The War As We Saw It

The War As We Saw It
By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
The New York Times, Sunday 19 August 2007

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

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Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

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Iran's Islamic Revolution Had Western Blessing

Interview with Iranian journalist and author Roozbeh Mirebrahimi
Inter Press Service, 28/07/08

In his new book on the covert history of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, award-winning journalist Roozbeh Mirebrahimi says that Western powers, including the United States, accelerated events by recognizing and supporting religious revolutionary forces, forcing the shah to leave the country and averting a coup by Iran's army.


In 1953, the United States had deposed the popular government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his cabinet via a CIA-backed coup d'état. Anti-communist civilians and army officers supported the coup.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's second departure from Iran, almost a month before the victory of the revolution in February 1979, had dramatically raised concerns among the leaders of the revolution that Washington would try to stage another coup to bring back the shah, who had fled to the United States. However, diplomats who were at the center of events say that an accommodation was reached between Western countries and Iran's Islamic clergy.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Omid Memarian, Mirebrahimi said that the role of the West in facilitating the revolution has been largely ignored, particularly by the Iranian government itself. His Farsi-language book, Untold Aspects of the Iranian Revolution (Khazaran, 2008) is based on an extensive interview with Abbas Amir-Entezam, the spokesman and deputy prime minister in the interim cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979.

Amir-Entezam, now Iran's longest-serving political prisoner, was an ambassador to Scandinavian countries during the hostage crisis at the US Embassy. He was accused of spying for the US, arrested and sentenced to death in 1981. This was later reduced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Critics suggest the charges were retaliation against his early opposition to theocratic government in Iran.

(Q) There are rumors of a meeting between the French president's representative and Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris, prior to the revolution. What was the significance of this meeting?

(A) While Khomeini was in exile in Neauphle-le-Chateau near Paris and leading the revolution, he was asked by the current world powers to meet and to have a dialogue. He raised some demands, including the shah's removal from Iran and help in avoiding a coup d'état by the Iranian Army. On the other side of the table, the western powers had certain demands too. They were worried about the Soviet Union's empowerment and penetration and a disruption in Iran's oil supply to the west. Khomeini gave the necessary guarantees. These meetings and contacts were taking place in January of 1979, just a few days before the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.

(Q) What made these same western countries turn against Khomeini and others just months after 1979 Revolution?

(A) Western powers had been monitoring the political and social changes inside Iran for a long time. They had been trying to understand the internal changes in Iran through the forces they had in Iran or the people they would send to Iran, such as [former US attorney general] Ramsey Clark. They had realized that Iranian society was on the verge of a fundamental change. They chose to accommodate this change. After recognizing the opposition groups, they facilitated them with opportunities such as media coverage. Through this action, changes accelerated with an unexpected speed. In the next stage, in order to prevent the Soviet Union from taking advantage of these changes, amongst all existing opposition groups they chose the religious forces to stand against communism, which was anti-religion by nature.

(Q) But why after the revolution did they turn against them?

(A) I would say because of the revolutionary atmosphere inside Iran and actions of the empowered radicals, this relationship faced challenges.

(Q) Why did US officials trust Ayatollah Khomeini enough to negotiate with him?

(A) [William H.] Sullivan, the US ambassador to Iran, was keeping a very close watch over Iran's internal affairs and analyzing all the developments. All the army and military affairs, all the macro-level decisions and reactions by the Shah's regime, all the activities of the religious forces, activities of the communists, and all other revolutionary forces were monitored by him. According to documents and books published in the United States and other western countries, around September 1978, four months before the revolution, it was clear that the shah could no longer stay, and that they should be looking for a way to reach an agreement with the opposition. All the contacts and dialogues picked up pace during this time. The religious forces that were surrounding Khomeini at the time were people like Yazdi, Bazargan, Bani sadr, Ghotbzadeh or among the clergy, people like Beheshti and Motahhari... They were educated and relatively technocratic and the west felt that they could rely on them. After the revolution, this trust and relationship remained intact until the invasion of the US Embassy.

(Q) Why did the hostage-taking occur at a time when the new government under Ayatollah Khomeini had a normal relationship with the US?

(A) Ayatollah Khomeini was opposed to radical actions such as invading the US Embassy. For example, this was not the first time the US Embassy was occupied. Right around those early days of the revolution, during the first 10 days, the US Embassy was occupied for the first time by the leftist forces such as Khalgh and other parallel forces, but this received a very strong reaction from Ayatollah Khomeini who sent Ebrahim Yazdi to the embassy to get the revolutionary occupiers out of there. During the second incident, Khomeini was caught off-guard after the incident had already taken place. Pressure by the radicals at that time caused Khomeini to react by standing behind it. That incident caused Prime Minister Bazargan to resign. Prior to this incident, the relationship of the new government with the west was still quite normal. We should not forget that exactly one day after the revolution, the United States officially recognized the new government.

(Q) So what kind of an impact did all this have on the Islamic Revolution?

(A) This book has several features. First, it reexamines the Islamic Republic's portrayal of the history of the revolution, which is a red line in today's Iran. Secondly, Amir Entezam himself has always been a red line for the regime, which has tried so hard to erase his name from all official records. Thirdly, a person from the new generation, born in the year of the revolution, has done all of this research. And I'm very happy that after five years of all kinds of bans and obstacles, this book is getting published.

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Obama the irony man

By Walter Russell Mead
Los Angeles Times, 27/07/08

(Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World.")

His overseas tour highlights the paradoxes that benefit his campaign.

Reinhold Niebuhr's observation that U.S. history is often ironic has rarely seemed as relevant as it does today.

First, there is the spectacle of the war in Iraq. At the beginning, most observers thought the war would be short and sweet, and many Democrats supported it, despite their qualms, because they believed it was political suicide to oppose it. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was one Democrat who supported the authorization to use force against Saddam Hussein, a vote widely hailed at the time as showing her as tough and realistic. Ironically, her stance on the war gave Barack Obama the opportunity he needed to deny Clinton the Democratic presidential nomination.

The fighting dragged on, the Bush administration floundered without a strategy, and the conflict became deeply unpopular. Expert opinion swung around to the view that the war was hopelessly lost. But at just that moment, with the debate turning to how we could best live with defeat and disaster, Gen. David Petraeus' surge strategy helped turn the war around. It's not over by any means, and the security gains are reversible, but the 18-month troop surge has put the U.S. on the road to a win in Iraq.

But the irony is we have a presidential contest between Obama, whose entire primary candidacy was driven by his unshakable position as the toughest and most pessimistic critic of the war, and John McCain, an unrepentant supporter of the war who called for the surge at a time when the rest of the establishment was running for cover.

Yet during Obama's visit to Iraq last week, it was the presumptive Democratic nominee who was enjoying a love fest with embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who told the world-including U.S. voters-that Obama's timetable was on the right track and that the quicker U.S. forces got out of Iraq, the better.

The net result, ironically, is that the antiwar candidate who predicted failure is benefiting most from the war's success. Thanks to the surge he opposed, the policy Obama championed-a relatively swift and steady withdrawal of U.S. combat forces over 16 months, conditions permitting-no longer looks dangerous, irresponsible or an invitation to defeat.

Military progress in Iraq is transforming the international situation in other ways and creating more ironies. The Bush administration was unwilling to negotiate with Iran when the U.S. seemed permanently stuck in an Iraq that would only grow worse. But as the situation there improves, the U.S. has a stronger hand-and with its coalition of Western allies still holding together, the administration has gingerly initiated nuclear talks with Tehran.

For Obama, this is a godsend. Once savaged for his calls to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuke-seeking, Holocaust-denying, threat-spewing government, he can now point to the Bush administration's example.

But, ironically, Obama is using his new maneuvering room to toughen his stand rather than soften it. In Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan, he wants to send in more troops, take a harder line with Islamabad and crush the elusive Taliban beneath his heel. He says the administration hasn't fought hard enough and has been too willing, out of a misguided deference for allied opinion, to let countries such as Pakistan push us around. Meanwhile, those soft and dithering Europeans need to do more. More troops. More ambitious goals. Deeper commitment. Oh-and by the way-our goal must be to build democracy in the Mideast, starting with Afghanistan.

In Israel, Obama went to great pains to tell anxious Israelis that his commitment to Israel's security is "unshakable" and that Tel Aviv would have no stronger or more reliable ally than an Obama administration. Like President Bush, Obama has promised Israel that he would never ask it to make concessions that endanger its security.

Obama also appears to have cleared up the ambiguity in his stance on Iran. The world community, he told the Israelis, "must prevent" the mullahs from getting a nuclear bomb. Presumably, that means if negotiations fail to stop Iran from enriching uranium, and sanctions don't do the trick either, the world community will have to explore other options.

Obama's pilgrimage abroad points to a larger truth: In the midst of a bitter political year, a loose bipartisan consensus on the Mideast may be emerging. And, irony of ironies, the consensus, seemingly embraced by Obama, seems closer to Bush's views than to those of the antiwar activists who propelled the Illinois senator to the nomination.

Here's what that consensus says:

On the war on terrorism: The terror threat is real, and we can't prevail by just fighting defense. Ultimately, we have to take this war home to the people who made it, and that means the caves of Afghanistan-and any place in Pakistan that the Pakistanis cannot secure on their own. The military budget will grow; the U.S. presence in Central Asia will increase, at least for now. This is similar to what a Bush White House would do in a third term.

On Iraq: Bush screwed up the war in many ways. But we cannot afford to let hostile forces control this strategic country, nor can we allow Iraq to sink into genocidal strife. We will not leave Iraq like we left Vietnam. Here too Obama's current stance is, in practical terms, very close to Bush's.

On Israel/Palestine: Continuity is the theme once again. Although the U.S. must bring new energy and determination to resolve this dispute, we can't and won't throw Israel under the bus. Israel's confidence in U.S. foreign policy remains a vital asset; to lose it would diminish the chances for peace.

On Iran: Intensive multilateral diplomacy, including direct U.S.-Iranian talks when appropriate, is our preferred strategy to keep Tehran from building a bomb. We are willing, even eager, to live in peace with a non-nuclear Iran. The next president will have to pursue negotiations while considering all the options-a policy that represents, at most, a small evolutionary change from the current Bush position.

Not everyone will like this consensus. But, overall, the U.S. seems to be edging toward it. If the policies flowing from this consensus work (always a big "if" in the Middle East), Iraq could be the first in a string of U.S. successes in the region. That, surely, would be the biggest irony of all: a stable U.S. presence in the Middle East based on a meeting of the minds between Obama and Bush.

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The Benefits of Peaceful Dialogue With Iran

By François Géré
Le Figaro, 23/07/08

July 20, 2008, in Geneva, the American diplomatic corps agreed to meet with Iran's for the first time. It was about time, too, since the Iranian nuclear crisis will enter its sixth year in a few days. It was in August 2002 that the revelation of the clandestine enrichment activities at Natanz set off a confrontation between Iran and the international community. Six years is too long. Yet, we still need to know how to get out of the deadlock.

By war? President Bush and his vice president send mixed signals about that. "All options are on the table," they repeat, while in London on June 16, the American president acknowledged Iran's right to a civilian nuclear industry. In Israel, the potential successors to Mr. Olmert, Shaul Mofaz and Ehud Barack believe it electorally profitable to outdo one another over Iran. Nonetheless, not a day goes by without Western and Eastern - including Israeli - media experts and editorialists presenting the military option as inadequate, ineffective, immediately disastrous, as much for the Middle East as for the whole world. Therefore, let's eliminate that collision course. And on the contrary, let's consider the benefits each of the parties could derive from a lasting agreement.

Iran has everything to gain. The package Javier Solana presented June 14 gave assurances of the advantages that would accrue to Iran in the event of an agreement, advantages in the nuclear domain as well as in that of economic cooperation.

Accepting this honorable offer, respectful of its sovereignty and its rights, would allow Tehran to leave diplomatic isolation, get rid of its image as a state suspected of complicity with terrorist organizations and recover a reputation as a trustworthy partner.

Access to global financial and trade mechanisms would then open. That is all the more essential in that Iran is suffering from economic backwardness that three years of calamitous management have worsened. The results are known and publicly denounced by the new Parliament: galloping inflation, squandered oil income. The mushrooming of global agricultural commodities' prices aggravates the situation. Iran barely profits from mushrooming oil prices because it has to pay higher prices for gasoline it is unable to produce.

For its part, Washington also has a great deal to gain. Such an agreement would allow the US to find the paths to a gradual retreat from Iraq, while maintaining some bases and improving the situation in Afghanistan. It would also be a good opportunity to reestablish regional equilibrium, given the difficulties with certain Sunni states rich in both oil and in radical Islamism! Finally, the United States would rapidly recover lost economic positions.

Israel would be done with the nightmare of a nuclear aggression and, over the long term, enjoy the opportunity to rediscover a natural partner in Iran, instead of an artificial ideological enemy. A pacified Iran could favor solutions in Lebanon - even in Palestine - which would no longer be subject to the logic of a zero sum game.

A durable stabilization of the balance of power in the region could be established, one that would limit the arms race which has already begun. The specter of the military nuclearization of the Persian Gulf would be warded off. The European Union, China and Russia would gain credibility from having asserted themselves as effective mediators in a high-risk diplomatic context.

Under those conditions, the UN would strengthen its status as the unique legitimate international institution. While nonproliferation regimes would see themselves upheld, the IAEA would consolidate its role, which it could strengthen to the extent the Arab-Persian zone develops civilian nuclear energy.

For everyone, the end of the crisis would calm the convulsions of the global economy. Everyone could satisfy their energy needs at prices equitably stabilized. Then, it would be possible to begin the long and indispensable process of rebalancing fossil and nuclear energies. Consequently, there is an enormous amount to be gained and hardly anything to lose. However, this calculation is far from being accepted, so numerous are the forces of negation. For the influence of ideologues must be bridled and the action of warmongers countered. This assumes an end can be put to provocative statements and bellicose displays. This also demands respect for every Iranian's gut need to finally feel as though they are taken into account. Once lost, trust takes a long time to be reestablished. It's out of the question to accept agreements of convenience, or to trust without verifying. We must take Mr. Velayati at his word when he announces a new Iranian position; take Mr. Larijani seriously when he proposes an international consortium to enrich uranium in Iran.

Realism demands that we admit that the acquisition of the nuclear know-how desired by the Shah has occurred. The installations can certainly be destroyed, but it will not be possible to eliminate tens of thousands of human competencies. That knowledge will have to be inserted into a partnership subject to rigorous verification procedures. As the historic opportunity to exit from a global crisis emerges, who would dare bear responsibility for having deliberately lost it?

François Géré is president of the French Institute for Strategic Analysis (Ifas) and author of "L'Iran et le nucléaire" ["Iran and the Nuclear Issue"].

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Putting the Squeeze on Iran

By Michael Jacobson
Guardian, 22/07/08

US-Iranian relations are once again headline news after dropping off the radar for several months in the wake of the US National Intelligence Estimate in December 2007. In recent days, media and public attention has focused on the growing US diplomatic overtures to Tehran, as well as the reports about a possible military attack on Iran that continue to circulate.


With all of the focus on the diplomatic and military fronts, there has been little attention paid lately to the middle ground between the two: the US financial campaign against Iran. Financial pressure may be the most important tool the US has in its arsenal to persuade Iran to abandon all of its nuclear ambitions. While the US approach has been successful in raising the financial costs for Tehran of its nuclear ambitions, the regime shows no signs yet of changing course. To succeed in this effort, the pressure will have to be ramped up significantly, making the choice for Iran far more stark than it is today.

One problem with the current US effort to squeeze Iran is that it has largely been limited to one industry-the financial sector. On this front, the US Treasury has taken the lead and has been quite successful. Over the past two years, the Treasury has made the case to global financial institutions that doing business with Iran is risky business, explaining how Iran is abusing the international financial system by using front companies and deceptive financial practices designed to mask their activities.

Major international financial institutions have been responsive to the Treasury pitch. When confronted with this information, global financial institutions-particularly those based in Europe-have taken action, either terminating or reducing their business with Iran. More surprisingly, in recent months, it appears that banks in the United Arab Emirates and China are also beginning to exercise greater caution in their business dealings with Iran.

While these foreign banks are not legally bound to comply with the broad US sanctions against Iran, many have heeded the Treasury warnings for several reasons. First, banks are focused on maintaining stellar reputations, and avoiding the type of specific risk outlined by the Treasury makes sense from a business perspective. Second, since the US is the world's leading financial centre, these banks are not willing to risk losing access to the US market for the sake of maintaining business ties to designated terrorists or WMD proliferators. Financial institutions are particularly eager to avoid being the "next ABN Amro"-the Dutch bank fined $80m by the US in 2005 for having an inadequate programme in place to ensure compliance with the US sanctions against Iran and Libya. The Financial Times noted that the fine sent "seismic waves through the international banking system," and the "reverberations are still being felt today."

These US-led efforts have certainly had an impact on Iran, even in spite of booming oil prices (though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic mismanagement has also contributed to domestic problems). Inflation has risen to 25%, and Iranian businesses are carrying cash to pay for transactions, due to difficulty opening foreign currency accounts with non-Iranian banks. Iranian importers are now having to pay in advance for commodities and are no longer able to receive revolving lines of credit, and their costs are up 20-30%. The Iranian banking community has been hit particularly hard by the sanctions and US pressure. Bank Sepah is on the brink of collapse and other Iranian banks are struggling as well. Bank Saderat has seen its corresponding banking relationships-which are essential for a bank to operate effectively internationally-fall from 29 in August 2006 to eight by early 2008.

The US pressure on financial institutions has also scared off many foreign investors. In December 2006, then oil minister Kazen Vaziri Hamaneh confirmed that the industry was having difficulty financing its development projects, since "overseas banks and financiers have decreased their cooperation." As a result, Iran's oil production is falling and likely to decrease further without significant foreign investment. This could be a potentially devastating trend for Iran, as some experts believe that without major foreign investment in Iran's aging oil fields, the country's oil exports could eventually disappear. Iran's deputy oil minister expressed the government's concern, stating that "there will not be any oil for export" within 10 years if the situation did not change.

Unfortunately, the US has not applied the same type of pressure to other sectors. For the US to succeed in changing the decision-making calculus in Tehran, it must greatly broaden the financial squeeze. While banks are now being far more cautious in scrutinising their Iran-related transactions, the same is not necessarily true for other businesses. As a result, Iran has been able to find ways to circumvent the current sanctions, and, most troublingly, continues to have access to sensitive technology and embargoed US and European products. One of the primary ways that Iran has been able to do this is through re-exports-having products sent to destinations with loose export control restrictions and then shipped from there to Iran.

The United Arab Emirates remains the main re-export capital for Iran because of its free-wheeling business environment and the countries' long-standing economic ties. Thousands of Iranian businesses are located there and are engaged in this type of trade. To give a sense of the scale of this business, the Dubai Deputy Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimated that in 2006 re-exports constituted 60% of the trade between the two countries.

The deputy president of the Iranian business council in Dubai bluntly assessed the sanctions' limitations, saying that they have "virtually had no effect, to be honest. If someone wants to move something-get it to Iran-it is easy to be done."

To crack down on this type of trade and further tighten the economic noose against Iran will require the US government to target a number of key industries involved in facilitating international trade, including shippers, distributors, freight forwarders and importers-exporters. The US should press these businesses to scale back or at least more closely monitor possible Iran-related transactions. While these industries are certainly very different than banking, the US should nonetheless use the Treasury model as a guide for how to proceed. As a first step, the US needs to conduct a comprehensive analysis of how Iran is abusing these trade-related industries and the extent to which they are using deceptive practices to circumvent the sanctions. As Stuart Levey, under secretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, noted: "Iran's nuclear and missile firms hide behind an array of agents that transact business on their behalf."

Particularly important are cases where Iran managed to disguise the fact that the material was intended for its nuclear or ballistic missile programmes, or that entities such as Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards were involved.

The US should then conduct outreach to the major players engaged in facilitating trade with Iran and give industry-specific briefings, outlining Iran's reckless behaviour. It will be far more difficult for the companies to do business as usual and to plead ignorance after being on the receiving end of such a briefing. The US should also make clear, as they have with the banking sector, that companies which fail to heed these warnings could be the subject of tough enforcement actions.

Focusing these briefings on Iran's specific illicit conduct is important for another reason. In the past, the US has had little success in persuading others to adopt broad sanctions against Iran, as many countries viewed these punitive measures as politically driven. The difference this time around, according to Treasury undersecretary Levey, is that the US has tried to make clear that that the issue is not political, but rather about "conduct that's contrary to international law or international standards and norms."

Finding ways to end Iran's nuclear drive is clearly a top priority for the US and for many of its allies. While success is far from guaranteed, an approach that incorporates aggressive economic pressure remains the most likely path to success. For this approach to work, however, the pressure must be considerably stepped up. Putting additional industries on notice that doing business as usual with Iran is no longer possible would be a good step forward.

Michael Jacobson is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. His areas of focus include sanctions and financial measures to combat national security threats, as well as other issues related to counterterrorism, national security law, and intelligence reform.

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Israel Planning a September/October Surprise?

By Ray McGovern
17/07/08

(Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst, he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS))

You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain yesterday in their speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, that’s certainly what you got.

What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7"his insistence on a "timetable" for withdrawal of US troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.

Responding to a question at his press conference yesterday, President George W. Bush showed that he was vaguely aware that the timetable is, as Robert Dreyfuss says (in truthout.org, July 7), a "big deal." Bush even alluded haltingly to the possibility of extending the UN mandate still further.

But it is far from clear that Maliki, who is under great domestic pressure, would be able to sell that to the various factions upon which he depends for support, much less to those which he must keep at bay. As Dreyfuss points out, Maliki and his Shiite allies are also under considerable pressure from Iran, which remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites. Most important, Maliki is by no means in control of what happens next.

Israel

Here’s where it gets sticky. No one who knows about third rails in US politics would expect the candidates or the fawning corporate media (FCM) to address how those now running Israel are likely to be looking at the implications of a large US troop withdrawal from Iraq next year.

I am remembering how I was pilloried on June 16, 2005, immediately after Congressman John Conyers’ rump-Judiciary Committee hearing in the bowels of the Capitol, for a candid answer to a question from one of his colleagues; i. e., if the invasion of Iraq was not about WMD, and not about non-existent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then why did we attack?

In answer, I used the acronym OIL. O for oil; I for Israel; and L for Logistics, meaning the military bases deemed by neoconservatives as necessary to protect both. Neither the House members present nor the media people seemed to have any problem with oil and military bases as factors-in itself an interesting commentary.

However, the suggestion that one main motive was an attempt to make that part of the Middle East safer for Israel (yes, folks, the neocons really thought that attacking Iraq would do that)"well, that was anathema.

As it is anathema today to suggest that this is still one of the main reasons, besides oil, that Elliott Abrams, other neocons"not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney and his team"insist we must stay, Maliki and his associates be damned. (See the cartoon in the Washington Times today showing Maliki and words telling him "We are NOT leaving.")

Here in Washington we can sit back and quibble over the implications of such remarks by Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. The Israelis have to take such statements seriously. No agreement on US forces staying into 2009 without a timetable for withdrawal? For Tel Aviv, this is getting very serious.

My guess is the Israeli leaders are apoplectic. The fiasco in Iraq clearly has made the region much more dangerous for Israel. There are actually real "terrorists" and "extremists" now in Iraq, and the prospect of US troops leaving has got to be a cause of acute concern in Tel Aviv.

Keeping the US Entangled: Iran

This dramatic change"or even just the specter of it"greatly increases Israel’s incentive to ensure the kind of US involvement in the area that would have to endure for several years. The Israelis need to create "facts on the ground""something to guarantee that Washington will stand by what U.S. candidates, including Sen. Obama, call "our ally." (Never mind that there is no mutual US-Israel defense treaty.) Israel is all too painfully aware that it has only six more months of Bush and Cheney.

The legislation drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) being so zealously promoted in Congress calls for the equivalent of a blockade of Iran. That would be one way to entangle; there are many others.

The point is that the growing danger that the Israelis perceive will probably prompt them to find a way to get the US involved in hostilities with Iran. Cheney and Bush have pretty much given them that license, with the president regularly pledging to defend "our ally" if Israel is attacked.

All Israel has to do is to arrange to be attacked. Not a problem.

There are endless possibilities among which Israel can choose to catalyze such a confrontation"with or without a wink and a nod from Cheney and Abrams. The so-called "amber light" said to have been given to the Israelis is, I believe, already seen as quite sufficient; they are not likely to feel a need to wait until it turns green.

So far, the resistance of U.S. senior military has been the only real obstacle to the madness of hostilities with Iran. (And one need only read Scott Ritter’s article on Truthdig this week to get a sense for why they would be chary.)

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has been described as warning the Israelis that a "Third Front" in the Middle East would be a disaster. I think, rather, he was trying to warn anyone who might listen in Washington, including until now tone-deaf lawmakers.

Even if the pundits are correct in suggesting that Mullen is joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in trying to resist the neocons and Cheney, Mullen’s tone at his press conference two weeks ago suggested he is fighting a rear guard action-against the "crazies" in the White House, as well as those in Tel Aviv. And when is the last time the crazies lost a political battle with such implications for Israel?

Mullen had just returned from Tel Aviv. He appreciates better than most the fecklessness of endless speculation over whether Israel or the U.S. might strike Iran first. Even if the Israeli leaders have no explicit assurances from the White House, they almost certainly calculate that, once a casus belli is established, their friends in Washington"and the troops they command"are likely to be committed to the fray big time.

Seatbelts Please

Viewed from Tel Aviv it appears an increasingly threatening situation, with more urgent need to "embed" (so to speak) the United States even more deeply in the region"in a confrontation involving both countries with Iran.

A perfect storm is brewing:

– Petraeus ex Machina, with a record of doing Vice President Dick Cheney’s bidding, takes command of CENTCOM in September;

– Sen. McCain’s numbers are likely to be in the toilet at that point (because of the economy as much as anything else);

– McCain will be seen by the White House as the only candidate with something to gain by a wider war (just as by another "terrorist incident");

– The Bush/Cheney months will be down to three;

– And Maliki will not be able to cave in to Washington on the timeline requirement he has publicly set.

In sum, Israel is likely to be preparing a September/October surprise designed to keep the US bogged down in Iraq and in the wider region by provoking hostilities with Iran. And don’t be surprised if it starts as early as August. Israel’s leaders may well plead for understanding on the part of those U.S. officials not tipped off in advance, claiming that they could not distinguish amber from green with their night-vision goggles on.

Would they hesitate? Please tell me who…just who is likely to turn on the siren, pull them over, and even think of giving them a summons-once the patrol car computer confirms their privileged licenses?

(A shorter version of this article appeared first on www.Consortiumnews.com)

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Further escalation of tensions in the Caucasus between Russia and Georgia

By Vladimir Volkov
World Socialist Web Site, 14/07/08

The first ten days of July have witnessed a new intensification of tensions between Russia and Georgia over the status of two breakaway regions of Georgia-Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

While unrecognized by the United Nations, both territories are protected by Moscow and the majority of their populations have Russian passports. For its part, Tbilisi is trying to bring them back under its control, counting on the military and political support of the US and NATO.

In South Ossetia, on the night of July 3-4, Georgian troops used mortars, grenade launchers and small arms to fire on the region’s capital, Tskhinvali. According to North Ossetian authorities, one person died and several were wounded.

Eduard Kokoity, the leader of South Ossetia, declared a general mobilization. He then halted it, however, referring to the need to guarantee peace.

Just before, on the morning of July 3, an attempt was made on the life of the head of the parallel pro-Georgian "provisional administration of South Ossetia," Dmitria Sanakoev. His automobile hit a mine not far from a post of peace-keeping forces, after which it was hit by machine-gun fire.

Sanakoev’s administration was created by the Georgian authorities in November 2006 during "alternative presidential elections" held on the same day as the "official" elections in the republic. The base of this parallel administration is the Georgian population living on the territory of South Ossetia.

At the end of June and in the beginning of July, a series of explosions occurred in several cities of Abkhazia, a region on the shores of the Black Sea bordering Russia. As a result, more than fifteen people were wounded and four were killed:

On June 29 in Gagra two explosions occurred minutes apart-six people were wounded;

On June 30, six more people were wounded in an explosion at a market in Sukhumi;

On the morning of July 6, four bombs went off near the village of Rukhi in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. In the evening of the same day, an explosion occurred in a café in the center of Gali-four people died and six were wounded.

The Abkhazian authorities charged the Georgian secret services with responsibility for these acts of violence. They stated that the organizers of the explosions wanted to demonstrate the incompetence of the Russian peacekeepers and their inability to provide security for the population.

The sharpening of the situation became a pretext for unprecedentedly harsh statements by the US State Department, which placed all the blame for the escalating tensions on Russia.

On Monday, July 7, the American State Department announced, "The United States reiterates its strong support for Georgia’s territorial integrity, and calls for an immediate halt to recent bombings on both sides of the cease-fire line in Abkhazia, Georgia." Calling upon the government of Georgia and the "de facto authorities of Abkhazia" to immediately begin direct negotiations, Washington for the first time openly advocated acting independently of the efforts and positions of Moscow.

Along those lines, the official US State Department representative, Sean McCormack, proposed the deployment of an international peacekeeping contingent in those regions of Abkhazia where the explosions had recently occurred. These police forces would be an alternative to the Collective Peacekeeping Forces, which are composed of Russian troops.

These declarations were seen by Moscow as unacceptable ultimatums.

On July 9, the government newspaper, Russian Gazette wrote that Moscow was being addressed "in a tone resembling a dialog, at a minimum, with a colonial regime," and that Washington was itself "on slippery ground."

The newspaper continued that as long as "the US State Department avoids a mutual dialog with Moscow and Sukhumi and talks with Russia and Abkhazia as if they were colonies, the hot summer of 2008 in the Caucasus will flow into a hot autumn, and then into winter."

Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy of the chairman of the Gosduma’s (the lower house of Russia’s legislature) committee on CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) affairs, suggested that the statement by the US State Department was due to a poor knowledge of geography. "Evidently, they have confused Georgia with the American state of Georgia," declared Zatulin on July 9 in the Russian Gazette. "If they are talking about one of their own states, then the Americans have an unconditional right to invite international police forces. But to invite police into the zone of Georgian-Abkhazian conflict may be undertaken only with the agreement of those two sides. We have the format of a peace-keeping operation which is agreed to by both sides."

Formally, the status of Abkhazia is still regulated by resolutions adopted by the CIS in August 1994. According to these resolutions, Russia is the main guarantor of stability in the breakaway republic and maintains its "peacekeeping" contingent there, deployed in 12-kilometer security zones on both sides of the border river, Inguri.

A further development of these 1994 resolutions was the collective agreement reached at a summit of the CIS in 1996, which introduced a ban on trade and other relations with the unrecognized republic. However, by 1999, Russia relaxed a number of the sanctions, and in the spring of this year virtually cancelled them entirely.

This sharp turn-around was a response to the West’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence, which was declared in February of this year, and also to plans to offer Georgia and Ukraine membership in NATO.

In the prelude to the declaration of Kosovo’s independence, Russia repeatedly stated that this would become a precedent for similar measures with regard to unrecognized regions on the territory of the former USSR, in particular, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Fearing direct geopolitical confrontation with the US, however, Moscow did not decide to formally recognize the independence of these two regions. Instead, in April, a decision was made to begin full-scale economic collaboration with them, which further stoked regional tensions.

The ratcheting up of these tensions began at the end of April and in the beginning of May. Now a more explosive turn in the confrontation is taking place.

On July 8, four Russian aircraft flew over the airspace of South Ossetia, violating de jure the Georgian border. Two days later, On July 10, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged the fact, and explained that Moscow’s actions had allowed "a cooling of hotheads in Tbilisi and had prevented the development of the situation along violent lines, the probability of which was more than real."

In response, on Friday, July 11, the Georgian parliament threatened that the next time Russian military planes violated Georgian air space, Russia would have to "pick up the pieces."

On the same day, the Georgian ambassador in Russia was recalled from Moscow for consultation.

Both Georgia and Russia are appealing to the UN, and have presented resolutions for confirmation by the UN Security Council. Tbilisi wants the international body to condemn Russia’s actions in the zones of conflict as "provoking" Georgia to armed action. Moscow insists that the Georgian side sign an agreement not to use force against the unrecognized republics.

Western Europe is trying to serve as an independent mediator in this conflict. According to a plan by Germany’s Minster of Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmayer, the mediation process should pass through three stages. The first stage must be de-escalation-both sides are obligated to renounce force. In the second, Abkhazia must be rebuilt with financial aid from the EU, and Georgian refugees must return. Only in the third stage would discussions begin over the future status of Abkhazia.

This position is an indication that Western European governments are displeased with Washington’s aggressive actions on the territories of the former Soviet Union and that they want to preserve cordial relations with Russia, which is the main supplier of energy resources for Europe.

Aleksandr Rar is director of Programs for Russia and the CIS of the German Council for Foreign Policy. In explaining the attitude of Western European powers to events in the Caucasus, he told the Independent Gazette on July 9 that Washington’s actions are due to the fact that "Mr. Bush is leaving and he quickly needs to show a positive result of his activity, especially since Afghanistan and Iraq are becoming a catastrophe for American policy."

Another indication of the United States’ determination to support Georgia is last week’s visit to Tbilisi by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Within the framework of this visit, which was linked with the signing in the Czech Republic of an agreement to build elements of American anti-missile defense, Rice declared that "frankly, some of the things that the Russians did over the last couple of months added to tensions in the region."

The American Secretary of State also said that admitting Georgia to the Membership Action Plan (MAP) for NATO would help regulate the frozen conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, "therefore the USA will try to add Georgia to the MAP."

If this decision is made-which would be in December of this year-for the first time since the end of the "Cold War," the world will confront the danger of direct military confrontation between Russia, which as before maintains a powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons, and NATO.

The geopolitical interests of the American ruling elite are the main source of the growing tension in the Caucasus. The weakening of the American economy and the desire to secure control over the key routes for the supply of energy resources to the world market from the regions of the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus and Central Asia, drive American imperialism to military adventures and aggressive measures vis-à-vis dependent regimes.

The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are only the clearest examples of this explosion of imperialist ambitions. Within this context, Georgia is seen by Washington as the most crucial outpost in the Caucasus; the United States is systematically arming and supplying Georgia’s army.

The Georgian army has about thirty thousand men at the moment, out of which two thousand were sent last fall into Iraq.

The geopolitical goals of the USA collide with the unwillingness of Moscow to make concessions in those regions which traditionally have been seen as Russian spheres of influence. The strengthening of the Russian state in recent years due to the high prices of oil and gas worldwide has made the ruling elite in Russia more confident in its power and less compliant.

Armed conflicts in the Caucasus erupted in the 1980s and 1990s in conjunction with the fall of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands became refugees. Nothing can more starkly demonstrate the fatal nature of the processes of the last 20 years than the fact that the destruction of the Soviet Union has brought to the peoples of the region not peace and a flourishing life, but the growth of social inequality and the danger of bloody wars with incalculable catastrophic consequences.

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Reactions to Iranian missile tests underscore danger of war

By Peter Symonds
World Socialist Web Site, 12/07/08

American and Israeli reactions to Iranian missile tests this week have again highlighted the danger of an explosive new military conflict in the Middle East.


The two sets of missile tests on Wednesday and Thursday followed a string of barely-concealed Israeli threats to launch air strikes on Iran’s civilian nuclear installations. Despite Iranian denials, the US and Israel allege that Iran is actively building a nuclear weapon—contradicting a National Intelligence Estimate produced by 16 US spy agencies last December, which concluded that no such weapons program exists.

Tehran used the missile tests to underscore warnings that it will respond to any attack by striking Israel and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s oil is transported. The state media reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) had fired a variety of missiles, including the medium-range Shabab-3, and quoted a senior official saying the tests were "a lesson for enemies".

Among military analysts, there is debate as to the number and type of missiles tested. Several reports claimed that one of the photographs released by the IRGC photograph appeared to have been doctored to show an extra rocket being fired, perhaps covering up a misfiring. According to the US Defence Department and intelligence agencies, between 7 and 10 missiles were launched.

Several analysts pointed out that no new missiles were tested. Charles Vick from GlobalSecurity.org told the New York Times that the newer version of the Shabab-3, which has a range of around 2,000 kilometres and is capable of striking Israel, was apparently not fired. John Pike, also from GlobalSecurity.org, told Reuters: "They put on a big show and as a result they were able to get headline coverage."

The limited character of the tests did not stop US and Israeli officials from seizing upon them to issue a new round of threats against Iran. White House spokesman Tony Fratto condemned the exercise as "provocative" and again demanded that Iran halt its uranium enrichment and missile testing. Speaking at a press conference in Georgia, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned: "We will defend our interests and the interests of our allies... We take very, very strongly our obligations to defend our allies and no one should be confused about that."

In the context of the ongoing discussion in the US and Israel over launching air strikes on Iran, these claims that Iran is being provocative are completely hypocritical. Just last month, the Israeli air force carried out a large, long-range exercise over the Mediterranean Sea involving more than 100 war planes, helicopters and refuelling aircraft which could only be interpreted as a dry run for an attack on Iran.

While the White House objects to Iran’s missile tests, the US navy is currently conducting joint exercises with its British and Bahraini warships in the Persian Gulf supposedly to protect gas and oil installations in the region. Last week, the US navy conducted a little-reported exercise coordinating two warships, one in the Mediterranean Sea and the other in the Persian Gulf, in the simulated shooting down of a ballistic missile. The unprecedented five-day test, reported in Stars and Stripes, was clearly aimed at enhancing the US military’s ability to neutralise Iran’s ability to retaliate in the event of a US or Israeli strike.

Divisions exist in the Bush administration over whether to launch an attack on Iran. Whereas the most hawkish elements gathered around Vice President Dick Cheney have been pressing for war, President Bush is still supporting, publicly at least, the so-called diplomatic option advocated by Rice aimed at bullying Tehran through international sanctions into agreeing to US demands.

However, Rice’s strident comments in Georgia underline the tactical character of these differences. Her "very, very strong" support for the interests of US allies—above all, Israel—makes clear that the US would be drawn quickly into any conflict between Israel and Iran.

Israeli threats

Responding to the Iranian missile tests, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned: "The Iranian issue is a challenge not just for Israel but for the entire world... Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past it is not afraid to take action when its vital security interests are at stake."

Barak’s comments are an obvious allusion not only to Israel’s air strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, but also last September’s unprovoked attack that destroyed a building in northern Syria. The Bush administration, which would have been consulted over the Syrian strike, alleged this year that the building was a nuclear reactor under construction—a claim denied by the Syrian government.

To underscore Israel’s capacity to strike Iran, Israel Aerospace Industries displayed its latest state-of-the art airborne early warning and control plane to the media on Thursday. The plane, which is equipped with sophisticated radar and intelligence-gathering technology, as well as electronic warfare systems, would be deployed in any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yuval Steinitz, a senior member of the Israeli parliament’s powerful Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, commented to the press: "If those [Iranian] missiles will one day be equipped with nuclear warheads, this will produce [an] existential threat to Israel... Therefore we have to do our utmost to stop the Iranian nuclear project before such missiles can really become devastating."

Israel already has nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them against Iran. In April, amid the country’s largest ever civil defence drill, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned that an Iranian attack would lead to "the destruction of the Iranian nation". Israel’s determination to shut down Iran’s civilian nuclear programs is to ensure that Tehran does not have the capacity, either now or in the indefinite future, to undermine Israel’s position as "the strongest in the region".

Iran is clearly at the centre of a series of top-level discussions between Israel and the US. Barak is due in Washington next week for three days of talks with Vice President Cheney, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. In an article entitled, "Barak to tell Bush time is running out on thwarting Iran", the Jerusalem Post described the talks as "aimed at coordinating policies against the Iranian nuclear threat".

Barak’s visit follows days after Mossad chief Meir Dagan was in Washington for talks with key US intelligence officials. A week after Barak leaves, Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, will arrive in the US for a round of discussions with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen and other top Pentagon officials. While all these discussions are described as "routine", it was only two weeks ago that Mullen was in Israel for talks with Ashkenazi and other Israeli military heads.

A particularly ominous report in the Iraqi media yesterday, based on unnamed Iraqi army officers, claimed that Israeli jets had recently flown via Jordan into Iraqi air space and landed at an airport in Haditha in the western province of Anbar. US, Iraqi and Israeli officials immediately dismissed the report, which contributed to a $5 jump in crude oil futures to more than $146.60 a barrel yesterday. Iraq is one of few routes that Israeli war planes could use in any attack on Iran.

Nervousness over a possible war with Iran also contributed to the decision this week by Total, the French energy giant, to cancel plans for a $10 billion project to develop the huge South Pars gas field in Iran. Total has been under intense pressure from the Bush administration and the French government to pull out of Iran. Last year the company’s chief executive Christophe de Margerie and two other executives were investigated by French police over the project. De Margerie declared this week that the political risk was too high to continue.

Even as tensions over Iran escalated this week, a series of comments appeared in the US press playing down the danger of war. Most highlighted the remarks of Defence Secretary Gates who declared on Thursday that the Iranian missile tests did not bring the US any closer to a confrontation. "There is a lot of signalling going on," he said. "But I think everyone recognises what the consequences of any kind of a conflict would be." Gates’s comments reflect concerns among layers of the military top brass about the consequences of having to fight a third war on top of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, the dangerous game of brinkmanship being played by the Bush administration in the Persian Gulf has a logic of its own. The hostility of the most hawkish elements in Washington to a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Tehran is based on the calculation that the beneficiaries of any easing of tensions would be America’s rivals in Europe and Asia, which already have large investments and substantial trade links with Iran. A new military adventure, despite its potentially catastrophic geopolitical consequences, thus appears as the only viable alternative to ensure American domination in the vital oil-rich region.

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Learning From Past Blunders

By Paul Barratt
The Age, 09/07/08

(Paul Barratt is a former Australian secretary of the Department of Defence and former trade negotiator. He visited Tehran in 1978 to discuss the conditions for supply of Australian uranium to the Shah's regime.)

AS WE become accustomed to higher petrol prices resulting from Israeli threats to attack Iran, it is timely to ask whether the West's current approach to Iran really serves our interests. My critique centres on three points: the outrage about Iran's assumed nuclear intentions ignores the fact that the major powers have degraded the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the efforts to bluster Iran into dropping its indigenous program are unrealistic and doomed to failure; and the costs associated with any military strike would be completely unacceptable-to all parties.

The NPT was a logical corollary of the Eisenhower-era Atoms for Peace program. The central bargain was that if nations forswore the nuclear option, the US and other nuclear powers would spread the benefits of the peaceful uses of nuclear technology throughout the world, and would themselves undertake nuclear disarmament. NPT members (Iran is one) have a right to peaceful nuclear programs, and the nuclear weapon states have an obligation to disarm.

Aside from the fact that the nuclear arms race accelerated and enthusiasm for assisting peaceful nuclear programs evaporated, the West-and the US in particular-has been highly selective in its outrage about nuclear proliferation. The force of the proposition that any proliferation whatsoever is unacceptable has been undermined by an attitude that who was proliferating mattered more than the proliferation itself.

Iran has historical, commercial and energy security reasons to want as complete a commercial fuel cycle as it can achieve. The 1980s' war against Iraq left Iran obsessed with self-reliance. Veterans of that war believe that Iran's interests cannot be safeguarded by adhering to international treaties or appealing to Western public opinion. In this, it mirrors Israel's position.

The commercial backdrop is that in the 1970s Iran lent $US1 billion to the French Atomic Energy Commission to build its Eurodif enrichment facility, and acquired a 10% indirect interest in Eurodif-a stake that still exists. It paid another $US180 million for future enrichment services.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Khomeini regime cancelled the Shah's nuclear program and sought a refund of this investment. There followed a decade of bitter litigation, from which Iran was reimbursed $US1.6 billion for its 1974 loan plus interest. It remains an indirect shareholder in Eurodif, but under a 1991 settlement has no access to technology and no right to enriched uranium. It retained its right to dividends, but financial sanctions prevent it from receiving these dividends.

This experience left Tehran deeply distrustful of any proposal that it rely on others for a critical component of its nuclear electricity program.

Regarding energy security, the suggestion that Iran rely on Russia for enrichment services looks profoundly unattractive considering Russia's intransigence in turning off the gas supply to Ukraine, a move that left the EU anxious about reliance on Russian energy.

It may well be that Iran is also establishing for itself a nuclear weapons option, an intent the Shah expressed in 1974 but subsequently repudiated. A better way to persuade Iran to forgo the option would be to offer security rewards for acceptance of full-scope safeguards, and for the US to warn Israel that any unilateral attack on Iran would force the US to reconsider its bilateral treaty arrangements.

Despite its shrill rhetoric, Iran does not look like a country bent on war. As a proportion of GDP, it has the second-lowest military spending in the Middle East-less than half Turkey's, about one-third of Israel's.

Anyone with any knowledge of Iran's history and culture will know that it will not be bribed or bullied into doing what the West wants. It has no reason to trust Western promises, and having endured the suffering of the Iran-Iraq War, is unlikely to buckle under any pressure, military or economic, that the West would be prepared to impose.

Regarding nuclear proliferation, no self-respecting country would accept that its nuclear program is a problem because that state itself is a problem-that an Indian, Israeli or Pakistani nuclear capability is acceptable because they are the right kind of people, but an Iranian capability would be unacceptable because of the nature of Iran. The only way to establish a manageable relationship with Tehran is to understand its world view, to recognise its legitimate interests, and deal with problematic issues on a basis of equality and mutual respect.

Iran's demonisation by the Bush Administration only serves to undermine Iranian reformers, including pragmatic conservatives who see value for Iran in a more rational relationship with the US. And the constant brandishing of military options is counterproductive-Iran has too many means of retaliation. It will be an indispensable partner in any Iraq settlement.

A strategic approach to the issue would see a more dispassionate and mature attitude to Iran, dealing with it as an important power in a critical region, one that is here to stay and is to be taken seriously. To those who regard such an approach as "idealistic", I would observe that we have adopted the confrontationist approach for 29 years, and ask when it might begin working?

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Preparing the Battlefield

By Seymour M. Hersh
New Yorker, 07/07/08

The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership.

The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees-the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," a person familiar with its contents said, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money." The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and "there was a significant amount of high-level discussion" about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership-Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections-were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party's presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.'s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that "significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.")

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House's concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, "We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America." Gates's comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates's answer, the senator told me, was "Let's just say that I'm here speaking for myself." (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator's characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were "pushing back very hard" against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that "at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders"-the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world-"have weighed in on that issue." The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the "real objective" of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians' behavior, and that "attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice."

Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. "Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians," he told me. "Let's get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone's an individual. The idea that they're only one way or another is nonsense."

When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, "Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid."

The Democratic leadership's agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. "The oversight process has not kept pace-it's been co-opted" by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. "The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we're authorizing."

Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House's. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration's interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, material, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC's task-force missions, the pursuit of "high-value targets," was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

"This is a big deal," the person familiar with the Finding said. "The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was 'preparing the battle space,' and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight. Everything is justified in terms of fighting the global war on terror." He added, "The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray"-between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not-"but now it's a shade of mush."

"The agency says we're not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding," the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. "This drove the military people up the wall," he said. As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, the former senior intelligence official said, "the over-all authorization includes killing, but it's not as though that's what they're setting out to do. It's about gathering information, enlisting support." The Finding sent to Congress was a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A. while referring to the use of lethal force in ambiguous terms.

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that "no lethal action, period" had been authorized within Iran's borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House. On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better cooperation. "The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do," he said in a floor speech at the time. "We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble."

Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, "I suspect there's something going on, but I don't know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he'd find a way to do it. We still don't get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge."

None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes-would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, "is just that-notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee." However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, "As a rule, we don't comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings." The White House also declined to comment.)

A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, "it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control." He went on, "We control the money and they can't do anything without the money. Money is what it's all about. But I'm very leery of this Administration." He added, "This Administration has been so secretive."

One irony of Admiral Fallon's departure is that he was, in many areas, in agreement with President Bush on the threat posed by Iran. They had a good working relationship, Fallon told me, and, when he ran CENTCOM, were in regular communication. On March 4th, a week before his resignation, Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that he was "encouraged" about the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the role played by Iran's leaders, he said, "They've been absolutely unhelpful, very damaging, and I absolutely don't condone any of their activities. And I have yet to see anything since I've been in this job in the way of a public action by Iran that's been at all helpful in this region."

allon made it clear in our conversations that he considered it inappropriate to comment publicly about the President, the Vice-President, or Special Operations. But he said he had heard that people in the White House had been "struggling" with his views on Iran. "When I arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could. And why not? They didn't know who'd come out ahead, but they wanted us out. I decided that I couldn't resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood."

Fallon told me that his focus had been not on the Iranian nuclear issue, or on regime change there, but on "putting out the fires in Iraq." There were constant discussions in Washington and in the field about how to engage Iran and, on the subject of the bombing option, Fallon said, he believed that "it would happen only if the Iranians did something stupid."

Fallon's early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon's defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President's "czar" for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he's known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific," Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) "He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O."-area of operations. "That was not happening," Sheehan said. "When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out."

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

"The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations," Sheehan said. "If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can't have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq."

Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. "Fox said that there's a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing," Fallon's colleague said. "The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney."

The Pentagon consultant said, "Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that."

In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press "is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country," Gardiner said. It is, he said, "a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government." He added, "Hardly a day goes by now we don't see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed."

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi-who was overthrown in 1979-was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. "This is the ultimate for the Iranians-to blame the C.I.A.," Gardiner said. "This is new, and it's an escalation-a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the 'Great Satan.' " In Gardiner's view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran's religious government, may generate support for it.

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with "passing money" (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, "We've got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?" One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue," Nasr told me. "Iran is an old country-like France and Germany-and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran." The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. "You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population."

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. "The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda," Baer told me. "These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers-in this case, it's Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we're once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties." Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. "This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists," Nasr told me. "They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture." The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.

The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.

The M.E.K. has been on the State Department's terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. "The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results." He added, "The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts-and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends."

The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. (Iran, like Iraq and Turkey, has a Kurdish minority, and PJAK and other groups have sought self-rule in territory that is now part of each of those countries.) In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, the military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. In early June, the news agency Fars reported that a dozen PJAK members and four Iranian border guards were killed in a clash near the Iraq border; a similar attack in May killed three Revolutionary Guards and nine PJAK fighters. PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments.

Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.-a slap at the U.S.'s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. This was a sign, Gardiner said, of "Maliki's increasingly choosing the interests of Iraq over the interests of the United States." In terms of U.S. allegations of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, he said, "Maliki was unwilling to play the blame-Iran game." Gardiner added that Pakistan had just agreed to turn over a Jundallah leader to the Iranian government. America's covert operations, he said, "seem to be harming relations with the governments of both Iraq and Pakistan and could well be strengthening the connection between Tehran and Baghdad."

The White House's reliance on questionable operatives, and on plans involving possible lethal action inside Iran, has created anger as well as anxiety within the Special Operations and intelligence communities. JSOC's operations in Iran are believed to be modelled on a program that has, with some success, used surrogates to target the Taliban leadership in the tribal territories of Waziristan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But the situations in Waziristan and Iran are not comparable.

In Waziristan, "the program works because it's small and smart guys are running it," the former senior intelligence official told me. "It's being executed by professionals. The N.S.A., the C.I.A., and the D.I.A."-the Defense Intelligence Agency-"are right in there with the Special Forces and Pakistani intelligence, and they're dealing with serious bad guys." He added, "We have to be really careful in calling in the missiles. We have to hit certain houses at certain times. The people on the ground are watching through binoculars a few hundred yards away and calling specific locations, in latitude and longitude. We keep the Predator loitering until the targets go into a house, and we have to make sure our guys are far enough away so they don't get hit." One of the most prominent victims of the program, the former official said, was Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior Taliban commander, who was killed on January 31st, reportedly in a missile strike that also killed eleven other people.

A dispatch published on March 26th by the Washington Post reported on the increasing number of successful strikes against Taliban and other insurgent units in Pakistan's tribal areas. A follow-up article noted that, in response, the Taliban had killed "dozens of people" suspected of providing information to the United States and its allies on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. Many of the victims were thought to be American spies, and their executions-a beheading, in one case-were videotaped and distributed by DVD as a warning to others.

It is not simple to replicate the program in Iran. "Everybody's arguing about the high-value-target list," the former senior intelligence official said. "The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney's office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he's getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place."

The Pentagon consultant told me, "We've had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags-basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we're beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It's one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations-judicial, strategic, and political-are different in Iran."

He added, "There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan."

A Gallup poll taken last November, before the N.I.E. was made public, found that seventy-three per cent of those surveyed thought that the United States should use economic action and diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program, while only eighteen per cent favored direct military action. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to endorse a military strike. Weariness with the war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the public's tolerance for an attack on Iran. This mood could change quickly, however. The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. Initial reports of the incident made public by the Pentagon press office said that the Iranians had transmitted threats, over ship-to-ship radio, to "explode" the American ships. At a White House news conference, the President, on the day he left for an eight-day trip to the Middle East, called the incident "provocative" and "dangerous," and there was, very briefly, a sense of crisis and of outrage at Iran. "TWO MINUTES FROM WAR" was the headline in one British newspaper.

The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. No warning shots were fired, the Admiral told the Pentagon press corps on January 7th, via teleconference from his headquarters, in Bahrain. "Yes, it's more serious than we have seen, but, to put it in context, we do interact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their Navy regularly," Cosgriff said. "I didn't get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats."

Admiral Cosgriff's caution was well founded: within a week, the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the ominous radio transmission, and press reports suggested that it had instead come from a prankster long known for sending fake messages in the region. Nonetheless, Cosgriff's demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn't do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. "The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington," he said.

In June, President Bush went on a farewell tour of Europe. He had tea with Queen Elizabeth II and dinner with Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the President and First Lady of France. The serious business was conducted out of sight, and involved a series of meetings on a new diplomatic effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. (Iran argues that its enrichment program is for civilian purposes and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Secretary of State Rice had been involved with developing a new package of incentives. But the Administration's essential negotiating position seemed unchanged: talks could not take place until Iran halted the program. The Iranians have repeatedly and categorically rejected that precondition, leaving the diplomatic situation in a stalemate; they have not yet formally responded to the new incentives.

The continuing impasse alarms many observers. Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister, recently wrote in a syndicated column that it may not "be possible to freeze the Iranian nuclear program for the duration of the negotiations to avoid a military confrontation before they are completed. Should this newest attempt fail, things will soon get serious. Deadly serious." When I spoke to him last week, Fischer, who has extensive contacts in the diplomatic community, said that the latest European approach includes a new element: the willingness of the U.S. and the Europeans to accept something less than a complete cessation of enrichment as an intermediate step. "The proposal says that the Iranians must stop manufacturing new centrifuges and the other side will stop all further sanction activities in the U.N. Security Council," Fischer said, although Iran would still have to freeze its enrichment activities when formal negotiations begin. "This could be acceptable to the Iranians-if they have good will." The big question, Fischer added, is in Washington. "I think the Americans are deeply divided on the issue of what to do about Iran," he said. "Some officials are concerned about the fallout from a military attack and others think an attack is unavoidable. I know the Europeans, but I have no idea where the Americans will end up on this issue."

There is another complication: American Presidential politics. Barack Obama has said that, if elected, he would begin talks with Iran with no "self-defeating" preconditions (although only after diplomatic groundwork had been laid). That position has been vigorously criticized by John McCain. The Washington Post recently quoted Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign's national-security director, as stating that McCain supports the White House's position, and that the program be suspended before talks begin. What Obama is proposing, Scheunemann said, "is unilateral cowboy summitry."

Scheunemann, who is known as a neoconservative, is also the McCain campaign's most important channel of communication with the White House. He is a friend of David Addington, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. I have heard differing accounts of Scheunemann's influence with McCain; though some close to the McCain campaign talk about him as a possible national-security adviser, others say he is someone who isn't taken seriously while "telling Cheney and others what they want to hear," as a senior McCain adviser put it.

It is not known whether McCain, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been formally briefed on the operations in Iran. At the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in June, Obama repeated his plea for "tough and principled diplomacy." But he also said, along with McCain, that he would keep the threat of military action against Iran on the table.

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