Is the U.S. planning a 2006 invasion of Iran?

“Spekulationen über US-Schlag gegen Iran,” is the way the headline read on December 23, 2005, in Germany’s Der Spiegel. Translated it means: “Speculations over US invasion of Iran,” an article by Jurgen Gottschlich, which discuses a 2006 U.S.-led invasion of Iran. A translated version of the article is available on line.

Gottschich reports DDP (Deutsche Depeschendienst), Germany's second leading news agency, carried an article by “Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor for one of Germany's main dailies Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and an intelligence service expert,” detailing the planned invasion. Ulfkotte cited unidentified and unspecified "Western security circles" as the source for his claim. But, some question the accuracy of Ulfkotte’s article.

Ulfkotte says, “Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan have also been approached regarding the military plans.” He further says, C.I.A. chief Porter Goss provided Turkey with three dossiers proving “Iranian cooperation with al-Qaeda.” He claims, Goss “assured the Turkish government that it would be informed several hours ahead of any attack, and also green-lighted almost simultaneous Turkish attacks on camps in Iran run by the PKK, the Kurdish separatist organization.”

Gottschich says, DDP connects recent escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran to “anti-Semitic outbursts by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” DDP claims, “[Ahmadinejad’s] verbal attacks on Israel have supposedly convinced the U.S. government that Teheran will not back down in the nuclear stand-off, and that Iran is simply dragging its feet.”

In 2005 Seymour Hersh wrote that U.S. commandos were in Iran scouting for a planned invasion:

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”