För den som läser Engelska ett långt sammandrag från olika bloggar om möjligheten att Bush administrationen nu bestämt sig för att anfalla Iran med bombflyg i september. Läs själv och gör en bedömning. De som sysslar med sådant här proffesionellt brukar kalla det intelligence chatter.

Ett anfall mot Iran skulle förstås kasta hela mellanöstern i kaos och med det tanken på en irakisk uppbyggnad. Det troligaste ställe för Iran att slå tillbaka direkt blir då Irak. Amerikanska försörjningslinjer från Kuwait har experter i mer än ett år pekat ut som en svag punkt liksom oljefält i kuwait och Saudiarabien. Kurdiska styrkor närmast Iran har också redan tidigare beskjutits från Iran efter gerilla aktiviteter inne i Iran.

Troligen dras även både Libanon, Syrien och Israel in i en sådan konflikt. Både Israel, Hezbollah och Syrien har sedan ett år tillbaka förberett med att träna och skaffa in nytt material. Liksom amerikanarna. Om man så vill är alla delar är på plats för ett anfall. Kommer Bush att trycka på knappen?

Den intressant frågan är förstås hur Sverige och EU ska agera. Ska de europeiska trupperna i Libanon ingripa om Hezbollah eller Syrien angripper Israel eller ett Israeliskt anfall mot Syrien sker? Likandant finns det någon förberedelse för ekonomiska chocker om t ex Persiska viken stängs. Likadant har den Iranska regimen alltid svarat tillbaka med terrordåd utanför mellanöstern. Finns det beredskap för detta i Europa?

De kommande veckorna fram till 11 september verkar bli utrikespolitiskt intressanta.

uppdatering:
Iranian shelling has displaced hundreds of Kurdish villagers in the north. Iran maintains that the PEJAK Kurdish terrorist group is operating from Iraqi Kurdistan and hitting targets in Iran.

Countdown to Midnight in Persia : NO QUARTER
By Chris FloydDay after day, almost hour by hour, fresh confirmation comes of the impending American attack on Iran. Yet the same surreal malaise that hung over public affairs before the war of aggression against Iraq has descended again. Everyone knows the war is coming and nothing will stop it, but the strange, ludicrous shadow play of sham “debate” goes on, as if there were some kind of political or diplomatic maneuver out there that could deflect the Bush-Cheney junta from its long-chosen course. But nothing will stop them, just as nothing — not even 10 million people in the streets around the world, the largest protest in human history — stopped them from the rape of Iraq. It’s what they want to do — and they will do it.

The latest confirmation arrives from Juan Cole’s new spin-off blog, “Global Affairs,” where Barnett Rubin writes: Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this — they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have no inside connections anywhere, but I do have a couple of friends who do. And one of them reported last week that one of his friends — with good sources among the Establishment, including the White House — also confirms that the attack on Iran is a done deal, “just a matter of time.” Awaiting, no doubt, that post-Labor Day “rollout of product.” Cole also points us to the story by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, who reported on the study by two respected British academics on the likely course of the coming war. According to Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council, the war preparations now being made by the Bush Administration bespeak something far beyond a quick punitive strike on Iranian Guards positions or lightning raid on Iran’s nuclear power facilities.

Instead, what the Bush-Cheney junta envision is the complete destruction of the Iranian state in an aerial blitzkrieg aimed at up to 10,000 targets inside Iran. The goal, says Plesch and Butcher, is to: “destroy Iran’s WMD [capabilities], nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order…Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact. US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours. US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice. Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.

The assault will most likely be made with conventional weapons, the authors say, as the political and environmental effects of a nuclear strike on Iran would not be worth the limited military value of such an attack.

Do We Have The Courage To Stop War With Iran? (By Ray McGovern) : NO QUARTER
le to resolve differences with Iran through diplomacy. Network anchors are increasingly accepting or voicing such views. Are we supposed to believe that this is serendipitous?”

And not only that. It is as if Scooter Libby were back writing lead editorials for the Washington Post, the Pravda of this administration. The Post’s lead editorial on Aug. 21 regurgitated the allegations that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is “supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq;” that it is “waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible.” Designating Iran a “specially designated global terrorist” organization, said the Post, “seems to be the least the United States should be doing, giving the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq.”

As for the news side of the Post, which is widely perceived as a bit freer from White House influence, its writers are hardly immune. For example, they know how many times the draft National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program has been sent back for redrafting…and they know why. Have they been told not to write the story?

For good measure, the indomitable arch-neocon James Woolsey has again entered the fray. He was trotted out on August 14 to tell Lou Dobbs that the US may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program. Woolsey, who has described himself as the “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,” knows what will scare. To Dobbs: “I’m afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [Iran] could have the bomb.”

As for what Bush is telling his counterparts among our allies, reporting on his recent meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy are disquieting, to say the least. Reports circulating in European foreign ministries indicate that Sarkozy came away convinced that Bush “is serious about bombing Iran’s secret nuclear facilities,” according to well-connected journalist Arnauld De Borchgrave.

Intressant nog sade Sarkozy nedanstående i sitt första utrikespolitiska tal. Notera att han utesluter inte att bombningar kommer att ske.

France’s Sarkozy raises prospect of Iran airstrikes - Israel News, Ynetnews
Sarkozy said a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and that major powers should continue their policy of incrementally increasing sanctions against Tehran while being open to talks if Iran suspended nuclear activities. “This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said, adding that it was the worst crisis currently facing the world. Tehran says it only wants to generate electricity but it has yet to convince the world’s most powerful countries that it is not secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.

DN1 SVD Carl Bildts Blogg