The Middle East has been in a state of chaos for years now, with each passing year bringing a new wave of instability, carnage and human suffering to the people of the region. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, Western foreign policy has directly caused or exacerbated much of the chaos we see in the region today and has contributed to a growing trend of instability.
A pertinent question of our time however is whether this instability and destabilization is a result of inept strategy by Western nations, or a calculated strategy by the West to intentionally create chaos, balkanize nations and increase sectarian tensions in the region?
The “New Thirty Years War”
Certain individuals within the US establishment have been drawing the comparison between the Middle East today and the Thirty Years War in Europe in the 17th century, with Prof. Larry Goodson of the US Army War College being one of the latest individuals to make the comparison. Even though the parallels between Europe and the Middle East are by no means exact, it has become somewhat of a talking point within Western geostrategic circles.
The Thirty Years War is a complex historical period, pertaining to numerous wars and conflicts fought by an array of power blocs for a variety of reasons. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: “Although the struggles that created it erupted some years earlier, the war is conventionally held to have begun in 1618, when the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II, in his role as king of Bohemia, attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the Protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion.”
The war quickly spread to embroil the majority of Europe’s major powers who either believed there was an opportunity to conquer neighbouring powers or were drawn into the conflict by a force invading their lands, and is regarded by historians as one of the most destructive periods in European history. Villages, towns and cities were raped and pillaged by mercenaries who were fighting for different power blocs, devastating the European continent.
The Thirty Years War was brought to an end when a series of treaties was signed in 1648 known as the Peace of Westphalia, establishing a new political order in Europe in the form of co-existing sovereign states (although some historians dispute the significance of Westphalian sovereignty). James Bissett, the former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, described the Westphalian system in a 2007speech as laying “down the basic tenets of sovereignty—the principle of territorial integrity and of non-interference in the affairs of national states… The Westphalian order has frequently been violated, but age has not diminished the principles themselves.”
In July of 2014, the former director of policy planning for the US Department of State and the President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Richard Hass, compared the Middle East of today to 17th century Europe, in his article “The New Thirty Years War”. Hass proclaims that the Middle East will likely be as turbulent in the future unless a “new local order emerges”:
“For now and for the foreseeable future – until a new local order emerges or exhaustion sets in – the Middle East will be less a problem to be solved than a condition to be managed.”
As I reported a year ago, this “new local order” may be in the form of a Middle Eastern Union.
Fragmenting the Middle East
Ubiquitous evidence indicates that there is an agenda by at least some strategists within the US to destroy the nation state and balkanize the region into feuding rump states, micro-states and mini-states, which will be so weak and busy fighting each other that they will be unable to unify against foreign colonial powers – most notably Western multinational corporations. After a prolonged period of destruction and chaos in the region, the people of the Middle East may be so weary of the horrors of war that they will accept a Western imposed order as a means of ending the fighting, even though the very same Western forces have been responsible for creating much of the intolerable chaos.
The strategy of balkanization can be traced back to at least the early 1990’s, when British-American historian Bernard Lewis wrote an article published in the 1992 issue of the CFR’s publication, ‘Foreign Affairs’, titled: Rethinking the Middle East. He envisages the potential of the region disintegrating “into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties.” Even though Lewis writes in his article that this is only one “possibility” of many other possibilities, it is starkly similar to the situation that we see in countries such as Iraq and Libya today:
“Another possibility, which could even be precipitated by fundamentalism, is what has of late become fashionable to call “Lebanonization.” Most of the states of the Middle East—Egypt is an obvious exception—are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common national identity or overriding allegiance to the nation state.”
Lewis continues:
“The state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties. If things go badly and central governments falter and collapse, the same could happen, not only in the countries of the existing Middle East, but also in the newly independent Soviet republics, where the artificial frontiers drawn by the former imperial masters left each republic with a mosaic of minorities and claims of one sort or another on or by its neighbours.”
Speaking at the Ford School in 2013, former US secretary of state and CFR member, Henry Kissinger, reveals his desire to see Syria balkanized into “more or less autonomous regions”, in addition to comparing the region to the “Thirty Years War” in Europe:
“There are three possible outcomes. An Assad victory. A Sunni victory. Or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view…. I also think Assad ought to go, but I don’t think it’s the key. The key is; it’s like Europe after the Thirty Years War, when the various Christian groups had been killing each other until they finally decided that they had to live together but in separate units.” (from 27.35 into the interview).
Creating a “Salafist Principality” in Syria
In May of this year, Judicial Watch released a series of formerly classified documents from the US Department of Defense and Department of State after the watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the two government agencies. One important document contained in the release was a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report which reveals that the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” – wanted to create a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria in order to isolate the Syrian regime”:
“Opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighbouring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts… If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” (p.5)
The document adds:
“ISI [the Islamic State of Iraq] could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria.” (p.5)
Balkanizing Iraq
Fragmenting Iraq into three separate regions has been the goal of many within the US establishment since the 2003 invasion of the country, although NATO member Turkey has vocally opposed the creation of a Kurdish state in the North. In 2006, a potential map of a future Middle East was released by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters which depicted Iraq divided into three regions: a Sunni Iraq to the West, an Arab Shia State in the East and a Free Kurdistan in the North.
Even though the map does not reflect official Pentagon doctrine, it gives a glimpse into the minds of some of the top military strategists and corroborates with many other Western voices on the strategy for Iraq. As geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser noted in a recent article for New Eastern Outlook, the President Emeritus of the CFR, Leslie Gelb, argued in a 2003 article for the NY Times that the most feasible outcome in Iraq would be a “three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.”
Syria is shown as still being a unified country in the above map, although this may be because the Syrian proxy war did not begin until years later. Israel could also come to occupy more territory in the coming decades.
Different Country, Same Strategy
The same pattern of balkanization and chaos that we see in Iraq and Syria is also true in Libya. Following the NATO’s 2011 war in the North African nation, the country descended into an abyss of chaos and has essentially been split into three parts, with Cyrenaica comprising the East of the country, and the West split into Tripolitania in the Northwest and Fezzan in the Southwest. Libya is now a failed state which is devoid of central government and is stricken by tribal warfare, where rival militias who were once fighting alongside each other are now battling against one another.
The Iranian nuclear deal could mark a new beginning for Western geopolitical strategy in the Middle East, where they would work with regional powers to promote stability and refrain from military intervention (or intervention through proxies). Let’s hope this is true, and the West will halt the plethora of destabilization programs it has engaged in for years.
But the most probable scenario will be a continuation of the balkanization strategy that we have all come to expect; until a “new local order emerges” – an order that will be designed by, and for, Western interests of course.
August 14, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Middle East, Syria |
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Prologue: In the village of Duma, an 18 month old Palestinian baby died following the fire-bombing of his family’s home by Israeli settlers. The father of the child died of burns a week later and the surviving mother and young sibling are barely alive – covered with burns from racist Jewish arson.
The United Nations Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices toward Palestinians in Israeli occupied territory have revealed that the ‘root cause’ of the escalating violence is the ‘continuous policy of Jewish settlement expansion (financed and defended by the Netanyahu regime) and the climate of impunity relating to the activities of the settlers (financed and defended by the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations). (UN News Centre, Aug. 10, 2015).
Introduction
The recent US-Iran nuclear agreement, entitled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, has implications far beyond the ending of nearly 40 years of regional confrontation.
Several fundamental issues concerning the nature of US policymaking, the power of a foreign regime (Israel) in deciding questions of war and peace and the role organized power configurations with overseas loyalties play in making and breaking executive and legislative authorities.
To investigate these fundamental issues it is important to discuss the historical context leading up to the rise of this paradoxical situation: Where a ‘global power’ is subject to the dictates of a second-rate state through the strategic penetration and influence by domestic organizations composed of ‘nominal citizens’ of the subject state with ‘divided (to put it politely) loyalties’.
The Centrality of Israel’s Unchallenged Regional Supremacy
The motor force of Israeli foreign and domestic policy is their drive for unchallenged regional supremacy: Military dominance through wars, territorial occupation, brutal armed interventions, extra territorial political assassinations of opponents and favorable one-sided treaties. To ensure its unquestioned dominance Israel has developed the only nuclear weapons arsenal and largest missile launch capacity in the region and has openly declared its willingness to use nuclear weapons against regional rivals.
Israel’s repeated mantra that it faces an ‘existential threat’ from its Arab neighbors and subjugated Palestinians has no factual basis. On the contrary, history has taught the world that Israel, directly and indirectly, has engaged a series of aggressive wars devastating its Arab and Muslim neighbors. Israel has bombed and/or invaded Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan. Israel has assassinated scientists in Iran and Palestinian political leaders as well as intellectuals, writers and poets in the Gulf, Jordan and Europe. Even family members have not been spared Israeli terror.
Israel can brutalize its neighbors with total impunity because of its vast military superiority, but its real power is found in its overseas proxies, the Tel Aviv-dominated Zionist power configurations, especially in North America and Europe. The most important proxy organizations and individuals operate in the United States. Thanks to them Israel has received over $150 billion dollars in economic and military grants and loans from US taxpayers in the past half-century. Each year Israel rakes in billions in tribute, billions in tax-free donations from billionaire Israel loyalists with dual US citizenship, who extract their wealth from American workers, investors and gamblers, and hundreds of billions via unrestricted investments, privileged market access and technology transfers.
The economic and military transfers to Israel result from the cumulative build-up of political power among powerful US Zionists. No one disputes today that what is dubbed as the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ is the most powerful configuration inside Washington DC today. Focusing primarily on the ‘Israel lobby’ overlooks the powerful role that influential, Zionist political officials have played in deciding issues prioritized by the Israeli leadership.
Israeli power over the making and implementing of US Middle East policy has led to the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the current economic boycott and blockade of Iran; the breakup of Sudan; and the bombing of Somalia.
Israeli power in the US operates through various political instruments in different institutional settings. The pro-Israel mass media moguls at the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and all the TV networks unconditionally defend Israel’s bombing, dispossession and repression of Palestinians while demonizing any Arab or Muslim states which has opposed its brutality – frequently calling for the US to impose sanctions and/or to launch armed attacks against Israel’s critics.
The US military campaign known as the ‘Global War on Terror’, a series of brutal invasions and ‘regime changes’, launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001 was formulated and promoted by fanatical Israeli proxies in strategic positions within the Bush government, especially Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, ‘Scooter’ Libby, Elliott Abrams and Richard Perle. The boycott of Iran was designed and implemented by US Treasury officials Levey and Cohen. The drumbeat for war in Iraq and the phony ‘intelligence’ about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was propagated by New York Times scribe Judith Miller, designed by Wolfowitz and Feith, backed by the 52 President of Major American Jewish Organizations and ultimately paid for with the lives of over five thousand Americans and well over a million Iraqi civilians. The destruction and breakup of Iraq, a long-time supporter of Palestinian national rights, was accomplished without the loss of a single Israeli life – despite the enormous benefit the Jewish state has enjoyed from the war! The extraordinary success of this highest Israeli military priority was due entirely to the machinations of Israel’s highly placed US proxies.
Yet the cost of the war has been very high for the American people (and unimaginably high for Iraqis): Over a quarter million physical and mental casualties among US troops; two trillion dollars and counting in military expenditures crippling the US economy and a vast and growing army of Islamist and nationalist rebels opposing US interests throughout the region.
The Israeli power configuration within the US led the US into a war, which enhanced Israel’s dominance of the Middle East region and accelerated its annexation of Palestinian land. But Israeli ambition for total regional power is not complete. It still faces a formidable opponent to its conquest of the Middle East: Iran remains a staunch supporter of the people and national sovereignty of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.
The regime of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, backed by the entire Israeli political opposition and the majority of the Jewish electorate, has been aggressively pushing for a US confrontation with Iran – through economic and eventually military warfare.
There have been scores of public and private meetings in the US and elsewhere, where Netanyahu’s regime “informed” (or rather dictated to) the entire Zionist power configuration to launch an economic and military attack against Iran with the open aim of ‘regime change’ and the ultimate aim of breaking up and destroying the Islamic republic – similar to the destruction of Iraq, Libya and now Syria.
Israel’s Proxies and the Obama – Iran Nuclear Accord
All the major US spy agencies, including the CIA, long concluded that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear program has been proven to be limited to legal, internationally sanctioned peaceful civilian use. When the US intelligence establishment went ‘off-script’ and cleared Iran of a nuclear weapons program, Israel responded by brazenly assassinating five Iranian scientists and engineers, leaking faked evidence of a nuclear weapon program and directing its US proxies to push the US toward greater economic sanctions. They escalated their media campaign demonizing Iran, pushing for an economic and military blockade of Iran using the US naval forces in the Persian Gulf and its military bases in adjoining countries. Israeli officials want yet another US war for Israel along the lines of the Iraq invasion.
With the recent change in the Iranian government leadership via democratic elections there have been serious expressions of greater flexibility with regard to inspections of its nuclear programs and facilities. At the same time Washington has been confronted with multiple escalating insurgent wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. This provides the context for President Obama’s ‘pivot’ toward negotiations and diplomacy to secure an agreement with Iran and away from military confrontation.
This has infuriated the Netanyahu regime. Its government leaders and agents met with the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, leading Zionist Washington insiders like (Dennis Ross), super-rich Zionist billionaires and multiple delegations of notables and told them to launch an all-out campaign to sabotage the Iran-US- England- France-Russia-China, and Germany (‘P5+1’) nuclear agreement.
The entire Zionist political apparatus immediately organized a multi-prong, multi-million dollar campaign blitz to undermine the US President. The American (sic) Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) mobilized hundreds of its full-time functionaries, invading the US Congress with offers of all expense-paid junkets to Israel, political threats, campaign ‘donation’ enticements and outright blackmail.
Influential US Zionist Congress people joined the onslaught with their ‘leader’ the ‘Senator from Tel Aviv’ Charles Schumer, accompanied by his fellow Zionist one-hundred percenters, Congress people like Steve Israel, Ted Deutsch, Eliot Engel and Nita Lowery. They have openly chosen to follow the dictates of the Israeli Prime Minister against their fellow Democrat US President Obama. Schumer, who frequently boasts that his name derives from ‘shomer Yisrael’ (Israel’s Guardian), flaunts his ‘role in Washington’ to serve Israel’s interest. The unannounced (or undenounced) ‘elephant in the room’ is their primary loyalty to Israel over the US. The Democratic Congressional Zionists have joined hands with the Republican war mongers – both in tow to militarist, Zionist billionaires and media moguls. The 52 organizations brazenly announced a $40 million budget to fund an Israeli front group “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran” to undermine President Obama’s (and the other members of the P5+1) push for diplomacy.
Netanyahu’s ‘megaphones’ in the US mass media spread his message in their daily reports and editorial pages. The Zionist power configuration ran roughshod over dissident Jewish voters and Congress people who dared to support Obama’s Iran agreement – an agreement which has majority support of the war-weary US public and strong support from US scientists and Nobel Prize recipients.
President Obama has finally counter-attacked this campaign to undermine the agreement, calling attention to the fact that “the same people who led us into the Iraq war are pushing us into war with Iran”. The President discreetly omitted identifying the Israeli links of the “same people”.
Obama understands that the alternative to the peace accord opposed by Israel and the Zionist-led US Congress members will be a devastating regional war, costing trillions of dollars in losses to the US economy, thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers – not to speak of millions of Iranian casualties – and an environmental holocaust! While the Zionist power configuration saturates the airwaves with its unending lies and fear mongering, each and every major city and community Jewish Confederation have sent their activists to plant stories and twist arms to sabotage the agreement.
While many US intellectuals, liberals, progressives and leftists support the US-Iran agreement (see the Scientists’ Letter to Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal, Aug. 8, 2015 with 29 top scholars and Nobel laureates support diplomacy), few would dare to identify and attack Israel’s US proxies as they promote Tel Aviv’s agenda pushing the US to war with Iran. A brief glance through the sectarian left press, for example, The Socialist Register, New Politics, New Left Review, finds no discussion of the powerful, well-financed, highly organized, elite-driven Israeli proxies and their role in determining US wars in the Middle East, and more specifically the war agenda toward Iran.
Conclusion
The success or failure of the US-Iran nuclear agreement will have momentous, world-historic consequences that go far beyond the Middle East. Obama is absolutely right to pose the question as one between a diplomatic accord or a large scale, long-term devastating war. But war is what Israel, its leaders, its majority and its opposition parties are demanding and what its US proxies are pursuing.
The basic question for all Americans is whether we will act as an independent, sovereign country pursuing peace through diplomacy, as we currently see unfolding with Iran and Cuba, or a submissive military instrument, directed by Israel’s proxies hell-bent on destroying America for Israel.
August 12, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Charles Schumer, Eliot Engel, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Nita Lowery, Palestine, Sanctions against Iran, Steve Israel, Syria, Ted Deutsch, United States, Zionism |
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A year has passed since the establishment of a rather peculiar state—the Islamic Caliphate. And today, a year later, its “founding fathers,” allies, enemies, objectives and tasks (which will define its further development) can be identified with precision.
Hardly anybody doubts today that the notorious al-Qaeda is responsible for the creation, nurturing and funding with dollars (supplied by the U.S. and their allies from the Persian Gulf region, headed by Saudi Arabia) of a terrorist organization the Islamic State. Al-Qaeda had already been suspected of being an “American mercenary.” That is why it is believed that al-Qaeda was behind the formation of a terrorist organization the Islamic State of Levant in Syria, whose objective was to oppose country’s President Bashar Assad, who, unlike Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi of Yemen, had been legitimately elected and had never abandoned his country. The members of this organization were those same militants, who had undergone combat training conducted by American military advisors in the territory of Turkey and Jordan and had been supplied with the most advanced weapons. From time to time, in order to acquit themselves, Washington officials would admit that yes, indeed, there were instances when American weapons did not reach the intended people and fell into the wrong hands. However, it is an irrefutable fact that militants of the Islamic State of Levant were much better armed with American weapons as compared to the fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army (an organization, which is now almost completely forgotten).
Despite their high-tech armament, militants and terrorists failed to achieve considerable success, and this is why militants of the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq had to be relocated to the Syrian territory. It should be noted that the CIA spawned this organization during the U.S. occupation of Iraq with the objective of curbing the intentions of Tehran to gain full control over Iraq. Soon this organization, whose core consisted of the former officers of Saddam Hussein’s army and members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, became an influential force, capable of “showing teeth” to its overseas patrons to display their unwillingness to always dance to their tune. There was something about those former members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (who, perhaps, still maintain their memberships): they were aware of their worth and were very skillful negotiators. After the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq seeped to the territory of Syria, they joined forces with the Islamic State of the Levant. Thus, a new organization was formed — the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which is led by none other than the Head of the Islamic State of IraqIbrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi.
Since the leader of ISIS is a very intriguing and nontrivial character, whose charisma affects all activities of this organization, it would be proper to share a few interesting facts about this individual. According to the official data of the United States Department of Defense, from February to December of 2004 Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi was detained and held as a suspect in Camp Bucca, the largest detention camp in Iraq. But according to the memoirs of the commander of the Camp, US Army Colonel Kenneth King, who remembers this person very well, he is “99 % sure” that the Iraqi prisoner left the Camp not in 2004, but only right before its closing, i.e., at the end of the summer of 2009. The Colonel remembers Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi because when leaving the Camp, he said to his guards, “See you in New York,” because he knew that the guards were from New York and served in the 306th Military Police Battalion.
An unidentified friend of Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi, who was also detained at the Camp, told Iraqi newspaper Al-Fourat about their life in the American Camp Bucca. Only two people were detained in one cell, which was more like a room of a campsite; their daily ration was the same as the ration of a US Army sergeant; they would regularly receive carefully selected fresh press; a TV in the cell was always on; cells were equipped with a powerful AC unit. They would spend a part of their day talking with American advisors, who tried to convert the detainees to their faith. Often pro-American Iraqi university professors would come to teach the prisoners international relations, politics, history and geography. In other words, those prisoners of the Camp, selected for the close cooperation with Americans, not only had to participate in an extensive “counterinsurgency program” from early morning to late evening, but were also trained by American advisors “for future collaborative business.” Perhaps this is why Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi was released only on the 5th year of his imprisonment, or rather “training.”
Truth be told, American advisors, who lack the knowledge of Arab morals and customs, used to make and still make many mistakes. One of the Arab sayings is that, “a Bedouin cannot be enslaved, he can only be killed.” And Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi, not a Bedouin, but an Arab (though a descendant of Bedouins) and a faithful follower of Islam, who after his liberation had at his disposal a powerful organization and plenty of money, started playing by his own rules.
It is peculiar that the interests of this Iraqi and of the Washington rulers still coincide, at least to some extent. It is also noteworthy that the borders of the proclaimed state (Caliphate) perfectly fit the borders of the “Sunni State,” outlined in the map elaborated by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters (at the order of the Pentagon), which was assigned the name the New Middle East. Militants did not immediately head for Baghdad, which is supposed to be the capital of the Caliphate, but took Mosul first, from which the Sunni army of Iraq quietly withdrew leaving behind most of its inventory. Newspaper Al-Mashriq reported that on the day right before the seizure of Mosul, 50 million dollars had been delivered to the city’s Central Bank from Baghdad. Was it a coincidence? Later newspapers wrote that militants acquired a total of 200 million dollars in the Mosul operation.
Simultaneously, by having engaged in battles against Kurds and having threatened Iraqi Kurdistan, militants did an invaluable favor to Washington. First of all, Kurds were then faced with a rather tangible threat, were forced to begin mobilization and had to throw their Peshmerga forces into the battle. Secondly, in the absence of any considerable assistance on the part of the rulers of Baghdad, who were themselves hanging by a thread, dependence of Erbil on the U.S. had increased even more. It is not surprising then that the US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter promptly arrived in Kurdistan and held talks with the senior Kurdish leadership, not even having informed the central government of that. The day before, Ashton Carter defined the ground forces of the army of Kurdistan as “powerful and successful” and confirmed his eagerness to meet Barzani who, being the leader of the guerrilla movement, had been opposing the regime of Saddam Hussein for decades. It is no surprise either that the Pentagon intended to deploy American military units, including its elite special forces, in the territory of the autonomous Kurdish region. The Western mass media reported that military machinery, weapons and equipment would be delivered to Kurdistan to arm Kurdish groups countering jihadists of the Islamic State. All these actions were never coordinated with the Iraqi central government, which, as the facts suggest, was no longer viewed by Washington as a real power. By the way, neither such country as Iraq is at present in the Lt. Col. R. Peters’ map, nor its name is mentioned anywhere.
At the same time, unceasing clashes in the northern Iraq forced Turkish government to issue a permission to the US Air Force to use the Incirlik Air Base located in the eastern part of the country to launch air operations against the Islamic State in the territory of Syria. “We have endorsed the agreement pertaining to the Incirlik Air Base. The Base can start operating at any time. First of all, it will be used to target the IS’s facilities in Syria,” the agency quotes the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tanju Bilgiç. And recently, the implementation of the agreement on the construction of the Turkey Stream pipeline, signed with Russia, has been considerably slowed down. Based on the opinion of a knowledgeable expert in the field of energy Efgan Nifti, statements made by the Russian party, in which the beginning and end dates of the construction of the gas pipeline were announced, were premature since not all contentious issues had been resolved. The expert stressed that the parties have to find common ground and ensure their interests are harmonized. Apparently, the slowing down of the pipeline construction process was also “accidental.”
So far it looks like the IS is acting in line with the Washington’s interests, and Islamist militants carry out tasks orchestrated by their oversees patrons. But that, as they say, can go on only until the IS matures. The Caliphate was proclaimed in the entire territory of the Arab world and, apparently, Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi is ploughing around in an attempt to find the most vulnerable “link in the chain.” Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi had realized a long time ago that he could not stake on Jordan, as Washington would not give it up. Therefore, he does not seem to show any particular interest in it, though, he would not mind stirring up “an Islamic wave” (and it would not be hard to accomplish) in this small neighboring state. But a solemn pledge to free both holy cities—Mecca and Medina—from the notorious House of Saud has already been made. And, having put all pieces of this crazy jigsaw together, we get a bizarre picture: Saudi Arabia, which played the first fiddle and had made major monetary contributions to support the creation of terrorist organizations (including IS) in Syria to fight President Bashar Assad now faces the risk of falling victim of its own brainchild!
However, these actions of the IS fit perfectly into the map of the New Middle East, in accordance with which, a number of new states controlled by the United States is supposed to emerge in the territory of Saudi Arabia. Besides, when the time of the “one” Saudi Arabia is long gone would there be anybody to recall that almost a trillion dollars, deposited into accounts of American banks, earlier belonged to Saudi citizens? The U.S. would only gain from such a development since, having deployed its military bases in the territory of 140 states worldwide and having put together a huge military budget, the world’s gendarme would be fully insured against claims made by any country. Thus, since the only good enemy is a dead enemy, total destruction of this state would solve all the problems. Such thinking pattern was vividly illustrated in the situation with Iraq.
There we have it: a new American “assistant” with a proven track record of the obedient fulfillment of all uncle Sam’s orders has emerged in the Middle East. And apparently (for the above reasons), militants of the IS and the IS itself will not be at risk of destruction in the near future, as long as they continue launching strikes against victims picked by Washington. And all these speculations and vague hints that the U.S. are presumably countering the IS just do not withstand any criticism because criticism is supported by numerous crying facts.
August 12, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi, al-Qaeda, Iraq, ISIS, Jordan, Kurdistan, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria |
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The Trial and Sentencing of Amer Jubran
On July 29, 2015, the trial of Palestinian activist Amer Jubran in Jordan reached its predictable conclusion: 10 years with hard labor for phony “terrorism” offenses, based at least in part on laws manufactured after his arrest.
Last year I wrote an article about the circumstances of Amer’s arrest and detention. At that time he was being held without charges, after being seized from his home in the middle of the night and held incommunicado at an undisclosed location for over 2 months.
In August of 2014, he was finally given a list of charges against him. These included the charge of threatening to “harm relations with a foreign government,” part of a new set of “anti-terrorism” laws enacted in Jordan in June of 2014 (a month after Amer’s arrest in May). The law is a codification of Jordan’s existing practice of arresting dissidents who call attention to the regime’s traitorous collaboration with the main political enemies of its own people: Israel and the United States. A pertinent example would be Mwaffaq Mahadin, tried in 2010 for “endangering relations with a foreign state” for speaking on Al-Jazeera about Jordan’s security cooperation with the US. Under the new legislation, this “crime” became a “terrorism” offense, punishable before the State Security Court.
In a statement about his trial and sentencing recorded from prison (recording here, transcript here), Amer recounts a moment in his interrogation by the GID (General Intelligence Directorate, Jordan’s infamous secret police) which leaves no doubt about the real decision-makers behind his arrest and imprisonment:
During the interrogation period, I was told by the GID that any decision made about me is involving (quote) ‘our American and Israeli friends’ (end-quote). All started when I refused to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance. I was told then that I will be sent behind the sun for such a refusal. And frankly it is very easy for me to disappear behind the sun rather than to be well outside, but a sell-out and traitor.
The involvement of the US in Amer’s detention and trial comes as no surprise. As I recounted in my earlier article, the US had already detained Amer while he was living in the United States for his political activism on behalf of Palestine and against the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While living here as a green-card holder, he committed the inexcusable crime of refusing to be intimidated by the wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim repression that immediately followed September 11.
In 2002, he stood on a stage in Washington DC, before an anti-war gathering of more than 75,000 people, and spoke against US support for Israel and against the invasion of Iraq.
Amer has clarified in conversation that his refusal “to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance” was a refusal to act as an infiltrator and informant for the GID. He was thus charged with supporting Hezbollah.
In a similar trial that reached its conclusion a day earlier, another 12 people were sentenced for periods of up to 15 years for supporting Hamas. As one commentator asked in the Jordan Times: “[I]n whose interest is it to try those who support the Palestinian Hamas movement?”
“Anti-terrorism” laws that criminalize support for armed movements of national liberation in Palestine and national self-defense in Lebanon have nothing to do with protecting Jordan or its people. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah has ever threatened the security of Jordan. Such laws are designed purely to protect the interests of Israel and the US in their ongoing violations of the national sovereignty of Arab lands.
Likewise, Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate and its State Security Court function as arms of foreign powers. They are not protecting the security of Jordanians, but rather the security of Jordan’s most violent and militarily aggressive neighbor (Israel), and US soldiers who use Jordan as a base for attacking other Arab countries. Most recently, the US has been using Jordan as a base for training military forces involved in the destabilization of Syria–a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire region in violence.
To do their work effectively, these agencies must necessarily suppress the human and political rights of Jordanians. Journalists, activists, professors, religious leaders and all of Jordan’s ordinary citizens live under the constant threat of Jordan’s secret police and its judicial security apparatus. Trials before the State Security Court lack even the outward semblance of judicial independence, with judges recruited from the military and the GID itself.
In the campaign to free Amer Jubran, we are calling for letters on Amer’s behalf to be directed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein, a Jordanian. We have no illusions about the UN or its High-Commissioner for Human Rights. The value of such a campaign is to show that people around the world are watching, and to strip away the sham of “human rights” and “democracy” in Jordan.
Jordan is the most valuable regional asset for both Israel and the US. Its GID is one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, active throughout the region, and does much of the dirty work of suppressing the rights of people in the Arab world. It’s time to expose its crimes, and disrupt the political arrangement behind them.
Noah Cohen is active with the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign and can be reached through the campaign at defense (at ) amerjubrandefense.org
August 12, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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An online video of Indian MP Shashi Tharoor arguing that Britain should pay India reparations for its colonial legacy has gone viral. It prompted much enthusiasm in the Indian press and parliament, as well as responses in the British press arguing both for and against Tharoor’s proposal. Interestingly, it also prompted a short article in the Guardian newspaper, ‘How much did you really learn about the British empire in school?”
The article did not really answer the title’s question, even though the answer is ‘bugger all’.
It is quite extraordinary that British school children learn essentially nothing about an empire upon which ‘the sun never set’, which invaded every country on the planet bar 22 countries, spawned the world’s superpower, the United States, and that drew up the borders to so many countries with long-lasting negative results – Pakistan/India (Kashmir conflict), Sykes-Picot (divided up the Middle East), Nigeria, South Africa, and so on.
I had a British education in the 1980s and 1990s. In history lessons we touched on ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Vikings, then flash forwarded to Agincourt, Tudor England, the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars, and some Cold War history. Colonialism was barely mentioned, or de-colonisation. Students had no idea about the true scale and the long history of the British empire. Then at university, where I studied international history and international politics, I encountered next to nothing about British colonialism; one course was on de-colonisation in Africa, but that was a class only history students took. In fact, I learned more about the British empire from the Flashman novels than I did at school or university – through George McDonald Fraser’s witty novels I read for the first time about the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42), the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-6), the Indian War of Independence (or Mutiny as the Brits call it in 1857), the British and French invasion of China (the Second Opium War, 1856-1860), the invasion of Abyssinia (1868), and the White Rajah of Sarawak.
While Fraser had no real truck with imperialism, his extensive footnotes allowed you to read between the lines, and importantly learn something about what perfidious Albion was up to in the nineteenth century.
The Flashman novels aside, there are few other popular novels about the British empire (although J.G. Farrell’s excellent Empire Trilogy comes to mind), or films for that matter, certainly with a critical perspective produced over the past few decades. It is as if there is a collective amnesia about Britain’s imperial past. The one place you do encounter it is at the Imperial War Museum in London, but that is very much a hagiographic experience, not touching on the dark side of colonialism.
This amnesia extends to political studies too. Despite studying international relations at university, British foreign policy – old and contemporary – was not taught. An internet search showed that only one British university covers British foreign policy, as if Britain was not at all an actor on the world stage, not a part of the G8 or the UN Security Council, and was practising isolationism, when we know that is far from being the case. This is also extraordinary. There were – and still are – plenty of research papers and essays written about US foreign policy – invariably bashing it – but the same does not apply to British foreign policy; Europe yes, but not about what is coming out of Westminster and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Indeed, the FCO’s title says it all really, which should mean students, academics and journalists should be devoting as much, if not more, attention to its activities than Washington’s.
In conversation with Mark Curtis shortly after he published “Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses”, in which he states Britain bears “significant responsibility” since 1945 for the direct or indirect deaths of 8.6 million to 13.5 million people throughout the world, I asked him how many people were going through declassified British documents. He answered just one other research he knew of, Caroline Elkins, for her book “Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya”.
No academics or investigative journalists? He answered in the negative. That may, one hopes, have changed since 2005. But the title to George Monbiot’s article in 2012 discussing Elkins’ book still holds true, ‘Deny the British empire’s crimes? No, we ignore them’.
To have discovered about Britain’s past – varnished and unvarnished – has been a long term endeavour, from one’s own volition. Travel has also helped to discover the true extent of Britain’s empire and its legacy. The fact that all plug sockets in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are British speaks volumes. Unless I had been there and read about the Gulf, I would never have known that the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain all got their independence from Britain in 1971, and Kuwait in 1961. Or known that Cyprus got independence in 1960 – despite the ongoing presence of British Sovereign Base Areas – Uganda in 1962 and Tanzania in 1963. Hong Kong in 1997.
None of these ‘handbacks’ are very old, at all, yet few Brits below a certain age would know, and I would bet the vast majority of schoolchildren as well as university students today wouldn’t know either. Students wouldn’t be able to point on the map the countries that were British colonies. India perhaps. But would they know about the rest of Asia, Africa, South America, the Caribbean? Perhaps from the Commonwealth Games the public would have an idea, but the history of how Britain ‘acquired’ its colonies would be missing.
Tharoor’s suggestion that Britain should pay India reparations, even a token £1 ($1.54) a year as a form of apology for 200 years of occupation, should be strongly considered. Teaching children about the British empire should also be a major component of the curriculum. It is, quite simply, ridiculous that such a broad sway of history is not touched upon, especially a history that has had such a profound effect on the modern world.
Paul Cochrane is a freelance journalist and commentator based in Beirut, Lebanon for the past eight years. He covers the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. He can be reached at: paulcochrane@gmail.com.
August 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Middle East, UK |
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In light of the fact that Israel is in possession of at least 200 (surreptitiously-built) nuclear warheads, and considering the reality that, according to both US and Israeli intelligence sources, Iran neither possesses nor pursues nuclear weapons, the relentless hysterical campaign by Israel and its lobby against the Iran nuclear deal can safely be characterized as the mother of all ironies—a clear case of chutzpah.
As I pointed out in a recent essay on the nuclear agreement, the deal effectively establishes US control (through IAEA) over the entire production chain of Iran’s nuclear and related industries. Or, as President Obama put it (on the day of the conclusion of the agreement), “Inspectors will have access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain—its uranium mines and mills, its conversion facility and its centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities. . . . Some of these transparency measures will be in place for 25 years. Because of this deal inspectors will also be able to access any suspicious location.”
Even a cursory reading of the text of the agreement shows that, if ratified by the US congress, the deal would essentially freeze Iran’s nuclear program at a negligible, ineffectual level of value—at only 3.67% uranium enrichment. Israel and its lobby must certainly be aware of this, of the fact that Iran poses no “existential threat to Israel,” as frequently claimed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his co-thinkers.
So, the question is: why all the screaming and breast beating?
There is a widespread perception that because the nuclear agreement was reached despite the lobby’s vehement opposition, it must therefore signify a win for Iran, or a loss for Israel and its allies. This is a sheer misjudgment of what the deal represents: it signifies a win not for Iran but for Israel and its allies. And here is why: under the deal Iran is obligated to (a) downgrade its uranium enrichment capabilities from 20% of purity to 3.67%, (b) freeze this minimal level of 3.67% enrichment for 15 years, (c) reduce its current capacity of 19000 centrifuges to 6104 (a reduction of 68%), (d) reduce its stockpile of low grade enriched uranium from the current level of 7500 kg to 300kg (a reduction of 96%), and (e) accept strict limits on its research and development activities. While some restrictions on research and development are promised to be relaxed after 10 years, others will remain for up to 25 years.
In addition, Iran would have to accept an extensive monitoring and inspection regime not only of declared nuclear sites but also of military and other non-declared sites where the monitors may presume or imagine incidences of “suspicious” activity. The elaborate system of monitoring and inspection was succinctly described by President Obama on the day of the conclusion of the agreement in Vienna (July 14, 2015): “Put simply, the organization responsible for the inspections, the IAEA, will have access where necessary, when necessary. That arrangement is permanent.”
These are obviously major concessions that not only render Iran’s hard-won (but peaceful) nuclear technology ineffectual, but also weaken its defense capabilities and undermine its national sovereignty.
So, the lobby’s frantic objection to the nuclear agreement cannot be because the deal represents a win for Iran, or a loss for Israel. Quite to the contrary the agreement signifies a historic success for Israel as it tends to remove, or drastically undermine, a major challenge to its expansionist schemes in the Middle East—the challenge of independent, revolutionary Iran that consistently opposed such colonial schemes of expansion and occupation.
Thus, the reasons for the lobby’s panicky, or more likely feigned, protestations must be sought elsewhere. Two major reasons can be identified for the lobby’s vehement opposition to the nuclear deal.
The first is to keep pressure on negotiators in pursuit further concessions from Iran. Indeed, the lobby has been very successful in quest of this objective. A look back at the process of negotiations indicates that, under pressure, Iran’s negotiators have continuously made additional concessions over the course of the 20-month long negotiations. For example, when negotiations began in Geneva in November 2013, discussion of Iran’s defense industries or inspection of its military sites were considered off the limits of negotiations. Whereas in the final agreement, reached 20 months later in Vienna, Iran’s negotiators have regrettably agreed to such highly intrusive, once-taboo measures of national sovereignty.
The lobby is of course aware of the fact that the 159-page long nuclear deal is fraught with ambiguities and loopholes, which leaves plenty of room for haggling and maneuvering over the many contestable aspects of the deal during its 25-year long implementation period. This means that, even if ratified by the US congress, the deal does not mean the end of negotiations but their continuation for a long time to come.
The shrill, obstructionist voices of the lobby’s operatives are, therefore, designed to continue the pressure on Iran during the long period of implementation in order to extract additional concessions beyond the agreement.
The second reason for the lobby’s relentless campaign to sabotage the nuclear agreement is that, while the agreement obviously represents a fantastic victory for Israel, it nonetheless falls short of what the lobby projected and fought for, that is, devastating regime change by military means, similar to what was done to Iraq and Libya.
This is no conspiracy theory or idle speculation. There is well-documented, undeniable evidence that the lobby, as a major pillar of the neoconservative forces in the US and elsewhere, set out as early as the late 1980s and early as 1990s to “deconstruct” and reshape the Middle East in the image of radical Zionist champions of building “greater Israel” in the region, extending from Jordan River to Mediterranean coasts.
Indeed, radical Zionists’ plans to balkanize and re-mold the Middle East are as old as the state of Israel itself. Those plans were actually among the essential designs of Israel’s founding fathers to build a Jewish state in Palestine. David Ben Gurien, one of the Key founders of the state of Israel, for example, stated unabashedly that land grabbing, expulsion of non-Jewish natives from their land/homes and territorial expansion is best achieved through launching wars of choice and creating social chaos, which he called “revolutionary” times or circumstances. “What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out—a whole world is lost” [1].
While the plans to foment war and create social convulsion in pursuit of “greater Israel” thus began with the very creation of the state of Israel, systematic implementation of such plans, and the concomitant agenda of changing “unfriendly” regimes in the region, began in earnest in the early 1990s—that is, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As long as the Soviet Union existed as a balancing superpower vis-à-vis the United States, US policy makers in the Middle East were somewhat constrained in their accommodations of territorial ambitions of hardline Zionism. That restraint was largely due to the fact that at the time the regimes that ruled Iraq, Syria and Libya were allies of the Soviet Union. That alliance, and indeed the broader counter-balancing power of Soviet bloc countries, served as a leash on the expansionist designs of Israel and the US accommodations of those designs. The demise of the Soviet Union removed that countervailing force.
The demise of the Soviet Union also served as a boon for Israel for yet another reason: it created an opportunity for a closer alliance between Israel and the militaristic faction of the US ruling elites—elites whose interests are vested largely in the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex, that is, in military capital, or war dividends.
Since the rationale for the large and growing military apparatus during the Cold War years was the “threat of communism,” US citizens celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall as the end of militarism and the dawn of “peace dividends.”
But while the majority of the US citizens celebrated the prospects of what appeared to be imminent “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the expansion of military-industrial-security-intelligence spending felt threatened. Not surprisingly, these influential forces moved swiftly to safeguard their interests in the face of the “threat of peace.”
To stifle the voices that demanded peace dividends, beneficiaries of war and militarism began to methodically redefine the post-Cold War “sources of threat” in the broader framework of the new multi-polar world, which purportedly goes way beyond the traditional “Soviet threat” of the bipolar world of the Cold War era. Instead of the “communist threat” of the Soviet era, the “menace” of “rogue states,” of radical Islam and of “global terrorism” would have to do as new enemies.
Just as the beneficiaries of war dividends view international peace and stability inimical to their interests, so too the militant Zionist proponents of “greater Israel” perceive peace between Israel and its Palestinian/Arab neighbors perilous to their goal of gaining control over the “promised land.” The reason for this fear of peace is that, according to a number of the United Nations’ resolutions, peace would mean Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders. But because proponents of “greater Israel” are unwilling to withdraw from the occupied territories, they are therefore afraid of peace—hence, their continued attempts at sabotaging peace efforts and/or negotiations.
Because the interests of the beneficiaries of war dividends and those of radical Zionism tend to converge over fomenting war and political convulsion in the Middle East, an ominously potent alliance has been forged between them—ominous, because the mighty US war machine is now supplemented by the almost unrivaled public relations capabilities of the hardline pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
The alliance between these two militaristic forces is largely unofficial and de facto; it is subtly forged through an elaborate network of powerful neoconservative think tanks such as The American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and Center for Security Policy.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, these militaristic think tanks and their hawkish neoconservative operatives published a number of policy papers that clearly and forcefully advocated plans for border change, demographic change and regime change in the Middle East. Although the plan to change “unfriendly” regimes and balkanize the region was to begin with the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, as the “weakest link,” the ultimate goal was (and still is) regime change in Iran.
For example, in 1996 an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, sponsored and published a policy document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which argued that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should “make a clean break” with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel’s claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would “shape its strategic environment,” beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria and Iran.
The influential Jewish Institute for the National Security Affairs (JINSA) also occasionally issued statements and policy papers that strongly advocated “regime changes” in the Middle East. One of its hardline advisors Michael Ladeen, who also unofficially advised the George W. Bush administration on Middle Eastern issues, openly talked about the coming era of “total war,” indicating that the United States should expand its policy of “regime change” in Iraq to other countries in the region such as Iran and Syria. “In its fervent support for the hardline, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian Likud-style policies in Israel, JINSA has essentially recommended that ‘regime change’ in Iraq should be just the beginning of a cascade of toppling dominoes in the Middle East [2].
It follows from this brief sketch of the lobby’s long-standing plans of regime change in Iran that, as mentioned earlier, its opposition to the nuclear deal is not because the deal does not represent a win for Israel, or a loss for Iran, but because Iran’s loss is not as big as the lobby would have liked it to be, that is, a devastating regime change through bombing and military aggression, as was done in Iraq or Libya.
What the lobby seems to overlook, or more likely, is unwilling to acknowledge or accept, is that regime change in Iran is currently taking place from within, and the nuclear deal is playing a major role in that change. The lobby also seems to overlook or deny the fact that the Obama administration opted for regime change from within—first through the so-called “green revolution” and now through nuclear deal—because various US-Israeli led attempts at regime change from without failed. Indeed, such futile attempts at regime change prompted Iran to methodically build robust defense capabilities and geopolitical alliances, thereby establishing a military and geopolitical counterweight to US-Israeli plans in the region.
Furthermore, The Obama administration’s plan of “peaceful” regime change seems to be more like an experimental or tactical change of approach to Iran than a genuine commitment to peace, as it does not rule out the military option in the future. If Iran carries out all its 25-year long obligations under the deal, regime change from within would be complete and military option unnecessary—in essence, it would be a gradual, systematic retrogression to the days of the Shah. But if at any time in the long course of the implementation of the deal Iran resists or fails to carry out some of the highly draconian of those obligations, the US and its allies would again resort to military muscle, and more confidently too because success chances of military operations at that time would be much higher, since Iran would have by then greatly downgraded its military/defense capabilities.
References
[1] Quoted in Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Introduction to German edition (10 July 2002).
[2] William D. Hartung, How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? New York: Nation Books
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
August 7, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | America Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Enterprise Institute, Iraq, Israel, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Libya, Middle East, Middle East Forum, Middle East Media Research Institute, National Institute for Public Policy, Project for the New American Century, Sanctions against Iran, Syria, United States, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Zionism |
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Trying to rally public support for a diplomatic agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, President Barack Obama went to American University in Washington D.C., where – in 1963 – President John F. Kennedy gave perhaps his greatest speech arguing against the easy talk of war in favor of the difficult work for peace.
Obama’s speech lacked the universal appeal and eloquent nobility of Kennedy’s oration, but represented in a programmatic way what Kennedy also noted, that the details and deal-making of diplomacy are often less dramatic than the clenching of fists and the pounding of chests that rally a nation to war. Obama went through the pluses of what he felt the Iran deal would achieve and the minuses of what its rejection would cause.
Obama said congressional approval of the agreement would gain the narrow but important goal of ensuring that Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon while congressional rejection would lead toward another war in the Middle East, thus adding to the chaos started by President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option, another war in the Middle East. I say this not to be provocative, I am stating a fact,” Obama said.
“So let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”
Obama also called out many of the deal’s opponents, noting that many were vocal advocates for invading Iraq and that some are now openly acknowledging their preference for another war against Iran.
Obama said, “They’re opponents of this deal who accept the choice of war. In fact, they argue that surgical strikes against Iran’s facilities will be quick and painless. But if we’ve learned anything from the last decade, it’s that wars in general and wars in the Middle East in particular are anything but simple.
“The only certainty in war is human suffering, uncertain costs, unintended consequences. We can also be sure that the Americans who bear the heaviest burden are the less-than-1 percent of us, the outstanding men and women who serve in uniform, and not those of us who send them to war.”
Still a ‘War President’
Apparently seeking to establish his own credibility as a “war president,” Obama also took note of how many countries he has launched military attacks in and against during his presidency:
“I’ve ordered military action in seven countries. There are times when force is necessary, and if Iran does not abide by this deal, it’s possible that we don’t have an alternative. But how can we, in good conscience, justify war before we’ve tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives, that has been agreed to by Iran, that is supported by the rest of the world and that preserves our option if the deal falls short?
“How could we justify that to our troops? How could we justify that to the world or to future generations? In the end, that should be a lesson that we’ve learned from over a decade of war. On the front end, ask tough questions, subject our own assumptions to evidence and analysis, resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war, worry less about being labeled weak, worry more about getting it right.”
One might note that as worthy as those guidelines are, they have often been violated by the Obama administration, such as its dubious allegations against the Syrian government regarding the infamous sarin gas attack on Aug. 21, 2013, and against Russia over the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. In both cases, Obama and his administration have kept from public view evidence that they claim to possess while decrying skeptics who have questioned the conventional wisdom.
But Obama did take to task the neoconservatives and other warmongers who have followed a pattern of exaggerating dangers to frighten the American people into support for more warfare:
“I know it’s easy to play in people’s fears, to magnify threats, to compare any attempt at diplomacy to Munich, but none of these arguments hold up. They didn’t back in 2002, in 2003, they shouldn’t now. That same mind-set in many cases offered by the same people, who seem to have no compunction with being repeatedly wrong.”
In conclusion, Obama added,
“John F. Kennedy cautioned here more than 50 years ago at this university that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war. But it’s so very important. It is surely the pursuit of peace that is most needed in this world so full of strife.”
Usual Iran Bashing
Yet, while Obama made an impassioned case for a diplomatic solution to the Iran-nuclear dispute – and defended the details of the agreement – he also drifted back into the typical propagandistic Iran bashing that has become de rigueur in Official Washington.
Obama salted his praise for diplomacy with the typical insults toward Iran, portraying it as some particularly aggressive force for evil in the Middle East, juxtaposed against the forces for good, such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf sheikdoms and Israel – all of which have spread more violence and chaos in the Middle East than Iran.
In that sense, Obama’s speech fell far short of the statement of universal principles on behalf of humanity that was the hallmark of Kennedy’s speech on June 10, 1963, a declaration that was remarkable coming at a peak of the Cold War and almost unthinkable today amid the petty partisan rhetoric of American politicians. In contrast to Obama’s cheap shots at Iran, Kennedy refrained from gratuitous Moscow bashing.
Instead, Kennedy outlined the need to collaborate with Soviet leaders to avert dangerous confrontations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Kennedy also declared that it was wrong for America to seek world domination, and he asserted that U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a respect for the understandable interests of adversaries as well as allies. Kennedy said:
“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”
Standing Up to Cynics
Kennedy recognized that his appeal for this serious pursuit of peace would be dismissed by the cynics and the warmongers as unrealistic and even dangerous. But he was determined to change the frame of the foreign policy debate, away from the endless bravado of militarism:
“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. …
“Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
And then, in arguably the most important words that he ever spoke, Kennedy said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
Kennedy followed up his AU speech with practical efforts to work with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to rein in dangers from nuclear weapons and to discuss other ways of reducing international tensions, initiatives that Khrushchev welcomed although many of the hopeful prospects were cut short by Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Kennedy’s AU oration was, in many ways, a follow-up to what turned out to be President Dwight Eisenhower’s most famous speech, his farewell address of Jan. 17, 1961. That’s when Eisenhower ominously warned that,
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. … We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Arguably no modern speeches by American presidents were as important as those two. Without the phony trumpets that often herald what are supposed to be “important” presidential addresses, Eisenhower’s stark warning and Kennedy’s humanistic appeal defined the challenges that Americans have faced in the more than half century since then.
Those two speeches, especially Eisenhower’s phrase “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet,” resonate to the present because they were rare moments when presidents spoke truthfully to the American people.
Nearly all later “famous” remarks by presidents were either phony self-aggrandizement (Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall” – when the wall wasn’t torn down until George H.W. Bush was president and wasn’t torn down by Mikhail Gorbachev anyway but by the German people). Or they are unintentionally self-revealing (Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” or Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”)
Obama has yet to leave behind any memorable quote, despite his undeniable eloquence. There are his slogans, like “hope and change” and some thoughtful speeches about race and income inequality, but nothing of the substance and the magnitude of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet.”
Despite the practical value of Obama’s spirited defense of the Iran nuclear deal, nothing in his AU speech on Wednesday deserved the immortality of the truth-telling by those two predecessors.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
August 6, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Obama, United States |
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We’ve now spent three weeks watching American politicians argue needlessly over the Iran nuclear deal. For or against, they all miss this one salient point: It is the US that needed to end this standoff with Iran – not the other way around.
For years we have been hearing that US sanctions “were biting” and had “teeth.” Sanctions, it was said, would “change Iranian behaviors,” whether in regards to the Islamic Republic’s “support of terrorism,” its “calculations” over its nuclear program, or by turning popular Iranian sentiment against its government.
Here is US President Obama spinning the fairytale at full volume:
“We put in place an unprecedented regime of sanctions that has crippled Iran’s economy… And it is precisely because of the international sanctions and the coalition that we were able to build internationally that the Iranian people responded by saying, we need a new direction in how we interact with the international community and how we deal with this sanctions regime. And that’s what brought President Rouhani to power.”
There is, of course, scant evidence that any of this is true.
If anything, on the economic front, the net effect of sanctions has been to rally Iranians behind domestic production and thrift – establishing both the discipline and policy focus necessary to sustain the country indefinitely. A 2013 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report explains this unintended consequence of sanctions:
“There is a growing body of opinion and Iranian assertions that indicates that Iran, through actions of the government and the private sector, is mitigating the economic effect of sanctions. Some argue that Iran might even benefit from sanctions over the long term by being compelled to diversify its economy and reduce dependence on oil revenues. Iran’s 2013-2014 budget relies far less on oil exports than have previous budgets, and its exports of minerals, cement, urea fertilizer, and other agricultural and basic industrial goods are increasing substantially.”
Sanctions didn’t succeed on the political front either. By in large, Iranians did not hold their leadership responsible for sanctions-related economic duress, nor did they seek rapprochement with the West as a way out. The US continues to flog the narrative that Iranians elected President Hassan Rouhani in a bid to “moderate” foreign policy stances, but a survey conducted by US pollster Zogby Research Services in the immediate aftermath of Rouhani’s election turns that premise on its head:
Ninety-six percent of Iranians surveyed agreed with the statement that “maintaining the right to advance a nuclear program is worth the price being paid in economic sanctions and international isolation.” Of those polled, a mere five percent of Iranians felt that improved relations with the US and the West were their top priority.
No, sanctions have not worked in any of the ways they were intended.
So if the Iranians were not ‘dragged’ to the negotiating table, then what was the sudden incentive behind a multilateral effort to forge a deal in 2015 – 36 years after the first US non-nuclear sanctions were levied against the Islamic Republic, and nine years after the UN Security Council first issued nuclear-related sanctions?
Keep in mind that both the Iranians and the permanent members of the UNSC have offered up proposals to end the nuclear deadlock since 2003. So why, this deal, now?
Could it be that the Americans had simply blinked first?
And the world turned
It must be understood that much of this nuclear brouhaha has nothing to do with Iran actually possessing or aspiring to possess nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic neither has nuclear weapons, nor does it profess to want them.
US intelligence agencies, over the years, have conceded that Iran has not even made the “decision” to pursue weaponization, and the IAEA has repeatedly stated in 52 periodic assessment reports that there has been “no diversion” of nuclear materials to a weapons program.
In short, all the fuss has really only ever been about containing, isolating and taming a developing nation with aspirations that challenge Empire’s hegemony. Iran was never going to be able to change the rules of the game single-handedly. That is, until the game itself shifted hands and direction.
In 2012, cracks in the global economic and political power structures started to shift dramatically. We started to see the emergence of the BRICS, in particular Russia and China, as influential movers of global events. Whether it was a shift in trading currencies from the conventional dollar/euro to the rupee/yuan/ruble, or the emergence of new global economic/defense institutions initiated by BRICS member states, the world’s middle powers began to assert themselves and project power on the international stage.
But it was in the vast and complicated Middle East arena that old power and new power came to clash most ferociously.
In November 2011, the year of the Arab uprisings, the BRICS announced their first collective foreign policy statement, urging the rejection of foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.
By 2012, it started becoming clear that the crisis in Syria was being heavily fomented by external players, including the three UNSC Western permanent members, the US, UK and France and their regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and NATO-member Turkey.
In 2012, it also became clear that Al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist fighters were dominating the opposition inside the Syrian military theater and that these elements were being backed by the United States and its allies.
The American calculus, at this point, was to allow and even encourage the proliferation of fighters prepared to unseat the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, anticipating that at some future date they could then reverse the gains of radicals.
Assad did not fall, but extremism – fueled by funding, arming and training from US allies – entrenched itself further in Syria.
This did not go unnoticed in Washington, which has always struggled to make a coherent case for its Syria strategies. The rise of ISIS (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the flood of jihadists into the Syrian theater began to change the American calculations. The US began to work on hedging its bets… and that is when Iran began to factor significantly in America’s Plan B.
That Plan B began in mid-2012, just as Saudi Arabia’s incoming intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan was preparing for a violent escalation in Syria, one that would exacerbate the Islamist militancy in the Levant exponentially.
That July, secret backchannel talks between the United States and Iran were established in Oman, kicked off, according to the Wall Street Journal, by “a pattern of inducements offered by Washington to coax Tehran to the table.”
Take note that the Americans initiated this process, not the allegedly “sanctions-fatigued” Iranians, and that this outreach began when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at the helm, not his successor Rouhani.
Iran – or bust
Iran’s elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani said a few months ago: “Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [IS] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran.”
If you look at the array of ground forces amassed against Islamist radicals from Lebanon to Iraq, they consist almost entirely of elements allied with the Islamic Republic, or are recipients of weapons and sometimes training provided by the Iranians.
There are no combat forces from Western states and none from their Arab or Turkish allies within the region.
‘Boots on the ground’ are essential in asymmetrical warfare, but the US military will continue to oppose inserting its troops into direct combat situations in Syria and Iraq.
In a Telegraph op-ed on the eve of the Vienna nuclear agreement, Britain’s influential former ambassador to Washington Christopher Meyer wrote:
“Whether we like it or not, we are in de facto alliance against ISIL with Assad of Syria and with Iran, the implacable foe of our long-standing ally, Sunni Saudi Arabia…. if ISIL is able to expand further in the Middle East, won’t this unavoidably lead to the conclusion that our strategic ally in the region for the 21st century must be Iran?”
This is the conundrum Washington began facing in 2012. And so it set in motion a face-saving strategy to enable itself to “deal” with Iran directly.
The Vienna Agreement
Here’s what the Iran nuclear deal does – besides the obvious: it takes the old American-Iranian “baggage” off the table for the US administration, allowing it the freedom to pursue more pressing shared political objectives with Iran.
The Iranians understood full well in Vienna that they were operating from a strong regional position and that the US needed this deal more urgently. The Americans tried several times to get Iran to expand discussions to address regional issues on a parallel track, but the Iranians refused point-blank. They were not prepared to allow the US to gain any leverage in various regional battlefields in order to weaken Iran’s position within broader talks.
Although the Iranians are careful to point out that the Vienna agreement is only as good as the “intentions” of their partners, this deal is essentially a satisfactory one for Tehran. It ensures rigorous verification that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, which is great for a country that doesn’t seek one.
It also provides Iran with protections against ‘over-inspection’ and baseless accusations, dismisses all UNSC resolutions against the Islamic Republic, recognizes the country’s enrichment program, provides extensive international sanctions relief, binds all UN member-states to this agreement (yes, Israel too) and nails down an end-date for this whole nuclear saga.
The deal also frees up Iran to pursue its regional plans with less inhibitions.
“What the president (Obama) and his aides do not talk about these days — for fear of further antagonizing lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have cast Iran as the ultimate enemy of the United States — are their grander ambitions for a deal they hope could open up relations with Tehran and be part of a transformation in the Middle East,” reads a post-Vienna article in the New York Times.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, commenting after the deal, said: “I know that a Middle East that is on fire is going to be more manageable with this deal and opens more potential for us to be able to deal with those fires, whether it is Houthi in Yemen or ISIL in Syria and Iraq than no deal and the potential of another confrontation with Iran at the same time.”
“The Iran agreement is a disaster for ISIS,” blares the headline from a post-agreement op-ed by EU foreign affairs chief Frederica Mogherini. She explains:
“ISIS is spreading its vicious and apocalyptic ideology in the Middle East and beyond… An alliance of civilizations can be our most powerful weapon in the fight against terror… We need to restart political processes to end wars. We need to get all regional powers back to the negotiating table and stop the carnage. Cooperation between Iran, its neighbors and the whole international community could open unprecedented possibilities of peace for the region, starting from Syria, Yemen and Iraq.”
Clearly, for Western leaders Iran is an essential component in any fight against ISIS and other like-minded terror groups. Just as clearly, they have realized that excluding Iran from the resolution of various regional conflicts is a non-starter.
That is some significant back-tracking from earlier Western positions explicitly excluding Iran from a seat at the table on Mideast matters.
And stay tuned for further policy revisions – once this train gets underway, it will indeed be “transformative.”
As for the Iran nuclear deal… except for some hotheads in Congress and the US media, most of the rest of the world has already moved on. As chief US negotiator and undersecretary for political affairs, Wendy Sherman said recently: “If we walk away, quite frankly we walk away alone.”
The balance of power has shifted decisively in the Middle East. Washington wants out of the mess it helped create, and it can’t exit the region without Iran’s help. The agreement in Vienna was reached to facilitate this possibility. Iran is not inclined to reward the US for bad behavior, but will also likely not resist efforts to broker regional political settlements that make sense.
It was not a weak Iran that came to the final negotiations in Vienna and it was not a crippled Iran that left that table.
As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (for once) aptly observed: “It is stunning to me how well the Iranians, sitting alone on their side of the table, have played a weak hand against the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain on their side of the table. When the time comes, I’m hiring (Iran’s Supreme Leader) Ali Khamenei to sell my house.”
Iran just exited UNSC Chapter 7 sanctions via diplomacy rather than war, and it’s now focusing its skill-sets on unwinding conflict in the Middle East. If you’re planning to challenge Empire anytime soon, make sure to get a copy of Iran’s playbook. Nobody plays the long game better – and with more patience.
~
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. You can follow her on Twitter at @snarwani
August 6, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Iran, ISIS, Middle East, Obama, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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A US-led air strike in October 2014 in Kobani, Syria
The bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed at least 459 civilians, including 100 children, in 52 air strikes, according to a new report by Airwars, a project by a group of independent journalists.
Commenting on the supposed precision of air strikes against Isis, the Airwars project leader Chris Woods has told the Guardian that this “hasn’t been borne out by facts on the ground”.
This is one of the first reports examining the number of civilian casualties which have resulted from the savage bombing campaign against Isis militants. The lack of official interest in and support for investigating these casualties means that their number may actually be far higher. The violence on the ground also greatly impedes the verification of casualties.
It took years before the full scale of mass murder in the Second Iraq War came to light. A recent study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has established that around a million people have died as a result of that war.
The UK is the second-most active participant in the bombing campaign against Isis. The British government’s claims about its commitment to avoiding civilian casualties are negated by facts.
Chris Woods from Airwars has stated that bombing Isis fighters in their strongholds means that the focus is on bombing cities. 40% of civilian casualty reports came from the city of Mosul in Iraq. “You can’t have an air war of this intensity without civilians getting killed or injured,” said Woods.
Western intervention in Iraq and Syria is adding fuel on the fire of a savage war. As the experience of more than a decade of terroristic “war on terror” shows us, Western intervention contributes to a vicious cycle of brutalising violence. It increases suffering and is a major cause of bitterness against the West.
This underscores the need to oppose resolutely the proposed full-scale UK military intervention in Syria, which will lead to more of the same: more misery, more hatred, more death and more destruction. Humanity can be more creative than that.
August 4, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Iraq, Middle East, Syria, UK, United States |
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Senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi has welcomed a call by the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Mosque, Egypt’s top Muslim authority, for a unity meeting of leading Sunni and Shia scholars.
Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi has sent a letter to al-Azhar’s Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, proposing a conference between top Shia and Sunni scholars “to review the most important obstacles in the way of Islamic unity” and “to set forth the most significant, necessary measures for reinforcing Islamic unity,” the Iranian cleric’s international affairs adviser Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Qazvini told reporters on Monday, without specifying the date the letter was sent.
The call by Tayeb had been aired on Egypt’s state TV on July 22 at the end of a series of programs during the holy month of Ramadan.
Stressing the necessity of “coexistence and peace” between Shia and Sunni Muslims, Tayeb had urged Sunni scholars to issue a fatwa (religious decree) prohibiting the killing of Shia Muslims.
He had also called on Shia scholars to issue a similar fatwa banning the killing of Sunni Muslims.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Ayatollah Qazvini said Ayatollah Shirazi had included principal issues in his letter and is awaiting Tayeb’s response.
August 4, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism | Iran, Middle East |
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The rulers of the two most powerful authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are launching major wars to reconfigure the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared war by proxy on Iran, announcing full-scale military mobilization within Israel (July 27 -29) and organizing the biggest political campaign of ultra Zionist Jews in Washington.
The purpose of this two-pronged propaganda blitz is to defeat the recently signed US-Iranian agreement and start another major Middle East war. Ultimately, Netanyahu intends to take care of his ‘Palestinian Problem’ for good: complete the conquest and occupation of Palestine and expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland – the single most important foreign policy and domestic goal of the Jewish state. In order to do this, Israeli leaders have had to systematically campaign for the destruction of the Palestinians regional supporters and sympathizers – Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Erodogan’ s Multiple Wars
At the same time, Turkish Prime Minister Erodogan has launched a major war against the Kurdish people and their aspirations for a Kurdish state. This has followed closely on several recent incidents beginning with the bombing (with cooperation from Turkish intelligence ) of a Kurdish youth camp, killing and wounding scores of young secular activists. Within days of the massacre of Turkish-Kurdish youth, Erodogan ordered his air force to bomb and strafe Kurdish bases within the sovereign territories of Iraq and Syria and Turkish security police have assaulted and arrested thousands of Kurdish nationalists and Turkish leftist sympathizers throughout the country. This has all occurred with the support of the US and NATO who provide cover for Erodogan’s plans to seize Syrian territory, displace Kurdish civilians and fighters and colonize the northern border of Syria – under the pretext of needing a ‘buffer zone’ to protect Turkish sovereignty. Such a massive land grab of hundreds of square kilometers will end the long standing support and interaction among Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurdish populations who have been among the most effective opponents of radical Islamist groups.
Erdogan’s newly declared war on the Kurds has complex domestic and regional components (Financial Times 7/28/15, p 9): Within Turkey, the repression is directed against the emerging electoral-political power of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. Erodogan plans to discredit or outright ban this political party, which had won a surprising number of seats in the recent parliamentary election, call for new elections, secure a ‘majority’ in Parliament and assume dictatorial ‘executive powers’.
Regionally, Erodogan’s invasion of Syria is part of his strategy to expand Turkey’s borders southward and westward and to provide a platform from which Turkey’s favorite jihadi clients can launch assaults on the secular government in Damascus and Aleppo. The bombing of Kurdish villages and camps in Iraq and Syria are designed to reverse the Kurd’s military victories against ISIS and will justify greater repression of Kurdish activists backing autonomy in southeastern Turkey.
Erodogan is counting on Turkey’s agreements with the US and NATO for overt and covert collaboration against the Kurds and against Syrian national sovereignty.
Netanyahu’s Proxy Wars
Netanyahu’s multifaceted political offensive is designed to drag the US into a war with Iran. His strategy operates at many levels and in complex complimentary ways. The immediate target is the nuclear agreement recently signed between the White House and Iran. Part of the longer-term strategy to destroy Iran includes the formation of a coalition of Middle East states, especially Gulf monarchies, to encircle, confront and provoke war with Iran. This political-military strategy is being pushed by leading Zionists within the highest circles of the US Government.
All the major Israeli political parties, and most Israeli voters support this dangerous policy against Iran. The Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations in the US have been mobilized to bully, bribe and bludgeon the majority of Congress into following Netanyahu’s dictates. Every US Congressperson is being ‘visited’ and presented with propaganda sheets by leaders, activists and full time functionaries of AIPAC, the Jewish Confederations and their billionaire political donors. All the major US press and TV media parrot Netanyahu’s call for ‘war on the peace accord’ despite massive US public opinion against any escalation of the conflict.
At the highest levels of US Executive decision-making top Zionist officials avoid association with AIPAC’s public polemics and thuggish bluster, all the while promoting their own political-military ‘final solution’ … for eliminating Iran as an adversary to Israeli-Jewish supremacy in the Middle East. In the State Department and Departments of Commerce, Defense and Treasury, US-Israeli agents acting as special Middle East advisers, ambassadors and insiders push Netanyahu’s policies to undermine any normalization of relations between the US and Iran.
A recent proposal written by Professor Phillip Zelikow in the Financial Times (7/23/15, p. 9 ) entitled “To Balance (sic) the Nuclear Deal, Defeat ISIS and Confront Iran” is chilling.
The former ‘Executive Director of the ‘9/11 Commission Investigation Report’, uber-insider Zelikow promotes the formation of an ingenious coalition, in the name of fighting ISIS, but whose real purpose is to “confront Iranian ambitions”. Zelikow’s “coalition” includes Turkey, which will be assigned to attack Iran’s regional allies in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah) – all in the name of “fighting ISIS”.
The bland, bespectacled and most respectable Professor Zelikow lays out Netanyahu’s own bloody hit list down to the most minute detail – but tidied up with a thin veneer of ‘confronting ISIS’ to obscure his real agenda. This is no blustering AIPAC thug or open Neo-Con war monger beating the drums…
Zelikow’s ‘anti-ISIS coalition’ will ultimately go after the Iraqi Shia militia and their main supporters among Iran’s Revolutionary Guard – hewing closely to Netanyahu’s strategy!
Zelikow was a major inside advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Twelve years after the US invaded, occupied and destroyed Iraq, Zelikow pops up again to promote a policy of sending US combat troops to serve Israel’s regional interest. He writes, “The military side [of the ‘coalition’] will need more Americans on the ground to offer meaningful combat support among the coalition”. (FT ibid).
Zelikow is clearly aware of US public opinion in favor of diplomacy with Iran and against the US engaging in more ground wars in the Middle East, when he writes that a ‘military effort is not an alternative to diplomacy.” Zelikow and his bosses in the Israeli Foreign Office know any US military intervention with such a “coalition” would lead to the destruction of the US-Iran Agreement and another major ground war with US troops fighting for Israel once again!
Considering his position as a highly connected insider, Zelikow’s attempts to sabotage the Iran-US agreement presents a far greater danger to world peace than all the noisy lobbying by the 52 Zionist organizations active in Congress.
Zelikow has been a highly influential security adviser to the US Executive and State Department since the early 1980’s under Reagan. He was appointed ‘special adviser to the State Department’ in 2007, a position held earlier by Neo-Con operative Wendy Sherman and followed by war-monger, Victoria Nuland. In 2011 President Obama appointed him to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
He came to national prominence when President Bush appointed him Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission where he directed the highly controversial (and highly censored) 9/11 Commission Report against much public opposition. The appointment was made after Bush first choice of Henry Kissinger had created a media storm – Kissinger was never a serious choice with an insider-gatekeeper like Zelikow waiting in the wings. He was a controversial choice because of his role as intimate advisor to Condaleeza Rice and his authorship of the notorious Bush national security strategy promoting pre-emptive war, published in September 2002.
Phillip Zelikow suppressed any discussion of Israel’s role as a major catalyst for US involvements in the Afghan and Iraq wars. As executive-director of the 9/11 Commission Report, Zelikow assumed the role of editor and censor. He ignored the history of Israeli Mossad operations in the US, especially in the run-up to the attack on September 11, 2001. The report made no mention the fake ‘moving’ van filled with Israeli spies arrested on September 11, 2001 while celebrating and photographing the destruction of the World Trade Center complex. Nor did he discuss the quiet ‘deportation’ of the Israeli agents. The report contains no discussion of the scores of phony Israel “art students” who operated in South Florida around US military installations and in the vicinity of the apartment of the alleged 9-11 hijackers. They too were quietly arrested and deported.
He also suppressed discussion of the Defense Department’s ‘Able Danger Project’, which showed US intelligence awareness of the hijackers presence and activities much earlier dating back to 1997.
In October 2001, the first ‘anthrax attack’ occurred – first sickening and killing a photojournalist at a scandal sheet in Florida. National news programs featured an interview with… the re-packaged ‘al Qaeda’ and ‘bioterrorism’ expert Professor Zelikow (his lack of Arabic and scientific credentials notwithstanding…) who declared the anthrax to be ‘weapons grade’ and ‘definitely from a state sponsored military lab’, implying Iraq. (He was correct in the ‘military lab’ part of his declaration – only the facility was the US Weapons Lab at Fort Detrick. Zelikow’s role in accusing the embargoed and beleaguered regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of the anthrax hysteria was crucial in the public build-up for the case to invade Iraq, echoed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s call for the destruction of Iraq. Master-performance complete, ‘scientist’ Zelikow’s interview (among others) has disappeared from the ‘web’.
Zelikow’s ‘expertise’ (such as it is) and usefulness to Israel derives from his articles on the political usefulness of ‘false flags’ and catastrophes – events concocted or instigated by imperialist powers to push a traumatized public into unpopular wars and draconian domestic police state policies. His work has centered on the manipulation and exploitation of ‘events’ to push public policy – and include the Cuban Missile Crisis, the re-unification of Germany, policing Northern Ireland, (but not Middle East studies or bio-weaponry’). His expertise is in the historical use of the ‘public myth’- whether the Riechstag Fire or Pearl Harbor. In Foreign Affairs, November-December 1998, he co-authored an article with the current US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, entitled Catastrophe Terrorism where a ‘watershed event’ could result in ‘horror and chaos’ pushing the US public to accept the destruction of ‘their civil liberties, wide-spread surveillance, detention and use of deadly force…’
Zelikow continues to push the “false flag” script: In 2001 with the “anthrax hysteria” and now with the “Iran threat hysteria” . . . What is not surprising is that in both instances he hews closely to Israel’s strategic goal of utterly destroying countries, which have opposed Israel’s dispossession, occupation and expulsion of Palestinians – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and now Iran.
Zelikow is a long-term, major asset for Israel, working quietly and effectively while the AIPAC bullies break down the doors of Congress. He never held a prominent position in the Cabinet or White House post like the brazen Zion-Cons Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Perle, Abrams and Levey who aggressively pushed the country into war with Iraq. Wolfowitz and company have scuttled back into obscurity under the cover of lucrative private positions while Zelikow continues to work inside pushing the Iran war agenda out of the limelight.
Zelikow’s role is far more discrete and important to Israel over the long haul than the loudmouths and thugs of AIPAC and other Zionist fronts. On the surface he pursues his academic and university administrative career (an excellent cover) while repeatedly inserting himself into crucial public discussions and quietly assuming strategic positions to advise on events or policies which have ‘turning point’ consequences and where his deep ties to Israel are never discussed.
Zelikow has one asset, which his bullying and blustering Zionist comrades lack and another which he shares with them. Zelikow is a great con-man – claiming knowledge about anthrax, Middle East relations, and military strategy. He spouts …. pure unadulterated rubbish with authoritative finesse!.. Claiming legal and investigative expertise he controlled the 9/11 Commission Report and denied the American people any open and relevant discussion of the event. He even likened the Commission Report skeptics to ‘an infection’ within American public opinion – apparently relying on his ‘expertise’ in biological warfare…
What Zelikow does have in common with the raging bulls of Zionism is his constant resort to vituperation against any country or movement identified as a target by Israel. He consistently refers to the secular government of Syria (under attack by jihadi terrorists) as a “terrorist regime”. He calls the Iraqi militia fighting ISIS “Shia torture squads”. This is part of a build-up to push the US into ground war for Israel against Iran and its allies.
Unlike Turkey’s Erodogan who uses his own armed forces to launch an all-out war to dispossess, terrorize and colonize ethnic Kurdish territories in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, Israel’s Netanyahu relies on his overseas (US) high level operatives to set in motion the wheels of war. Within days of attacks of September 11, 2001, Israel’s leading mouthpiece in the US Senate, Joseph Lieberman presented the roadmap for US wars for the next decade and a half – declaring that “the US must declare war on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and Iran”, despite the complete absence of these countries’ involvement in the event.
Is he a prophet or just a highly successful agent? Zelikow will push for a ‘coalition’ of Middle East dictators and monarchs to fulfill Israel’s dream as dictated by Joseph Lieberman in September 2001. This is a dream of waging devastating war against Iran leading to its partition, similar to the de facto partition of Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in a Middle East forever ravaged by sectarian strife, foreign occupations, balkanized and devoid of any possibility of regaining civilized life. Israel can then carry out its brutal final solution: the dispossession and expulsion of all Palestinians and establishment an expanded, purely Jewish state – surrounded by unspeakable destruction and destitution…
Conclusion
Erodogan expands ‘Turkoman frontier’ into Syria and Iraq – despite the fact that Turkey has never shown any interest in the Turkoman minorities. To that end, he allies with ISIS terrorists to uproot Kurds, everywhere extending into Turkey. Erodogan, like, Netanyahu, wants a ‘pure’ ethnic state – one Jewish, the other Turkish! Both brutal leaders have no regard for the sovereignty of neighboring states, let alone the security of their civilian populations. Both depend on the military support of the US. Both are in the process of igniting wider and more destructive wars in the Middle East. Netanyahu and Erodogan want to reconfigure the Middle East: Turkey seizes Kurdistan and Syria; Netanyahu expands military dominance in the Persian Gulf through the destruction of Iran.
These two leaders appear to hate each other because they are so similar in arrogance and action… But according to Professor Zelikow, the US will step in ‘god-like’ to ‘mediate’ the different power grabs among what he mindlessly refers to as the ‘partners of the coalition’.
August 1, 2015
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Able Danger, AIPAC, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, NATO, Palestine, Phillip Zelikow, Syria, Turkey, United States, Zionism |
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