Keys Corner

View from the Pentagon behind the scenes:

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night…

...Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there’s clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I’ve had, I’d say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

‘It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran’s not involved, it’s a let down.’ He added: ‘I’ve had people say to me, “They’re really pushing the Iran thing. It’s like, shit, you know.” ’

Brose said that reports about Washington’s increasingly hawkish stance towards Tehran, including possible military action, chimed with his experience. ‘My impression is they’re just trying to get every little bit of ammunition possible. If we get something here it fits the overall picture. The engine needs impetus and they’re looking for us to find the fuel – a particular type of fuel…

The official view from both the US and German government leaders:

President George W Bush and visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel say they will continue to seek a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear programme...

...Mrs Merkel warned that if Iran refused to freeze its nuclear work, then “we need to think about further possible sanctions”.

The US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany have agreed to draft a UN resolution calling for new sanctions and officials are meeting in nine days to finalise a text unless the UN’s nuclear watchdog reports concessions by Iran.

Mrs Merkel added that she would work with the business sector in Germany – one of Tehran’s main trading partners – to reduce trade with Iran. Washington has been lobbying its allies to cut business links.

I hope Mrs. Merkel has all her wits about her. If she should find herself on the same side as the USA in a war against Iran in a few months time, she can wave goodbye to running the government after the next elections.

John Bolton, arch-neocon and former US ambassador to the United Nations called for Iran to be bombed yesterday:

Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was “pushing out” and “is not receiving adequate push-back” from the west.

“I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is. Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.”

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad.

“If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change … The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.”

Sounds like the US rhetoric on their invasion of Iraq. Watch the price of oil if they start to move in this direction – it will go through the roof, I think.

Seymour M. Hersh, writing in next week’s New Yorker paints a picture of the American government spoiling for a chance to bomb Iran as soon as they have manufactured a plausible reason for an attack, but that hasn’t learned from their mistakes in Iraq and thought through what will happen if they do attack:

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

The White House / Pentagon spin machine has shifted up a gear with their attempts to convince us that Iran is really, really evil. How long until they or Israel attacks them? The Guardian thinks we probably have about a year.

It appears that Bush has been caught lying again. By Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker. Just like before the Iraq war. Am I surprised?

No.

Mission was completed in Iraq three years ago this May. Now Bush feels it is time to take out Iran and save it from itself, according to the New Yorker:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that 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 former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”...

...One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.

What indeed are Bush and Rumsfeld smoking?

Mark Cliff, chief economist at ING Financial Markets, writes in the Independent today about the possible economic consequences of an invasion of Iran by the USA:

...this would imply: a $12 per barrel increase in the oil price, taking West Texas crude up to more than $60 per barrel; a 14 per cent drop in the Dow Jones, taking other stock markets with it; a plunge in bond yields, taking US 10-year yields down by around 0.75 per cent; and a 10 per cent drop in the US dollar…

Actually, given the massive deficit (White House forecast: $427 billion this year) that Bush is currently running and the analysis in the Economist three days ago, Mark’s estimates look to be a trifle conservative, as he admits in the article. In fact, back in December – before the talk about an Iran invasion – the Economist was already talking about estimates that the dollar needs to fall by another 30% (to 1.80 dollars per euro) to bring it into line with its fair value reflecting the size of America’s budget deficit.