-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 25, 2007 7:25:29 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Bob Baer: US 'poised to strike Iran'
US 'poised to strike Iran'
Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent | August 25, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22303955-31477,00.html
Bob Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book
about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is
working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior
intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the
next couple of months because things could be about to change.
Baer, in an interview with The Weekend Australian, says his
contacts in the administration suggest a strategic airstrike on
Iran is a real possibility in the months ahead.
"What I'm getting is a sense that their sentiment is they are going
to hit the Iranians and not just because of Israel, but due to the
fact that Iran is the predominant power in the Gulf and it is
hostile and its power is creeping into the Gulf at every level,"
Baer says.
He says his contacts have told him of his book: "You better hurry
up because the thesis is going to change. I told them submission is
in January but they said, 'You're probably going to be too late'."
Washington's intelligence community is abuzz about possible
military action against Iran, which is being weighed at the highest
levels of the Bush administration. While the guessing game has
become "will they or won't they?", at least some experienced and
trusted intelligence sources have told The Weekend Australian that
the possibility of a strike in the next 12 months remains remote.
"The success of a strike is limited and the downside could be
enormous," said one source, noting the possibility of a regional
conflagration involving the entire Gulf because Iran would look to
hit back at the US's strategic interests.
For his part, Baer is not an advocate of a demonstration strike on
Tehran and he is scathing of the Bush administration's handling of
Middle East policy, as he is of previous administrations, marking
1979, under the Carter administration, as the point in which US
policy on Iran went awry.
He agrees with many in the intelligence community in Washington
that a strike on Iran could be a disaster and counterproductive to
US interests, but he says that the rising level of impatience in
the Bush administration over Iran's belligerence on its nuclear
program and its destabilising role in Iraq could mean that
something snaps.
"In the CIA, they are calling what the Iranians are doing to us in
Iraq as the slow cook -- where we get cooked there for the next 10
years and then we give up completely and leave."
But Baer says an emboldened Iran in the event of mass US withdrawal
from Iraq "scares the shit out of Saudis, the Bahrainis and all the
Arab gulf states". "They are saying: 'What are you going to do now
that you've created a mess in Iraq and what are you going to do
about Iran?'."
Intelligence sources say military contingency planning on Iran
under the Bush administration has been under way since 2003 but the
latest speculation has been a surgical strike on the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard.
A case for a strike became more prominent last week when The New
York Times reported the Bush administration was preparing to
declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist
organisation.
"If imposed, the declaration would signal a more confrontational
turn in the administration's approach to Iran and would be the
first time that the United States has added the armed forces of any
sovereign government to its list of terrorist organisations," the
Times reported.
The Revolutionary Guard is said to be the largest branch of Iran's
military.
"While the United States has long labelled Iran as a state sponsor
of terrorism, a decision to single out the guard would amount to an
aggressive new challenge from an American administration that has
recently seemed conflicted over whether to take a harder line
against Tehran over its nuclear program and what American officials
have called its destabilising role in Iraq," the newspaper said.
The Bush administration continues to try to ratchet up the pressure
on Iran, pressing the US's allies to apply sanctions against Iran
in the UN Security Council. The State Department and Treasury
officials are pushing for sanctions that include an extensive
travel ban on senior Iranian officials and further moves to
restrict the ability of Iran's financial institutions to do
business abroad.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has consistently denied US
allegations that Iran was furnishing weapons to both the Taliban in
Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq. Two months ago, US Defence
Secretary Robert Gates said the volume of weapons reaching the
Taliban from Iran made it "difficult to believe" that the shipments
were "taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian Government".
Baer says the Iranians are "masters at using surrogates" and
disguising their role in conflicts.
"They are not stupid, they are the least stupid people in the
Middle East," he says. "If they are providing the EFPs (explosively
formed penetrators), they are not leaving serial numbers, return
addresses; it's not the way the world works out there."
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