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October 20, 2004

A Bush pre-election strike on Iran 'imminent'

White House insider report "October Surprise" imminent
By Wayne Madsen

According to White House and Washington Beltway insiders, the Bush administration, worried that it could lose the presidential election to Senator John F. Kerry, has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country, including the main underground research site at Natanz in central Iran and another in Isfahan. Targets of the planned U.S. attack reportedly include mosques in Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan known by the U.S. to headquarter Iran's top mullahs.

The Iran attack plan was reportedly drawn up after internal polling indicated that if the Bush administration launched a so-called anti-terrorist attack on Iran some two weeks before the election, Bush would be assured of a landslide win against Kerry. Reports of a pre-emptive strike on Iran come amid concerns by a number of political observers that the Bush administration would concoct an "October Surprise" to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

According to White House sources, the USS John F. Kennedy was deployed to the Arabian Sea to coordinate the attack on Iran. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discussed the Kennedy's role in the planned attack on Iran when he visited the ship in the Arabian Sea on October 9. Rumsfeld and defense ministers of U.S. coalition partners, including those of Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Poland, Qatar, Romania, and Ukraine briefly discussed a very "top level" view of potential dual-track military operations in Iran and Iraq in a special "war room" set up on board the aircraft carrier. America's primary ally in Iraq, the United Kingdom, did not attend the planning session because it reportedly disagrees with a military strike on Iran. London also suspects the U.S. wants to move British troops from Basra in southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to help put down an expected surge in Sh'ia violence in Sadr City and other Sh'ia areas in central Iraq when the U.S. attacks Iran as well as clear the way for a U.S. military strike across the Iraqi-Iranian border aimed at securing the huge Iranian oil installations in Abadan. U.S. allies South Korea, Australia, Kuwait, Jordan, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan were also left out of the USS John F. Kennedy planning discussions because of their reported opposition to any strike on Iran.

In addition, Israel has been supplied by the United States with 500 "bunker buster" bombs. According to White House sources, the Israeli Air Force will attack Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr with the U.S. bunker busters.The joint U.S.-Israeli pre-emptive military move against Iran reportedly was crafted by the same neo-conservative grouping in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office that engineered the invasion of Iraq.

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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Council (NSA) during the Reagan Administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with john Stanton of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates." Madsen can be reached at [e-mail]

http://www.lebanonwire.com/0410/04102002LW.asp