The war strategy towards Iran was published in a policy paper outlining how the United States could use Israel to fight the war against Iran, while justifying it with a false narrative of failed negotiations.

A plan was developed for the United States to use diplomacy to entice Iran into negotiations that then fail, so Iran could be attacked while the US was pushing a false narrative saying the Iranians “brought it on themselves”.

The plan also urged the US to encourage or assist the Israelis, as a direct US proxy, to conduct the strikes on Iran so as to deflect criticism and retaliation onto Israel, as Declassified Australia reports.

The  audacious plan for a “plausibly deniable” war is detailed in an analysis flippantly titled “Leave It To Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike”, published in a report named Which Way To Persia: Options for a New American Strategy Towards Iran by the Brookings Institution, a longstanding Washington DC thinktank.

The plan, recently  reviewed by strategic analyst Brian Berletic, no doubt since perfected after being written in 2009 following the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, outlines options for a new venture by the US – this time, to counter Iran.

The US intelligence community is well served by the plan’s authors. They include  liberal "war hawks" and propagandists for US Middle East policy, Kenneth Pollack, who is a former Iraq and Iran military analyst at the CIA and adviser at the White House, Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA and a Middle East presidential adviser, and Daniel Byman, a former CIA analyst on Middle East terrorism.

Another of the report’s authors is a one-time Australian citizen and intelligence analyst with Australia’s Office of National Assessment, Martin Indyk, who moved to the US and served twice as US ambassador to Israel, and who became a leading pro-Israel lobbyist.

The report’s chapters cover options to topple the Iranian Government that include supporting a military coup, an insurgency by opposition groups, a popular uprising, an invasion and a campaign of air strikes.

For the military campaign against Iran, the report describes the goal is to deflect any retaliation and international blame for a military attack onto Israel:

“The US would encourage, and perhaps even assist, the Israelis in conducting the strikes [on the Iranian nuclear facilities] themselves, in the expectation that both international and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel.” [p.89]

In laying the groundwork for a public relations justification for the attack on Iran, the report proposes a false narrative of “failed peace talks”:

“The best way to minimise international opprobrium and maximise support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer – one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. 

“Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians ‘brought it on themselves’ by refusing a very good deal.” [p.39]

The deception and  psychological warfare element, supporting Israel’s decapitation strikes against Iran, involved crafting false narratives to mislead Iran, like the now-abandoned nuclear talks between the US and Iran. This element induced Iran to suspect infiltrators in their midst, and to misjudge intentions, capabilities and timing, so exploiting Iran’s vulnerabilities.

And so it goes. The plan of strategic surprise is being executed almost verbatim.

After 60 days of hopeful but inconclusive talks between the US and Iran over the fate of Iran’s nuclear research program — and a few days before those talks were due to recommence — Israel commenced a surprise series of bombing attacks on Iran on Friday, 13 June. Targets of the pre-emptive strikes included Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing nuclear scientists, military figures, and civilians.

Now, at the time of the writing of this article, the Israeli-initiated bombing of Iran and Iran’s defensive response, continues. The US and the UK reportedly are amassing planes, ships and personnel at close readiness for possibly joining in the war against Iran.

The Iran ‘threat’

The ‘Leave It To Bibi’ plan was written at a time when Western intelligence  agencies knew that Iran’s defences were purely “defensive” and designed to resist attack by Israel and the United States.

Australia’s intelligence agencies have reported that, despite there being “strong indicators that Tehran’s preferred end state included a nuclear arsenal”, Iran’s position was essentially defensive, as Dr Clinton Fernandes wrote in his book Sub-imperial Power.

The then director-general of Australia’s top spy agency, the Office of National Assessments, Peter Varghese, said in a classified US embassy cable of an intelligence exchange in 2008 between Australia and the US that was leaked to WikiLeaks, that:

“ONA viewed Tehran’s nuclear program within the paradigm of ‘the laws of deterrence’.” 

Australia’s top spy chief concluded by telling the intelligence briefing to US embassy officials in Canberra, that ONA stated its position:

“It’s a mistake to think of Iran as a ‘rogue state’.”

Supporting this view was the director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant-General Ronald L. Burgess, who in 2010 said Iran has a “defensive” military stance, reflected in its defence spending priorities:

“This reflects its defensive military doctrine, which is designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities. Iranian military training and public statements echo this defensive doctrine.

“Its principles of military strategy include deterrence, asymmetrical retaliation, and attrition warfare.

“Iran’s military strategy is designed to defend against external threats, particularly from the United States and Israel.”

The most up-to-date assessment of the US intelligence community supports this position that Iran is not presently developing nuclear weapons.

On 25 March, director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in testimony at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing for the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, stated there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear weapon:

“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorised the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons program."

Last week, new details of US Intelligence Assessments were leaked to CNN from four sources. The assessments reach a far different conclusion from the pro-war “Israel has a right to defend itself” statements emerging from Australia’s  Defence and  Foreign Affairs  ministers, the Israeli ambassador, and the mainstream media.

The secret Intelligence Assessments definitively contradict those public statements.

They state that not only was Iran “not actively pursuing” a nuclear weapon, it was also up to “three years away” from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing.

US involvement – and Australia’s too

The military support provided to Israel by the US is both comprehensive and massive – more than US$17 billion in military aid from October 2023 to October 2024. It is coming in the form of aircraft, weapons, munitions, and refuelling capabilities, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

According to news reports, the US is already providing key support specifically for the massive bombing operation against Iran. A well-placed US  source says the US provided “exquisite intelligence” for the present Israeli attacks on Iran.

“Exquisite intelligence” is a rarely-used term, referring to exceptionally detailed and accurate information obtained from sophisticated sources or platforms, including technical platforms such as satellite surveillance.

It is very possible, even likely, that at least some of the “exquisite intelligence” was provided through the extraordinary capabilities of the surveillance satellites used by the massive US base located at Pine Gap on the outskirts of Alice Springs in Central Australia.

There are other ways Australia is helping the overall US campaign in support of Israel.

The NW Cape surveillance base near Exmouth in Western Australia provides  communications and monitoring, airbases in northern Australia have been provided for US  refuelling tanker planes supporting B-2 bombers heading to bomb Yemen and to be stationed at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. And an Australian naval officer heads the US-multinational naval task force CTF-153,  confronting the Yemen blockade of Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea.

But, of course, the Pine Gap base provides by far the most important warfighting support – from collecting military communications, to geolocating individuals for targeting, to detecting troop movements, to detecting and targeting missile and rocket launches.

Pine Gap collects and provides this intelligence and analysis for the United States’ National Surveillance Agency, which then shares much of it with Israel, as Declassified Australia first reported in November 2023.

A “Top Secret” NSA document titled “NSA Intelligence relationship with Israel”, leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2014, states:

“NSA maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit, sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting."

Spying on Iran is stated as a “key priority” for the NSA and ISNU relationship, and has apparently been bearing results:

“[A] robust and dynamic relationship has enabled breakthroughs on high priority Iranian targets.

“USA and ISNU continue to initiate joint targeting of Syrian and Iranian leadership and nuclear development programs with CIA, ISNU, SOD [Israel’s Special Operation Division] and Mossad.”

US goals in the region – and in the world

Far from the false narrative of undermining US initiatives in the Middle East, Israel is acting as vassal states do, as a loyal proxy nation, carrying out long-term US hegemonic goals in the region.

Those goals were formalised in a 2001  secret memorandum sent from the office of the then secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Four-star US General Wesley Clark, who had served as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, said in a televised report on Democracy Now in 2007, that he was shown the memo by a general on the Joint Staff.

As he flourished the memo, the general told him:

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years – starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

In the years following, all those seven countries have been either toppled or come under enormous pressure from the US.

Israel is being used by the US as proxy for implementing its strategic domination plans – just as Ukraine is being used against Russia, and Taiwan may shortly be used against China.

 

Republished from Declassified Australia, 19 June 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.