Replies

washingtonexaminer.com

Mattis says Washington didn’t even inform him when Iran committed an “act of war” on American soil. The duty officer at his Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 11, 2011 told him that the attorney general and FBI director had held a press conference to announce the arrest of two Iranians who had planned a bomb attack on Cafe Milano, a high-end restaurant in Washington that was a favorite of the rich and famous, including Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir.

Senior Political Correspondent David Drucker on the expanded Washington Examiner magazine

As Mattis writes in his book, “Attorney General Eric Holder said the bombing plot was ‘directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Qods Force.’ The Qods were the Special Operations Force of the Revolutionary Guards, reporting to the top of the Iranian government.”

Many pundits questioned the administration’s assessment that the Iranian government was involved in the plan. Despite Iran’s long history of overseas assassination plots, some observers were skeptical that the theocratic regime would attempt such an audacious attack.

Mattis is certain, however: “I saw the intelligence: we had recorded Tehran’s approval of the operation.”

“Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House,” he writes. “Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”

The CENTCOM chief thought that point needed to be driven home to the public. “I believed we had to respond forcefully. My military options would raise the cost for this attack beyond anything the mullahs and the Qods generals could pay,” he writes. “First, though, the President had to go before the American people and forcefully lay out the enormous savagery of the intended attack. The American public — and the global public — had to understand the gravity of the plot.”

Mattis envisioned something like the moment that locked American sentiment against Germany in the First World War. “In March 1917, President Wilson received, via British intelligence, a copy of a telegram sent by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the president of Mexico.” The Germans proposed an alliance that would see Mexico recovering parts of Texas and other states if it helped Germany on America’s entry into the war.