The shooting has already started
in the Persian Gulf and chances are we'll be at war with Iran
before President Bush's term is up. An American ship under contract
with the U.S. Navy the Western Venture claims it was in
international waters when Iranian speedboats approached and failed
to answer radio calls. Shots were fired on the American side. Iran
denies the whole thing. Yet you'll recall that in the last
incident, involving the capture of British sailors, the story
about being in international waters was the same except, it turns
out, they weren't in international waters, but in disputed
waters, just as we speculated in this
space. There's no reason to expect anything different this time.
Clearly, the U.S. and Britain are trying to trigger a new conflict
with the most brazen provocations, and they don't really care how it
happens only that it does.
The indications of an imminent attack the latest incident, the
steady
stream of accusations
coming from the U.S. regarding Iranian influence in Iraq, the nuclear
charade, etc. have suddenly taken a more ominous turn with the
recent statement of America's top military officer that the U.S. is
weighing
military action against Iran. The Washington Post
reports:
"The nation's top military officer said yesterday that the
Pentagon is planning for 'potential military courses of action' as
one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the
Tehran government's 'increasingly lethal and malign influence' in
Iraq. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said a conflict with Iran would be 'extremely stressing' but not
impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the
Navy and Air Force."
Speaking of malign influences: since when does an American
military officer make foreign policy pronouncements, as if he were
the president? It's an indication of the advances
militarism has made in what used to be a republic that no one has so
much as blinked at the brazenness of such blatant Caesarism.
The reasons for the uptick in the rhetorical and physical assault
on Iran by the Americans are entirely due to domestic politics, not
anything occurring on the ground in the region.
Hillary Clinton's demagogic threat to "obliterate"
Iran, uttered on national television just before the Pennsylvania
primary, was meant to buttress her newfound image
as a shot-swilling
macho up against the effete, Adlai Stevenson-esque Barack "Arugula"
Obama. It's the Old Politics, trying to revive the red state-blue
state dichotomy, and it's driving us down the road to war with
Tehran. McCain,
too, is helped by the ratcheting up of tensions in the Persian Gulf:
think what the outbreak of war with Iran would do for his underdog
candidacy.
Standing behind this developing pro-war Popular Front, the
central factor in turning the U.S. toward a policy of confrontation
rather than constructive engagement with Iran has been the
Israel lobby. Since 1993, the Lobby has been demanding that the
U.S. take a more aggressive approach to the mullahs of Tehran, and,
with few exceptions, has been largely successful.
The policy of "dual
containment," conceived by the Clinton administration during the
early 1990s, meant that the U.S. was committed to hostile relations
with both Iraq and Iran. The policy, as John
J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out, "was essentially a
copy of an Israeli proposal." It meant stationing troops in
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to offset an alleged threat to American
interests. Yet there was no reason to assume Tehran had hostile
intentions toward the U.S. At the time, Iranian President Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani was eager to establish friendly relations
with the U.S. As pressure built to abandon "dual containment" and
initiate a more workable policy that would give the U.S. more
flexibility, the Lobby went on the offensive with a relentless
campaign to impose economic sanctions on Iran.
The Iranians, determined to signal their willingness to be
reasonable, chose an American oil company, Conoco, to develop the
Sirri oil fields. As Trita Parsi points
out in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel,
Iran, and the United States:
"For AIPAC, the Conoco deal 'was a coincidence and a
convenient target.' The organization went into high gear to use the
Iranian offer not only to scuttle the Conoco deal, but also to put
an end to all U.S.-Iran trade. In a report that it released on April
2, 1995, titled 'Comprehensive U.S. Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan
for Action,' AIPAC argued that Iran must be punished for its actions
against Israel. 'Iran's leaders reject the existence of Israel.
Moreover, Iran views the peace process as an American attempt to
legalize Israel's occupation of Palestinian, Muslim lands,' it said.
Pressured by Congress, AIPAC, and the Israelis, President Clinton
swiftly scrapped the deal by issuing two executive orders that
effectively prohibited all trade with Iran. The decision was
announced on April 30 by Clinton in a speech before the World Jewish
Congress."
This wasn't enough for the Lobby, which brought pressure on Sen.
Alphonse D'Amato to introduce a bill that imposed sanctions on any
countries doing business with either Libya or Iran. The Iran-Libya
Sanctions Act passed the House with not a single dissenting
vote, and the same scenario went down in the Senate. The Lobby made
sure the Iranian peace offering was rudely rebuffed and the
president reminded of just who was in charge of U.S. foreign policy
in the Middle East. The White House meekly went along with the
Lobby's wishes: after all, the presidential election was but three
months away.
The Conoco affair should dispel any myths about the supposedly
supreme power of the "oil lobby" as the decisive factor in shaping
U.S. policy in the region: the Israel lobby beat them hands down. As
James Schlesinger put it, "It is scarcely possible to overstate the
influence of Israel's supporters on our politics in the Middle
East." The harder the Iranians tried to approach the Americans, the
more rudely they were repulsed.
The election of the even more pro-American Mohammad Khatami as
Iran's president in 1997 did not break the back of "dual
containment" dubbed "a nutty idea" by Brent Scowcroft, albeit one
with plenty of domestic political traction. The U.S. had every
reason to pursue a policy of engagement, while that was
possible, giving Iranian moderates the political breathing space
they needed to ensure the growth of pro-American forces in the
country. The benefits of opening up Iran to American investment are
similarly obvious, yet our leaders chose to do otherwise due solely
to the power of the Lobby. As Ephraim Sneh, a prominent figure on
the Israeli Right, acknowledged: "We were against it
because the
interest of the U.S. did not coincide with ours."
In short: Washington policymakers weighed the interests of both
the U.S. and Israel, and made their decision accordingly
From dual containment to regional
transformation and "regime
change" was not a long road to travel. After 9/11, Washington
embarked on a campaign to topple the governments of both Iraq and
Iran, as well as Syria, and rid Lebanon of Hezbollah while they were
at it. As soon as "mission
accomplished" was declared in Iraq, the Israelis and their
American amen corner began demanding action against Iran.
In an interview with the Times of London, Ariel Sharon
declared that Washington had better start threatening to march on
Tehran "the
day after" Baghdad was secured. By late April 2003, the Israeli
ambassador to Washington was complaining that the demise of Saddam's
regime was "not
enough." Those indolent Americans must be made to "follow
through" by taking action against "great threats of that magnitude
coming from Syria, coming from Iran."
Shimon Peres rallied the faithful with an op-ed
in the War Street Journal titled "We Must Unite to Prevent an
Ayatollah Nuke." The neoconservatives convened a special all-day conference
devoted to inciting war hysteria aimed at Tehran, with all the usual
suspects Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Reuel Marc Gerecht in
attendance. The cry went up: "Regime change!" The only question was
which exile faction we were going to support: the
royalists, or the cult-like neo-Marxist Mujahideen-e-Khalq
(MEK) and its numerous well-connected front groups in the U.S. and
Europe.
The leaders of the latter have energetically vied for the role of
the Iranian Chalabi,
coming up with reams of "intelligence" detailing Iran's alleged
nuclear weapons program. Their "revelations," however, have been
definitively debunked by the latest national
intelligence estimate, which says Tehran abandoned its nuclear
program some time ago. All those diagrams and
documents coming from MEK by the truckload were evidence of a
nuclear program that no longer existed.
If any
of this sounds
familiar, then it
should.
The efforts of the Lobby aren't limited to war propaganda. The AIPAC spy
trial in which two top officials
of the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization have been indicted
for passing top-secret classified information to Israeli embassy
officials is all about Israel's attempt to penetrate U.S.
governmental discussions about what stance to take regarding
Iran, with the goal of exerting maximum influence on American
policymaking circles.
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Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran an "existential
threat" to the Jewish state, a contention that amounts to little
more than absolute nonsense. Their argument goes something like
this: Iran is not a normal state, it is run by ideologues who are
profoundly invested in apocalyptic religious visions that can only
end in war. Deterrence means nothing to them. They want to be
incinerated in a nuclear exchange involving Israel, themselves, and
quite possibly the U.S., because it fulfills the ancient prophecies
and means the return of the Mahdi, or something along
those lines.
This makes no more sense than the inverse version of the
religion-determines-all theory, which would have the "born again"
George W. Bush intent on provoking a nuclear war in the Middle East
in order to bring about the Second Coming and the Kingdom of God on
Earth as the Christian dispensationalists who make up so much of
the GOP's base fervently believe is entirely possible and certainly
desirable.
These latter, of course, are the foot-soldiers
of the Israel Lobby in America, a group that GOP presidential
candidate John McCain has actively
courted in the person of the Rev. John Hagee. Rev. Hagee is a vicious
Catholic-hater and all-around
nut-job who looks forward to a nuclear war in the Middle East as
the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Hagee has lately taken up with
AIPAC, appearing at their last national confab in a starring role.
This administration, which has been in
thrall to the Israel lobby more than any other, has been
increasing the volume in its war of words with Tehran since January
of this year, and, as Bush's reign comes to an inglorious end,
there apparently remains one last act of perfidy the neocons will
leave as their legacy. Bush's going away gift to the American people
looks more than likely to be another war one that truly does make
the Iraq war seem like a "cakewalk"
in comparison. It took a few years for the impact of the war in Iraq
to be felt by the American people, and its full impact has yet to
hit. Not so with the next war. The firing of a few shots at those
speedboats sent the price of oil up
three bucks. Think of what a full-scale all-out war would do to
the price of nearly everything. And for what?
Iran, a signatory to the Nonproliferation
Treaty, says
it is not seeking to build nuclear weapons, and that the
production of nuclear energy for peaceful uses is the one and only
goal of its activities on this front. This is more than Israel can
say, far more. Everyone
knows the Israelis have nukes the technology for which they
probably stole
from us and they are one of the few civilized countries who
haven't signed the NPT and refuse to even discuss doing so.
If ever there was a nuclear rogue nation, then surely it is
Israel. As Henry Kissinger said
of them in a 1969 memo to Richard Nixon: "The Israelis, who are one
of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are
probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use
their nuclear weapons." Although the Iranians claim their nuclear
program is geared exclusively toward peaceful purposes, that they
have the option to act otherwise, should the need arise, is a
challenge to Israel's nuclear hegemony. The Iranians, by American
and Israeli lights, have no right to a deterrent.
In a world where "benevolent
global hegemony" is the goal of U.S. foreign policy, there is no
right to self-defense; that, along with national sovereignty, has
been abolished. Defiance is met with an implacable campaign for
regime-change in the offending nation. By all indications,
Iran is the next victim to be made an example of, sometime in
mid-summer, or so the rumor goes.
We know where the presidential candidates stand on this issue.
Hillary looks forward to the "obliteration" of Iran and takes
up Charles Krauthammer's demand
that we extend our nuclear shield over Tel Aviv just as we would do
the same for, say, Toledo. Indeed, there are not a few who would
argue that we would be fully justified in sacrificing the latter in
order to save the former, and not all of them are to be found among
Rev. Hagee's deluded
flock. In any case, we know what the McCain-Hagee position is
without even having to ask.
We also know where Obama stands on all or most of this: he
advocates a policy of engagement
with the Iranians, just as he has endorsed talking
with South American caudillo Hugo Chavez, and for the
same very sound reasons: because it's talk or fight. He clearly
realizes waging perpetual war is hardly in our interests, even if we
had the financial and military capacity to carry out such a crazed
policy. Yet, if he's speaking out about this, at this crucial moment
when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is practically declaring war
on the Iranians then I just can't hear him: he must not be
speaking very loudly, or perhaps this gets lost amid all the soaring
rhetoric about Change and Hope and A Better Tomorrow.
Hillary voted for the Kyl-Lieberman
resolution, which designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
an official part of the Iranian armed forces as a "terrorist
organization," and now Gen. Petraeus is telling
us Tehran is funding, arming, and succoring those who are
killing American soldiers and bombing
the Green Zone. The main threat against us in Iraq is no longer
the Sunni "dead-enders," as Don Rumsfeld liked to call them, it's
the Mahdi Army Iraqi Shi'ites and the Iranians, who have very
close ties to the government our troops are dying to defend. If
Bush seeks to obliterate Iranian hopes for regional preeminence by
launching an attack before he leaves office, one can hardly see how
the Clintons could possibly object: perhaps they'll declare that,
this time, we have to send enough troops to "do the job." This,
you'll recall, was Hillary's McCain-like critique of the Iraq
invasion long before being antiwar was required of all Democratic
presidential aspirants. No doubt she'll revert to that when the time
comes, but what about Obama?
He could skewer Hillary
the hawk with one well-placed arrow, aimed straight at her
vulnerability on the Iran issue. With the first shots of a new war
already fired, apparently, and rumors of an imminent American strike
at Iran flying thick and fast, Obama could denounce her as a
warmonger, a McCain in drag, whose short-term political opportunism
is helping to embroil us in a quagmire far worse than the one in
Iraq, where she played a similar role in 2003. Yet I hear nothing
like this coming from Obama's camp. Maureen Dowd nails
it, with her typically acerbic take:
"Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several
opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again
and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the
politics of scoring points, but to win, you've got to score
points."
The American people oppose war with Iran, perhaps more than they
want out of Iraq: the economic consequences alone will infuriate
them far more than any other foreign policy decision of this
administration. What the War Party is hoping is that their fury will
be directed overseas, at our alleged "enemies" in Tehran, and not at
home, in the direction of Washington, where proper blame belongs.
Americans await the advent of a real leader, the sort who could
and would focus that anger on the right target. Whether Obama has
the gumption and the strategic sense to make this fight about
policy, not personalities, race, and gender, remains to be seen.
He's promised us a new politics, but that doesn't have to mean
blandness and an inability to fight. It can and must mean sharp
attacks on wrong ideas and one looks in vain for an idea as
wrongheaded as war with Iran.
~ Justin Raimondo