Iran Denies Report of Troop Buildup on Iraq border
VOA News 15 Jun 2004, 17:34 UTC
Iran's state-run news agency IRNA quotes what it calls "an informed source" as denying a report in a Saudi-owned newspaper that says Iranian troops are massing on the border with Iraq.
The report in the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat, or "Middle East" newspaper, quotes what it calls "reliable sources" who say four Iranian battalions have moved to the southern border with Iraq. The sources say the troops are preparing to move into Iraq to fill a security vacuum if U.S. forces pull out after the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.
But IRNA quotes its source as saying the report is "fabricated and baseless" and is meant to help the United States continue its occupation of Iraq.
Iranian officials have previously said the Tehran government supports full sovereignty for Iraq.
The author is with the hawkish neocon-led Hudson Institute think tank.
These are the conservatives that read to Bush and furnish him with coloring books.
One of their thoughts is that the United States has been appointed to rule the world with Iran as the prize.
Iran knows this and is reacting accordingly.
I agree with this, our troops are in Iraq for Iran.
First and foremost we must deploy our forces in Iraq in a decisive way. Deals with the terrorists cannot be brokered. We must display the full lethality of our fighting force not only to secure Iraq but to send a message to Iran.
The problem with London’s argument is that Iran has been on our takeover list before we invaded Iraq, therefore the destabilization of Iraq is a later excuse for our proposed conquest of Iran. The primary reason is Iran, which owns the Caspian's southern shores, is the most awkward country in the region for the US: American oil companies have yet to find a way there.
Iran is the main obstacle to US plans to develop international oil and gas projects in the Caspian
Fighting Iran in a Regional Mideast War Written by Herbert London Wednesday, June 16, 2004
If it wasn’t clear before, it is crystal clear now that the war in Iraq is a regional war. At stake are the tyrannies that hold sway over the Middle East. At the epicenter of this tyrannical world is Iran, a nation feverishly panting for nuclear weapons and simultaneously funding and supporting terrorist organizations of every stripe. Iran is terror central. The mullahs in this peculiar nation realize that a stable Iraq on its border that will make strides economically challenges willy-nilly the very existence of the present Iranian government.
That, of course, explains why the Iranian leaders send arms and money to Muqtada al-Sadr and why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been sent across the border to attack American troops. The mullahs are intent on reducing U.S. influence in the region as its own broadcasts proclaim.
The pursuit of nuclear weapons is merely an extension of this general policy since WMD serve as a counterweight to American conventional weapons superiority. With nuclear weapons in their possession, the mullahs assume – probably rightly – that punitive strikes by the U.S. would be restrained and U.S. forces would be hostage to nuclear terror. In this scenario, Iran’s terror masterminds can go about their bombings and assassinations with impunity.
Should Iran undermine the U.S. position in Iraq, it would serve as a checkmate in the regional chess game. Nearby nations might seek pragmatic agreement with Iran in order to forestall terrorist groups, and U.S. prestige would be dealt a major blow. Moreover, the war on terror would be far more difficult to control than it is at the moment.
What then can the United States do? First and foremost we must deploy our forces in Iraq in a decisive way. Deals with the terrorists cannot be brokered. We must display the full lethality of our fighting force not only to secure Iraq but to send a message to Iran.
Second, the United States must insist on transparent nuclear weapons inspections by the I.A.E.A., the organization discharged with this responsibility. The dispersal of weapons sites in Iran is an ipso facto suggestion that weapons grade plutonium is probably being concealed. Despite tense relations with western European capitals, this U.S. administration should point out at every opportunity how dangerous nuclear weapons in the hands of the radical Islamists would be.
Third, I’m convinced that Secretary of State Colin Powell should tell the Iranian leadership that we are more capable of disrupting the Iranian government than the Iranian government is capable of disrupting Iraq. What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. It is time for tough talk since diplomatic speech does not appear to be working.
Fourth, the U.S. should be prepared to deploy non-military sub rosa means to undermine the Iranian government and embolden the many liberal groups in the country eager for regime change. The State Department gives lip service to this notion, but neither State nor the CIA seem to have a clear strategy to bring about this result.
As I see it, Iran is the wild card in the region. Unrestrained, it will cast an ominous shadow over Syria, support Hamas in the Palestinian territory, send troops into Afghanistan, and foment terror in Turkey. Some of these conditions already exist and others could be moving in an ominous direction.
Iraq is the first step in forestalling Iran. We must realize that and realize as well that this is a regional war in a high stakes effort. To fight half-heartedly won’t send the appropriate message. There is much more at stake here than some barren desert land.
The future of mankind is contained in this cradle of civilization. History has anointed the United States as global protector. We cannot shun this responsibility. In fact, as I see it, there isn’t any alternative other than defeating Iranian extremists and radical Islamists so that we can win the war on terror.
About the author: Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute and John M. Olin Professor of Humanities, and author of the recently published book "Decade of Denial," from Lexington Books. He can be reached through http://www.benadorassociates.com.
Repost: "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," co-authored by Perle
On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, now the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group that reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, presented a written document to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spelling out a new Israeli foreign policy, calling for a repudiation of the Oslo Accords and the underlying concept of "land for peace"; for the permanent annexation of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip; and for the elimination of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, as a first step towards overthrowing or destabilizing the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The document was prepared for the Jerusalem and Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a think tank financed by Richard Mellon-Scaife. The report, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," was co-authored by Perle; Douglas Feith, currently the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy; David Wurmser, currently special assistant to State Department chief arms control negotiator John Bolton; and Meyrav Wurmser, now director of Mideast Policy at the Hudson Institute.
Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true. : John Pilger :12 Dec 2002
The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American "defeat" in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a "peace dividend" following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed,along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.
One of George W Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan's education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism. The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America's Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.
As for Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction", these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," it says, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.
On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.
Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'", which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war. Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary". Under cover of propaganda about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.
In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".
In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans – as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: "the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position".
"Our position" is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair's "Iraq dossier" and Jack Straw's inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to "explain"). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.
This corruption makes journalists and broadcastersmere ventriloquists' dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.
The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how "bad" Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America's international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them. - Pilger
"It's part of the problem, not part of the solution," he said. Perle's approach to Tehran would be different. He asserts the people of Iran are increasingly disaffected toward their government and favorable to the United States. That instinct could be "encouraged" with propaganda and support to political opposition groups.
"There may be ways to get other resources to opponents," he said.
Perle believes the overthrow of the government in Iran could be bloodless.
"We should be doing everything we can to encourage the centrifugal forces" of change there.
Perle said the United States should then turn its attention to longtime allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. – excerpt: Top Bush Adviser: 'Get Saddam Out Violently', NewsMax.com Wires, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001
Woolsey, a Wolfie pal, bluntly told U.C.L.A. students that to reshape the Middle East, the U.S. would have to spend years and maybe decades waging World War IV. – San Diego Union Tribune
But several of the hawks outside the administration who had pressed for war with Iraq have moved to the next step. R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence, said Wednesday that Iraq was the opening of a "fourth world war," and that U.S. enemies included the fundamentalist religious rulers in Iran, states such as Syria and Islamic terrorist groups. Woolsey seemed to be speaking for at least some in the administration. But Bush's aides will not discuss the future – yet. "We don't want to talk about a broader agenda now," one of his aides said. "It's not the time. The time will come."
Excerpt from Bush aides deny war new aspect in foreign policy
By David E. Sanger NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE April 6, 2003
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Thu, Jun. 24, 2004
TEHRAN, Iran - President Bush freed Afghanistan from the Taliban and toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but in doing so he also may have unshackled an even more dangerous foe: Iran.
Western diplomats and local officials in the Middle East say Iran, widely considered a supporter of international terrorism that's trying to develop nuclear weapons, is emerging as the unintended winner of Bush's war on terrorism.
Iran's rise as a key power broker in the Persian Gulf is an alarming prospect for the United States, which has used political and economic sanctions to contain the Islamic Republic and its radical government for a quarter century, since Iranian radicals seized the American Embassy in Tehran.
"Iran has definitely come to be a major beneficiary" of U.S. policy since Sept. 11, 2001, said Mohammed Hadi Semati, a political scientist from Tehran University now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "With the exception of the current chaos, everything that comes out of the Iraqi operation is good for Iran's national interests."
The logic of Iran's ascendance is simple. Iran sat back as the United States launched expensive wars and defeated Iranian enemies on two of its borders, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran's population is predominantly Shiite Muslim, and with Iraq's Shiite majority certain to dominate any new Iraqi government, the two nations will share cultural and religious ties that will likely bringing the formerly warring neighbors closer.
Senior U.S. officials in Washington fear that a Shiite uprising in Iraq could trigger unrest in neighboring Kuwait, where Shiites are 30 percent of the population; in Bahrain, which is 70 percent Shiite, and in the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia, where Shiites are a narrow majority.
Iranians, who succeeded in exporting their Islamic revolution to Shiite parts of Lebanon after Israel invaded that country in 1982, believe they've now played their cards well as America stumbled into a guerrilla war in Iraq.
"Two factors have made our position stronger. First is the American attitude, the American behavior. They came to Iraq under the slogan of human rights and democracy, but unfortunately, the Americans could not prove they are sincere in what they are saying," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. "The second was our behavior in Iraq was very clear ... we are not looking for hegemony."
There's unmistakable confidence at the highest levels of the Iranian government about its role.
"There are some realities that cannot be changed by any power, especially that Iran is a free country and a very powerful country in the region," said Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader. Rezaei is widely seen as a top presidential contender in next spring's election. "Iran's regional role is a fact. And if America had accepted that fact, then Iraq wouldn't have attacked Kuwait and Iran, nor would the Taliban have been successful in Afghanistan and the Twin Towers would be still standing."
The protracted war with insurgents in Iraq has also weakened America's standing in the region. Many people across the Middle East have begun to embrace Iran's vision of the United States as a "Great Satan." America's aim of bringing democracy to the region doesn't square with what they see happening. Instead, they're convinced that American policy is aimed at controlling the Middle East's vast oil reserves and subduing both Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
The changing political reality worries Washington's Arab allies, who privately complain that the White House ought to engage Iran rather than isolate it. Many say it's the only way to shore up America's influence amid a widespread perception that Bush is waging a war on Islam rather than terror.
"Basically, Iran is a much more serious threat to the region than terrorism," said one Persian Gulf state official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "Terrorism is something everyone is dealing with and taking seriously, whereas we're not dealing with Iranians seriously and we're not dealing with them as a powerful state. We're pushing them into a corner."
Compounding Arab concerns is that Iran, which is Muslim but not Arab, is poised to become the region's second nuclear power after Israel.
"Certainly I wouldn't like to see an American policy that would shift 180 degrees and jump into the arms of the Iranians. But we have to engage with Iran, and we have to be sure Iran should understand they can become a better society and better country and better state without having nuclear power," said Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahayan, the United Arab Emirates information minister.
"Strategically, a winning Iran is better for the region because Iran would feel confident and less threatened and isolated," said Semati. "If it comes out of this U.S. containment, then I think it will feel more confident and compelled to sit down and talk."
Top Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and that their goal is to be a regional team player and not to impose their will on Iraq or any other Middle Eastern country.
"It's not to Iran's advantage to impose on Iraq the way America did," said Rezaei. "After this, the Iraqi people will look to a regional solution with the help of the countries in the region.
"I believe the facts of convergence exceed the facts that separate us" across the region, he added.
Iran's new sense of self-confidence has been felt most recently in European capitals, where leaders were warned of a chill in relations with the oil-rich nation of 70 million people if they refused to remove impediments to its pursuit of nuclear power.
In a rare diplomatic outburst against its Arab neighbors, Iran recently clashed repeatedly with the United Arab Emirates over fishing rights near islands that both claim. Soon thereafter, on June 21, Iranian authorities arrested eight British sailors in three boats that were patrolling near the southern Iraqi city of Basra. They entered what Iran insisted was its territory. The sailors were released four days later.
Iran has kept a low profile in Iraqi affairs. It's embraced each coalition-approved Iraqi council, while echoing widespread Iraqi calls for timely free elections.
"We tried to maintain good relations with all groups, not only the Shiites, but also the Sunnis and the Kurds," said Asefi. "What we care about is security in the region, and we tried not to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs."
The Iranian strategy has gone far to win over Iraq's long oppressed Shiite Muslims. Their ties have been strengthened as Iraqis watched security slip, reconstruction falter and elections be delayed under the American-led occupation.
The fundamentalist tone of Iraqi insurgents is also in tune with Iran's increasingly hard-line government.
Iranian troops reportedly guard the most influential Iraqi Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al Sistani. Iranian agents are suspected to have crossed into Iraq with the mass pilgrimages of ordinary Iranians to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and they appear to wield some control over Shiite insurgents.
Photographs of the Islamic Republic's founder and Iran's current supreme leader hang next to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr's photo in the holiest Shiite site, the Grand Imam Ali Shrine in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf.
How much influence Iran will have in Iraq is uncertain. For one, Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war, with Kurds and Sunni Muslims determined to limit the Shiites' role in the new government. Squabbles among Shiite factions are another threat.
There's also widespread resistance to Iranian-style rule by religious leaders among Iraqi Shiites, who prefer Sistani's approach, in which religious leaders only offer guidance from behind the scenes.
Nevertheless, Iran will likely be the social, political and economic center of Shiites from Lebanon to Afghanistan, who share a powerful sense of historical oppression. It's in Iran's interest to combine the Shiites of the region into "one very powerful entity, religion-driven," one former high-ranking Jordanian official said, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.
That's discomforting to many Arab leaders in the region, who've long abandoned their support for Iran's Islamic revolution. Iran's ruling Shiite clerics have made little secret of their disdain for pro-Western Arab rulers who are Sunni Muslims. The Islamic Republic's founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared Saudi Arabia's rulers unfit to be guardians of Islam's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.
(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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