US re-establishes secret elite air force team; perfecting plan for Iran strike?

The US Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group whose task is "fighting the next war". At a time when tensions are rising with Iran, experts say that this points to only one thing; the US getting together a strategy for a military assault on Iran.

Called Project Checkmate, the team is a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War air campaign. It was quietly re-established at the Pentagon in June, and reports directly to US Air Force chief General Michael Moseley, says a Sunday Times report from London.

The group comprises 20 to 30 top air force officers, as well as defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Defence sources say that the US central command or Centcom has been doing detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran, for over two years.

Project Checkmate, they say, will bring in fresh thinking to counteract usual military tendencies to "fight the last war". It will also provide innovative war fighting strategies and assess future needs for air, space and cyber warfare.

It is led by Brigadier-General Lawrence ''Stutz'' Stutzriem, who is considered one of the most brilliant air force generals. He is assisted by Dr Lani Kass, a former Israeli military officer and an expert on cyber-warfare.

Checkmate was first formed in the ''70s to counter Soviet threats, but went into hibernation in the ''80s. It was then revived under Colonel John Warden and was responsible for drawing up plans for the crushing air blitz against Saddam Hussein at the opening of the first Gulf war in 1991.

Checkmate''s latest mission is "to provide planning inputs to war fighters that are strategically, operationally and tactically sound, logistically supportable and politically feasible".

Its brief is freethinking and not specific to any one country, say defence sources. Rather, it is expected to come up with the kind of forward planning that would be relevant in the context of any future air war. Apart from military action against Iranian nuclear and military sites, it is also looking at possible threats from China and North Korea.

Checkmate has a significantly different role from Centcom. It has access to unlimited numbers of people with expertise, including all the intelligence agencies, and can be considerably more agile than Centcom.

Col Warden believes that Checkmate''s role is to develop the necessary expertise so that if the target is Iran, it can set out the objectives, the risks, the costs, and the projected loss of aircraft. It should also be able to deliver a prognosis of how the war is likely to end and what the peace will look like.

While Centcom''s brief is to execute war plans, it doesn''t have the staff, the expertise or the responsibility to do the thinking required before a country makes the decision to go to war.

France has joined America in pushing for a tough third sanctions resolution against Iran at the UN Security Council, but there is strong resistance from China and Russia. It now looks increasingly likely that any new sanctions will be implemented by a new US-led "coalition of the willing".

There is a strong hawkish lobby in Washington that advocates a military strike against Tehran, if the United Nations ''fails'' to impose further sanctions to curtail Iran''s nuclear ambitions. Bernard Kouchner, the outspoken French foreign minister, said last week about Iran that it was "necessary to prepare for the worst… and the worst is war".

He later qualified his remarks, saying he wanted to avoid that outcome, but has emboldened US hawks that think with France and the UK as allies, The US may just be able to carry Europe along if it opts for war with Iran.

Iran''s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who visited New York for the United Nations general assembly and made a controversial, high profile speech at Columbia University, has come under attack from US politicians of all hues, from President George W Bush to Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2008 race for the White House.

Bush still hopes to isolate Iran diplomatically, but believes the regime is moving steadily closer to obtaining nuclear weapons while the UN Security Council bickers. But he faces strong opposition to military action even from his own joint chiefs of staff. None of them think it is a good idea, say insiders.

Former Centcom commander Gen John Abizaid said last week: "Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed Iran."

Conservative hardliners say Abizaid is not considering Iran''s propensity to arm radical militant groups like Hezbollah with nuclear weapons. "You can deter Iran, but there is no strategy against nuclear terrorism," retired air force Lt Gen Thomas McInerney, who heads the Iran policy committee, says.

There is no question that no matter how stretched; the US armed forces will be able to capture an Iran that has been militarily crippled by US-led sanctions. But the problem, as with Iraq, is what happens after. In Pentagon-speak, it''s called creating a velvet revolution, so that the Iranian people know the military action is not aimed at them, but at the regime.

Another Sunday report in Newsweek quotes a Cheney advisor who says that the hawkish US vice president has been contemplating a strategy of pushing for a limited Israeli missile strike against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz, among others, to provoke Tehran into retaliatory missile strikes on Israel. That would then give the US the ability to launch a strike in response.

US President George W Bush has ruled out a first-strike on Iran. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, all oppose a strike, say sources, but they voice concerns that the Cheney team might seek to use an ''incident'' like the above to start beating the war drums.

The problem is also that Cheney & Co are matched on the Iran side by the elite, Islamic fundamentalist Revolutionary Guard, which is outside the control of the country''s government and answerable only to the country''s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. A quick reaction from the Guard to any provocation from Israel may leave the Iranian government with a fait accompli on its hands.

On Saturday, Iran tested a longer-range missile in public for the first time, and ran the gamut of anti-Israeli slogans in a military parade marking the start of Iran''s 1980-1988 war with Iraq. The missile, significantly, puts US West Asia bases and Israel within Tehran''s reach. The parade was marked by slogans calling for "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".