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Top British Officials Said to Discuss Iran War Plan
Senior British military officers were expected to meet today with officials from the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister’s Office to discuss the potential consequences of an attack on Iran, the London Daily Telegraph reported yesterday (see GSN, March 31). British military chiefs believe an attack would consist only of air strikes against Iranian nuclear installations. They said British involvement in such an attack would be limited but could include use of early warning aircraft. The White House is prepared to attack on its own or with Israel even if it fails to obtain multilateral support for the strike, according to the Telegraph. “Monday’s meeting will set out to address the consequences for Britain in the event of an attack against Iran. The CDS [chiefs of defense staff] will want to know what the impact will be on British interests in Iraq and Afghanistan which both border Iran. The CDS will then brief the prime minister and the Cabinet on their conclusions in the next few days,” said a senior Foreign Office source. “If Iran makes another strategic mistake, such as ignoring demands by the U.N. or future resolutions, then the thinking among the chiefs is that military action could be taken to bring an end to the crisis. The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable,” the official said. “There will be no invasion of Iran but the nuclear sites will be destroyed. This is not something that will happen imminently, maybe this year, maybe next year. [Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw is making exactly the same noises that the government did in March 2003 when it spoke about the likelihood of a war in Iraq,” the source added. “Then the government said the war was neither inevitable nor imminent and then attacked” (Sean Rayment, Daily Telegraph, April 2). A spokesman for the British Defense Ministry denied the Telegraph report, United Press International reported yesterday (United Press International, April 2). A senior Iranian official said the world should negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told CNN’s “Late Edition” in an interview taped on Friday that if Iran “will be threatened and any harm will come (to the) Iranian nation, then we will defend it to the last moment.” He urged nuclear negotiations, “rather than pushing the issue to the confrontation and battlefield” (Associated Press, April 2). “The best action of United Nations Security Council is no action, merely just to take note of the documents which have been sent to United Nations Security Council, and let the IAEA to do its own job,” Soltanieh said. “The more the United Nations Security Council is engaged and involved, the situation will be further deteriorated,” he said. He added that Iran would not withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and would continue cooperating with international nuclear inspectors, Reuters reported yesterday. Soltanieh said the nuclear issue been taken “hostage” by Washington and should be returned to a “multilateral atmosphere.” However, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Security Council action would bring added pressure on Iran. “We think it is important to increase international pressure on Iran to get them to rethink the policy of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and thereby try and bring a peaceful and diplomatic solution to this problem,” he said (Lesley Wroughton, Reuters/RedOrbit.com, April 2). U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts have said Iran would likely respond to a U.S. attack on its nuclear installations by conducting terrorist attacks worldwide, the Washington Post reported yesterday. Iran would strike at U.S. targets within Iraq, as well as against civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, experts said. The threat scenario “is consuming a lot of time” throughout the U.S. intelligence community, said one senior official. The experts also warned that Iranian-affiliated groups such as the country’s Intelligence and Security Ministry operatives, the Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah tend to be better trained and equipped than the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul Pillar said any strike on Iran “would be regarded as an act of war” and that Iran would retaliate with terrorism. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that. … Whether it’s overseas at the hands of Hezbollah, in Iraq or possibly Europe, within the regime there would be pressure to take violent action,” Pillar said. Iran’s intelligence services “are well trained, fairly sophisticated and have been doing this for decades,” said Henry Crumpton, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. “They are still very capable. I don’t see their capabilities as having diminished” (Dana Priest, Washington Post, April 2). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States is committed to ending the nuclear standoff through diplomacy, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday. “We believe that diplomacy has a chance to work, but we are going to work with whomever we can, in whatever form we can, diplomatically, to try and bring the Iranians around,” she told the United Kingdom’s ITV television. “Iran is not Iraq,” she added. “I know that’s what’s on people’s minds (but) the circumstances are different.” However, Rice reaffirmed Washington’s refusal to rule out military action. “The president of the United States doesn’t take his options off the table,” she said (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, April 2). The threat of sanctions must also remain in the mix, Rice said last week, according to AFP. “Where we end up in this process in terms of the potential for sanctions ... will be in part dependent on whether the Iranian regime decides to respond to the just demands of the international system,” she said (Agence France-Presse II/Hindustan Times, March 31). U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday said Tehran could become more internationally isolated if it ignores warnings on its nuclear activities, AFP reported. “There is common agreement that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said. “If they want to participate in the international order of things, if they don’t want to isolate themselves, they must listen very carefully to what we’re saying with unified voice,” he said. The State Department, meanwhile, addressed Iran’s successful test of a radar-evading missile. Spokesman Adam Ereli said the test “demonstrates that Iran has a very active and aggressive military program under way.” Their program includes “efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction as well as delivery systems,” he said (Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, April 1). International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said Friday that it was Iran’s responsibility to find a diplomatic resolution to the standoff, Reuters reported. “I see the Security Council statement as an extension of diplomacy,” ElBaradei told Reuters. “The focus at this stage should be on finding a diplomatic solution through transparency and cooperation by Iran to build the necessary confidence and to create the conditions for the return to negotiations with the international community,” he said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, March 31). Iran yesterday also test-fired what it called the world’s fastest underwater missile, the London Guardian reported today. With a reported top speed of 225 mph, the missile carries a warhead designed to destroy large submarines, said Gen. Ali Fadavi, deputy head of Iran’s navy. “Even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed,” Fadavi said (Robert Tait, The Guardian, April 3). Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Friday played down the potential for a military confrontation with the West, the Los Angeles Times reported. “I wish to stress that Iran’s nuclear question can be approached from two perspectives: Cooperation and interaction or confrontation and conflict. I underline that my country has prepared itself for both possibilities,” he said. Some experts said that Iran’s strategy seems to be to send mixed signals in an effort to continue nuclear development while avoiding consequences. “It has been the general pattern over the two months to send a message that they are ready to talk, but at the same time, show a very resolute defiance,” said Hadi Semati, a Tehran University professor and visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “They are trying to send a signal that they won’t concede but won’t provoke, either.” Tehran did not anticipate having its case referred to the U.N. Security Council, said Ali Ansari, an Iranian history expert at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. “The experience for three years had been that the West would back down,” he said. Mottaki said Thursday that the Security Council was unlikely to impose tough penalties. “We don’t think there is a lot of chance of sanctions being put into place,” he said. A meeting of foreign ministers from the Security Council’s permanent members and Germany last week reportedly failed to yield support for targeted sanctions, such as a travel ban and freeze on the assets of Iranian leaders (Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, April 1).
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