Out of Iraq, ready to march on Iran?

Hawks Behind Iraq War Rally for War With Iran
by Jim Lobe, October 19, 2011 – Antiwar Forum

Key neoconservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador.

Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilizing support for “regime change” in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.

In a column headlined “Speak Softly … and Fight Back” in this week’s Weekly Standard, chief editor William Kristol, co-founder of both PNAC and FPI, said the alleged plot amounted to “an engraved invitation” by Tehran to use force against it.

“We can strike at the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and set it back,” he wrote, adding that Congress should approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iranian entities deemed responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, acts of terrorism, or “the regime’s nuclear weapons program.”

Kristol’s advice was seconded by Jamie Fly, FPI’s executive director, who called for President Barack Obama to emulate former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ordered targeted strikes against Libya in 1986 and Iraq in 1993, respectively, in retaliation for alleged terrorist plots against U.S. targets.

“It is time for President Obama to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and stand up to tyrants who kill Americans and threaten our interests,” wrote Fly, who served on the National Security Council staff and the Pentagon under George W. Bush, in the online edition of National Review.

“It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response,” he wrote.

The FPI appeals, which have been echoed by other former Iraq war hawks such as Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, and Reuel Marc Gerecht at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), came as analysts continue to debate the credibility of the alleged plot against Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir and how to react to it if, as the administration contends, it was authorized at a high level in Tehran. …more