US Soldiers Spying and Nuclear Bombing in Iran?

Via Informed Comment:

The question of US intelligence on Iran is very much an item of interest these days. Sy Hersh’s revelation that the U.S. military is doing operational planning for a possible nuclear strike on Iran to preempt a civilian nuclear program that is still years away from the possibility of building a nuclear weapon caused a firestorm (pardon the imagery) of interest. Of course, a superpower does a lot of planning, and evey option is considered. But the Penatgon tried to remove the option of using tactical nukes from operational plans for Iran, but where ordered not to by the White House.

We are of course talking about a direct, preemptive targeting of a non-nuclear nation that presents no threat to Americans and would cause massive civilian casualties. This is causing a lot of tension between the military leadership and the civilian leadership, with the possibility of several senior command officers retiring in protest. The bellicosity of the Bush Administration is stunning and may be pushing nuclear proliferation rather than containing it, and may harm prospects for peaceful reform in Iran, especially should there be a military strike by America or Israel.

Veteran CIA Middle East analyst Ray Close
reacted to rumors that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have already sent
Special Operations forces into Iran on intelligence missions. (One
clarification: in popular parlance we speak of CIA "agents." But in the
intelligence world, an "agent" is actually a local person recruited by
an intelligence field officer.)

Close writes:

"I do not believe that in today’s atmosphere there is any justification
whatsoever for infiltrating covert paramilitary agents (especially
American service personnel) into Iran.

I am confident that
there are enough very intelligent, well-placed, and highly motivated
Iranians in key positions within the government and in the intellectual
community in Iran who would be excellent candidates for recruitment as
clandestine sources. People of that kind can be recruited not as agents
of the Great Satan, but as patriotic Iranians who love their country
and are willing to risk everything for (dare I use the word?) FREEDOM.

We
should therefore be relying on the classic methods of agent recruitment
and handling to achieve our objectives inside Iran, not cowboy
operations dreamed up in the bowels of the Pentagon by wanabe Rambos.
(There is a role, of course, for electronic and other technical forms
of stand-off intelligence collection, but those lie outside the scope
of this commentary.)

Further, we should emphatically NOT
listen to the large fat-cat (and primarily self-interested) Iranian
exile community in Beverly Hills, London and Paris, who would be no
more reliable than Ahmed Chalabi and his crew were in the case of Iraq.
(To be sure, most of these exiled Iranians are fine individuals, and
most are now loyal Americans, but ALL political exiles very quickly
lose touch with reality and are deluded by memories of their society as
it was a whole generation ago. The Iranian-American community and their
relatives in Europe are no exception to that rule. )

Nor
should we accept at face value the intelligence on Iran that we get
from the Israelis. Mossad has a long history of influencing us through
the intelligence liaison system by providing "sexed up" intelligence
that was warped to benefit Israel’s special interests, often at the
expense of the United States. (That bias has not always been
deliberately injected with malice aforethought, but the practice has
been persistent, and must be carefully guarded against if we want to
form our own objective judgments.)

But back to my first point:
the worst course of all would be reliance on the infiltration of
American (or surrogate third-country) military types, whose primary
mission, presumably, would be to scout out likely targets for bombing.
First of all, we should NOT BOMB Iran at all — under ANY
circumstances. Simply put, even the most successful physical results
would be politically disastrous, and would kill whatever healthy
opposition movement struggles to stay alive within Iranian society
today.

So what possible "intelligence" could Special Forces
agents collect that would be worth the downside risks of exposure,
capture, show trials, etc? It’s frighteningly stupid! "

Americans need to start thinking about preemption of their own: against this Administration’s war mongering.

It seems impossible that the Administration could possibly be irresponsible enough to actually attack Iran with military force. The Security Council will never countenance it, and it seems unlikely that they’ll be burned again by giving us even the implausible fig leaf of an initial resolution – even a referral seems unlikely. Nor does Congress seem in the mood to endorse yet more military adventure as our military and budget slowly bleeds in Iraq. However, even most of Democrats running for Congress here in Arizona that I have spoken with refuse to take military force off the table as a realistic option. To me this yet more demonstration how militarized our foreign policy has become.

With the prevailing Convential Wisdom among our political elites being that if the world fails to defer to us, they just need a little bombin’ to get ’em back in line, any craziness seems possible. And this Administration has proven again and again that they are not above simply breaking the law or ignoring Congress – and getting away with it.