Peter Cronau on a 2009 Brookings policy paper outlining how Washington could use Israel to wage war on Iran while justifying it with a false narrative of failed nuclear negotiations.
Controlling the narrative includes killing journalists. Iran’s state TV and radio broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, in the nation’s capital Tehran, was bombed by Israel. A bloodied journalist reported from the street outside as the building burned. (IRIB via Declassified Australia)
By Peter Cronau
Declassified Australia
A plan was developed for the United States to use diplomacy to entice Iran into negotiations that then fail, so Iran can be attacked while the U.S. is pushing a false narrative saying the Iranians “brought it on themselves.”
The plan also urged the U.S. to encourage or assist the Israelis, as a direct U.S. 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 Path To Persia: Options for a New American Strategy Towards Iran by the Brookings Institution, a longstanding Washington, D.C., think tank.
The plan, recently reviewed by strategic analyst Brian Bertelec, 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 U.S. — this time, to counter Iran.
The U.S. intelligence community is well served by the plan’s authors. They include liberal “war hawks” and propagandists for U.S. Middle East policy — Kenneth Pollack who is a former Iraq and Iran military analyst at the C.I.A. and adviser at the White House; Bruce Riedel a 30-year veteran of the C.I.A. and a Middle East presidential adviser; and Daniel Byman a former C.I.A. 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 (ONA), Martin Indyk, who moved to the U.S. and served twice as US Ambassador to Israel, and who became a leading pro-Israel lobbyist.
The late Martin Indyk, then U.S. ambassador to Israel, with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, undated. (U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
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 U.S. 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 minimize international opprobrium and maximize 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 the 13th of 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 U.S. and the U.K. 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 (ONA), Peter Varghese, said in a classified U.S. embassy cable of an intelligence exchange in 2008 between Australia and the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 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.”
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The most up-to-date assessment of the U.S. intelligence community supports this position that Iran is not presently developing nuclear weapons.
On March 25, 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in testimony at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing for the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. 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 authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.”
Presented with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment last month that Iran was not working toward a nuclear weapon, President Trump said yesterday, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
If he will not listen to his… pic.twitter.com/tLAHWcBlJP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) June 17, 2025
This week new details of U.S. 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 & Australian Involvement
The military support provided to Israel by the U.S. is both comprehensive and massive — over $17 billion in military aid from October 2023 to October 2024. It is coming in the form of aircraft, weapons, munitions, and refueling capabilities, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
According to news reports, the U.S. is already providing key support specifically for the massive bombing operation against Iran. A well-placed U.S. source says the U.S. provided “exquisite intelligence” for the present Israeli attacks on Iran.
“Exquisite intelligence” is a rarely-used intelligence 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 U.S. base located at Pine Gap on the outskirts of Alice Springs in Central Australia.
Pine Gap Defence Base, a key U.S.-run listening post in Australia’s Northern Territory, as viewed from Mount Gillen, Alice Springs, September 2013. (Mark Marathon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
There are other ways Australia is helping the overall U.S. 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 U.S. refueling 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 U.S.-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 war-fighting support — from collecting military communications, to geolocating individuals for targeting, to detecting troop movements, to detecting and targeting missile and rocket launches.
The Pine Gap base collects and provides this intelligence and analysis for the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA), 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 (ISNU), 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 & World
Far from the false narrative of undermining U.S. initiatives in the Middle East, Israel is acting as vassal states do, as a loyal proxy nation, carrying out long-term U.S. hegemonic goals in the region.
Those goals were formalised in a 2001 secret memorandum sent from the office of the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Four-star U.S. 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 by the U.S.
Israel is being used by the U.S. as proxy for implementing its strategic domination plans – just as Ukraine is being used against Russia and Taiwan may shortly be used against China.
Peter Cronau is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentaries have appeared on ABC TV’s Four Corners and Radio National’s Background Briefing. He is an editor and cofounder of DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA. He is co-editor of the recent book A Secret Australia – Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposés.
This article is from Declassified Australia.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Nah Brookings. Tail wags the dog when it comes to Washington’s Middle East policy.
See professor James Petras’ absolutely seminal short book “Power of Israel in the US”.
Nothing new. SOS. If your party is in power, it’s ok to bypass a partisan Congress and bomb. The neocon elites, military/industrial complex, and Deep State run our government. Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution!!!
To recap the history of Iran: On August 19, 1953, there was an Anglo-American coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Musaddiq.
The country was in the midst of a historic struggle with Britain over the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. The coup not only halted Iran’s gradual development toward establishing its national independence under nationalist leadership, but also put an end to constitutional processes in Iran, as Shah Muhammad Riza Pahlavi (1941–1979) was restored to power and moved to consolidate power under his autocratic rule, with obvious disregard for Iran’s monarchical constitution. https://iranian.com/History/2001/November/Tudeh/
So the history of Iran has been brought back centuries, under the ferocious impact of the Western coup, like an athlete shot in the legs, because that is what the Anglo-American Zionists did to Iran, they paralyzed it.
So the mortal sin of Iran was to want to nationalize its oil, taking it away from the English monopoly. And it is basically the same sin for which it is being attacked now: no one says that in Iran the oil has been nationalized and that there are no private banks, the banks are public. This is the real fault of Iran.
In short, under the veils, the beards and the Koran, Iran has a socialist economy, here is the surprise,
(a little pearl, if we think of the Western countries are turning into ferocious military oligarchies, where welfare is replaced by warfare).
While the Zionists and the Anglo-Americans (which are actually the same thing) return to bomb Iran, let us meditate on the history of Iran, on what the West has done to this country, one of the cradles of civilization.
It was the Neoplatonist Porphyry who wrote to his wife Marcella that prayer not combined with works and good deeds is of little use, indeed, it only harms. Porphyry was not a Christian, much less a Jew.
And now it’s happened,
As for the Brookings Institute paper, I downloaded it and the first thing I notice is that it was written specifically by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, under the Brookings Institute. The founder of this organization is Haim Saban, the top donor of the Democrat Party.
In other words, the neocon lust for empire as a unipolar world has been de facto policy for decades. Who’s U.S. President, matters Congress should decide, or what seasoned military officers might advise are irrelevant. Why would their brilliance, corroborated by allied think tanks, need more? We peasants aren’t on their radar at all except as economic or actual cannon fodder. If they have to continue to destroy much of the planet to preserve their fantasies of themselves in total control, they will.
The state of Israel created as a double edged sword just like using Iraq against Iran to harm and destabilize both. Western style strategic hypocrisy over the ages. Western empire generosity to grant wars all around for benefit while proclaiming R2P humanitarianism.
Just like a religion stolen with defamation planted in its heart to promote a Roman occupation and started on a rampage across the planet ever after. Including between the two Orthodox knockoffs from Greece to Kiev to Moscow as franchise infringement hostility. Plus we are still pivoting to Asia after stumbling onto the Americas along the way. There was also fear of communism getting hold of China as part of the two front war against communism named WWII. FDR family business interests in China may have been at risk.
“A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’ U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”
– former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feb. 1, 2007
“Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. […] Given all this, you would probably be well advised to keep your forces, including clandestine forces, as far away from the Iraqi border as you can. You might even consider bringing in some neighbors to verify that you are not shipping arms next door. [… F]or the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so.”
– former Sen. Gary Hart, excerpts from “Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran,” HuffPost, Sep. 26, 2007
“There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger war. The one that interested me the most was: why don’t we build in our shipyard—build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats, put Navy SEALs on them with a lot of arms and the next time what about those goes through the Straits of Hormuz start a shoot up. Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. But that’s the kind of that’s the level of stuff we were talking about: provocation.”
– Seymour Hersh, interview with Faiz Shakir at the Campus Progress journalism conference, July 2008
The doomsday people and neoliberals control the levers of power for the present time, and are hell-bent on destroying everything of beauty or value in the world. We shall see how successful they prove to be before they self-destruct.
The entirety of Mideast violence is a direct result of 1948 “Israel” not being a contemporary version of Biblical Israel, but is the Kharzar Empire expanded.
Furthermore, “Israeli” is not synonymous with “Israelite “… Learn the difference.
The kabbalist elites of Judaism are engineering the false prophetic interpretations of their lying “sages”.
According to the Zohar, “Edom” must be destroyed before the “Moschiach” can come.
The kabbalists identify Edom as the Christian West.
According to the Zohar, Europe must be destroyed via war with Russia, while the USA must be destroyed via war with Iran.
e.g.hxxps://mishpacha.com/iran-and-the-end-of-days/
Quote: “Do not become despondent, because until there is the war with Iran, Mashiach will not come.”
The nuclear threat is just a cover story to lure the USA to its destruction.
Here’s the rub: Biblical Edom is Judaism and Moschiach is a delusion. Messiah came 2,000 years ago.
The Zionist state is doomed.
But they are going to take the world down with them (2 Peter 3:10)
Brian Berletic of The New Atlas website has been talking about the Brookings Inst. “Which Path to Persia?” for years now. This agenda was not even hidden, it was available all along for anyone to read. The playbook has been followed as though the people implementing it have no ideas of their own, and can only follow someone else’s plan. These are not smart people in Israel, they are religious fanatics and we will never have peace in the ME until this fanatic regime is removed from power.
How do we get the psychopaths out of power before they spark the end of us all?
Pass laws or regulations that ALL candidates for ANY office must take a test for psychopathy. These tests are now 100% accurate.
Depending on the laws or regulations a psychopathic candidate could then be excluded from running -or- it could be required that the voting public will be notified of the test results on the ballot.
What is what is normally used against mad dogs.