Cheney's Secret Escalation Plan?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 10, 2007; 1:44 PM

At yesterday's press conference, President Bush announced that he had put Iran on notice: "One of the main reasons that I asked [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq was to send the message that there will be consequences for people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] that kill Americans in Iraq."

Describing Iran as "a very troubling nation right now," largely because of its nuclear program, Bush warned its leaders that "when we catch you playing a non-constructive role [in Iraq] there will be a price to pay."

So what price is Bush prepared to exact? Is this saber-rattling a harbinger of war? And perhaps most to the point: What is Vice President Cheney up to?

Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef write for McClatchy Newspapers today that "the president's top aides have been engaged in an intense internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy. . . .

"Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

"The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about internal government deliberations. . . .

"Lea Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman, said only that 'the vice president is right where the president is' on Iran policy."

As the McClatchy reporters point out: "The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn't clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

"Nor is it clear from the evidence the administration has presented whether Iran, which has long-standing ties to several Iraqi Shiite groups, including the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Badr Organization, which is allied with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is a major cause of the anti-American and sectarian violence in Iraq or merely one of many. At other times, administration officials have blamed the Sunni Muslim group al Qaida in Iraq for much of the violence."

Robin Wright wrote in yesterday's Washington Post about the neoconservative push for military action: "Fourteen months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered to talk to Iran, the failure of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to block Tehran's nuclear and regional ambitions is producing a new drumbeat for bolder action, including the possible use of force," she wrote.

Among the drum-beating neoconservatives she cited: " Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, who writes that diplomacy with Iran is a "mirage," and Norman Podhoretz, who argues the "Case for Bombing Iran" in Commentary.

Provocation Watch
While bombing training camps inside Iraq would not be nearly as provocative as launching an attack within Iran's borders, there are two things to keep in mind: 1) The only camps where the U.S. military thus far has alleged Iranians are training Iraqi insurgents are inside Iran; and 2) Cheney has long been said to be looking for some way to maneuver Bush into having no choice but to launch a full-scale attack against Iran.

Joshua Partlow wrote in The Washington Post last month that Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the new U.S. military spokesman who is fresh from a stint at the White House, asserted that Iran's elite al-Quds Force was training Iraqi militiamen inside Iran -- at three camps near Tehran.

And there is evidence that Cheney is trying to undermine Rice's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East in favor of a more aggressive and militaristic approach. (See my June 4 column.)

Reports about Cheney's plans first surfaced on May 24 when Steve Clemons wrote in his influential blog, The Washington Note: "Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been . . . explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

"This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an 'end run strategy' around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. . . .

"According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the 'right decision' when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.'"

Helene Cooper wrote in the New York Times on June 2 that "people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the reports."

Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball wrote for Newsweek on June 7: "A Newsweek investigation shows that Cheney's national-security team has been actively challenging Rice's Iran strategy in recent months."

Non-neoconservatives are generally in agreement that attacking Iran would be a disastrous move for the United States, potentially emboldening its enemies in Iran and elsewhere and increasing the risk of terror attacks.

But Cheney generally gets his way with this president. And that prospect worries even traditionally unflappable champions of bipartisanship. As I noted yesterday, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, recently wrote on the TPM Cafe Web site: "Here is my nightmare. The Cheneyites succeed in creating a situation in which Bush does decide to bomb Iran. Iran retaliates, as they openly threaten to do, with terrorist attacks against us on U.S. soil. That tilts the election."

How About Demanding Some Proof?
For several months now, the Bush administration has been engaged in what appears to be a coordinated campaign to blame attacks on U.S. forces on Iran.

But as I wrote in my Feb. 12 column: "The administration finally unveiled its case this weekend, first in coordinated and anonymous leaks to a trusting New York Times reporter, then in an extraordinarily secretive military briefing at which no one would speak on the record, journalists weren't allowed to photograph the so-called evidence, and nothing even remotely like proof of direct Iranian government involvement was presented."

Since then, possibly the most dramatic charge against Iran has been that it was involved in planning a particularly deadly operation against U.S. forces in Karbala last January.

As Gareth Porter writes for the American Prospect: "On July 2 and 3, The New York Times and the Associated Press, among other media outlets, came out with sensational stories saying that either Iranians or Iranian agents had played an important role in planning the operation in Karbala, Iraq last January that resulted in the deaths of five American soldiers. Michael R. Gordon and John F. Burns of The New York Times wrote that 'agents of Iran' had been identified by the military spokesman as having 'helped plan a January raid in the Shiite holy city of Karbala in Iraq in which five American soldiers were killed by Islamic militants. . . . ' Lee Keath of the Associated Press wrote an even more lurid lead, asserting that U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner had accused 'Iran's elite Quds force' of having 'helped militants carry out a January attack in Karbala that killed five Americans.'

"The story was a big break for the war-with-Iran faction in Washington. . . .

"No one questioned the authenticity of the story at the time. But the official source -- Brig. Gen. Bergner -- offered no real evidence of Iranian involvement in planning the January attack in his press briefing on July 2. Even more remarkably, Bergner never even explicitly claimed such direct Iranian involvement in the planning. Instead, he used carefully ambiguous language that implied but did not state such an Iranian role.

"It was not Bergner, in fact, but New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon who articulated the narrative of an Iranian-inspired attack on Americans."

Here's the transcript of the briefing.

Porter notes that the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, had denied in April that there was any evidence of Iranian involvement in the Karbala operation. " Porter writes: "The revival of the charge of Iranian involvement in the Karbala attack, despite the earlier Petraeus denial, has the all the hallmarks of a White House decision."

Iran's Friendly Neighbors
Ironically, Bush was saber-rattling just as U.S.-supported Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was making a friendly visit to Tehran. That came up at the press conference.

Olivier Knox reports for AFP: "Bush sternly warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Thursday against cozying up to Iran, amid what Washington sees as unsettling signs of warming Baghdad-Tehran relations. . . .

"'[I]f the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend, the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive,' said Bush, who called Iran 'a very troubling nation.'"

Paul Richter writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The growing intimacy of Baghdad and Tehran was on display late Wednesday, when Maliki met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials. In a joint appearance, Maliki told Ahmadinejad that Iran has a 'positive and constructive' role in improving security in Iraq, the official IRNA news agency reported. . . .

"U.S. officials believe that Maliki's government shares their concern about weapons allegedly supplied by Iran, but they also acknowledge anxiety about the fundamentalist Tehran regime's increasing trade with and aid to Iraq, as well as the close personal ties its officials enjoy with counterparts throughout the Baghdad government."

Earlier this week, Bush's harsh words about Iran were similarly undercut by another important ally in the region: President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who characterized Iran as "a helper" in a CNN interview. At a joint appearance with Karzai the next day, Bush said he strongly disagreed.

David Gardner writes for the Financial Times: "US commanders seem to have no trouble detecting the hand of Tehran everywhere. This largely evidence-free blaming of serial setbacks on Iranian forces is a bad case of denial. First, the insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, built around a new generation of jihadis created by the US invasion. Second, to the extent foreign fighters are involved these have come mostly from US-allied and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shia Iran. Third, the lethal roadside bombs with shaped charges that US officials have coated with a spurious veneer of sophistication to prove Iranian provenance are mostly made by Iraqi army-trained engineers -- from high explosive looted from . . . unsecured arms dumps.

"Shia Iran has backed a lot of horses in Iraq. If it wished to bring what remains of the country down around US ears it could. It has not done so. The plain fact is that Tehran's main clients in Iraq are the same as Washington's: Mr Maliki's Da'wa and the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq led by Abdelaziz al-Hakim. . . .

"So, in sum. Having upturned the Sunni order in Iraq and the Arab world, and hugely enlarged the Shia Islamist power emanating from Iran, the US finds itself dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, yet unable to dismantle the Sunni jihadistan it has created in central and western Iraq. Ignoring its Iraqi allies it is arming Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda. And, by selling them arms rather than settling Palestine it is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance (Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) with Israel against Iran. All clear? How can anyone keep a straight face and call this a strategy?"

End Part I