I was the recipient yesterday of a mass e-mail sent out to bloogers and such about a pending focus on Iran by the administration. I took the information with a grain of salt, as it consisted of rumors and third-hand information, although there has been enough saber-rattling by the administration and it supporters in the punditocracy (yes, I’m looking at you, Bill Kristol) to give such rumors some credence.
Now, the Times of London picks up the story, after a fashion, but reporting on a set of plans drawn up by the Pentagon for an attack on Iran: Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran :
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
Now, we see this kinds of stories all the time, i.e., that there has been “planning” at the Pentagon, or that there are “plans on the table” to do X, Y or Z. Of course, planning is what the Pentagon is supposed to do, and they do it all the time. Given tensions with Iran, it would be more newsworthy if the Pentagon didn’t have such plans.
Further, the story is about the director of a think tank making a presentation at a conference, not a press conference by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
However, the part of all of this is disturbing are the eeire similarities in the rhetoric over Iran emanating from the White House and other places.
For example:
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.
That sounds rather familiar. Perhaps in the waning days of the administration, what with all the resignations, they are just re-running old speeches. Just cross out a “q” here and add an “n” there and you’re good to go…
And then there’s this:
Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”
Okay, we have been down this road before: a resistance leader in exile asserts that the UN is bungling its inspection activities, and the targeted regime actually has capabilities
Ultimately one can hope that this is all rhetoric and a little bit of psyops.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
[...] Indeed. However, in the midst of all this leftist panic, I’ll end with a quote of level headedness from Steven Taylor of Poliblog, though he does have other doubts. Now, we see this kinds of stories all the time, i.e., that there has been “planning” at the Pentagon, or that there are “plans on the table” to do X, Y or Z. Of course, planning is what the Pentagon is supposed to do, and they do it all the time. Given tensions with Iran, it would be more newsworthy if the Pentagon didn’t have such plans. [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
thinking clearly
i truely enjoyed this blog article on the announced US plan to go to war againt Iran.
it is difficult to seperate between what is possible and what will happen, especially in political science. political activists think with their hearts. Sometimes it is as if they want the worst to happen, just to be able to say “I told you so”.
to say that the Bush administration will go to war against Iran because they plan for it, are aggressive or even irrational is not a good argument. the consequences of war or even massive bombing will be catastrophic, whether performed by israel or the US. the capability of Mossad terrorist cells all over the world is a far greater danger than anything connected or associated with the name bin laden.
it is important to be allowed to speculate in all of the sciences, not only in political sciences. but we cannot say that something is true, or even likely to happen before we can show a clear reasoning. with aristotles i am ofte tempted to say “show me the premisses and the conclusion”.
this does not mean that the US or Israel will not attack. it only says that i have not seen good enough arguments for a war as of yet. what i do see is the importance of making the iranians believe they will attack. when iran have the bomb this means the end of US-Israeli dominance in the persian gulf.
iran will probably have their bomb soon, if they do not possess one already. does this make the world a more unsafe place? yes, but so does the fact that the pakistanis have one and the israelis.
i am not going to say that the US or Israel is not bombing, but i will say that i have not as of yet seen arguments that indicate this, on the contrary.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:23 am
[...] I was the recipient yesterday of a mass e-mail sent out to bloogers and such about a pending focus on Iran by the administration. I took the information with a grain of salt, as it consisted of rumors and third-hand information, … …more [...]