| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"=?utf-8?B?VGhlIExhc3QgMjQ0NyBEYXlz4oSiIOKZpQ==?=" |
| Date: |
07 Apr 2006 10:42:09 PM |
| Object: |
World War III NEWS, Saturday, April 8th, 2006 AD.....Plans Stepped Up as Tehran Tests Weapons |
http://www.forward.com/articles/7616
U=2ES. Officials Are Mulling Iran Strikes, Experts Say
Plans Stepped Up as Tehran Tests Weapons
By MARC PERELMAN
April 7, 2006
Key players in the Bush administration think a military confrontation
with Iran is unavoidable, leading to stepped up military planning for
such a prospect, according to several experts and recently departed
senior government officials.
Some of these observers stressed that military strikes against Iran are
not imminent and speculated that the escalated war chatter could be a
deliberate ploy to ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Tehran to abandon
its nuclear ambitions. Still, they made clear, the tone in Washington
has changed drastically.
"In recent months I have grown increasingly concerned that the
administration has been giving thought to a heavy dose of air strikes
against Iran's nuclear sector without giving enough weight to the
possible ramifications of such action," said Wayne White, a former
deputy director at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research. White, who worked in the bureau's Office of Analysis for the
Near East and South Asia, left government in early 2005 and is now an
adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.
Several experts and former officials interviewed by the Forward pointed
to Vice President ***** Cheney as one of the key figures who has
concluded that the ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring Iran before the
United Nations Security Council and eventually slap the Islamic regime
with sanctions will come to naught, forcing Washington to resort to
force to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
Cheney's office responded that he was "supporting the administration's
position" of seeking a diplomatic solution while keeping all options on
the table.
Iran, meanwhile, has also taken several public steps to suggest that it
is preparing for a confrontation. Iranian officials recently announced
with great fanfare that the military had tested several new weapons,
including three new missiles and two new torpedoes, during maneuvers in
the Persian Gulf. After Tehran successfully tested its second new
torpedo, General Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani told Iranian state
television Monday that the weapon is powerful enough to "break a heavy
warship" in two. The torpedo was tested in the Straits of Hormuz, a
vital corridor for oil supplies.
A day earlier, Iran announced it had tested a high-speed missile, the
Fajr-3, that allegedly can avoid radar and hit several targets
simultaneously. General Hossein Kargar, said Monday that the purpose of
the maneuvers was to prepare for an attack by the United States.
Bush administration officials repeatedly have stated that a diplomatic
solution to the international crisis over Iran's nuclear program would
be preferable, although they would not rule out a military option. Last
week, the U.N. Security Council adopted a non-binding statement urging
Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment activities. Tehran has rejected
the demand, repeating its claim that the sole aim of the country's
nuclear program is to generate electricity.
According to Laurent Murawiec, a senior fellow at the conservative
Hudson Institute, the Bush administration's contingency plans were
being upgraded "because the diplomatic solution has lost credibility."
Murawiec said that while he feared several years ago that some
officials in Washington seemed to be relying on Israel to take out
Iran's nuclear facilities, "I don't fear this anymore." He added that
two European defense ministries were also working on military
contingency plans, but declined to identify them.
The Sunday Telegraph of London reported April 2 that a high-level
meeting of British military and government officials was to take place
to weigh the consequences of an American-led attack on Iran, which is
considered "inevitable" if Tehran fails to comply with U.N. demands to
freeze its uranium enrichment program. British officials forcefully
denied the story, one of several that have appeared in recent months in
the British press describing stepped-up American preparations for war
against Iran.
Such articles, coupled with consultations between senior Israeli and
American military officials, repeated statements by top Bush
administration officials about the imminent threat of Iran and its
links to terrorism, and the growing tensions with Tehran have fueled
speculation of potential confrontation in recent weeks.
"Up until recently, I dismissed talk of military strikes against Iran
as posturing or left-wing conspiracy theories," said Joseph Cirincione,
the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. "But I
recently changed my mind after friends close to the White House and the
Pentagon told me that some people in government have already decided
the military option was the only one and there was active military
planning."
Kenneth Katzman, an expert with the Congressional Research Service,
noted that there was a growing belief in government that eventually a
choice will come between military action and acquiescence of a nuclear
Iran. "There is a broad range of people in government examining the
military option," he added.
Other experts dismissed such talk, saying that any military planning
taking place is simply part of the usual contingency phase. They also
argued that war fatigue, concerns about oil prices and the lack of
available troops rendered a decision to go to war unlikely in the near
future.
"Obviously diplomatic pressure works best with an implicit military
threat in the background; nobody I know is interested in taking that
off the table," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations. "And tea-leaf readers can try to infer subtle ups or
downs in the salience of the implicit military threat that is always in
the background on this issue. But I don't see any major change in
policy ongoing here."
One possibility is that the war talk is part of a strategy to squeeze
Iran, according to Graham Fuller, a retired CIA officer who worked for
years in the Middle East.
"In my opinion," Fuller wrote in an e-mail, "the proliferation of all
these articles on war plans, attack strategies, U.S. generals visiting
Turkey to talk of military 'preparations,' etc., increasingly shows the
fine hand of U.S. (maybe U.K. too) disinformation and psychological
warfare against Iran using a variety of newspapers to plant stories of
rising threats, time running out, and the urgency of the need to use
force to stop Iran. Indeed this campaign may now be intensified,
perhaps out of frustration that the 'real thing' is not, in fact, on
the table any more."
A former senior CIA official said that the United States was conducting
a disinformation campaign that was part of a wider set of covert
operations intended to destabilize the Islamic regime. He declined to
be identified or to be more specific. The Bush administration recently
allocated $85 million to upgrade television and radio broadcasting into
Iran, and to support pro-democracy activists there.
Looking ahead, "the greatest danger is Iran's overconfidence," said
Michael Rubin, a scholar at the conservative American Entreprise
Institute who worked on Iran policy at the Pentagon until his departure
in 2004. "They believe we're bogged down in Iraq. They may believe
we're stymied in the U.N. by the Russians and Chinese. They may believe
oil prices are too high for action. But the administration is deadly
serious. Any military action would likely involve the air force and
navy, not the troops in Iraq. And while everyone recognizes the
problems of any military action, there is a real belief that the
consequences of Iran going nuclear would be worse."
But others believe that Iran is sending a message to Washington that it
could retaliate to a military strike not only by activating its
terrorist networks but also by forcing the United States into a
protracted, bloody and costly war, according to White, the former State
Department intelligence official.
"People have to stop thinking in terms of 'surgical' strikes instead of
a far messier scenario that could evolve into something more akin to
war," White said. "Hostilities could potentially involve elements of
Iran's air force, Iranian attempts to take pot shots at American fleet
units in the Gulf, and much stepped-up =E2=80=94 and perhaps more direct =
=E2=80=94
Iranian trouble-making directed against us and our allies in Iraq. All
of this would, among other things, drive up world oil prices still
farther, perhaps for a considerable period of time."=20
---0---
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| User: "Perseid" |
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| Title: Re: World War III NEWS, Saturday, April 8th, 2006 AD.....Plans Stepped Up as Tehran Tests Weapons |
08 Apr 2006 07:47:04 AM |
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"=?utf-8?B?VGhlIExhc3QgMjQ0NyBEYXlz4oSiIOKZpQ==?=" <stargatedecember2012
@yahoo.ca> Spat the Words
Looking ahead, "the greatest danger is Iran's overconfidence," said
Michael Rubin, a scholar at the conservative American Entreprise
Institute who worked on Iran policy at the Pentagon until his departure
in 2004.
============================================================
"They believe we're bogged down in Iraq. They may believe
we're stymied in the U.N. by the Russians and Chinese. They may believe
oil prices are too high for action.
============================================================
But the administration is deadly
serious.
============================================================
Any military action would likely involve the air force and
navy, not the troops in Iraq.
============================================================
And while everyone recognizes the
problems of any military action, there is a real belief that the
consequences of Iran going nuclear would be worse."
.
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