Call
for 'more credible' US military
threat By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The administration of
President Barack Obama should take steps to make
threats of a possible United States or Israeli
attack against Iran more credible, according to
the fourth in a series of studies released here on
Wednesday by a 13-man "bipartisan" task force
dominated by Iran hawks.
Among other
steps, Washington should increase its naval
deployments to Gulf, scale up the frequency and
size of its military exercises there, and augment
the offensive strike capabilities of its Gulf Arab
allies, in order to persuade Iran to halt its
nuclear program, according to the 76-page report
released under the auspices of the Bipartisan
Policy Center (BPC).
Washington should
also supply Israel with several aerial refueling
tankers and 200 GBU-31 "bunker buster" bombs to
add to its
existing stockpile of
about 100 bunker-buster GBU-28 munitions.
"[W]hile we do not advocate an Israeli
military strike, we believe a more credible
Israeli threat can only increase the pressure on
Iran to negotiate," said Air Force General
(retired) Charles Wald, a co-chair of the task
force, in a statement released with the report.
If such measures, combined with
ever-tougher economic sanctions, fail to achieve
their goal, Washington should launch an "effective
surgical strike against Iran's nuclear program"
involving aerial attacks and the deployment of US
Special Forces units over a period of weeks,
according to the task force.
The latest
report, entitled "Meeting the Challenge: Stopping
the Clock", comes amid considerable uncertainty -
if not outright confusion - about the intentions
both of Israel and the administration, as well as
the Iranian regime itself.
The rhetorical
reaction in Tehran to harsh new financial and
oil-related sanctions that are being implemented
by Washington and the European Union (EU) has been
defiant.
However, senior officials from
the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) returned from a three-day visit to
Iran this week suggesting that their hosts had
been more forthcoming in clarifying questions
about possible military applications of its
nuclear program than in the past. A follow-up
visit is scheduled to take place in three weeks.
At the same time, senior administration
officials here have sent a series of mixed signals
over the past month, ranging from repeated
statements that Washington hopes to resume "Iran
Six" (the five permanent members of the Security
Council plus Germany) negotiations with Iran over
its nuclear program and suggestions that a
military strike would prove counter-productive, to
the explicit assertion of "red lines" that Iran
could not cross without incurring a military
response.
On Sunday, for example, Pentagon
chief Leon Panetta vowed to take "whatever steps
are necessary" to prevent Iran from acquiring a
nuclear weapon, while on Tuesday, the director of
national intelligence, General James Clapper,
testified that Tehran may be preparing to conduct
terrorist attacks in the US in the event of a war.
Meanwhile, congress, where the "Israel
Lobby" exerts its greatest influence, appears
poised to enact a new round of economic sanctions
even before the most Draconian yet - barring
foreign institutions doing business with Iran's
central bank from the US financial system - have
taken full effect.
As for Israel, the
government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
has appeared to go along with the administration's
efforts to tamp down tensions that reached a high
point after last month's assassination, presumably
by Israel's Mossad, of a Iranian nuclear scientist
in Tehran.
At one point, Netanyahu himself
suggested that the sanctions strategy may be
having the desired effect, while Defense Minister
Ehud Barak claimed that any possible Israeli
attack on Iran was "far off".
But that
notion was countered by the publication in the
Sunday New York Times Magazine of an essay by a
well-connected Israeli journalist who, on the
basis of numerous interviews with Barak and other
senior security officials, predicted that Israel
would almost certainly strike Iran this year if
its nuclear program was not halted.
Amid
these confusing messages, the BPC task force
report clearly sides with the hawks, at one point
even scolding top US and Israeli officials,
including Panetta and Barak, for expressing any
reservations about taking military action.
"By injecting such uncertainty, Iranian
leaders may no longer be clear that their actions
will have consequences which are beyond their
ability to bear," the report complained.
In addition to Wald, the task force was
co-chaired by a conservative former Virginia
Democratic senator, Charles Robb. The group also
included other retired flag officers, several
former congressmen from both parties, as well as
three prominent neo-conservatives who served in
the George W Bush administration: former under
secretary of defense for policy, ambassador Eric
Edelman; vice president Dick Cheney's top Middle
East aide, John Hannah; and former assistant
secretary of state for arms control and
non-proliferation Stephen Rademaker.
As in
previous task force reports on Iran, the staff
director was Michael Makovsky, who worked as a
consultant to the controversial Pentagon office
set up in 2002 to find evidence of operational
ties between al-Qaeda and Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein as a justification for the invasion the
following year.
"Preventing Iran from
achieving nuclear weapons capability is the most
urgent national security challenge facing the
United States," the report asserts at the outset.
It goes on to argue a nuclear Iran will not be
"deterrable" or "containable" in the same way that
other nuclear powers, including North Korea, have
been.
It claims that Iran could produce
enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear
weapon - the threshold which, according to the
report, would give it a nuclear-weapons capability
- within two to six months "should it choose to do
so".
While the report suggests a
negotiated settlement with Iran was the primary
goal of enhancing the credibility of US and
Israeli military threats against Iran, Makovsky
told Inter Press Service (IPS) that the task force
was opposed to any solution that permitted Tehran
to continue its enrichment of uranium.
Most Iran experts here believe that Iran
is unlikely to agree to stop enrichment
altogether. Tehran has hinted from time to time
that it could agree to limiting enrichment to 3.5%
and an enhanced IAEA inspection regime.
"Our report says clearly that Iran needs
to shut down its nuclear program," he said.
The report notes that an Israeli attack on
Iran "would pose serious risks". But Washington
"could not remain neutral in an Israeli-Iran
conflict.
"If Israel attacked and Iran
retaliated strongly, the United States would have
to respond, meaning that we could be dragged into
a conflict at a time not of our choosing. We are
not encouraging Israel to attack, but the United
States must make clear that our country will never
abandon Israel," it said.
In addition to
hitting suspected nuclear sites, according to the
report, an initial US military attack should
target Iranian communications systems and
air-defense and missile sites, facilities of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the
Iranian and IRGC navies, sites related to Iran's
missile and biological or chemical weapons
programs, munitions storage facilities, and
airfields, aircraft and helicopters on the ground
or in the air.
If, as a result of
retaliation by Tehran or its allies in the region,
it was deemed necessary to escalate the conflict,
Washington should expand its target list to
include Iranian tanks and artillery units, power
generation plants and electrical grids,
transportation infrastructure, and manufacturing
plants and refineries.
While "US plans
would not include targeting of civilians",
according to the task force, Washington should
also prepare to provide humanitarian relief in
Iran "to counter any crisis that could result from
kinetic action".
"The United States would
lose international support for military action
against Iran - or for future action against other
states - if it neglected to address the
humanitarian consequences of a military strike,"
according to the report.
The report
acknowledges that the US public, in the wake of
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, is war weary,
particularly in light of the country's economic
difficulties. "The Iranian regime does not pose
the same threat as the Third Reich," it noted,
"but neither does defeating it require such a
Herculean effort."
Jim Lobe's
blog on US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
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