Gareth Porter

In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran agenda of the George W. Bush administration and the preoccupation of its military command in Afghanistan with militant Sunni activism, a State Department official publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming the Taliban forces last week, but the US commander of NATO forces … Continue reading “New Iran Arms Claim Reveals Cheney-Military Rift”

A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. … Continue reading “Cheney’s Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed”

Following revelations of a George W. Bush administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran. Brzezinski, the national security … Continue reading “Could an al-Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran?”

Nationalist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s bid to unite Sunnis and Shi’ites on the basis of a common demand for withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces, reported last weekend by the Washington Post‘s Sudarsan Raghavan, seems likely to get a positive response from Sunni armed resistance. An account given Pentagon officials by a military officer recently returned … Continue reading “Sunni Resistance Receptive to Sadr Alliance”

Adm. William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was … Continue reading “Commander’s Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Buildup”

The language on a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq voted out of the House-Senate conference committee this week contains large loopholes that would apparently allow U.S. troops to continue carrying out military operations in Iraq’s Sunni heartland indefinitely. The plan, coming from the Democratic majority in Congress, makes an exemption from a 180-day timetable … Continue reading “Democrats’ Timetable Allows U.S. War in Sunni Region to Go On”

When the George W. Bush administration launched a high-profile campaign in January and February accusing Iran of exporting armor-piercing bombs to Shi’ite militias in Iraq, seizing Iranian officials in Iraq, threatening cross-border raids against Iran and sending a second carrier battle group into the Gulf, it seemed that it was entering a much more aggressive … Continue reading “Bush’s Bluster on Iran Was Cover for Direct Talks”

Two weeks ago, Pentagon officials discussed a strategy to escalate U.S. pressure on Iran with the intention of creating the impression that the U.S. is ready to go to war, according to an account by one of the participants. A meeting at the Pentagon in mid-February was said by the participant to have revolved around … Continue reading “Pentagon Meet Discussed Escalating Pressure on Iran”

Karl Rove, then White House deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff. Ney, who pleaded guilty last … Continue reading “Rove Said to Have Received 2003 Iranian Proposal”

The first major effort by the George W. Bush administration to substantiate its case that the Iranian government has been providing weapons to Iraqi Shi’ites who oppose the occupation undermines the administration’s political line by showing that it has been unable to find any real evidence of an Iranian government role. Contradicting recent claims by … Continue reading “US Briefing on Iran Discredits the Official Line”