Region | Iran
US is 'preparing military options' against Tehran
The country's top military officer said on Friday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticising what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.
- By Ann Scott Tyson, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 00:45 April 27, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- Iraqi and US Army troops board a helicopter after their joint patrol mission, some 50km south of Baghdad.
Washington: The country's top military officer said on Friday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticising what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for US forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.
"It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference.
Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said.
Mullen's statements and others by Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates recently signal a new rhetorical onslaught by the Bush administration against Iran, amid what officials say is increased Iranian provision of weapons, training and financing to Iraqi groups that are attacking and killing Americans.
Interference
In a speech on Monday at West Point, Gates said Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons". He said a war with Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table given the destabilising policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat".
Army Gen David H. Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all US forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said.
The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said.
"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way," Mullen said.
He said recent unrest in Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been understood by the US military previously. "It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn't seen before," he said.
But while Mullen and Gates have recently stated that Tehran must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, which they say are led by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mullen said he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved in this".
Warning shots
In an incident early local time on Thursday, a cargo ship carrying US military hardware, fired "several bursts" of warning shots at two fast boats that approached in international waters off the Iranian coast, a defence official said on Friday.
The unidentified small boats approached the Westward Venture as it headed north through the central Gulf at about 8am local time, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.
The US ship initiated bridge-to-bridge communications and, after receiving no response, it fired a flare. The speed boats continued to approach, so the ship fired warning shots with a .50-calibre machine gun and M16 rifle. The boats then left the area, she said.
"They fired several bursts, it went pretty quickly," Robertson said. Soon afterwards, an Iranian coast guard boat queried the Western Venture, she said. It was unclear whether that was one of the small boats.
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