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US quietly turns up the heat on Iran
Observer Worldview
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs Editor Sunday September 29, 2002 The Observer
There is a curious little website called Debkafile, a newsletter that bases most of its material on reporters' contacts in the Israeli intelligence services.
Like most of these things, it is not entirely reliable.
It runs releases fed by its sources. Sometimes -like all of us - it publishes things that are just plain wrong.
But what is interesting and useful is that it accurately reflects a certain Israeli mindset on the politics of the Middle East as viewed by the country's spooks.
And what is piquing the interest of Debkafile (www.debka.com) this week is what America is up to in Iran.
According to their sources, a CIA undercover unit has entered Iran.
Its assignment:to stir up dissent among the majority Baluchi tribes in the area, and to keep an eye on an al-Qaeda escape route it claims has been used by up to 4,000 terrorists fleeing Afghanistan.
True or not, it is a warning to watch out for odd, sinister stories emerging about Iran - number two on President George Bush's 'axis of evil'.
For what is clear is that even as the US escalates its threats of war against Iraq, it is also quietly turning up the heat on Iran by talking up its threat to regional security.
The US is not alone in this. Israeli rhetoric against Iran is also becoming increasingly aggressive.
Indeed, the view in some circles in Tel Aviv is that the real threat to regional stability is Tehran and not Baghdad.
Which all poses the question:is Iran next on Bush's list of countries ripe for action?
In theory, US policy towards Iran is ripe for change.
The nine- year-old policy of Dual Containment of Iraq and Iran declared both countries inimical to the US, and replaced the old policy of first backing pre-revolutionary Iran against Iraq and then, after the Iranian revolution, Iraq against Iran.
Recently, however, many have argued that in Iran's case that policy has been counterproductive to American interests.
In the past year Iran has made substantial efforts to reassure the US of its friendly intentions.
It immediately denounced the attacks on 11 September, and during the war in Afghanistan offered to assist downed US pilots.
There have also been persistent reports that US and Iranian officials have had private diplomatic contact - denied by both sides - after a break of more than two decades.
It all seems promising, but evidence is emerging that the pro- Israeli neo-conservatives in the Bush administration aren't interested in engagement with Iran.
They cite Iran's covert programme to develop long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction which they say could deliver a nuclear weapon as early as 2005.
The issue of Iran's role in supporting groups like Hamas and Hizbollah has also begun to loom more largely for those who see the security interests of the US and Israel as being indivisible.
Iran, far from being part of a regional solution, is increasingly being painted as the problem.
In late August, while the Bush administration was insisting that Iran was harbouring key members of al-Qaeda, Bush's Special Assistant for the Near East, Zalmay Khalilzad, was talking up the risk posed by Iranian chemical weapons and its links to terrorist groups.
Khalilzad insisted that US policy 'is not to impose change on Iran', but he left little doubt that it wanted a changing of the guard all the same.
'Our policy,' he said, 'is not about... reform or hardline;it is about supporting those who want freedom, human rights, democracy, and economic and educational opportunity for themselves and their fellow countrymen.'
It is the same spiel from the same people who have been insisting that regime change is the only option for Iraq.
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,801149,00.html
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