Pentagon Official Warns of Israeli Attack on Iran
U.S. Offical Sees Two 'Red Lines' That Could Prompt Strike
BY JONATHAN KARL
WASHINGTON, June 30, 2008
Senior Pentagon officials are concerned that Israel could carry out an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of the year, an action that would have enormous security and economic repercussions for the United States and the rest of the world.
A senior defense official told ABC News there is an "increasing likelihood" that Israel will carry out such an attack, a move that likely would prompt Iranian retaliation against, not just Israel, but against the United States as well.
The official identified two "red lines" that could trigger an Israeli offensive. The first is tied to when Iran's Natanz nuclear facility produces enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. According to the latest U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments, that is likely to happen sometime in 2009, and could happen by the end of this year.
"The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that point," the official said. "We are in the window of vulnerability."
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The second red line is connected to when Iran acquires the SA-20 air defense system it is buying from Russia. The Israelis may want to strike before that system -- which would make an attack much more difficult -- is put in place.
Some Pentagon officials also worry that Israel may be determined to attack before a new U.S. president, who may be less supportive, is sworn in next January.
Pentagon officials believe the massive Israeli air force exercise in early June, first reported by the New York Times, was done to prepare for a possible attack. A senior official called it "not a rehearsal, but basic, fundamental training" required to launch an operation against Iran.
"The Israeli air force has already conducted the basic exercise necessary to tell their senior leadership, 'We have the fundamentals down.' Might they need some more training and rehearsals? Yes. But have they done the fundamentals? I think that is what we saw," the official told ABC News, adding that if Israel moves closer to military action, he expects to see more exercises like the one conducted in early June.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was in Israel over the weekend for a series of meetings with senior Israeli military officials, including, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to a military spokesman, Iran's nuclear program was "a major topic" of discussion.
Iran nuclear
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, 350 km (217 miles) south of Tehran, April 8, 2008.
The widely held view among Pentagon officials is that an Israeli attack would do only temporary damage to Iran's nuclear program, and that it would cause major problems in the region and beyond, prompting a wave of attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.
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US ‘won't allow' Iran to shut key Gulf oil route
(AFP)
30 June 2008
MANAMA - The commander of the US navy's Fifth Fleet warned on Monday that the United States will not allow Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf sea lane through which much of the world's oil is supplied.
"They will not close it... They will not be allowed to close it," Vice-Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff told a press conference in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is based.
His remarks followed comments by the chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who issued a new warning last week against any attack against his country over its controversial nuclear drive.
"It is natural that when a country is attacked it uses all of its capabilities against the enemy, and definitely our control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be one of our actions," Jafari said.
The strait between Iran and Oman is a vital conduit for energy supplies, with as much as 40 percent of the world's crude passing through the waterway from Gulf suppliers.
"Certainly if there is fighting... the scope will be extended to oil, meaning its price will increase drastically. This will deter our enemies from taking action against Iran," Jafari said.
Cosgriff said: "The latest Iranian statements are not helpful."
He insisted that that the international community will work to protect navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that any action by Iran "will not be an action against the United States but against the international community".
According to news reports, more than 100 Israeli warplanes staged a training exercise with Greece earlier this month to prepare for a possible long-distance strike and as a warning to Tehran.
But Cosgriff said he did not see "any reason for Israel to strike Iran" in the short term.
Iran has been slapped with three sets of UN sanctions over its defiance of Security Council ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment, the process which produces nuclear fuel for civilian reactors but in highly extended form can also make the fissile core for an atomic bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear ambitions extend only to generating electricity for a growing population but both Israel and the United States suspect it of trying to develop a bomb.
There have been several confrontations between Iranian and US vessels in the Gulf this year.
Iran, the OPEC oil cartel's number two producer, has said that using oil as weapon is not on its agenda -- but has also not ruled it out.
A former head of Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence agency, Shabtai Shavit, said in comments published on Sunday that the Jewish state had one year to destroy Iran's nuclear programme or face the risk of coming under nuclear attack.
Israel has the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal.
No comment from White House on Iran ops
Published: June 30, 2008 at 4:10 PM
WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) -- The White House Monday refused comment on whether U.S. President George Bush has requested funds for covert operations in Iran.
The New Yorker published a story by Seymour Hersh alleging the administration has initiated covert operations on the ground to destabilize the Iranian regime -- something denied Sunday by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker in a CNN interview.
Asked whether Bush sought $400 million for such operations to "prepare the battlefield" in Iran, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told the daily press briefing she couldn't comment.
Perino also was asked whether the election campaign was having any impact on Bush's Iran considerations and only said Bush wants to solve the Iranian issue diplomatically.
Israeli military intelligence reports Iran is preparing for an invasion and has started digging graves for the casualties.
Does Iran Have Bush Over a Barrel?
by Jim Lobe
If President George W. Bush wants to boost Republican chances of holding on to the White House and keeping Democratic gains in Congress to a minimum in the November elections, he might consider taking an attack on Iran before the end of his administration "off the table."
Of course, that's probably the last thing Bush – and his particularly belligerent vice president, Dick Cheney – will do.
But there's a little doubt that forswearing military action against Tehran should ease the upward pressure on world oil prices – which hit a historic high Monday of more than $143 per barrel before falling back to $140 – and thus offer at least some reprieve to the U.S. consumer at a time when record gasoline prices appear to be driving widespread popular dismay with the state of the U.S. economy.
"[I]f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect," wrote Michael Klare, author of a new book, Rising Power, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, in this week's Nation magazine. "[D]eclare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran."
While oil analysts say that prospects of a continuing decline in the dollar no doubt played an important role in Monday's price jump, they also pointed to this weekend's pointed reaction by the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, to recent U.S. and Israeli threats to attack Tehran's nuclear facilities, as well as his assessment that those threats should be taken seriously, as a major factor.
In addition to retaliating against any regional powers, presumably including Israel, which take part in such an attack, Jafari warned that Tehran would "definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz," after which, he added, "the oil price will rise very considerably, and this is among the factors deterring the enemies."
Indeed, even without an attack, continuing tension involving Iran's nuclear program will almost certainly contribute to a continued rise in oil prices to as high as $170 a barrel in the coming weeks and months, OPEC's president, Chakib Khelil, said during a conference in Madrid.
World oil prices have risen by nearly 50 percent since the beginning of 2008 and nearly doubled over the past year. Analysts have argued over how much of that increase is due to structural factors in the world economy – such as growing demand in middle-income countries and the depreciating dollar that would tend to make the price increase permanent – and how much is related to worries about possible supply disruptions arising from the kind of conflict that has plagued the Niger Delta region in Nigeria, terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda in the Gulf, economic or other sanctions against key oil producers, or war.
The latter risk factors, according to some analysts, could account for as much as $50 of the total current price, although most believe that the figure is about half that.
How much is due to the uncertainty about Iran is also a matter of considerable debate. Many point to the unprecedented $11 one-day spike in oil prices – from $128 to $139 a barrel – that took place June 6 after Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an Israeli attack on Tehran's nuclear facilities was "unavoidable" if international pressure did not succeed in persuading it to freeze its uranium enrichment program.
While that incident offered the most spectacular suggestion of a relationship between threats against Iran and the price of oil, most analysts believe the effect is somewhat more modest, albeit still quite real.
"I don't think it would be unreasonable to say it could be a few dollars [out of the current $140 a barrel]," Paul Saunders, an energy expert who directs the Nixon Center, told IPS.
And in congressional testimony just last week, Daniel Yergin, a longtime analyst and historian of the oil industry, observed, "You see the Iranians make a … bellicose statement, and you see the price of oil go up five or seven dollars."
That is not a new pattern, according to Klare, who said the possibility of a $100-a-barrel price first loomed nearly two years ago amid speculation during the July-August war between Israel and Hezbollah that the conflict could spread to Iran. At that time, the price hovered around $75 a barrel before falling back to just over $50 a barrel in early 2007, its lowest point in the last 18 months.
Even though the price retreated after Mofaz's remarks, events of the past 10 days have helped drive up the price to historic levels. These include the publication of a front-page New York Times article about a massive Israeli air exercise that purportedly simulated an attack on Iran, and a New Yorker article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh about a $400 million covert action program directed against Tehran; and public warnings by U.S. hawks close to Cheney's office that either the Israelis or the U.S. would attack Iran between the November elections and the inaugural of a new president in January 2009; as well as Jafari's weekend remarks.
Klare believes that the oil markets believe "there's at least a 50-percent chance that the U.S. and/or Israel will attack Iran before Bush leaves office and that Iran will retaliate [in ways] … that would push oil prices to $200 a barrel and above" which is why speculators are buying oil futures now at $140 and even $150 a barrel.
"The run-up in the price today will only encourage more speculators to get into the act, unless the administration makes clear it has no intention of attacking Iran and will force Israel to make a similar declaration, neither of which is likely to occur," he told IPS.
Meanwhile, the voting public is clearly worried about where oil prices are going. Seven out of 10 people told a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll last week that their families had suffered "financial hardship" as a result of the price increases, and more than eight in 10 blamed the administration for "not [having] done enough" to ease the impact.
According to a Pew Research Center poll taken earlier in June, three of four voters believe gas prices will be "very important" in deciding who to vote for – a larger percentage than those who cite terrorism or the Iraq war. By margins of nearly 20 percent, those same voters said they had more confidence in Democrats and Sen. Barack Obama than they did in Republicans and Sen. John McCain to deal with the issue.
That's one reason why most analysts rate the chances of an attack by either country before the election as quite low. Others accept Jafari's logic that the likely impact on oil prices before or after the elections make an attack improbable.
"I think one of the things that makes [an attack] a lot less likely is what it will actually do to the oil price," said the Nixon Center's Saunders.
(Inter Press Service)
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