Posted on 01/02/2007 9:46:01 PM PST by nuconvert
Covert US group plots to isolate 'rising' Iran
Farah Stockman, Washington
January 3, 2007
A SELECT group of US officials has been quietly co-ordinating actions for nearly a year to counter the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, including increasing the military capabilities of Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The group, known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, is also giving covert help to Iranian dissidents and building international outrage towards Iran by publicising its alleged role in a 1994 terrorist attack in Argentina.
Pentagon officials involved with the group intend to ask Congress as early as next month to increase funding for transfers of military hardware to allies in the Persian Gulf and to accelerate plans for joint military activities. The request is expected to include more advanced missile-defence systems and early-warning radar to prevent or detect Iranian missile strikes.
"There is the perception in the Gulf that Iran is really on the rise," said Emile El-Hokayem, research fellow at the Stimpson Centre, a Washington think tank. "Washington wants to prepare for a potential showdown."
US financing of pro-democracy activities in Iran is expected to double next year, according to the senior State Department official. Last year, $US85 million ($A107 million) was allocated.
The group's workings have been so secretive that several officials in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs Bureau said they were unaware it existed.
The US has repeatedly said its policy is not to overthrow the Iranian regime, but one former US official who attended a preliminary meeting of the group said he got the impression that regime change was a goal of many participants.
But interviews with half a dozen White House, Pentagon and State Department officials indicated that the group's aims are more modest. Several said that as much as they would like to see the regimes in Tehran and Damascus go, military action in Iraq and Afghanistan had limited their options. The main goal now, they said, was Cold War-style "containment" of Iran in the hopes that Iranians one day would opt to change their own government.
The group's work to isolate Tehran is consistent with the Administration's refusal to reach out diplomatically to Iran and Syria.
"Iran is the key to everything at the strategic level — the biggest problem we have faced in a long time," said a State Department official involved in the group, citing Iran's negative impact on Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"These are all things they are doing because they sense weakness on the part of the United States. The best thing for us to project is strength, not 'please talk to us'."
The group is modelled on the Iraq Policy and Operations Group, set up in 2004 to shepherd information and co-ordinate US action in Iraq.
It has raised eyebrows in the State Department for hiring BearingPoint — the same Washington-based private contracting firm used by the Iraq group — to handle its administrative work.
But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said BearingPoint was hired for its experience and good work on Iraq.
The group is led by a steering committee with two leading hawks on Middle East policy as chairmen: James Jeffrey, who once headed Iraq policy, and Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser for "global democracy strategy".
pong
This is nothing "covert" or "secret".
They obviously don't trumpet their work and planning into the world, but the persons involved are known.
Feith, Ledeen, Abrams, Shulsky are all well known "neocons".
To think we wouldn't prepare for Iran is foolish.
I'm sure the moonbats are quick to spin this into a new jewish conspiracy... but whatever.
bump
Why?
I have heard this line of reasoning time and time again--chiefly (though not entirely) from devotees of the "realist" school of foreign policy--and it has never yet made even a scintilla of sense to me.
The logic (such as it is) seems to go something like this: If only the US Army were not otherwise engaged right now, it would be available for combat in Iran. But that begs the obvious question: Why would we wish to use this branch of the armed forces against Iran?
Many of us believe that we would benefit by engaging Iran militarily now, rather than later; and, moreover, that any thought of a third, more antiseptic alternative--say, regime change--has all the realism of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. But even all-out war with Iran need involve no more than the US Navy and Air Force.
Why would we want to occupy that country with ground troops?
I think the Left is just happy to out anything they believe is actually planned by W or the 'neocons' so as to sabotage us. They don't care if it was the troops movements to pin down Osama along with aerial maps of his location - it would be front page NYTimes even if, and especially if, it meant blowing the operation and letting a mass murderer go free.
Disinformation?
"The request is expected to include more advanced missile-defence systems and early-warning radar to prevent or detect Iranian missile strikes. " This is NOT comforting. It implies they are ready to accept a nuclear Iran. Reminds me of the Dems' constant screeching over funds for "First Responders," who basically just respond to the carnage after an attack.
I also wouldn't want a regime changed Iran to have nukes either. It would be a weak government in a nasty neighborhood. Iran, whatever its government, should not be allowed to have nukes.
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