Beltway Area Indymedia

A U.S. armada including two aircraft carriers moved into the Persian Gulf Wednesday, amid increasing threats from the U.S. and increasing defiance from Iran this week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also this week stated that Iran has stepped up uranium enrichment in the face of U.N. Security Council sanctions and calls for a halt to Iran’s nuclear program. The large U.S. naval force includes amphibious assault vessels with over 2,000 U.S. Marines.

The U.S. will likely seek a third set of sanctions against Iran, while Iran vows to further speed up and expand its nuclear activities. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that his country’s nuclear capabilities are “close to the peak”, and asserted that Iran “will never retreat even one step from this path.” The IAEA estimates that Iran is between 3 to 8 years away from building a nuclear weapon, and Iran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes only.

These developments come as new information has surfaced from CBS News that the U.S. and other nations are engaging in sabotage of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including tampering with equipment and blueprints, that leads to system failures and other setbacks such as the explosion at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility a year ago.

Additionally disturbing news this week came in the form of reports that Vice President Dick Cheney has been working within the administration not only to advance a strategy of military confrontation with Iran, but has also directly worked to disrupt diplomatic efforts by the State Department and other diplomats. These reports claim Cheney is explicitly planning to force President George Bush into a war with Iran, and the strategy reportedly includes pressuring Israel to launch a missile strike against Iranian nuclear facilities in order to prompt Iranian retaliation that targets U.S. forces. Such a scenario would, in theory, guarantee that Bush would order U.S. military action against Iran in retaliation. These assertions come from an aide to the vice president, who spoke to The Washington Note this week on condition of anonymity.

In other comments this week, the Iranian president also issued a warning to Israel not to take military action against Lebanon in the coming months, saying, “If this year you repeat the same mistakes of last year, the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will uproot the Zionist regime.” Comments from Israeli political and military leaders late last year and early this year indicated that Israel views a war with Lebanon and Syria as highly possible sometime this year, most likely during the summer months. Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon was interpreted by many observers as a “test run” for operations in the event of a U.S.-Iran war, and Israel has insisted that if other nations do not act to stop the Iranian nuclear program, Israel will take unilateral military action as it did against Iraq’s nuclear facilities in 1981.

Finally, unconfirmed reports are now surfacing that claim President Bush will announce another massive troop surge into Iraq later this year, involving potentially up to 100,000 additional U.S. troops. These reports suggest that the next surge may be in anticipation of military action against Iran.