Seymour Hersh's latest piece on Iran and American intelligence has made a few waves with its assertion that the US has conducted secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids.
There is also understandable concern about the CIA covert action mission being taken over by the Department of Defense. But all of that misses what I consider to be Hersh's critical point: with or without the intelligence, no matter who is put on the ground, the mission is NOT about Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is about changing the fundamental (if you'll pardon the expression) dynamic in the region.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region.
Rumsfeld is quoted that
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
Swell. Can anyone say "imperial overstretch"? I knew you could.
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