The United States Is Preparing To Attack Iran

by David Hinz

Attacks Planned by Beelzebub (Dick Cheney)

The United States Government is conspiring with the state of Israel to attack Iran, according to various sources around the world. From such "unimpeachable" sources as Seymour Hersh, to The People's Voice, reports of American plans to attack Iran have surfaced repeated over the past five years.

The People's Voice attack, posted just a few hours ago, takes a decided leftist-conspiracy-theory view of America.

Cheney's shadow government in collusion with the official state of Israel are proceeding with their attack upon Iran, regardless of international law or any other considerations that might interrupt this military component in their War to finish their version of the Redistribution of Wealth worldwide.

"Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

Seymour Hersh, while less a conspiracy theorist in his rhetoric, has nonetheless been relentless in his rumor-mongering. In January 2005 he told CNN this:

The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's "Late Edition."

--snip--

"The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," he wrote in "The New Yorker" magazine, which published his article in editions that will be on newsstands Monday.

When the expected US attack on Iran failed to materialize, Hersh once again fanned the flames of war with this April 2006 piece in the New Yorker. In this piece he once again accuses the Bush Administration of "clandestine" efforts to foster war against Iran, with the ultimate goal of regime change in Tehran.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"

When his prognostications in 2006 failed to materialize, he once again returned to his favorite theme in October 2007, once again claiming the administration, pushed by Vice President Cheney was redrawing plans to attack Iran. Unable to convince the American people, Hersh told the New Yorker readers, Cheney was rethinking his attacks, to fit the intelligence of the moment.

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.

While Hersh has been one of the most fervent of the conspiracy theorists assigning Dick Cheney the role of Beelzebub, this theme is by no means limited to him. Reports from sources across the political spectrum have run with rumors of imminent American attacks on Iran, usually at the behest of Cheney.

In February 2007 the New Statesman, using in part evidence from Seymour Hersh, confirmed that Dick Cheney, and his neo-con allies, were once again fomenting plans to attack Iran.

Vice-President Dick Cheney has had something of a love affair with the US marines, and this may reach its culmination in the fishing villages along Iran's Gulf coast. Marine generals hold the top jobs at Nato, in the Pentagon and are in charge of all nuclear weapons. No marine has held any of these posts before.

Traditionally, the top nuclear job went either to a commander of the navy's Trident submarines or of the air force's bombers and missiles. Today, all these forces follow the orders of a marine, General James Cartwright, and are integrated into a "Global Strike" plan which places strategic forces on permanent 12-hour readiness.

The BBC was also reporting an imminent attack on Iran in February of 2007, basing their intelligence on British sources. Thr trigger according to the Brits was either the proof of a nuclear weapons program or casualties in Iraq being traced back to Iranian intervention. Thankfully, Dick Cheney was not mentioned in the BBC report, which of course, completely stripped it of legitimacy.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

A month later, in March 2007, Blogcritic Magazine ran with the story that the US buildup of our carrier forces in the Gulf signaled our imminent intention to attack Iran. The irony of depending on Russian intelligence sources, the same Russian intelligence the US government used, in part, to justify the deposing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, was apparently lost on the magazine.

A top Russian security source thinks so. He claims the U.S. has built up forces at the border and they are becoming much more "active", stating that the U.S. is planning both air and ground attacks against Iran.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov of Moscow's Academy of Geopolitical Sciences said that the U.S. is planning a large scale air strike on Iran's military infrastructure shortly. The USS John C. Stennis, accompanied by eight support ships and four nuclear submarines, is heading for the Gulf. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been there with similar support for over three months. The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the Persian Gulf region.

The Russians certainly believed the US was preparing to attack Iran in April 2007; at least according to this report from March of that year.

MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces have nearly completed preparations for a possible military operation against Iran, and will be ready to strike in early April, a security official said.

The source said the U.S. had already compiled a list of possible targets on Iranian territory and practiced the operation during recent exercises in the Persian Gulf.

"Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory," the source said.

American commanders will be ready to carry out the attack in early April, but it will be up to the country's political leadership to decide if and when to attack, the source said.

The Bush Administration, orchestrated by Dick Cheney, is once again trying to manufacture a reason to attack Iran, a rush to war -- we are told. According to the American Chronicle, the recent increase in violence in Basra, and throughout Iraq is not due to Iranian intervention in the country, but instead to Vice President Cheney's recent visit to the area.

The Petraeus report could be the tipping point, but can we really trust it?

Just how much is Iran involved in, or indeed responsible for, the instability in Iraq? The answers to this question are often vague, ambiguous and frequently tainted by self interest.

Last week General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, declared that the mortars and missiles fired on Baghdad´s fortified Green Zone were of Iranian manufacture. He further asserted that they were supplied by Iran, and fired by Iranian trained insurgents.

--snip--

By contrast, many Iraq watchers are of the opinion that the recent Baghdad government assault on Basra and the subsequent nation-wide surge in violence was inspired by Vice President Dick Cheney during his recent visit to the region. Another of the building blocks, apparently, in plans for military action against Tehran. The aim, they say, was to destroy any support base the Iranians may have among the Shia militias to prevent effective retaliation in the event of a wider conflict.

As the left once again focuses on the possibility of US action against Iran, the rhetoric is becoming more and more shrill. In this opinion piece we find now, that an attack against Iran will bring about WWIII with Russia and China intervening against the US in support of Iran. In this scenario, the President's planned Missile Shield over our European allies is not aimed at protecting them from Iran, but instead, Russia.

The mainstream media, when it does mention the chances of a US attack on Iran, fails to mention the likelihood of China and Russia backing Iran directly. But as tensions continue to mount between Bush and Putin, on top of the struggle for control of the world's remaining resources turned violent by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I have become almost certain that, if the U.S. and/or Israel attack Iran, China and Russia are almost certain to take action in defence of Iran.

As all analysts state the Bush-Putin meeting will come nowhere close to resolving their differences I am going to go one step further and say these differences won't be resolved because Bush doesn't want them to be.

Bush is the biggest megalomaniac to ever inhabit the White House, his invasions of two countries, both of which he thought would be quick wars shows his overblown opinion of U.S. military strength. Plans for a Missile Shield are not to protect against Iran, as Bush claims but to ensure U.S. supremacy over Russia in preparation for the scrap over resources, a move he thought Russia wouldn't dare challenge, but instead it is a move Russia will go to any length to prevent.

US military hegemony! I am so sick and tired of hearing that word from the left. I fail to understand why protecting American citizens and American interests around the world is "hegemony" while dictatorial regimes like Iranian Ayatollahs and Russian premiers who seek to expand and influence by force of arms, their religious and political will on the rest of the world, are given a pass by the media.

but then again, fellow travelers are more willing to give a pass to those who agree with their aims, than those who disagree.

Regardless of motivations, the constant labeling, by the media, of American intentions toward Iran as dishonorable and disingenuous, has the effect of undermining the American publics' trust in its own government. The constant demonization of Vice President Cheney serves the interest of nobody -- nobody that is, except the enemies of our country.