OK, so now can we bomb their asses? --- Update 2
--- Updated and bumped
See previous: OK, so now can we bomb their asses?, 'OK, so now can we bomb their asses? --- Update Iran’s secret plans for Iraq
Bryan Preston
Eeeenteresting: WASHINGTON — Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.
Let’s pause here for a second to note that among our political elites, it has lately become received wisdom that Iran has no interest in seeing or sowing chaos in Iraq. The sentence above makes hash of the conventional wisdom. Iran has no interest in seeing a strong, democratic Iraq. It has every interest in creating chaos, to weaken us and its old enemy at the same time. Any fool outside the beltway can see this. The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq. ...
Do read the whole thing, people.
*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 13:24 The time has come today
Scott Johnson
This morning I noted Eli Lake's New York Sun story on the Iranian contribution to the sectarian strife in Iraq; the Iranians appear to support the strife in and of itself. At Faster, Please!, the invaluable Michael Ledeen explains why it's the most important story about The War, but -- why are we not surprised? -- that no one has picked it up and run with it. In short, the documents discovered in Baghdad show a degree of Iranian involvement -- on both the Sunni and the Shi'ite sides -- no one dreamt of. So now what? Ledeen writes that we may want to avoid Iran, but that Iran cannot be avoided: There is no escape from the war Iran is waging against us, the war that started in 1979 and is intensifying with every passing hour. We will shortly learn more about the documents we found accompanying the high-level Iranian terrorist leader we briefly arrested in Hakim’s compound in Baghdad some days ago, and what we will learn–what many key American officials have already learned–is stunning. At least to those who thought that Iran was “meddling” in Iraq, but refused to believe that it was total war, on a vast scale.
Several good journalists are working on this story (see, for example, today’s article by Eli Like in the NY Sun), and the outlines are pretty clear. First, we had good information that terrorists were in Baghdad, and had gone to the compound. We did not know exactly who they were. We entered the compound and arrested everybody who looked like a usual suspect. One of them told us he was the #3 official of the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a particularly vicious group. He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted. It seems that our misnamed Intelligence Community had grossly underestimated the sophistication and the enormity of the Iranian war campaign.
I am told that this information has reached the president, and that it is part of the body of information he is digesting in order to formulate his strategy for Iraq. If he sees clearly what is going on, he must realize that there can be no winning strategy for Iraq alone, since a lot of ‘Iraqi’ activity—not just lethal materiel such as the latest generation of explosive devices, now powerful enough to penetrate the armor of most of our vehicles—is actually Iranian in origin. We cannot ‘solve’ the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran. ...
Follow the link to the Ledeen post and read the whole thing.
*** The Push In The New Direction
Ed Morrissey
Michael Ledeen covered the latest news from Iraq yesterday, which Eli Lake reported for the New York Sun. New intelligence has produced evidence of Iranian support for both the Shia and the Sunni insurgencies, a feat that completely undermines the ISG's notion that Iran has no interest in chaos in Iraq: Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.
The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.
An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.
In other words, Iran has played both sides against the middle in order to ensure the destabilization of the democratic government in Iraq. They have had a good deal of success so far, with the rise of the Mahdi Army and the tenacity of the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists both sourced from Teheran. That new information has caused a great deal of consternation, Ledeen reports, with the people who have to calculate a new strategy for Iraq and beyond: ...
*** Iran Wants War
Jules Crittenden
Iran just doesn't want to fight it. The New York Sun reports that the U.S. military has captured documents providing evidence that Iran is backing Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. Against each other.
Now that doesn't make sense, does it? Shiite Iran backing Sunni insurgents who kill Shiite Iraqis. Except that until last year, they weren't fighting each other, at least not enough, and that didn't suit Iran at all.
This is because Iran benefits from chaos and violence that (a) ties down the United States and could lead to U.S. political failure in Iraq, and (b) ties down Iraq in Iraq and could lead to Iraqi political failure in Iraq. Perfect conditions for a Shiite strongman/Iranian stooge to take power in 60 percent Shiite Iraq. But it's a win-win as long as chaos and unspeakable violence continue. Iran is setting the conditions to discredit the United States, boot the United States from from the region, and weaken the United States globally, while dominating Iraq and ultimately the Arab world. Where the rest of the oil is. ...
Read the whole thing.
*** Iran Strategies 6: Preparing For the "Herman Option?"
Hatched by Dafydd ab Hugh
We haven't had an installment of this popular (hah) series since April. (And I haven't noticed anyone screaming for its return...) But with the publication in November's Commentary of an article by historian Arthur Herman describing a new strategy for settling Iran's hash, I decided it was a good time to dust off the concept.
Our previous posts in the series are:
- Iran Strategies 1: the Guillotine Gambit
- Iran Strategies 2: Beachhead Bingo, and
- Iran Strategies 3: Re-examining the "Default Assault"
- Iran Strategies 4: the Econostrike
- Iran Strategies 5: the Joint-Stike Attack
Today, Reuters reports that the Navy has just sent a second carrier battle group (CBG), the USS John Stennis, into "the Gulf," presumably the Persian Gulf. This CBG joins that of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which entered the PG last month.
Reuters notes: The second carrier, while adding relatively few service members to the region, is valuable as a symbol of America's increased presence in the Gulf, military analysts said.
...But they miss the point like Emily Litella. It's not the number of "service members" that counts, but the fact that between those two CBGs, we've added 180 fixed-wing and rotary aircraft to the Persian Gulf.
Take a moment to look at this map of the Persian Gulf: ...
*** Vietnam on the mind: Congress jockeys
for position on Bush's new plan for Iraq
neo neocon
There's an awful lot of speculation on what Bush's new plan for Iraq might be. The consensus is that it will take the form of the "go big" option: the so-called "surge."
The details--just how large that surge will be, how long it might last, and what other policies or plans it will be tied into--remain to be seen. The plan is not just a strategic one for Bush and for Iraq, but it presents members of Congress with strategic dilemmas and decisions as well. They not only have to take a position on the merits, but in the time-honored way of most politicians, they have to decide what's in it for them in terms of re-election.
Bush, after all, has been released from that particular consideration. He only needs to take into account his own "vision" and plan for "success" (derided here by Fred Kaplan of Slate); Bush is exempt from serving another term. So, as Kaplan writes, "He's playing for History (most definitely with a capital H), which, he seems convinced, is on his side."
That's for history (or History) to decide. But history isn't written in the present, much as some would like to think it can be. Therefore the Democrats and Republicans trying to decide right now whether to support a surge in Iraq only know what has happened in the past, in distant times and places that may or may not be analogous; try as they (or we) might, they can't foretell the future.
John Keegan, a British writer who specializes in the history of war, opines that a surge could well be helpful in Iraq if it consists of a force of at least 50,000 troops and takes the war to the enemy rather than waging it defensively. Robert Tracinski, a disciple of Ayn Rand and head of The Intellectual Activist, thinks the only worthwhile approach would be to wage war--literal, not metaphorical--against Iran (this option is probably not going to be part of Bush's "go big" plan--he's thinking big, but not that big). ...
Read it all.
***
Ed Morrissey: Not Just Diplomats After All
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