Dick Cheney, 2007: 'dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them'
The intent of the United States to start a war with Iran goes back many years. Unfortunately for the U.S. and Israel, Iran appears to be fully prepared for any such confrontation, possessing advanced weaponry, including hyper-sonic missiles for which neither the U.S. nor Israel have a viable defense. Their air defense systems, obtained in part from Russia, also appear to be superior. Furthermore, both Russia and China have an interest in Iran, thus any large scale attack on Iran could bring one or both of its partners into the fold and according to military and intelligence analysts the U.S. cannot defeat any one of these countries, much less a combination thereof.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney's office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don't we build - we 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 next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of - that's the level of stuff we're talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.