From the inbox.

It is interesting to note that while some Nigerians are busy creating excuses for the many blunders of Bush Americans are asking the hard questions and taking positions based on what makes sense.

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Next Stop: Tehran, by Philip Giraldi

By the time President Bush finally announced it, his surge
strategy was old news. But an unexpected section of the
speech jarred the normally somnolent mainstream media:
"Iran is providing material support for attacks on American
troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. , And
we will seek out and destroy the networks providing
advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
Speculation that Bush was already plotting his next war
nearly stole the story of how he plans to salvage the
current one.

Picking up the presidential cue, the administration began
advancing the fiction that Iranian support of America's
"enemies" in Iraq is killing U.S. soldiers-an implausible
assertion since the insurgents and al-Qaeda are Sunnis,
while the Iranians are Shi'ites linked to parties within
the current Iraqi government. The day after the speech,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her way to the
Middle East to pull together a Sunni coalition against
Iran, asserted willingness to confront Tehran over its
"destabilizing behavior." And by Jan. 15, the
administration's supposed realist, Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates, had jumped on the scrum, declaring that Iran
has been "very negative," while admitting for the first
time that the naval buildup in the Persian Gulf was
designed to threaten Iran and "reassure allies." White
House sources report that the National Security Council
has already considered likely consequences of a war with
Iran, and an assessment of Tehran's ability to retaliate
concluded that the resulting damage to American facilities
and interests worldwide would be "acceptable."

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow dismissed as "urban
legend" the notion that war preparations are underway. But
he persuaded neither a public turned skeptical by the Iraq
invasion nor certain congressional Democrats. The Jan. 11
Special Forces raid on the Iranian Consulate in the Kurdish
Iraqi city of Irbil, a calculated provocation personally
authorized by President Bush and evidently representative
of the more muscular new policy, fueled questions about
the administration's intentions. Sen. James Webb asked
Secretary Rice, "Is it the position of this administration
that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action
against Iran in the absence of a direct threat without
congressional approval?" She ducked the question.
Similarly, on ABC's "This Week," National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley would not say whether he agrees with
senators who insist that the president needs congressional
approval for an attack. Other administration sources assert
that Bush believes he could strike Iran in his capacity as
commander in chief or under his 2003 Iraq authorization.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. John D.
Rockefeller voiced his alarm: "It's Iraq again. This whole
concept of moving against Iran is bizarre."

In some sense, the war has already begun. For the past two
years, the U.S. has been conducting secret operations
inside Iran, employing Special Forces units operating out
of Afghanistan, while Pentagon-supported dissidents have
been carrying out armed raids into Iran's predominantly
Arab provinces.

A second carrier group, the USS John Stennis, is moving
toward the Persian Gulf to supplement the carrier USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower-the last time two carrier groups were
in the Gulf was during the invasion of Iraq-and a flotilla
of minesweepers accompanied by an Aegis class cruiser was
sent to the region at the end of 2006. The carrier
aircraft, useless against insurgents and terrorists in
Iraq, can only be employed in a war with Iran, while the
minesweepers would be needed to keep clear the Strait of
Hormuz for oil tankers and other shipping.

The naval presence in the region will be directed by Adm.
William Fallon, the recently appointed chief of Central
Command, replacing the uncooperative Gen. John Abizaid,
who had opposed the surge. Fallon knows little of ground
combat but a great deal about naval air operations. The
dearth of "boots on the ground" Army and Marine infantry
would be irrelevant in Iran as an assault would be
conducted from the sea and air, where the U.S. has more
than enough available resources.

Bush has also ordered Patriot missile batteries to the
region, clearly intended to defend against Iranian
ballistic missiles and airstrikes launched in a retaliatory
attack against vulnerable U.S. bases in Iraq and in Kuwait
and against the region's oil fields.

Once the military and naval resources arrive at the end of
February, the precise timing for a strike would depend on
political and economic factors, as well as suitable weather
conditions permitting aerial and satellite reconnaissance.
But maintaining two carrier groups and support vessels in
the Persian Gulf is hugely expensive, so the administration
will be motivated to use them once all the components for
an attack are in place. A Kuwaiti newspaper, relying on
confidential sources in the Emirate's government, predicts
that the attack will take place before the first week of
April, when Tony Blair steps down as British prime
minister, under the assumption that he will provide
political cover as well as material support in the form of
minesweepers. As Kuwait's government, host to the sprawling
U.S. base Camp Doha and a prime target for Iranian
retaliation, has been in the loop for planning vis-à-vis
Iran, the suggested date has a high level of credibility.

As for casus belli, an attack might be preceded by a Gulf
of Tonkin type incident in which Iran fires on or otherwise
interferes with a U.S. warship. As two carrier groups will
basically fill the shallow and narrow waters of the Persian
Gulf, the potential for an incident is obviously very high.

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At least as significant as the military buildup is the
intensifying rhetoric surrounding the Iranian threat.
President Bush has guaranteed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert that the U.S. will defend Israel against Iran and
will not engage Tehran in negotiations. At the 2006 annual
meeting of AIPAC, the principal Israeli lobbying group,
Vice President Dick Cheney stated in his keynote address,
"We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." There
have been similar, and frequent, iterations of that theme
by Rice, Hadley, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
and, most recently, by the Undersecretary of State Nicholas
Burns addressing an audience in Israel. Those who hope that
Democrats will stop the rush to war need only note the
repeated excoriation of Iran by party leaders like Hillary
Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Charles Schumer.
Howard Dean has declared that the U.S. attack on Iraq was
directed against the "wrong enemy" while Iran is "the right
enemy." Dean's DNC, which reportedly receives more than
half of its funds from Jewish sources, would be
understandably reluctant to oppose war against Iran.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Deputy Prime
Minister Avigdor Lieberman urge an expeditious attack to
destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities-arms inspector Scott
Ritter has called the drive to attack Iran a policy "made
in Israel." And outspoken former Israeli Brigadier General
Oded Tira has called on the Israeli lobby to engage
Democratic hawks and exploit media connections to bring
about action against Iran:

President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As
an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence,
we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic
Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and U.S.
newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the
Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq
failure.

Tira joins other advocates of war with Iran in recognizing
the power of the mainstream media to prime the public for
an attack. Four separate Iran groups working within the
U.S. government-and staffed by many of the same individuals
who brought about the Iraq War-will likely preface military
action against Tehran with a series of leaked stories to
latter-day Judith Millers demonizing the designated enemy.
As with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, ideologically
driven intelligence centers relying on dubious sources
like the terrorist group Mujahadeen e Khalq have been
established at the Pentagon and elsewhere to offer alarmist
assessments of Iran.

The propagandizing effort has already begun. A late-2006
series of largely fictional Israeli-generated stories in
Rupert Murdoch's Times newspapers of London hyped the
Iranian threat. Most recently, the Times reported that
Israel is preparing for its own attack on three key Iranian
nuclear facilities. The planning reportedly includes use
of nuclear devices to eliminate deeply buried facilities,
a refinement to the story added to encourage the United
States to attack instead, as the U.S. believes it could
take out the targets without using nuclear weapons.

Other indicators suggest that an attack against Iran is
impending, if not imminent. Pentagon planners, conscious
that if attacked Iran would stir up its Shi'ite friends
in neighboring Iraq, anticipate that extra soldiers being
used in the surge might be shifted to the Iran-Iraq border
to seal it off when military operations against Tehran
start. Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who taught
strategy and military operations at the National War
College, believes that combat brigades ostensibly being
collected for the surge pacification of Baghdad might
instead be sent directly to the border with Iran. The
Department of Defense is also reported to be hiring more
Farsi speakers to train soldiers in the language-a point-
less exercise unless some level of engagement with Iran
is anticipated-while Washington contractors providing
translation services to the Pentagon are working seven
days a week on Farsi documents, seeking the "silver
bullet" linking Iran to terrorism, thus making some case
for war.

The rejection of the Iraq Study Group's suggestion that
the U.S. work diplomatically and constructively with
all parties in the Persian Gulf region provided further
evidence of the administration's intentions. Likewise,
its refusal to approach the bargaining table until Iran
agrees to abandon its nuclear energy program. That program,
monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, exists
in response to a legitimate need for electrical generating
capacity based on projections that Iran's oil resources
will soon sharply diminish and eventually be depleted. An
as yet unreleased U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on
Iran concludes that the evidence for a weapons program is
largely circumstantial and inconclusive, while the Director
of National Intelligence John Negroponte reported that
Iran is five to ten years away from having a weapon even
if it accelerates the process and no one interferes with
its development. Negroponte was predictably fired for his
unwillingness to alter the intelligence, and the NIE is
unlikely to see the light of day unless it is rewritten
to conclude that Iran is an immediate threat.

Other attempts to build bridges between Washington and
Tehran have also failed. Years of negotiations with Iran
by Britain, France, and Germany went nowhere because of
American refusal to play a part in the process, which came
very close to a comprehensive settlement on a number of
occasions. The U.S. instead chose to block agreements that
did not include complete Iranian surrender on the key issue
of its nuclear program. A series of compromises proposed by
Tehran between March 2005 and October 2006 that would have
banned nuclear-weapon production and permitted round-the-
clock complete-access inspections were rejected due to
American objections.

Iran has also reached out directly to the United States to
establish a basis for negotiations but has been rebuffed
repeatedly by an intransigent White House. In the spring
of 2006, confidential negotiations between Iran and
American Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad to help
stabilize Iraq were suspended under orders from Vice
President Cheney. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
18-page letter to President Bush in May 2006, widely
interpreted in Iran as an attempt to establish dialogue,
was summarily rejected. Bush did not even bother to read
it. Yet the overtures continued. Former Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami's September visit was a backdoor approach
for opening discussion. But Rice's State Department only
reluctantly permitted the visit, and the White House then
ignored it, failing to grasp the extended olive branch. It
is the ultimate irony that the Iraqi government, which the
U.S. is ostensibly protecting, is regularly meeting Iranian
leaders to establish a modus vivendi, while Washington
refuses to engage.

Iran is not an imminent threat and clearly doesn't want
war, while the United States can ill afford another.
But the Bush administration seems intent on toppling
Ahmadinejad. The overwhelming victory of moderates and
reformers in Iran's December election shows that the
Iranian people are peacefully working toward the same end.
But the White House, showing interest neither in dialogue
nor in letting the democratic process do its work, seems
more inclined to let bombs do the talking.
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Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in
Cannistraro Associates, an international security
consultancy.