Richard Whalen

Some of the same American neocon war hawks who pushed the U.S. into the “cakewalk” war in Iraq in 2003 are still pushing to extend the war to Iran. And just as the late 2007 tactical military “surge” in Iraq (especially Baghdad and neighboring Anbar Province) stabilized the battlefield as the U.S. presidential campaign began, so a geopolitical and strategic move against Iran later in 2008 could create a war scare that would benefit the Republicans in a close election.

Senator John McCain feels the pressure to find “progress” in the Iraq situation to justify his support for the war and he is non-committal on Iran. On Monday, February 25, McCain said he needed to convince the American people that “the troop escalation in Iraq is working and that American casualties would continue to decline…or I lose.”

A USAToday/Gallup poll conducted on February 8 found that 43 percent of Americans now believe the troop surge was making the situation there better, an increase from 22 percent last July. But the poll underscores just how unpopular the war continues to be, with 60 percent saying it was a mistake.

History repeats. Iranian exiles are also promoting war as the Iraq exiles did a decade ago. Exiled Iranian politicians held a news conference in Brussels, Belgium February 20th, according to Agence-France Presse . The exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) promoted U.S. air attacks on their homeland.

According to confidential Washington sources, the selection of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense had been engineered by ex-President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker to prevent Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocon war hawks from opening up a new war front with Iran. So far, Gates has succeeded, using the Pentagon’s senior military and civilian officials to convince the Bush White House’s inner circle that there is no more military capability to deploy beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

The NCRI is determined to debunk the sensational American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007 that found Iran had suspended its covert military nuclear program in 2003. This document, long delayed by Cheney, was forced into the public domain by Gates. NCRI showed the news media civilian commercial satellite images of what it said was a functioning Iranian defense ministry missile research site at Khojir in the suburbs southeast of Tehran. The Iranian government is believed to be developing a nuclear warhead there for delivery by its medium-range missiles.

The complex reportedly contains a guest villa housing North Korean technicians working at the warhead facility. Most interestingly some of the Iranian exiles’ group hinted that the intelligence data made available at the conference was being released on the private initiative of France and Israel to rebut, once and for all, the NIE’s “mistaken” conclusions about Iran’s nuclear warhead program having been suspended. On September 6, 2007, Israel bombed two sites in Syria presumed to have nuclear weapons under development. North Korean technicians were present at these sites.

AFP and other news agencies showed skepticism about the Iranian exile’s’ disclosures in Brussels. Reportedly, these were based on tips from the U.S., Israeli and French intelligence using ultra-sensitive spy satellites to uncover new “data” at Khojir; NCR’s agents inside Iran then checked out the “data” and NCRI rented commercial satellites to obtain imagery of the new “data.” It was in this way, NCRI claims, that U.S. intelligence brought the world the news of the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in 2002 years before the Russians admitted building it.

The latest NCRI evidence and claims did not shake the Bush Administration’s public faith in the December 2007 NIE on Iran’s suspension of its nuclear program. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Washington’s view have not changed.

Informed European observers believe ambitious French President Sarkozy’s intelligence agencies are orchestrating the NCRI disclosures and moving into the U.S.’s place alongside Israel for an eventual diplomatic and potentially military showdown with Iran over its covert nuclear program. Sarkozy believes that the U.S., which is preoccupied with the election and led by a lame duck president, is incapable of intervening before early 2009, which he believes could be too late to prevent Iran’s nuclear capability from becoming a reality.

I believe the war hawks are badly mistaken and completely out of step with the American voters’ anti-war sentiment and any “October surprise” is certain to backfire.