U.S. backup plan: invade iran by land, air, water strikes
By Maxim Kniazkov
04/16/06 -- "Asian
Age" -- -- Washington, April 16: The United
States began planning a full-scale military campaign against
Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval
operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even
before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq,
a former US intelligence analyst
disclosed on Sunday.
William Arkin, who served as the US Army’s top intelligence mind
on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military
operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military
circles as Tirannt, an acronym for "Theatre Iran Near Term."
It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine
Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a
global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass
destruction, Mr Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and
British planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game
as part of these preparations, the scholar said.
"According to military sources close to the planning process,
this task was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander
of Centcom, in 2002," Arkin wrote, referring to the
Florida-based US central command. But preparations under Tirannt
began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The
plan has since been updated using information collected in Iraq.
Air Force planners have modelled attacks against Iranian air
defences, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal targets and
drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz.
A follow-on Tirannt analysis, which began in October 2003,
calculated the results of different scenarios to provide options
to commanders, Mr Arkin wrote. The Marines, meanwhile, have come
up with their own document called Concept of Operations that
explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore
without establishing a beachhead first. "Though the marine corps
enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary
country named Karona, it is — with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD
and oil wealth — unmistakably meant to be Iran," Mr Arkin said.
Various scenarios involving Iran’s missile force have also been
examined in another study, initiated in 2004 and known as BMD-I,
which is short for "Ballistic Missile Defence — Iran", Mr Arkin
said. In June 2004, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld alerted
the US Strategic Command in Omaha to be prepared to implement
CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. "The new
task force mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver
‘prompt’ global strikes against certain targets in Iran under
some emergency circumstances, the President might have to be
told that the only option is a nuclear one," Mr Arkin said. The
US military has been involved in contingency planning against
Iran since at least the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who
undertook a failed commando operation to rescue US hostages in
Tehran in 1980.
Following the 1996 bombing of an apartment building used by the
US Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which was reportedly
traced to Iranian agents, the administration of then-President
Bill Clinton considered a bombing campaign, according to Richard
Clarke and Steven Simon, who held at the time high-level
counterterrorism positions at the national security council.
"But after long debate, the highest levels of the military could
not forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the
US," the two experts wrote in Sunday’s New York Times. (AFP)
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