WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's
seemingly aggressive policy of taking direct
action against alleged Iranian "networks" involved
in attacks on US troops in Iraq, combined with the
deployment of a second aircraft-carrier group off
Iran's coast, has triggered speculation that it is
related to a plan for an attack.
But the
revelation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
that the campaign against Iranian officials had
already been in effect for several months before
Bush's speech last Wednesday indicates that the
new rhetoric is aimed at serving the desperate
need
of the White House to shift the blame for its
failure in Iraq to Iran, and to appear to be
taking tough action.
Rice told the New
York Times in an interview on Friday that Bush had
ordered the US military to target Iranian
officials in Iraq allegedly linked to attacks on
US forces some time last autumn. Bush and Rice had
previously created the impression that the US
administration had launched a new initiative
against Iran in connection with its proposed
increase in troop strength in Iraq.
The
Bush speech coincided with an attack by an
unidentified US military unit on the building used
by Iranian consular officials in Irbil and the
seizure of six Iranian officials in the compound.
But all indications are that the US military has
no real intelligence on any Iranian direct
involvement in supplying lethal weapons to
insurgents.
The statement issued by the US
military but clearly written in the White House
said the detainees, who were not identified as
Iranians, were "suspected of being closely tied to
activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces".
That statement shows that the seizure was not
based on any prior evidence of the officials'
complicity in insurgent attacks. US troops also
seized documents and computers, indicating that
the attack was really nothing more than an
intelligence operation, launched in the hope of
finding some evidence that could be used against
Iran.
The only other such US military raid
came late last month and targeted four Iranian
officials visiting Baghdad at the invitation of
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. That operation
bore similar evidence of being a fishing
expedition against Iranians, based on nothing more
than the "suspicion" that they were connected with
the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps.
Contrary to the impression conveyed
by the Bush administration, therefore, it is not
targeting those it knows to be involved in
supplying insurgents with weapons but is still
trying to find some evidence to justify its tough
rhetoric against Iran.
The initial
rhetoric from Bush suggesting a possible intention
to expand the Iraq war into Iran or Syria in
response to alleged Iranian and Syrian support for
anti-coalition insurgents had been followed by
clarifications and new details that point to a
very carefully calibrated propaganda offensive
aimed at rallying his own political base.
Bush's identification in his January 10
speech of Iran and Syria as "allowing terrorists
and insurgents to use their territory to move in
and out of Iraq" and the more specific reference
to Iran as "providing material support for attacks
on American troops" seemed to hint at such a plan
to expand the war into Iran.
Rice seemed
to be dropping even more pointed hints of such a
plan in television interviews on Thursday. On the
National Broadcasting Co's Today show, Rice
vowed, on behalf of Bush, "We are going to make
certain that we disrupt activities that are
endangering and killing our troops and that are
destabilizing Iraq." And when asked if that meant
that "attacks inside Iran and Syria" were "on the
table", she responded that Bush "is not going to
take options off the table".
Rice went on
to declare, "The Iranians need to know, and the
Syrians need to know, that the United States is
not finding it acceptable and is not going to
simply tolerate their activities to try and harm
our forces or to destabilize Iraq."
Asked
in an interview with Fox and Friends
whether Bush's speech could mean "going over the
border to chase down those who are providing the
technology and possibly the training", Rice coyly
replied, "Well, I don't want to speculate on what
kinds of operations the United States may be
engaged in," as if to leave that possibility open.
Then she added, "But I think you will see that the
United States is not going to simply stand idly by
and let these activities continue."
In
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee last week, Rice refused to answer a
question from chairman Joe Biden on whether the
president has the authority to conduct military
missions in Iran without congressional approval.
That provoked expressions of alarm from both
Democratic and Republic senators. Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel said this ambiguity reminded
him of the Richard Nixon administration's policy
toward Cambodia in 1970 during the Vietnam War.
Some analysts viewed Rice's rhetoric as
evidence of a Bush administration plan to justify
an air offensive against Iran on the basis of
alleged Iranian complicity in attacks on US forces
in Iraq, rather than on the more abstract threat
of Iranian progress toward a possible
nuclear-weapons capability.
But the
careful wording used and the explicit caveats
issued by administration officials belied the
impression of menace against Iran that Bush and
Rice had clearly sought to convey. Bush's
reference to the issue in his Wednesday-night
speech avoided any actual threat to Iran. Instead,
he said, "We will seek out and destroy the
networks providing advanced weaponry and training
to our enemies in Iraq." That formulation was
carefully chosen to limit the scope of US actions.
The next day, even though Rice was
provoking congressional fears of a wider war, the
whole Bush team was qualifying that rhetoric in
remarks to reporters by specifying that US actions
to stop the alleged Iranian interference in Iraq
will be confined to Iraq itself.
General
Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
who is considered a full member of the Bush
administration team, limited the threatened
aggressive US actions to "those who are physically
present trying to do harm to our troops".
He concluded, "We can take care of the
security of our troops by doing the business we
need to do inside of Iraq."
And National
Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe, after
repeating the new line that the administration
would "not tolerate outside interference in Iraq",
went on to say that the actions would be taken
only inside Iraq, not across the border. Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates also said on Friday that
the US had no intention of going into Iranian
territory.
The contrast between the
general impression of steely resolve toward Iran
conveyed by Bush and the unusual clarity about the
limited geographical scope of the response points
to a sophisticated two-level communications
strategy prepared by the White House.
For
those who get their news from television, the
message conveyed by Rice was one of effective
action against the Iranians supposedly causing
harm to US troops; for Congress and the media, the
message conveyed to reporters was much more
cautious.
The two-level communications
strategy suggests, in turn, that the White House
was acutely aware that a single message of menace
toward Iran could have triggered a negative
congressional response that would have defeated
the purpose of the tough rhetorical line.
Ironically, therefore, the net effect of
the new tough line toward Iran may actually have
been to force the Bush administration to admit, if
only tacitly, that it is not free under present
circumstances even to threaten to go to war
against Iran.
Gareth Porter is a
historian and national-security policy analyst.
His latest book is Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
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