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Behind the Annapolis Meet
And the Iran NIE Shock
by Jeffrey Steinberg
December 14, 2007 issue
The war party faction in the Bush Administration has
suffered a pair of stunning political setbacks to their
plans for further military confrontations in Southwest Asia.
The danger of yet another Persian Gulf war is not over; but
the prospects of perpetual war in the world's oil patch is
reduced, for the first time in a long while.
First, the Nov. 27 summit meeting in Annapolis, Md. was a
qualified success, robbing Vice President Dick Cheney of the
opportunity to seize upon a breakdown of the
Israel-Palestine peace process to press for the immediate
bombing of Iran. As one well-informed Washington
intelligence source put it, "The Annapolis conference did
not fail, and that alone represents a modest success."
Sources close to the Vice President say that he was furious
that the Annapolis conference took place, and that the State
Department even extended an invitation to one of Cheney's
most detested "rogue states," Syria—and, what is worse, they
attended. Cheney, the sources elaborated, had hoped the
failure at Annapolis would discredit Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice in the eyes of the President, dash any
prospects of an Arab-Israeli peace deal, and revive Cheney's
argument that Bush's "Presidential legacy" must be ensured,
by wiping out Iran's nuclear ambitions, militarily.
Second, on Dec. 3, the U.S. intelligence community's
long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's
nuclear weapons program—at least 18 months in
preparation—was released by the Director of National
Intelligence, with the shocker key finding that Iran had
halted its weaponization efforts in Autumn 2003, and had
probably not resumed them, as of Summer 2007.
Washington sources have confirmed to EIR that the White
House decision to release the NIE on Iran's nuclear program,
including a five-page public version of the key findings,
was, in part, driven by the fear that, if the Bush
Administration continued to conceal the report, it would
soon be leaked to the national media, creating a scandal,
far more damaging than the Nixon-era leak of the Pentagon
Papers. The release of the declassified summary findings
has, for now, blown a further hole in Cheney's plans to bomb
Iran before the Administration leaves office.
The Vice President himself all but admitted that the White
House had been forced to publicly release the NIE, which
expresses the judgment of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies,
under pressure from the intelligence community. In a Dec. 5,
interview with the online neoconservative Capitol Hill
journal Politico, Cheney explained, "There was a general
belief that we all shared that it was important to put
out—that it was not likely to stay classified for long,
anyway." Asked point blank if the NIE would have been leaked
to the media, Cheney responded, "Everything leaks."
According to the sources, senior officials in the U.S.
intelligence community had made it clear that there were
people willing to go to jail in order to reveal the NIE
findings and avert an unwarranted bombing of Iran; and that
if the Administration continued to block its release, it
would trigger another round of political warfare, pitting
the CIA and other intelligence agencies against the White
House. "It would have been far, far bloodier than the
Valerie Plame affair," one senior ex-intelligence official
told EIR.
It is widely known that the top U.S. military brass, along
with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, are opposed to any
military attack on Iran. Drafts of the NIE had been
completed months ago, and sources tell EIR that the drafts
were sent back for further work, largely due to Cheney's
efforts to block any findings that would undercut his war
drive.
Coincident with the NIE release, Newsweek published a
lengthy profile of Defense Secretary Gates, on Dec. 1, 2007,
reporting, among other things, that he had met with the
Democratic Senate Policy Committee in late September, and
had candidly told them, "It would be a strategic calamity to
attack Iran at this time." Gates has ordered military
commanders in the Persian Gulf to be on guard for any
incident that might "accidentally" trigger a military
brush-up with Iran—a sound policy, given that several former
CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) commanders have voiced
serious worries about a "Gulf of Tonkin incident" that could
quickly lead to a full-scale war.
Furthermore, Cheney has by no means given up on his Iran
bombing scheme. According a Dec. 6 New York Times account,
just two weeks before the release of the NIE, top White
House officials were briefed in detail, and Cheney pitched a
fit over some of the key findings, including that Iran had
halted its weaponization program. Intelligence community
briefers were prepared to answer the Cheney challenges,
reporting that they had conducted "red team" exercises, and
concluded that the intelligence reports and intercepts about
the shutdown of the weapons component of the Iranian nuclear
program, on which they based the finding, were not Iranian
disinformation.
Intelligence community sources intimately familiar with the
Cheney circles said that the Vice President will now focus
much greater attention on Iran's activities inside Iraq, and
will look for an alternative argument for starting a
military confrontation with the Islamic Republic. In June
2007, Gen. Kevin Bergner, a former military aide to Elliott
Abrams at the National Security Council, was dispatched to
Baghdad, to take over as intelligence briefer. According to
U.S. journalists recently in Baghdad, Bergner has been
feeding a steady stream of alarmist, and often
uncorroborated "intelligence" on stepped up Iranian
activities, in support of insurgents in the country, in an
effort to keep Cheney's "Plan B" alive.
The 'Bush Legacy' Factor
Lyndon LaRouche has recently emphasized that there is a
significant "Bush legacy" factor at play, that likely
contributed to both the newfound enthusiasm for Middle East
diplomacy, and the decision to publicly release the NIE
findings. Former President George H.W. Bush and former First
Lady Barbara Bush, according to sources close to the family,
are horrified at the prospect of G.W. leaving office with no
accomplishments to show for his eight years in power. The
Israel-Palestine and Israel-Syria peace deals offer the
last, best chance to salvage the Bush Presidency, and a Bush
family legacy that also hangs in the balance. Texas sources
point to George Prescott Bush, the son of former Florida
governor Jeb Bush, and a prominent Dallas-area attorney and
Naval Reserve intelligence officer, as a future Bush family
political star. The Bush family sees itself as an American
dynasty, and does not wish to go down in history as the
architects of America's ultimate decline.
Bolstering the "legacy factor," EIR reported last week that
former Bush Sr. National Security Advisor and alter ego
Brent Scowcroft, played a pivotal role, in aiding Secretary
of State Rice in her diplomatic efforts, leading into the
Annapolis summit. The inclusion of Syria in the meeting
opened the prospect for a Syria-Israel peace deal in the
immediate period ahead. Such a deal has been promoted by
LaRouche as a key to rebuilding momentum towards a larger
peace agreement, along the lines of the Beirut Declaration
of the Arab League, the December 2006 Iraq Study Group call
for a regional peace conference, and his own "LaRouche
Doctrine for Southwest Asia," by far the most comprehensive
blueprint for long-term stability in the region, first
published in April 2004.
According to several senior U.S. intelligence sources, two
times before, an Israeli-Syrian final agreement was nearly
signed: in 1994-95, and again in 2000. In the first
instance, in the immediate aftermath of the 1992 Madrid
Summit and the Oslo Accords, the United States had pledged
$11 billion in sophisticated surveillance systems to Israel,
to guarantee its security against a Syrian attack; and had
additionally promised to place a U.S. combat batallion on
the Golan Heights, similar to the U.S. observer force in the
Sinai, once the Golan had been returned to the Syrians. The
deal was stalled when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
was assassinated in 1995.
Again, in 2000, President Bill Clinton met in Geneva with
then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad, and a variation on the earlier agreement was
almost finalized. There are varying explanations why the
Geneva effort broke down at the last moment, none of which
are definitive. The point is, as one senior U.S.
intelligence official told EIR recently, "an Israel-Syria
final peace deal is 99% worked out already, and could be
finalized in a matter of days." Such an agreement, the
source continued, "would tilt the entire situation in the
region—away from war."
Indeed, those who saw Annapolis as a step towards building a
Sunni Arab/Israeli axis of war against Iran, were seriously
set back by statements from Saudi Arabia, that the Arabs
have no interest in confrontation with "the Persians."
Indeed, on Dec. 4, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
showed up at the Gulf Cooperation Council summit, "holding
hands" with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. It was the first
time an Iranian President had ever been invited to the GCC
session.
The 'War Party' Goes Ballistic
Predictably, Beltway neocons and their Israeli co-thinkers
have gone ballistic over the Annapolis conference and the
NIE. The day after the report was released, the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, held
an emergency conference call, according to the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency. The group's executive vice chairman,
Malcolm Hoenlein, said that they would be sending letters to
all of the Presidential candidates, urging them to ignore
the NIE, and make no reference to it in their campaign
activities. Hoenlein also said that the organization would
focus its own efforts at Iran's continuing role in
sponsoring international terrorism—a track totally
consistent with Dick Cheney's "Plan B."
AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) also
responded immediately to the NIE—with predictable sophist
spin. Spokesman Josh Block told the JTA that the NIE, far
from exonerating Iran, proved that the Islamic Republic was
pursuing a nuclear bomb. "Far from acquitting Iran," he told
the JTA, "the NIE reveals that Tehran continues to violate
the international community's calls to end the pursuit of
the fuel cycle and the ability to make highly enriched
uranium, concludes that Iran has utilized and has at its
disposal a hidden, secret second unacknowledged, unmonitored
track for enriching bomb fuel, and has engaged in a nuclear
weaponization program, an assessment never before made
public by the American intelligence community." Block
concluded, "All in all, it's a clarion call for additional
and continued effort to pressure Iran economically and
politically to end its illicit nuclear program."
Other leading Washington neocons from the American
Enterprise Institute, including Norman Podhoretz and
Danielle Pletka, made similar statements, attempting to
trash the findings, denounced the U.S. intelligence
community, and urged action against Iran.
But the climate has, for the moment, shifted even further
against their war cries.
In response to the NIE, the Council on Foreign Relations
pre-released an article, scheduled to appear in the
January/February 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs, calling
for the United States to pursue "dialogue, compromise, and
commerce" with Iran, as part of a larger scheme to create a
new, inclusive regional security and economic structure,
with Iran included as a full participant. Authors Ray Takeyh
and Vali Nasr argue, "Engaging Iran while regulating its
rising power within an inclusive regional security
arrangement is the best way of stabilizing Iraq, placating
the United States' Arab allies, helping along the
Arab-Israeli peace process, and even giving a new direction
to negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. Because this
approach includes all the relevant players, it is also the
most sustainable and the least taxing strategy for the
United States in the Middle East."
Asked, during a conference call on Dec. 5, whether they
thought the Bush Administration would embrace their call for
an inclusive strategy towards Iran, abandoning the nearly
30-year policy of containment and confrontation, both Takeyh
and Nasr said they were skeptical; however, just a few weeks
back, most strategists were convinced that the United States
was almost certainly going to bomb Iran, before Bush and
Cheney leave office.
Any fundamental shift in Bush Administration policy towards
Iran, even at this late date, hinges on the removal of Vice
President Cheney from office, now. As the neocon uproar
shows, the war party is smarting from a pair of significant
setbacks; but they are not about to give up on their
confrontation agenda—unless and until their man at the White
House is removed from the scene.
If the Family Bush is serious about using the next year to
salvage some legacy for G.W., they would do well to exert
their newfound leverage, to see to it that the Vice
President makes for the exit—the sooner the better.
Source: EIR
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