US analysts detail war plans against Iran

US analysts detail war plans against Iran

11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed.

William Arkin, who served as the US Army's top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as TIRANNT, an acronym for "Theater Iran Near Term."

Snip...

But preparations under TIRANNT began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan has since been updated using information collected in Iraq.

Snip...

President George W. Bush last week dismissed talk of war planning against Iran as "wild speculation."

But Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned this weekend that "there are some in this administration who have been pushing to make nuclear weapons more 'usable.'

"This is pure folly," the Democratic senator commented in The Los Angeles Times. "First use of nuclear weapons by the United States should be unthinkable."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060416/ts_alt_afp/usirannuclearmilitary_060416170316

SUPPLEMENT NO. 3

TO

REPORT OF COMMITTEE NO. 8

SUBJECT:

CRITICAL AREAS OF CANADA AND APPROACHES THERETO

-snip-

f. Conclusion.

"Crimson cannot successfully defend her territory against the United
States (Blue). She will probably concentrate on the defense of Halifax
and the Montreal-Quebec line in order to hold bases of operation for Red.
Important secondary efforts will be made to defend her industrial area and
critical points on her transcontinental railroad lines.

It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction, Arkin wrote in The Washington Post.

Op-Ed Contributors

Bombs That Would Backfire

By RICHARD CLARKE and STEVEN SIMON
Published: April 16, 2006

WHITE HOUSE spokesmen have played down press reports that the Pentagon has accelerated planning to bomb Iran. We would like to believe that the administration is not intent on starting another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been. A brief look at history shows why.

Reports by the journalist Seymour Hersh and others suggest that the United States is contemplating bombing a dozen or more nuclear sites, many of them buried, around Iran. In the event, scores of air bases, radar installations and land missiles would also be hit to suppress air defenses. Navy bases and coastal missile sites would be struck to prevent Iranian retaliation against the American fleet and Persian Gulf shipping. Iran's long-range missile installations could also be targets of the initial American air campaign.

Snip...

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.

The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/opinion/16clarke.html?ex=1302840000&en=bde4bd3288470a1a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss