Posted on 23-6-2003
Special
Forces 'Prepare for Iran Attack'
By Robert Fox, The Evening Standard (USA), 17 June 2003
British and American intelligence and special forces
have been put on alert for a conflict with Iran within the next
12 months, as fears grow that Tehran is building a nuclear weapons
programme.
Iran has been constructing a nuclear civil power programme
for some years. It is due to start generating significant amounts
of electricity for the national power grid in two years.
However, United Nations, American and EU experts have
become alarmed at the extent of the nuclear plants in Iran,
and many are of a sophistication that suggests that they are
for a weapons programme rather than for civil use.
A full report by the International Atomic Energy Authority
is due to be published within days. It points at "discrepancies"
in what Iran has officially disclosed about its nuclear facilities.
The chief IAEA inspector Mohammed El Baradei said: "Tehran
has failed to report certain nuclear material and activities."
The EU has declared this week that it backs the demands
of the United States and Britain that IAEA inspectors should
be allowed full access to all nuclear sites in Iran. Russia,
which has helped Iran develop nuclear plants, has also backed
the international effort to get more inspectors on the ground
there.
Tehran has rejected these demands. A government spokesman
accused Washington of "blatant interference" in stirring
up the student protests against the clerical regime, which have
been running for six nights in the capital.
However, the EU's foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg
yesterday backed the Americans and demanded that inspectors
be admitted or any trade deals with the EU should be called
off.
In the past week the EU and Nato, as well as Russia and
Japan, have expressed genuine alarm that Iran could be developing
a nuclear weapons programme more powerful than anything Saddam
Hussein actually achieved in Iraq, whatever he intended.
"This is not a question of crying Wolfowitz,"
a Washington defence insider said, referring to the calls to
deal with the "axis of evil" of rogue states - which
include Iran - by the hawkish deputy defence secretary Paul
Wolfowitz. "The threat is real."
Already CIA agents are known to have been working inside
Iran to establish the full range of the Iranian nuclear programme.
Production and research is being carried out at no less than
16 different sites, including Tehran university-Recently Iran
began developing a new series of medium-range missiles, which
could reach Israel, Cyprus and even Greece.
Growing protests against the clerical regime of the ayatollahs
has suddenly made Iran more unstable in the past few weeks.
President Bush has welcomed the protests, though some fear they
will make the country even more unmanageable. But one of the
Pentagon's most hardline advisers, Richard Perle, has said that
the demonstrations could undermine the rule of the clerics,
which would be the best way of disarming Iran. Michael Ledeen,
his colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, a think
tank close to the White House, has gone further.
He wrote last week: "Iraq's support of terrorism
was minuscule compared to Tehran's activities. If we are serious
about winning the war against the terror masters, the Tehran
regime must fall."
Washington also blames the ayatollahs in Tehran for giving
financial backing and training to a hardline organisation, the
Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), founded
by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al Hakim. He has just returned to
Iraq. The ayatollah is blamed for the Shi'ite violence against
British and American forces in Basra and in the Shi'ite heartlands
of central and southern Iraq.
A British intelligence official said that any campaign
against Iran would not be a ground war like the one in Iraq.
The Americans will use different tactics, said the intelligence
officer. "It is getting quite scary."
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