As the Bush administration seemed to be heading towards war with Iran, it seemed to many people it was pushing to do something militarily insane.

In December, the fedayeen told news outlets that USS John C. Stennis and the its carrier support vessels would be deployed to the Gulf early, so it would overlap with the USS Eisenhower it was supposed to replace. That would put two carriers in the Gulf rather than two, which would “send a message to Tehran”. Then, in April, the USS Nimitz would arrive as well.

Admiral William Fallon was nominated to head CENTCOM, the unified Iraq command center for the whole of the US endeavour. He had a history with fighter aircraft. The pieces were shifting into place, and war with Iran became more likely.

But then, Fallon sent

“a strongly-worded message to the Defence Department in mid-February opposing any further U.S. naval buildup in the Persian Gulf as unwarranted.

“He asked why another aircraft carrier was needed in the Gulf and insisted there was no military requirement for it,” says the source, who obtained the gist of Fallon’s message from a Pentagon official who had read it.

Fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch”.

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, “You know what choices I have. I’m a professional.” Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.”

Fallon’s opposition to adding a third carrier strike group to the two already in the Gulf represented a major obstacle to the plan. The decision to send a second carrier task group to the Gulf had been officially requested by Fallon’s predecessor at CENTCOM, Gen. John Abizaid, according to a Dec. 20 report by the Washington Post’s Peter Baker. But as Baker reported, the circumstances left little doubt that Abizaid was doing so because the White House wanted it as part of a strategy of sending “pointed messages” to Iran.

CENTCOM commander Fallon’s refusal to request the deployment of a third carrier strike group meant that proceeding with that option would carry political risks. The administration chose not to go ahead with the plan. Two days before the Nimitz sailed out of San Diego for the Gulf on Apr. 1, a Navy spokesman confirmed that it would replace the Eisenhower, adding, “There is no plan to overlap them at all.”

The defeat of the plan for a third carrier task group in the Gulf appears to have weakened the position of Cheney and other hawks in the administration who had succeeded in selling Bush on the idea of a strategy of coercive threat against Iran.”

I’d call that both an act of courage and a decisive shift in power. A kind of very discreet, slow motion coup.

From Inter Press Service News Agency, via Juan Cole.

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