Dasa — US Congress pushes+Special Forces prepare
Topic(s): Iran | Comments Off on Dasa — US Congress pushes+Special Forces prepare1. Bush pressed to pursue ‘regime change’ in Iran
2. Special Forces ‘Prepare for Iran Attack’
Financial Times June 17, 2003
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054966190810&p=1012571727172
Bush pressed to pursue ‘regime change’ in Iran
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
-Sam Brownback, Republican senator for Kansas, told the Financial Times he
had support at a high level from the Pentagon for a bill to support
peaceful regime change in Iran and that he would consider expanding his
proposed Iran Democracy Act to include funding for covert operations.
“There was a substantial group in the government that was pushing to engage
with the reformists in Iran,” the senator said, referring to officials in
the State Department. “Now they are coming to the view that we should
confront aggressively the regime in Iran.” -More than $50m would be
provided to support opposition Iranian groups and broadcasters adopting
this goal. Mr Brownback said it was possible that a provision for covert
operations would also be included.
Conservative US Republicans, backed by some Democrats, are seizing on
anti-government protests in Tehran as an opportunity to press the Bush
administration to adopt “regime change” in Iran as official policy.
Sam Brownback, Republican senator for Kansas, told the Financial Times he
had support at a high level from the Pentagon for a bill to support
peaceful regime change in Iran and that he would consider expanding his
proposed Iran Democracy Act to include funding for covert operations.
Mr Brownback said a week of anti-government demonstrations in Tehran had
contributed to a shift in the Bush administration’s thinking on how to
reshape its Iran policy, which is under review.
“There was a substantial group in the government that was pushing to engage
with the reformists in Iran,” the senator said, referring to officials in
the State Department. “Now they are coming to the view that we should
confront aggressively the regime in Iran.”
Mr Brownback said the administration had not taken a stand on his
legislation, proposed six weeks ago. Asked about the view of the Pentagon,
he said he had not contacted Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, but that
his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, was “generally supportive”.
President George W. Bush on Sunday declared his support for the Tehran
protesters, but a source close to the White House said the administration
was reluctant to adopt a “regime change” approach to Iran, which remains
alongside North Korea in the Bush administration’s “axis of evil”.
This hesitation to embark on another foreign campaign stems from what the
source called the president’s realisation that the Pentagon had been
ill-prepared for the postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq and resistance
to US occupation.
The Iran Democracy Act would be similar in approach to the Iraq Liberation
Act passed by Congress in 1998 which adopted regime change in Baghdad as
the policy goal. The Iran bill would make it US policy to “support an
internationally monitored referendum in Iran by which the Iranian people
can peacefully change the system of government in Iran”.
More than $50m would be provided to support opposition Iranian groups and
broadcasters adopting this goal. Mr Brownback said it was possible that a
provision for covert operations would also be included.
Richard Boucher, State Department spokesman, said that from his “vantage
point” the administration was only involved in expressing “our moral
support, our rhetorical support, our solidarity with the demonstrators”.
In the House of Representatives, Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, is
planning to introduce similar legislation which would also halt the limited
trade with Iran initiated by the Clinton administration.
There are also proposals to block non-US companies investing in Iran from
being awarded contracts in Iraq.
US diplomatic efforts to censure Iran for its alleged contravention of its
nuclear safeguards commitments have met only partial success this week at a
board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Diplomats said major nations are set to agree today that Iran should take
rapid action to address international concerns about its allegedly
clandestine nuclear programme. But the 35-member board is unlikely to adopt
a formal resolution condemning Iran.
Additional reporting by Gillian Tett in Vienna
===
Special Forces ‘Prepare for Iran Attack’
By Robert Fox
The Evening Standard
Tuesday 17 June 2003
British and American intelligence and special forces have been put on alert for a conflict with Iran within the next 12 months, as fears grow that Tehran is building a nuclear weapons programme.
Iran has been constructing a nuclear civil power programme for some years. It is due to start generating significant amounts of electricity for the national power grid in two years.
However, United Nations, American and EU experts have become alarmed at the extent of the nuclear plants in Iran, and many are of a sophistication that suggests that they are for a weapons programme rather than for civil use.
A full report by the International Atomic Energy Authority is due to be published within days. It points at “discrepancies” in what Iran has officially disclosed about its nuclear facilities.
The chief IAEA inspector Mohammed El Baradei said: “Tehran has failed to report certain nuclear material and activities.”
The EU has declared this week that it backs the demands of the United States and Britain that IAEA inspectors should be allowed full access to all nuclear sites in Iran. Russia, which has helped Iran develop nuclear plants, has also backed the international effort to get more inspectors on the ground there.
Tehran has rejected these demands. A government spokesman accused Washington of “blatant interference” in stirring up the student protests against the clerical regime, which have been running for six nights in the capital.
However, the EU’s foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday backed the Americans and demanded that inspectors be admitted or any trade deals with the EU should be called off.
In the past week the EU and Nato, as well as Russia and Japan, have expressed genuine alarm that Iran could be developing a nuclear weapons programme more powerful than anything Saddam Hussein actually achieved in Iraq, whatever he intended.
“This is not a question of crying Wolfowitz,” a Washington defence insider said, referring to the calls to deal with the “axis of evil” of rogue states – which include Iran – by the hawkish deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz. “The threat is real.”
Already CIA agents are known to have been working inside Iran to establish the full range of the Iranian nuclear programme. Production and research is being carried out at no less than 16 different sites, including Tehran university-Recently Iran began developing a new series of medium-range missiles, which could reach Israel, Cyprus and even Greece.
Growing protests against the clerical regime of the ayatollahs has suddenly made Iran more unstable in the past few weeks. President Bush has welcomed the protests, though some fear they will make the country even more unmanageable. But one of the Pentagon’s most hardline advisers, Richard Perle, has said that the demonstrations could undermine the rule of the clerics, which would be the best way of disarming Iran. Michael Ledeen, his colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank close to the White House, has gone further.
He wrote last week: “Iraq’s support of terrorism was minuscule compared to Tehran’s activities. If we are serious about winning the war against the terror masters, the Tehran regime must fall.”
Washington also blames the ayatollahs in Tehran for giving financial backing and training to a hardline organisation, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), founded by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al Hakim. He has just returned to Iraq. The ayatollah is blamed for the Shi’ite violence against British and American forces in Basra and in the Shi’ite heartlands of central and southern Iraq.
A British intelligence official said that any campaign against Iran would not be a ground war like the one in Iraq. The Americans will use different tactics, said the intelligence officer. “It is getting quite scary.”