Commander's veto sank Gulf
buildup By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Admiral William Fallon, then
US President George W Bush's nominee to head
Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong
opposition in February to an administration plan
to increase the number of aircraft-carrier strike
groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and
vowed privately that 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.
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 US Pacific Command, had been
associated with naval aviation throughout his
career, and in January Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates publicly encouraged the idea that the
appointment presaged greater emphasis on the
military option in regard to the US 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 (Columbia Broadcasting System)
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, 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
said they heard about such a plan being pushed at
high levels of the administration, and Newsweek's
Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari reported on
February 19 that the deployment of a third carrier
group to the Gulf was "likely".
That would
have brought the US naval presence up to the same
level as during the US 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 program.
At a
mid-February meeting of top civilian officials
over which 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 on March 16, responded to the proposed plan
by sending a strongly worded message to the
Defense Department in mid-February opposing any
further US 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," said 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 said, Fallon replied, "You know what
choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said
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,
General John Abizaid, according to a December 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.
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 April 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 appears to have weakened the position
of Vice President Dick 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 January 12, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice had dismissed direct talks with
Iran in the absence of Tehran's suspension of its
uranium-enrichment program as "extortion". But by
the end of February, Rice had received
authorization 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 it 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 US officials last weekend that
bilateral talks will begin with Iran on Iraq.
Despite 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 a
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.
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