Sy Hersh on Iran and a Changing Washington

Seymour Hersh always manages to untangle the complexities of the political relationships in Washington in a way that's fairly easy to understand and in his latest New Yorker article The Next Act, he takes a look at the realities faced by a White House with a new (old guard) Defence secretary, a Democratic congressional majority and the issues it faces in the Middle East - most especially a nuclear Iran.

Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”

Critical decisions will be made in the next few months, the former C.I.A. official said. “Bush has followed Cheney’s advice for six years, and the story line will be: ‘Will he continue to choose Cheney over his father?’ We’ll know soon.”

Who's your daddy, dubya?

Once again, tensions are flaring between the White House and the CIA which is not giving Cheney the intel he wants to see to 'prove' that Iran is a so-called imminent threat. It's Iraq deja vu all over again. This time, however, the dynamics in the region are very different:

The former senior intelligence official added that the C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations. “An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world, and we’ll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against us—and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West. It’s an analyst’s worst nightmare—for the first time since the caliphate there will be common cause in the Middle East.” (An Islamic caliphate ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth century.)

According to the Pentagon consultant, “The C.I.A.’s view is that, without more intelligence, a large-scale bombing attack would not stop Iran’s nuclear program. And a low-end campaign of subversion and sabotage would play into Iran’s hands—bolstering support for the religious leadership and deepening anti-American Muslim rage.”

The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because “we’ve cried wolf” before.

Indeed. But, buoyed by mounting pressure from Israel (which is supplying questionable intelligence of its own), the question remains: which force will win in the end? Bush's real dad or his pseudo-dad Dick?

Read the whole article. It's well worth your time...

Update: Those neocons just never give up. There's an editorial by a member of the American Enterprise Institute, Joshua Muravchik, in Sunday's LA Times titled 'Bomb Iran'. Seriously, is that the best thing a scholar like him can come up with? How pathetic. Go ahead neocons: bomb Iran and see what happens. This time though, don't expect flowers and candies.