Posted on 09/18/2007 1:16:48 AM PDT by sierrascrapper
Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Dick Cheney ('The Man') with George W Bush
Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.
Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.
Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.
In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.
advertisement A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.
Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.
Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.
The intelligence source said: "No one outside that tight circle knows what is going to happen." But he said that within the CIA "many if not most officials believe that diplomacy is failing" and that "top Pentagon brass believes the same".
He said: "A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the US will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq."
Possible flash points: Click to enlarge Previously, accusations that Mr Bush was set on war with Iran have come almost entirely from his critics.
Many senior operatives within the CIA are highly critical of Mr Bush's handling of the Iraq war, though they themselves are considered ineffective and unreliable by hardliners close to Mr Cheney.
The vice president is said to advocate the use of bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. His allies dispute this, but Mr Cheney is understood to be lobbying for air strikes if sites can be identified where Revolutionary Guard units are training Shia militias.
Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials.
Gen David Petraeus, Mr Bush's senior Iraq commander, denounced the Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq last week as he built support in Washington for the US military surge in Baghdad.
The US also announced the creation of a new base near the Iraqi border town of Badra, the first of what could be several locations to tackle the smuggling of weapons from Iran.
A State Department source familiar with White House discussions said that Miss Rice, under pressure from senior counter-proliferation officials to acknowledge that military action may be necessary, is now working with Mr Cheney to find a way to reconcile their positions and present a united front to the President.
The source said: "When you go down there and see the body language, you can see that Cheney is still The Man. Condi pushed for diplomacy but she is no dove. If it becomes necessary she will be on board.
"Both of them are very close to the president, and where they differ they are working together to find a way to present a position they can both live with."
The official contrasted the efforts of the secretary of state to work with the vice-president with the "open warfare between Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld before the Iraq war".
Miss Rice's bottom line is that if the administration is to go to war again it must build the case over a period of months and win sufficient support on Capitol Hill.
The Sunday Telegraph has been told that Mr Bush has privately promised her that he would consult "meaningfully" with Congressional leaders of both parties before any military action against Iran on the understanding that Miss Rice would resign if this did not happen.
The intelligence officer said that the US military has "two major contingency plans" for air strikes on Iran.
"One is to bomb only the nuclear facilities. The second option is for a much bigger strike that would - over two or three days - hit all of the significant military sites as well. This plan involves more than 2,000 targets."
2,000 is a good start.
Don’t buy this one. Alot of inuendo by Bush haters.
>>>Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran,
In the last week I’ve read that line a dozen times, but this time it occurs to me that somewhere a bunch of Iranian staff officers are working night and day to answer the question WHICH 2000 targets would that be. The first hundred or so are simple, the nuke sites, airbases, SAM sites, etc. But rounding out the list in a nation as large as Iran has to be a job.
Well, there is the little thing called Congressional approval which given Democratic control is going to be unlikely to obtain.
I would put an attack on Iraq as a very low probability right now. I think the only thing that might change that would be an Iranian attack on US interests in the ME or elsewhere or on Israel.
I concur. At most this is just a bit of saber-rattling by the US administration. More likely their contingency plans have been compromised.
The libs would be sending "I'm sorry for offending notes" instead of retaliation!
So that’s the word from London (posted article from the Telegraph)! Things are getting very interesting, indeed! We’ll see what happens.
France’s Sarkozy raises prospect of Iran airstrikes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1887211/posts
ON COLLISION PATH : FRANCE’S SARKOZY RAISES PROSPECTS OF STRIKES AGAINST IRAN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1887505/posts
French FM Kouchner: ‘We must prepare for war against Iran’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897458/posts
Germany backs French minister on Iranian nuclear weapons warning
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1898190/posts
I ask you, what's not to like about that guy?
Which should have been done by the CARTER administration...
You can lance a pustule when it's the size of a booger, or you can wait until it's the size of a grapefruit and you have to take off an arm to be quit of it.
Bush 2 will be no different.
Hillary (Bush 3) will cowtow as well.
Until Iranian proxies (Iraq Lebanon Syria Palestine) attack Israel unleashing the prophesy.
BUMP
You could have saved that until after breakfast!
If they didn’t at least plan for this contingency, I wouldn’t have voted for them in the first place. However, I’m not going to believe the Telegraph reporting, either. Besides, isn’t Iran already at war withus? How many of OUR soldiers have been killed by Qud forces in Iraq or by Iranian supplied weapons?
You could have saved that until after breakfast!
Pustules, boogers, grapefruits...what's your point? (grin)
“Congressional approval?”
“An Iranian attack on U.S. interests?”
You’ve got to be kidding.
First if this does happen, several dems will be informed just before it happens. There will not be time for the dems to stop it. It will be over too soon.(the original 2000 targets)
Second, just what the hell have the Iranians been doing for two or three years? Killing Americans in Iraq. To me that seems like targeting American interests.
It’s a bunch of bull. He may be preparing, but he’s not going to pull the trigger. He’s going to leave it for his successor to decide.
Let's see how it all shakes out.
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