"The Coming Attack on Iran" How the world sees us.

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Though rumors that Poland was backing an American war on Iran proved false, an eventual attack is not out of the question.
1/13/2006

Rumor has it that Poland has pledged to support a coming U.S. attack on Iran, said Piotr Gillert in Warsaw’s Rzeczpospolita. An American journalist and former military analyst, one Wayne Madsen, has been entertaining Washingtonians with the tale that Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski personally assured Donald Rumsfeld of Poland’s backing. The prospect of participating in yet another American war alarmed many Poles, and Sikorski had to come forward to deny the story. Rzeczpospolita’s own sources in Washington corroborate that denial. Madsen, it turns out, is a kook. Conveniently anonymous sources are the basis for most of his wild stories—including the bizarre contention “that the perpetrator of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole was not al Qaida, as is widely believed, but Israel, seeking to rouse America against Islamic extremists.” His story about a planned American attack on Iran is just as nonsensical.

Not necessarily, said Philippe Gelie in Paris’ Le Figaro. Iran really may be close to building a nuclear weapon—and the Americans won’t stand for it, especially since they helped bring this event about. In an “unbelievable faux pas,” the CIA actually gave Iran detailed blueprints of a Russian nuclear detonator. According to New York Times reporter James Risen, the CIA meant to lead Iran down a false path by giving it blueprints that had mistakes inserted in crucial areas. But the Russian defector who made the drop was apparently a double agent. He told the Iranians about the mistakes and offered to correct them for a fee. Apparently, the CIA “never imagined it might be double-crossed by someone even more nefarious than itself.”

Come now, said Mary Riddell in the London Observer. Even the CIA would hardly be “daft enough” to hand Iran a do-it-yourself bomb manual. But the scary thing is that such manuals are easily obtainable. Pakistan’s rogue nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was so generous with his expertise that it would be a miracle if Iran didn’t have the know-how to make nuclear weapons. All it needs is the materials—and thanks to the “flawed” Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it can get them. Under that treaty, Iran is allowed to make reactors, including research reactors, to generate electricity. Of course, “any rogue state can build up a civil program, opt out of the treaty with six months’ notice, and begin making weapons.” If the U.S., or Israel, really wants to stop Iran, it will have to “act fast.” In just a few months, “Iran’s powerful Bushehr reactor could be up and running, and few attackers would dare unleash a reprise of Chernobyl.”

The showdown is coming, said Markus Günther in Bonn’s General-Anzeiger. If Iran doesn’t “give up its nuclear ambitions,” a military confrontation with the U.S. is “only a matter of time.” Just a few months ago, such a conflict would have been unthinkable. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent and repeated cursing of Israel and the Jews in general has marked him as a loose cannon. The U.S. public now “perceives Iran as a real threat” and will likely support an attack on nuclear sites.

But destroying those sites won’t be easy, said Prague’s Mlada Fronta Dnes in an editorial. Iran has learned from its enemy Iraq’s experience in 1981, when Israel took out the Osirak nuclear reactor with precision air strikes. The Iranian nuclear plants are buried in “who knows how many secret locations.” Yet diplomatic options are also limited. Either Russia or China or both might veto a Security Council attempt to impose sanctions. The U.S. simply “does not have many cards to play—but it has no other option than to continue playing.”

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.aspx?id=1272