Thread: Bush setting up for war with Iran

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

Bush setting America up for war with Iran
By Philip Sherwell in New York and Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 2:29am BST 17/09/2007

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.

Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.

Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.

The intelligence source said: "No one outside that tight circle knows what is going to happen." But he said that within the CIA "many if not most officials believe that diplomacy is failing" and that "top Pentagon brass believes the same".

He said: "A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the US will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq."



Previously, accusations that Mr Bush was set on war with Iran have come almost entirely from his critics.

Many senior operatives within the CIA are highly critical of Mr Bush's handling of the Iraq war, though they themselves are considered ineffective and unreliable by hardliners close to Mr Cheney.

The vice president is said to advocate the use of bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. His allies dispute this, but Mr Cheney is understood to be lobbying for air strikes if sites can be identified where Revolutionary Guard units are training Shia militias.

Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials.



Gen David Petraeus, Mr Bush's senior Iraq commander, denounced the Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq last week as he built support in Washington for the US military surge in Baghdad.

The US also announced the creation of a new base near the Iraqi border town of Badra, the first of what could be several locations to tackle the smuggling of weapons from Iran.

A State Department source familiar with White House discussions said that Miss Rice, under pressure from senior counter-proliferation officials to acknowledge that military action may be necessary, is now working with Mr Cheney to find a way to reconcile their positions and present a united front to the President.

The source said: "When you go down there and see the body language, you can see that Cheney is still The Man. Condi pushed for diplomacy but she is no dove. If it becomes necessary she will be on board.

"Both of them are very close to the president, and where they differ they are working together to find a way to present a position they can both live with."

The official contrasted the efforts of the secretary of state to work with the vice-president with the "open warfare between Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld before the Iraq war".

Miss Rice's bottom line is that if the administration is to go to war again it must build the case over a period of months and win sufficient support on Capitol Hill.

The Sunday Telegraph has been told that Mr Bush has privately promised her that he would consult "meaningfully" with Congressional leaders of both parties before any military action against Iran on the understanding that Miss Rice would resign if this did not happen.

The intelligence officer said that the US military has "two major contingency plans" for air strikes on Iran.

"One is to bomb only the nuclear facilities. The second option is for a much bigger strike that would - over two or three days - hit all of the significant military sites as well. This plan involves more than 2,000 targets."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ran116.xml

NEWS FROM FRANCE

'War' talk heightens Iran nuclear dispute
17/09/2007 21h32

The shadow of Mohamed ElBaradei

©AFP - Samuel Kubani PARIS (AFP) -

France followed up a warning that the Iran nuclear crisis could lead to war by calling on Monday for European sanctions against Tehran.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said tensions with Iran are now "extreme", heightening a diplomatic storm caused by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's warning on Sunday that the world should prepare for a possible conflict over Iran's alleged work on a nuclear weapon.

The comments infuriated Iranian leaders who accused France of stoking tensions. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei called the war talk "hype".

While French leaders said they would prefer a negotiated settlement, they also launched a proposal to establish European sanctions against Iran, outside of those already implemented by the United Nations.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are to discuss new UN sanctions on Iran, which has rejected demands to stop enriching uranium.

Kouchner met his Dutch counterpart Maxime Verhagen in Paris and said European countries should prepare their own non-UN sanctions.

"These would be European sanctions that each country, individually, must put in place with its own banking, commercial and industrial system. The English and the Germans are interested in talking about this. We will try to find a common European position," Kouchner said

Britain, France and Germany have led European efforts, with US backing, to try to persuade Iran to end its nuclear efforts in exchange for a package of economic and diplomatic measures.

Verhagen said that if the Security Council did not agree more sanctions, the Dutch government would be willing "to apply European Union sanctions in common with the United States sanctions."

On Sunday, Kouchner warned that "we have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war." If Tehran possessed an atomic weapon, it would be a "real danger for the whole world," he said in an interview.

Speaking Monday, the French prime minister said: "The Iranians must understand that tension has reached an extreme point... in the relationship between Iran and its neighbours."

France has taken a more aggressive line since President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in May. Many analysts say Paris is now moving very close to US policy.

Some of France's own European neighbours reacted nervously to Kouchner's strident tones, with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik criticising his "martial rhetoric".

"I am for continued work towards a negotiated solution," she said in Vienna where the French campaign has cast a shadow over the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference in Vienna where Iran is top of the agenda.

Italy's Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said, "I think new wars are not the solution to the problem and that they could create new tragedies and new dangers."

Iran insists its nuclear work is peaceful and Vice President Reza Aghazadeh, who is also head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI), warned the West against seeking a confrontation.

Western countries "have always chosen the path of confrontation instead of the path of understanding and cordial relations toward the great nation of Iran," he told the UN meeting in Vienna.

"The great nation of Iran has recorded your discriminatory behavior and performance in its memory and will not forget," Aghazadeh said.

In Tehran, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement: "It seems that the French foreign minister has forgotten the policy of the European Union" with his war warning.

"The use of such words creates tensions and is contrary to the cultural history and civilisation of France," he added.

The IAEA director general also said that force should not be used yet to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

"We need always to remember that use of force could only be resorted to when ... every other option has been exhausted. I don't think we are at all there," ElBaradei told reporters on the sidelines of the conference, at which he expressed regret at Iran's refusal to fall in line with UN resolutions.

Without mentioning the French comments, he said "a lot of hype" had been raised about the Iran case.

http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories ... n8z1e.html