‘US planning strike on Iran’

‘US planning strike on Iran’
By Roy Eccleston

The Bush administration is conducting secret reconnaissance missions in Iran aimed at identifying three dozen targets it suspects are linked to the Islamic state’s alleged nuclear, chemical weapons and missile programs, according to the New Yorker magazine.

Pulitzer prize-winning author Seymour Hersh claims there are about 13 sites suspected of nuclear development and the US might strike this year despite the heavy strain on its military in neighbouring Iraq.

“The (Bush) administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last (northern) summer,” writes the veteran reporter who was one of the first to break news of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

“Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical and missile sites, both declared and suspected.

“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.”

Interviewed on CNN at the weekend, Hersh said there was a push among some senior Pentagon officials to strike Iran, perhaps by the northern summer.

“So I think it’s systems go,” he said. “I think the guys on the inside really want to do this.”

The White House did not address the specific claims but one of George W. Bush’s senior advisers, Dan Bartlett, said several of Hersh’s articles had been “fundamentally inaccurate – and I think this one will fall in the same category”.

Mr Bartlett said the US was concerned about Iran and was working with European allies

to convince Tehran not to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes such as power generation.

“I’ve seen excerpts of this story,” he said. “I think it’s riddled with inaccuracies. And I don’t believe that some of the conclusions he’s drawing are based on fact.”

Hersh told CNN the US was involved in detailed contingency planning for a strike, and added that senior civilian officials at the Pentagon – including Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary Doug Feith – wanted to proceed.

Mr Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believed the election victory had given them a mandate to continue the war on terrorism even though Iraq was messy, Hersh said. “The war in Iraq is different from the war in Iran, and the war maybe against Syria, and the war against global terrorism,” he said. “They’re all separate war zones.”

He claimed some officials believed it was possible to “do something” in Iran by mid-2005.

“This is a series of aerial attacks they’re talking about. But they need the intelligence first. We’re getting help from the Pakistanis on this, who worked very closely with Iran a decade ago.”

The Hersh article, citing a former intelligence official, said a US commando taskforce in south Asia was working with Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts.

Aided by Pakistani information, the commandos had been penetrating eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear weapons installations, he claimed.

In return, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had won assurances he would not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

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