deja vu por favour

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 8, 2006

THIS WEEK IN

THE NEW YORKER

PRESS CONTACTS:
Perri Dorset, (212) 286-5898
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The Bush Administration’s Plan For Iran

“The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack,” Seymour M. Hersh reports in the April 17, 2006, issue of The New Yorker (“The Iran Plans,” p. 30). Moreover, he writes, “There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change.” One former senior intelligence official tells Hersh that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a potential Adolf Hitler. “That’s the name they’re using,” he says. A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror says, “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.” The danger, he adds, is that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” The former senior intelligence official, referring to activity at three U.S. military facilities, says, “The planning is enormous.” He depicts it as hectic and operational—far beyond the contingency work that is routinely done. One former defense official tells Hersh that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He adds, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ” A government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon confirms that undercover units are working with minority groups in Iran, and that while one goal is to have “eyes on the ground,” the broader aim is to “encourage ethnic tensions” and undermine the regime.

Hersh reports, “In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat.” A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, tells Hersh that the Administration is “reluctant to brief the minority.” He adds, “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq.... There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Hersh also reveals that one of the options under consideration involves the possible use of “a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the destruction of Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz.” The former senior intelligence official tells Hersh that the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military and that some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed. Hersh writes, “The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option.... He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue.” The adviser explains, “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries.”

The Pentagon adviser warns, as do many others, that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?” he asks. He tells Hersh that any attack might also reignite Hezbollah. “If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle,” he says. A retired four-star general tells Hersh that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, “the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.” “If you attack,” a high-ranking diplomat in Vienna tells Hersh, “Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.” The diplomat went on, “There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking.” He adds, “The window of opportunity is now.”

Also this week: In “A Church Asunder” (p. 44), Peter J. Boyer reports that the election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church “posed the biggest crisis for Anglicanism since the Reformation, and brought the worldwide church to the edge of schism.” Boyer writes that while a belief in the power of compromise has always permeated the Anglican faith, to several conservative bishops the move “pushed the Anglican notion of comprehensiveness beyond its historically implied limits. What the Church had affirmed, in the view of these traditionalists, was not just a different expression of Christianity but a different religion altogether.” Bishop Robert Duncan, of Pittsburgh, led a small delegation of twenty bishops in protest the day of Robinson’s affirmation and has since reached out for support from the worldwide Anglican community, and specifically from bishops in the Global South, who tend to be far more conservative. Boyer writes, “More than half of all Anglicans live in Africa, South America, and Asia.... There are more Anglicans in Kenya (roughly three million) than there are Episcopalians in the U.S.... The balance of power has shifted dramatically.” While Anglicanism has no global hierarchy as in the Catholic Church, Duncan hopes that through an alliance with the Global South, he and like-minded bishops can convince the worldwide Anglican Communion that the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, or ecusa ... has already departed from the faith, and that an alternative body of orthodox Episcopalians should be recognized as the true church in America.” Boyer writes, “Duncan says that his battle is not with Gene Robinson, or even over the issue of homosexuality, but with what he considers a radical reinterpretation of the faith by the liberal church.” He says that the future may hold many unpleasant legal battles, “And the question that the state courts are going to have to figure out is, ‘Who are the Episcopalians.’ ” Boyer writes, “Gene Robinson watches these developments with a mixture of sadness and alarm.” He tells Boyer, “Bob Duncan wants to ally our church with the church of Kenya, where the primate there said that, when I was consecrated, Satan entered the church. What most people don’t realize is that homosexuality is something that I am, it’s not something that I do.... We’re not talking about taking a liberal or conservative stance on a particular issue; we’re talking about who I am.” Later, he adds, “I have to tell you—I felt called by God to come out. It seems to me that if God stands for anything, God stands for integrity. And to be a priest, calling other people to integrity, when you’re not exercising it yourself—it’ll kill you.”

Plus: Hendrik Hertzberg, in Comment, on the drawbacks of the Bush Administration’s health-care plan (p. 25); Adam Gopnik on “The Gospel of Judas,” a recently released translation (p. 80); Alec Wilkinson on Pete Seeger and on a new album inspired by his work by Bruce Springsteen (p. 44); Cynthia Zarin on the works of Maurice Sendak (p. 38); David Denby on the new films “The Notorious Bettie Page” and “Friends with Money” (p. 86); John Lahr on the life of playwright Clifford Odets (p.72); and fiction by Bernard MacLaverty (p. 66)

The April 17, 2006, issue of The New Yorker goes on sale at newsstands beginning Monday, April 10th.