Zelikow+-+What+does+he+know,+Helena+Cobban,+Just+World+News

Just World News, November 28, 2006
=Zelikow: What does he know?=

//Posted by// **Helena Cobban** //at November 28, 2006 10:00 PM//

I've spent more time today wondering why, exactly, Phil Zelikow yesterday **[|chose to resign]** from what looked like his dream job as Condi Rice's "Counsellor", and to do so in a way that was abrupt and woefully inadequately explained.

I have wondered, too, about the timing and other aspects of the peace overture that Israeli PM Olmert made to the Palestinians yesterday. Again, it looked fairly **[|abrupt and ill-prepared]**, and was not discernibly part of any broader peace move in the region.

And I've wondered about why Bush, Cheney, and Rice all suddenly decided to start criss-crossing the Sunni Arab world in these particular days...

And then, over at **[|this post]** on Badger's "Missing Links" blog, I read his rendering of **[|an article]** that Abdel-Bari Atwan has in //Al-Quds al-Arabi//... (scroll down some on Badger's post there; for various reasons I don't find the Zaman piece he quotes from at the top there particularly credible or interesting)... And I started to see that there is indeed a possible "single cause" that could explain all three of the above, slightly strange developments...

And that would be, that Zelikow might have learned (or deduced) that Bush and Olmert have reached agreement on a plan for the speedy launch of a military attack on Iran.

Yes, I know, I know, I know: __no such attack can even possibly be said to "make any sense"__, either militarily or politically. (That's why, if he had learned of it, the intelligent realist Zelikow would have resigned.)

I also recall, with some pride, that in all the months leading up to the recent midterm elections, I publicly dismissed the fears that so many other commentators were voicing, that the Bushites might launch an attack on Iran as part of their pre-election campaigning. I was right on that.

And I still think it would be a crazy, crazy, and very destructive thing to do. __But Bush has fewer domestic political constraints against doing something extremely foolhardy now than he had before the election.__ He himself will, of course, never be running for re-election, and now it's a long two years till any of his GOP comrades have to run again... And anyway, nowadays many of the Democrats coming into the majority in the Congress have already been baying for blood against Iran. So if a military strike is launched against Iran in the upcoming period, when that venture turns into the quite predictable and inevitable regionwide (and possibly global) debacle and when, as is extremely likely, the lives of hundreds of US service people in Iraq would end up being put at direct risk because of this attack, __the Democrats will already be there in the majority positions on Capitol Hill and, with most of them having also joined the clamor for an attack against Iran, they will be be forced to take some of the responsibility for that aftermath.__ But why the apparent hurry around whatever it is the Bushites seem currently to be planning?

Well, GOP "adult" Jim Baker and Democratic "adult" Lee Hamilton are about to come out with the recommendations of their Iraq Study Group. Which almost certainly will include a strong recommendation that the US needs to include both Syria and Iraq in the diplomacy over how to de-escalate the situation inside Iraq. The Israelis absolutely hate that idea. So, I'm sure, does the chief asset whom the hardline Israelis still have as an ally within the Bush administration, Elliott Abrams. Abrams, remember, is now the number-two person in the National Security Council and in charge of all the NSC's work on the Middle east, except Iraq. (So yes, that would indeed include Iran, and all those big Sunni Arab states... and Israel.)

In **[|this]**article in today's //Newsweek//, Abrams is described as perhaps being the neocons' "best hope for keeping President Bush onboard". The Newsweek writers also quote an un-named senior administration official as saying, "Bush has enormous regard for him." (And as I **[|recalled]**earlier today, there had been some reports recently that Zelikow had been angling for that position. But even his good friend and long-time collaborator Condi Rice failed to win it for him. So Bush must really like having Abrams there.)

... So maybe all the haste with which Olmert and the Bushites are acting these days has to do with them trying to __pre-empt the recommendations that the ISG are expected to come out with__? After all, once the relatively sage recommendations of the wise adults of both parties are out there publicly on the table, and framing the national debate, it would be a lot harder for Bush and Olmert to launch a military adventure against Iran, unconstrained by political realities.

(Bush and Olmert would have to create some kind of an immediate "pretext" for the attack. But doing that need not be hard to arrange.)

So maybe all the present visits by Bush and his high-level acolytes to Sunni countries are related not so much to planning regarding Iraq, but to some final advance planning for a military strike against Iran that may be fairly imminent?

In the event that such a plan is afoot, it is not clear to me whether the US or Israel (or both?) would actually launch the strike. But either way, getting overflight agreements and other arrangements worked out in advance with some key, large Arab states in locations like, for example, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, would be an extremely helpful part of the planning.

And whether Israel or the US (or both) do go ahead and launch any kind of a military strike against Iran, I repeat: the affair will absolutely certainly turn out very badly for the US and for US troops and allies throughout the whole region.

... Gosh, I certainly hope I'm wrong on this one. But many pieces of evidence do, suddenly, seem to be coming together in this very worrying direction.

From: **http://justworldnews.org/archives/002254.html**

1010 words