Decision ‘08

U.S. Planning Iran Air Strikes?

That’s the speculation from Germany’s Spiegel Online, based largely on reports from unnamed sources and close parsing of travel itineraries:

…”western security sources” claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss’ Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.

DDP also reported that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan have been informed in recent weeks of Washington’s military plans. The countries, apparently, were told that air strikes were a “possible option,” but they were given no specific timeframe for the operations.

…According to [German news agency] DDP, during his trip to Turkey, CIA chief Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Sources in German security circles told the DDP reporter that Goss had ensured Ankara that the Turkish government would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened. The Turkish government has also been given the “green light” to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question.

The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a “myth” and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”) have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there’s little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans.

The German wire service also quotes a high-ranking German military official saying: “I would be very surprised if the Americans, in the mid-term, didn’t take advantage of the opportunity delivered by Tehran. The Americans have to attack Iran before the country can develop nuclear weapons. After that would be too late.”

This strikes me as largely true in the particulars but probably false in the conclusion; I don’t think these things add up to a U.S. strike - at least not in the near term.

Instead, my best guess is the U.S. is trying to build up a credible threat of a strike to bring Iran to the table and the Europeans into more of a pressure role. However, the unnamed German military official has a point, and it’s one I’ve made often myself; the time to take on a potential nuclear power is before said power actually gets the bomb. It’s one of the overwhelmingly irrefutably good things about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and if we need a good counter-example, we need look no further than North Korea…

4 Responses to “U.S. Planning Iran Air Strikes?”

1 Joe Says:
December 31st, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Well, then let’s just take Switzerland out before they get any crazy ideas, too.

Seriously though, an attack on Iran would end our Iraqi occupation overnight. We would no longer be fighting the minority Sunnis, but a Sunni/Shia coalition.

That’s another result of the Iraqi war: we can no longer apply much credible pressure on Iran, and the Iranians know it.
2 Clint Says:
December 31st, 2005 at 10:09 pm
I’d like to hope that we will do this (though I’d prefer it to become unnecessary, of course). If we really do sit on our hands until Iran actually tests an atomic bomb (something it’s worth noting that NoKo has never done) I’ll join the calls for impeachment hearings.

Joe-

The Iran-Iraq war is a decade more recent than the war with Vietnam, and was literally a hundred times bloodier. (Compare roughly 60,000 U.S. casualties from a population of 250 million for Vietnam, roughly 700,000 Iraqi casualties (plus another 100,000 Kurdish casualties) from a population of 25 million for Iran-Iraq) It’s hard to imagine that any substantial number of Iraqis think a nuclear-armed Iran would be a good thing.

The notion that half of Iraq yearns to become a puppet of Iran, simply because of similarities in their religious beliefs, has always been one of the stranger ideas put forth in opposition to the most recent Gulf War. Iraqi shiites are ethnically Arab, while Iranian shiites are ethnically Persian. Iraqi shiites speak Arabic, while Iranian shiites speak Farsi. The main shiite religious leader in Iraq, Ali al-Sistani preaches a substantially different version of Islam than that of the ruling mullahs in Iran — most especially in his loud, repeated and unequivocal rejection of clerical rule and the imposition of Shariah law. When he had health problems last year, he publicly snubbed Iran’s offers of medical treatment and instead flew to London for treatment.

Yes, if we start carpet bombing Tehran, there will be strong negative reactions throughout the Middle East — not to mention Europe and America. But if we strike military targets and nuclear sites, after giving the mullahs an ultimatum, it’s a totally different story. I’d agree that we won’t invade, unless we can do so in support of some kind of semi-credible popular revolt, but I don’t think we can rule out any and all military strikes — and certainly not because of fear that the Iraqi shiites would rise up violently against us in support of a nuclear Iran.
3 Joe Says:
January 1st, 2006 at 6:56 am
Clint: Yes, if we start carpet bombing Tehran, there will be strong negative reactions throughout the Middle East — not to mention Europe and America. But if we strike military targets and nuclear sites, after giving the mullahs an ultimatum, it’s a totally different story.

Sorry, you’re kidding yourself. Any US military attack on Iran would result in a massive uprising in Iraq. That would be our 3rd Muslim country in 3 years! Think about it.
4 Scott Says:
August 18th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Makes me wonder how we pulled Europe out of their “hell hole” in WWII, rebuilt Germany and simultaneously kept Japan under Marshall Law….