War Signals: Is An 'October Surprise' Attack On Iran Imminent?
By Dave Lindorff
Created Sep 23 2006 - 9:22am
As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible
US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The
Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved
up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear
aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate,
submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off
Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue
of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of
mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf
by October 1.

As Time writes in its cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of
the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval
operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors
"suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect
has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."

According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the
Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group,
bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the
United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public
affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this
powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around
October 21.

The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several
years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been
scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and
possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved
into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses
and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch
of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry
officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired
Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to
attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

"This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment
analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden
deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA,
resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration
pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence
agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity [1].)

Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War
College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf
arrival date of October 21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He
says, "I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to
deploy orders' [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as
October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to
get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any
possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should
be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a
certain date--in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, "You
cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very
significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise." This point was
also made in the Time article.

So what is the White House planning?

On Monday President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening
session, and while studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran's
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered
a two-pronged message. Bush told the "people of Iran" that "we're working
toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis" and that he looked forward "to
the day when you can live in freedom." But he also warned that Iran's
leaders were using the nation's resources "to fund terrorism and fuel
extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." Given the President's assertion that
the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is Commander in
Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror
has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight
there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional
Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan
was also an authorization for an unending "war on terror."

Even as Bush was making not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack
on Iran, was in Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further
diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program--itself tantalizing
evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that those
favoring an attack may be winning that struggle.

"I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says
Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against US law and it's against
international law, but I think they've decided to do it." Gardiner says that
while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its
cruise missiles, "the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can
activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world,
including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting
nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias
in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the
Persian Gulf." Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East
have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their
own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close
connection of Shiite populations to Iran's religious rulers.

Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of
military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in
the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian
coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles,
and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against which
the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk
high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor
has bluffing been a Bush MO to date.

Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on
Bush's talk about dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from
confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his
National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN
resolution supporting military action, and rumors of "hushed back doors"
being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a
unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn
Kessler saw in Bush's UN speech evidence that "war is no longer a viable
option" in Iran. Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush
Administration's judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam Chomsky
and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an attack is being
planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington's leaders aren't crazy, and
would not take such a step--though more recently, he has seemed less
sanguine about Administration sanity and has suggested that leaks about war
plans may be an effort by military leaders--who are almost universally
opposed to widening the Mideast war--to arouse opposition to such a move by
Bush and war advocates like Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for
the online journal TomPaine.com [2], focuses on the talk of diplomacy in
Bush's Monday UN speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means
"the realists have won" and that there will be no Iran attack.

But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all,
it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions
the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation
is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States,
according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces
operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking ominous.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War,
informed about the Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower
Strike Group to head out to sea, said, "For some time there has been
speculation that there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in
order to exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has
cultivated now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will
be a very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US. It would only
make worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope
this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible." He adds, "Military
people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the military already."

Calls for comment from the White House on Iran war plans and on the order
for the Eisenhower Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National
Security Council press office, which declined to return this reporter's
phone calls.

McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on
the National Mall in Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called "Camp
Democracy," about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned,
"We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening."

One solid indication that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force
buildup would be if the carrier Enterprise--currently in the Arabian Sea,
where it has been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan,
and which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour--is kept on station
instead of sent back to the United States. Arguing against simple rotation
of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower's refurbishing and its dispatch
were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from the Enterprise on the
Navy's official website referred to its ongoing role in the Afghanistan
fighting, and gave no indication of plans to head back to port. The Navy
itself has no comment on the ship's future orders.

Jim Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a
Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia, expressed some caution about
reports of the carrier deployment, saying, "Remember, carrier groups
regularly rotate in and out of that region." But he added, "I do not believe
that there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without
a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002
authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend to
Iran."
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson