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U.S. Backup Plan: Invade Iran By Land, Air, Water Strikes |
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by ShiftShapers Guerilla News Network Entered into the database on Monday, April 17th, 2006 @ 20:22:34 MST |
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Summary: Tirannt, an acronym for “Theatre Iran Near Term,” includes a scenario
for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian
missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Also See: William
M. Arkin: The Pentagon Preps for Iran: In early 2003, even as U.S. forces
were on the brink of war with Iraq, the Army had already begun conducting an
analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. [Posted By ShiftShapers] ______________________ By Maxim Kniazkov Preparations for full-scale attack well under
way. The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against
Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to
establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion
of Iraq, a
former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Sunday. William Arkin, who served as the US Army’s top intelligence mind on West
Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against
Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as Tirannt, an acronym for
“Theatre Iran Near Term.” It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed
analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian
weapons of mass destruction, Mr Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and British
planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations,
the scholar said. “According to military sources close to the planning process, this task
was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander of Centcom, in 2002,”
Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US central command. But preparations
under Tirannt began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan
has since been updated using information collected in Iraq. Air Force planners
have modelled attacks against Iranian air defences, while Navy planners have
evaluated coastal targets and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the
Strait of Hormuz. A follow-on Tirannt analysis, which began in October 2003, calculated the results
of different scenarios to provide options to commanders, Mr Arkin wrote. The
Marines, meanwhile, have come up with their own document called Concept of Operations
that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore without establishing
a beachhead first. “Though the marine corps enemy is described only as
a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is — with its
Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth — unmistakably meant to be Iran,”
Mr Arkin said. Various scenarios involving Iran’s missile force have also been examined
in another study, initiated in 2004 and known as BMD-I, which is short for “Ballistic
Missile Defence — Iran”, Mr Arkin said. In June 2004, US defence
secretary Donald Rumsfeld alerted the US Strategic Command in Omaha to be prepared
to implement CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. “The
new task force mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver ‘prompt’
global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances,
the President might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one,”
Mr Arkin said. The US military has been involved in contingency planning against
Iran since at least the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who undertook a failed commando
operation to rescue US hostages in Tehran in 1980. Following the 1996 bombing of an apartment building used by the US Air Force
in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which was reportedly traced to Iranian agents, the
administration of then-President Bill Clinton considered a bombing campaign,
according to Richard Clarke and Steven Simon, who held at the time high-level
counterterrorism positions at the national security council. “But after long debate, the highest levels of the military could not
forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the US,” the two
experts wrote in Sunday’s New York Times. |