Le reporteur-vedette du New Yorker<\/em>, Seymour Hersh, consacre un long article \u00e0 l’activisme de l’administration GW Bush en Iran, dans le num\u00e9ro du magazine dat\u00e9 du 7 juillet<\/a>. Cet article doit naturellement \u00eatre plac\u00e9 en corr\u00e9lation avec les diverses rumeurs<\/a> sur la possibilit\u00e9 d’une attaque contre l’Iran, qui ont trouv\u00e9 une nouvelle jeunesse depuis quelques jours.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n La situation que d\u00e9crit Hersh est principalement une intensification des op\u00e9rations de forces sp\u00e9ciales US en Iran, avec l’espoir que ces op\u00e9rations d\u00e9clencheraient \u00e9ventuellement une riposte iranienne, laquelle donnerait \u00e0 l’administration GW Bush un pr\u00e9texte pour une attaque contre l’Iran. Isra\u00ebl serait fid\u00e8lement et h\u00e9ro\u00efquement aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de l’administration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Nous nous int\u00e9ressons surtout \u00e0 un (des) passage(s) concernant l’attitude des militaires qu’on dit oppos\u00e9s \u00e0 une attaque de l’Iran. Il y est notamment question de Gates, des amiraux Mullen et Fallon. On y apprend que l’attitude de Gates d’opposition \u00e0 une attaque est tr\u00e8s fortement marqu\u00e9e, et aussi que l’une des causes, sinon la cause essentielle du d\u00e9part de Fallon de CENTCOM, en mars dernier, est l’impossibilit\u00e9 où il semblait \u00eatre de contr\u00f4ler l’activit\u00e9 des forces sp\u00e9ciales US en Iran. Ces forces sp\u00e9ciales semblent devoir d\u00e9pendre directement, par le biais d’un commandement int\u00e9gr\u00e9 sp\u00e9cial, de l’autorit\u00e9 civile \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n «Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a pre\u00ebmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, \u00ab\u00a0We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.\u00a0\u00bb Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was \u00ab\u00a0Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.\u00a0\u00bb (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were \u00ab\u00a0pushing back very hard\u00a0\u00bb against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that \u00ab\u00a0at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders\u00a0\u00bb—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—\u00a0\u00bbhave weighed in on that issue.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the \u00ab\u00a0real objective\u00a0\u00bb of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that \u00ab\u00a0attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. \u00ab\u00a0Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,\u00a0\u00bb he told me. \u00ab\u00a0Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.\u00a0\u00bb <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, \u00ab\u00a0Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em> (…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n »Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s \u00ab\u00a0czar\u00a0\u00bb for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u00ab\u00a0One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,\u00a0\u00bb Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) \u00ab\u00a0He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.\u00a0\u00bb—area of operations. \u00ab\u00a0That was not happening,\u00a0\u00bb Sheehan said. \u00ab\u00a0When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n L’article de Hersh est publi\u00e9 alors que les sp\u00e9culations se poursuivent, on l’a dit. Elles se poursuivent mais elles sont toujours aussi incertaines et contradictoires, comme elles le sont depuis une dizaine de jours.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Pour entretenir cette chronique de l’incertitude de l’attaque par surprise annonc\u00e9e, nous citons \u00e0 nouveau la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 d’analyse Stratfor.com<\/em>, qui occupe par rapport \u00e0 ses habitudes une position originale sur la question. D’habitude du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des faucons et des durs, c’est-\u00e0-dire plut\u00f4t inclin\u00e9e \u00e0 des analyses bellicistes, cette fois Strafor.com<\/em> maintient<\/a> une analyse d’apaisement, estimant qu’aucune attaque n’est \u00e0 envisager. Stratfor.com<\/em> confirme cette analyse aujourd’hui<\/a>, dans son \u00ab\u00a0Geopolitical Diary<\/em>\u00ab\u00a0, en acc\u00e8s libre. Pour Stratfor.com<\/em>, l’esquisse d’une manœuvre de rapprochement diplomatique est beaucoup plus importante et significative que les rumeurs d’attaque.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n «The United States has raised the possibility of opening a diplomatic interests section in Iran. To avoid giving the impression that the idea was an unqualified U.S. position, State Department officials carefully leaked word of an ongoing debate about the plan to the press. But the news was not met with immediate denial by U.S. officials. In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to rule the idea out — instead Rice said she preferred not to comment on internal U.S. deliberations.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »Hours after her statement, the official Iranian news agency said Iran was prepared, in principle, to consider the request if it is officially made by the United States. So, a week after word was leaked to The New York Times of Israeli maneuvers in preparation for a possible air strike on Iran, the Administration has opened a diplomatic door. <\/em>(…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n »So on Friday it appeared that the world was on the verge of war between Israel and Iran, with the United States supporting Israel. By late Monday, the United States was proposing raising the level of diplomatic relations and the Iranians were indicating that they were open to it. In our mind this reinforces the idea that the careful leaking of putative Israeli war games was part of a \u00ab\u00a0bad cop, somewhat better cop\u00a0\u00bb routine, designed to work the Iranians psychologically. They were offered the choice between Israeli air strikes or improving diplomatic relations. The second offer sounded much better than the first.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »Setting aside the purple rhetoric on all sides, we have long believed that the Americans and Iranians were talking and actually working together in Iraq. The massive decline in casualties in Iraq is not simply due to U.S. military operations. The decision by the Iranians to rein in Shiite Iraqi militias had a significant impact on it. Indeed, in our view, the Iraq issue has always been more important to both countries than the nuclear weapon issue, and in Iraq, there has been progress.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n »Both governments are urgently concerned with face. Neither wants to appear to be conceding anything to the other. When the Great Satan meets the Axis of Evil, no public compromise is possible. So all compromising is done privately. And that’s what makes this important. The tentative offer is very public and comes from the highest levels of government. It has been acknowledged officially. Now, this is the United States and Iran so anything public can collapse quickly. But the offer itself, no matter how it was couched, is extremely significant as is the response. In many ways we regard this as more significant than the Israeli exercises.<\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n Mis en ligne le 30 juin 2008 \u00e0 14H51<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hersh et l’attaque contre l’Iran Le reporteur-vedette du New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, consacre un long article \u00e0 l’activisme de l’administration GW Bush en Iran, dans le num\u00e9ro du magazine dat\u00e9 du 7 juillet. Cet article doit naturellement \u00eatre plac\u00e9 en corr\u00e9lation avec les diverses rumeurs sur la possibilit\u00e9 d’une attaque contre l’Iran, qui ont trouv\u00e9… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2870,6296,3984,4180,2773,7098,3160],"class_list":["post-70007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-attaque","tag-fallon","tag-gates","tag-hersh","tag-iran","tag-mullen","tag-stratfor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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