Petraeus' rise lets Cheney loose on
Iran By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON -
The nomination of General David Petraeus to be the new
head of the US Central Command ensures that he will
be available to defend the George W
Bush administration's policies on Iran and Iraq at
least to the end of Bush's term and possibly
even beyond.
It also gives Vice President
Dick Cheney greater freedom of action to exploit
the option of an air attack against Iran during
the administration's final months.
Petraeus will take up the CENTCOM post in
late summer or early autumn, according to Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.
The ability of the
administration to threaten Iran with an attack
both publicly and behind
the scenes had been dramatically reduced in 2007
by opposition from the former CENTCOM commander,
Admiral William Fallon, until he stepped down from
the post under pressure from Gates and the White
House last month.
Petraeus has proved himself willing to
cooperate closely with the White House on Iraq and Iran,
arguing against any post-"surge" reduction in
troop strength and blaming Iran for challenges to
the US military presence. Along with the deference
to Petraeus in Congress and the media, his
pliability on those issues made him the obvious
choice to replace Fallon.
But Petraeus had
already effectively taken over many of the powers
of the CENTCOM commander last year.
As
the top commander in Iraq, he was in theory
beneath Fallon in the chain of command. In
reality, Petraeus ignored Fallon's views and took
orders directly from the White House. Petraeus was
in effect playing the role of CENTCOM commander in
regard to the twin issues of Iraq and Iran.
Fallon clashed with Petraeus repeatedly
from the beginning of his command about the
"surge" and US withdrawal from Iraq. Fallon
opposed the "surge" and believed the US should
begin the withdrawal of most of its troops from
Iraq, but he was effectively stymied by the close
Petraeus-White House link from being able to
influence US military policy in Iraq and the
region as a whole.
Fallon had also pushed
very hard, according to a source familiar with his
thinking, for trying to negotiate an agreement
with Iran over innocent passage through the Strait
of Hormuz to ease tensions caused by US-Iranian
differences over the obligations of navy vessels
transiting the strait. But any such negotiations
would have conflicted with the administration's
emphasis on confrontation with Iran, and they
weren't interested.
Petraeus revealed in
his Congressional testimony on April 10 that he
had already assumed some of the functions normally
carried out by the CENTCOM commander in regard to
relations with military leaders in the region.
Petraeus said he had "actually gone to a couple of
neighboring countries in an effort ... to get at
the networks, the countries in which they operate,
and the sources of some of these foreign
fighters".
In fact, the Associated Press
reported, Petraeus had taken trips to five Middle
Eastern countries - Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain,
Turkey and the United Arab Emirates - since
September 2007. That should have been Fallon's
job, but the White House had apparently made it
clear they wanted Petraeus - not Fallon - to
undertake missions.
It had become
increasingly evident to Fallon that he was not
really running things at CENTCOM, according to the
source. Fallon's frustration about Petraeus' de
facto power over Middle East policy was the main
reason he was ready to step down.
But it
was Fallon's refusal to accept that the option of
a military strike against Iran was still
effectively on the table that led to serious
tensions with the White House, as reported in
Esquire magazine in early March. Fallon had
evidently angered Cheney by suggesting publicly on
three occasions between September and late
November that a military strike against Iran had
been ruled out by Washington.
Fallon's
resignation announcement on March 11 was followed
less than a week later by a 10-day Cheney trip to
the Middle East in which the vice president talked
explicitly about the military option against Iran
during visits to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That
suggested that Cheney felt freer to wield the
military threat to Iran with Fallon neutralized.
Cheney aggressively solicited political
support from Turkish leaders for a US strike
against Iranian nuclear facilities during his
visit to Turkey last month, according to a source
familiar with Cheney's meeting in Ankara.
Cheney was "very aggressive" in asking
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
President Abdullah Gul, as well as Turkey's chief
of general staff General Yasar Bukyukanit to get
"on board" with such an attack, according to the
source, who has access to reports from the Cheney
visit.
Cheney indicated that Turkey had
been added to the trip at the last minute,
suggesting that the decision to visit Ankara was
linked to the Fallon resignation.
After
the meeting between Cheney and Saudi Arabia's King
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on the same trip, Saudi
sources let it be known to the media that King
Abdullah had told Cheney that his government
opposed any US military strike against Iran. That
suggested that Cheney had brought up the military
option in Riyadh as well.
One of Cheney's
main objectives on the trip appears to have been
to get the message to Iran that the option of a
strike against its nuclear facilities is still
very much alive.
In an interview with
Cheney while he was in Ankara, ABC News reporter
Martha Raddatz commented, "[W]hen you come over
here, people in the region start thinking you're
over here to plan some sort of military action."
Cheney strongly implied that it was indeed
the major objective of his trip. "Well, I think
the important thing to keep in mind," he said, "is
the objective that we share with many of our
friends in the region, and that is that a
nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for
the entire area."
Petraeus has become the
primary administration spokesman for the argument
holding Iran primarily responsible for the Shi'ite
military resistance to the US occupation of Iraq.
Petraeus and his staff developed the idea in early
2007 that Iran was using so-called "special
groups" of renegade fighters from Shi'ite leader
Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army to wage a proxy war
against US forces.
In his testimony before
Congressional committees this month, Petraeus
declared what he called the "special groups"
allegedly organized and manipulated by Iran "pose
the greatest long-term threat to the viability of
a democratic Iraq".
Gareth
Porter is an historian and national
security policy analyst. The paperback edition of
his latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published in 2006.
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