Truemors
The recent rhetorical surge from both the United States and Iran is anything but business as usual. With American policy experts now using terms like proxy war in Iraq was Iranian reports and with the usual suspects in Russia and China stonewalling the European led Iranian diplomatic process, critical mass now seems to be only just out of view of the horizon. In recent weeks the U.S. government has conducted massive war games depicting a colossal aerial bombardment and indications are that Washington based think tank Heritage Foundation officials delivered its war-game findings to the Bush Administration this week. Sources say the report contains a list of policy proposals that will, in effect, offset the economic ramifications of such a strike. Among the policies entailed in the report are said to be the lifting of tariffs on ethanol imports, the opening of strategic U.S. fuel reserves to keep hyperinflation of oil prices at a minimum, and the subsidization of fuel costs for millions of low income Americans. The feeling is in Washington, that some sort of unseen boundary has been breached and the U.S. government now seems to be shifting away from what they perceive as failed diplomatic endeavors and toward more forceful alternatives.
The UK based Times Online is also now reporting that pentagon planners have delivered an aerial bombardment plan to President Bush. The plan, which original thought dictated would focus mainly on Iran's nuclear capabilities, is now said to contain a much larger air assault. They are not just preparing for "Pinprick strikes" said Alex Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center when speaking of the plans "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military." Intelligence sources have already indicated that the U.S. has reached out with funding and support to anti-Iranian dissident groups based in Iraq's Kurdish north. Recently Iran began cross border artillery shelling of what it deemed as terrorist bases in Kurdish Iraq; indicating that there may indeed be a flurry of activity taking place there. The U.S. has also drastically stepped up intelligence gathering incursions into Iran with Special Forces troops said to be operating on a daily basis within Iranian territory.
Will President Bush bomb Iran?
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007
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In a nondescript room, two blocks from the American Capitol building, a group of Bush administration staffers is gathered to consider the gravest threat their government has faced this century: the testing of a nuclear weapon by Iran.
George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Will president Bush bomb Iran?
President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The United States, no longer prepared to tolerate the risk that Iranian nuclear weapons will be used against Israel, or passed to terrorists, has already launched a bombing campaign to destroy known Iranian nuclear sites, air bases and air defence sites. Iran has retaliated by cutting off oil to America and its allies, blockading the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf bottleneck, and sanctioned an uprising by Shia militias in southern Iraq that has shut down 60 per cent of Iraq's oil exports.
The job of the officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, who have gathered in an office just off Massachusetts Avenue, behind the rail terminus, Union Station, is to prevent a spike in oil prices that will pitch the world's economy into a catastrophic spin.
The good news is that this was a war game; for those who fear war with Iran, the less happy news is that the officials were real. The simulation, which took four months, was run by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close links to the White House. Its conclusions, drawn up last month and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, have been passed on to military and civilian planners charged with drawing up plans for confronting Iran.
News that elements of the American government are working in earnest on how to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come at a tense moment.
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On Tuesday, President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the US government accuses of overseeing a covert programme to develop nuclear weapons. In a speech to war veterans, Mr Bush said: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."
He went on to condemn Iranian meddling in Iraq, where America increasingly blames the deaths of its soldiers on Iranian bombs and missiles. Mr Bush made clear that he had authorised military commanders to confront "Iran's murderous activities".
This was widely taken to mean that he is set on a confrontation with Iran that
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