Bomb Bomb Iran by Summer’s End?

     By Steve Weissman 

    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

When Senator John McCain serenaded reporters
last April with his “Bomb Bomb Iran,” I had to wonder. Was
this a taste of his aging flyboy humor? Or was he telling us what to
expect should he ever become president? We may never find out. If Vice
President Dick Cheney has his way, he will beat McCain to the punch,
possibly as soon as late May, after President George W. Bush returns
from celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel’s creation.

The evidence is surprisingly public,
though in several bits and pieces that fit together like a jigsaw. I
hope that I’m wrong in how I’ve put the puzzle together, but here’s
how it looks to me.

On February 25 of this year, Cheney made
a surprise visit to the Sultanate of Oman, a longtime military ally
just across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. He had come, an Omani official
told The Associated Press, “to discuss regional security issues,
including the US standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.”

A little over three weeks later, Cheney
returned to Oman as part of a ten-day visit to several countries in
the region, including Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. While in Oman,
he gave an interview to Martha Raddatz of ABC News. “Can you foresee
any point where military action would be taken?” Raddatz asked.
Cheney tried to downplay the question, but Raddatz persisted, asking
specifically about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded
that Iran had shut down its nuclear arms program five years ago.

Cheney read the NIE differently. The
Iranians definitely had a program to develop a nuclear warhead, which
they apparently stopped in 2003, he insisted. “We don’t know whether
or not they’ve restarted.” Cheney emphasized that the Iranians
were continuing with their uranium enrichment, which – he said – would
give them the fissile material to make nuclear weapons. He offered no
evidence that the Iranian program would or could produce the highly
enriched uranium they would need to make a bomb.

“VP: Iran May Have Resumed Weapon
Program,” the headlines ran. “Cheney: Iran might be next US
target.” The Israeli web site DEBKA added that Cheney was specifically
talking about possible US military action in the region to shut down
Iran’s nuclear program.

Punctuating Cheney’s remarks, the US
Navy continues to build up its forces in the region, which now include
two nuclear aircraft carriers and strike groups capable of attacking
Iran or defending against missile attacks from Iran. America’s military
brass are also chiming in. The Pentagon is considering “potential
military courses of action” against Iran, warns the nation’s top
military officer – Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. “It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat
capability.”

Mullen presented his threat, he said,
as a response to Iranian support for Iraqi militias fighting US forces,
as well as their support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He also repeated as fact Dick Cheney’s belief that Iran was pursuing
nuclear weapons. Mullen raised all this the day after the CIA reported
to Congress that North Korea had supplied Syria with a nuclear reactor,
which an Israeli air strike had destroyed last September. Mullen’s timing
added weight to his threat and raised the question of what role Israelis
might play in an airstrike on Iran.

Cheney himself touched on the question
when he returned from his ten-day trip. In an interview with neo-conservative
journalist Hugh Hewitt, he mentioned the widely reported threats that
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made against Israel. “I
know the Israelis well enough, and I was just there a couple of weeks
ago, to know there isn’t any way they’re prepared to ignore those kinds
of statements coming out of Tehran,” said Cheney. “They have
to take them seriously, given their history. And I think they perceive
the possibility of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons as a fundamental
threat to the very survival of the state of Israel.”

What exactly would the Israelis do? Cheney
refused to say. But an Israeli airstrike against Iran would prove far
more difficult than the strike against Syria, and the Israelis would
likely need American help in clearing the airspace over Iraq, guaranteeing
non-interference from Saudi and other Arab air forces, sharing satellite
intelligence, blinding Iranian radar, and possibly refueling the Israeli
planes. The Israelis would, of course, use long-range F-15s and bunker-buster
bombs that the US supplied, while the Iranians have announced that they
will respond to any attack as coming from both Israel and the United
States. With all this in mind, Cheney might well want the Israelis to
make the first strike, and when the Iranians try to retaliate, American
forces could intervene “in self-defense” and “defense
of our ally Israel.”

To be sure, others have previously predicted
American and Israeli airstrikes against Iran, and those strikes never
happened. Hopefully, my parsing of the tea leaves will fail as well,
either because of intervening events or a decision by Bush not to press
ahead. But Cheney has clearly started the war drums beating, and unless
Congress shows far more gumption than it has on Iraq, I would not plan
a late spring or summer trip to Iran or anywhere else in the Middle
East or Persian Gulf.  

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech
Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as
a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in
France.

This article first appeared in TruthOut.