United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

In its Saturday edition, the Washington Post reported that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a news conference "that the Pentagon is planning for 'potential military courses of action' as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's 'increasingly lethal and malign influence' in Iraq."[1] -- Adm. Michael "Mike" Mullen also said that Gen. David Petraeus is preparing a briefing on increased Iranian involvement in Iraq. -- The remarks followed on the heels of other belligerent rhetoric this week from Secretary of State Robert Gates, who on Monday said Iran is "hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons," Ann Scott Tyson noted. -- The Post also noted an incident that allegedly occurred in the Persian Gulf early Thursday in which the Westward Venture, a "cargo ship contracted by the U.S. military," supposedly fired "warning shots" at "two fast boats" that "approached in international waters off the Iranian coast." -- The Post did not report that the Iranian Navy denied the account.[2] -- The Los Angeles Times called the comments from American officials "a series of unusual public accusations and warnings."[3] -- Julian Barnes said that some expert commentators speculated that the remarks were "aimed more at Arab nations" than at Iran. -- Barnes offered some background information that cast doubt on American officials' statements: "Iranian officials publicly dismiss the U.S. charges. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, including Tehran's envoy to Baghdad, have condemned the shelling of the U.S.-protected Green Zone and praised Maliki's offensive against militants in southern Iraq." -- Barnes also offered byzantine, gratuitous speculations about possible Iranian motives: "[E]xperts and officials in Iran and the U.S. say several dynamics are at work within Tehran's leadership circle. Iranians support their Shiite, Kurdish, and even Sunni allies in the Baghdad government. But they fear the U.S. will turn its sights on Iran if the situation in Iraq stabilizes, at least during the last months of the Bush administration." -- Bloomberg News reported that "Iran's leaders have denied their government has shipped weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militias there" and then in the next paragraph affirmed Mullen's charge that "the Iranian government pledged to halt such activities just some months ago," without acknowledging the contradiction.[3] -- At the end of its article on Mullen's remarks, Reuters made a rare mention of Israel's nuclear weapons: "Mullen's warning came a day after the United States accused Syria of trying to build a secret nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli air strike last year. -- Asked whether the Syrian strike should be seen as a signal to Iran that military action will be taken against suspected nuclear sites, Mullen simply repeated Washington's charge that Iran is seeking the bomb. -- Israel is widely believed to have assembled the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal at Dimona, a plant out of bounds to foreign inspection. U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge Israel's arsenal, although sometimes they slip. -- 'I think more nuclear, I think nuclear weapons in the Middle East, particularly with Iran, proffers potential for other countries to develop it,' Mullen said."[4] -- NOTE: The notion of a "secret [Syrian] nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli air strike last year," here purveyed as a fact by Reuters, is most likely false. -- In a 6100-word article in the Feb. 11 New Yorker that explored the mysterious Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli attack known as "Operation Orchard," Seymour Hersh did not come to a definitive conclusion about its nature, but he all but ruled out the widely bruited notion that this was a nuclear site. -- The hypothesis that Hersh preferred was dual: that the attack was designed, first, to reestablish Israel's "credibility as a deterrent" vis-à-vis Syria in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, and, second, to be "a warning about — and a model for — a preëmptive attack on Iran." ...

The nation's top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.

"It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference. Speaking of Iran's intentions, Mullen said: "They prefer to see a weak Iraq neighbor. . . . They have expressed long-term goals to be the regional power."

Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution and does not expect imminent action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said.

Mullen's statements and others by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently signal new rhetorical pressure on Iran by the Bush administration amid what officials say is increased Iranian provision of weapons, training, and financing to Iraqi groups that are attacking and killing Americans.

In a speech Monday, Gates said Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." He said war would be "disastrous" but added that "the military option must be kept on the table, given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat."

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon on increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said.

"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not," Mullen said. He said unrest in the Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been clear previously.

But while Mullen and Gates have said that the government in Tehran must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, Mullen said he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership is involved."

In an incident early local time Thursday, a cargo ship contracted by the U.S. military fired "several bursts" of warning shots at two fast boats that approached in international waters off the Iranian coast, defense officials said yesterday.

The unidentified small boats approached the Westward Venture, a ship carrying U.S. military hardware, as it headed north through the central Persian Gulf, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Navy's 5th Fleet.

The U.S. ship initiated communications, and after receiving no response, it fired a flare. The speedboats continued to approach, so the ship fired warning shots. The boats then left the area, Robertson said.

In January, five Iranian patrol boats sped toward a U.S. warship in the Gulf and dropped small, boxlike objects in the water, an incident that President Bush called "a provocative act." The objects turned out to pose no threat to U.S. vessels.

TEHRAN -- Iran has said it had not had a confrontation with the U.S. Navy in the Gulf, official news agency IRNA reported on Friday night.

IRNA quoted an Iranian Navy spokesman as saying there was no confrontation between Iranian boats and a U.S. vessel in the Gulf.

The U.S. Navy said on Friday that a contracted cargo vessel had fired warning shots on two small boats that approached the ship in the Gulf and failed to respond to radio communications.

Tehran had denied reports about a similar incident earlier this month between three Iranian speedboats and the USS Typhoon in the Gulf, saying that in that case there had just been routine radio contact between the two sides.

** In unusually public accusations, it says Tehran is working to destabilize Iraq via attacks on U.S. troops. **

WASHINGTON -- U.S. military leaders have issued a series of unusual public accusations and warnings about Iran, saying they have new evidence of Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. troops as part of a broader effort to destabilize Iraq.

On Friday, the top uniformed officer in the U.S., Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, accused Iran in a televised news briefing of increasing its shipments of weapons to militants in Iraq, in violation of its promises to stem the flow of arms.

The comments by Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came days after angry complaints by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

In addition, military officers in Iraq are planning to publicize evidence of what Mullen called Iran's "malign influence" there.

Military officials said there was no concerted U.S. campaign to intensify pressure on Iran. But taken together, the remarks represent a shift in the military's thinking. Hopes expressed last year that Iran might be tempering its involvement in Iraq seem to have evaporated, and military officials have renewed warnings about the potential for military action.

Though a third conflict in the Middle East in addition to those in Iraq and Afghanistan would be "extremely stressful" for the U.S. military, no potential adversary should feel emboldened, Mullen said.

"I have reserve capability, particularly in our Navy and our Air Force," Mullen said. "So it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability."

Underscoring the latest tensions, a cargo vessel under contract to the Defense Department fired on a group of small boats in the Persian Gulf on Friday, briefly touching off alarm in the world energy markets. U.S. military officials said they believed the boats involved in the confrontation were Iranian, but military officials in Tehran denied the incident took place.

President Bush and officials in his administration have been accused by political opponents of using criticism of Iran to shift public attention away from the protracted war in Iraq.

U.S. intelligence experts reversed earlier assessments in December and concluded that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. But in releasing classified information this week on an alleged nuclear reactor being built in Syria with the help of North Korea, the White House also warned Iran against pursuing such technology.

Some experts say the tough new talk on Iran is aimed more at Arab nations, which are worried about Iranian influence in the Middle East and want to see Washington take a harder line against Tehran.

Military officers in Washington and Baghdad dismissed the idea that the audience for their recent criticisms was anyone other than the leaders of the government in Tehran, and said their comments were prompted by military concerns.

Both Gates and Mullen have urged repeatedly that military confrontation with Iran be avoided. Mullen and other military officers have said that problems with Iran can and should be solved diplomatically.

Gates has sought bipartisan ground on Iraq in his dealings with Congress, and Mullen has a reputation for being fiercely apolitical.

The tougher rhetoric may reflect the shifting nature of threats inside Iraq. The U.S. military has weakened the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and reached cease-fire agreements with many former Sunni Arab insurgents.

As those threats have receded, Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militant groups have been left as the most serious threat to stability.

"It's a reordering of challenges," said Nathan Freier, a former advisor to the military in Iraq and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The reasoned military judgment is that armed Shiite groups that operate outside government control are posing a substantial challenge to making additional progress in Iraq," he said.

Iran has carefully built up influence with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, but it also has ties to the movement led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.

To those in the Pentagon, recent fighting in the southern city of Basra between Maliki's government forces and armed groups associated with Sadr is a clear illustration of Iran's ability to both stir up violence and clamp down on it. Some military officials believe Iran pressured Sadr to agree to a cease-fire with Maliki.

On Friday, Mullen said the Basra fighting was a visible confirmation of the expanded influence of Iran in Iraq.

"I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability," he said.

Officers in Baghdad have complained about growing numbers of explosively formed penetrators, a particularly dangerous form of roadside bomb. U.S. military officers have long blamed Iran for the presence of those weapons in Iraq. In addition, officers have said Iranian-trained militants are responsible for the worst rocket and mortar attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone.

At one military briefing this month, officials displayed rockets they said had been supplied by Iran. And at an April 20 briefing, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a division commander in central Iraq, said many of the 146 soldiers he had lost were killed by Iranian munitions. He said his division had detained at least 25 Iraqis who said they had been trained, directly or indirectly, by Iranians.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and other American diplomats in Baghdad have been equally critical of Iran. In testimony in Washington this month, Crocker said Iran was seeking to co-opt elements of the Shiite community.

"Iran continues to undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government to establish a stable, secure state through the training of criminal militia elements," he said.

Iranian officials publicly dismiss the U.S. charges. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, including Tehran's envoy to Baghdad, have condemned the shelling of the U.S.-protected Green Zone and praised Maliki's offensive against militants in southern Iraq. They blame the U.S. military presence for Iraq's troubles.

But experts and officials in Iran and the U.S. say several dynamics are at work within Tehran's leadership circle. Iranians support their Shiite, Kurdish and even Sunni allies in the Baghdad government. But they fear the U.S. will turn its sights on Iran if the situation in Iraq stabilizes, at least during the last months of the Bush administration.

In his news conference Friday, Mullen voiced support for the view that Iran wants to destabilize the Iraqi government.

"They have expressed long-term goals to be the regional power in that part of the world."

Some experts say that may be what's behind the new U.S. approach. Trita Parsi, a Mideast affairs scholar and president of the National Iranian American Council, said many Arab countries wanted to see the U.S. take a tougher stance against Iran.

The U.S. has been pushing Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations to open embassies in Baghdad. But Parsi said the Arab states were reluctant to support the Maliki government unless the U.S. did more to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq.

"In order for the Arabs to go along with the Iraqi Shiite-led government, one of their demands is that the U.S. push back on Iran and make sure Iraq does not fall into Iranian hands," Parsi said.

Although the military is primarily concerned about Iranian support for Iraqi militants, many Mideast experts also worry about the possibility of a maritime confrontation that could touch off a broader military conflict.

Friday's gulf incident, which temporarily drove the price of oil to $119.55 a barrel, occurred when speedboats came within 100 yards of the Westward Venture, a commercial cargo ship contracted by the Pentagon. A detachment of U.S. naval personnel aboard the ship fired three bursts of warning shots, a Defense Department official said.

The official said the shots, from a .50-caliber gun and an M-16 rifle, came after the Westward Venture attempted to warn the boats away by sounding its whistle and firing a flare. The speedboats turned away after the shots were fired.

Although U.S. officials weren't certain the boats were Iranian, the incident occurred 50 miles off the Iranian coast, the official said, and the boats were believed to be part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's increasingly aggressive naval force in the region.

--Times staff writers Tina Susman in Baghdad, Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.

MULLEN SAYS IRAN STILL ARMING IRAQI SHIITE MILITIAS
By Ken Fireman and Tony Capaccio

Iran is continuing to supply arms to Iraqi Shiite militias that attack U.S. forces in Iraq, violating a commitment from Iranian leaders to halt such shipments, said Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

U.S. forces in Iraq have found caches containing Iranian-made weapons that were "recently manufactured," Mullen told a Pentagon news conference. He declined to be more specific about when the weapons were produced.

Mullen said the discoveries have convinced him and other U.S. military officials that Iran is a "lethal and malign" influence in Iraq and isn't keeping its pledge to end such activities. "Action certainly speaks louder than words," he said.

Iran has "expressed long-term goals to be the regional power" in the Middle East and would "prefer to see a weak Iraq neighbor," he said.

Mullen's remarks are the latest this month from senior U.S. military officials to highlight Iran's support of Shiite Muslim militia groups. General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in congressional testimony that Iranian-backed militia groups are the greatest long-term threat to stability.

So-called special groups, funded, trained and armed by Iran, played a "destructive role" in the recent clashes between extremist militias and Iraqi government forces in Basra and Baghdad, Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee April 9. U.S. officials have said that Iran also supplied the rockets fired into Baghdad's Green Zone.

Mullen said Petraeus is preparing a briefing that will soon lay out detailed evidence of Iran's involvement in Iraq.

Mullen said he has seen no "massive increases" in Iranian arms flow to Iraqi militia.

"I would characterize it as consistent with what they have done -- over time, not just in the last few weeks, but over the last couple of the years," Mullen said. "And it's not just weapons" but training and broad support for other terrorist groups in the region, he said.

Iranian leaders said they "were committed to decreasing support," but "I just don't see any evidence of them backing off and Basra highlighted a lot of it," Mullen said.

Iran's leaders have denied their government has shipped weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militias there. Mullen today said he had no "smoking gun" proof of their complicity.

Still, "the Iranian government pledged to halt such activities just some months ago," he said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed they seem to have gone the other way."

Mullen said the best way to thwart Iranian influence in Iraq is through "diplomatic, financial, and international pressure."

He said he had "no expectations" of a conflict with Iran "in the immediate future," and that a third conflict in the Middle East would be "extremely stressing" for U.S. forces.

Still, he said, "no military options" are "off the table," and it would be "a mistake" to think the U.S. is "out of combat power."

"I have reserve capability, in particularly our Navy and our Air Force, not just there, but available globally," Mullen said. "There are lots of potential military courses of action."

--To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1@bloomberg.net; Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon sharpened its warnings about Iran on Friday, saying Tehran had boosted its support for Iraqi militias fighting U.S. troops and that Washington had military options to force Iran to stop.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military had evidence Iran was sending new weapons to Iraqi insurgents despite Tehran's commitment to the government in Baghdad that it would halt such support.

"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activity some months ago," Mullen said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way."

Mullen also said he was "extremely concerned" about Iran's activities throughout the region, including its support for Islamist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Mullen said the United States would continue to rely on diplomatic and economic methods to encourage Iran to change, but that the Pentagon had military options it could consider.

"When I say I don't want to take any military options off the table, that certainly more than implies that we have military options," Mullen told reporters. "That kind of planning activity has been going on for a long time. I think it will go on for some time into the future."

Mullen's comments are the latest in a string of warnings from Washington about Iranian activity, seen by the Pentagon as a threat to the United States, its allies, and the oil market.

Washington accuses Iran of funding, training, and arming Shi'ite militias in Iraq and says Iran has a long-term desire to attain nuclear weapons despite a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran halted its nuclear program years ago.

Iran denies all of those charges and blames the United States for instability in Iraq and the Middle East.

Mullen's warning came a day after the United States accused Syria of trying to build a secret nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli air strike last year.

Asked whether the Syrian strike should be seen as a signal to Iran that military action will be taken against suspected nuclear sites, Mullen simply repeated Washington's charge that Iran is seeking the bomb.

Israel is widely believed to have assembled the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal at Dimona, a plant out of bounds to foreign inspection. U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge Israel's arsenal, although sometimes they slip.

"I think more nuclear, I think nuclear weapons in the Middle East, particularly with Iran, proffers potential for other countries to develop it," Mullen said.