WarSclerotic

A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

	A U.S. fighter jet taking off from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Sunday, June 6, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, said that during his tenure “a strike was way down the list of options.” But he tells CNN’s State of the Union that such action now “seems inexorable.”

“In my personal thinking,” Hayden said, “I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.”

Hayden said that the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has rises in face of Tehran’s defiance to halt its contentions nuclear program, saying “We engage. They continue to move forward.”

“We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward,” he added.

The former CIA chief predicted Iran, in defiance of the international community, planned to “get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community.”

Hayden said that reaching even that level would be “as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon.”

The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have imposed new restrictions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities, which the West fears could lead it to make a bomb.

The fourth round of U.N. sanctions calls for measures against new Iranian banks abroad if a link to the nuclear or missile programs is suspected and for vigilance on transactions with any Iranian bank, including the central bank.

On Saturday, several key Iranian officials estimated that the United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran’s nuclear sites, adding that they were confident that Iranian forces would easily repel such an attempt.

The United States, which has ships in the Persian Gulf, has not ruled out a military strike to thwart what it suspects is an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran denies its atomic program is aimed at making weapons.

Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted an aide to the country’ Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday as saying that Israel and the United States would never strike Iran, saying that “both the U.S. and Zionist regime face internal problems and they know that we make many troubles for them if they attack Iranian territory.”

Yahya Rahim Safav told ISNA that Iran’s armed forces were “fully prepared and enemies are aware of that, they do not have the power to take a political decision on the issue, because they know they can start the war but are not able to finish it.”

“Wwe need to be fully vigilant of these attacks, the enemy knows that it will regret if launches a land strike against Iran.” Safavi said.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted the commander of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad-Ali Ja’fari as saying that the United States would not dare to attack Iran as it is fully aware of Iran’s defense power and its nation’s determination.

Ja’fari also said, according to the IRNA report, that he considered his forces’ preparedness as being at their “highest level,” adding that recent sanctions imposed on Iran in view of its contentious nuclear program would have no impact on Iran’s potency.

Also Saturday, a former naval chief in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said his country has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each U.S. warship that poses a threat.
General Morteza Saffari is quoted by the conservative weekly Panjereh Saturday as saying that troops aboard U.S. warships “are morsels for Iran to target in the event of any American threat against Iran.”

In 2008, Iran put its most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, in charge of defending the country’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, a vital oil route.
Speaking with the semi-official Fars news agency, Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said that the increased U.S. pressure on Iran were prompted by Washington’s desire to advance its “propaganda campaign “and gain control of the region.

Fars quotes Vahidi as saying that a military strike on Iran was unlikely, adding that Israel too was “uttering such remarks in a bid to reduce the growing international pressures through psychological warfare,” Vahidi told Fars.

“We, too, advise them not to seek trouble and tension in the region through spoiling the atmosphere,” Vahidi said.

WASHINGTON – In light of the wide range of issues that have been injected into public debate in the United States in advance of the November Congressional elections, from the economy to illegal immigration, Israel seems to be the last thing that would be worrying the voters. The rift between the Israeli government and the U.S. administration, however, has barely been bridged, and it’s too good an opportunity for conservatives to pass up in their campaign against Barack Obama and Democratic candidates.

“Obviously we welcome the administration’s better treatment of Israel in public, but one good meeting doesn’t define a relationship,” said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a new Washington-based conservative organization.

	U.S. President Barack Obama. “It is unacceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon,” he said in an interview with Channel 2.
	Photo by: AFP

Pollak added: “You have to look beyond the atmospherics to the substance, and there are big concerns about the administration when it comes to Iran, the commitment to Israel in the international arena, where America has helped discourage the obsessive and one-sided treatment of Israel and in so doing strengthened the international system.”

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last visit, he said, “we saw an effort to improve the image of the relationship, but there is a big question about what happens after the mid-term elections. It wasn’t long ago that the administration was openly questioning the very fundamentals of the US-Israel alliance. Is Obama going to tack back to that stance? And we see that the Palestinians once again are failing to negotiate in good faith with Israel. How is Obama going to handle that?”

In describing his organization, Pollak said: “This is not a Jewish group, it’s a pro-Israel group – and all faiths are welcome. We are independent of other organizations, and felt that the strategy we wanted to pursue wasn’t being undertaken by existing groups”.

The Emergency Committee’s first act was to intervene in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, when in a television ad, it accused the Democratic candidate for the seat, Congressman Joe Sestak, of not supporting Israel when he called for the end of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. The left-leaning American Jewish lobby J Street quickly responded with its own commercial in support of Sestak.

“We welcome the debate over Joe Sestak’s record and Obama administration policy toward Israel,” said Pollak. “The Sestak campaign obviously is not so enthusiastic about this, because they’ve been trying to get our ad pulled off the air with legal threats.”

Although this is not the first organizational effort of its kind, Obama’s support in opinion polls is low at the moment and the U.S. president’s criticism of Israel over the past year and a half has provided the conservatives with ammunition.

In explaining his group’s aims, Pollak said: “The idea of the committee is to try to address the threats to the US-Israel relationship, to the US position in the Middle East, and to Israel. Those threats are first and foremost the Iranian nuclear program, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist organizations, the delegitimization campaign against Israel and the poor treatment of Israel by the Obama administration.”