Ritter: Iran Attack On for June

Ritter: Iran Attack On for June
Kurt Nimmo
February 21, 2005
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=9870&hd=0&size=1&l=x

“[Scott] Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005,” writes Mark Jensen on the United for Peace of Pierce County web site ( http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/2/ ). “Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million—a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.” Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq and vehement critic of Bush and the Strausscons, made the comment during a talk in Olympia, Washington, last week. Ritter also said the so-called election last month in Iraq was a heavily stage managed affair.

Ritter did not provide details, or did he reveal his source for this information, saying only that “an official involved in the [election] manipulation was the source” and details would be soon “reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine,” a likely reference to Seymour Hersh.

Of course, all of this makes perfect sense. Bush has his “mandate” (not that he needs one), the Strausscons are firmly in the driver’s seat, and the next phase of the Strausscon plan is on the front burner, nearing a roiling boil. Condi Rice, on a consensus shopping tour of Europe, “reportedly rejected the European offer [on a joint strategy towards Iran’s nuclear program], calling instead for Iran’s political isolation and economic blockade, reports the German news magazine Der Spiegel ( http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCo
de=29858&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs ). “Under the deal, the Americans would support Europe’s diplomatic Iran initiative, however should the talks fail, the Europeans would vote for tough US-backed UN economic sanctions against Iran.”

“The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act,” Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker last month ( http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050124fa_fact ). “The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership.”

Meanwhile, the Israelis are turning up the heat for an attack. “Israel is privately pushing the United States to stop Iran’s nuclear program, hinting that Tel Aviv may have no choice but to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities, U.S. defense officials say,” al-Jazeera reports ( http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_fu
ll_story.asp?service_id=7102 9. “The defense officials said that Israel isn’t concerned about Iran in a ‘you attack or we do’ warning to the U.S., but they noted that top Israeli officials have repeatedly raised Iran’s nuclear program during their visits to Washington over the past 18 months,” a nuclear program that, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has no substance. “On Iran, there really hasn’t been much development, neither as a result of our inspections or as a result of intelligence,” IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the Washington Post on February 16( http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=2413250 )

Iran’s illusory nuke program is, of course, simply a pretext, more fear-mongering on the part of the Likudite-Strausscon faction. Far more important to Bush’s clique of Zionists is reducing Iran to rubble—taking out its civilian infrastructure, as it did in Iraq, and fomenting chaos and ethnic squabbles in the hope of balkanizing the nation of around 70 million people. Iran does not have the ethnic mix required, or not to the degree Iraq does. More than half of the population is Persian with much smaller numbers of Azeri, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Kurd, Arab, Lur, Baloch, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups. The Strausscons intend to agitate these minorities against the Persian majority and the Shia theocracy ruling Iran.

“You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it,” Shahram Chubin ( http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050124fa_fact ), an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told Hersh last month. “Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response.”

Drones or no, if Bush and the Israelis attack Iran, there will be hell to pay and large swaths of the Middle East will erupt in flames. I believe this is precisely what the Strausscons and the Likudites want—chaos, ethnic strife, endless suicide and car bombs, the current situation in Iraq magnified and spread across the Arab and Muslim Middle East. If Saudi Arabia catches fire—and you bet it will if Iran and in turn Lebanon explode—this will serve as an ideal pretext to seriously launch the Likudite-Strausscon version of World War IV and thus mobilize a sleepy American public, tired of war and terrorism (Strausscons call this a lack of “stomach"). Another “terrorist event” to rival September 11, 2001, blamed on Iran or Shia terrorists, would go a long way to mobilizing public sentiment, as did the sinking of the Maine, the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the bogus attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

:: Article nr. 9870 sent on 21-feb-2005 21:06 ECT

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