This morning I was watching "G.M.A."(a day I could have caught up on some sleep,). A segment about Iran came on about Iran and enriching uranium, and the 4,000 suicide bombers that are said to ready to attack if the U.S. attacks. At the end of the segment they showed a female senator [I cant remember who she was,] who said, it's a tricky situation. On one hand we know they want to build a bomb, on the other how do we stop them with out going to war.(paraphrased) Look we know that they want Israel GONE, but they have also said, WE DON'T WANT TO BUILD A BOMB. Read on>>>
At this point in time the U.S. can not afford to attack Iran, especially by itself. Tony Blair came out and said that he will not be able to put troops forth if the attack on Iran takes place. At this moment in time Blair is in a political fight for his life, and can not risk any back lash from another debacle like Iraq.
Even with the possibility of an attack from the U.S., Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said today that he pledges that Iran will not stop enriching uranium.
"The Islamic Republic wants to continue along its path," he told reporters in Kuwait during a visit to the Gulf state.
Rafsanjani, speaking through an interpreter, said he did not believe the United States would attack Iran. "We are sure that America will not enter into such a predicament," he added. "But if (Iran) is subjected to an aggression ..., then the war will have its consequences."
Rueters
With his neighbors in the Middle East getting nervous about an appending attack, the Iranian President is doing his best to a sure them that it is not likely that an attack will take place.
"We in the Gulf are worried by Iran's nuclear program," Abdul Rahman al-Attiya, secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, told reporters in Yemen.
In Kuwait, Rafsanjani sought to ally Gulf fears, saying the nuclear program which he said was bound by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and supervised by the IAEA.
"This is a comprehensive treaty and the paths toward any breaches are blocked," he said.
With the tensions between Iran and the U.S./Israel states in the Gulf region are now have another thing to worry about, other than the stability of Iraq.
Anyone with half a brain can see that if Iran is attack by either the U.S. and, or Israel the inevitable result will be an ugly outcome. [end]
Goodman & Hersh
On the 13 of April 4 days after his article in the "New Yorker" Amy Goodman Sat down with Seymour Hersh and talked about the Middle East, and the article.
Mediachannel
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Well, talk about what you have found and written about in your piece, "The Iran Plans."
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply, as you said in the introduction. This is not wild speculation. It's simply a fact that the planning has gone beyond the contingency stage, and it's gone into what they call the operational stage, sort of an increment higher. And it's very serious planning, of course. And it's all being directed at the wish of the President of the United States And I can understand why they don't want to talk about it, but that's just the reality.
I have skipped some of the transcript, touching on what I thought was enough to get the point across. You can read the whole transcript HERE and you can Listen Here
Sy Hersh, you write in your piece about a military official who says that the military planning is premised on the belief that a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership. Can you talk more about what this defense official said?
SEYMOUR HERSH: It's a former defense official who still does a lot of highly classified stuff, so he has access and he was given a briefing or a look at what they're planning. And, you know, it's hard to know. This is a White House that's very dominated -- this kind of planning is very dominated by the Vice President's office. In that office, you have a number of people who have been long associated with what we call the neoconservative point of view, the American Enterprise Institute point of view, which is a very hard line towards the Middle East. They've been the great pushers on this idea of democracy in that area, and it's those people who I think are pushing most effectively the President and the Vice President to believe that you can -- if you bomb and if you sustain the bombing, you will humiliate the clerics, the mullahs, who run the country.
After all, as we know, the Middle East basically, oversimplifying it, but it's this culture dominated by shame. We operate out of guilt here in the West. And shaming them will make them vulnerable to the masses. And there's no question, by the way, the masses in Iran, most of them, it's fair to say that a great large percent of them are very secular. They're all good Muslims, but they're secular. They're not interested in religious leadership. So there is a tension. And that was the thought: Bomb them, and there will be an overthrow, and you'll have a democratic regime that, you know, can dance happily with the democratic regime the President thinks is going to emerge out of Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: And you quote further this defense official, who talked about the belief that the Bush administration has of humiliating the religious leadership, as saying, "I was shocked when I heard it and asked myself, `What are they smoking?'"
SEYMOUR HERSH: That's what he said.
Later on in the interview Ms. Goodman ask if Hersh sees a parallel to the Iraq invasion.
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest in Washington D.C. is Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter with The New Yorker magazine. His latest article is called "The Iran Plans: How Far Will the White House Go?" In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Sy, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and President Bush were at Camp David. They held a news conference, and they said that the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had a report that said that Iraq was six months away from building nuclear weapons. And President Bush said I don't know how much more evidence we need. Well, it turned out any evidence would have helped, that the I.A.E.A. did not have such a report. Do you see parallels here with Iran?
SEYMOUR HERSH: How can you not? You know, what's interesting about that I.A.E.A. issue is that they were -- as you know, they had inspectors there until 1968, late `68. And in late '67, the I.A.E.A. published an extensive analysis of the Iranian nuclear complex and basically said nothing - nada - there, I mean, categorical. That's why I was very - because it's a long -- I happen to be working, doing a lot of reporting on what was going on in the U.N. then with the UNSCOM, it was called, the U.N. inspection process. So I had read that report. So, anybody reading that report would have known there was nothing there.
You do have a lot of parallels, because right now it's been taken away from the I.A.E.A., I must say to the disappointment and probably anger, definitely anger, of the leadership there, because at least the I.A.E.A. has inspectors in some legal right to be inside Iran right now. And they've taken it to the U.N., where there's, you know -- are there going to be sanctions or not? I mean, I don't know what kind of economic sanctions you can put on a country that puts out four million barrels of oil a day, and they're swimming in U.S. dollars. And, of course, everybody knows inside, all of the people involved know, that Russia and China will never go along. It's almost inconceivable they will go along with sanctions. China is one of the recipients of oil. Russia does a lot of business there. So, basically you've put yourself in a situation where you've got a dead end. And you know it's going to be a dead end, at least you can anticipate. It could change. Something could happen, but at this point, it's a dead end. And so, the parallel is obvious.
Everybody I talk to, the hawks I talk to, the neoconservatives, the people who are very tough absolutely say there's no way the U.N. is going to work, and we're just going to have to assume it doesn't in any way. Iran, by going along with the U.N., what they're really doing is rushing their nuclear program. And so, the skepticism -- there's no belief, faith here, ultimately, in this White House, in the extent of the talk, so you've got a parallel situation. The President could then say, `We've explored all options. We've done it.' I could add, if you want to get even more scared, some of our closest allies in this process -- we deal with the Germans, the French and the Brits -- they're secretly very worried, not only what Bush wants to do, but they're also worried that -- for example, the British Foreign Officer, Jack Straw, is vehemently against any military action, of course also nuclear action, and so is the Foreign Office, as I said, but nobody knows what will happen if Bush calls Blair. Blair's the wild card in this. He and Bush both have this sense, this messianic sense, I believe, about what they've done and what's needed to be done in the Middle East. I think Bush is every bit as committed into this world of rapture, as is the president.
I really recommend that if you have not read or heard this you take some time and check it out. It is very informative. ABA