Political forces are preparing the ground for executive orders to wage war, writes Mohamed Hakki* Now that US armed forces have near completed the destruction of Iraq for the sake of Israel, they are readying the last phase of the Israeli plan by preparing to either "partition Iraq into three separate entities", or allow civil war to do the job for them. Going back through Israeli strategic thinking for the last 20 years, partitioning Iraq stands out as one of the main targets. On 30 April, The Washington Post, in an eight-column article, talked about the "merits of partitioning Iraq or allowing the civil war to happen". Couched in attractive terms like "struggling against persistent sectarian violence", the US military are now arguing that separating Shias, Sunnis and Kurds -- partitioning Iraq -- might be the only way to avoid civil war. It is fascinating to watch how the US administration and the US media is now moving into Stage II of destroying the Middle East and remoulding it in a fashion that suits Israeli plans. Part of this, of course, is manufacturing the "crisis of Iran". Eric Margolis writes on LewRockwell.com : "Iran poses no real military threat to anyone, but listening to the Bush administration or the media one would think that Tehran was about to unleash a nuclear Holocaust on the world. They are even considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's underground nuclear facilities." Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker quoted one of the most astute military analysts, Colonel Sam Gardiner, as saying: "I don't think a US military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are 14 airfields with sheltered aircrafts -- we would want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting cruise missile sites and Iranian diesel submarines. Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target, even with penetrating weapons. They will have to use Special Operations units." Most respected international experts say that Iran is at least five to 10 years away from producing a nuclear bomb. Cynics are seeing a clear similarity between the "war fever" created before the Iraq invasion and what is going on now vis-à-vis Iran. They suspect that a bombing campaign may be used to reverse the Republican Party's steep decline in the polls. Margolis points to the fact that much of the anti- Iranian rhetoric has been orchestrated, as was the case with Iraq, by Vice-President Dick Cheney, who increasingly emerges as the Rasputin of the Bush administration. He adds: "Cheney is carrying out former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's command to the US that once it invaded Iraq, march immediately on Tehran. America's mighty Israeli lobby has become Cheney's personal army in this struggle and is mounting high-powered campaigns to generate war fever against Iran." Zbigniew Brzezinski, the respected former National Security adviser to president Carter opines that, "if there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favour of military action." Brzezinski has cited compelling reasons against a pre-emptive attack on Iran, chief among them that, "if a undertaken without a formal Congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president." Unfortunately, few of us can believe that President Bush cares about that or any other reason for not attacking Iran. Indeed, Bush's top officials openly assert that he can do anything he wants on his authority as commander in chief. In an article in The Nation, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when asked whether the president would circumvent Congressional authorisation if the White House chose military action against Iran; she answered, "I will not say anything that constrains his authority as commander in chief." The only member of Congress so far who is trying to put the brakes on this dangerous thinking is Democratic Congressman Peter De Fazio from Oregon, who is now preparing a resolution underscoring that the president cannot initiate military action without Congressional authorisation. "The imperial powers claimed by this administration," says De Fazio, "are breathtaking in their scope. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues were willing to cede our constitutional authorities to the president prior to the war in Iraq. Congress cannot make the same mistake again. The constant drumbeat we're hearing out of the administration, in the press, from think-tanks, eerily echoes what we've heard about Iraq." Meanwhile, evidence is emerging that military action on Iran has already started. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner told CNN that, "the decision has been made and military operations are under way." He also said that the Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency told him that Iran has captured dissident units confessing to working with the Americans. Representative Dennis Kusinich of Ohio has written to Bush noting, "the presence of US troops in Iran constitutes a hostile act against that country," urging Bush to report immediately to Congress on all activities involving American forces in Iran. There are only two factors that offer partial reassurance; one is the growing feeling that top military leaders are strongly opposed to nuclear strikes. The six retired generals that recently called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation are not alone. According to Hersh, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran." The other factor is the American people's scepticism about Bush's efficacy in matters of war and peace. In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, 54 per cent of respondents said they did not trust President Bush to make the right decision about whether to go to war with Iran. Whether these two factors will weigh this administration down, preventing another pre-emptive war, remains to be seen. * The writer is a political analyst resident in Washington.
