Bomb Bomb Iran by Summer's End?
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 29 April 2008
When Senator John McCain serenaded reporters last April with his "Bomb
Bomb Iran," I had to wonder. Was this a taste of his aging flyboy humor?
Or was he telling us what to expect should he ever become president? We may
never find out. If Vice President Dick Cheney has his way, he will beat McCain
to the punch, possibly as soon as late May, after President George W. Bush returns
from celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation.
The evidence is surprisingly public, though in several bits and pieces that
fit together like a jigsaw. I hope that I'm wrong in how I've put the puzzle
together, but here's how it looks to me.
On February 25 of this year, Cheney made a surprise visit to the Sultanate
of Oman, a longtime military ally just across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran.
He had come, an Omani official told The Associated Press, "to discuss regional
security issues, including the US standoff with Iran over its nuclear program."
A little over three weeks later, Cheney returned to Oman as part of a ten-day
visit to several countries in the region, including Israel, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia. While in Oman, he gave an interview to Martha Raddatz of ABC News. "Can
you foresee any point where military action would be taken?" Raddatz asked.
Cheney tried to downplay the question, but Raddatz persisted, asking specifically
about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded that Iran had
shut down its nuclear arms program five years ago.
Cheney read the NIE differently. The Iranians definitely had a program to develop
a nuclear warhead, which they apparently stopped in 2003, he insisted. "We
don't know whether or not they've restarted." Cheney emphasized that the
Iranians were continuing with their uranium enrichment, which - he said - would
give them the fissile material to make nuclear weapons. He offered no evidence
that the Iranian program would or could produce the highly enriched uranium
they would need to make a bomb.
"VP: Iran May Have Resumed Weapon Program," the headlines ran. "Cheney:
Iran might be next US target." The Israeli web site DEBKA added that Cheney
was specifically talking about possible US military action in the region to
shut down Iran's nuclear program.
Punctuating Cheney's remarks, the US Navy continues to build up its forces
in the region, which now include two nuclear aircraft carriers and strike groups
capable of attacking Iran or defending against missile attacks from Iran. America's
military brass are also chiming in. The Pentagon is considering "potential
military courses of action" against Iran, warns the nation's top military
officer - Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It
would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability."
Mullen presented his threat, he said, as a response to Iranian support for
Iraqi militias fighting US forces, as well as their support for Hamas, Hezbollah
and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also repeated as fact Dick Cheney's belief
that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons. Mullen raised all this the day after
the CIA reported to Congress that North Korea had supplied Syria with a nuclear
reactor, which an Israeli air strike had destroyed last September. Mullen's
timing added weight to his threat and raised the question of what role Israelis
might play in an airstrike on Iran.
Cheney himself touched on the question when he returned from his ten-day trip.
In an interview with neo-conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt, he mentioned the
widely reported threats that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made
against Israel. "I know the Israelis well enough, and I was just there
a couple of weeks ago, to know there isn't any way they're prepared to ignore
those kinds of statements coming out of Tehran," said Cheney. "They
have to take them seriously, given their history. And I think they perceive
the possibility of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons as a fundamental threat
to the very survival of the state of Israel."
What exactly would the Israelis do? Cheney refused to say. But an Israeli airstrike
against Iran would prove far more difficult than the strike against Syria, and
the Israelis would likely need American help in clearing the airspace over Iraq,
guaranteeing non-interference from Saudi and other Arab air forces, sharing
satellite intelligence, blinding Iranian radar, and possibly refueling the Israeli
planes. The Israelis would, of course, use long-range F-15s and bunker-buster
bombs that the US supplied, while the Iranians have announced that they will
respond to any attack as coming from both Israel and the United States. With
all this in mind, Cheney might well want the Israelis to make the first strike,
and when the Iranians try to retaliate, American forces could intervene "in
self-defense" and "defense of our ally Israel."
To be sure, others have previously predicted American and Israeli airstrikes
against Iran, and those strikes never happened. Hopefully, my parsing of the
tea leaves will fail as well, either because of intervening events or a decision
by Bush not to press ahead. But Cheney has clearly started the war drums beating,
and unless Congress shows far more gumption than it has on Iraq, I would not
plan a late spring or summer trip to Iran or anywhere else in the Middle East
or Persian Gulf.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.
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