In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. \u201cShia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,\u201d Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. \u201cThe attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.\u201d He then concluded, to applause, \u201cI have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran\u2019s murderous activities.\u201d
\nThe President\u2019s position, and its corollary\u2014that, if many of America\u2019s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians\u2014have 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\u2019s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on \u201csurgical\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British \u201cwere on board.\u201d At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.<\/p>\n
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, \u201cBill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.\u201d The former intelligence official added, \u201cThere is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, \u2018You can\u2019t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we\u2019re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.\u2019 But Cheney doesn\u2019t give a rat\u2019s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, \u201cThe President has made it clear that the United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution with respect to Iran. The State Department is working diligently along with the international community to address our broad range of concerns.\u201d (The White House declined to comment.)<\/p>\n
I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the \u201cexecute order\u201d that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, \u201cThe C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re moving everybody to the Iran desk,\u201d one recently retired C.I.A. official said. \u201cThey\u2019re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It\u2019s just like the fall of 2002\u201d\u2014the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, \u201cThe guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.\u201d<\/p>\n
That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House\u2019s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack \u201cby intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a speech at the United Nations last week, Iran\u2019s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was defiant. He referred to America as an \u201caggressor\u201d state, and said, \u201cHow can the incompetents who cannot even manage and control themselves rule humanity and arrange its affairs? Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of God.\u201d (The day before, at Columbia, he suggested that the facts of the Holocaust still needed to be determined.)<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot depends on how stupid the Iranians will be,\u201d Brzezinski told me. \u201cWill they cool off Ahmadinejad and tone down their language?\u201d The Bush Administration, by charging that Iran was interfering in Iraq, was aiming \u201cto paint it as \u2018We\u2019re responding to what is an intolerable situation,\u2019 \u201d Brzezinski said. \u201cThis time, unlike the attack in Iraq, we\u2019re going to play the victim. The name of our game seems to be to get the Iranians to overplay their hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, in his report to Congress in September, buttressed the Administration\u2019s case against Iran. \u201cNone of us, earlier this year, appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq\u2019s leaders all now have greater concern,\u201d he said. Iran, Petraeus said, was fighting \u201ca proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam Hussein\u2019s rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran; last week, at the Council on Foreign Relations, Maliki said, according to the Washington Post, that Iraq\u2019s relations with the Iranians had \u201cimproved to the point that they are not interfering in our internal affairs.\u201d Iran is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any \u201cproxy war\u201d could be as much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush Administration\u2019s strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene.<\/p>\n
Vali Nasr, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, who is an expert on Iran and Shiism, told me, \u201cBetween 2003 and 2006, the Iranians thought they were closest to the United States on the issue of Iraq.\u201d The Iraqi Shia religious leadership encouraged Shiites to avoid confrontation with American soldiers and to participate in elections\u2014believing that a one-man, one-vote election process could only result in a Shia-dominated government. Initially, the insurgency was mainly Sunni, especially Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Nasr told me that Iran\u2019s policy since 2003 has been to provide funding, arms, and aid to several Shiite factions\u2014including some in Maliki\u2019s coalition. The problem, Nasr said, is that \u201conce you put the arms on the ground you cannot control how they\u2019re used later.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Shiite view, the White House \u201conly looks at Iran\u2019s ties to Iraq in terms of security,\u201d Nasr said. \u201cLast year, over one million Iranians travelled to Iraq on pilgrimages, and there is more than a billion dollars a year in trading between the two countries. But the Americans act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of those who support the President\u2019s policy argue that Iran poses an imminent threat. In a recent essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz depicted President Ahmadinejad as a revolutionary, \u201clike Hitler . . . whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it . . . with a new order dominated by Iran. . . . [T]he plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force.\u201d Podhoretz concluded, \u201cI pray with all my heart\u201d that President Bush \u201cwill find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel.\u201d Podhoretz recently told politico.com that he had met with the President for about forty-five minutes to urge him to take military action against Iran, and believed that \u201cBush is going to hit\u201d Iran before leaving office. (Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, is a strong backer of Rudolph Giuliani\u2019s Presidential campaign, and his son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, is a senior adviser to President Bush on national security.)<\/p>\n
In early August, Army Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Times about an increase in attacks involving explosively formed penetrators, a type of lethal bomb that discharges a semi-molten copper slug that can rip through the armor of Humvees. The Times reported that U.S. intelligence and technical analyses indicated that Shiite militias had obtained the bombs from Iran. Odierno said that Iranians had been \u201csurging support\u201d over the past three or four months.<\/p>\n
Questions remain, however, about the provenance of weapons in Iraq, especially given the rampant black market in arms. David Kay, a former C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the aftermath of both Iraq wars, by \u201cthe huge amounts of arms\u201d it found circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded American cluster bombs. Arms had also been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq who had been persecuted by the Baath Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Petraeus went way beyond what Iran is doing inside Iraq today,\u201d Kay said. \u201cWhen the White House started its anti-Iran campaign, six months ago, I thought it was all craziness. Now it does look like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats\u2014more a \u2018shot across the bow\u2019 sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the good stuff\u2014the anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another element of the Administration\u2019s case against Iran is the presence of Iranian agents in Iraq. General Petraeus, testifying before Congress, said that a commando faction of the Revolutionary Guards was seeking to turn its allies inside Iraq into a \u201cHezbollah-like force to serve its interests.\u201d In August, Army Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, told reporters in Baghdad that his troops were tracking some fifty Iranian men sent by the Revolutionary Guards who were training Shiite insurgents south of Baghdad. \u201cWe know they\u2019re here and we target them as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me that \u201cthere are a lot of Iranians at any time inside Iraq, including those doing intelligence work and those doing humanitarian missions. It would be prudent for the Administration to produce more evidence of direct military training\u2014or produce fighters captured in Iraq who had been trained in Iran.\u201d He added, \u201cIt will be important for the Iraqi government to be able to state that they were unaware of this activity\u201d; otherwise, given the intense relationship between the Iraqi Shiite leadership and Tehran, the Iranians could say that \u201cthey had been asked by the Iraqi government to train these people.\u201d (In late August, American troops raided a Baghdad hotel and arrested a group of Iranians. They were a delegation from Iran\u2019s energy ministry, and had been invited to Iraq by the Maliki government; they were later released.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have to be prepared to show the evidence,\u201d Clawson said. Adding to the complexity, he said, is a question that seems almost counterintuitive: \u201cWhat is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack could put a strain on the Iraqi government.\u201d<\/p>\n
A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. \u201cWe know that the Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities,\u201d he said, \u201cand we believe they will react asymmetrically\u2014hitting targets in Europe and in Latin America.\u201d There is also specific intelligence suggesting that Iran will be aided in these attacks by Hezbollah. \u201cHezbollah is capable, and they can do it,\u201d the diplomat said.<\/p>\n
In interviews with current and former officials, there were repeated complaints about the paucity of reliable information. A former high-level C.I.A. official said that the intelligence about who is doing what inside Iran \u201cis so thin that nobody even wants his name on it. This is the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The difficulty of determining who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq can be seen in Basra, in the Shiite south, where British forces had earlier presided over a relatively secure area. Over the course of this year, however, the region became increasingly ungovernable, and by fall the British had retreated to fixed bases. A European official who has access to current intelligence told me that \u201cthere is a firm belief inside the American and U.K. intelligence community that Iran is supporting many of the groups in southern Iraq that are responsible for the deaths of British and American soldiers. Weapons and money are getting in from Iran. They have been able to penetrate many groups\u201d\u2014primarily the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.<\/p>\n
A June, 2007, report by the International Crisis Group found, however, that Basra\u2019s renewed instability was mainly the result of \u201cthe systematic abuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias.\u201d The report added that leading Iraqi politicians and officials \u201croutinely invoke the threat of outside interference\u201d\u2014from bordering Iran\u2014\u201cto justify their behavior or evade responsibility for their failures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, before the surge in U.S. troops, the American command in Baghdad changed what had been a confrontational policy in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland (and the base of the Baathist regime), and began working with the Sunni tribes, including some tied to the insurgency. Tribal leaders are now getting combat support as well as money, intelligence, and arms, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Empowering Sunni forces may undermine efforts toward national reconciliation, however. Already, tens of thousands of Shiites have fled Anbar Province, many to Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, while Sunnis have been forced from their homes in Shiite communities. Vali Nasr, of Tufts, called the internal displacement of communities in Iraq a form of \u201cethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American policy of supporting the Sunnis in western Iraq is making the Shia leadership very nervous,\u201d Nasr said. \u201cThe White House makes it seem as if the Shia were afraid only of Al Qaeda\u2014but they are afraid of the Sunni tribesmen we are arming. The Shia attitude is \u2018So what if you\u2019re getting rid of Al Qaeda?\u2019 The problem of Sunni resistance is still there. The Americans believe they can distinguish between good and bad insurgents, but the Shia don\u2019t share that distinction. For the Shia, they are all one adversary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nasr went on, \u201cThe United States is trying to fight on all sides\u2014Sunni and Shia\u2014and be friends with all sides.\u201d In the Shiite view, \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the United States cannot bring security to Iraq, because it is not doing everything necessary to bring stability. If they did, they would talk to anybody to achieve it\u2014even Iran and Syria,\u201d Nasr said. (Such engagement was a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group.) \u201cAmerica cannot bring stability in Iraq by fighting Iran in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cCheney\u2019s option is now for a fast in and out\u2014for surgical strikes,\u201d the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. \u201cThe Navy\u2019s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They\u2019ve got everything they need\u2014even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.\u201d There are also plans to hit Iran\u2019s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get a path in and a path out,\u201d the former official said.<\/p>\n
A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called \u201cshort, sharp incursions\u201d by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, \u201cCheney is devoted to this, no question.\u201d<\/p>\n
A limited bombing attack of this sort \u201conly makes sense if the intelligence is good,\u201d the consultant said. If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing \u201cwill start as limited, but then there will be an \u2018escalation special.\u2019 Planners will say that we have to deal with Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the cue ball one time and have all the balls go in the pocket. But add-ons are always there in strike planning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The surgical-strike plan has been shared with some of America\u2019s allies, who have had mixed reactions to it. Israel\u2019s military and political leaders were alarmed, believing, the consultant said, that it didn\u2019t sufficiently target Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. The White House has been reassuring the Israeli government, the former senior official told me, that the more limited target list would still serve the goal of counter-proliferation by decapitating the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, who are believed to have direct control over the nuclear-research program. \u201cOur theory is that if we do the attacks as planned it will accomplish two things,\u201d the former senior official said.<\/p>\n
An Israeli official said, \u201cOur main focus has been the Iranian nuclear facilities, not because other things aren\u2019t important. We\u2019ve worked on missile technology and terrorism, but we see the Iranian nuclear issue as one that cuts across everything.\u201d Iran, he added, does not need to develop an actual warhead to be a threat. \u201cOur problems begin when they learn and master the nuclear fuel cycle and when they have the nuclear materials,\u201d he said. There was, for example, the possibility of a \u201cdirty bomb,\u201d or of Iran\u2019s passing materials to terrorist groups. \u201cThere is still time for diplomacy to have an impact, but not a lot,\u201d the Israeli official said. \u201cWe believe the technological timetable is moving faster than the diplomatic timetable. And if diplomacy doesn\u2019t work, as they say, all options are on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bombing plan has had its most positive reception from the newly elected government of Britain\u2019s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. A senior European official told me, \u201cThe British perception is that the Iranians are not making the progress they want to see in their nuclear-enrichment processing. All the intelligence community agree that Iran is providing critical assistance, training, and technology to a surprising number of terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, through Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Israel\/Palestine, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were four possible responses to this Iranian activity, the European official said: to do nothing (\u201cThere would be no retaliation to the Iranians for their attacks; this would be sending the wrong signal\u201d); to publicize the Iranian actions (\u201cThere is one great difficulty with this option\u2014the widespread lack of faith in American intelligence assessments\u201d); to attack the Iranians operating inside Iraq (\u201cWe\u2019ve been taking action since last December, and it does have an effect\u201d); or, finally, to attack inside Iran.<\/p>\n
The European official continued, \u201cA major air strike against Iran could well lead to a rallying around the flag there, but a very careful targeting of terrorist training camps might not.\u201d His view, he said, was that \u201conce the Iranians get a bloody nose they rethink things.\u201d For example, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Larijani, two of Iran\u2019s most influential political figures, \u201cmight go to the Supreme Leader and say, \u2018The hard-line policies have got us into this mess. We must change our approach for the sake of the regime.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
A retired American four-star general with close ties to the British military told me that there was another reason for Britain\u2019s interest\u2014shame over the failure of the Royal Navy to protect the sailors and Royal Marines who were seized by Iran on March 23rd, in the Persian Gulf. \u201cThe professional guys are saying that British honor is at stake, and if there\u2019s another event like that in the water off Iran the British will hit back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The revised bombing plan \u201ccould work\u2014if it\u2019s in response to an Iranian attack,\u201d the retired four-star general said. \u201cThe British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, \u2018Let\u2019s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.\u2019 It\u2019s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.\u201d There is, he added, \u201ca widespread belief in London that Tony Blair\u2019s government was sold a bill of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So if somebody comes into Gordon Brown\u2019s office and says, \u2018We have this intelligence from America,\u2019 Brown will ask, \u2018Where did it come from? Have we verified it?\u2019 The burden of proof is high.\u201d<\/p>\n
The French government shares the Administration\u2019s sense of urgency about Iran\u2019s nuclear program, and believes that Iran will be able to produce a warhead within two years. France\u2019s newly elected President, Nicolas Sarkozy, created a stir in late August when he warned that Iran could be attacked if it did not halt is nuclear program. Nonetheless, France has indicated to the White House that it has doubts about a limited strike, the former senior intelligence official told me. Many in the French government have concluded that the Bush Administration has exaggerated the extent of Iranian meddling inside Iraq; they believe, according to a European diplomat, that \u201cthe American problems in Iraq are due to their own mistakes, and now the Americans are trying to show some teeth. An American bombing will show only that the Bush Administration has its own agenda toward Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
A European intelligence official made a similar point. \u201cIf you attack Iran,\u201d he told me, \u201cand do not label it as being against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, it will strengthen the regime, and help to make the Islamic air in the Middle East thicker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmadinejad, in his speech at the United Nations, said that Iran considered the dispute over its nuclear program \u201cclosed.\u201d Iran would deal with it only through the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, and had decided to \u201cdisregard unlawful and political impositions of the arrogant powers.\u201d He added, in a press conference after the speech, \u201cthe decisions of the United States and France are not important.\u201d<\/p>\n
The director general of the I.A.E.A., Mohamed ElBaradei, has for years been in an often bitter public dispute with the Bush Administration; the agency\u2019s most recent report found that Iran was far less proficient in enriching uranium than expected. A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based, said, \u201cThe Iranians are years away from making a bomb, as ElBaradei has said all along. Running three thousand centrifuges does not make a bomb.\u201d The diplomat added, referring to hawks in the Bush Administration, \u201cThey don\u2019t like ElBaradei, because they are in a state of denial. And now their negotiating policy has failed, and Iran is still enriching uranium and still making progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The diplomat expressed the bitterness that has marked the I.A.E.A.\u2019s dealings with the Bush Administration since the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. \u201cThe White House\u2019s claims were all a pack of lies, and Mohamed is dismissive of those lies,\u201d the diplomat said.<\/p>\n
Hans Blix, a former head of the I.A.E.A., questioned the Bush Administration\u2019s commitment to diplomacy. \u201cThere are important cards that Washington could play; instead, they have three aircraft carriers sitting in the Persian Gulf,\u201d he said. Speaking of Iran\u2019s role in Iraq, Blix added, \u201cMy impression is that the United States has been trying to push up the accusations against Iran as a basis for a possible attack\u2014as an excuse for jumping on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack. \u201cThey want to hurt us,\u201d he said, \u201cbut, with the will of God, they won\u2019t be able to do it.\u201d According to a former State Department adviser on Iran, the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former adviser said, \u201cThey\u2019ve been trying to convey to the United States that \u2018We can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.\u2019 \u201d Instead, the Iranians are preparing for an American attack.<\/p>\n
The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. \u201cThe Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security,\u201d the adviser said. \u201cThey are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship\u2014to signal the Americans that they can get close to them.\u201d (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull\u2019s-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.)<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, \u2018Uncle Sam is here! We\u2019d better stand down\u2019? \u201d the former senior intelligence official said. \u201cThe reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130 Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130 had come from Iran\u2014especially since SA-7s are available through black-market arms dealers.<\/p>\n
Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: \u201cThe Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incident\u2014in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.\u201d The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.<\/p>\n
The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence \u201cwas worried\u201d about passing the information along. \u201cThe Brits don\u2019t trust the Iranians,\u201d the retired general said, \u201cbut they also don\u2019t trust Bush and Cheney.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThey\u2019re moving everybody to the Iran desk,\u201d one recently retired C.I.A. official said. \u201cThey\u2019re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It\u2019s just like the fall of 2002\u201d\u2014the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, \u201cThe guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.\u201d Continue reading