From Volume 2, Issue Number 32 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Aug. 12, 2003

Iran and Syria Targetted for War by Cheney-Sharon 'Disinformation Units'
Special to EIW

President George W. Bush's gutlessness toward Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon represents the greatest security threat to the United States at this time, stated Lyndon LaRouche, candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination in 2004.

By the time Sharon left Washington after his July 30 meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, his government was breaking every agreement he had made with Bush at the Aqaba summit of June 4, and every requirement of the Middle East Road Map. And after the killing of four Palestinians by Israeli military forces over the Aug. 2-3 weekend, another meeting between Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) was cancelled, and the fragile cease-fire is about to break down—exactly what the neo-conservative cabal around Cheney wants.

This would be "business as usual" in the Sharon-Bush relationship, for when Sharon is in the room, "W" stands for "Weak." But this time there is more at stake. On July 29, LaRouche raised the question of whether the Cheney-led neo-conservative cabal and their "Synarchist" controllers might be orchestrating a new terrorist attack against the United States, in order to complete their fascist coup d'etat.

Cheney forecast a new 9/11 attack in his July 24 speech at the neo-con stronghold, the American Enterprise Institute. He said: "Having lost thousands of Americans on a single morning, we are not going to answer further danger by simply issuing diplomatic protests or sharply worded condemnations.... We will act, and act decisively, before gathering threats can inflict catastrophic harm on the American people.... The terrorists intend to strike America again." On July 31, he repeated the warning. On Aug. 3, Attorney General John Ashcroft echoed Cheney's prediction. Cheney's demeaning reference to "diplomatic protests" was widely understood to be a jab against Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Propaganda Campaign Against Iran

As reported in the EIW Middle East Digest last week, new information suggests that the secret deployment of Sharon's master spy and assassination expert Rafi Eytan to the United States could be involved in the Cheney crew's "new 9/11" plot. The same two corrupt intelligence units that foisted phony intelligence about Iraq on the U.S. Congress and the United Nations — the Office Special Plans in the Pentagon, and the parallel special unit under Ariel Sharon — are spreading false intelligence reports to set the basis for new U.S. attacks on Syria and Iran.

And there are clear indications that the still-secret meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Vice President Dick Cheney on July 30 centered on laying the groundwork with a massive propaganda campaign, combined with covert operations, for a U.S. strike against Iran and Syria.

This was hinted in a story in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on July 30, citing sources claiming to have been close to the talks between Sharon and President Bush. Ha'aretz says that Sharon presented Bush with aerial photographs and other alleged evidence of Iranian efforts to enrich uranium for use in weapons development, as well as evidence claiming that Iran was supporting militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and that Iran was trying to undermine the cease-fire. Sharon also told Bush that Iran was offering $50,000 to would-be suicide bombers.

There can be little doubt that this same "information" was discussed in even greater detail, when Sharon met Cheney a day after meeting Bush. Through a back channel in the Office of Special Plans, set up for Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, by the Likudnik network in the Pentagon, the capability exists to launder Sharon's cooked up "intelligence" on alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iran, directly into the media and into White House and Presidential speeches — exactly as was done with the case of Iraq.

On cue, a report appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 4, entitled "Iran Closes In On Ability To Build a Nuclear Bomb," by Douglas Frantz. The article claims to draw on "secret reports, international officials, independent experts, Iranian exiles and intelligence sources in Europe and the Middle East."

Among the Iranian sources Frantz quotes is the terrorist Moujahedeen el Khalq (MEK), which, despite the fact that it is on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations, has now become useful to the chickenhawks in their campaign against Iran.

Frantz cites what he claims is a French government report, claiming that Iran is close to producing weapons grade plutonium. Citing "a foreign intelligence officer and an American diplomat," Frantz says UN inspectors have found samples of enriched uranium during their inspections in Iran. Iran, he claims, is concealing weapons research laboratories, including one in a watch factory near Tehran.

Accompanying the article is a map with all the sites where Iran allegedly has nuclear weapon facilities, and detailed explanations of each. Frantz claims that Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been helping Iran for years—although he quotes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denying it. Allegations of North Korean, Russian, and Chinese roles are also detailed.

Frantz writes: "Foreign intelligence officials told the Times that the Central Intelligence Agency, which has long contended that Iran is building a bomb, has briefed them on a contingency plan for U.S. air and missile attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. 'It would be foolish not to present the Commander in Chief with all the options, including that one,' said one of the officials." Of course the CIA refused to officially comment on such an assertion. Nonetheless Frantz wrote that a preemptive strike would have a precedent in the 1981 Israel strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor.

As soon as the Times story hit the streets, it became big news on Israeli Army Radio, where it was the lead news item every hour. The same day, a senior Israeli military officer was briefing a closed-door session of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, claiming that Iran will have the material needed to make a nuclear bomb by 2004 and will have an operative nuclear weapons program by 2005. Prime Minister Sharon told the committee: "It is clearer than ever that the Iranians are making every effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Getting into the act, the right-wing Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun (Aug. 5) claimed that the North Koreans are holding talks with Iran, about exporting their Taepodong 2 long-range ballistic missile and jointly developing nuclear warheads. The paper said that this missile is claimed to have a range of 6,000 kilometers.

This anti-Iranian hysteria is building up just as the International Atomic Energy Agency had a delegation in Tehran to negotiate a new inspections arrangement.

In response to this propaganda assault, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, speaking before a meeting of senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that Iran has no interest in producing nuclear weapons. "I emphasize that Iran is totally against any form of weapons of mass destruction and denounce as false and groundless the claims that Iran is producing nuclear weapons." But he added, "Iran will not renounce the development of nuclear technology, one of the pillars of the power of the people."

Targetting Syria

Syria is being given the same treatment as Iran, with Israel leading the propaganda assault. Writing in Ha'aretz on Aug. 5, military commentator Reuven Pedatzur warned that the Israeli military is playing up an alleged Syria missile threat that in reality doesn't exist. Pedatzur cites a recent report in the journal Foreign Report, published by Jane's Defence Weekly, which quotes Israeli sources claiming that "100 Syria missiles are aimed at Israel," equipped with payloads of VX nerve gas. Why is this reported now? he asked. After all, Israel has known this since 1988. Furthermore the Israeli military knows it has a powerful deterrent and knows "the Syrians would not dare launch ballistic missiles topped with chemical warheads at Israel because it was clear to them that the price they'd pay would be so high, with painful Israeli Defense Forces attacks on the Syrian rear, that it would not justify the first strike at Israel."

The author writes that this anti-Syria campaign is a repeat of the one against Iraq, which is no longer a threat. It is now building up the phony Syrian threat in order to justify massive investments in the "Home Front" command, including the billions wasted on gas masks for every Israeli, and on building an antiballistic-missile system for a threat that doesn't exist. He writes that the U.S. has done the same thing, with its think-tanks pumping out studies about "the new ballistic missile threats from Iraq, Iran and North Korea. It didn't matter to anyone that the threat didn't really exist, because those three countries don't have missiles with the range to reach the U.S.... The probability that those countries would fire a missile capable of hitting American territory was nil, even if it managed to develop missiles capable of hitting the U.S. With an impressive fear campaign, the American defense establishment managed to enlist enough politicians and public opinion to neutralize the serious threat—of budget cuts."

Border Provocations

Sharon is also heating up the situation along the Israeli-Lebanese border, in an effort to provoke the militant Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon to attack Israeli targets. This effort also constitutes an effort to lay the groundwork for attacks on Iran and Syria, the main backers of Hezbollah. Despite the fact that the border has been quiet for over a year, Israel continues to conduct totally illegal overflights with its bombers creating sonic booms over Lebanese territory, as far north as Beirut.

On Aug. 3 there was the mysterious assassination of Hezbollah operative Ali Hussein Saleh. Israel has been accused by Hezbollah and Lebanese government ministers of being behind the assassination. It has been noted that the method of using a powerful car bomb in the assassination is the trademark of Mossad chief Gen. Meir Dagan. A long-time crony of Sharon, Dagan promised, when Sharon named him to the position, that he would restore the Mossad's "proactive" operations, including assassinations.

This campaign against Syria is a major point of dispute between the chickenhawks and the U.S. military-intelligence establishment. This was documented in a feature article by Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker on July 28. Hirsch documents how Syria had become the CIA's most important source on al-Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks. This was coordinated directly between Syrian President Bashar Assad and CIA Director George Tenet.

Syrian intelligence proved to be extremely valuable, since many al-Qaeda operatives belong to the terrorist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been engaged in undermining the Damascus regime for 20 years. The U.S.-Syrian cooperation yielded information that prevented at least one terrorist attack on American forces based in the Persian Gulf. Because Syria hoped to use this contact in an effort to establish a direct channel to the Bush Administration, to restart serious peace negotiations with Israel, the cooperation flourished, despite the persistent attacks on Syria by the chickenhawks and Israel.

Hersh reports that the chickenhawks did everything possible to undermine this cooperation, even though it was yielding highly useful intelligence. When Syria, like most of the countries on this planet, refused to support the Iraq war, the chickenhawks escalated their attacks and false allegations. This came to a head on June 28, when special U.S. army units crossed deep into Syrian territory to destroy a convoy of vehicles they claimed were transporting Saddam Hussein and other high Ba'ath party officials. The attack left 80 people dead, including many Syrian civilians. The convoy turned out to be a group of smugglers trying to transport Iraqi oil into Syrian territory.

Although Syria was willing to maintain the cooperation, the hardliners in the Bush Administration forced a break-off of the ties. Hersh reports that the CIA is "pissed," but the big losers are likely to be American citizens who could become the victims of the next Sept. 11-style terror attack—an attack from which Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would both greatly benefit.

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