The term “pre-emptive strike” is once again being bandied about in the US as momentum around the Iran debate builds off the back of controversial Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US.

During his visit, the Iranian president (apart from telling Columbia University students that Iran didn’t have any “homos-xual residents“) vowed to disregard the resolutions of the UN Security Council on Iran’s nuclear program. His inflammatory comments were followed by a Senate vote urging Washington to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, Democrat front runner Hillary Clinton nodded in firm agreement and in the UK, former UN ambassador John Bolton floated the idea of bombing the disobedient nation. 

Iranian MPs hit back at the US by voting to classify the US armed forces and the CIA as terrorist groups. And in the eye of the commentary storm, The New Yorker’s Seymour M Hersh filed a report revealing that the Bush administration were redrawing long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran:

“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 group 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.”

Hersh later told CNN:

“There have been expressions of interest from Australia, and other countries. The Israelis, of course, have gone bananas. They’re very upset about the idea of not going … They want us to go. And they want us to hit hard.”

To follow is an extract from the Hersh’s report and some of the latest commentary on the spectre that is Iran:

Shifting targets: 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. – Seymour M Hersh, The New Yorker

Tyranny in Tehran: As the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, Iran has a source of wealth that ostensibly provides the government with a degree of protection against outside economic pressures. Yet years of US sanctions have starved its oil industry of investment and left its infrastructure dilapidated. One consequence is a lack of capacity to refine crude into petrol. That has forced the state to import up to 50 per cent of its domestic petrol supply, which was then sold to consumers at heavily subsidised prices. Worried about the long-term budgetary consequences and its potential for leaving the Iranian economy vulnerable to a US blockade, the government in June imposed rationing. From being used to considering cheap and unlimited petrol as a birthright, motorists suddenly found themselves restricted to 600 litres over the following six months. The response was an outbreak of nationwide unrest in which dozens of filling stations and some state supermarkets and banks were destroyed and looted. It seemed to indicate that Iran’s social peace was more fragile and conditional than its leaders believed. ‘They are playing very badly with the economy,’ says Ebrahim Yazdi. ‘Governments can play with politics, which is the domain of the intellectuals, but the economy is the everyday life of all citizens. Play around with it and you will have the kickback.’ – The Observer

Mind your ‘n’s and ‘q’s: It would be tragic to confuse Iran with Iraq. The Bush administration should keep the distinction firmly in mind to keep frictions between our two nations from getting out of control. In the end, what President George W. Bush and his successor must determine is whether, in an effort to normalize relations that have remained in a state of frozen hostility since the 1979 Iranian revolution, it is wiser for the United States to continue confronting Iran or to engage it diplomatically. Engagement, ultimately, is a far more preferable way to begin defusing tensions. Such tensions were highlighted last week by the controversial appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University and his abrupt vow to disregard the resolutions of the UN Security Council on Iran’s nuclear program. They were furthered by a Senate vote urging Washington to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. There are other, more disturbing portents of conflict. U.S. commanders in Iraq have accused Iranian officials of furnishing advanced weapons to Shia militias, endangering U.S. troops. The new French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has warned that the world should prepare for war over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel insists Iran is only a year away from developing a nuclear weapon and says it’s prepared to strike Tehran first. In turn, Iran says it has drawn up plans to bomb Israel if it launches an attack on Iranian soil. Strategic planners are particularly concerned that if Israel were to take unilateral action against Iran, it could suck the United States into war. – Newsday editorial

A Headline You’re Not Reading: Iran Ready to Work with US on Iraq: Even supposedly left-leaning papers The New York Times and the Washington Post had no mention of the remarks made by Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, who said, “If they [the Americans] have a clear definition of a timetable we’ll help them materialize it. If the US is persisting with its mistakes, it shouldn’t ask for help from us.” So much for the “liberal bias” in American’s newspapers. Sure, Larijani is playing politics and made some aggressive threats against Israel and other U.S. foreign “adventures” in his interview with the Financial Times, but the message in his remarks offers some complexity to what is, of course, an enormously complex situation and an enormously complex country.
It’s shocking to believe that the American media could make the same mistake twice, falling in lockstep with the Bush administration’s propaganda about the war and demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who, it’s not hard to see, is essentially a political weak boaster and blunderer on the order of our own U.S. president, no better or worse than a half-dozen other demagogues in power. But that’s exactly what is happening. — Anthony Kaufman, The Huffington Post

Should we come to terms with a nuclear Iran? The broad resonance of the Iranian president’s message at the UN should serve as a powerful reminder that Israel is faced with a dangerous enemy who opposes the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, is seeking to acquire nuclear capabilities and is actively helping Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist organizations. This is a foe who rejects all efforts at compromise between Israel and moderate Palestinians and Arab states, and who tries to tip in his favor the regional balance of power by exploiting the American entanglement in Iraq. Against Ahmadinejad’s statements comes the clear voice of France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose election is emerging as a significant event in international affairs in general and in Middle East policy in particular. In his first appearance before the UN General Assembly, Sarkozy declared that allowing Iran to attain nuclear weapons would be an “unacceptable risk to stability in the region and the world.” U.S. President George W. Bush chose to avoid confronting Ahmadinejad, but criticized the UN’s hypocritical attitude toward Israel. – Haaretz editorial

 

Is the ‘Bomb, Bomb Iran’ Brigade Winning? These are strange and frightening times! It seems to be that human life is being devalued by those with influence and power and what’s worse their message that mass death and destruction is somehow acceptable to achieve an end-goal is seeping into the psyches of ordinary people. On Sunday, the controversial former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told delegates attending the British Conservative Party’s annual conference that in his view Iran’s nuclear facilities should be bombed and regime-change effected.  Coming out of the mouth of such an abrasive, neoconservative that sentiment is hardly surprising. What is shocking, however, is the fact he was cheered and not jeered. — Arab News

Building a case to fight Iran: Regime change? A reality-distorting demonization campaign focusing on one man? Sounds familiar. One hint that the attack-Iran crowd is not dealing with reality is symbolized by the amateurish attempt of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to give Ahmadinejad a tongue-lashing. Look, Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denial is disgusting, nor is he a champion of human rights, but we shouldn’t let emotion blind us to reality. As the Hasidic proverb reminds us, when you add to the truth, you subtract from it. Bollinger called Ahmadinejad “a dictator.” As a well-known legal and free-speech scholar, I hope Bollinger was embarrassed. He ought to know that the Iranian president doesn’t really run the country. The big decisions in Iran are made by the Grand Ayatollah, who has forbidden the development of nuclear weapons by Iran as being contrary to Islam. — Alternet