Gareth Porter

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neoconservative allies in the George W. Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it. And they did not give it up until late 2005, according to a … Continue reading “The Warpath to Regime Change”

Despite the White House spin that the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) supports its policy of increasing pressure on Iran, the estimate not only directly contradicts the George W. Bush administration’s line on Iranian intentions regarding nuclear weapons, but points to a link between Tehran’s 2003 decision to halt research on weaponization and its decision … Continue reading “Iran NIE Validates 2003 European Diplomacy”

Recent statements by the U.S. military that Iran had pledged to stop supplying weapons to Shi’ite militias in Iraq and that this alleged flow of arms may have stopped in August were part of a behind-the-scenes struggle over whether the George W. Bush administration should make a gesture to Iran by releasing five Iranian prisoners … Continue reading “Petraeus Sought to Prevent Release of Iranians”

Until late October, the accepted explanation about the Sept. 6 Israeli air strike in Syria, constructed in a series of press leaks from U.S. officials, was that it was prompted by dramatic satellite intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility with help from North Korea. But new satellite evidence has discredited that narrative, suggesting … Continue reading “Israel’s Syrian Air Strike Was Aimed at Iran”

The George W. Bush administration’s campaign to seize and detain Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials in Iraq, presented by Bush himself last January as a move to break up an alleged Iranian arms smuggling operation in Iraq, appears to have run its course without having been able to link a single Iranian to … Continue reading “Seizure of Iranians Failed to Validate Bush Line”

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of US Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of … Continue reading “Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE”

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neoconservative allies in the George W. Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it. And they did not give it up until late 2005, according to a … Continue reading “For Neocons, Iran Aim Is Still Regime Change”

When the US military command accused the Iranian Quds Force last January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows. The record also … Continue reading “US Military Ignored Evidence of Iraqi-Made EFPs”

The George W. Bush administration’s shift from the military option of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran’s role … Continue reading “Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike”

Despite the U.S. military command’s frequent assertions that the primary threat to U.S. forces in Iraq comes from Iranian meddling, its real problem is that Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army is determined to end the occupation and is simply too big and too well entrenched to be weakened by military force. The U.S. command … Continue reading “Unable to Defeat Mahdi Army, US Hopes to Divide It”