Pentagon `three-day blitz’ plan for Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington
The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200
targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military
capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon
Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for `
pinprick strikes’ against Iran’s nuclear facilities. `They’re about
taking out the entire Iranian military,’ he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a
conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the
US military had concluded: `Whether you go for pinprick strikes or
all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the
same.’ It was, he added, a `very legitimate strategic calculus’.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week,
accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East `under the shadow of a
nuclear holocaust’. He warned that the US and its allies would confront
Iran `before it is too late’.
One Washington source said the `temperature was rising’ inside the
administration. Bush was `sending a message to a number of audiences’,
he said � to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security
council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions
against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported `
significant’ cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said
that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most
questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is
stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is
merely developing civilian nuclear power.
Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is
moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed
source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid,
overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.
Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be
ready to attack if the Americans back down.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance
of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment
plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. `A number of
nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,’ he said. `They’re
giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have
practised deception.’
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush
administration last week by vowing to fill a `power vacuum’ in Iraq. But
Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the
Americans in Iraq.
The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by
Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term `proxy war’ and claims that
with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq `increasingly under
control’, Iranian intervention is the `next major problem the coalition
must tackle’.
Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by
Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months � `despite
pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq’.
It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians.
But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the
use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would
seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.