In the white desert sands of New Mexico, close to where the first atom bomb was detonated, America’s biggest conventional weapon was tested last spring. A 30,000lb massive ordnance penetrator, known as the Big Blu or the Mother of All Bombs, was placed inside a tunnel to test its explosive power against hard, deeply buried bunkers and tunnels designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction.
The monster bunker-buster was so heavy, it could not fly. But the blast was a huge success, rippling through the tunnels and destroying everything in its wake.
Today the Big Blu might as well have “Tehran” written on its side in the same way that the Iranians love to parade missiles marked “Tel Aviv”. Tucked away in an emergency defence spending request, the US air force has just asked Congress for $88m to equip B2 stealth bombers, the black warriors of the skies, with racks strong enough carry the huge bomb.
This was no casual request, but an “urgent operational need from theatre commanders”, according to the air force. Even a Republican congressman fretted: “This whole thing . . . reminds me of the movie Dr Strangelove.”
In the 1964 film starring Peter Sellers, a demented general launches a unilateral strike on the Soviet Union, convinced it is already stealthily undermining America. Global nuclear destruction ensues. THE end result might not be so grave, but are America’s B2s being readied for an attack on Iran? It would fit in neatly with President George W Bush’s recent warning about the dangers of a third world war, should Iran be allowed to obtain the “knowledge to make a nuclear weapon”.
Iran-watchers noted with interest the use of the word knowledge. Bush, it appeared, was determined to act well before the mullahs got anywhere close to an actual bomb.
Dick Cheney, the vice-president, piled on the pressure last week, calling Iran a “growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East” and vowing “serious consequences” if it persisted with its nuclear programme.
A senior Pentagon source, who remembers the growing drumbeat of war before the invasion of Iraq, believes Bush is preparing for military action before he leaves office in January 2009. “This is for real now. I think he is signalling he is going to do it,” he said.
But nobody is sure whether the president really will add a risky third front to the Afghan and Iraq wars that are already overstretching US forces.
“If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said yes,” said John Bolton, the hawkish former US ambassador to the United Nations. “Today I’d say, I don’t know.”
It is clear the military machinery for an attack is being put into place. More than 1,000 targets have been identified for a potential air blitz against Iran’s nuclear facilities, air defences and Revolutionary Guard bases, despite claims last week by Robert Gates, the defence secretary, that the planning was merely “routine”.
As for the urgent request for the Big Blu, it has “bombing Iran written all over it”, said John Pike, a defence expert at the think tank Globalsecurity.org.
Iran’s uranium enrichment halls at Natanz, about 150 miles south of Tehran, are buried 75ft deep, while there are believed to be nuclear sites buried under granite mountains in tunnels that are like the long roots of a tree. It is not enough to drop a smart bomb down a shaft – it has to have the capacity to blast sideways with massive force.
The question of timing is becoming ever more urgent, now that Bush has fewer than 15 months left in the White House. Confidants say he is determined not to bequeath the problem of a nuclear Iran to his successor and regards it as an important part of his legacy.
Although intelligence estimates vary as to when Iran will achieve the know-how for a bomb, the French government recently received a memo from the International Atomic Energy Agency stating that Iran will be ready to run almost 3,000 cen-trifuges in 18 cascades by the end of this month, in defiance of a UN ban on uranium enrichment. It is enough, say scientists, to produce one bomb within a year. If that is the case, the hour for action may soon be upon us.
Against this backdrop, the US public is growing acclimatised to the threat of war. As the saying in Washington goes, “Iran is the new Iraq”. While controversy over the Iraq war is fading in intensity – even for the 2008 presidential candidates – the problem of a nuclear Iran is rapidly moving up the political agenda.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, was in Washington last week for talks with Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state. Shortly before heading back to Britain, he declared that, for the first time, Iraq was not “the top item” for discussion, a sign of the growing stability and success of the American troop surge.
According to a spokesman for US armed forces chiefs, there was not a single military casualty last week – Iraqi or American – in Anbar, formerly a hotbed of trouble.
In so far as Iraq is presented as a threat to international security, it is increasingly in connection to growing friction with Iran.
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, stated baldly last month that America was already fighting a proxy war with Iran, which is arming the sectarian militias and smuggling in weapons and sophisticated roadside bombs designed to kill American soldiers.
The US is building a forward base in Iraq called Combat Outpost Shocker just five miles from the Iranian border as a sign of its new aggressiveness against interference from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime.
Bush’s decision to approve tough unilateral sanctions against Iran last week and to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organisation and proliferator of weapons of mass destruction marks a further escalation of the war of words and deeds with Tehran.
After Miliband was briefed on the move during his visit to Washington, Gordon Brown batted for America in the House of Commons by promising Britain would lead the effort to secure a tough sanctions resolution against Iran at the United Nations security council.
All the evidence appears to point in the direction of increasing diplomatic and military hostilities. As Robert Byrd, a Democrat member of the Senate armed services committee, put it, the action by the Bush administration “not only echoes the chest-pounding rhetoric” which preceded the invasion of Iraq in 2003, “but also raises the spectre of an intensified effort to make the case for an invasion of Iran”.
Yet a Downing street source said: “They are not at that stage.”
Could it all be an elaborate game of “chicken”, using the growing threat of an attack to force Ahmadinejad to back down on his nuclear ambitions?
Nick Burns, the State Department’s leading negotiator on Iran, said last week the imposition of new sanctions merely “supports the diplomacy and in no way, shape or form does it anticipate the use of force”.
Even the urgent request to fund the Big Blu may not be all that it seems. “We could be trying to turn up the volume to get the ayatollahs to pay attention,” said Pike. “It could be part of the diplomatic pressure to see if the Iranians will move voluntarily.”
If Ahmadinejad is to be believed, nothing will deter Iran from pursuing its nuclear programme, which he claims is for peaceful energy purposes while at the same time boasting that Israel will one day be wiped off the map.
In a surprise announcement, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, was replaced by Saeed Jalili, a hardliner close to the president. Confusingly, however, Larijani still appeared to lead last week’s talks in Rome with Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief.
“I found the same Larijani and he had the role of chief negotiator,” said Solana. It suggests a power struggle over the extent to which Iran can continue to thwart the West.
Until recently, most Iranians discounted the threat of an attack on the grounds that America had its hands full with Iraq, but their mood is altering. At gatherings in Tehran, the talk has turned to possible American bombing raids.
Ali Nazeri, 35, a shopkeeper in the Iranian capital, said: “The government says the Americans cannot do a damn thing, but they are also changing the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard and saying they will fire thousands of missiles at US targets within the first few minutes of a confrontation. I think it is a matter of putting two and two together and coming to the conclusion that war is very likely.”
In the wider Middle East, the conviction is growing that America is determined to launch an attack. Some well-placed Israeli and Palestinian sources suggest that next month’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, near Washington, could be the catapult for an ambitious plan to establish a Palestinian state and disarm Iran.
“The idea is to tie Palestine to Iran,” said an Israeli Middle East expert. “Israel will be obliged to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state within a short and firm timetable and the US administration will guarantee that the Iranian nuclear issue will be solved before Bush leaves office.”
If Israel is prepared to move towards the creation of a Palestinian state, the hope is that Sunni Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not protest too loudly about a US attack on Iran, given their own private fears about the impact of a nuclear Iran on the balance of power in the region.
As with the Israeli bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear site last month, they could simply stay mum. In theory, Bush could thus broker a settlement in the Middle East, while denuclearising Iran – a tempting legacy.
But such a “grand bargain” is far too delicate and complicated to be attempted, according to Washington sources, even if it provides a subtext for some of the negotiations. “We’re not smart enough for that,” Bolton said bluntly.
The most convincing explanation for the sabre-rattling is that Bush has embarked on a course of action that may lead to war, but there are many stages to pass, including the imposition of tougher sanctions, before he concludes a military strike on Iran is worth the risk. As his generals have warned, it could unleash a new round of terrorism, destabilise Iraq and send oil prices way above the $100-a-barrel mark.
If muscular diplomacy can stop the mullahs, so much the better. If it cannot, Bush may decide to launch an attack as one of the final acts of his presidency. The preparations are under way, but only he knows if he will make that fateful decision.
Additional reporting: Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv
The pros and cons of launching an attack on Iran
The arguments for
- Protects Israel from a potential nuclear holocaust. President Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel will be wiped off the map
- Reduces the risk to the West of a “dirty” bomb in big cities. Iran is a sponsor of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah
- Forestalls the development of Iranian long-range nuclear missiles aimed at Europe and America
- Prevents Iran from intimidating or attacking its Sunni Arab neighbours
- Creates the space for potential regime change and installation of a pro-western government in Tehran
The arguments against
- Sets back Iran’s nuclear ambitions by only a few years. US intelligence has not mapped out all the potential Iranian nuclear sites
- Unleashes a wave of attacks on Israel and the West by Hezbollah and other terrorist proxy groups Closes the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel and possibly creating a global economic crisis
- Destabilises Iraq, plunging the country into a new round of terror, creating further regional instability
- Creates a global public relations disaster. Intensifies antiAmericanism which critics argue that President Bush has made worse. Fosters a new generation of fundamentalist militants and terrorists
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2753953.ece
JPTF 28/10/2007
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