candidates) has any intention of withdrawing U.S. forces.

The Democrats have twisted the word “withdrawal.” Most people think withdrawal means the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq. The reality is that they’re talking about possibly drawing down the number of troops--which makes for a permanent occupation.

A few months ago, Bush himself said that we need to be thinking about the U.S. presence in Iraq along the lines of South Korea, where troops have been for decades. This is nothing new for the U.S. There have been U.S. troops in Germany and Japan for six decades now.

The Democrats’ plan for Iraq--Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama--doesn’t differ one iota from the Bush administration or mainstream Republican goals. They have no exit strategy because there’s not going to be an exit.

AT A recent debate of Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton said she thought the U.S. should “stay focused” on keeping al-Qaeda “on the run, as we currently are doing in Anbar province.” Do recent events in Anbar province support this view?

FIRST, CLINTON’S statement is misleading because it suggests there have been some successes against al-Qaeda because of something the U.S. military has done. This is false. The reality is that Iraqi resistance groups have been fighting against al-Qaeda since almost the very beginning, when al-Qaeda started infiltrating Iraq’s borders, thanks to the U.S. occupation.

U.S. military commanders on the ground admit they have been unsuccessful in fighting al-Qaeda because they can’t find them. It’s actually the resistance groups that are the only ones having any successes in this respect.

Clinton is again just piggybacking on the Bush administration’s rhetoric that we have to “fight them there so that we don’t have to fight them here.” There is a small presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq, but even according to the U.S. military, they compose a single-digit percentile of the forces that are actually launching attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq.

Clinton’s claims also parallel the Bush administration’s assertion that there’s progress in Anbar province, and that Falluja is a model of success, but I like to defer to the facts on the ground.

Embedded reporters may parrot the military’s claim that new life is being breathed into Falluja thanks to the U.S., but one of my colleagues who lives there reports a very different story.

Yes, there are fewer attacks at the markets in Falluja, but that’s because the city is essentially dead. Unemployment is up over 80 percent, according to my source, and there are still tens of thousands of refugees who fled from the U.S. sieges in 2004 who have not come back because more than 70 percent of the city is totally destroyed.

Whole neighborhoods and quarters of the city have been without water and electricity since the 2004 siege. There’s rampant sickness in the city because there’s no medical care and no ambulances allowed to move. In fact, there’s been a ban on the use of all vehicles in the city since May.

We can say similar things about other cities in Anbar--Samarra, Ramadi--but we only have to look at the number of attacks on the ground. It’s still an extremely insecure place. There is no area in Anbar where U.S. soldiers walk around or go outside their bases without using armored vehicles or as part of a large operation.

A Blackhawk helicopter was shot down a few weeks ago right outside the U.S. base, which is a couple miles from Falluja. That killed four soldiers. There have been so many U.S. military operations and air strikes that the few people who remain there are basically staying in their homes.

THE U.S. seems to have an uneasy relationship with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Why?

I DON’T spend too much time investigating the machinations of Iraq’s puppet government, precisely because it’s a puppet government. Just to give you an idea of how “democratic” it is, Maliki was installed by the Bush and Blair administrations.

If you think back, there were elections in January 2005, and the politicians elected were supposed to choose a prime minister. They did, and that person was Ibrahim Jaafari.

But he wasn’t toeing the line of the Bush/Blair administrations, so Condoleezza Rice and her UK counterpart Jack Straw flew out to Baghdad just a couple months after Jaafari became prime minister. By the time they left Baghdad, Jaafari was out, and Maliki was in.

Today, the Iraqi government has no popular support whatsoever. More than 90 percent of Iraqis now favor total U.S. withdrawal and are completely against the government. The government wouldn’t exist for five minutes without the U.S. occupation there.

People in Baghdad now say that whenever the Americans leave, all of these people will be riding out in the tanks with them, because they won’t be able to walk in safety anywhere in Iraq for the rest of their lives.

BUT IF Maliki is such a puppet, why is the U.S. upset with him?

THE U.S. is upset because he’s no longer doing exactly what they say. A recent example is Maliki’s visit to Iran. Bush ratcheted up the rhetoric against him and threatened him with “consequences” if he becomes too friendly with the Iranians. In Tehran, he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and they made a deal to run a pipeline from Iraq to Iran, as well as other business deals.

Bush then continued his taunts, but Maliki went on to Syria, met with President Bashir Assad and declared that we can find friends elsewhere--in other words, we don’t need only the Bush administration. This creates friction, of course. Their puppet is loosening a couple of the strings and threatening to cut more.

On top of that, Maliki is becoming a whipping boy. He’s useful for the Bush administration to point to as the reason for everything that’s going wrong in the country. Bush assumes that most people in the U.S. are ignorant of the fact that the U.S. installed the man they’re blaming.

WHAT’S BEHIND the clashes between Moktada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization in Karbala?

IT’S COMPLEX. First, it’s important to understand that the recent clashes are not a new phenomenon. They are part of a larger ongoing conflict between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization, which is the armed wing of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC).

SIIC was formerly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and was formed as a mirror group of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran. The SIIC is the religious and political wing governed by the dictates of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who came to Najaf from Iran in 1953.

So essentially, we have Moktada al Sadr, the anti-occupation nationalist cleric, and his Mahdi Army vying for control of the south of Iraq against SIIC and the Badr Organization. In Basra alone, there have more than 5,000 assassinations and tit-for-tat killings between these two groups in the last two years.

The recent clashes occurred during a massive pilgrimage to Karbala. Hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims were making their way to a shrine when guards from the Badr Organization opened fire on some of the Mahdi Army guards who were traveling with the pilgrims, according to one version of the story that I received from sources who had just come from that location.

There are other reports that a renegade loosely affiliated with the Mahdi Army attacked the guards of the Badr Organization, which set off the clashes.

Later on the same day, Sadr announced that he was halting all operations of the Mahdi Army for six months and didn’t say why. This indicates that maybe it was actually a renegade group, not directly under his control, which launched this attack.

In the 48-hour period following the clashes in Karbala, Mahdi Army members attacked SIIC offices in at least five different cities and did the same thing in several neighborhoods of Baghdad--attacking offices, setting them on fire, kidnapping and killing people. I think this ongoing--and savage--war will continue to escalate.

WHAT ARE the political differences between these groups?

ONE KEY difference is that the Badr Organization and SIIC have far cozier relations with Iran. Sadr also has ties to Iran, but he has been more consistently opposed to the U.S. occupation and pushing to maintain the national unity of Iraq, while the SIIC and the Badr Organization have been “playing ball” with occupation forces.

Make no mistake--Badr/SIIC are anti-occupation. But for the moment, they are trying to use the U.S. occupation powers and the U.S. military as leverage against their rival group, which is Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

Without that U.S. military leverage, Sadr and the Madhi Army are the most powerful force in Iraq. U.S. backing is critical to keeping SIIC/Badr from being overwhelmed by Sadr’s forces. Sadr essentially controls the majority of Baghdad, and the Mahdi Army, I would argue, already controls most of southern Iraq.

The important thing is that Sadr has gained so much more popularity during the occupation because he has consistently opposed it--while political games have cost the Badr Organization, SIIC and Sistani much of the power and respect they once had.

IN LATE August, Bush accused Iran of trying to destabilize Iraq. Is Iran responsible for Iraq’s “instability”?

THE PRIMARY force responsible for the violence, chaos and instability in Iraq is, of course, the U.S. military. Needless to say, it is the largest group of foreign fighters in Iraq.

They have caused more death in Iraq than any other single group. They are destabilizing the entire region. If you look at the level of violence across the Middle East today compared to before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it’s night and day.

The Bush administration’s claim that Iran is responsible for the problems in Iraq--specifically, the attacks against U.S. forces--is hypocritical and even absurd. The U.S. is in no position whatsoever to say Iran has no right to have influence in Iraq--or even to have soldiers and weapons in Iraq. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

The U.S. has more than 160,000 heavily armed military personnel in Iraq. They are building permanent bases there with massive airstrips. They are flying an average of more than 60 combat missions a day in Iraq. I think the U.S. is “meddling” in Iraq a little more than Iran is.

Iran does give political support to groups in Iraq, but there is absolutely no evidence on the ground to back up the claim that Iran is giving these groups military support. The fact that they’ve found some weaponry in Iraq that has come from Iran is not proof at all that the Iranian government is itself involved.

There are now reports that U.S. weapons are turning up in Turkey. Does that mean that the U.S. government is directly arming groups in Turkey? Absolutely not. The U.S. itself admits that more than 190,000 U.S. weapons have gone missing. These are turning up in black markets all over the region, including Turkey.

The same is true of Iran. There are mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets and artillery shells from Iran that are turning up in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean the Iranian government has even knowledged that these weapons are crossing their borders into Iraq.

It’s also well documented that $8 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds went “missing” under the watch of the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, which was set up and ran Iraq for the first year of the occupation. Was it spent in Iran? No one knows where this money is. Did it find its way into resistance coffers somehow? Was it used to finance weapons purchases? Again, no one knows.

DO YOU think the U.S. is preparing to attack Iran?

I ALWAYS caution people not to use logic in trying to predict what the neoconservatives in the Bush administration want to do regarding Iran.

We are at a very dangerous time. I wouldn’t call Bush a lame-duck president because he basically has the powers of a dictator. Enough of the laws of this country have been changed and parts of the Constitution have been shredded, so he can do whatever he wants.

Politically and in the polls, he doesn’t care--what does he have to lose? Anything that goes wrong, blame Bush, he’s out anyway, everyone knows that he’s a done deal. So why not go ahead and finish the job with Tehran?

“Everyone wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran,” was the slogan of the neocons in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And that’s the mindset right now. Israel has been calling for the U.S. to attack Iran since even before the invasion of Iraq.

All of the chatter I’m hearing from the ex-CIA analysts I’ve been talking to in recent weeks is that there are plans for an attack on Iran before the Bush administration leaves office, and the only thing that would stop it would be the prompt impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

We know for sure that there are U.S. plans for a massive propaganda campaign against Iran sometime this month in an attempt to justify why the U.S. must launch a strike against Iran. The American Enterprise Institute, all of the neocons, Fox News--these are just some of the mouthpieces ready to begin the propaganda offensive.

It’ll be a lot like during the propaganda campaign against Iraq, when Andrew Card said you don’t roll out new products until the fall. And it was September 7, 2002, when Bush and Blair at Camp David began accusing Saddam Hussein of trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

This blitz will continue into the fall. Personally, I think they’ll take time to let the propaganda work--I could be wrong--and let it filter down to the public that relies on mainstream news sources. I suspect a spring attack, again similar to what happened with Iraq, sometime between February and April 2008.

Seymour Hersh talked about what an attack would entail a while ago in an excellent piece in the New Yorker--massive air strikes and cruise missile attacks across Iran, and targets would include Iranian infrastructure and suspected sites where Iran is carrying out nuclear activities.

But what would happen if these attacks take place? As a Pentagon adviser told Hersh, “Southern Iraq will light up like a candle.”

The two largest Shia militias in the country are already vying for control in the south. Immediately, both of those militias--including Sadr, who has also visited Tehran and expressed solidarity with Iranians, and said that any attack on Iran is an attack on us--will immediately turn from fighting each other and go against the U.S. military.

The main supply line--basically the umbilical cord of the occupation--is a highway that runs from Kuwait to Baghdad. The U.S. military occupies one-third of the geographic area of Kuwait, right up near the Iraqi border. There’s a massive Kellogg Brown and Root truck yard there, and every day, an average of 2,000 supply trucks run from Kuwait into Baghdad, and then the supplies flow to bases around the country.

The supply line is already tenuous, at best. The truck convoys are guarded by Humvees and Bradleys, and sometimes with air support. And there are already daily attacks on this road.

That supply line will immediately be cut once those bombs start falling on Iran. All of the bases, the Green Zone and the rest of the U.S. military infrastructure will find themselves undersupplied.

The road will become unusable--as has long since happened along the main road from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad, because of Sunni resistance forces that operate in that region. The U.S. isn’t able to bring supplies from the massive bases in eastern Jordan because they can’t control that highway.

What’s more, Sistani has not once, throughout the entire U.S. occupation, called on his followers to take up arms against the occupation, but once Iran is attacked, I think we can safely assume that this will change, and we’ll see five, six, seven times more fighters willing to launch attacks against U.S. occupation forces.

There’s lots of bombastic rhetoric from the U.S. about how its military has already targeted critical sites throughout Iran. But Iran can say the same. It’s well known--anyone can get on the Internet and see where the U.S. bases are in Iraq. Those sites are already targeted by Iranian missiles.

Missiles will rain down on most of the U.S. bases in Iraq immediately. There will be dramatic numbers of U.S. military casualties when that happens.

The oil infrastructure of the Persian Gulf will be torched. Iran knows what that would do to the U.S. economy, when oil cross the $100-a-barrel threshold--to $200 or maybe $250 in the matter of a few days’ time.

Overnight, these are a few of the things that would happen. Around the region, there are other possible consequences. It could ignite another war between Hezbollah and Israel, which basically guarantees that Syria will become involved because Israel will attack southern Lebanon, then Iran starts using missiles against Israel, and Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons.

Iran is already shelling areas of northern Iraq because Kurdish rebels, backed by the U.S., are launching incursions into Iran. Turkey has been shelling and even mounting incursions into Kurdistan for the same reasons--because Kurdish rebels have been killing Turkish soldiers and civilians for years now. Turkey has more than 140,000 troops on the border of Iraq, so the possibility of a Turkish invasion of Iraq looms if there’s another huge destabilizing event in the region.

These are just some of the highlights of how the region might unravel in the immediate aftermath of a U.S. attack on Iran.