Storm Watch

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Teheran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb. Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic’s nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme. “This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” said a senior Pentagon adviser. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”

Neoconservatives in Washington are urging President George W Bush to drop diplomacy with Iran in favour of boosting internal dissent and opposition forces within the Islamic regime. In an open breach with White House policy, they argue the multilateral diplomacy pursued by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is encouraging the Iranians to snub the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and develop a nuclear bomb under cover of a peaceful energy programme. Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said: “The United States doesn’t have a policy on Iran. We should be looking for a way to address the people of the country.”

As former CIA intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi told the American Conservative last July, the United States plans to nuke the be-jesus out of Iran. “The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.” All of this despite the fact Iran is a non-nuclear country, a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and working with the IAEA, although the latter reported Iran to the UN Security Council last week. So itchy is the Pentagon to use nukes against non-nuke countries, they wrote the “policy” in their “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations” (pdf doc).    

“Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, [said] Mr. Bush is expected to be faced by the decision [to criminally bomb Iran] within two years.” More balderdash–the United States plans to bomb Iran next month, or soon thereafter. It wants Iran wasted sooner before later. Last week Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Russia, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station “that the Muslim [cartoon] riots were orchestrated by the US to garner European backing for the military strike” and the “war is inevitable because the Americans want this war. Any country claiming a leading position in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to retain its leading position,” as well spelled out by the PNAC maniacs who have captured the flag in Washington.

“Americans are telling us that they would prefer we pack our bags and leave Iraq now, and yet they appear ready to do some damage to Iran if it proceeds with its nuclear program,” said John Zogby, president of the polling firm, Zogby International, which released a survey last week in which nearly half of the respondents (47 percent) said they favored military action, preferably along with European allies, to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

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Nonetheless, the latest poll, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that some 27 percent of respondents cite Iran as Washington’s greatest menace – three times the percentage who ranked it at the top of foreign threats just four months ago.

 

The same survey, which polled 1,500 adults during the first week of February, also found that nearly three in four (72 percent) believed Tehran was “likely” to launch attacks on Israel if it obtained nuclear weapons. An even higher percentage (82 percent) said they believed the Iranian government would likely transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists.

 

The latest results strongly suggest that the combination of belligerent declarations by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Tehran’s defiance of European appeals not to resume its uranium enrichment activities; and efforts by Israel and its allies here to mobilize international and U.S. opinion has moved the Islamic Republic to the center of the public’s foreign-policy consciousness.

 

This shift in some ways echoes how the hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush focused the public’s post-9/11 fears on former President Saddam Hussein in the yearlong run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003.