Annals of National Security
Shifting Targets
The Administration’s plan for Iran.
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Keywords
Iran;
Iraq War;
Bush, George W. (Pres.) (43rd);
Foreign Policy;
Pentagon;
Iranian Operations Group;
Plans, Planning
In a series of public statements in
recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined
the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the
United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to
carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national
convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our
troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime
must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to
protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our
military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”
The President’s position, and its
corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of
Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm
hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office
of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw
long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials
and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing
attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and
other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical”
strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which,
the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq.
What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been
reconceived as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three
developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that
their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent
nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and
that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing
campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in
private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that
Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has
been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that
Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
During a secure videoconference that
took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the
border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because
of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran
to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.
At a White House meeting with Cheney
this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed
that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend
off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in
Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the
same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in
Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added,
“There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran
as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it,
because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from
going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the
Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
Bryan Whitman, a
Pentagon spokesman, said, “The President has made it clear that the United
States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution with respect to
Iran. The State Department is working diligently along with the international
community to address our broad range of concerns.” (The White House declined to
comment.)
I was repeatedly
cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute
order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an
order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the
tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that
the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a
foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A.
told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the
authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said,
“The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its
operational components.”)
“They’re moving
everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re
dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall
of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group
became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the
Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an
attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the
Administration has not thought it all the way through.”
That theme was
echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said
that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans
for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by
intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and
that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty
years.”
