Nation & world briefing
Threat from Iran vexes Bush officials
Tom Infield and Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON — It appears to be
intent on acquiring nuclear
weapons. It’s stepped up its biologi
cal and chemical arms programs. It’s
No. 1 on the State Department’s list
of terrorism sponsors, and intelli
gence officials say it’s harboring
some senior al-Qaida leaders.
Iran, some senior administration
officials privately concede, is as big
a threat to the United States and
American interests as Iraq ever
was, probably bigger. But they don’t
want to talk about Iran because,
they admit, they don’t know what
to do about it.
Even among the Bush administra
tion hard-liners who first pushed to
topple Saddam Hussein, there’s no
consensus about how to deal with
the Iranian regime, which, as former
CIA director James Woolsey puts it,
has been “at war with us for nearly a
quarter-century. ”
“They seized our embassy per
sonnel as hostages in 1979 in
Tehran. They blew up our embassy
and our Marine barracks in Beirut
in 1983. And they have conducted
a wide range of terrorist acts
against the United States,” Woolsey
has said.
Now, U.S. intelligence officials
charge, Iran is trying to undermine
American efforts to stabilize Iraq
and Afghanistan. There is evidence
that Saif al Adel, a senior al-Qaida
leader, has found sanctuary in Iran
and helped direct last week’s bomb
ings in Saudi Arabia, which killed
34 people, eight of them Ameri
cans. He and other al-Qaida opera
tives may be planning further at
tacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and
elsewhere, U.S. officials say.
But the American response to the
third member of President Bush’s
“axis of evil,” along with Iraq and
North Korea, is unlikely to be war, at
least not any time soon.
“I don’t see any pressure for con
flict or war,” said Anthony Cordes
man, a Middle East expert at the
Center for Strategic and Internation
al Studies, a Washington research
center, who’s served in both the
State and Defense departments.
America’s options in Iran are lim
ited. The U.S. military has its hands
full in Iraq.
And unlike with Iraq, the U.N. Secu
rity Council hasn’t ordered Iran to dis
pose of weapons of mass destruction.
The Iranian government is even
harder to deal with, administration
officials say, because it’s set a new
standard for divided government.
President Mohammad Khatami
and his supporters in the Iranian
Parliament deny that Iran is sup
porting terrorism or harboring al
Qaida renegades. The Shiite Mus
lim clerics who hold supreme
power and their allies in the Revo
lutionary Guard, meanwhile, un
derwrite terrorist groups, shelter
their leaders and send weapons to
Palestinian terrorists.
“When we ask the Iranians we talk
to about these activities, they say
they don’t know anything about
them,” said one senior U.S. official,
who like the others spoke on the
condition of anonymity. “The ones
who do know about them are not the
ones we talk to.”
So for now, the United States is
engaged in a balancing act, seeking
to unseat the Islamic hard-liners,
who are increasingly unpopular af
ter 25 years of political repression
and economic stagnation, while
Terror alert level
rises to ‘orange’
Frank James
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
WASHINGTON — As U.S. and
Saudi officials braced for what they
feared would be imminent attacks in
Saudi Arabia, the Bush administra
tion raised the terror threat level to
“high” in the United States and
warned of possible car and suicide
bombings or strikes by gun-toting
terrorists in this country.
Following recent attacks in Saudi
Arabia and Morocco believed linked
to al-Qaida, the embassies of the
United States, Britain and Germany
closed their doors in Riyadh, and a
Saudi official said more bombings
were inevitable there.
Putting the United States on or
ange alert status, the second highest,
administration officials cited in
creased communications, or “chat
ter,” among terrorists similar to con
tacts that have typically preceded
other attacks.
Homeland Security Department
officials said they lacked specifics
about locations of any possible ter
rorist attacks. Even so, they urged
extra vigilance, particularly for
places where large crowds gather,
such as sports arenas.
Homeland Security officials didn’t
rule out further terrorist strikes on
U.S. and Western targets overseas
like last week’s suicide attacks in
Riyadh and Casablanca, which killed
75 people, including eight Ameri
cans and 21 bombers.
Al-Qaida, the global organization
behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
was clearly the focus of Tuesday’s
move from elevated risk to high risk,
or from yellow to orange. But U.S. of
ficials didn’t rule out possible attacks
from other sources.
“Threats may also emanate from
other anti-U.S. terrorist groups, re
gional extremist organizations and
ad-hoc groups or disgruntled individ
uals not connected to existing ter
rorist organizations or state sponsors
of terrorism,” Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge said in a writ
ten statement.
Ridge informed state homeland
security advisers of the decision by
conference call on Tuesday. He
asked state officials “to review their
current security measures and de
ploy additional measures, particular
ly going into a holiday weekend
where there will be many large pub
lic gatherings.”
The increase in the terror-alert
level was likely to further burden fi
nancially strapped states and cities
that will have to step up security
around important venues that at
tract crowds and symbolic targets
like important buildings.
The decision to change the alert
level was made at a midday meeting
at the White House that required
Ridge to cut short an appearance be
fore a congressional committee.
The meeting of President Bush’s
Homeland Security Advisory Coun
cil came after warnings by the FBI to
state and local officials in recent
days of possible terrorist attacks in
the U.S. Earlier in the week, Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s
ambassador to the United States,
warned foreign journalists that he
believed further attacks in his nation
and the United States were likely.
© 2003, Chicago Tribune. Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information
Services. Chicago Tribune
correspondents Nancy Ryan in Chicago
and Cam Simpson in Saudi Arabia
contributed to this report
dealing with the more moderate
part of the regime.
There may be a contradiction in
this, “but so what?” said Ray
Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Nation
al Defense University, which the De
fense Department operates.
The best the United States may be
able to do is construct a policy of
“managed tensions,” Takeyh said.
Under this approach, Washington
would cooperate with Tehran on is
sues of common interest while re
sisting Iranian actions it opposes.
“Despite themselves, the adminis
tration has sort of stumbled onto this
policy,” Takeyh said.
For 22 years, four American presi
dents have hoped that moderates in
Iran somehow would prevail, but the
hard-liners have outlasted Ronald
Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill
Clinton. America’s patience, howev
er, is likely to evaporate if the cur
rent President Bush is presented
with conclusive evidence that Iran
was behind new terrorist attacks on
Americans or is about to build a nu
clear weapon.
“There is concern right now,” said
an administration official. “People
are spending a lot of time trying to
figure out how to deal with it.”
© 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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