Iran 'Recruiting Suicide British Bombers'.

Relations between Iran's theocracy and the West are set to worsen after a Tehran-based group on April 18 claimed it was trying to recruit Iranians and other Muslims in Britain to carry out suicide bombings against Israel. If it is true that Iranian recruitment of would-be suicide bombers is being done in Britain, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair would be among the first Western leaders to join the US in the event of confrontation against Iran.

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which claims to be independent but has the backing of the theocracy, said it was targeting potential recruits in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders can enter Israel. The claim came hours after nine people were killed by a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv on April 17, and days after a prediction by Iran's harline President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad that Israel would be blown away in a "storm". President George W. Bush has repeatedly refused to rule out a limited nuclear strike on Iranian atomic facilities.

The Guardian on April 19 quotedMohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, as saying that striking at Israel was the priority of his recruitment drive, adding: "The first target is Israel. For us, that is the battlefield. All the Jews are targets, whether military or civilian. It's our land and they are in the wrong place. It's their duty to pay attention to safety of their own families and move them away from the battlefield".

Samadi's group, according to the Guardian, was participating in a recruitment fair for "martyrdom seekers" being held in the grounds of the former US embassy in central Tehran. The London paper said: "Several hundred volunteers have signed up for missions in the past few days. Volunteers attracted to his group were asked to complete forms specifying whether they prefer to carry out operations against 'the Quds occupiers' [Israel], the British author Salman Rushdie [subject of a death sentence passed by Iran's late spiritual leader, Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, over The Satanic Verses], or the occupiers of Islamic lands" - the US and Britain.

"Samadi was standing at an exhibition stall festooned with portraits of Palestinian suicide bombers, including pictures of the aftermaths of attacks. It also featured a tribute to Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza three years ago. A banner outside the fair read: 'There is no voice higher than intifada'. Nearby stood a mock model of the Statue of Liberty, with iron bars cut into the torso to symbolise a prison cell. The British embassy has called on the Iranian government to renounce support for the group. A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We have longstanding concerns at the support that Iran provides to groups undermining peace in the Middle East through violence, including the activities of this group'.

"But western diplomats played down the significance of the group's threat, saying it was primarily a campaign to gather signatures of protest against Israel rather than recruiting bombers. But the group's pronouncements add to the list of western indictments against Iran since the election last year of...[Ahmadi-Nejad], who has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth".

The committee has been linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). It claims it has gathered 52,000 recruits, of whom 30% are women, since forming two years ago. According to the group, recruits are instructed in target planning and military discipline before progressing to intensive urban guerrilla warfare training, involving the use of bomb belts.

The Guardian added: "When asked how Iranian volunteers would get into Israel, Mr Samadi cited the precedent of Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Sharif, two British Muslims who attacked a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis, in 2003 after entering Israel as tourists and then posing as peace activists. Hanif blew himself up at the scene while Sharif fled, but was found drowned in the Mediterranean". The paper quoted Samadi as saying: "That shows that it has not been difficult getting into Israel. Do you think getting hold of a British passport for an Iranian citizen is hard? Tens of passports are issued for Iranian asylum seekers in Britain every day. There are hundreds of other ways available to us, such as illegal entry [into Britain], fake passports, etc. Britain and other European countries have a lot of disaffected Muslims who are ready. We understand the suspicion with which Britain, America and other western countries regard their Muslim populations. We don't condemn them for this because we believe every Muslim has the potential to turn into a bomb against the west".

Samadi said recruits would not be told to attack British cities. "With the exception of Israel, we do not target civilians", he said, adding: "They would definitely not be sent to carry out an attack on London unless it was to kill Salman Rushdie".

The Guardian quoted "Israeli security analysts" as saying there was no evidence the group had been directly linked to suicide bombings or other attacks in Israel. But Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, in a Security Council debate about the April 17 bombing, called Iranian threats against Israel a "declaration of war".

US/UK War Planning: The Guardian on April 15 said the Bush administration had yet to decide on a clear plan B for Iran if diplomacy and sanctions failed to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, adding: "But military planning is progressing to fill that policy vacuum and may create a momentum of its own".

Citing "former [US] administration officials and political observers", the Guardian recalled that, after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, US Marines "completed an analysis for an amphibious assault on a radical, fictitious Middle Eastern theocracy called Karona, a thinly disguised version of Iran, according to William Arkin, a former army intelligence officer who writes on military affairs for Washington Post online. In parallel with the marines' plan, the Pentagon has ordered the US Central Command (CentCom) to conduct an analysis of a full scale war with Iran in the "near term".

The Guardian added: "In July 2004, US and British army planners met at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to play a war game codenamed Hotspur 2004, fictitiously set in 2015 in the Caspian Sea, in which a British medium-weight brigade operated as part of a US-led force. Most of the plans being worked on focus on suspected underground facilities scattered around Iran where Tehran is believed to be building a covert nuclear weapons programme. Because those bunkers are thought to be built of thick concrete and buried deep below the surface, those plans also include nuclear options".

Arkin wrote: "To think today that the gamers put nukes away is na?ve, and to think that nuclear weapons don't play a role in the Bush administration's strategy is wildly wrong". The plans, he said, were being honed by US strategic command in Omaha, Nebraska, as part of Global Strike, "a pre-emptive strategy for dealing with suspected weapons of mass destruction held by 'rogue states' such as Iran and North Korea".

Interest in the military's planning, the Guardian said, took on added urgency on April 11-13 as Iran's President Ahmadi-Nejad, said Iran had joined the nuclear club by mastering a key part of the technology. This came within days of the New Yorker magazine disclosing that Bush was refusing to take off the table a nuclear strike on Iran's research establishments.

The London paper said the White House, "for the last 15 months, has been engaged in plan A, the diplomatic route backed up, if necessary, by sanctions. But Iran once more rebuffed diplomatic overtures this week, and is unlikely to be troubled by sanctions if China and Russia do not participate. That leaves the question of what the Bush administration would do next".

The Guardian quoted Col. Sam Gardiner, a retired UK air force man and expert on targeting at the National Defence University, as saying: "I have a terrible feeling they are taking this one day at a time. They have a plan A but not a plan B".

The paper said: "The US State Department and the Foreign Office, in spite of public statements that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, privately discuss what the Middle East landscape would look like if Iran acquires a nuclear bomb: there is a tacit acceptance of what may turn out to be the reality. But the White House does not accept this. Col Gardiner said: 'At one time there was a paper floating around, produced by the NDU, on how to live with a nuclear armed Iran. But they [the US administration] are so negative about that. There is no serious discussion about it other than among academics".

Flynt Leverett, formerly a Middle East specialist in Bush's National Security Council, said: "The policy line is that Iran should not have a fuel cycle and that the number of centrifuges [used to enrich uranium] should be zero. But they have ruled out direct diplomacy with Iran, or any kind of grand bargain that would encompass the nuclear issue".

The Guardian quoted Col Gardiner, "who oversaw an independent war game study for Atlantic Monthly magazine two years ago", as saying the use of a military option rarely left the US in a better position, after likely retaliations and international reaction were taken into account. Yet he said, "it was the Pentagon's job to think up war plans and pass them up the chain of command, gathering momentum along the way. At that level, the administration would have to factor in the scale and nature of Iranian retaliation, which Robert Baer, a former CIA covert agent in the Middle East, believes would be ferocious".

Baer was quoted as saying: "The Iranians are smarter than anyone in this whole equation. Their intelligence service is very good. They know they could do an enormous amount of damage in Iraq, in Lebanon, in the whole region".

Leverett said: "The administration is realising that there are serious drawbacks with the military option. If you strike at the nuclear infrastructure, the chance you're not going to hit everything you need to hit is high. Second of all, you're going to make Iranian decision-makers all the more determined to make a bomb. The blowback would be devastating. And if the US, as it's coming out more and more, may have to use nuclear penetrating warheads to get after the facilities then the international political blowback is enormous".

Even more than over Iraq, the US would need allies. Many would question what Blair would do if he received a call from Bush asking for support. While Straw says repeatedly that a military strike on Iran is "inconceivable", Blair has preferred to leave the military option on the table.

The Guardian said: "Number 10 has privately expressed irritation with Mr Straw for categorically ruling out the military option. According to the Foreign Office, when Mr Straw says a military strike is inconceivable, what he means is that is it inconceivable that Britain would support such a strike and that his conversations with Condoleezza Rice...suggest the US is not likely to launch such a strike.

There is also Israel to consider. That is a wild card as far as the Foreign Office is concerned. But Israel, in spite of warnings from its military that Iran could have an atomic bomb within two or three years, says it is inclined to leave the initiative in confronting Tehran to Washington. Shimon Peres, widely regarded as the father of Israel's nuclear bomb, said Israel would leave the initiative to Washington. "The United States has placed this issue at the top of its agenda. I do not recommend that we should be involved", he told Israel Radio.

The Guardian quoted "former White House officials" as doubting that the White House would ever acquiesce in Iran reaching the point where a weapon was within its reach. It quoted Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff under the former secretary of state Colin Powell, as saying: "I think there has been an agreement formed in the administration...and the body politic of America - a nuclear armed Iranian leadership is unacceptable".