Attacking Iran

I’d been hearing for a month now that Sy Hersh had a major piece coming out in the New Yorker on the struggle going on inside the Bush administration regarding how, when and with what excuse to attack Iran. Well, as of Sunday, Hersh’s article is finally out online. (It won’t be in the print magazine until next week.) It’s titled “Shifting Targets: The Administration’s Plans for Iran and I strongly recommend that you read it.

A friend of mine who knows Hersh well talked with him at length about the article when Hersh was in the last stages of writing it. He says that Hersh, of necessity, has pulled some punches on this in terms of the urgency of the situation, but the main part of what Hersh knows—what he has been told by insiders (who are leaking to him like crazy because of their own concerns about what the Bush administration is likely to do)—is there in the piece.

As you read, keep in mind that last week the Senate handed the White House what amounts to its tacit permission to attack Iran. They did it in the form of the Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution. (Hilary voted for it, Obama missed the vote, Edwards condemned it.) The resolution says that the United States should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization…and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Understand, the Islamic Guard is not some rogue group. This is the largest branch of Iran’s military. So what do you think that means?

Okay, now here are a few excerpts from Hersh’s article:

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 Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have 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 Iran’s 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.

Yes, of course Iran is the “geopolitical winner” in the war with Iraq. Oh, my we are shocked. Shocked. What in the world did these ahistoric, culturally arrogant people think was going to happen? Okay, here’s more:

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 Iran’s 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.”)

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the 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.”

Chilling.