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US Forces in Iran Pinpointing Strike Targets : Report
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Former intelligence officials told Hersh that the “Iranian campaign” is next.
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WASHINGTON,
January 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – American Commandoes
have been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least
since last summer, a leading US magazine revealed Monday, January 17.
“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,” wrote The New Yorker’s award-winning
reporter Seymour Hersh.
“The
civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of
the military infrastructure as possible,” he quoted a US
administration consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying.
A
former high-level intelligence official told the acclaimed journalist
that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and
is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and
technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts.
The
force has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan, in cooperation
with recruited local agents and Pakistani intelligence services,
secreting remote detection devices capable of sampling the atmosphere
for radioactive and nuclear emissions.
“We’re
not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers
here,” the intelligence source told Hersh, who last year exposed the
extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
“They’ve
already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do
anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”
“Iranian
Campaign”
The
former intelligence official told The New Yorker that the
“Iranian campaign” is next on the agenda of the administration of
wartime US President George W. Bush.
“This
is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush
Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” he said.
“Next,
we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the
bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last
hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we
won the war on terrorism.”
The
intelligence source said that the Americans have learned some lessons
from the invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq.
“We’re
not going to rely on agency pissants. No loose ends, and that’s why
the CIA is out of there.”
The
administration adviser told Hersh that the CIA would continue to be
downgraded and serve as “facilitators” of policy emanating from Bush
and Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Secretary
of State Colin Powell acknowledged in April that the pre-war information
he gave the UN to justify the Iraq invasion was
not “solid”, heaping the blame on the intelligence
community.
Bombing
Scenario
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A library photo of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor.
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One
Western diplomat told The New Yorker that the Europeans were in a
“lose-lose position” as long as the US refused to get involved in
seeking a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear file issue.
He
said that the alternative would be to go to the UN Security Council, but
any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or
Russia.
“[And
then] The United Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say,
‘The only solution is to bomb.’”
A
senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreed.
“The
neocons (neoconservatives) say negotiations are a bad deal. And the only
thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be
whacked,” he told Hersh.
In
a major breakthrough in the standoff, the IAEA confirmed Monday,
November 29, that Tehran has
suspended all uranium enrichment activities.
The
IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors adopted a British-French-German
draft resolution which was relatively uncritical of Iran and praised the
Islamic Republic for suspending uranium enrichment as a
confidence-building measure.
Covert
Operations
Hersh
further revealed that Bush has signed a series of executive orders
authorizing Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against
suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten countries in the Middle
East and South Asia.
The
decrees widen the powers of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
relieve him from the legal restrictions and CIA laws.
All
CIA covert activities overseas must be authorized by a presidential
finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Citing
two former CIA clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip
Giraldi, The New Yorker’s reporter said that a presidential
finding permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally” in a number
of friendly countries, where there is a perception of a clear and
evident terrorist threat.
The
two former officers listed some of the countries - Algeria, Sudan,
Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia.
Rumsfeld
and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of
Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. Boykin,
will be part of the chain of command for the new covert operations.
Boykin
triggered controversy in 2003 when, speaking about a Somali Muslim
fighter, he said: “My God
was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his
was an idol.”
Inaccurate
The
White House dismissed Hersh’s report as being “riddled with
inaccuracies.”
“I
don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on
fact,” Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President Bush, told CNN's “Late
Edition.”
But
he said that Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken
seriously.
“We
obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about
Iran. No president, at any juncture in history, has ever taken military
options off the table,” Bartlett added.
The
United States, and its Mideast alley Israel, accuse Iran of secretly
trying to develop nuclear weapons but Tehran denies
the accusation, saying it merely wants to produce fuel to
generate nuclear energy.
In
1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor.
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