U.S. journalist exposes further American moves against Iran

30 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. The American journalist Seymour Hersh has sounded the alarm about "a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources." Writing in the current issue of The New Yorker (7 July), this well-known antiwar journalist with long-standing high level sources in the U.S. government and especially the military revealed two main points about these new moves:

• The U.S. military (Special Operations Forces) have "significantly expanded" cross-border raids from Iraq into Iran since late last year, including kidnapping Iranian military officers (the Al-Quds arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) and taking them to Iraq for "interrogation" . The U.S. is also stepping up its covert work with armed ethnic and religious opposition forces within Iran.

• The expansion of this latter programme was secretly authorized "late last year" by the U.S. Congress leadership, now controlled by the Democratic Party, whose candidate Barack Obama claims to represent an alternative to the Bush regime's war policies.

U.S.-sponsored kidnapping, bombings and assassinations

Congressional leaders agreed to fund this covert escalation, Hersh says, after they were shown a highly classified document called a Presidential Finding signed by President George W. Bush, legally necessary to authorise a covert CIA programme. Bush claims that unlike the CIA, the U.S. military's Special Ops activities are not legally subject to Congressional oversight, so that it can be presumed that a major purpose of the Finding is to broaden CIA work with organisations and individuals within Iran. According to Hersh's sources, "the overall authority includes killing."

Hersh says that the U.S. is now going further than ever in fostering terrorist attacks on the Shia Islamic Iranian regime by minority groups in Iran, including Iranian Kurdish forces, Iranian Arabs and the most emphasized movement in this report, the Baluchi Sunni Islamist fundamentalist group Jundallah. The article describes this as a tactical alliance with  "Al-Qaeda" against the Iranian regime, since several Baluchi Sunnis were accused of spearheading the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, and these forces are very much linked to Taleban-allied Sunni Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan.

This is not the first time Hersh and others have speculated on what seems to be at least a temporary global tactical alliance with anti-Shia Sunni forces (broadly defined, from the Saudi Arabian regime to anti-Hezbollah Sunni fanatics in Iraq, the Iraqi Sunni "Awakening Councils" and the Pakistan military, which would make the "Al-Qaeda" label more an attempt to frighten the American public than a strictly accurate description) . This helps expose the U.S.'s "war on terror" as meant primarily to serve the interests of the American empire. 

On 20 June, the Jundallah said it had executed two Iranian police and kidnapped 14 others, taking them to the Baluchi region in Pakistan, on the other side of the Iranian border. Last year the U.S. television chain ABC "quoted U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that Jundallah members have been 'encouraged and advised' by American officials since 2005." (Washington Post, 20 June)

Other recent armed attacks linked to U.S. support have taken place in Iranian Kurdistan, and the Iranian city of Shiraz, where a culture centre was bombed. Hersh quotes a covert intelligence operative on the Pentagon's successful use in Pakistan and Afghanistan of "false flag" operations – CIA work carried out through groups that may not even be aware that they are being manipulated by the U.S. The source argues that such operations won't work in Iran, and may backfire. (Although he doesn't discuss them, among other results, they could further destabilize the Pakistan regime, which has been a key American regional ally.) He explains, "There is huge opposition within the intelligence community to the [White House] idea of waging a covert war inside Iran and using Baluchis and Ahwazis [Iranian Arabs] as surrogates."

Consensus and contention in the U.S. ruling class

The New Yorker article emphasises opposition from within the U.S. military to a "pre-emptive" strike on Iran in the next few months, which, according to other reports, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney advocates. Following publication of the Hersh piece, ABC News (30 June) quoted "a senior [U.S.] defence official" as saying that Israel is anxious to attack before Iran sets up the advanced air defence system it is buying from Russia, which would make an aerial strike more difficult. The ABC source worries that unleashing Israel to do the U.S.'s dirty work might "cause major problems in the region and beyond," while doing little damage to the Iranian regime.

Hersh interviewed Admiral William Fallon, who under White House pressure recently resigned from heading the U.S. Central Command in charge of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and potentially Iran. Fallon told Hersh that he agreed with Bush's advisors that the U.S.'s inability to win in Iraq made it necessary for the U.S. to decisively deal with "the neighbourhood" , that is, Iran. His disagreements with the Bush circle were twofold, involving presidential interference in the military chain of command, and, related to that, whether an immediate U.S. attack on Iran would be able to achieve its goals or, instead, would be a disaster. The U.S. current military chiefs are against such an action, Hersh's sources told him.

At the same time, the Congressional leadership's agreement for the Finding, and the as much as $400 million funding for these moves that went with it, shows a great deal about a certain consensus operating within the U.S. ruling class, in terms of what all leading politicians call "keeping all options on the table", in other words, mounting military as well as other sorts of pressure on the Iranian regime and attacking it if necessary to achieve U.S. regional and global aims. Similarly, despite some ambiguous promises of an early end to the Iraq war by Democratic candidate Obama, last week the Democratic-controll ed U.S. Senate voted to approve the Bush administration' s requested funding to continue that war as well, along with the one in Afghanistan.

Like earlier Hersh scoops, Hersh obtained his information from within the high ranks of the military itself. Congressional forces, both Republicans and Democrats, seem better than the military at keeping these moves secret. The Congressional consensus on the need to keep the masses of people in the U.S. out of the political picture is, like the military's hesitations about the chances of battlefield success, another indication of the potentially dangerous consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran for the American rulers themselves.