{"id":2928,"date":"2006-08-13T08:11:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-13T15:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/13\/paving-the-way-to-war-with-iran\/"},"modified":"2006-08-13T08:11:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-13T15:11:03","slug":"paving-the-way-to-war-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/13\/paving-the-way-to-war-with-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Paving the Way to War with Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s war on Lebanon is a warm-up for the U.S. war on Iran.<\/p>\n

That is the message of Seymour Hersh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest superb article<\/a><\/strong> in the New Yorker. Hersh reveals that the Bush administration was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153closely involved\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in planning Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attacks on Lebanon.\u00c2\u00a0 A former senior intelligence official informed Hersh that, beginning this Spring, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153planners from the U.S. Air Force\u00e2\u20ac\u201dunder pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear facilities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbegan consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Hersh notes:
\nThe surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Israel is following its own agenda.\u00c2\u00a0 But a Pentagon consultant informed Hersh that the Bush White House \u00e2\u20ac\u0153has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a pre\u00c3\u00abmptive blow against Hezbollah.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Hezbollah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capture of two Israeli soldiers last month provided the pretext for a massive bombing campaign than had been planned long before.<\/p>\n

The Bush team is chomping at the bit to use the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lessons\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s war for its own on Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 A former intelligence officer told Hersh: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We told Israel, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLook, if you guys have to go, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Bush team apparently believes that they are entitled to create a few more catastrophes before Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time runs out.<\/p>\n

Hersh highlights the harebrained notion underlying the Israeli bombing campaign: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has backfired massively.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And yet the Bush administration appears to still believe that a U.S. bombing campaign in Iran would turn the Iranian people against the Iranian government.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that Bush or Cheney have yet recognized any drawbacks, political or otherwise, from sending Americans off to die for damnfool ideas. [Comments \/ criticisms welcome – post at http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s war on Lebanon is a warm-up for the U.S. war on Iran. That is the message of Seymour Hersh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest superb article in the New Yorker. Hersh reveals that the Bush administration was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153closely involved\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in planning Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attacks on Lebanon.\u00c2\u00a0 A former senior intelligence official informed Hersh that, beginning this Spring, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153planners from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}