Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?
by Dave Lindorff |

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.
Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.
_______
About author Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an
Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by
Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is "The Case for
Impeachment, " co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at:
dlindorff@.. .

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