Rummy Targets Iran

September 08, 2004

There are now 1,001 American reasons why Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake, but Don Rumsfeld is talking about Iran. And Bill Luti, the former Gingrich aide who runs the Near East and South Asia (NESA) office at the Pentagon and who is reportedly a key cog in the machine now targeted by the FBI’s counterintelligence unit, has five or six other countries in mind. Re-elect Bush, anyone?

Meeting reporters and editors of the Moonie-led Washington Times (yes, I subscribe to that) Rumsfeld said:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld charged yesterday that Iran is fueling the deadly insurgency in Iraq with money and fighters.

But … Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the United States has limited options because other nations are "not willing" to join in pressuring Iran, which has shown behavior that Mr. Rumsfeld said is "not part of the civilized world."

Asked for details yesterday on Iranian meddling, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "They have put people in there. They have put money in there.

"By 'they,' I'm not going to say which element of the government or whether it's even known to the government. But money has come in from Iran. People have come in from Iran. And it's a very difficult thing to stop," he said. "Iran is a country that is not part of the civilized world in terms of its behavior."

Asked whether Iran is funding Sheik al-Sadr, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "There's a lot of speculation to that effect."

At the very least Rumsfeld is trying to blame Iran for the catastrophically bad news out of Iraq. Problem is, the strongest resistance to the U.S. occupation comes from Sunni-led groups who don’t especially like Iran. But with Americans dying at ever-faster rates, he has to blame someone.

Now Rummy is right that America has few options. Of course, we had few options in Iraq in 2003, and Bush chose the very worst of those. The growing split between Europe and the United States over Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a sign that the White House is once again thinking about choosing the wrong one. And while Iran certainly is meddling in Iraq, the ayatollah most closely linked to Sadr broke with him recently, and in fact Iran could totally destroy the U.S. position in Iraq if it wanted to; so far, at least, it is acting with great restraint. How long that restraint will last if Rumsfeld keeps muttering about the mullahs is open to question. And there is this question: Is Rumsfeld trying to set the stage for an Israeli attack on Iran?

Luti, meanwhile, scared a bunch of members of Congress in a conference call last month, according to Time magazine :

A Democratic official tells Time that a leading Pentagon hawk recently hinted that the doctrine of pre-emptive war could soon apply to potential new targets. During a private Aug. 19 conference call with Capitol Hill aides from both parties, sources say, senior Pentagon policy official William Luti said there are at least five or six foreign countries with traits that "no responsible leader can allow." An outspoken proponent of the Iraq war, Luti had declared at an October 2002 conference that the U.S. has "the right to ... hold accountable nations that harbor terrorists." In his recent call, Luti did not name the nations he had in mind but said they are led by dictators with weapons-of-mass-destruction programs and close ties to terrorists. His remarks suggest that the Administration is looking well beyond the current "axis of evil," which includes Iran, Iraq and North Korea; this might put countries like Syria in the spotlight.