Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter:US to hit Iran in June; Iraqi elections manipulated [Archives:2005/819/Opinion]
By Mohammed Ali
For the Yemen Times
The former head of the UNSCOM team that was inspecting for Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction in the mid 1990s announced that George W. Bush has given the green light for bombardment of Iran in June of this year. This follows the press reports that the Bush Administration has set out on plans for making Iran the next target for American unilateral action against states that it alleges are not falling in line with what the Administration's claims to be the international communities demands that Iran ceases its nuclear program “and assisting terrorist acts”, as Washington claims. In Olympia, Washington State's Capital Theater, “the ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has 'signed off' on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005” and he claimed that the US had manipulated the Iraqi elections held last January 30, to make sure that the United Iraqi Alliance does not get the 56% of the votes they actually got but only 48%.
Ritter also suggested that the bombing raid Bush allegedly approved was only the start of the efforts of the Bush Administration to force a regime change in Iran as it did in Iraq, which is something that Ritter was rather skeptical about.
Ritter said that the source for the lection rigging report was an official involved in the manipulation and that New Yorker Magazine's Seymour Hersh will publish the details later. Seymour Hersh had previously reported of the American plans to carry out covert activities against the Islamic Republic of Iran for not falling in line with demands that it stop its nuclear program. On Jan. 17, the New Yorker posted (on the net) an article by Hersh entitled The Coming Wars (New Yorker, January 24-31, 2005), in which he suggested that the White House has put in place plans for turning against Iran, which include possible bombing raids. Ritter's announcement was the first specific allusion that indeed the operation has gone beyond the planning stage and the first indication of actual involvement by US forces. There had been reports that Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested that Israel might carry out possible air strikes against Iran. According to Hersh, “Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. . . Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. . . . The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans' negotiated approach [to Iran] cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act.”
Scott Ritter's talk was the culmination of a long evening devoted to discussion of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Before Ritter spoke, Dahr Jamail narrated a slide show on Iraq focusing on Fallujah. He showed more than a hundred vivid photographs taken in Iraq, mostly by himself. Many of them showed the horrific slaughter of civilians.
Ritter was hopeful that by revealing this development early enough, cries for peace and a sensible US foreign policy would prevail in due time before the situation gets out of hand as he believes that the operations in Iran would be minuscule for what is to occur as the sound of war drums is heard against Syria and Iran, which Ritter believes to be the Bush Administration's next targets.
Ritter and Dahr spoke in an evening discussion last Friday sponsored by a local community college and some peace activist groups.
It is worth pointing out that Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency are not in agreement on the state of the Iranian nuclear program and the IAEA asserts that there is no substantiation of claims that Iran is proceeding to build its nuclear weapons as far as the IAEA has been able to determine so far. Dr. Mohammed Al-Baradie, the General Manager of IAEA has also said that the Iranians have been generally cooperative with the Agency's investigations of the program and they have not been able to find proof that Iran is indeed carrying out a full fledge program to build nuclear weapons. The European Union is also of the belief that the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue is through negotiations and there are really no grounds to justify harsh measures or military action against Iran.
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