Bolton: Striking Iran ‘Is Really The Most...

[Steve Gardner]

...Prudent Thing To Do’

Take a look at this piece about an interview John Bolton gave to FOX.

Bear in mind, as you read it, that Bolton is a former member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) - so no surprise he'd be simply delighted to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran then.

You might also be interested to learn that this weasel supported the Vietnam War but enlisted in the National Guard, thus avoiding service in Vietnam.

He's also derailed a major international conference convened to endorse the enforcement of the UN's 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, claiming such an enforcement would compromise US national security - meaning, "oops, we can't let the world find out about our own secret biological weapons programmes."

Further, he's be known to withhold information from his bosses - including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - if said information ran counter to his own personal goals.

In short, his opinion is the last you should trust when it comes to weighing up the arguments for and against any military action with Iran.

Source: Think Progress

Yesterday morning, Fox News interviewed former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton to discuss whether America is close to striking Iranian targets, as new reports indicate the Bush administration is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike.” Bolton said that while there are “obviously risks associated” with a strike on Iran, the risks of not doing something are “far higher” at this point.

Fox anchor Jaime Colby asserted, “The Brits think we overestimate the threat of Iran in this particular case. Are they right or wrong?” Bolton — who has previously claimed that the “mullahs in Iran” want a Democratic president in 2008 — responded:

I think they’re dead wrong on this. I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do. Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.

Fox anchor Colby reacted to Bolton’s war cries by concluding — without sarcasm — “That’s a good message to end on. Thank you.”

Bolton has asserted that preventive war against Iraq “did work” and “achieved our strategic objective.” Moreover, he has openly stated that the U.S. should have no interest in the well-being of Iraqis.

Bolton’s unquenchable appetite for a military conflict with Iran is easy to understand, given that he cares so little about the disastrous consequences that follow from war.

[teddy]

Shocking, but not at all surprising coming from this guy. I feel that an attack on Iran is imminent. They just keep going on and on and on and on and on about it until the general public just accepts it.

[Steve Gardner]

Yeah, I think you're right. They're just bombarding the general public with all sorts of shit and they know that some people will buy one 'reason' whilst others will buy some other 'reason' until, eventually, enough people 'accept' we need to attack. Just like Iraq.

I'm not surprised at Bolton's remarks and I shouldn't have been surprised at FOX's position, but I must admit to being taken aback when I read this part:

Fox anchor Colby reacted to Bolton’s war cries by concluding — without sarcasm — “That’s a good message to end on. Thank you.”

A 'good message to end on"!?!? WTF?

[Steve Gardner]

Source: Reuters

Makes me sick reading this crap...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States and Israel agree on the need for "tangible action" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush.

"We are on the same page. We both see the threat ... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said on Friday.

Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive", but added: "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken".

Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said: "Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."

Bush ratcheted up his rhetoric toward Tehran in a speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday, saying critics' calls for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two.

Bush vowed that Washington would stand with Israel in opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying it would be "unforgivable" if Tehran were allowed to get the bomb.

Iran has said it will not stop uranium enrichment, which it says is for generating electricity only. In a separate development on Friday, the United States said it would sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia to help the kingdom develop peaceful nuclear energy.

[Steve Gardner]

More of the same, but this is almost unbelieveable. It's not only 'doing an Iraq' by perversely arguing Iranians want the US to attack them, but it's arguing that limited airstrikes are not enough and that a major one is needed. And, just like Iraq, there's talk of 'decapitating' the regime.

These people are sick-minded and I sincerely hope they can be stopped before they bring the whole world to the brink of a catastrophic war.

Unfortunately, I fear a lot of people actually believe this garbage. In fact, there are some who would like to see an even moire aggressive stance towards Iran.

I'd like to know what makes people who feel this way think they have the right to interfere in the way another country is run. How would they react, for example, if another country toyed with the idea of bombing Washington and decapitating the US regime on account of them being globe-trotting, megalomaniacal war-mongers?

Source: Newsmax

As Barack Obama and John McCain thrash it out over how they would deal with Iran, voices from inside Iran are weighing in with an unusual message: If the United States strikes hard and fast, we will support you.

Emissaries from inside Iran have been meeting with Iranian exiles in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in recent weeks to deliver this provocative message, which they claim comes from pro-U.S. dissidents at the upper-most levels of the regime.

“U.S. airstrikes must be powerful and sustained enough to break the myth of the regime’s absolute power and reveal the weakness of the leadership,” a former official who traveled outside of Iran recently said.

The United States should target the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards Corp, the offices of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that of his predecessor and rival, Mullah Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Iranian sources say.

The goal should be to carry out sustained airstrikes over a 48-72 hour period that would “decapitate” the regime.

Such a strike would send a clear message to the Iranian people and to disgruntled officials throughout Iran’s faction-ridden government that the United States is serious about confronting the regime over its bad behavior in Iraq and is willing to strike the leaders responsible for that behavior, the Iranian sources argue.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has urged the administration to launch airstrikes against Quds Force bases and facilities in Iran that have been used to support Iran’s campaign to help terrorist groups in Iraq to kill Americans.

But many Iranians contend that limited strikes would have a limited usefulness, and might even be counter-productive.

“The conventional wisdom is that limited strikes will allow the regime to rally the people around the flag,” says Mohebat Ahdiyyih, an Iran media analyst at the office of the director of National Intelligence.

“However, if the U.S. launches a major strike that goes after the leadership in Iran, that’s different,” he told Newsmax. “Most Iranians hate the regime. People would be very happy to see a major strike that took out the leadership.”

Mr. Ahdiyyih and other Iran analysts speaking at an American Enterprise Institute conference on Monday painted a picture of a bitterly-divided regime in Tehran that is “unstable” and fighting for its survival.

“The situation is so bad that former president Mohammad Khatami has said that the hard-liners [close to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] are worse than al-Qaida,” Ahdiyyih said.

Mr. Ahdiyyih regularly scans the Iranian media, including Web sites close to Ahmadinejad and his rivals, to find clues about the factional infighting in Tehran.

Mullah Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a rival to Ahmadinejad who is often mistakenly portrayed in the U.S. media as a “moderate,” has been warning that Iran “faces a serious threat of being attacked by the United States,” Ahdiyyih said.

“Ahmadinejad’s people say it’s just a psychological war. But if Iranians found out the risks of their nuclear program, the regime would face serious problems” from opposition inside Iran, he added.

Ahmadinejad has boasted frequently that Iran’s nuclear program “is like a locomotive with no brakes,” said Alex Vatanka, an Iran analyst with Jane’s Information Group.

Iranians interpret that to mean just one thing: that Iran is very close to acquiring nuclear weapons capability, if it hasn’t done so already.

It is the real possibility that Iran already could have nuclear weapons or be on the verge of acquiring them that has given a sense of urgency to such discussions in Washington, Jerusalem, and Tehran.

While the hard-liners are convinced that the U.S. is “bluffing” about putting any real pressure on Iran, Vatanka noted that the escalation of U.S.-led sanctions on Iran includes efforts to ban Iran from the international banking system, which would seriously complicate Iran’s efforts to get paid for its oil.

“The United States hasn’t put this type of pressure on Iran ever,” he said.

The popular Tabnak.ir Web site in Iran translated a report from Israel Army Radio on Tuesday claiming that a U.S. military strike on Iran was imminent.

“Based on the statements of senior Bush administration officials, Israeli Army Radio reported today that the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran in the coming months is more likely than ever,” Tabnak reported.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have become convinced since the Iranian-backed takeover by Hezbollah in Lebanon that “the head of the snake must be struck,” Tabnak quoted Israeli Army Radio as saying.

Tabnak.ir is the mouthpiece of former Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Mohsen Rezai, who is widely seen inside Iran as one of the guiding powers behind the newly-elected, anti-Ahmadinejad majority in the Iranian parliament.

The parliamentary faction, known as the “principalists,” is led by former Revolutionary Guards officer Ali Larijani, who was fired by Ahmadinejad as his chief nuclear negotiator because the president considered him too conciliatory.

Another key figure in the new anti-Ahmadinejad faction is Tehran mayor, Mohammad-Baqr Qalibaf, a Revolutionary Guards general and former commander of the Rev. Guards Air Force, who ran against Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential elections.

“The Revolutionary Guards is not a unified political party,” said Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of the Rev. Guards who has broken with the regime and now lives in the United States,

“They are like the rest of Iran. You can see many people [inside the Rev. Guards leadership] who are not satisfied with the present situation” and are seeking a change, he added.

The White House went to great lengths on Tuesday to deny the Israeli Army Radio report, which quoted President Bush as telling Israeli officials that “the disease must be treated — not its symptoms.”

In a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, the White House said that Bush believed that “no president of the United States should ever take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard.”

Some Washington, D.C. analysts take the White House at its word. “The Bush administration has decided that the nuclear issue [in Iran] should be decided by the next administration,” Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told the conference at AEI.

On Monday, the USS Ronald Reagan and its carrier strike group steamed out of San Diego for a six month tour of the Persian Gulf.

The Reagan will join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, which entered the Gulf late last month.

The United States frequently has had two carrier strike groups in the region over the past two years, so the arrival of the Reagan is not a reinforcement.

Together, the two carriers can launch 144 strike aircraft and hundreds of cruise missiles against ground targets inside Iran, while ship-board helicopters, U.S. Marines, and naval artillery can destroy Iranian oil platforms and cripple the Iranian navy.

U.S. airstrikes that target the top leadership of Iran and refrain from extensive damage to civilians or religious targets, could win strong support from the Iranian people for a pro-U.S. coup by the security services, many Iranians in positions of responsibility believe.

“Anything that hurts the regime will make the people of Iran happy. The young people in Iran see the U.S. as the only country that can help them,” former regime official, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara, told Newsmax this week.

Dissidents within the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guards believe that U.S. air strikes that take out the leadership will open the doors to a coup led by the military that would put an end to the Islamic Republic.

But some Iranian pro-democracy activists fear that air strikes will only perpetuate the tyranny of the Islamic Republic.

“Military strikes, as limited as they may be, will allow the regime to repress Iranians even more, because Iran will be at a state of war where dissent will simply not be tolerated,” former student leader Roozbeh Farahanipour told Newsmax.”

Rather than promote military strikes on Iran, Farahanipour believes the United States should be backing pro-democracy groups inside Iran to carry out a systematic campaign of civil disobedience against the regime.

“The speed with which we can organize Iranians depends on the amount of resources at our disposal,” he said. “Marze Por Gohar, with a molecular-sized budget, has been able to organize Iranians to conduct non-violent campaigns inside Iran. Certainly if we received more help from the international community we could be even more potent then we already are.“

Marze Por Gohar is a small nationalist party that is calling for Iran to become a secular republic.

Dr. Sazegara, the former Revolutionary Guards founder, would also prefer to see the United States engage in a serious and sustained “Helsinki process” that would impose crippling international banking sanctions and diplomatic sanctions on Iran, and only lift them in exchange for real concessions.

“The first demand should be a general pardon, a general amnesty against political dissidents,” Sazegara told Newsmax.

But even Sazegara doubts that the current leadership will ever engage in a serious dialogue over its nuclear weapons program or political freedom.

“The regime knows very well that the first step back [from repression] will set off a chain reaction that ultimately will lead to their collapse,” Sazegara said.

The unwillingness to compromise, and the belief that the United States is only bluffing, is encouraging Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to stand firm against U.S. pressure, Sazegara and other Iran analysts believe.

“My biggest fear is that the Iranian leadership will miscalculate, just as Hezbollah did in 2006,” says AEI Middle East analyst Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who served in Iraq.

Rather than softening the tough talk toward Tehran, the White House should “make the red lines as clear as possible so we don’t stumble into war,” Rubin said.