U.S. Creating Pretext for Attacking
Iran
In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled
“Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim
of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides
valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country,
on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power,
about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and
on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organizations Jondollah,
PJAK and MEK.
Hersh explains that the aim of the US
covert operations inside Iran is to create a pretext for attack with
the goal of regime change. “The strategic thinking behind this covert
operation is to provoke enough trouble and chaos so that the Iranian
government makes the mistake of taking aggressive action which will
give the impression of a country in acute turmoil”, he said. “Then
you have what the White House calls the “casus belli’, a reason to
attack the country. That is the thinking and it is very crazy.”
On Iran’s role in Iraq, Hersh points
out: “There is absolutely no clear evidence known to the American
government that the Iranian leadership has any interest in provoking
trouble with the United States in Iraq by sending in people to cause
mayhem or kill Americans. There is just no evidence for it.” He continues
further on: “Frankly, the guys I know in the inside– in the Special
Forces, high up in DoD, high up in the intelligence community–if you
push them hard enough, they tell you that Iran has been more of a force
for stability in Iraq than negative”.
Hersh comments that the decision to launch
these covert operations was prompted by the 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate’s verdict that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme
and that the approval by the US Congress leadership of the $400 million
budget for the operations “is totally an expansion” of the executive
powers of the Bush Administration.
He explains how the Bush Administration’s
policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has led the US to support
the Baluchi organisation Jondollah and the MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq a.k.a
PMOI), both of which have clear track records of terrorist activities
including against the US. He reiterates that the US has been giving
arms and cash to the terrorists in the MEK for years and reveals that
“most of the [MEK] leaders have been taking our money and cashing
it in an awful lot of bank accounts in London.” He also reveals for
the first time that the US has trained MEK teams in the state of Nevada
and that “they do a lot of crazy stuff inside Iran”.
Hersh warns that “we have been moving
cruise missiles there for a few months now” and that the US military
is ready. “Our submarines are there, our destroyers are there with
cruise missiles aboard, our aircrafts are there, our soldiers are there”
to attack Iran within “10 to 12 hours” of the go-ahead order by
President Bush, he says, stressing that troops have to go on the ground
in Iran in order to destroy Iran’s defensive systems.
He finally points out that Bush “is
going to be a very active president, I am afraid, until 11:59:59 seconds
on January 20, 2009” and raises the alarm about an “October surprise”,
a military attack on Iran, in particular if Obama continues to have
a lead in the polls.
Listen to the whole interview here .
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