The Point Of Maximum Danger Of War With Iran Approaching

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Behind The Israeli Mole Affair -

The Point Of Maximum Danger

Of War With Iran Approaching

By Webster Griffin Tarpley

8-29-4

 

 

WASHINGTON, DC -- News of the investigation of Larry

Franklin, a middle-level functionary working for the

Wolfowitz-Feith-Luti-Shulsky clique in the Pentagon,

indicates that we are now approaching a critical

choice-point on the road to war with Iran, and towards

a synthetic terrorism attack inside the US which would

be used as an additional pretext to start such a war.

 

The probe of an Israeli mole in the Pentagon was made

public by CBS news last Friday evening. The Saturday

edition of the Washington Post named Larry Franklin as

being identified by sources as the person under

investigation. In Sunday,s Washington Post, it was

confirmed that Lawrence A. Franklin was the person at

the center of investigation.

 

As seen in the excerpt below, this same Larry Franklin

was named in my June 6 news release, " Rogue Bush

Backers Prepare Super 9-11 False Flag Terror Attacks.

Franklin was indicated as one of the vulnerable links

in the neocon network which finds itself in a

hysterical flight forward to try to salvage the

debacle of their Iraq war by expanding that war to

neighboring countries, notably Iran. The threat of a

new round of " own goal synthetic terrorism, quite

possibly in the ABC dimension, was linked to the

preparation of that wider war. The logic at work was

that of an " October surprise, this time on the scale

adequate to shock the post 9-11 world.

 

The best working hypothesis to understand the new mole

investigation is that neocon networks in the Pentagon

may be very close to embroiling the United States in a

war with Iran. This would likely come as an Israeli or

US pre-emptive bombing attack on Iran,s nuclear

facilities, possibly combined with a terrorist attack

inside the US using weapons of mass destruction, which

the corporate controlled media would immediately blame

on Iran.

 

Whatever forces are behind the naming of Franklin, it

must be assumed that their main aim is to break up

neocon preparations for a surprise attack on Iran,

which the neocons have been boasting about in the

media with special emphasis for some weeks. Backing

the Franklin probe may well be military factions who

have no desire to be fed into the Iranian meatgrinder,

and who not fancy neocon fascist dictatorship. The

immediate goal would be to knock Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,

Feith, Bolton, Rice, Abrams and their cheering section

in the media and think-tanks onto the defensive. While

the exposure of Franklin is a positive step, it is far

from decisive, and the neocons are still in a position

to unleash the dogs of war over the next days and

weeks.

 

We are therefore now most probably on the brink of war

with Iran, and at the same time entering a period of

steadily increasing danger of synthetic terrorism

designed to steal or cancel the November elections,

and thus freeze the current neocon clique in power for

the foreseeable future. The calculation of the rogue

network operating behind the scenes is evidently that

terrorism taking place a few days before the elections

will stampede the electorate to support Bush, while

terrorism well in advance of the elections will give

the public time to recover enough to advance

recriminations and demands for accountability on the

part of the administration. We are now entering the

time frame when the terrorist controllers can expect

the maximum impact of their handiwork, either in

stampeding the electorate, or in calling off the

elections completely.

 

OCTOBER SURPRISE IN SEPTEMBER?

 

On August 19, Martin Sieff of UPI warned: " Forget an

October Surprise, a much worse one could come in

September: Full-scale war between the United States

and Iran may be far closer than the American public

might imagine.

 

Sieff quoted remarks made by Iranian Defense Minister

Ali Shamkhani on August 18 which bluntly warned that

if Iranian military commanders believed the United

States were serious about attacking Iran to destroy

its nuclear power facility at Bushehr, or to topple

its Islamic theocratic form of government, the Iranian

military would not sit back passively and wait for the

U.S. armed forces to strike the first blow, as

President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq did in

March 2003. They would strike first.

 

" We will not sit to wait for what others will do to

us, " Shamkhani told al-Jazeera. " Some military

commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive

operations which the Americans talk about are not

their monopoly, " he added. With this, the Iran-Iraq

border became a new line of hair-trigger confrontation

in the restless war agitation of the neocons.

 

One day earlier, neocon Undersecretary of State for

Arms Control and International Security John Bolton

told an audience at the Hudson Institute in Washington

that it was imperative that the Iranian nuclear

program be brought before the U.N. Security Council.

" To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to

would-be proliferators that there are no serious

consequences for pursuing secret nuclear weapons

programs, " said Bolton. " We cannot let Iran, a leading

sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear

weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most

of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond, "

Bolton added. " Without serious, concerted, immediate

intervention by the international community, Iran will

be well on the road to doing so. " Similar threatening

noises have come from Condoleezza Rice at the Bush

National Security Council.

 

Iranian public opinion had been shocked by a raving,

psychotic column by Charles Krauthammer in the July 23

Washington Post: Krauthammer wrote: " The long awaited

revolution (in Iran) is not happening. Which [makes]

the question of pre-emptive attack all the more

urgent. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist

regime openly dedicated to the destruction of 'the

Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and

missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us

and that is either revolution or pre-emptive attack. "

Iranian observers compared this to the US propaganda

campaign which had preceded the attack on Iraq.

 

US FORCES IN IRAK AS HOSTAGES TO IRAN

 

Competent US military commanders dread the prospect of

war with Iran. Iran is four times the area of Iraq,

and has three times the population. Its infrastructure

was not destroyed during the Kuwait war in the way

that Iraq,s was, and Iran has not been subjected to 13

years of crippling UN sanctions on everything,

including food and medicine. The Iranian military

forces are intact. In case of war, Iran could be

expected to use all means ranging from ballistic

missile attacks on US and Israeli bases to

asymmetrical warfare. The situation of the US forces

already in Iraq could quickly become extraordinarily

critical. Shamkhani alluded to this prospect when he

said that " The U.S. military presence will not become

an element of strength at our expense. The opposite is

true because their forces would turn into a hostage. "

 

For purposes of analogy, the Iraq war so far could be

compared to the first months of the Korean War, from

June to November 1950. By provoking Iran to go beyond

logistical support for guerrillas and the sending of

volunteers, and come into the war with both feet, the

neocons would be inviting a repeat of the Chinese

intervention and the disastrous US retreat south from

the Yalu to south of Seoul, which still stands as the

longest retreat in US military history. Just as

Chinese entry into the Korean conflict in late

November 1950 created a wholly new and wider war,

Iranian entry into the US-Iraq war would have

similarly incalculable consequences. The choices might

quickly narrow to the large-scale use of nuclear

weapons or defeat for the current US hollow army of

just 10 divisions.

 

ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS WORLD WAR III

 

In the case of Iran, the use of nuclear weapons by the

US would have a dangerous complication: Iran is an

important neighbor and trading partner of the Russian

Federation, which is helping with Iran,s nuclear power

reactor program. The threatened US/Israeli raid on

Iran might kill Russian citizens as well. Such a US

attack on Iran might prod the Russian government into

drawing its own line in the sand, rather than sitting

idle as the tide of US aggression swept closer and

closer to Russia,s borders, as one country after

another in central Asia was occupied. In other words,

a US attack on Iran bids fair to be the opening of

World War III, making explicit was already implicit in

the invasion of Iraq. The Iran war project of the

neocons is the very midsummer of madness, and it must

be stopped.

 

War with Iran means a military draft, just for

starters. If Iran can close the Straits of Hormuz, it

might mean rationing of food and fuel. Bloated

speculative financial structures could hardly survive.

 

The Israeli mole investigation seeks to explore the

intersection of the Valerie Plame affair, the Chalabi

affair, the Niger yellowcake forged documents scandal,

and some key policy documents passed to the Israelis.

According to a CIA veteran interviewed by CNN, the

probe reaches into the National Security Council as

well as the Pentagon. On June 6, I had identified

Larry Franklin in these terms:

 

At the root of the Valerie Plame affair is the role of

her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the

baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase

uranium yellowcake from Niger. This story was

buttresses by documents which turned out to be forged.

A prime suspect in this regard is Ledeen, and the

accusation is made more plausible because the faked

documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen

possesses extensive contacts. A federal grand jury is

probing this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush

officials, is an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W.

Bush-Poindexter-Abrams-Oliver North Iran-contra

gun-running and drug-running scandal, and appears to

have mobilized these networks as part of the post 9-11

assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to

revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting

between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher

Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA

called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in

Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin,

Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian

regime. After the conquest of Iraq, Rhode was sent to

Baghdad as the contact point between the Office of

Special Plans and Chalabi. Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22,

2003 interview with Newsweek's Mark Hosenball,

reported that he maintained contact with Rhode and

Franklin " five or six times a week through June 2003,

when he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. This

back channel to the Iranians is now also under intense

scrutiny.

 

In the June 6 release, I also showed that, for Bush,

the notion of a confrontation with Iran was closely

linked to the hypothesis of a new wave of synthetic

terrorism. I pointed in this context to a key speech

in which Bush had escalated his threat of both:

 

A dramatic turning point on the way to the current

emergency came on April 21, when Bush delivered two

speeches which represented a palpable escalation of

the tone of his usual demagogy of terrorism and fear.

In the afternoon, he assured the Newspaper Association

of America, composed of newspaper editors, that Iran

" will be dealt with if they pursue a nuclear

development program. Bush went on to characterize the

United States as " a battlefield in the war on terror.

He was at pains to build up the stature of Al-Qaeda,

whose members he emphatically characterized as

" smarttoughand sophisticated. Because the terrorists

are so formidable, Bush said the United States " is a

hard country to defend. Our intelligence is good. It,s

just never perfect, is the problem. We are disrupting

some cells here in America. We,re chasing people down.

But it is we,ve got a big country. Later, Bush spoke

to the same themes at a closed-door gathering at the

White House: " ...On Tuesday evening, Bush told

Republican congressional leaders during a meeting at

the White House that it was all but certain that

terrorists would attempt a major attack on the United

States before the election, according to a

congressional aide. The leaders were struck by Bush's

definitiveness and gravity, the aide said...

(Washington Post, April 22, 2004)

 

The general thesis of the June 6 release was this:

 

Washington DC, June 6 Intelligence patterns monitored

here now point conclusively to the grave threat of an

imminent new round of ABC

(atomic-bacteriological-chemical) terror attacks in

the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and possibly

other nations. These attacks could include nuclear

detonations, radiological dirty bombs, poison gas and

other chemical weapons, or biological agents, to be

unleashed in such urban settings as New York City, Los

Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Vancouver BC, or

London. The goal of these operations would be to

produce a worldwide shock several orders of magnitude

greater than the original 9-11, with a view to

stopping the collapse of the Bush administration, the

Wall Street-centered financial structures, and the

US-UK strategic position generally. The attacks would

be attributed by US/UK intelligence to controlled

patsy terrorist groups who would be linked by the

media to countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, North

Korea, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, thus setting these

states up for attack. The organizers of the attacks

would in reality be substantially the same secret

command cell in the United States which set up the

9-11 events and its associated networks, which has

been able to continue in operation because of the

abject failure of all 9-11 investigations to date to

identify it. These forces are now in a desperate

flight forward to escape from their current

increasingly grim position. Their goal is now to

establish a neocon fascist dictatorship in the United

States, complete with martial law, special tribunals,

press and media censorship, and the full pervasive

apparatus of the modern police state.

 

As of the end of August, 2004, this threat is now more

urgent than ever.

 

These issues will be discussed in my upcoming book,

9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: The Myth of the Twenty-First

Century, to be published by Progressive Press. For

information, please contact info.

 

To read the full text of the June 6 release, " Rogue

Bush Backers Prepare Super 9-11 False Flag Terror

Attacks,aaa' please go to:

 

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules

/news/article.php?storyid=355