Report Says Cheney Considered Baiting Iran into War

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AFP-The Monday issue of Newsweek magazine says David Wurmser, former Middle East adviser to Cheney, had told a handful of friends that Cheney considered asking Israel to bomb Iranian targets in order to provoke a retaliation. The report cited two unnamed "knowledgeable sources", saying it happened shortly before his departure from the administration a month ago.

The plan called for missile strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran by Israel which would inevitably elicit a defensive response from the regime and create a pretense for an all-out American invasion. The strikes would target Iranian nuclear energy sites at the Natanz plant and possibly others inviting a military response against Israel after which the U.S would intervene militarily.

Israel and the U.S suspect Iran is pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program while Tehran insists it is merely practicing its rights under the NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty) to produce nuclear energy. Two rounds of sanctions have been imposed by the United Nations Security Council against Iran despite no evidence of a secret program amid continuous inspections by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).

A September, 2005 statement by the IAEA concluded that its investigation had shown that no nuclear material had been diverted to any military purposes. More recently, a report in August stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity, is far from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts, and is not making significant enrichment progress.

A non-signatory to the NPT, Israel is itself in possession of more than 200 hundred nuclear weapons and has refused to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.