McCain’s Gaffes Reflect Bush’s Iran-Qaeda Myth
Submitted by anonymous on March 22, 2008 - 10:53am
McCain’s Gaffes Reflect Bush’s Iran-Qaeda Myth
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain’s confusion in recent allegations of Iranian training of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq is the result of a drumbeat of official propaganda about close Iran-al Qaeda ties that the George W. Bush administration and neoconservatives have promoted ever since early 2002.
McCain, the Republican nominee for the presidency, was confusing the Bush administration’s charges of Iranian training of Shi’a militiamen associated with the Mahdi Army with the administration’s propaganda theme of Iranian tacit or explicit support for al Qaeda operatives in Iran — charges which have amplified by right-wing media.
During a press conference in Jordan Tuesday, McCain brought up the charge that Iran with training al Qaeda operatives
and sending them to Iraq, then corrected himself after Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, whispered in his ear. It was the fourth time in a little over three weeks, however, that McCain had made the same charge.
McCain’s confusion has been widely characterised as demonstrating his inability to distinguish Sunni al Qaeda from Shiite Mahdi Army. But more fundamentally, McCain’s gaffes were a reflection of how thoroughly he had internalised a favourite theme of the Bush administration and neoconservatives — that Iran has tolerated and even covertly assisted al Qaeda agents operating inside Iran.
Those administration charges have continued despite the repeated release of information by Iran and other countries about its arrest, detention and repatriation of al Qaeda suspects.
That charge has been given credence by mainstream news media for years.
The theme of an Iran-al Qaeda link first appeared in the wake of the defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Although most al Qaeda cadres escaped to Pakistan, a much smaller number crossed the border into Iran. Despite the fact that U.S. officials later said Iran had been responsive to U.S. communications about intercepting al Qaeda cadres at the border, then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld stated on more than one occasion in 2002 that Iran was “harbouring” al Qaeda officials.
That was same term Bush had used in his Sep. 20, 2001 speech as criterion for considering a nation to be a “hostile regime” in regard to terrorism.
The Bush propaganda line was taken so seriously by the news media that the Washington Post reported Aug. 28, 2002 that “Arab intelligence sources” were saying that two high-ranking al Qaeda officials were being “sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashad and Zabol.”
The Post said the report “supported the Bush administration’s long-standing assertion that Iran — or at least hardliners in the conservative clerical line of authority that controls the army and intelligence services — is harbouring al Qaeda fighters.”
In spring 2003, Iran declared that it was holding senior members of al Qaeda but refused to divulge their identities and proposed to exchange information on its al Qaeda detainees in return for the U.S. providing Iran with information on the anti-Iran terrorist group Mujihidden e Khalk (MEK) which had surrendered to U.S. troops in Iraq. But hardliners in the Bush administration rejected such a deal, on the grounds that MEK should be protected from Iran.
After the May 12, 2003 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed eight U.S. citizens and 26 Saudis, Rumsfeld declared, “We know there are senior al Qaeda in Iran…presumably not an ungoverned area.” Then CBS news reported, “U.S. officials say they have evidence the bombings in Saudi Arabia and other attacks still in the works were planned and directed by senior al Qaeda operatives who have found safe haven in Iran.”
That was an obvious ploy to insinuate that Iran was deliberately allowing al Qaeda operatives to plan terrorist attacks from Iranian territory. The New York Times reported May 26, 2003, however, that the Rumsfeld statement was disputed by another unnamed administration official who observed that the intercepted messages did not necessarily refer to the Saudi bombing at all.
Former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence on the matter say there was never any clear evidence that any al Qaeda detainees were being allowed to operate freely. Paul Pillar, the intelligence officer on Iran at the time, said in an interview in 2006, “It was very fuzzy whether they were free to do things or not.”
Lawrence Wilkerson, later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview, “The Iran experts agreed that, even if al Qaeda had come in and out of Iran, it didn’t mean the Iranian government was complicit.”
Iran did hand over 225 suspected al Qaeda operatives to their country of origin in 2003, and provided their names to the United Nations. Saudi Arabia confirmed that Iran had repatriated suspected al Qaeda of Saudi nationality.
Nevertheless, Bush administration officials carried out a determined campaign of press leaks in 2003 and 2004 suggesting covert Iranian support for al Qaeda terrorism.
A typical example of such press leaks is a CNN story on Oct. 27, 2003 quoting “U.S. intelligence officials” as saying that the “Quds Force” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “may be sheltering some al Qaeda leaders, including its military commander, Saif al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, son of the al Qaeda leader.”
On Mar. 24, 2003, the New York Times reported from Tel Aviv that senior al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had “turned up in Iran” under the protection of Iranian security forces, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.
But in the Arab-language London daily Asharq Alawsat, usually known for its anti-Iran coverage, published an article by Mahammed Al Shafey in 2005 which quoted an internet posting by al-Adel in which he recalled that approximately 80 percent of the group of al Qaeda operatives led by al-Zarqawi which had fled to Iran had been arrested and the rest had fled to Iraq.
According to Al-Adel, “The steps taken by Iran against us shook [us] and caused the failure of 75 percent of our plan.”
The high point of the Iran-al Qaeda theme was the spate of stories in the week before the publication of the 9/11 Commission report in July 2004, reporting that the Iranian government had facilitated the transit of eight Sep. 11 hijackers through Iran.
But CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin said the CIA had “no evidence” of any official Iranian approval of the transit.
In July 2005, Iran’s intelligence minister Ali Younessi said Iran had apprehended more than 1,000 members of al Qaeda since late 2001. Younessi said that some al Qaeda agents had taken refuge in Iranian cities but had been arrested “because they intended to use Iranian territory to launch terrorist strikes on other countries”.
He also referred to the arrests and trial of a number of Ansar al Islam operatives who he said were “still in prison”.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service
The Coming Uncertain War against Iran
The Coming Uncertain War against Iran
by Ramzy Baroud
When Admiral William J “Fox” Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn’t shy from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable man for this job. Almost exactly a year later, as Fallon abruptly resigned over a controversial interview with Esquire magazine, we are left with a less certain analysis.
Fallon was the first man from the navy to head CENTCOM. With the US army fighting two difficult and lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and considering the highly exaggerated Iranian threat, a war with Iran was apparently inevitable, albeit one that had to be conducted differently. Echoing the year-old speculation, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote on 14 March 2007 that an attack against Iran “would fall on the US Navy’s battle carrier groups and its cruise missiles and Air Force B-2 bombers based in Diego Garcia”.
Fallon is a man of immense experience, having served equally high-profiled positions in the past (he was commander of US Pacific Command from February 2005 to March 2007). The Bush administration probably saw him further as a conformist, in contrast to his predecessor Abizaid who promoted a diplomatic rather than military approach and who went as far as suggesting that the US might have to learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb.
Fallon’s recent resignation may have seemed abrupt to many, but it was a well-orchestrated move. His interview in Esquire depicted him as highly critical of the Bush administration’s policy on Iran; the magazine described him as the only thing standing between the administration and their newest war plan. Further, his resignation and “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s handling of [it] is the greatest and most public break in the Bush team’s handling of preparations for war against Iran that we are ever likely to see,” wrote respected commentators and former CIA analysts Bill and Kathy Christison on 12 March. “Gates has in fact publicly associated himself with the resignation by saying it was the right thing for Fallon to do, and Gates said he had accepted the resignation without telling Bush first.”
Fallon’s resignation represents a bittersweet moment. On the one hand it’s an indication of the continued fading enthusiasm for the militant culture espoused by the neo-conservatives. On the other, it’s an ominous sign of the Bush administration’s probable intentions during the last year of the president’s term. Sixty-three-year-old Admiral Fallon would not have embarked on such a momentous decision after decades of service were it not for the fact that he knew a war was looming, and — having considered the historic implications for such a war — chose not to pull the trigger.
Unlike the political atmosphere in the US prior to the Iraq war — shaped by fear, manipulation and demonisation — the US political environment is now much more accustomed to war opposition, which is largely encouraged and validated by the fact that leading army brass are themselves speaking out with increasing resolve. Indeed pressure and resistance are mounting on all sides; those rooting for another war are meeting stiff resistance by those who can foresee its disastrous repercussions.
The push and pull in the coming months will probably determine the timing and level of US military adventure against Iran, or even whether such an adventure will be able to actualise (one cannot discount the possibility that as a token for Israel, the US might provide a middle way solution by intervening in Lebanon, alongside Israel, to destroy Hizbullah. Many options are on the table, and another Bush-infused crisis is still very much possible).
In an atmosphere of hyped militancy, Fallon’s resignation might be viewed as a positive sign, showing that the cards are not all stacked in favour of the war party. Nonetheless, it is premature to indulge in optimism. Prior signs have indicated a serious rift among those who once believed that war is the answer to every conflict. Yet that didn’t necessary hamper the war cheerleaders’ efforts.
Last December, the National Intelligence Estimate — an assessment composed by all American intelligence agencies — concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, and that any such programme remained frozen. Meanwhile the “bomb-first-ask-questions-later” crowd suggested that such an assessment is pure nonsense. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain has since then sung the tune of “bomb Iran”, — literally — and Israel’s friends continue to speak of an “existential” threat Israel faces due to Iran’s “weapons” — never mind that Israel is itself a formidable nuclear power.
According to Borchgrave, “McCain’s close friend Senator Joe Lieberman… invoking clandestine Iranian explosives smuggled into Iraq, has called for retaliatory military action against Tehran. He and many others warn that Israel faces an existential crisis. One Iranian nuclear-tipped missile on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv could destroy Israel, they argue.”
In fact, Lieberman, and other Israel supporters need no justification for war, neither against Iran nor any of Israel’s foes in the Middle East. They have promoted conflicts on behalf of that country for many years and will likely continue doing so, until enough Americans push hard enough to restack their government’s priorities.
An attack on Iran doesn’t seem as certain as the war against Iraq always did. Public pressure, combined with courageous stances taken by high officials, could create the tidal wave needed to reverse seemingly determined war efforts. Americans can either allow those who continue to speak of “existential threats” and wars of a hundred years to determine and undermine the future of their country, and subsequently world security, or they can reclaim America, tend to its needy and ailing economy, and make up for the many sins committed in their name and in the name of freedom and democracy.
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Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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