Seymour Hirsh writes in The New Yorker, with his usual access to inside sources, of the administration’s plans for Iran.
Now that the Bushies have redefined the war in Iraq as a strategic struggle with Iran, the position that we have to confront the Iranians has taken firm hold of the administration. Longstanding battle plans against Iran have been redrawn this summer, no longer centered on broadranging bombing attacks against suspected nuclear centers but on surgical strikes on Revolutionary Guard centers which the administration now claims have been the source of attacks against Americans in Iraq. Hersh says this reflects both the administration conclusion that they cannot get away with another WMD argument and the recognition that Iran has been the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
Cheney is behind this desperate push to bring military action to Iran, disregarding the fact that Republican prospects for 2008 are crashing and burning wholesale. Hersh’s sources report an increased tampo of attack planning, largely by people without any experience with Iran, and caution that, as usual, the administration has not thought through the likely Iranian reaction. Hersh quotes the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski as predicting that Iran will intensify its conflict with its neighbors, drawing Pakistan in and keeping the US embroiled in a decades’-long regional war.
A justification for attacking Iran based on its supplying weapons for Iraqi insurgent attacks against the US, as we heard, e.g., in Petraeus’ recent assertions, ignores several facts. The provenance of the terrorist weaponry in Iraq is far from clear. And Iranian-supplied armaments may well have been given to Iran’s Shiite allies in southern Iraq years ago when they were fighting Saddam. And despite the enormous presence of Iranians inside Iraq, direct evidence of their role in military training of Iraqis is lacking. Iraqi politicians routinely invoke outside interference to evade responsibility for their own failures. CIA sources have told Hersh that the intelligence about who is doing what “is so thin that nobody even wants his name on it.” [But lack of intelligence has never been a problem for this administration before, has it?]
The problem with a surgical bombing strike campaign, however, is that it only makes sense if the intelligence behind it is good. If significant targets are not hit quickly, it will escalate. The Israelis, alarmed that the US is abandoning its targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities, may press for such a broadening. especially if Iran’s proxy Hezbollah responds. Israel is not impressed by evidence that Iran is years away from being able to deliver a nuclear attack. Once they have mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and have the requisite materials, the possibilities of passing materials to terrorist groups or of unleashing a dirty bomb materialize. Recent changes of leadership in our allies (and erstwhile allies) in Western Europe may also factor into the shape of the American attack.
