[NYTr] Brown "Backs" Bush Regime's Plan to Bomb Iran (Indepdent on Hersh)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Oct 1, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3018375.ece

US plan for air strikes on Iran 'backed by Brown'

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

A plan by the Bush administration to launch surgical strikes on Iran's
Revolutionary Guard Corps has won the support of Gordon Brown,
according to a US report, although a presidential "execute order"
required for such an operation has yet to be issued.

The report in The New Yorker magazine by the journalist Seymour Hersh
states that the White House has concluded that many of its problems in
Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran. But rather than conduct an
unpopular all-out assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, the US is
planning limited air strikes, arguing that they are needed to defend
soldiers in Iraq.

The article stated that, "The bombing plan has had its most positive
reception from ... Gordon Brown", but this was denied yesterday by some
with close ties to the US military.

"It is quite the opposite," said Phillip Giraldi a former CIA
counterterrorism officer. "In fact Robert Gates [the US Defence
Secretary] was rebuffed during his recent visit to London when the idea
was floated.

"Because British mine-sweepers based in the Gulf of Hormuz will be
essential to any US action against Iran, US war planners need to have
Britain on board," he said. "So far that is not forthcoming."

The US has changed its emphasis to counter-terrorism, supported by
Pentagon planners wary of earlier plans for an all-out attack on Iran,
Hersh writes. 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".

Hersh quotes an unnamed senior European as saying that there were four
possible responses to Iran-ian activity in Iraq: to do nothing (this
would be sending "the wrong signal"); to publicise Iranian actions
("There is one great difficulty with this option – the widespread lack
of faith in American intelligence assessments"); to attack the Iranians
inside Iraq ("We've been taking action since last December, and it does
have an effect."); or, finally, to attack inside Iran.

"The British perception is that the Iranians are not making the
progress they want to see in their nuclear-enrichment processing," said
the European official.

"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."

Earlier this summer, according to Mr Giraldi, the Pentagon, acting
under instructions from Vice-President Dick Cheney, tasked Strategic
Command to draw up a response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on
the US. "The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing
both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons," said Mr Giraldi.

That may now have changed, in part because of opposition within the
military. "A number of senior air force officers involved were appalled
at the implications of what they were doing ... that Iran was being set
up for an unprovoked nuclear attack," said Mr Giraldi. None were
prepared to object and damage their career, he added.

Hersh maintains that the Bush administration's emphasis on "surgical"
strikes reflects a failure to persuade the US public that Iran poses an
imminent nuclear threat.

The White House has come to terms, in private, with the general
consensus of the US intelligence community that Iran is at least five
years away from obtaining a bomb. There is also a growing recognition
in Washington that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the
war in Iraq.