Julian Borger, "The Spies Who Pushed
for War," Guardian, July 17, 2003
Enver Masud, "Iran Has an 'Inalienable Right' to
Nuclear Energy," The Wisdom Fund, January 16, 2006
Tony Benn, "U.S., Britain's 'Total Hypocrisy' on
Nuclear Energy," Democracy Now!, March 10, 2006
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel
Lobby," London Review of Books, March 23, 2006
[ . . . some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove
the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to
the report.--"US considers use of nuclear weapons against
Iran," AFP, April 8, 2006]
[They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might
be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal.
The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some
analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.--William J. Broad, Nazila
Fathi, Joel Brinkley, "Analysts
Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away," New York Times, April 13, 2006]
[ . . . any military move directed against Iran would become a "bipartisan"
matter in the US.--M. K. Bhadrakumar, "End of story:
Israel triumphant," Asia Times, April 13, 2006]
[He said the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or
Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and
"that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
One military planner told me that White House criticisms of Iran and the
high tempo of planning and clandestine activities amount to a campaign of
"coercion" aimed at Iran. . . .
"This is much more than a nuclear issue," one high-ranking diplomat told me
in Vienna. "That's just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it.
But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the
hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the
Middle East and its oil in the next ten years."--Seymour M. Hersh, "Would
President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?," New
Yorker, April 17, 2006]
[The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking:
remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war
plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed
plans for the Iraq invasion.--Richard Clarke and Steven Simon, "Bombs That
Would Backfire," New York Times, April 16, 2006]
[Much of the administration's anti-Iranian jihad has been orchestrated, like
the attack on Iraq, by Vice President Dick Cheney, who increasingly emerges
as the Rasputin of the Bush presidency. Cheney is very close to Israel's
political far right. He is carrying out former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's command to the US that once it invaded Iraq, 'march immediately on
Tehran.'--Eric Margolis, "Countdown
Over Iran," ericmargolis.com, April 17, 2006]
Enver Masud, "Assured by the U.S., Saddam
Invaded Kuwait," The Wisdom Fund, April 17, 2006
Saul Hudson, "Bush won't
exclude Iran nuke strike," Reuters, April 18, 2006
[An expansion of civil nuclear power offers the best hope of tackling global
energy insecurity--Carola Hoyos, "IEA
backs nuclear power study," Financial Times, April 20, 2006]
"Iran
still years away from having nukes: US intelligence chief," AFP, April 20, 2006
Phyllis Bennis, "Iran: The Day After," Mother Jones, April 21, 2006
[The Israel lobby was overwhelmingly in favor of starting the war with Iraq
and is now among the leading hawks on Iran.--Molly Ivins, "Let's call
the Israel lobby the Israel lobby," Creators Syndicate, April 25, 2006]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Do not
attack Iran," International Herald Tribune, April 26, 2006
James D. Besser And Larry Cohler-Esses, "Iran-Israel
Linkage By Bush Seen As Threat," Jewish Week, April 28, 2006
[They want to declare that even if Iran is legally entitled under the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, Mr.
Ahmadinejad cannot be trusted to do so.--David E. Sanger and Elaine
Sciolino, "Iran
Strategy: Cold War Echo," New York Times, April 30, 2006]
"Iran: The
Intelligence Reports vs. the Hard-Liners," Newsweek, May 1, 2006
[He said a military strike against Iran was inconceivable. His problem is
that Tony Blair thinks differently.--Ewen MacAskill, "Iran is the key to Jack Straw's demotion," Guardian, May 5, 2006]
"Blair:
Nuking Iran Would Be Absurd," Associated Press, May 8, 2006
[In the 27 years since the Iranian Revolution, the United States has
launched air strikes on Libya, invaded Grenada, put Marines in Lebanon and
run air strikes in the Bekaa Valley and Chouf Mountains in retaliation for
the Beirut bombing.
We invaded Panama, launched Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait and put troops
into Somalia. Under Clinton, we occupied Haiti, fired cruise missiles into
Sudan, intervened in Bosnia, conducted bombing strikes on Iraq and launched
a 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia, a nation that never attacked us.
Then, we put troops into Kosovo.
After the Soviet Union stood down in Eastern Europe, we moved NATO into
Poland and the Baltic states and established U.S. bases in former provinces
of Russia's in Central Asia.
Under Bush II, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, though it appears Saddam
neither had weapons of mass destruction nor played a role in 9-11.
Yet, in this same quarter century when the U.S. military has been so busy it
is said to be overstretched and exhausted, Iran has invaded not one neighbor
and fought but one war: an eight-year war with Iraq where she was the victim
of aggression.--Patrick J. Buchanan, "'Comrade Wolf'
and the Mullahs," Conservative Voice, May 11, 2006]
[Iran was an incipient democracy in 1953, but Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadegh - chosen by an elected parliament and hugely popular among
Iranians - angered the West by nationalizing his country's oil industry.
President Eisenhower sent the CIA to depose him. The coup was successful,
but it set the stage for future disaster.
. . . the United States has overthrown the governments of at least 14
countries, beginning with the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and forcibly
intervened in dozens more. Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, there were the
Philippines, Panama, South Vietnam and Chile, among others.
Most of these interventions not only have brought great pain to the target
countries but also, in the long run, weakened American security.--Stephen
Kinzer, "U.S. history lesson: stop meddling," Los Angeles
Times, May 13, 2006]
[Unless the U.S. government intends nuclear genocide against Muslims, it
cannot prevail in war in the Middle East. A solution in the Middle East
requires diplomacy and good will, not threats and aggression. Yet the Bush
regime refuses to even meet with Iranian leaders.--Paul Craig Roberts, "How Bush Brewed the
Iranian Crisis," antiwar.com, May 24, 2006]
[The US lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy
Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The
neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the
Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that
the US will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony.--Paul
Craig Roberts, "A Final End to History? Bush's Armageddon Wish," counterpunch.org,
June 12, 2006]
Seymour M. Hersh, "The
military's problem with the President's Iran policy," New Yorker,
July 3, 2006
[The Central Intelligence Agency blacklisted Mr. Ghorbanifar in 1984 for
providing allegedly bogus information on threats against President Reagan.
It soured on him further after the exiled Iranian businessman helped set up
an arms-for-hostage deal with Iran that in 1986 rocked the Reagan
administration and embarrassed the CIA.--Jay Solomon and Andrew Higgins, "Exiled Iranian Has Another Run As U.S.
Informant: Concern He's a New Chalabi," Wall Street Journal, July 13,
2006]
"Bush 'would understand' attack on
Iran," Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2006
VIDEO: "The Nuclear Bunker Buster," Union of
Concerned Scientists