Re: Although he did not specifically refer to the Joint Chiefs, Fallon also suggested that other military leaders were opposing a strike against Iran, saying, "There are several of us who are trying to put the crazies back in the box," according to the same source.


http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=11781
Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike
by Gareth Porter

The George W. Bush administration's shift from the military option of
a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against
selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this
month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran's role
in Iraq but by the explicit opposition of the nation's top military
leaders to an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The reorientation of the military threat was first signaled by
passages on Iran in Bush's Jan. 10 speech and followed by only a few
weeks a decisive rejection by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a strategic
attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Although scarcely mentioned in press reports of the speech, which was
devoted almost entirely to announcing the troop "surge" in Iraq, Bush
accused both Iran and Syria of "allowing terrorists and insurgents to
use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Bush also alleged
that Iran was "providing material support for attacks on American
troops."

Those passages were intended in part to put pressure on Iran, and were
accompanied by an intensification of a campaign begun the previous
month to seize Iranian officials inside Iraq. But according to Hillary
Mann, who was director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the
National Security Council staff in 2003, they also provided a legal
basis for a possible attack on Iran.

"I believe the president chose his words very carefully," says Mann,
"and laid down a legal predicate that could be used to justify later
military action against Iran."

Mann says her interpretation of the language is based on the claim by
the White House of a right to attack another country in "anticipatory
self-defense" based on Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. That
had been the legal basis cited by then National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice had in September 2002 in making the case for the
invasion of Iraq.

The introduction of a new reason for striking Iran, which also implied
a much more limited set of targets related to Iraq, followed a meeting
between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Dec. 13, 2006 in which
the uniformed military leaders rejected a strike against Iran's
nuclear program. Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein, reported
last May that military and intelligence sources told him that Bush had
asked the Joint Chiefs at the meeting about a possible strike against
the Iranian nuclear program., and that they had unanimously opposed
such an attack.

Mann says that she was also told by her own contacts in the Pentagon
that the Joint Chiefs had expressed opposition to a strike against
Iran.

The Joint Chiefs were soon joined in opposition to a strike on Iran by
Admiral William Fallon, who was nominated to become CENTCOM commander
in January. Mann says Pentagon contacts have also told her that Fallon
made his opposition to war against Iran clear to the White House.

IPS reported last May that Fallon had indicated privately that he was
determined to prevent an attack on Iran and even prepared to resign to
do so. A source who met with Fallon at the time of his confirmation
hearing quoted him as vowing that there would be "no war with Iran"
while he was CENTCOM commander and as hinting very strongly that he
would quit rather than go along with an attack.

Although he did not specifically refer to the Joint Chiefs, Fallon
also suggested that other military leaders were opposing a strike
against Iran, saying, "There are several of us who are trying to put
the crazies back in the box," according to the same source.

Fallon's opposition to a strike against Iranian nuclear, military and
economic targets would make it very difficult, if not impossible for
the White House to carry out such an operation, according to military
experts. As CENTCOM commander, Fallon has complete control over all
military access to the region, says retired Air Force Col. Sam
Gardiner, an expert on military strategy who has taught at the
National War College.

Douglas McGregor, a retired Army Lt. Col. who was a tank commander in
the 1991 Gulf War and has taught at the National Defense University,
agrees. "I find it hard to imagine that anything can happen in the
area without the involvement of the Central Command," says McGregor.

The possibility that Fallon might object to an unprovoked attack on
Iran or even resign over the issue represents a significant deterrent
to such an attack.

Former NSC adviser Mann believes the Iraq-focused strategy is now
aimed at averting any resignation threat by Fallon or other military
leaders by carrying out a very limited strike that would be presented
as a response to a specific incident in Iraq in which the deaths of US
soldiers could be attributed to Iranian policy. She says she doubts
Fallon and other military leaders would "fall on their swords" over
such a strike.

Gardiner agrees that Fallon is unlikely to refuse to carry out such a
limited strike under those circumstances.

Mann believes the Bush-Cheney purpose in advancing the strategy is to
provoke Iranian retaliation. "The concern I have is that it would be
just enough so Iranians would retaliate against US allies," she says.

But the issue of what evidence of Iranian complicity would be adequate
to justify such a strike evidently remains a matter of debate within
the administration. A story published by McClatchy newspapers Aug. 9
reported that Vice President *** Cheney had argued some weeks earlier
for a strike against camps in Iran allegedly used to train Iraqi
Shiite militiamen fighting US troops if "hard new evidence" could be
obtained of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-US forces in Iraq.

But Cheney and his allies have been frustrated in the search for such
evidence. Mann notes that British forces in southern Iraq patrolled
the border very aggressively for six months last year to find evidence
of Iranian involvement in supplying weapons to Iraqi guerrillas but
found nothing.

After several months of trying to establish specific links between
Iraqis suspected of trafficking in weapons to a specific Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guard contact, the US command has not claimed a
single case of such a link. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the US commander for
southern Iraq, where most of the Shiite militias operate, admitted in
a Jul. 6 briefing that his troops had not captured "anybody that we
can tie to Iran."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is known to be closely allied with Cheney on
Iran policy, has betrayed impatience with a policy that depends on
obtaining proof of Iranian complicity in attacks. On Jun. 11 he called
for "strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence
that they have a base at which they are training these people coming
back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Lieberman repeated that position on Jul. 2, but thus far it has not
prevailed.

(Inter Press Service)

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