Many nations spend a lot of money on intelligence, and a good lead always leaks out. This one did out of US sources, where the American government spends $100 billion per year on intelligence. We will soon see if the information is correct or is based on wishful thinking. However, given Israel’s record on how it treats its perceived or imagined threats and the American adventurism that created the Iraqi imbroglio, the two may cooperate in a venture “for the security of the free world.”It is on record that the neocons and their military buddies at the Pentagon had drawn up a contingency plan in response to a repeated Sept. 11-type terrorist attack on the United States upon the directive of the former vice president, Dick Cheney. Information leaked by appalled senior US Air Force officers revealed that the Bush administration had wanted to conduct a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. It did not matter whether Iran was in the Sept. 11 plot or posed a danger to the US. It was a radical state and all radicalism, except of the evangelistic sort, had to be erased from the face of the earth. Some 450 major strategic targets were listed in the plan.
The neocons are no more in power. But the power of their beliefs and influence on American policies seems to linger because increasing rumors of a possible Israeli or combined attack on Iran is widespread. On the other hand Iran’s ability to retaliate has increased considerably in past years. Its long-range missiles are more developed and effective. It has tested an unmanned, long-rage aircraft (named Kerrar, or Striker) with the ability to bomb targets from afar. It has recently handed the 51-foot Bladerunner, the world’s “fastest warship” capable of speeds up to 82 miles per hour, to the Pasdaran, or the Revolutionary Guards. This extraordinary ship was built in South Africa, but Iran will soon begin to mass produce it. Their ambitious endeavors in the nuclear field won’t even be mentioned here.
The Pasdaran were created as an adjunct to the ruling clerics to protect their regime, but in time they acquired military skills including naval capabilities. The unit is known to be operating small, swift boats to swarm US warships going in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. Their surprising capabilities and the threat they pose to super tankers using this narrow waterway with their ability to lay mines along the way make them a dangerous hornet’s nest. The traffic in and out of the mile-wide exit channel of the Strait of Hormuz carries 40 percent of all seaborne traded oil that corresponds to 20 percent of all oil traded world wide, including three-quarters of all of Japan’s oil consumption.
It is known that Iran is prepared to close the strait to the tanker traffic that moves some 17 million barrels a day to the rest of the world. Oil prices would most likely shoot up from $80 a barrel (today’s price) to $400 or $500. No doubt Israel and the US would then become the most-hated countries in the world.
What the Iranian “hornet” speedboats are capable of if loaded with explosives and manned by suicidal fanatics is exemplified by the suicide boat attack against the 8,600-ton USS Cole in Aden Harbor in October of 2000. Seventeen US sailors were killed in the attack and a $1 billion warship was immobilized for two years. Iran has many of these boats that can halt oil traffic and make the strait a dead end for years. Hence bombing Iran it is not a matter of military victory or deterring her from her nuclear ambitions, it is a matter of global economic balances. Considering that Iran has an endless supply of suicide volunteers as witnessed with hundreds walking across minefields during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88) holding keys to heaven given to them by mullahs, any ensuing war will have not a military but spiritual tenacity which the West will find hard to grasp.
What about the timing of a likely Israeli attack? Most probably Mr. Barack Obama will not take on such a responsibility alone. Such a dramatic decision has to be endorsed overtly or covertly by the US Congress. Congress will reconvene on Sept. 10. A resolution (HR 1553) that paves the way for an Israeli attack on Iran is currently moving through Congress. This may the beginning of the second-and-a-half world war.
