World War III — The coming conflict with Iran

{Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V}

In April of 2006, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who first reported torture at Abu Ghraib two years ago, wrote a new story concerning plans by the Bush Administration for a massive bombing campaign against Iran, which would include the use of nuclear weapons.

The piece, entitled “The Iran Plans,” revealed that there was a “growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change.” Hersh claimed that President Bush views Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as a “potential Adolf Hitler.” A former senior intelligence official says, “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’” Bush feels that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

Most disquieting is the talk surrounding the use of nuclear weapons against, specifically the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon known as “B61-11“. Concern that air strikes might not totally knock out hardened underground bunkers has left military planners with little choice but to consider nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” a former senior intelligence official tells Hersh. “‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

Since April, the Bush Administration has played quiet over its plans to attack Iran, but recent events indicate that a push for war may be soon in the making. On September 21, The Nation reported the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major “strike group” of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

That same day, the online newspaper Raw Story received confirmation from several military intelligence sources as well as a senior administration official that the United States military, through the voices of Joint Chiefs of Staff, has “come around on to the administration’s thinking.”

“The Joint Chiefs have no longer imposed roadblocks on a possible bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear production facilities,” the intelligence official said. “In the past, only the Air Force had endorsed the contingency, saying that it could carry out the mission of destroying, or at least significantly delaying, Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Preparation for such a strike would require contingency plans for securing oil transport lines and dealing with possible riots, as well as assessment of issues that arose during the Iran-Iraq war. “Bahrain will be a battleground as it is majority Shi’a and has had Shi’a riots stimulated by Iran in the past,” the official said. “The US Fifth Fleet is also based there. A system for [protection of] oil transport in the Gulf will have to be devised by the US Navy to protect against attacks.”

Why the rush to confront Iran? The problem is again one of perspective. The Iranian regime has been a thorn in the side of the United States for the past 25 years. With the advent of “The Long War,” Iran was grouped together with other American enemies in the region as a “potential terrorist threat”; and once a regime is a terrorist nation, eventually the United States must go out and destroy it.

In the minds of American leaders, Iran has come to represent the ultimate enemy — the supposed source of the civil war in Iraq, the “central banker of terrorism,” and the gadfly of American ambitions in the Middle East. But the consequences of such an attack would be catastrophic. In addition to oil prices shooting through the roof, there is no guarantee that the military strike would even set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to the extent that it seeks the bomb. Iran might even be hoping for airstrikes: the sympathy it would receive from the rest of the world — yet another country the target of American bombs — would give the country an extraordinary boost of prestige and authority throughout the region.

In any iteration, it is hard to see the Americans walking away with a victory, no matter how thorough the bombing. But the chief aim of the Bush Administration is not victory in the Middle East — it is the protection of their power. And an attack against Iran would force the American people to make that choice which up till now has been permeating beneath the surface of the war on terror but yet to be openly asked: “Whose side are you on?”

While it is impossible to tell when an attack might take place, there is a good bet that the timing will coincide with the November 2006 Congressional Elections, just a little more than a month away at this point. The outcome of these elections will determine whether the United States will realize its mistakes and halt its aggression, or proceed full speed ahead into the dark corridors of total war.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 11:25 am and is filed under Structure and System, World War III. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.