Seymour Hersh has come out with another long article about the state of play with the Cheney-Bush administration's Iran policy: The Next Act New Yorker 11/20/06 (accessed 11/19/06; 11/27/06 issue).His bottom line is that an attack on Iran at this point is still a live option for many officials including Dark Lord Dick Cheney.
He hits on a number of points that are important to keep in mind in the administration's overall approach to Iran policy. An important one that I've mentioned before is how central the entire model of covert Executive foreign policy and war-making evident in the Iran-Contra affair is to Cheney's thinking. That comes out in the first three paragraphs.
Another is that the Robert Gates nomination for Defense Secretary could be primarily a new sales approach not accompanied by any significant change of policy on Iraq or Iran, in hopes that Gates would be a new, more credible figure to advocate expanding the war to Iran, for instance.
Bad habits die hard. The Cheney-Rummy use of "stovepiping" raw intelligence to war advocates in the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President continues. As does a willingness to rely on dubious HUMINT (human intelligence) from shaky sources. There's even a remarkable form of groupthink going on that has some officials arguing that the absence of any good evidence on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program is itself ividence that the Islamic Republic is deviously concealing such a program.
The growing and mysterious role of the Pentagon in covert ops has not been entirely missed by our Establishment press. But not much is being reported on it, in part because the Republican Congress all but shut down the Congressional oversight function.
Hersh gives an idea of the potential problems of the Pentagon's expanded role in fighting secret wars:
Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon’s expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.’s responsibility, but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions have been substantially increased. In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group has also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.” (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.)The fact that the Cheney-Bush administration is already funding violent opposition groups against the Iranian government is something that is rarely mentioned in stories about US-Iranian relations. But it's worth asking if that could have something to do with Iran's current or future cooperation over Iraq. Among other things.
Such activities, if they are considered military rather than intelligence operations, do not require congressional briefings. For a similar C.I.A. operation, the President would, by law, have to issue a formal finding that the mission was necessary, and the Administration would have to brief the senior leadership of the House and the Senate. The lack of such consultation annoyed some Democrats in Congress. This fall, I was told, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that finances classified military activity, pointedly asked, during a closed meeting of House and Senate members, whether “anyone has been briefing on the Administration’s plan for military activity in Iran.” The answer was no. (A spokesman for Obey confirmed this account.)
Hersh provides another confirmation of how closely the Cheney-Bush administration is working with the Israeli government on Iran policy. Which makes recent bellicose statements by Israeli leaders all the more concerning. Hersh writes:
The Pentagon consultant told me that, while there may be pressure from the Israelis, “they won’t do anything on their own without our green light.” That assurance, he said, “comes from the Cheney shop. It’s Cheney himself who is saying, ‘We’re not going to leave you high and dry, but don’t go without us.’ ” A senior European diplomat agreed: “For Israel, it is a question of life or death. The United States does not want to go into Iran, but, if Israel feels more and more cornered, there may be no other choice.”Iranian nuclear weapons would be a huge spur to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Even major Democratic leaders might be willing to go along with an attack on Iran based on that concern. Unless the public in general and the Democratic base in particular makes very clear to the Dems that expanding the war to Iran is unacceptable. Hersh:
A nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel. It could trigger a strategic-arms race throughout the Middle East, as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—all led by Sunni governments—would be compelled to take steps to defend themselves. The Bush Administration, if it does take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that—as Clinton said earlier this year—“we cannot take any option off the table.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, “A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die—the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.”The elimination of Saddam's regime and the transformation of Iraq into a violent, chaotic failed state have given Iran a status as the leading power in the region after Israel. Administration calculations based on the idea that Iran will be overawed by American might are higly problematic, as Hersh notes:
One problem with the proposal that the Administration enlist Iran in reaching a settlement of the conflict in Iraq is that it’s not clear that Iran would be interested, especially if the goal is to help the Bush Administration extricate itself from a bad situation.Hersh's reports that Cheney was heavily involved with Rummy, Gates and Bush over Rummy's resignation before the election. No big surprise there. But a "former senior intelligence official" suggests to Hersh that Cheney might not have been as adverse to having Rummy take the fall for the administration over the Iraq War as some press reports have indicated.
“Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East,” I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration official. “With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout the region, it’s basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate with us over Iraq?”
The same source used a darkly ironic image in describing one of the likely effects of a military attack on Iran. Administration spokespeople including Bush himself have been raising the bogeyman of the revived caliphate that is part of Bin Laden's fanatical ideology. Al Qaida has nothing like the capability to seek such a goal, so citing Bin Laden on a new caliphate is sort of like citing Charles Manson as an expert on Beatles songs. Although the idea is not unique to Al Qaida; other extreme Islamist groups also talk about restoring a caliphate. The "former senior intelligence official" suggested that Bush might wind up giving the pie-in-the-sky idea a bit of a boost He told Hersh:
... that the C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations. “An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world, and we’ll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against us—and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West. It’s an analyst’s worst nightmare—for the first time since the caliphate there will be common cause in the Middle East.” (An Islamic caliphate ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth century.)I was surprised to see that Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) sounding cautious and restrained in his interview with Hersh about the danger of Iran's nuclear program. WINEP is generally supportive of hardline Israeli policies.
Finally, Rummy apparently started a review of options for the Iraq War back in August to head the Baker-Hamilton commission off at the pass as they suggest alternatives to the current disastrous Iraq War policies. Hersh reports:
It is not clear whether the Administration will be receptive. In August, according to the former senior intelligence official, Rumsfeld asked the Joint Chiefs to quietly devise alternative plans for Iraq, to preëmpt new proposals, whether they come from the new Democratic majority or from the Iraq Study Group. “The option of last resort is to move American forces out of the cities and relocate them along the Syrian and Iranian border,” the former official said. “Civilians would be hired to train the Iraqi police, with the eventual goal of separating the local police from the Iraqi military. The White House believes that if American troops stay in Iraq long enough—with enough troops—the bad guys will end up killing each other, and Iraqi citizens, fed up with internal strife, will come up with a solution. It’ll take a long time to move the troops and train the police. It’s a time line to infinity.”It's worth remembering, discouraging though it may be, that Lyndon Johnson had effectively accepted the defeat of the US in Vietnam in 1968 - though he may not have framed it that way for himself - when he decided on a bombing halt and agreed to open peace negotiations with the other side. But American combat forces didn't leave Vietnam until 1973. And even then the US remained actively involved in the cotinuing war until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Seven years after Johnson's major change of course in 1968.
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