What War With Iran May Look Like

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There's this conspiracy theory/whispered belief out there that says that Israel via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential pro-Israel group, is pressing the Pentagon to employ a strategy of regional transformation in the Middle East. AIPAC, in theory, feels that because most of the regimes in the Middle East are obviously anti-Israel, it would be beneficial to them to remove from power any and all hostile governments from the region. However, since most of the world tends to lean anti-Semitic, this plan requires subterfuge because stating outright that the War on Terror is really a war to defend Israel wouldn't play well in the sticks...or anywhere else for that matter.

There's some indication that even in the short run, invading Iraq has caused there to be significant pressure on certain "friendly" regimes to make at least ancillary changes in their approach to Israel. For example, according to Islam-Online, "Riyadh has promised, as part of a bilateral agreement signed with Washington on Friday, September 9, not to enforce aspects of the Arab League boycott of Israel that apply to US firms doing business with Israel, US Trade Representative Rob Portman said in a statement posted on his Web site.

The kingdom has also pledged to abide by WTO rules in its trade with all 148 members of the WTO, including Israel, he added.

"As a result of negotiations on its accession to the WTO, we will see greater openness, further development of the rule of law, and political and economic reform in Saudi Arabia".

The agreement, signed without public fanfare in Washington, paves the way for Saudi Arabia to join the WTO by the end of 2005.

The United States was the last WTO member to reach a bilateral market access deal with Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is one of the four largest world economies outside the WTO and is the only Gulf country that is not member of the world organization."

Though the article goes on the state that AIPAC isn't satisfied with this development, I still contend that the Saudi's wouldn't have even bothered with this much of an olive branch if US soldiers weren't currently blowing up bits and pieces of their Gulf neighbor, Iraq. But small changes and long drawn out diplomacy using economic partnerships as a carrot isn't really what the Pentagon is allegedly after.

If the whispers and the conspiracy theories are true then what AIPAC and the Pentagon really want is for all volatile and hostile regimes to be forcefully removed from the Middle East/Central Asia and be replaced by those who be more amicable to Israel and more importantly, sell the US cheap and dependable oil. Phase 1 of this plan seems to have been carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan, for better or for worse depending on whom you ask. As I've written many times before, the signs seems to pointing toward Iran as the next logical domino that the US would like to topple.

Iran, just like Iraq was, is currently being labeled as a possible producer of weapons of mass destruction. For the last several months they have been in negotiations with the so-called EU-3 (France, Germany and the UK) to stop enriching uranium, a process that typically leads to the creation of nuclear bombs, and accept instead a bevy of economic packages. In reality, what has been happening is that the mullahs dance with the EU-3 for a few months, making promises and talking nice and then just like Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, suddenly all negotiations stop and the quest for enriched uranium continues. A few months later they dance again.

According to former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, in a new article he's written, the EU-3 is engaging in faux diplomacy in the hopes that they can prolong the US' planned invasion of Iran.

"The real purpose of the EU-3 intervention -- to prevent the United States from using Iran's nuclear ambition as an excuse for military intervention -- is never discussed in public.

The EU-3 would rather continue to participate in fraudulent diplomacy rather than confront the hard truth -- that it is the United States, and not Iran, that is operating outside international law when it comes to the issue of Iran's nuclear program.

In doing so, the EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran.

The heart of the EU-3's position regarding Iran's nuclear program is the matter of nuclear enrichment, which the EU-3 outright oppose. This, of course, is an extension of the American position (as well as that of America's shadow ally, Israel)."

Ritter is of the opinion that, "Europe would like to believe that the diplomatic initiative undertaken by the EU-3 last November represents a nominal 'Plan A', which avoids direct confrontation between the United States and Iran through use of the European intermediary.

The EU-3 comfort themselves with the knowledge that any failure of their initiative pushes the world not to the brink of war, but rather toward a 'Plan B', intervention by the Security Council of the United Nations, which would seek to compel Iran back into line with the threat of economic sanctions.

A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for 'Plan C', American military intervention."

However, according to Ritter, war with Iran is exactly the intention of the US. "What the Europeans -- and the member nations of the EU-3 in particular -- fail to recognize is that the Bush administration's plan for Iran does not consist of three separate plans, but rather one plan composed of three phases leading to the inevitability of armed conflict with Iran and the termination of the theocratic regime of the Mullahs currently residing in Tehran.

These three phases -- the collapse of the EU-3 intervention leading to a referral of the Iran matter to the Security Council, the inability of the Security Council to agree upon the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran, and the US confronting the Security Council over its alleged inability to protect American national security interests - lead inevitably toward military confrontation...If the Security Council, because of Russian and Chinese opposition, refuses to support sanctions, the American people will be confronted by the Bush administration with the choice to either appear weak before the United Nations, or to take matters into our own hands (i.e., unilateral military action) in the name of national defence. The outcome in this case is certain -- war.

Since the result of any referral of the Iran issue to the Security Council is all but guaranteed, the push by the EU-3 to have the IAEA refer Iran to the Security Council, while rooted in the language of diplomacy, is really nothing less than an act of war."

Now every time I bring up the topic if a US war against Iran and the mad mullahs whom have proclaimed, "Death to America!" I typically get the same range of responses. "Balderdash! We're not crazy enough to go to war in Iran...our troops are stretched to thin as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Europe and South East Asia...this idea that we'd attack Iran is a bunch of hooey because in order to so we'd need to institute a draft, which nobody in America aside from maybe the richest amongst us would support. There will be revolution in the streets by gad Frey! And another thing..." And so on...

I once believed some of this as well. As a voter who supported this administrations effort to forcefully institute regime change in Iraq and then was burned when it became evident there was no real plan to secure borders or put down any rebellions, I thought surely they were with these sort of adventures. Many commentators on Iran, myself included, have moved away from the idea of a military intervention, calling instead for open rebellion by the Iranian people against their tyrannical mullahs. It would appear we're all going to be screwed again.

For those that banked their entire argument against the US initiating a war against Iran on the premise that we don't have enough deployable troops, once more this administrations hubris has outflanked us all.

According to a paper that was posted on the Pentagon's own website as well as here, the US has decided to employ pre-emptive nuclear strikes against enemies it sees as an imminent threat to US security.

"Amid increasing tension between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme, and growing concern about overstretched U.S. ground forces, the George W. Bush administration is moving steadily toward adopting the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states as an integral part of its global military strategy.

According to a March document by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that was recently posted to the Pentagon's website, Washington will not necessarily wait for potential adversaries to use what it calls "weapons of mass destruction" before resorting to a nuclear strike against them.

The document, entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations", has yet to be approved by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, according to an account published in Sunday's Washington Post. However, it is largely consistent with the administration's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was widely assailed by arms control advocates for lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S."

And just to be sure there's no confusion over whom the US sees as a threat, the article goes on to say that, "The Doctrine is the latest in a series of documents adopted by the administration that has moved the U.S. away from the traditional view that nuclear weapons should be used solely for the purposes of defence and deterrence.

Along with the NPR, which called for the development of new delivery systems for nuclear weapons and noted that China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya could all be targets, the new view was expounded by Bush himself in his September 2002 National Security Strategy document. "We cannot let our enemies strike first," he warned at the time."

So nuclear war with Iran is the game, at this time. The only remaining question one must ask themselves, aside from, "When is this happening and where can I run and hide?" is "Is this administration crazy enough to actually pre-emptively use nuclear missiles against Iran as a first-strike?" Now ask that question again and this time, picture George W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in your mind. OK, ask that question again...

Sleep well children.