Skip to main content

← The Shortest Reading List

Reading Item 4: General Clark's Seven Countries, With Iran Last

Time to read: about 10 minutes. Documents: Democracy Now!, March 2, 2007, transcript and video; the fuller telling reprinted by Global Dashboard, July 30, 2007.

A parent who has heard only that "we're bombing Iran over its nuclear program" should read this one paragraph. It shows that Iran was named as a target more than two decades ago, in a list drawn up weeks after 9/11, by the office of the Secretary of Defense. The war on Iran is not a surprise that began in 2025 or 2026. It is the last item on an old list.

Who Wesley Clark is​

Gen. Wesley Clark is a retired four-star U.S. Army general who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. He is not an outsider or an activist. That is what gives his account its weight.

The paragraph to read​

In a March 2, 2007 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Clark described visiting the Pentagon shortly after the September 11 attacks. In the fuller version of his account, reprinted by Global Dashboard:

"About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in."

When Clark came back weeks later and asked whether the U.S. was still going to war with Iraq, the general said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He picked up a piece of paper and said, "I just got this down from upstairs" (meaning, Clark explained, "the Secretary of Defense's office") "today":

"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." — Gen. Wesley Clark, Democracy Now!, March 2, 2007; fuller telling at Global Dashboard

When Goodman asked the officer's name, Clark answered, "I'm not going to give you his name," and repeated the list: "starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran" (transcript on Genius). He also told the story of a classified paper he chose not to handle ("Is it classified?" "Yes, sir." "Well, don't show it to me."), and of the officer later saying, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo!" A general does not make a point of never having shown someone a memo that does not exist.

Look at the list, then look at the map​

Count what has happened to the seven countries since 2001. A September 2026 interview description put it plainly: since 9/11, "the U.S. has attacked five of those seven countries" (description of Mehdi Hasan's interview with Clark, September 18, 2026). Afshin Rattansi posted the list as a scorecard in October 2024: "Iraq ✅ -Syria ✅ -Lebanon ✅ -Libya ✅ -Somalia ✅ -Sudan ✅ -Iran ❌ Either directly, or via its proxy, Israel, the US has destroyed all but one of these countries; Iran" (@afshinrattansi, October 9, 2024). The writer Jonathan Cook noted in December 2024 that "None of these states had any obvious connection to the events of 9/11. The one that did have such a connection – Saudi Arabia – was not on the list," and that with Syria's government fallen and Hezbollah cut off, "Iran, the last target on the Pentagon's list, is now fully in the cross-hairs" (@Jonathan_K_Cook, December 11, 2024).

Six months after Cook wrote that, on June 22, 2025, the United States struck Iran's nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Fourteen months after, on February 28, 2026, it began the war that is still going on.

What Clark has said since​

Clark has retold the story many times. In the 2026 Mehdi Hasan interview, as transcribed in the video's captions, he added: "It was clear at the time that we were going to have to do something to Osama bin Laden. I also knew that we'd been scheming to find a reason to invade and finish off Saddam Hussein." On Piers Morgan's program in February 2026 he described the memo's origin: "it wasn't really a plan. That that was a concept that came out of the neocons" (YouTube, February 27, 2026).

Read those two lines as a parent, not as a debater. "Scheming to find a reason to invade." "A concept that came out of the neocons." Clark is telling you where the list came from: a circle of advocates inside and around the Pentagon who wanted these wars and looked for reasons. The section Pentagon Plan for Greater Israel's List of Wars traces that circle back to the 1996 paper written for Benjamin Netanyahu, A Clean Break, and the September 2000 Rebuilding America's Defenses. Every one of Clark's tellings from 2003 to 2026 is laid out, in order, on Clark's Story Over 23 Years.

Watch the seams when the story is retold​

Because this paragraph is powerful, it travels, and it picks up words along the way. Some retellings say Clark "was shown" the document; in his own telling he declined to look. One reprint adds, in its own voice after Clark's words, that "Israel's diabolical objective" is part of "The Greater Israel Project" (Global Research reprint). That is the site's conclusion, not Clark's sentence. The evidence for it is real and is laid out, with Israeli sources, in the Greater Israel section. A parent who keeps the speaker's words and the commentator's words separate can defend both, and cannot be tripped up by anyone who says "Clark never said that."

What to take away​

  • A four-star general says the Secretary of Defense's office had a list of seven countries weeks after 9/11, with Iran last.
  • Five or six of the seven have since been attacked or broken, directly or by allies. Iran is now being bombed.
  • Clark himself says the idea "came out of the neocons," and that officials were "scheming to find a reason to invade."
  • Read his words first. Then read the section that shows who the list served.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t73__v865.md, t73__v866.md, t73__v867.md.

Status: Wesley Clark, Amy Goodman, Afshin Rattansi, Jonathan Cook, Mehdi Hasan, and Piers Morgan are alive. Nothing on this page is a claim that any of them committed a crime.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

Last updated on