George Bush’s latest $190 billion request to Congress for emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan includes an item that has escaped much media coverage.
The US Department of Defence has asked for an additional $88 million to modify B2 stealth bombers so that they can carry a 30,000lb bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator (or MOP). The MOP is an advanced form of a “bunker buster”, an air-delivered weapon with an explosive capacity to destroy targets deep underground. Explaining the request, the Pentagon says it is in response to an “urgent operational need from theatre commanders”. What urgent need?
The Americans control the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq and could, if they wished, blanket the two countries with bombs from a few thousand feet in broad daylight. So what lies somewhere between Iraq and Afghanistan that might demand the urgent deployment of a stealth aircraft that can quietly drop a 30,000lb bomb and destroy something several storeys below ground? The debate in Washington about what to do with the increasingly self-confident Iranian regime has taken a significant turn in the past few weeks. And the decision to upgrade the bombing capacity of the US military is perhaps the most powerful indication yet as to where the debate is leading. A number of developments have tilted the argument towards a more aggressive US posture. It’s clear that Moscow, under its breathtakingly arrogant and ambitious President, has no intention of lifting a finger to help the US and its allies with any economic measures that might persuade the Iranians to disarm. China too continues to show no interest.
At the same time Western diplomatic sycophancy has become much more favourable. France has long been an advocate of a hardline approach towards Iran and Nicolas Sarkozy’s Government has recently indicated its willingness to support Washington, Tony Blair-style. Another significant development was what happened last month when Israeli jets attacked a target inside Syria. The details remain murky but it looks increasingly as though Israel may have pulled off a near-repeat of its 1981 attack on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor. The US Government feels that this aggression went encouragingly well.Iran is not Syria, however and its tentacles are much more extensive. But the biggest argument within the US against military action in Iran has always been that such a move would inflame public opinion, causing the Iranian people – who despise their regime perhaps more than the Americans do – to rally around the Government, while, at the same time, not doing enough to set back the nuclear programme. Now the US thinks it has the intelligence and the military capacity to undermine the Iranian threat seriously, and the costs of doing so may not be as high as once seemed.
America is already at war with Iran. Every day US soldiers in Iraq are attacked by Iranian-financed paramilitaries, with Iranian-produced weapons in pursuit of Iranian political objectives. Iran is manipulating the Iraqi Government in ways that undercut the US and its
puppets allies.
