Russia announced this week that it would proceed with a plan to sell 29 sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, spurning a call by the Bush administration to not “continue with the arms sale.”

Rosa Brooks writes today in the Los Angeles Times that the Russian-Iranian deal is cause for alarm because it could precipitate the next war, a war between Iran and Israel. Brooks writes that Russia is playing a deceptive “double game” that could initiate such a war in the near future:

Russian leaders continue to mouth the usual diplomatic platitudes about democracy and global cooperation, but Russia is actually playing a complex double game. On Tuesday, Russia launched a spy satellite for Israel, which the Israelis can use to monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities. On the same day, Russian leaders confirmed their opposition to any U.N. Security Council effort to impose sanctions against Iran, and their intention to go through with the lucrative sale of 29 Tor M1 air defense missile systems to Iran.

Sergei Markov, a Russia expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, spoke this week about the dangers of the Russian missile deal:

[W]e realize perfectly well that as soon as Israeli intelligence gets information that the missiles have been dispatched to Iran, it is very likely that the missile attack against Iranian nuclear facilities will be launched particularly at that moment by Israel.

Brooks writes a regional war would draw the U.S. into the conflict, causing the entire Middle East to “implode,” terrorist attacks worldwide to increase further, and the U.S.’s global influence to wane. Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian political analyst, believes Russia’s oil and gas oligarchs won’t shed any tears over a war in the Middle East, especially if it keeps oil prices high. Read more

Early this afternoon, conservatives in the House Homeland Security Committee voted down an amendment by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have mandated 100 percent scanning of American-bound shipping containers for radiological weapons.

The vote followed an “aggressive lobbying campaign” by a “coalition of industry groups” who pressed conservative members to oppose the amendment. Yesterday, committee chairman Peter King (R-NY) announced that he was caving to industry interests. His excuse was that Markey’s plan was “not realistic“:

There’s no sense putting something in the bill if it’s not realistic, if it’s not going to be implemented and can’t be done. We want a real bill, not a headline.

In fact, the plan is realistic: for well over a year, Hong Kong has been successfully using high tech screening machines to inspect every single container. Achieving that in the United States will undoubtedly take time, but it is technologically feasible, and should be our number one port security priority. Businesses that rely on shipping simply don’t want to spend the money, and conservatives are bending to their will at the expense of our homeland security.

The headline from the Rumsfeld/Rice trip to Baghdad today is that the United States might pull out 30,000 troops this year. There’s actually nothing new in this statement. Since last year, top Bush administration officials and generals in the field have been saying that significant withdrawals of US troops were likely to occur in 2006.

As many have learned the hard way, it is more important to watch what the Bush administration does rather than believe what it says. There are troubling signs that the Bush administration wants to make the U.S. presence permanent in Iraq. According to Newsweek, the Bush administration is putting forward plans to beef up military installations in Iraq:

- The Bush administration is asking for more than $1.1 billion for new military construction in Iraq – roughly double what it plans to spend in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE combined.

- Nellis Balad Air Force Base in Northern Iraq is second only to London’s Heathrow airport with 27,500 landings and takeoffs a month;

- The $592 million new US Embassy in Baghdad rivals the Vatican City in size (US embassy is 104 acres, about 80 football fields; Vatican City is 109 acres).

The main problem is these steps only feed perceptions of occupation that fuel terrorist attacks and give America’s terrorist enemies the perfect recruitment tool — without helping advance U.S. interests in the Gulf region.

The United States need to take back control of its national security and send a clear message to Iraqi leaders that they need to strike the power-sharing deals to stabilize the country — as proposed in American Progress’s strategic redeployment plan.

– Brian Katulis

In an op-ed titled “Do Not Attack Iran,” former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski today makes the case against launching an air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. First on his list:

In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the President.

Most strikingly, Brzezinski wonders whether the Bush administration’s current strategy is actually designed to “deliberately encourag[e] greater Iranian intransigence” and undercut chances of reaching a diplomatic solution:

How else to explain the current U.S. “negotiating” stance: the United States is refusing to participate in the on-going negotiations with Iran but insists on dealing only through proxies. That stands in sharp contrast with the simultaneous negotiations with North Korea, in which the United States is actively engaged.

At the same time, the United States is allocating funds for the destabilization of the Iranian regime and is reportedly injecting Special Forces teams into Iran to stir up non-Iranian ethnic minorities in order to fragment the Iranian state (in the name of democratization!).

Brzezinski is the latest in a long line of national security experts and others advising against a military strike in Iran. (Read our full list HERE.) But Brzezinski also makes a strong proactive case on Iran, calling for the Bush administration to “sober up, to think strategically, with a historic perspective and with America’s national interest primarily in mind.” Read his full op-ed.

Tonight on 60 Minutes, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister — who agreed to act as a spy for the United States — had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program. Watch it:

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice…

BRADLEY: And at that meeting…?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There’s no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

Read the full transcript HERE.

UPDATE: More at CBS News.

Today is the 31st anniversary of former President Gerald Ford’s announcement that he would end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict. Speaking to a group assembled at Tulane University, Ford said:

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned. “¦ Some tend to feel that if we do not succeed in everything everywhere, then we have succeeded in nothing anywhere. I reject categorically such polarized thinking. We can and we should help others to help themselves. But the fate of responsible men and women everywhere, in the final decision, rests in their own hands, not in ours. [Ford speech, 4/23/75]

On Friday, Ford issued a statement praising Rumsfeld and Bush for staying the course in Iraq:

When America’s security remains under threat and terrorists plot to attack us at home, our country is fortunate that we have a Secretary and a Commander-in-chief in President Bush with the character and steadiness to hold firm to the right course. [Ford statement, 4/21/06]

Vietnam was a conflict that could not be resolved by military force. Rep. John Murtha makes the case that the same is true for Iraq: “Our military has accomplished its mission in Iraq…and it is time to bring our troops home.” The administration now claims to have 242,000 trained Iraqi forces, and yet there has been no significant drawdown of U.S. troops.

Instead of defending Rusmfeld, Ford could best serve Bush by reminding him of the lessons of Vietnam.

This tidbit about President Bush’s schedule was buried in today’s Washington Post:

Bush traveled Friday night to Stanford University, where he met privately with members of the libertarian Hoover Institution to discuss the war. He concluded the day with a private dinner held by George P. Shultz, a Hoover fellow and former secretary of state.

Why is this significant? The Hoover Institution is a think tank that has been aggressively promoting the viability of a preemptive military strike in Iran. Here’s just a couple of recent examples —

Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Hoover:

[Europe] will be able to think of all sorts of nicer alternatives to taking out Iran’s nuclear development sites. They will be able to come up with all sorts of abstract arguments and moral equivalence, such as: Other countries have nuclear weapons. Why not Iran? Debating abstract questions is much easier than confronting concrete and often brutal alternatives. The big question is whether we are serious or suicidal. [Creators Syndicate, 1/3/06]

Tod Lindberg, a research fellow at Hoover:

Whatever it is that Saddam was going to perpetrate in his remaining years in power, whatever he intended to bequeath to his sons and whatever in turn they would do to follow up on his legacy, this we have prevented”¦ Which takes us back to Iran”¦I don’t think it would be a good idea to wait around in the hope that we never arrive at the moment when we realize we should have done something. [Washington Times, 4/18/06]

George P. Schultz, who hosted the event, was an “early defender of the use of pre-emptive force to deal with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.”

President Bush, 11/20/05:

It is important that social, political and religious freedoms grow in China. And we encourage China to continue making the historic transition to greater freedom.

But Bush proved today that he isn’t serious about pushing China on human rights, and China isn’t serious about reforming. Instead of calling for greater freedoms, Bush acquiesced to a Chinese demand to allow no unscripted questions at the press briefing, despite standard protocol.

At today’s briefing, the White House allowed only one scripted softball question about human rights, in effect allowing Hu to avoid facing any of the embarrassing facts about China’s abysmal human rights record. Hu’s answer was rather ironic:

QUESTION: President Hu, when will China become a democracy with free elections?

PRESIDENT HU: I don’t know — what do you mean by a democracy? … China has…been actively, properly, and appropriately moved forward the political restructuring process, and we have always been expanding the democracy and freedoms for the Chinese citizens.

The reality is that oppression in China continues to thrive. From 2002-2005, China has received Freedom House’s lowest score on political rights, even as it grows “increasingly adept at using the tools of technology to repress free expression and dissent.”

UPDATE: It does not appear that the questions yesterday were scripted. Instead, the White House limited the session to a few “pool” reporters, under a “mutual agreement” with the Chinese, who did not want a more public setting.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been doing a series of softball interviews with hosts like Rush Limbaugh in an effort to rehabilitate his image. On Monday, Rumsfeld appeared on the Bill Cunningham Show and had this to say about the retired generals criticizing his management of the Iraq war:

Of course the implication that there was something wrong with the war plan is amusing almost because of the fact that the war plan’s fashioned by the combatant commanders and it’s reviewed in great detail by the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then it’s recommended to me and the President.

In other words, Rumsfeld is arguing that there is nothing wrong with the Iraq war planning “” but if there was anything wrong it wasn’t his fault. He’s blaming the combat commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld doesn’t make these kind of statements in the mainstream media, probably because he knows a “pass the buck” strategy wouldn’t go over well. But this is the message he wants to deliver to his base of supporters.

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner stirred interest last week by stating that “the decision has been made and military operations are under way” in Iran. In an interview yesterday, Gardiner discussed a similar series of covert military operations that occured in Iraq in 2002 — months before either the full-scale invasion in March 2003 or even the passage of the Congressional Iraq resolution in October 2002.

Then, in mid-2002, U.S. and British forces “doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq…in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.” The bombings received scant attention from the traditional media at the time, but that was by design. According to Gardiner, Rumsfeld had told the military, “you can begin to bomb Iraq, but don’t let it appear on CNN“:

COL. SAM GARDINER: Well, the evidence is beginning to accumulate that a decision has already been made to use military force in Iran. Now, let me do a historical thing, and then I’ll tell you what the current evidence is. We now know that the decision and the actual actions to bomb Iraq occurred in July of 2002, before we ever had a U.N. resolution or before the Congress ever authorized it. It was an operation called Southern Focus, and the only guidance that the military — or the guidance that the military had from Rumsfeld was keep it below the CNN line. His specific words. The evidence that we’ve already –

AMY GOODMAN: Keep it below what?

COL. SAM GARDINER: The CNN line. In other words, I don’t want this to appear on CNN, okay? That was his guidance to the military, you can begin to bomb Iraq, but don’t let it appear on CNN.

Reports by Seymour Hersh and others indicate that U.S. forces are already working in Iran: marking targets, “working with minority groups” and exiles, and “encourag[ing] ethnic tensions.” Will traditional media outlets avert their eyes again?

Read the full interview HERE.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, two weeks ago, lamenting how energy politics ‘warp’ foreign policy:

“I can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more as secretary of state than the way that the politics of energy is — I will use the word ‘warping’ — diplomacy around the world,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 5.

Condoleezza Rice, last week, sharing a photo-op with Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Nguema is “one of the most brutal, most corrupt and unreconstructed dictators in the world”; he also controls the third-largest oil reserves in Africa:

The Washington Post noted this morning, “The meeting with Mr. Obiang was presumably a reward for his hospitable treatment of U.S. oil firms, though we cannot be sure since the State Department declined our invitation to comment.”

Unfortunately, Rice’s backslapping with a vicious dictator is nothing new:

In 2003, the Bush administration reopened the embassy [in Equatorial Guinea], a move sharply criticized by human rights groups as a favor to the oil companies and to Obiang. Frank Ruddy, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, decries current U.S. policy, saying that Bush administration officials are “big cheerleaders for the government — and it’s an awful government.”

Read more in this excellent Mother Jones profile.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has joined the long list of officials and experts who believe that no good military options exist in Iran. (Read the full list HERE.)

“I think to further comment on it would be complete speculation, but I would say that a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option,” he added. …

“I believe a political settlement will be the answer. Not a military settlement. All these issues will require a political settlement,” Hagel said.

Stating that no good military options exist doesn’t mean the U.S. should take the military option off the table. What it means is that the U.S. needs to get off the sidelines and engage Iran directly, as Hagel has urged in the past:

Iran is a regional power; it has major influence in Iraq and throughout the Gulf region. Its support of terrorist organizations and the threat it poses to Israel is all the more reason that the U.S. must engage Iran. Any lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear weapons program will also require the United States’ direct discussions with Iran. The United States is capable of engaging Iran in direct dialogue without sacrificing any of its interests or objectives.

Unfortunately, the latest reports suggest the Bush administration is turning down opportunities to begin direct talks, as it has done consistently for several years.

Iran announced yesterday that it has enriched uranium in violation of a recent U.N. Security Council demand. The development is being hyped with headlines like “Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says.”

But the truth is Iran’s announcement “had less to do with an engineering feat than with carefully timed political theater” to symbolize its defiance of the U.N. Here are the facts:

Iran enriched the uranium using a cascade of 164 centrifuges that spin uranium hexafluoride gas at supersonic speed. This process extracts U-235″”usable in power reactors and nuclear weapons””from the gas. The enriched uranium that Iran produced cannot be used in a nuclear weapon because it contains just 3.5% U-235, whereas a nuclear weapon typically requires highly-enriched uranium (HEU) that contains more than 90% U-235. Assuming Iran has perfect luck with the centrifuge, it would need to operate this cascade continually for more than five years to produce enough HEU (15-20 kg, roughly the size of a basketball) for a crude nuclear bomb. Read more

Both before and after the Iraq invasion, President Bush predicted that Saddam’s fall would lead to democracy flourishing throughout the Middle East:

A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. [2/26/03]

Iraqi democracy will succeed – and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran – that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. [11/6/03]

And the advance of freedom in the Middle East requires freedom in Iraq. By helping Iraqis build a lasting democracy, we will spread the hope of liberty across a troubled region, and we’ll gain new allies in the cause of freedom. [12/12/05]

But as has been the case with other administration forecasts about the Iraq war and its aftermath, the prediction of a subsequent “global democratic revolution” was overly optimistic.

“Steps toward democracy in the Arab world,” the New York Times reports today, “are slowing, blocked by legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.” The New York Times provides several specific examples: Read more

U.S. officials are considering plans to launch a massive military strike in Iran, a strategy that threatens to undermine U.S. national security interests around the world while actually speeding up Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

From the Heritage Foundation to the Council on Foreign Relations, from Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) to former top Bush State Department official Richard Haass, analysts and experts agree — there are no good military options in Iran.

ThinkProgress has created a graphic database featuring quotes from prominent analysts and experts all stating that there are no good military options in Iran. The document will be updated as more experts and officials weigh in — if we’re missing someone, let us know HERE or in the comments section.

This morning on CNN, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh addressed the uproar at the highest levels of the U.S. military over plans to launch a massive strike against Iran that would include nuclear weapons:

What I’m writing here is that if this [plan to use nukes] isn’t removed — and I say this very seriously, I’ve been around this town for 40 years — some senior officers are prepared to resign. They’re that upset about the fact that this plan is kept in. … [O]ne thing about our military, they’re very loyal to the president, but they’re getting to the edge. They’re getting to the edge with not only Rumsfeld, but with Cheney and the President.

Watch it:

Hersh also addressed claims today by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is “completely nuts.” Hersh’s response: “He didn’t deny there’s serious planning about the military strike, is the point. He’s absolutely right about a nuclear option, but there is planning for conventional war.”

Full transcript: Read more

Joseph Cirincione is a respected non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment, one who admits he “was the last remaining person in Washington who believed President George W. Bush when he said that he was committed to a diplomatic solution.” Yet, in a new column for Foreign Policy magazine, he says he now believes that senior U.S. officials have already made up their minds to attack Iran:

For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran. … What I previously dismissed as posturing, I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran.

The ramifications of such an attack could be disastrous. At a minimum, it would likely “rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq.” But most importantly, a military strike would “almost certainly speed…up” Iran’s nuclear weapons development by sparking a “crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.”

This morning on Meet the Press, Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush officials to resign for making a “series of disastrous mistakes” in Iraq. Watch it:

Transcript:

ZINNI: There’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the Secretary of State say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policies made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them.

RUSSERT: Should someone resign?

ZINNI: Absolutely.

RUSSERT: Who?

ZINNI: Secretary of Defense to begin with.

RUSSERT: Anyone else?

ZINNI: Well, I think that we — those that have been responsible for the planning, for overriding all the efforts that were made in planning before that, that those that stood by and allowed this to happen that didn’t speak out – and there were appropriate ways within the system you can speak out, at congressional hearings and otherwise — I think they have to be held accountable.

Full transcript below: Read more