It is becoming apparent that before Bush takes leave of the Oval Office in January 2009, his Administration is intent to add Iran to the list of nations his tenure will have shaken and stirred.

It took a while to decide why Iraq needed to be invaded. And it seems the same problem has now presented itself with Iran. If Iraq has taught politicians one thing, it is that the reason for going to war needs to last the distance.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, finds there are several echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the present discussions about going to war with Iran: "It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux."

A growing list of "possible excuses" has been aired for more than a year. One that failed was that there was a "suspicion" that Iran was trying to stir Shiite rebellion in other Muslim countries. Despite King Abdullah of Jordan warning about this "arc of Shia radicalism", Shia minorities in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia are not preparing for a revolt and the Shia in Saudi Arabia are actually fearful of a backlash from the Sunni majority if sectarianism continues.
A good place to scan sentiments against Iran was the annual Herzliya Conference in late January 2007, where former Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz stated: "Iran is the heart of the problem in the Middle East. It is the most urgent threat facing the world, and needs to be dealt with before it's too late." After meeting with the Department of State's Nicholas Burns, Mofaz called 2007 "a year of decision".
Political advisor and lobbyist Richard Perle assured the conference that Bush will attack Iran rather than see it acquire nuclear weapons capabilities. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich added that "Three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust. ... I'll repeat it. Three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust. ... Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany and more determined than the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get." The Financial Times' Philip Stephens summed up Herzliya as "I gave up counting the times I heard the words 'existential threat' to describe Iran's nuclear program capability."

Iran's president Ahmadinejad has long been labelled as insane - though a more correct term would be that he is a religious zealot. A nuclear weapon in the hands of a madman is indeed a powerful argument why Iran's nuclear programme should have to be stopped.
It is clear that Israel can feature in an attack on Iran's nuclear facility; it carried out such an attack in the 1980s against Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. A few weeks back, according to UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave, "Bibi" Netanyahu declared that Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international public relations front first and foremost on the United States - the goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the [US] government, the Congress, and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the US and the entire world, not only Israel." According to Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of The Guardian, Meir Dagan, head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, has been placed in charge of this publicity campaign, which is definitely gathering strength and winning converts.
But what is the truth? Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Iran is three to eight years away from being able to build an atomic bomb. That is: even if it wanted to do that. It is powerful evidence that Iran poses no nuclear threat whatsoever. Furthermore, unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory. It has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. No report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever cited Iran for diverting its civilian nuclear programme to military use. The IAEA has said that for most of the past three years, its inspectors have been able to "go anywhere and see anything". They inspected the nuclear installations at Isfahan and Natanz on January 10 and 12 and on February 2 to 6.
Just like Saddam Hussein did not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction, Iran does not possess any military nuclear technology. But will that stop anyone?
Israel sees Iran as a danger to its existence, using a famous quote from President Ahmadinejad, in which he apparently called for "wiping Israel off the map". Yet a close examination of his notorious remark in October 2005 reveals that it has been mistranslated - quite likely on purpose. Farsi language analysts have pointed out that Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Instead, he said: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Though it still may seem very aggressive, Ahmadinejad only compared the demise of the Israeli regime to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was arguing that a new breed of politicians had to rule over Israel. Confronted with the gung-ho speeches of Netanyahu, he has a point.

Like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad is definitely rattling America's cage, trying to change the present political paradigm. Whereas Chavez does it with humour and intelligence, it is clear that Ahmadinejad does not come across as such. And his tactic of using a holocaust conference to show his defiance towards Western paradigms was probably not the best option to take. Together with the falsified "wiping Israel off the map", in early 2006, a story was planted that the Iranian parliament had passed a law forcing Iranian Jews to wear yellow badges. "Fourth Reich," screamed a banner headline in one of the New York City tabloids. In a matter of days, the source was disclosed as a neoconservative and the story was completely retracted by the Canadian paper in which it was first published. The New York paper never apologised.
Ahmadinejad has become the victim of his own tactics, but also of an orchestrated campaign to make Iran look as if they are persecuting minorities. This time, it are not Kurds (the reason used to hound Saddam Hussein), but Jews.

It is nevertheless questionable whether Ahmadinejad can be ousted purely on the Israel-Holocaust agenda alone. Several prominent American politicians have ousted their fear that a false flag terror attack will be staged by the US, to warrant the attack on Iran. Even former National Security Advisor and founding member of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski tacitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee about such a staged provocation. Brzezinski said it could revolve around "some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a 'defensive' US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Brzezinski cited how Bush "described the several ways in which this could be done", but refused to elaborate, stating only, "the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them." He was referring to the plan to fly a U2 spy plane painted with UN colours over Iraq and goading Saddam to order the aircraft shot down, resulting in widespread international support for the war. Bush and Blair discussed the possibility of staging this provocation along with others during their January 31, 2003 meeting.

Unless Israel decides to act, the best bet as to why Iran "needs" to be attacked may be that the nation will be blamed for influencing the Iraqi insurgency. An intelligence report scheduled for late January was delayed. As recent as February 2, 2007, Bush administration officials acknowledged that they had yet to compile evidence strong enough to back up publicly their claims that Iran is fomenting violence against US troops in Iraq. As with Iraq, State Department spokesmen are continuously briefing that "Iranian agents are involved in these networks and that they are working with individuals and groups in Iraq and are being sent there by the Iranian government." But investigations by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and others, including British military officials, have concluded that Iran is not engaged in a cross-border supply of weapons. General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no such evidence exists. The question at the time was whether the CIA will once again be pressured into creating evidence? Could this be why Robert Gates was moved into the office of Secretary of Defense, perhaps because, as a former Director of Central Intelligence, he is able to twist arms more easily than the unpopular Rumsfeld?

That the latter option is indeed what the US is going for, was indicated on February 11, 2007, when the US military accused the "highest levels" of Iran's government of supplying increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents. The briefing occurred in Baghdad, where senior defence officials told reporters that the bombs were being used to deadly effect, killing more than 170 US troops since June 2004.
Despite the claims achieving global publicity, there were also numerous comparisons with Iraq and the failed - if not fabricated - intelligence there. Furthermore, the US claims that the bombs were smuggled from Iran continues to defy independent verification.
Furthermore, the US officials were speaking off camera on condition of anonymity, which is not the best tactic to convey belief in your message. Furthermore, this was briefing, but all cameras and recording devices were banned, making it a rather surreal "press conference". Is it perhaps because through this methodology (anonymity, no recording of the event) the Defence officials have made sure they cannot be held accountable (from a legal perspective) with spreading deliberate disinformation?
For what the assembled press was asked to believe, without any - any - evidence presented, is that the allegedly smuggled weapons that were put on display have characteristics unique to being manufactured in Iran. But we only have an anonymous person's word for that!

So what's next? An American naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean has begun, part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022-02, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. On February 8, Robert Gates repeated the US would not attack Iran. But Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike."
The Kuwaiti Arab Times says that Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov, says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by cruise missiles launched from the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on January 24, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilisation. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. [...] Posing as victims, the Israelis [...] will suffer some tolerable damage and then the outraged US will destabilise Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution [...] Public opinion is already under pressure."
But ideas that the US might invade Iran are nothing new. Seymour Hersch wrote "The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb", which was published in the New Yorker on April 17, 2006. It coincides with American talk about how Iraq's insurgency was escalating - an escalation in which the US had a hand with the creation of the death squads.

Bush may be seen as a lame duck, having lost a Republican majority in Congress, but Vice-president Dick Cheney made it clear that such "details" would not stop them. Seymour Hersh added: "The fact of the matter is we have a government that will do what it wants to do for the next two years." "The worst is yet to come. It's sort of like we're essentially powerless [and] just play it out."
The question is why. Hersch states "What [the White House is] doing now is not about the region, it's about us, protecting America. They really believe it. They say, 'We're protecting you, we're doing this for you.'"
It may seem odd, as most people believe Bush is pursuing an "oil agenda". But sources close to Conspiracy Times, who met with Bush in 2006 and discussed Iran, echo the opinion that Bush is indeed in an apocalyptical mindset, in which an Iranian invasion is believed to push the end of the world back with 5-7 years.
Though Ahmadinejad is a fervent believer in the Islamic version of the apocalypse, his US opponent is "Rapture ready". Hersch: "[George W Bush is] a total radical, probably the most radical president we've ever had in terms of his definition of the power of the presidency. There's nothing more dangerous than a radical who doesn't have information, doesn't learn from information and doesn't learn from the past."

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But some sources say that if there is going to be an attack, it may be as late as 2008, just before Mr Bush leaves office. A lot, no doubt, will depend on how smoothly the campaign to demonise Iran works.
Unfortunately, Iran has already fallen for the US agitation, with religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stating they would strike back if the US attacked. By the mere fact of stating such acts of aggression, the Western media have been given "evidence" of the aggressive nature of the Iranian leaders.

Iraq had its "Project for a New American Century", the campaign to bomb Iran is largely the brainchild of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). It is "a private, non-partisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare." AEI is also seen as the headquarters of the neo-conservatives and it was a member of the AEI that coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea.
Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline because of the continuously bad news from Iraq. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Bush opted for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq; a plan which was bound to fail. But as it is now known that the US had a hand in the creation of the death squads in Iraq, it should not be ruled out that the Iraqi insurgency itself was merely a show, willed by the US, for it would provide the White House with an excuse to carry out its plans against Iran, claiming it is that nation that is causing the civil war in Iraq.

There is, however, a personal dimension to Bush's interest to Iran, one that dates back to his father. Iran held 63 diplomats and three other US citizens hostage between late 1979 and January 1981. He has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The Iran hostage crisis and specifically the debacle when several US soldiers died in a failed rescue mission, crashed Jimmy Carter's hope at re-election and brought Reagan and George Bush Sr. into the White House. But a hidden dimension to the Iran hostage crisis is the so-called "October Surprise". The crux of the October Surprise is that an agreement was made between Bush and William Casey and the government of Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the November 1980 election. And it is here that another question needs to be posed: with the Republican hopes to win the 2008 elections to be minimal at best, will it use the pretext of a war with Iran to try and vote in a Republican candidate, so that he is able to "complete" the work? In which case, Iran may start late, or be another long drawn-out affair.

> To read more about Bush and the October Surprise, read State Sponsored Terrorism in the West, published in Nexus New Times (February-March 2007) and soon to appear on this site.

> To learn more about the apocalyptic dimension to the Iranian crisis, don't miss the first issue of the REAL NEWSpaper Conspiracy Times on March 18.