Politics > Politics-USA > Did CENTCOM chief Admiral William Fallon stop a war with Iran last February
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"can_o_worms" |
| Date: |
16 May 2007 06:30:03 PM |
| Object: |
Did CENTCOM chief Admiral William Fallon stop a war with Iran last February |
POLITICS-US:
Commander's Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Buildup
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37738
Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, May 15 (IPS) - Admiral William Fallon,
then President George W. Bush's nominee to head the
Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong
opposition in February to an administration plan to
increase the number of carrier strike groups in the
Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately
there would be no war against Iran as long as he was
chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access
to his thinking.
Fallon's resistance to the proposed deployment of a
third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in
the Bush administration's Iran policy in February
and March away from increased military threats and
toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift,
for which no credible explanation has been offered
by administration officials, suggests that Fallon's
resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor
in the intra-administration struggle over policy
toward Iran.
The plan to add a third carrier strike group in the
Gulf had been a key element in a broader strategy
discussed at high levels to intimidate Iran by a
series of military moves suggesting preparations for
a military strike.
Admiral Fallon's resistance to a further buildup of
naval striking power in the Gulf apparently took the
Bush administration by surprise. Fallon, then
Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, had been
associated with naval aviation throughout his career,
and last January, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates
publicly encouraged the idea that the appointment
presaged greater emphasis on the military option in
regard to the U.S. conflict with Iran.
Explaining why he recommended Fallon, Gates said,
"As you look at the range of options available to
the United States, the use of naval and air power,
potentially, it made sense to me for all those
reasons for Fallon to have the job."
Bush administration officials had just leaked to CBS
News and the New York Times in December that the USS
John C. Stennis and its associated warships would be
sent to the Gulf in January six weeks earlier than
originally planned in order to overlap with the USS
Eisenhower and to "send a message to Tehran".
But that was not the end of the signaling to Iran by
naval deployment planned by administration officials.
The plan was for the USS Nimitz and its associated
vessels, scheduled to sail into the Gulf in early
April, to overlap with the other two carrier strike
groups for a period of months, so that all three
would be in the Gulf simultaneously.
Two well-informed sources say they heard about such
a plan being pushed at high levels of the
administration, and Newsweek's Michael Hirsh and
Maziar Bahari reported Feb. 19 that the deployment
of a third carrier group to the Gulf was "likely".
That would have brought the U.S. naval presence up
to the same level as during the U.S. air campaign
against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, when the
Lincoln, Constellation and Kitty Hawk carrier groups
were all present. Two other carrier groups helped
coordinate bombing sorties from the Mediterranean.
The deployment of three carrier groups simultaneously
was not part of a plan for an actual attack on Iran,
but was meant to convince Iran that the Bush
administration was preparing for possible war if
Tehran continued its uranium enrichment programme.
At a mid-February meeting of top civilian officials
over which Secretary of Defence Gates presided, there
was an extensive discussion of a strategy of
intimidating Tehran's leaders, according to an
account by a Pentagon official who attended the
meeting given to a source outside the Pentagon. The
plan involved a series of steps that would appear to
Tehran to be preparations for war, in a manner
similar to the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
But Fallon, who was scheduled to become the CENTCOM
chief Mar. 16, responded to the proposed plan by
sending a strongly-worded message to the Defence
Department in mid-February opposing any further U.S.
naval buildup in the Persian Gulf as unwarranted.
"He asked why another aircraft carrier was needed in
the Gulf and insisted there was no military
requirement for it," says the source, who obtained
the gist of Fallon's message from a Pentagon official
who had read it.
Fallon's refusal to support a further naval buildup
in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an
attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his
career on the line to prevent it. A source who met
privately with Fallon around the time of his
confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity
quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will
not happen on my watch".
Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon
replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a
professional." Fallon said that he was not alone,
according to the source, adding, "There are several
of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."
Fallon's opposition to adding a third carrier strike
group to the two already in the Gulf represented a
major obstacle to the plan. The decision to send a
second carrier task group to the Gulf had been
officially requested by Fallon's predecessor at
CENTCOM, Gen. John Abizaid, according to a Dec. 20
report by the Washington Post's Peter Baker. But as
Baker reported, the circumstances left little doubt
that Abizaid was doing so because the White House
wanted it as part of a strategy of sending "pointed
messages" to Iran.
CENTCOM commander Fallon's refusal to request the
deployment of a third carrier strike group meant
that proceeding with that option would carry
political risks. The administration chose not to go
ahead with the plan. Two days before the Nimitz
sailed out of San Diego for the Gulf on Apr. 1, a
Navy spokesman confirmed that it would replace the
Eisenhower, adding, "There is no plan to overlap
them at all."
The defeat of the plan for a third carrier task
group in the Gulf appears to have weakened the
position of Cheney and other hawks in the
administration who had succeeded in selling Bush on
the idea of a strategy of coercive threat against
Iran.
Within two weeks, the administration's stance had
already begun to shift dramatically. On Jan. 12,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had dismissed
direct talks with Iran in the absence of Tehran's
suspension of its uranium enrichment programme as
"extortion". But by the end of February, Rice had
gotten authorisation for high level diplomatic
contacts with Iran in the context of a regional
meeting on Iraq in Baghdad.
The explanation for the shift offered by
administration officials to the New York Times was
that the administration now felt that it "had
leverage" on Iran. But that now appears to have been
a cover for a retreat from the more aggressive
strategy previously planned.
Throughout March and April, the Bush administration
avoided aggressive language and the State Department
openly sought diplomatic engagement with Iran,
culminating in the agreement confirmed by U.S.
officials last weekend that bilateral talks will
begin with Iran on Iraq.
Despite Vice President ***** Cheney's invocation of
the military option from the deck of the USS John C.
Stennis in the Persian Gulf last week, the strategy
of escalating a threat of war to influence Iran has
been put on the shelf, at least for now.
**********
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security
policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War
in Vietnam", was published in June 2005. (END/2007)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37738
--
Jeffrey Blankfort on Washington DC's
subservience to the Israel Lobby:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/11/blankfort-interview.html
illuminating full interview with Jeffrey Blankfort:
http://bleiersblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/jeffrey-blankfort-my-years-of-middle.html
.
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