This is a follow-up to Smintheus's brilliant article summarizing the collapse of Bush administration "negotiations" over the Status of Forces Agreement ("SOFA") for Iraq. We awake this morning and already the Bush response is on the table: Brown and Bush Issue Iran Warning. Significantly, "Bush said he has not ruled out the use of force to end Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, but added that he preferred to resolve the dispute diplomatically."
Sound familiar? He said the same thing about Iraq, after he had already secretly made the decision to go to war. Since the intelligence community has already issued it's report that Iran gave up it's nuclear weapons program years ago, and since there is actually ZERO evidence that they have begun any significant moves towards getting a nuclear bomb, what exactly is Bush talking about? What is he really after? <More below the fold>
Bush's Threats Against Iran Are Directly Linked To Iranian Opposition To the SOFA!
As Smintheus reports, Iraqi President Al Maliki's Iranian supporters are putting intense pressure on him not to agree to any SOFA with the Bush administration:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki concluded a three-day visit to Iran after meeting Monday with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who warned that the continued presence of U.S. troops was "the main obstacle on the way to progress and prosperity in Iraq.
The session with Khamenei, Iran's top religious and political authority, served to further highlight the delicate position of the Iraqi government -- caught between the U.S. and Iran, each seeking to pull Iraq out of the other's sphere of influence."
Since our own intelligence community has already concluded that the "threat" of an Iranian bomb is without any factual basis, why is Bush continuing to push this line? Answer: Just like the non-existent weapons of mass destruction that Saddam was supposedly about to unleash served as the justification for an attack on Iraq, the similarly non-existent Iranian bomb program serves as a hammer to attack Iran for interfering with U.S. attempts to pressure the Iraqi government to agree to the SOFA -- thus guaranteeing permanent military bases in Iraq, and the absolute right of U.S. forces to use Iraqi bases as a staging area for attacks on Syria or Iran.
Since Iran won't back down from it's opposition to SOFA, the Bush response has been immediately to threaten Iran with an attack. Specifically, Bush has gotten new British PM Gordon Brown to assume the Tony Blair "Poodle Position" and back Administration economic sanctions against Iran:
President Bush thanked Mr Brown for his "strong statement" and added: "The Iranians must understand that when we come together and speak with one voice we are serious."
In the wake of Iran's rejection of the six nation offer to have Russia supply it with fuel for it's nuclear reactors, Bush has been lining up Europe's leaders (France's Sarkosy was first and Brown second):
Bush said pressure was necessary to "solve this problem diplomatically"- but added: "Iranians must understand, however, that all options are on the table."
Of course, Bush ADMITS that Iran is perfectly within it's rights to develop it's nuclear power industry under existing international law. In a message to Tehran, he said:
"You bet you have a sovereign right, absolutely, but you don't have the trust of those of use who have watched you carefully when it comes to enriching uranium."
Apparently the new international legal standard is that the Bush administration "trust" you. The intelligence community's report that there's NO evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program has been shoved down the memory hole. That's so six months ago. And why doesn't Bush "trust" Iranian Supreme leader Khamenei? The real reason has nothing to do with the non-existent Iranian weapons program:
U.S. officials have long accused Shiite Muslim Iran of playing a negative role in the affairs of its neighbor to the west, which has had a Shiite-run government of its own in the wake of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Khamenei, however, said Iraq's "most important problem" wasn't the still-active Sunni Arab insurgency or the reining in of Shiite militias, but rather the continued presence of "occupying troops."
Khamenei and other Iranian politicians have repeatedly urged Maliki's government not to sign a status of forces agreement being negotiated with the United States. The agreement would provide a legal framework for the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq after the United Nations mandate expires at the end of this year.
Iran accuses the United States of seeking to formalize a permanent domination of Iraq through the status of forces pact.
This is exactly what the Bush administration is trying to do, create "facts on the ground" that cannot be undone by an successor, there is an impasse between Tehran and Washington.
As the Iranians are well aware, what Bush wants is to use Iraq as a base of operations to attack Iran. To this end Bush needs a SOFA that allows U.S. troops complete freedom to attack anybody that Washington sees as "threatening Iraqi security" whether or not the Iraqis agree. Naturally, once these details became public in Iraq, the political pressure on Al Maliki to back off became overwhelming. His response?
As Smintheus notes:
AMMAN (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that negotiations with the United States on a long-term security pact were deadlocked because of concern the deal infringes Iraqi sovereignty.
"We have reached an impasse, because when we opened these negotiations we did not realise that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept," he told Jordanian newspaper editors, according to a journalist present at the meeting.
"We cannot allow US forces to have the right to jail Iraqis or assume, alone, the responsibility of fighting against terrorism," Maliki said on the final day of a two-day visit to Amman.
That's been Cheney's idea for years now, and it's moving closer and closer to fruition, now that obstacles like Admiral Fallon (who famously said that he would never allow such a war to start on his watch) have been pushed aside. Administration hardliners have outmaneuvered their State Department opponents, now that Iran has rejected the "take it or leave it" deal over Russia supplying them with fuel for their reactors.
What's Next: Europe has been quietly going along with Bush:
Mr Brown said Britain would urge Europe to impose "further sanctions" on Iran and Europe would take action to freeze the overseas assets of the country's biggest bank and impose new sanctions on oil and gas.
Obviously, everybody is aware that Iran won't back down under this threat. They have already taken large amounts of their international funds out of Europe to avoid an asset freeze. So, this clears the way for Bush to claim that "Iranian intransigence" has forced his hand, and then proceed to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities in September, just in time to rescue McCain's campaign from ruin. It will put Obama on the defensive because all the spinning heads on TV will be saying that it's all Iran's fault for rejecting the international agreement. The fact that Iran is RIGHT under international law and the U.S. and it's allies flat WRONG won't even be reported.
This is Bush's desperate last throw of the dice to prevent everything he's done from being undone by the next administration. He knows Americans desperately want change -- which means change AWAY from Bush policies at home and abroad. As he infamously said months ago to visiting friends from Texas back in June 2007:
When a recent visitor asked him what assurance he could give about his successor in 2009, President Bush replied, "we'll fix it so he'll be locked in." The visitor left perplexed and wondered whether that might mean the U.S. would be in a wider war in the region by then.
Now we know that he meant he'd conclude the SOFA so that any successor couldn't withdraw from Iraq without being accused of "abandoning our commitments and abandoning our troops sacrifices." What has only recently become clear is how far he'd go:
"Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."
Our "country's destiny" is to dominate the Middle East oil by occupying the oil producing countries and selling off their oil to American oil companies, and ensuring immense further wealth for Republican crony corporations like Halliburton.