The BBC is reporting on a leaked NATO report claiming that elements of Pakistani intelligence are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan even as the U.S.-led NATO forces are fighting them:

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

(…)

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report – on the state of the Taliban – fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.

It notes: “Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly”.

It says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

“Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad,” it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: “Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can’t [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching.”

“The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad.”

Pakistani official are not surprisingly dismissing the report as “old wine in an even older bottle”:

“We can disregard this as a potentially strategic leak,” [Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar] said, adding that Pakistan and Afghanistan should stop blaming each other for cross-border problems.

“These claims have been made many, many times. Pakistan stands behind any initiative that the Afghan government takes for peace,” she said. “We have no hidden agenda in Afghanistan.

“We consider any threat to Afghanistan’s independence and sovereignty as a threat to Pakistan’s existence.”

For their part, NATO officials are saying that conclusions should not be drawn from the report given that the source of much of the information contained therein came from highly motivated extremists:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A spokesman for the NATO-led coalition on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a report that summarizes the views of Taliban detainees, who claim that they are winning the war thanks to cooperation from some Afghan government officials and soldiers and who say their movement is controlled by Pakistan’s intelligence service.

But the official, Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings of the International Security Assistance Force, disputed accounts of the NATO report that suggested the alliance’s analysts accepted the Taliban views as valid.

“This document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections,” Colonel Cummings said, in an unusually detailed rebuttal of accounts of the classified report’s contents. “Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best.”

(…)

NATO’s response indicated it was more concerned at suggestions that Afghan officials and soldiers were demoralized and expected a Taliban victory once coalition troops pull out than about the claims of Pakistani collaboration.

“It is important not to draw conclusions based on Taliban comments or musings,” Colonel Cummings said. “These detainees include some of the most motivated and ruthless of the insurgents who are inspired to play up their success. It is what they want us to believe they think.”

“We also dispute the idea that somehow the Afghan national security forces might be working with the Taliban. Many dedicated patriotic Afghan security force members have lost their lives defending Afghanistan from insurgents.”

This is all well-taken, of course. However, given the other evidence we’ve seen over the years linking Pakistani actors to the Taliban and apparently al Qaeda, would it really be all that surprising if this was true?

More so than he has in the past, Ron Paul took a drubbing in last night’s debate far worse than anything he’s seen to date, and it happened because of his foreign policy positions:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The rivals who largely ignored Ron Paul for much of the campaign gave him a drubbing Monday night.

The Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate pile-on began after Paul answered a question about whether the U.S. government had the authority to kill Osama bin Laden. Booed by the boisterous audience, Paul compared bin Laden’s capture in Pakistan to a Chinese dissident hiding in the U.S. and said the U.S. government wouldn’t want China to “bomb us and do whatever.” He also advocated attempting to capture and question top terrorist leaders instead of kill them.

“I mean, if you think about Saddam Hussein, you know, we did that,” Paul said. “We captured him, and we tried him — I mean, the government tried him — and he hung — got hung. What’s, what’s so terrible about this? This whole idea that you can’t capture … what’s this whole idea that you can’t capture people?”

Paul added: “Just think, [Nazi leader] Adolf Eichmann was captured. He was given a trial. What’s wrong with capturing people? Why didn’t we try to get some information from them? You know, we’re, we’re accustomed to asking people questions, but all of a sudden — gone. You know, that’s it.”

Newt Gingrich quickly jumped on the Texas lawmaker, calling the comparison of bin Laden to a Chinese dissident “utterly irrational.” Romney moved to second the former speaker, adding the right solution for bin Laden was the “bullet in the head that he received.”

The video of the whole exchange, including the crowd reaction, is worth watching and quite telling in terms of just how badly things went for Paul:

That wasn’t the only odd part of the night for Paul. Shortly after this exchange, Paul tried to explain how his arguments in favor of cutting back on military commitments abroad wouldn’t impact defense spending at home:

Speaking in a part of the state heaviest on retired military, Paul defended his pledge to cut military spending by arguing that he wouldn’t reduce domestic defense expenditures.

“I want to cut military money. I don’t want to cut defense money,” he said. “I want to bring the troops home. I’d probably have more bases here at home. We were closing them down in the 1990s and building them overseas. That’s how we got into trouble. So we would save a lot more money and have a stronger national defense, and that’s what we should do,” he contended.

He added, in a line that drew big applause — some of his only of the night: “You don’t understand there’s a difference between military spending and defense spending. Just because you spend — spend a billion dollars on an embassy in Baghdad bigger than the Vatican — you consider that defense spending. I consider that waste.”

It’s an odd position for Paul to take, given that he’s talked repeatedly about cutting $1 Trillion from the Federal Budget in a single year. How he thinks he could do that without significantly cutting the military budget on the domestic side as well as the foreign side is beyond me. Moreover, I’m not entirely sure what Paul is thinking of here. Is he suggesting that we bring the troops home, put them in bases and just keep them there? If we really are reducing our foreign commitments, then there’s no need for the same sized military we have today. Of course, telling people in a very pro-military state that probably wouldn’t go over very well, so Paul prevaricated.

It’s the bin Laden response that I think is going to hurt Paul the most, though. He could have just said “I voted for the AUMF after the September 11th attacks, and this action was taken in compliance with that resolution.”Instead, as seems to always be the case with him, he went off on some bizarre tangent that at least made it seems likes he thinks it was a bad thing that we killed Osama bin Laden. I’m largely skeptical of interventionist foreign policies to begin with so I’m sometimes sympathetic with what Paul says, but I have absolutely no problem with the operation that resulted in bin Laden’s death, and I don’t see how any reasonable person could. Moreover, every single account of the mission makes it rather clear that Paul’s fantasy of capturing bin Laden and putting him on trial was just that, a fantasy. Neither bin Laden nor the men with him were going to let him be taken alive, and if SEAL Team Six could help the man live out his death wish then that’s just fine with me. I don’t see how this helps Paul in South Carolina, or Florida for that matter. His core group of supporters will love it, obviously, but this is just going to make him a target.

It hardly matters, of course, Paul isn’t going to be the nominee. But if you needed a lesson in why that is the case, last night was a perfect example.

As part of the blowback from the accidental deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a NATO helicopter raid, the U.S. is leaving a base in Pakistan used in drone operations:

In another sign of deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the United States is vacating an air base used to launch American drones in response to Islamabad’s request following an incident in which NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter said Monday in a local TV interview that the U.S. “will do everything we can to vacate the Shamsi base by the date that you asked us,” The Associated Press reports.

(…)

Meanwhile, the Express Tribune in Pakistan reported on Monday that Islamabad has decided to do away with all existing anti-terror cooperation agreements with Washington as “part of a review of political, diplomatic and military ties with the U.S.”

According to the AP, the Shamsi air base, located in southwestern Baluchistan province, is only used for services drones that had mechanical or weather troubles and vacating it is not expected to significantly effect drone attacks in Pakistan.

Until the next sign of conflict between the U.S. and Pakistan, that is.

SEC. 1034. AFFIRMATION OF ARMED CONFLICT WITH AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN, AND ASSOCIATED FORCES.
Congress affirms that—
(1) the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad;
(2) the President has the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 23 1541 note);
(3) the current armed conflict includes nations, organization, and persons who—
(A) are part of, or are substantially supporting, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or
(B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A); and
(4) the President’s authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 11 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority to detain belligerents, including persons described in paragraph (3), until the termination of hostilities.

But, wait… it gets worse. The White House has threatened to veto the bill–but not because of this. In fact, the current draft of Levin-McCain came about because, “according to Senator Carl Levin, it was the Obama administration which told Congress to remove the language in the original bill which exempted American citizens and lawful residents from the detention power.” Josh Gerstein confirms. Rather, the White House wants more flexibility in deciding exactly how it will detain people. The administration’s objections (PDF) expressly state that they believe that the detention authority already “exists under the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” It just wants to be free to chose how to use that power and not be required to use only the military detention option.*

As Adam Serwer puts it in Mother Jones, this bill therefore goes beyond the policy “that was followed almost without exception by the Bush administration: Domestic terrorism arrests are the province of law enforcement, not the military.”

Only a few people come out looking good in this, Mark Udall (D-CO) and Rand Paul (R-KY) chief among them. Udall was the only vote against passing this abomination out of the Democrat-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee and his amendment to strip the detention provisions was voted down 37-61 on Tuesday. Paul, one of the few Republicans to vote “Nay,” quoted James Madison: “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.” We could use a few more like them in both parties–and a lot fewer Lindsey Grahams and Mark Levins.

Supreme Court cases that mightmost certainly would have definitely affirmed that such detentions are unconstitutional (which they manifestly are) have been dodged before simply by remanding detainees over for civilian trials before an adverse ruling could be handed down. If the flexibility the White House wants is to keep playing that game, Congress should indeed clarify the detention powers of the AUMF. But it should be making it clear that that power does not extend to indefinite military confinement of American citizens without trial, not the other way around.

—
* Disappointingly, the White House sounds like the worst caricatures of the Bush administration, going to great lengths in detailing its concerns that the bill “would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets… and would, in certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles.” But not so much as a dependent subclause is devoted to the massive Constitutional defect inherent in indefinite detention of American citizens without trial.

One of the most notable exchanges during Saturday night’s debate came when National Journal’s Major Garrett asked Herman Cain about the use of torture, and then the other candidates started chiming in:

We have an email question I’m happy to say, emailed into the National Journal. And it comes from Stephen Schafroth (PH) of Odell’s (PH), Oregon. And I’d like to address this question to Mr. Cain. Stephen writes, “I served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. I believe that torture is always wrong in all cases. What is your stance on torture?”

HERMAN CAIN:

I believe that following the procedures that have been established by our military, I do not agree with torture, period. However, I will trust the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture. That is the critical consideration.

MAJOR GARRETT:

Mr. Cain, of course you’re familiar with the long-running debate we’ve had about whether waterboarding constitutes torture or is an enhanced interrogation tech– technique. In the last campaign, Republican nominee John McCain and Barack Obama agreed that it was torture and should not be allowed legally and that the Army Field Manual should be the methodology used to interrogate enemy combatants. Do you agree with that or do you disagree, sir?

HERMAN CAIN:

I agree that it was an enhanced interrogation technique.

MAJOR GARRETT:

And then you would support it at present. You would return to that policy.

HERMAN CAIN:

Yes, I would return to that policy. I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.

Michele Bachmann agreed with Cain:

If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information (CHEERING) for our country. And I– and I also would like to say that today, under Barack Obama, he is allowing the A.C.L.U. to run the C.I.A. You need to understand that today– today we– it– when we– when we interdict a terrorist on the battlefield, we have no jail for them.

We have nowhere to take them. We have no C.I.A. interrogations anymore. It is as though we have decided we want to lose in the War on Terror under President Obama. That’s not my strategy. My strategy will be that the United States will be victorious in the War on Terror.

Rick Perry was similarly supportive of the idea of returning to the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and one suspects that Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney would agree with them if the question had got to them. In fact, of all the candidates on the stage, the only ones who spoke out against the use of such techniques were Ron Paul, obviously, and Jon Huntsman, who put it this way:

We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project which include liberty, democracy, human rights, and open markets when we torture. We should not torture. Waterboarding is torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries. And we lose that ability to project values that a lot of people in corners of this world are still relying on the United States to stand up for them.

The exchange has generated much attention since Saturday night including, most unusually, the President himself who addressed the exchange during a press conference at the conclusion of the APEC Summit. John McCain also addressed the matter this morning on Twitter where he said he was disappointed by the candidates who endorsed waterboarding, which he described as torture. It’s also generated no small degree of comment from the punditocracy.

Steve Benen takes note of what it says about the GOP:

In light of the Cain and Bachmann responses, it’s worth keeping a couple of things in mind. First, in GOP circles, support for torture remains painfully strong, even now. Post-Cheney, it’s become practically a party norm to support torture techniques that America used to consider unthinkable. Though Rick Santorum didn’t comment on this last night, it was just this summer when he said John McCain “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works,” because the former prisoner of war opposes torture.

And second, Republican debate audiences continue to be a legitimate story in their own right. Over the last few months, we’ve seen GOP audiences cheer the execution of 234 people, cheer letting the insured die, boo an American soldier who happens to be gay, and now applaud torture.

It’s worth noting that Paul and Huntsman also drew applause for their comments against waterboarding, although it probably is far to say that the comments by Cain, Bachmann, and Perry reflected the views of the audience in the room. Unfortunately.

Andrew Sullivan makes a similar point:

The days when the GOP could be credibly seen as having more concrete and solid judgment on foreign affairs than the Democrats have long since disappeared into the memory hole. The last Republican president did more damage to American soft and hard power in eight years than any president in history, and, on top of that, besmirched this country permanently with the scar of torture as an instrument of state, something the West had decisively put behind it centuries ago, something that once helped define the United States as a civilized country. But now we have a motivational speaker who knows nothing about foreign affairs, Herman Cain, telling us that he is against torture but also in favor of torture, and then saying he would defer to the military leaders. Well, torture is barred from the military services, period, so consultation with them would be redundant. And this ignorant creep is at the head of the pack. Michele Bachmann apparently thinks that Obama has allowed the ACLU to run the CIA, which would come as some surprise to both. Her statement is so insane, so utterly removed from reality, that it would disqualify someone from a high school debating tournament. But again, this preposterous woman is a serious candidate for this farce of a party.

Even the supposedly “sane” candidates on the stage seemed to have gone off the rails, though. Though he didn’t directly answer the waterboarding question, Mitt Romney made more than one comment — on Iran, China, and the assassination of Anwar al-Alwaki — that makes one wonder what happened to the realpolitik foreign policy that epitomized the GOP during the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 years. With two exceptions, the men and woman on the stage Saturday night seemed to be determined to prove to the base that they were “tougher” and more willing to engage in risky, if not insane, foreign policy prescriptions. Whether they’d actually do any of these things if elected, they at least seem to think that going down this rabbit hole is the best way to win the Republican nomination. There’s something deeply troubling about that.

There were moments of sanity during the debate, of course. Huntsman provided more than one, especially during an exchange about trade with China when he gently reminded Mitt Romney that he couldn’t take China to the WTO over currency manipulation because the treaty doesn’t allow it. Rick Santorum even provided one when he criticized the other candidates who were talking about taking a more bellicose stance towards Pakistan, reminding them that we cannot afford not to have a relationship with that country for or own good and the good of the entire region. For the most part, though, it was things like this waterboarding exchange that dominated the discussion.

There is no reasonable argument that waterboarding is not torture. We prosecuted Japanese officials at the end of World War II for using the technique on soldiers. It was a technique favored by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, and was used extensively by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Saying that it’s “not torture” is just semantic nonsense designed to soothe us into believing that we weren’t doing something wrong during the War on Terror. More importantly, as I pointed out in the wake of the death of  Osama bin Laden, the argument that torture “works” is irrelevant to whether or not it is wrong:

It may be theoretically possible that we could break a suspected terrorist by placing him a room with his child while a CIA operative put a loaded gun to the child’s head, threatening to kill them unless the suspect revealed what they knew. We could revive the medieval torture processes of the Inquisition. Those methods might even prove highly effective in getting a particularly difficult person to crack. That doesn’t mean we should do those things, however, and the fact that the debate has suddenly moved into “ends justify the means” territory should concern anyone who believes in the rule of law.

Even if we accept the argument that enhanced interrogation techniques  “worked”  in this case, that says nothing about whether they should be done, and the extent to which people are willing to throw morality out the window when it’s convenient is profoundly disturbing.

Moreover, to the extent that the utilitarian argument matters, there’s plenty of evidence that it doesn’t work at all. The person who was waterboarded the most, Khalid Shiekh Mohammad, laughed at his interrogators when they used the practice on him. Moreover, we learned through traditional intelligence techniques that Mohammed and other al Qaeda detainees were lying to interrogators even after being subjected to waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” These supposedly fool proof techniques didn’t break them and may have actually caused them to take a harder line.

Of all the exchanges during Saturday’s debate, I’ve got to agree with Sullivan that it’s the waterboarding discussion that was perhaps the most troublesome.  It was Ronald Reagan himself who, in the midst of signing the 1984 Convention Against Torture provided the reason why it is something that we just don’t do:

“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

As Sullivan notes, Reagan wasn’t trying to use weasel words to define what is and wasn’t torture, he was talking about anything that could be considering inhuman treatment, which certainly includes something like waterboarding. As with so many other things, though, the “Party of Reagan” has left their namesake behind and gone off in a very disturbing direction.

Update: A friend on Twitter passes along an interesting story about the Reagan Administration prosecuting a Texas Sheriff who waterboarded prisoners:

George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case — which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later — was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.

The legal standards for actions by Federal officers may be different, obviously, but given that it occurred a year before the 1984 convention was signed it puts Reagan’s comments at that time into an interesting context.

Karim Sadjapour writes about a wargaming scenario he recently participated in with a group of former U.S. officials and experts on Israel and Iran to try to play out how an Israeli strike on Iran might go. Sadjapour was on the Iranian team and, as he relates, it didn’t turn out well for anyone:

Iran’s nuclear sites are purposely built close to population centers, but in the simulation, the Israeli strike managed to cause only a small number of civilian casualties. Nonetheless, one of my immediate reactions was to order Iranian state television to show graphic images of the “hundreds of innocent martyrs” — focusing on the women and children — in order to incite outrage against Israel and attempt to convert Iranian nationalism into solidarity with the regime.

To further that goal, we then invited the symbolic leadership of the opposition — Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi (both of whom are now under house arrest), as well as former President Mohammad Khatami — onto state television to furiously condemn Israel and pledge allegiance to the government. Instead of widening Iran’s deep internal fractures — both between political elites and between the people and the regime — the Israeli military strike helped repair them.

I asked a longtime aide to Karroubi about the plausibility of the above scenario. He said that an Israeli strike on Iran would be “10 times worse” — in terms of eliciting popular anger — than a U.S. strike and agreed that it would likely bring recognized opposition figures in concert with the government, strengthening the state’s capacity to respond.

(…)

We needed to respond in a way that would further enflame the regional security environment, negatively impact the global economy, and make reverberations felt throughout the world. So we played dirty.

One of our first salvos was to launch missiles at oil installations in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, as well as stir unrest among Saudi Shiites against their government. Our pretext was that Israel had used Saudi airspace to attack us, though we later found out it did so without Saudi permission. Given Iran’s less-than-accurate missile technology, most missiles missed their mark, but some struck home and we succeeded in spiking oil prices enough so that Americans and Europeans filling their cars with gasoline might be irritated by Israel’s actions.

We also fired missiles at Israeli military and nuclear targets and unleashed Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to fire rockets at Israeli population centers. Although few of these missiles reached their targets, the goal was create an atmosphere of terror among Israeli society so its government would think twice about future attacks.

We didn’t limit our reaction to just the Middle East. Via proxy, we hit European civilian and military outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq, confident that if past is precedent, Europe would take the high road and not retaliate. We also activated terrorist cells in Europe — bombing public transportation and killing several civilians — in the belief that European citizens and governments would likely come down hard on Israel for destabilizing the region.

The whole piece is worth reading as a glimpse into how experts think the various actors would respond in this kind of situation.

Ralph Peters lays out a warning for the people advocating military action against Iran’s nuclear program on the theory that it will be a quick operation:

Let’s look at what “Bomb Iran!” really means: The Iranians may appear mad, but that doesn’t mean they’re fools, and they’ve studied the errors of other rogue states that sought nuclear weapons. The results? First, the Iranians have dispersed their research, development and production facilities. Second, they’ve fortified a number of vital sites in bunkers deep underground. Third, they’ve placed other link-in-the-chain laboratories and research sites in populated areas so that any attack upon them would generate large numbers of civilian casualties ― and very ugly images in the global media. Fourth, the Tehran regime has made this program a matter of nationalist pride. An attack on Iran’s nukes would be viewed as an attack on Iran, period, by the great majority of the population (even many regime opponents would “rally ’round the flag,” in an Iranian version of the 9/11 effect). Fifth, Iran would respond promptly and asymmetrically in the wake of such an attack ― unless its extensive capabilities to hit back were also attacked and disabled from the start.

(…)

How would Iran respond to strikes on its nuke facilities? Inevitably missiles would be launched toward Israeli cities ― some with chemical warheads ― but these tit-for-tat attacks would be the least part of Tehran’s counterattack strategy. The Iranians would “do what’s doable,” and that means hitting Arab oil-production infrastructure on the other side of the narrow Persian Gulf. Employing it mid-range missiles, aircraft and naval forces, Tehran would launch both conventional and suicide attacks on Arab oil fields, refineries, storage areas, ports and loading facilities, on tankers in transit, and on the Straits of Hormuz, the great chokepoint for the world’s core oil supplies. The price of a barrel of crude would soar geometrically on world exchanges, paralyzing economies ― exactly as Iran’s leaders intend. Ten-dollar-a-gallon gas would be a brief bargain on the way to truly prohibitive prices. And, in the way of the world, Tehran would not get the blame. We would.

None of what Peters lays out here seems out of bounds. It seems rather obvious that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, whether by the United States or Israel, would not be the kind of one-off attack that we saw in Iraq in 1982, or in Syria in 2009. As Peters notes, Iran has learned from those examples to the point where an attack would require hitting multiple targets with weapons capable of penetrating hardened bunkers in multiple locations. We’d never know if we took everything out in one strike, and we’d have to worry about counterattacks. In other words, it wouldn’t be an “attack,” it would be a war:

So…if we are forced to attack Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities at some point, what would it take to do it right and limit Tehran’s ability to respond with such devastating asymmetrical attacks?

At the most-basic level, we would need to conceive of the operation as a war, not just a brief series of raids. In addition to the standard requirements to knock out Iran’s early-warning and air-defense systems, we would have to strike the headquarters facilities of the Revolutionary Guards, the military and the various intelligence arms. We would need to destroy Iran’s combat aircraft on the ground, and then destroy any aircraft ― including passenger jets ― that could be used as flying bombs against oil facilities. It would be essential to destroy, early on, Iran’s navy and the Revolutionary Guards’ naval arm, right down to the Zodiac-boat level. We also would need to sink any commercial vessel that attempted to leave an Iranian harbor throughout the period of hostilities, since it could be used in an attack scheme. Not only would we need to disable Iran’s government and military communications infrastructure on the first day, but we also would have to disrupt civilian communications indefinitely. Then we would have to parry years of Iranian attempts to take revenge, not just regionally, but globally. We certainly would see a resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism ― and it could be taken to a whole new level.

Is America ready for another war in the Middle East, and one that could make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like a cakewalk by comparison? Frankly, I’ve got to doubt that the public support for such a commitment will be there regardless of who the President is unless we find ourselves in some situation where Iran has taken aggressive action against the United States. Yes, there’s a history of animosity against the Iranians that goes back to the Hostage Crisis (which began 32 years ago yesterday), but there was also a history of animosity against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and yet the public never really got behind the minimal action that President Obama took there beginning in March. Would they really go along with an Iraq style war halfway across the world based on fears of an Iranian nuclear program based mostly on intelligence that, as I noted earlier this week, has been contradictory at best? Frankly, I don’t think they would.

Coincidentally, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has an article today that paints a similarly grim picture of the prospects of war against the Islamic Republic:

How will an Israel-Iran war look if it breaks out eventually? This question is at the center of a new study compiled by the Defense Ministry. Researcher Dr. Moshe Vered writes that such a war could go on for a long time. He believes that the Iranian’s typical willingness to sacrifice many victims for a long period of time in a conflict with Israel will dictate a prolonged war between the two states, which will be difficult to end.

Dr. Vered, a physicist, occupies various roles in the defense establishment’s technology division. He published his study this week as part of a sabbatical at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University. He argues that the length of an Israel-Iran war “will be measured in year, not in weeks or days.” This stems from the Shiite perception by which one must fight and sacrifice for the sake of justice and to correct wrongs to Islam and to Muslims. “This outlook sees Israel’s existence as a wrong that must be corrected for the sake of world redemption. The achievement of this goal will only be possible once Israel is annihilated. The Iranians will continue fighting this war, as much as it is up to them, until they achieve their objective, despite the heavy toll that will be exacted in battle,” Vered writes.

Vered argues further that only the fear the Iranian regime being toppled could bring such a war to an end. But, it seems unlikely that Israel will be able to pose a real threat to the Iranian regime, and “in the absence of a way out, acceptable to both sides, the war could continue for a very long time.”

Vered mentions the fact that the Iran-Iraq war, in the 1980s, lasted eight years. Iran fought many years to achieve its demands – to correct the basic wrong of Iraq’s invasion into its territory, Iraqi recognition of its culpability, and the removal of the head of the Iraqi regime Saddam Hussein.

Iran paid an inconceivable price in that war – half a million dead and economic damage higher than the country’s entire oil income in the 20th century – before it agreed to a ceasefire. The ceasefire came only when there was a real danger that the Iranian regime would not survive.

(…)

Vered rejects the assumption that in the absence of a shared border, the Israel-Iran war will be fought only with surface to surface missiles. Such warfare shouldn’t last a long time because Iran’s supply of long-range missiles isn’t large. However, he writes, it is more plausible to assume that Iran will want to continue the fighting against Israel via messengers: Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and maybe even an Iranian force on Syrian soil, as part of a defense treaty between Tehran and Damascus. He plays down the likelihood of a short confrontation (Israeli assault followed by a punishing counter assault and then an immediate ceasefire under international pressure while both sides realize that the war has played out), he thinks that the ideology of the Iranian regime will dictate a prolonged war. Yes, this isn’t exactly what you would call relaxing reading material for the weekend.

No, it’s not, but it’s a must-read for anyone who thinks about these issues. It stands as a helpful counterweight to the arguments made by the John Bolton’s of the world who seem to argue for military action against Iran on every day that happens to end in a “y” and dismiss any concerns about the consequences of such action. It’s very unlikely we’re talking about a one-off bombing run here. Instead, we’re talking about a prolonged campaign that could potentially ignite a spark of terrorism against the United States and Israel around the world. Would that really be worth it, especially when we don’t even know if we’d be successful in knocking out the nuclear program? I have serious doubts about it to say the least. Hopefully, this is exactly the kind of assessment that the people who actually make decisions in the United States and Israel and, hopefully, they’ll be honest with the public if they ever do decide to travel down this road because we’ll all be living with the consequences of their decision.

H/T: Stephen Green

Adam Entous, Sioban Gorman, and Julian Barnes reporting for WSJ (“U.S. Tightens Drone Rules“):

The Central Intelligence Agency has made a series of secret concessions in its drone campaign after military and diplomatic officials complained large strikes were damaging the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan.

The covert drones are credited with killing hundreds of suspected militants, and few U.S. officials have publicly criticized the campaign, or its rapid expansion under President Barack Obama. Behind the scenes, however, many key U.S. military and State Department officials demanded more-selective strikes. That pitted them against CIA brass who want a free hand to pursue suspected militants.

The disputes over drones became so protracted that the White House launched a review over the summer, in which Mr. Obama intervened.

The review ultimately affirmed support for the underlying CIA program. But a senior official said: “The bar has been raised. Inside CIA, there is a recognition you need to be damn sure it’s worth it.”

What was the bar before?

Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the U.S.

The Pakistan drone debate already seems to be influencing thinking about the U.S. use of drones elsewhere in the world. In Yemen, the CIA used the pilotless aircraft in September to kill American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected terrorist. But the White House has for now barred the CIA from attacking large groups of unidentified lower-level militants there.

The CIA concessions were detailed by high-level officials in a series of interviews with The Wall Street Journal. But in a measure of the discord, administration officials have different interpretations about the outcome of the White House review. While some cast the concessions as a “new phase” in which the CIA would weigh diplomacy more heavily in its activities, others said the impact was minimal and that the bar for vetting targets has been consistently high.

“Even if there are added considerations, the program—which still has strong support in Washington—remains as aggressive as ever,” said a U.S. official.

It’s not obvious from the report when all this took place. David Petraeus, easily the most famous American field general since World War II, just took over the agency on September 6. It would be odd to install a military commander, fresh from tours of duty in a war zone, as the head of CIA and simultaneously ratchet back the agency’s authority to make tactical decisions on strikes.

Then again, it has long struck me as more than a little odd that the CIA, not the Pentagon, is running our drone wars. Killing bad guys en masse isn’t really an intelligence mission, even granting that the line between intelligence “operations” and military operations has always been somewhat murky. And it’s no longer a matter of a strike every now and again as a complement to a wider operation. Increasingly, the drone war is the whole enchilada.

Last year, Mr. Obama expanded the CIA program to 14 drone “orbits.” Each orbit usually includes three drones, sufficient to provide constant surveillance over tribal areas of Pakistan. The CIA’s fleet of drones includes Predators and larger Reapers. The drones carry Hellfire missiles and sometimes bigger bombs, can soar to an altitude of 50,000 feet and reach cruise speeds of up to 230 miles per hour.

The drone program over the past decade has moved from a technological oddity to a key element of U.S. national-security policy. The campaign has killed more than 1,500 suspected militants on Pakistani soil since Mr. Obama took office in 2009, according to government officials.

To some degree, the program has become a victim of its own success. Critics question whether aggressive tactics are necessary following the eradication of senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including Osama bin Laden, killed in a helicopter raid by Navy Seals in May after drone and satellite surveillance of the compound where he was living.

Many officials at the Pentagon and State Department privately argued the CIA pays too little attention to the diplomatic costs of air strikes that kill large groups of low-level fighters. Such strikes inflame Pakistani public opinion. Observers point to the rising power in Pakistan of political figures like Imran Khan, who held large rallies to protest the drones and could challenge the current government.

The CIA has always been a strange hybrid. It was created in 1947–via the same Act that created the Secretary of Defense, a separate Air Force, and the National Security Council–as a postwar descendant of the military’s Office of Strategic Services. But whereas OSS was mostly about conducting operations, CIA had a second side: the analysis of intelligence. The two have very different bureaucratic cultures and draw from almost entirely different pools of people. (The same is increasingly true of the FBI, which is an uncomfortable hybrid between a white collar law enforcement operation and a counterterrorism intelligence analysis operation.)

It simply makes no sense to have CIA operating powerful weapons systems and calling the shots on targeting. And, rather obviously, the operations side isn’t listening to the analysis side at all or they wouldn’t be doing it so recklessly. Naturally, this is all done in the black so there isn’t much data to go on.

The U.S. drone war in Yemen has taken out another victim:

A wave of CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaeda figures in Yemen is stoking widespread anger there that U.S. policy is cruel and misguided, prioritizing counterterrorism over a genuine solution to the country’s raging political crisis.

Politics has never been a concern to Sam al-Homiganyi and his fellow teenagers. This month, though, they were shocked by the sudden death of a friend and are struggling to understand why.

Fighting back tears, his gaze fixed downward, al-Homiganyi, a lean-looking 15-year-old from the outskirts of Sana’a, told TIME, “He was my best friend, we played football together everyday.” Another of his friends spoke up, gesturing to the gloomy group of jeans-clad boys around him: “He was the same as us. He liked swimming, playing computer games, watching movies … you know, normal stuff.”

The dead friend was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old born in Denver, the third American killed in as many weeks by suspected CIA drone strikes in Yemen. His father, the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, also an American citizen, was killed earlier this month, along with alleged al-Qaeda propagandist Samir Khan, who was from New York. When Abdulrahman’s death was first reported in the Western press, his age was given as 21 by local Yemeni officials. Afterward, however, the Awlaki family put out a copy of Abdulrahman’s birth certificate.

According to his relatives, Abdulrahman left the family home in the Sana’a area on Sept. 15 in search of his fugitive father who was hiding out with his tribe, the Awalak, in the remote, rugged southern province of Shabwa. Days after the teenager began his quest, however, his father was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Then, just two weeks later, the Yemeni government claimed another air strike killed a senior al-Qaeda militant. Abdulrahman, his teenage cousin and six others died in the attack as well. A U.S. official said the young man “was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and that the U.S. was trying to kill a legitimate terrorist — al-Qaeda leader Ibrahim al-Banna, who also died — in the strike that apparently killed the American teenager.

Abdulrahman’s distraught grandfather is not buying the explanation. Nasser al-Awlaki, who received a university degree in the U.S., had for years sought an injunction in American courts to prevent the Obama Administration from targeting and killing his son, Anwar. He told TIME, “I really feel disappointed that this crime is going to be forgotten. I think the American people ought to know what really happened and how the power of their government is being abused by this Administration. Americans should start asking why a boy was targeted for killing.” He continued, “In addition to my grandson’s killing, the missile killed my brother’s grandson, who was a 17-year-old kid, who was not an American citizen but is a human being, killed in cold blood. I cannot comprehend how my teenage grandson was killed by a Hellfire missile, how nothing was left of him except small pieces of flesh. Why? Is America safer now that a boy was killed?” As for Abdulrahman’s father, Nasser says that the U.S. “killed my son Anwar without a trial for any crime he committed … They killed him just for his freedom of speech.” He levels the charges directly at the U.S. President. “I urge the American people to bring the killers to justice. I urge them to expose the hypocrisy of the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate. To some, he may be that. To me and my family, he is nothing more than a child killer.”

I believe the phrase they use is “collateral damage.”  This is one of the problems with the new world of remotely controlled warfare. If this had been a raid by a SEAL team, and they had seen that there were children around the target, does one seriously believe that they would’ve opened untargeted fire without regard to the possibility of taking out innocent life? I’d certainly hope not. One also has to wonder what kind of reputation this creates for the United States in the minds of the people of the Arab world. Doesn’t it tend to reinforce the words of the radicals who want us to be viewed as the enemy? Certainly seems like it does to me.

The headline itself is absurd.  Is there a terrorism problem in Tennessee?  Further, the issue is not a question of fighting terrorism, it is simply a case of increasing certain security measures.  Indeed, more than fighting terrorism this is simply increasing the amount of security that law-abiding residents are having to face.

Specifically, the policy is as follows:

You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

[...]

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

Agents are recruiting truck drivers, like Rudy Gonzales, into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.

This smacks of bureaucratic creep, not a reasoned, systematic attempt at law enforcement/anti-terrorism policy.  Why Tennessee?  Why only seven deployments?  Why a heavy emphasis on weigh stations?

Basically it seems that the main policy initiative is trying to get truck drivers to act as eyes and ears of law enforcement.  I am not exactly sure, however, what they are supposed to be looking for.

Indeed, the one example given in the piece is hardly compelling:

The random inspections really aren’t any more thorough than normal, according to Tennessee Highway Patrol Colonel Tracy Trott who says paying attention to details can make a difference. Trott pointed out it was an Oklahoma state trooper who stopped Timothy McVeigh for not having a license plate after the Oklahoma City bombing in the early 1990s.

First, if the inspections aren’t all the different than normal, why spend the extra money on them (as deploying TSA isn’t without cost).  Second, if the best example that can be given is one that is both a) over a decade and a half old, and b) one not of terrorism prevention, but of one of post-attack apprehension, then I am not sure how it helps illustrate the need for TSA and deputized (so to speak) truck drivers to patrol America’s weigh stations and interstates.

All of this sound like a production of Security Theater Hits the Road.   Which means:  more cost and more hassle for the law-abiding with a marginal, at best, increase in actual security.

h/t:  Alex Knapp’s FB feed.

Yesterday before the Republican debate, Herman Cain made a misstep that once again displayed out far out of his depth he is when it comes to foreign policy. It came in an interview with Wolf Blitzer in response to a question about the release of Israeli solider Galid Shalit in a prisoner exchange:

BLITZER: Imagine if you were President – we’re almost out of time – uh, and there were one American soldier who’d been held for years, and the demand was, al Qaeda or some other terrorist group, you- ya gotta free everybody at Guantanamo Bay- several hundred prisoners at Guantanam- could you see yourself as President authorizing that kind of transfer?

CAIN: I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer. but what I would do, is I would make sure that I got all of the information, that I got all of the input, considered all of the options, and then the President has to be the President and make a judgment call. I can make that call if I had to.”

Cain was asked about the comment during the debate last night and equivocated:

“You would have to consider the entire situation. But let me say this first: I would have a policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists. We have to lay that principle down first,” Cain said. “Now, then you have to look at each individual situation and consider all the facts. The point that I made about this particular situation is that I’m sure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to consider a lot of things before he made that. So on the surface, I don’t think we can say he did the right thing or not. A responsible decision-maker would have considered everything.

Then after the debate was over, Cain said that he misspoke:

The easy answer, the one most conservatives would want to hear from Cain is, that America does not negotiate with terrorists. Reality, of course, is quite different. Pretty much every President since Jimmy Carter has negotiated with terrorists, or with representatives of a regime designated as supporting terrorists. As Ron Paul pointed out during the debate, Ronald Reagan not only negotiated with terrorists, he sold them weapons as part of a scheme to gain the release of Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. The idea that we’d never negotiate with terrorists is, quite frankly, silly and doesn’t comport with reality.

That said, Cain letting the idea of releasing everyone at Gitmo, including people like Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, suggests that he doesn’t necessarily think things through when he’s talking. What that means for the job of the Presidency I don’t know, but I can’t believe that conservatives are going to be all too thrilled about guy who says stuff like this.

The near universal reaction among analysts who study Iran for a living to the news that broke yesterday of an apparent terrorist plot inside the United States seems to be a combination of deep concern and utter confusion. As more than one of the analysts I’ve watched speak about this over the past 24 hours has said, there’s nothing more dangerous than the idea that an element of the Iranian government was plotting what could only be described as an act of war against the U.S., and there’s nothing more puzzling then trying to figure out the answer to the question why would they take such a risky, dangerous step?

As Max Fisher noted at The Atlantic yesterday, this plot, if true, would be inconsistent with the way the Islamic Republic has acted in the recent past:

The Iranian leadership, for all their twisted human rights abuses and policies that often serve the regime at the cost of actual Iranians, are not idiots. Though they use terrorism as a foreign policy tool, the attacks in Iraq and Lebanon and elsewhere have clearly been driven by just that — a cool-headed pragmatic desire to further Iranian foreign policy interests. Unifying the U.S. and Saudi Arabia at a time when they are drifting apart with a plot that would galvanize American publics and policymakers to support Saudi Arabia, and all without actually doing much strategic damage to either country, would be monumentally stupid. They’ve made serious, ideology-driven mistakes before — as government often do — but this plot comes so far out of left field that it should raise more questions than accusations.

If they would go through all the trouble to organize a bombing attack on U.S. soil — no easy thing to do — why target someone so low-level? For that matter, why launch an attack on U.S. soil at all, something Iran has never done in the tumultuous decade since September 11? Why now, as opposed to, for example, during the height of the Iraq war? Why incur the wrath of the U.S. now, so soon after releasing the U.S. hikers detained in Tehran? (Their release was a modest and long overdue concession, but one that suggests the path of Iranian diplomacy.)

And why get involved with Mexican drug cartels? Is that really someplace where Iran has good contacts these days? As Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress asked, “Wiring money into US? Talking about plot on phone? Does that sound like an intel service to you?”

All that said, it really is possible that this is exactly what Holder says it is. Stranger things have happened, and Iran may have simply made an enormous, if out-of-character and obviously self-hurting, blunder. It’s also possible that the two Iranian men really were planning to bomb the ambassador, but are either rogue members of the Revolutionary Guards or not really members at all. Clearly, there is much more information in this story that has not yet been made public. Maybe that information, if it ever comes out, will back up the official U.S. version — which the White House already says it will use to escalate sanctions — and maybe it will tell a different story. But the plot as we now know it doesn’t seem like something that Iran’s leaders would think was a good idea.

That last point is an important one to keep in mind. So far, the only evidence we have to support the idea that the Iranian government, or some element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, are the allegations in the Criminal Complaint and the statements made by various U.S. officials. Just based on this alone, there are some elements who seem to be ready to start beating the drums of war, or at least calling for retaliation in the form of enhanced sanctions or some kind of military action. It may turn out that this is exactly what is necessary. In fact, despite being generally reluctant to back foreign intervention, I’d have to say that if we have clear and definitive proof that Iran or one of the elements inside it was plotting to commit a terrorist attack inside the United States, we’re under an obligation to retaliate in some form. But, it’s worth noting that the publicly available information doesn’t put us there yet, and if we’re going to go down that road we need to make sure our public officials justify their actions.

As for Fisher’s basic point, he does make a good point. It’s hard to see what rational basis there would be for Iran to escalate tensions with the United States to this level, and to potentially unite the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel against them. Unlike many on the right, I don’t subscribe to the theory that the Islamic Republic is inherently irrational and willing to act in a manner that would be suicidal. They may have goals that are what some of us would call insane, but it’s still possible for them to pursue those goals in a rational manner. Furthermore, engaging in a strategy that puts the survival of your nation at stake would seem to be inconsistent with previous Iranian policy.

Steve Clemons offers a quick theory as to why Iran might do something like this, though:

Iran sees the US stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan and still to some degree, tied down by Iraq — whose temperature is more controlled by Tehran than Washington.  The US financial crisis, a frustrated American population that wants to deal with issues at home rather than abroad, and diminishing returns to the US from playing global cop have factored in to Iran’s probably incorrect assessment that the US is weak and could be hit hard now.

Bottom line is that Iran is feeling its oats and could see some value in striking right into the heart of the US-Saudi relationship on US soil as a sign of its strength.  From their viewpoint, the Iranians may feel that Saudis may be more angry at the US for having failed to prevent the assassination rather than becoming best friends again.  The US options for responding to Iran would be as constrained after the assassination as before.

An assassination of an official like Adel Al-Jubeir who was both Ambassador and close confident of King Abdullah would be calculated so as not to kill a royal — but rather someone who mattered more than any other to the King’s strategic gamble at the moment.

A combination of perceived American weakness combined with wanting to knock the Saudis off balance might have been enough to justify this strike, which I agree is highly unusual.  The Iranians do not believe that they have a track forward with the US.  They believe that China and Russia will not automatically line up with the US and Saudis even if they were able to align their actions after the assassination might have taken place.

This plot, if true and not just a badly executed plan by rogues or a fabrication by others, could have a logic in what it did to destabilize an anchor relationship at a key economic inflection point for the US and the world.

If that’s what the Iranians are thinking, it strikes me as a massive miscalculation along the same lines of the one that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban made ten years ago. It’s fairly clear that bin Laden did not believe that the United States would retalitate as massively as it did for the September 11th attacks, based in part on the piecemeal retaliations of the past. Why the Iranians would think that we would act differently in this case, especially given the long and bitter history between us, is somewhat baffling.

Finally, James Kittfield offers another theory, and it’s one that may make the most sense of all:

One possible explanation is an increasingly tense power struggle inside Tehran between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Given that he is losing that battle, a desperate Ahmadinejad could conceivably believe that provoking an attack by the United States could allow him to consolidate power as the defender of Iran against “the Great Satan.” But even given Ahmadinejad’s history as a firebrand and ideologue, the plot to launch multiple bombings in Washington at this time seems uncharacteristically reckless.

There have been plenty of stories about tension between Ahamdinejad and Khameni in the past (which has always made me raise an eyebrow at the “Ahmadinejad is the next Hitler” arguments), so this wouldn’t be entirely surprising. And if it were rouge elements of the Revolutionary Guard assisting him, then it might explain why this plot reads like something that the scriptwriters for 24 would have rejected as too implausible.

There is another theory, of course. It’s entirely possible that this wasn’t an Iranian government operation at all, or at least not an officially sanctioned one. Given the Austin Powers -esque nature of the plot here, that would almost seem to be the most plausible theory even. Furthermore, the fact that so much of the “operation” was conducted under the auspices of an FBI sting operation leads one to wonder if these were actual foreign agents were talking about, or just a couple guys who thought they were hatching a plot. A crime is committed in either case, of course, but it’s only in the first case that this goes from being a crime to an international incident.

Where this will lead can’t be known at this point, but the allegations are certainly serious enough to raise concerns. If they’re true, then we may be headed down a road of confrontation. If that’s the case, then one hopes the American people won’t let themselves get fooled a second time around.

The Justice Department claims to have disrupted a major Iranian-backed terrorist attack in the United States.

NYT (“U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy“):

Federal authorities foiled a plot by men linked to the Iranian government to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and to bomb the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Israel in Washington, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a news conference on Tuesday.

The men accused of plotting the attacks were Manssor Arbab Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, according to court documents filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Both men are originally from Iran, Reuters reported.

There is “no basis to believe that any other co-conspirators are present in the U.S.,” Mr. Holder said.

He said the men were connected to the secretive Quds Force, a division of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has carried out operations in other countries. He said that money in support of the plot had been transferred through a bank in New York, but that the men had not yet obtained any explosives.

Mr. Shakuri is still at large, according the Reuters. Mr. Arbabsiar, a naturalized American citizen, was arrested in late September.

Mr. Holder said the Mexican government had been instrumental in the investigation.

Iran reacted immediately to the news, calling the accusations a fabrication.

ABC News (“Iran ‘Directed’ Washington, D.C., Terror Plot, U.S. Says“):

FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a “significant terrorist act in the United States” tied to Iran, federal officials told ABC News today.

The officials said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. Bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were also discussed, according to the U.S. officials.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in an announcement today that the plan was “conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran” by a faction of the government and called it a “flagrant” violation of U.S. and international law.

“The U.S. is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” Holder said. He said the White House will be meeting with federal agencies before announcing “further action” in regards to Iran.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said the arrest of a suspect in the plot shows the U.S. will “bring the full weight of [the] law to bear on those responsible” and that “any attempts on American soil will not be tolerated.”

The stunning allegations come against a backdrop of longstanding tensions between Iran and the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the last year, Saudi Arabia has attempted to build an anti-Iran alliance to push back against perceived aggression by Iran in the region.

This is a breaking story, so this is all I know at the moment. Obviously, this is huge. Relations with Iran have been awful going back to the fall of the Shah and the subsequent Hostage Crisis in 1979. Tensions have been especially high in recent years over Iran’s nuclear program. But this ratchets things up several notches. It’s one thing to support terrorist activity in the region, which Iran has done from almost the beginning of its ayatollah-led regime. It’s quite another to direct plots against targets on American soil.

FP’s Blake Hounshel points to the full complaint, in PDF format, on the CBS News site.

Reuters informs us today that the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki came about on the recommendation of a secret panel of government officials who have apparently been given the authority to determine who the United States can target for killing without due process of law:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants

Since this whole thing is cloaked in secrecy, it’s not even clear what role the President, who is supposed to be the man in charge of all of this, actually plays in the process, which leads to the concern that President Obama has essentially delegated authority that he really shouldn’t have the authority to delegate:

The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law,” Ruppersberger said.

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were consulted before Awlaki’s name was added to the target list.

Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to “protect” the president

That would be a little concept called deniability. Remove the decision from the President’s purview, and the argument can be made that he can’t be held responsible. If something goes wrong, someone else will be available to fall on their sword. If legal objections are raised, then the President is theoretically protected from liability. It’s a concept that goes as far back as the assassination of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170 by courtesans of King Henry II, but not on his direct order. It was the reason for the bizarre structure of the Iran-Contra scheme by Admiral John Poindexter and Col. Oliver North so as to shield President Reagan from direct knowledge of what was being done in his name. And, now, it’s apparently being used to compile lists of people to be targeted for killing without any kind of due process. The phrase Star Chamber comes to mind.

Glenn Greenwald is, not surprisingly, disturbed:

So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no known law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed by the CIA, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider.  It is difficult to describe the level of warped authoritarianism necessary to cause someone to lend their support to a twisted Star Chamber like that; I genuinely wonder whether the Good Democrats doing so actually first convince themselves that if this were the Bush White House’s hit list, or if it becomes Rick Perry’s, they would be supportive just the same.  Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?

That’s pretty much the question I’ve been asking ever since the news of the original kill order against al-Awlaki become public more than a year ago. The revelations regarding the decision making process, as minimal as they are, only heighten those initial concerns. The idea of that a secret panel of government officials can decide on their own who lives and who dies is troublesome on many levels. Additionally, as Greenwald notes, when decisions like this are made in secret and without any kind of legal oversight it’s very easy for the evidence to be manipulated, and even exaggerated:

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that nobody can see this “evidence” which these anonymous government officials are claiming exists.  It’s in their exclusive possession.  As a result, they’re able to characterize it however they want, to present it in the best possible light to support their pro-assassination position, and to prevent any detection of its flaws.  As any lawyer will tell you, anyone can make a case for anything when they’re in exclusive possession of all the relevant evidence and are the only side from whom one is hearing; all evidence becomes less compelling when it’s subjected to adversarial scrutiny.  Yet even given all those highly favorable pro-government conditions here, it’s obvious — even these officials admit — that the evidence is “partial,” “patchy,” based on “suspicions” rather than knowledge.

And yet the committee, or whatever, you want to call it, decided that evidence was sufficient to put al-Awlaki on a targeted assassination list. Moreover, although the claim is being made now that he is the only person ever to be put on that list, it was reported back in 2010 that there were at least three or four others on the list with him, none of whom have ever been identified. These are actions that are being done in our name, and they’re being done in secret. That’s not something any American should be comfortable with.

There are some times when secrecy is necessary for the good of the country. The planning for the operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was secret both because the raid could not have succeeded without it, and because we simply couldn’t trust the Pakistanis with the knowledge of what we were about to do. Throughout that operation, though, President Obama was involved in the decision making and the planning of the operation. There are also times when secrecy is used to hide actions that are improper, immoral, or potentially embarrassing. In the case of the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, it seems clear to me that punting this decision off to a committee was not only wrong, but the height of irresponsibility on the President’s part. He ought to be ashamed of himself.

There’s something fundamentally wrong here, I think. Even if you accept the idea that al-Awlaki was, in the end, an acceptable target, the idea that a President can make this kind of determination without having to justify it flies in the face of  the entire idea that we live under a government of limited powers. The Administration’s position is that the American people just need to trust that they’re doing the right thing, but it’s precisely when the government starts saying that when you need to make them prove their case.

Glenn Greenwald gets it exactly right when he says:

That is the mindset of the U.S. Government and its followers expressed as vividly as can be: we can spy on, imprison, or even kill anyone we want — including citizens — without any due process or any evidence shown, simply because we will tell you they are Bad People, and you will trust us and believe us.  That was absolutely the principal justification offered by Bush followers for everything their Leader did — I know they’re Terrorists because My President said so, so no courts or evidence is required - and that is now exactly the mindset of Obama loyalists to justify what he does (back in December, 2005, I described that defense as the ”Very Bad People” justification for lawless, due-process-free acts).

That mentality — he’s a Terrorist because my Government said he’s one and I therefore don’t need evidence or trials to subject that evidence to scrutiny — also happens to be the purest definition of an authoritarian mentality, the exact opposite of the dynamic that was supposed drive how the country functioned (Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution“).  I trust My President and don’t need to see evidence or have due process is the slavish mentality against which Jefferson warned; it’s also one of the most pervasive ones in much of the American citizenry, which explains a lot.

This kind of blind faith in government is precisely what gets us into trouble time and again. The Bush Administration should have been forced to justify its actions, but it wasn’t. The Obama Administration should be forced to justify its actions, and it won’t be.

H/T: Robert Murphy