[NYTr] Hersh: Shifting Targets - Bush Regime's Plan for Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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The New Yorker - Oct 8, 2007 issue
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh

Annals of National Security

Shifting Targets: The Administrations plan for Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and
members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an
increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and
Iran. Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out
attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people, Bush told the national
convention of the American Legion in August. The attacks on our bases
and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The
Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take
actions necessary to protect our troops. He then concluded, to
applause, I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront
Tehrans murderous activities.

The Presidents position, and its corollarythat, if many of Americas
problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to
them is to confront the Iranianshave taken firm hold in the
Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of
Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff
redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to
former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had
been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Irans known and
suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure
sites. Now the emphasis is on surgical strikes on Revolutionary Guard
Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration
claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had
been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been
reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President
and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince
the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has
failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a
result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing
campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to
terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American
intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from
obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in
Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the
geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the
President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was
thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the
British were on board. At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of
the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell
Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former
senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on
Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by
arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If
Democrats objected, the Administration could say, Bill Clinton did the
same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and
in Baghdad to protect American lives. The former intelligence official
added, There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military
action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are
saying, You cant do it, because every Republican is going to be
defeated, and were only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq. But
Cheney doesnt give a rats ass about the Republican worries, and neither
does the President.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, The President has made it
clear that the United States government remains committed to a
diplomatic solution with respect to Iran. The State Department is
working diligently along with the international community to address
our broad range of concerns. (The White House declined to comment.)

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to
issue the execute order that would be required for a military operation
inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a
significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August,
senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to
declare Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist
organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me
that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the
authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency
said, The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative
size of its operational components.)

Theyre moving everybody to the Iran desk, one recently retired C.I.A.
official said. Theyre dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up
everything. Its just like the fall of 2002the months before the
invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most
important in the agency. He added, The guys now running the Iranian
program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an
attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the
Administration has not thought it all the way through.

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former
national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of
the White Houses more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said
that Iran would likely react to an American attack by intensifying the
conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that
could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty
years.

In a speech at the United Nations last week, Irans President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, was defiant. He referred to America as an aggressor state,
and said, How can the incompetents who cannot even manage and control
themselves rule humanity and arrange its affairs? Unfortunately, they
have put themselves in the position of God. (The day before, at
Columbia, he suggested that the facts of the Holocaust still needed to
be determined.)

A lot depends on how stupid the Iranians will be, Brzezinski told me.
Will they cool off Ahmadinejad and tone down their language? The Bush
Administration, by charging that Iran was interfering in Iraq, was
aiming to paint it as Were responding to what is an intolerable
situation, Brzezinski said. This time, unlike the attack in Iraq, were
going to play the victim. The name of our game seems to be to get the
Iranians to overplay their hand.

General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in
Iraq, in his report to Congress in September, buttressed the
Administrations case against Iran. None of us, earlier this year,
appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about
which we and Iraqs leaders all now have greater concern, he said. Iran,
Petraeus said, was fighting a proxy war against the Iraqi state and
coalition forces in Iraq.

Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose
of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam
Husseins rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed
the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi
Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran; last week,
at the Council on Foreign Relations, Maliki said, according to the
Washington Post, that Iraqs relations with the Iranians had improved to
the point that they are not interfering in our internal affairs. Iran
is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any proxy war could be as
much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush
Administrations strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a
Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and
made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene.

Vali Nasr, a professor of international politics at Tufts University,
who is an expert on Iran and Shiism, told me, Between 2003 and 2006, the
Iranians thought they were closest to the United States on the issue of
Iraq. The Iraqi Shia religious leadership encouraged Shiites to avoid
confrontation with American soldiers and to participate in
electionsbelieving that a one-man, one-vote election process could only
result in a Shia-dominated government. Initially, the insurgency was
mainly Sunni, especially Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Nasr told me that
Irans policy since 2003 has been to provide funding, arms, and aid to
several Shiite factionsincluding some in Malikis coalition. The
problem, Nasr said, is that once you put the arms on the ground you
cannot control how theyre used later.

In the Shiite view, the White House only looks at Irans ties to Iraq in
terms of security, Nasr said. Last year, over one million Iranians
travelled to Iraq on pilgrimages, and there is more than a billion
dollars a year in trading between the two countries. But the Americans
act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons.

Many of those who support the Presidents policy argue that Iran poses an
imminent threat. In a recent essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz
depicted President Ahmadinejad as a revolutionary, like Hitler . . .
whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to
replace it . . . with a new order dominated by Iran. . . . [T]he plain
and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a
nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military
force. Podhoretz concluded, I pray with all my heart that President
Bush will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran
from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward
Israel. Podhoretz recently told politico.com that he had met with the
President for about forty-five minutes to urge him to take military
action against Iran, and believed that Bush is going to hit Iran before
leaving office. (Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, is
a strong backer of Rudolph Giulianis Presidential campaign, and his
son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, is a senior adviser to President Bush on
national security.)

In early August, Army Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the
second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Times about an increase
in attacks involving explosively formed penetrators, a type of lethal
bomb that discharges a semi-molten copper slug that can rip through the
armor of Humvees. The Times reported that U.S. intelligence and
technical analyses indicated that Shiite militias had obtained the
bombs from Iran. Odierno said that Iranians had been surging support
over the past three or four months.

Questions remain, however, about the provenance of weapons in Iraq,
especially given the rampant black market in arms. David Kay, a former
C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United
Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the
aftermath of both Iraq wars, by the huge amounts of arms it found
circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the
country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed
penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded
American cluster bombs. Arms had also been supplied years ago by the
Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq who had been
persecuted by the Baath Party.

I thought Petraeus went way beyond what Iran is doing inside Iraq today,
Kay said. When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign, six
months ago, I thought it was all craziness. Now it does look like there
is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in
response to American pressure and American threatsmore a shot across
the bow sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to
get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the
good stuffthe anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American
planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.

Another element of the Administrations case against Iran is the presence
of Iranian agents in Iraq. General Petraeus, testifying before Congress,
said that a commando faction of the Revolutionary Guards was seeking to
turn its allies inside Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its
interests. In August, Army Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of
the 3rd Infantry Division, told reporters in Baghdad that his troops
were tracking some fifty Iranian men sent by the Revolutionary Guards
who were training Shiite insurgents south of Baghdad. We know theyre
here and we target them as well, he said.

Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, told me that there are a lot of Iranians at any time inside
Iraq, including those doing intelligence work and those doing
humanitarian missions. It would be prudent for the Administration to
produce more evidence of direct military trainingor produce fighters
captured in Iraq who had been trained in Iran. He added, It will be
important for the Iraqi government to be able to state that they were
unaware of this activity; otherwise, given the intense relationship
between the Iraqi Shiite leadership and Tehran, the Iranians could say
that they had been asked by the Iraqi government to train these people.
(In late August, American troops raided a Baghdad hotel and arrested a
group of Iranians. They were a delegation from Irans energy ministry,
and had been invited to Iraq by the Maliki government; they were later
released.)

If you want to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have
to be prepared to show the evidence, Clawson said. Adding to the
complexity, he said, is a question that seems almost counterintuitive:
What is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack
could put a strain on the Iraqi government.

A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American
intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making
extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. We know that the
Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities, he said, and
we believe they will react asymmetricallyhitting targets in Europe and
in Latin America. There is also specific intelligence suggesting that
Iran will be aided in these attacks by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is capable,
and they can do it, the diplomat said.

In interviews with current and former officials, there were repeated
complaints about the paucity of reliable information. A former
high-level C.I.A. official said that the intelligence about who is
doing what inside Iran is so thin that nobody even wants his name on
it. This is the problem.

The difficulty of determining who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq
can be seen in Basra, in the Shiite south, where British forces had
earlier presided over a relatively secure area. Over the course of this
year, however, the region became increasingly ungovernable, and by fall
the British had retreated to fixed bases. A European official who has
access to current intelligence told me that there is a firm belief
inside the American and U.K. intelligence community that Iran is
supporting many of the groups in southern Iraq that are responsible for
the deaths of British and American soldiers. Weapons and money are
getting in from Iran. They have been able to penetrate many
groupsprimarily the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.

A June, 2007, report by the International Crisis Group found, however,
that Basras renewed instability was mainly the result of the systematic
abuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal
vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores,
together with the rise of criminal mafias. The report added that leading
Iraqi politicians and officials routinely invoke the threat of outside
interferencefrom bordering Iranto justify their behavior or evade
responsibility for their failures.

Earlier this year, before the surge in U.S. troops, the American command
in Baghdad changed what had been a confrontational policy in western
Iraq, the Sunni heartland (and the base of the Baathist regime), and
began working with the Sunni tribes, including some tied to the
insurgency. Tribal leaders are now getting combat support as well as
money, intelligence, and arms, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia. Empowering Sunni forces may undermine efforts toward
national reconciliation, however. Already, tens of thousands of Shiites
have fled Anbar Province, many to Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad,
while Sunnis have been forced from their homes in Shiite communities.
Vali Nasr, of Tufts, called the internal displacement of communities in
Iraq a form of ethnic cleansing.

The American policy of supporting the Sunnis in western Iraq is making
the Shia leadership very nervous, Nasr said. The White House makes it
seem as if the Shia were afraid only of Al Qaedabut they are afraid of
the Sunni tribesmen we are arming. The Shia attitude is So what if youre
getting rid of Al Qaeda? The problem of Sunni resistance is still there.
The Americans believe they can distinguish between good and bad
insurgents, but the Shia dont share that distinction. For the Shia, they
are all one adversary.

Nasr went on, The United States is trying to fight on all sidesSunni and
Shiaand be friends with all sides. In the Shiite view, Its clear that
the United States cannot bring security to Iraq, because it is not doing
everything necessary to bring stability. If they did, they would talk to
anybody to achieve iteven Iran and Syria, Nasr said. (Such engagement
was a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group.) America cannot
bring stability in Iraq by fighting Iran in Iraq.

The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus
on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in
the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise
missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes,
including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard
training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.

Cheneys option is now for a fast in and outfor surgical strikes, the
former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs
have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role
in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. The Navys planes, ships, and
cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. Theyve got
everything they needeven AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have
been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the
Gulf. There are also plans to hit Irans anti-aircraft surface-to-air
missile sites. Weve got to get a path in and a path out, the former
official said.

A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing
campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he
called short, sharp incursions by American Special Forces units into
suspected Iranian training sites. He said, Cheney is devoted to this,
no question.

A limited bombing attack of this sort only makes sense if the
intelligence is good, the consultant said. If the targets are not
clearly defined, the bombing will start as limited, but then there will
be an escalation special. Planners will say that we have to deal with
Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the cue ball one
time and have all the balls go in the pocket. But add-ons are always
there in strike planning.

The surgical-strike plan has been shared with some of Americas allies,
who have had mixed reactions to it. Israels military and political
leaders were alarmed, believing, the consultant said, that it didnt
sufficiently target Irans nuclear facilities. The White House has been
reassuring the Israeli government, the former senior official told me,
that the more limited target list would still serve the goal of
counter-proliferation by decapitating the leadership of the
Revolutionary Guards, who are believed to have direct control over the
nuclear-research program. Our theory is that if we do the attacks as
planned it will accomplish two things, the former senior official said.

An Israeli official said, Our main focus has been the Iranian nuclear
facilities, not because other things arent important. Weve worked on
missile technology and terrorism, but we see the Iranian nuclear issue
as one that cuts across everything. Iran, he added, does not need to
develop an actual warhead to be a threat. Our problems begin when they
learn and master the nuclear fuel cycle and when they have the nuclear
materials, he said. There was, for example, the possibility of a dirty
bomb, or of Irans passing materials to terrorist groups. There is still
time for diplomacy to have an impact, but not a lot, the Israeli
official said. We believe the technological timetable is moving faster
than the diplomatic timetable. And if diplomacy doesnt work, as they
say, all options are on the table.

The bombing plan has had its most positive reception from the newly
elected government of Britains Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. A senior
European official told me, The British perception is that the Iranians
are not making the progress they want to see in their nuclear-enrichment
processing. All the intelligence community agree that Iran is providing
critical assistance, training, and technology to a surprising number of
terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, through Hezbollah, in
Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine, too.

There were four possible responses to this Iranian activity, the
European official said: to do nothing (There would be no retaliation to
the Iranians for their attacks; this would be sending the wrong
signal); to publicize the Iranian actions (There is one great
difficulty with this optionthe widespread lack of faith in American
intelligence assessments); to attack the Iranians operating inside Iraq
(Weve been taking action since last December, and it does have an
effect); or, finally, to attack inside Iran.

The European official continued, A major air strike against Iran could
well lead to a rallying around the flag there, but a very careful
targeting of terrorist training camps might not. His view, he said, was
that once the Iranians get a bloody nose they rethink things. For
example, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Larijani, two of Irans most
influential political figures, might go to the Supreme Leader and say,
The hard-line policies have got us into this mess. We must change our
approach for the sake of the regime. 

A retired American four-star general with close ties to the British
military told me that there was another reason for Britains
interestshame over the failure of the Royal Navy to protect the sailors
and Royal Marines who were seized by Iran on March 23rd, in the Persian
Gulf. The professional guys are saying that British honor is at stake,
and if theres another event like that in the water off Iran the British
will hit back, he said.

The revised bombing plan could workif its in response to an Iranian
attack, the retired four-star general said. The British may want to do
it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, Lets do it if
the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq. Its got to be ten
dead American soldiers and four burned trucks. There is, he added, a
widespread belief in London that Tony Blairs government was sold a bill
of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So
if somebody comes into Gordon Browns office and says, We have this
intelligence from America, Brown will ask, Where did it come from? Have
we verified it? The burden of proof is high.

The French government shares the Administrations sense of urgency about
Irans nuclear program, and believes that Iran will be able to produce a
warhead within two years. Frances newly elected President, Nicolas
Sarkozy, created a stir in late August when he warned that Iran could be
attacked if it did not halt is nuclear program. Nonetheless, France has
indicated to the White House that it has doubts about a limited strike,
the former senior intelligence official told me. Many in the French
government have concluded that the Bush Administration has exaggerated
the extent of Iranian meddling inside Iraq; they believe, according to a
European diplomat, that the American problems in Iraq are due to their
own mistakes, and now the Americans are trying to show some teeth. An
American bombing will show only that the Bush Administration has its own
agenda toward Iran.

A European intelligence official made a similar point. If you attack
Iran, he told me, and do not label it as being against Irans nuclear
facilities, it will strengthen the regime, and help to make the Islamic
air in the Middle East thicker.

Ahmadinejad, in his speech at the United Nations, said that Iran
considered the dispute over its nuclear program closed. Iran would deal
with it only through the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said,
and had decided to disregard unlawful and political impositions of the
arrogant powers. He added, in a press conference after the speech, the
decisions of the United States and France are not important.

The director general of the I.A.E.A., Mohamed ElBaradei, has for years
been in an often bitter public dispute with the Bush Administration; the
agencys most recent report found that Iran was far less proficient in
enriching uranium than expected. A diplomat in Vienna, where the
I.A.E.A. is based, said, The Iranians are years away from making a
bomb, as ElBaradei has said all along. Running three thousand
centrifuges does not make a bomb. The diplomat added, referring to
hawks in the Bush Administration, They dont like ElBaradei, because
they are in a state of denial. And now their negotiating policy has
failed, and Iran is still enriching uranium and still making progress.

The diplomat expressed the bitterness that has marked the I.A.E.A.s
dealings with the Bush Administration since the buildup to the 2003
invasion of Iraq. The White Houses claims were all a pack of lies, and
Mohamed is dismissive of those lies, the diplomat said.

Hans Blix, a former head of the I.A.E.A., questioned the Bush
Administrations commitment to diplomacy. There are important cards that
Washington could play; instead, they have three aircraft carriers
sitting in the Persian Gulf, he said. Speaking of Irans role in Iraq,
Blix added, My impression is that the United States has been trying to
push up the accusations against Iran as a basis for a possible attackas
an excuse for jumping on them.

The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference
after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack.
They want to hurt us, he said, but, with the will of God, they wont be
able to do it. According to a former State Department adviser on Iran,
the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with
Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take
advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former
adviser said, Theyve been trying to convey to the United States that We
can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.  Instead, the
Iranians are preparing for an American attack.

The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the
Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can
stand up to an American attack. The Guards are claiming that they can
infiltrate American security, the adviser said. They are bragging that
they have spray-painted an American warshipto signal the Americans that
they can get close to them. (I was told by the former senior
intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this
spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bulls-eye
while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.)

Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, Uncle Sam is
here! Wed better stand down?  the former senior intelligence official
said. The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.

Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over
intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared
to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130
Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British
commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one
containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But
there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130
had come from Iranespecially since SA-7s are available through
black-market arms dealers.

Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely
with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: The Brits told me
that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incidentin fear that
Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran. The intelligence
subsequently was forwarded, he said.

The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence was
worried about passing the information along. The Brits dont trust the
Iranians, the retired general said, but they also dont trust Bush and
Cheney.