{"id":13689,"date":"2012-01-15T18:57:46","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T02:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=13689"},"modified":"2012-01-15T18:57:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T02:57:46","slug":"the-false-flag-story-and-provocations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/15\/the-false-flag-story-and-provocations\/","title":{"rendered":"The False Flag Story and Provocations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, I\u2019m sure most readers of this blog are informed about Mark Perry\u2019s blockbuster story<\/a> Friday on foreignpolilcy.com that describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as U.S. spies to recruit and use members of the Jundallah group to carry out what the State Department and others have called a campaign of terror against Iran focused in particular on the largely Sunni province of Sistan va Balochistan. If you haven\u2019t read it, you definitely should.<\/p>\n

This story naturally raises a host of questions, among them, why Jundallah was not put on the State Department\u2019s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list before November 20, 2010; how much control the Mossad has exercised over Jundallah and its operations; whether Mossad may be operating another \u201cfalse-flag\u201d operation with PJAK, the Iraqi Kurdistan-based Iranian branch of Turkey\u2019s PKK. (PJAK was designated an FTO 15 days after Obama\u2019s inauguration, reportedly as a gesture to both Ankara and Tehran, and, as Mark reminded me Friday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reportedly recommended last summer that Israel begin providing assistance to the PKK in retaliation for Ankara\u2019s decision to downgrade relations with Tel Aviv.) And hanging over all this is the big question of why, if Washington knew of Israel\u2019s sponsorship of one or more FTOs, particularly one as bloody-minded as Jundallah, did it not do more to discourage that relationship? Deliberately averting one\u2019s eyes to terrorist activity is, after all, a form of complicity, particularly if you know that this terrorist activity is being done in your name.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a remarkably and unusually candid discussion (for a mainstream medium) of Israel\u2019s strategy of provocation took place yesterday with an interview by MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews of former CIA officer Robert Baer and can be seen here<\/a>. It runs about five minutes. Baer makes clear his view that these assassinations, about which I hope to write more later, have little to do with setting back Iran\u2019s nuclear program in any meaningful way, but are rather designed to provoke an armed response that would increase the likelihood of a U.S. or U.S.\/Israeli attack.<\/p>\n

I think that these two forms of terrorism \u2014 support for Jundallah and possibly other terrorist groups, and the assassination of scientists associated with Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 share the same goal. (Killing a handful of scientists will not stop Iran\u2019s nuclear program, and Jundallah is essentially a ragtag group with no hope of seriously destabilizing the regime.) The primary aim of these programs, therefore, appears to be provocation. And, so long as the U.S. is seen as supportive of or at least complicit with these efforts (as Israel clearly wishes the U.S. to be seen), hard-line forces in the Iranian regime will always have a leg up in internal discussions about whether Washington can be trusted in any negotiation. That\u2019s why it seems to me that it\u2019s incumbent on the Obama administration, if indeed it wishes to avoid war<\/strong>, to make as clear as it possibly can that it has absolutely nothing to do with these covert programs. In that respect, public denials, no matter how categorical, by Clinton, Panetta, and the White House to that effect are not nearly sufficient.<\/p>\n

In that connection, one wonders whether Obama addressed this issue in his conversation<\/a> with Netanyahu on Thursday; that is, two days after the assassination in Tehran and on the eve of the publication of Perry\u2019s article of which the White House and other agencies were no doubt aware because of the author\u2019s last-minute efforts to get them to comment.<\/p>\n

The two leaders also discussed recent Iran-related developments, including the international community\u2019s efforts to hold Iran accountable for its failures to meet its international obligations. The President reiterated his unshakable commitment to Israel\u2019s security, and the President and the Prime Minister promised to stay in touch in the coming weeks on these and other issues of mutual concern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it focuses on the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, today\u2019s piece in the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a> is suggestive, particularly the last paragraph:<\/p>\n

Some American intelligence officials complain that Israel represents a blind spot in U.S. intelligence, which devotes little resources to Israel. Some officials have long argued that, given the potential for Israel to drag the U.S. into potentially explosive situations, the U.S. should devote more resources to divining Israel\u2019s true intentions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the update at LobeLog.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now, I\u2019m sure most readers of this blog are informed about Mark Perry\u2019s blockbuster story Friday on foreignpolilcy.com that describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as U.S. spies to recruit and use members of the Jundallah group to carry out what the State Department and others have called a campaign of terror against Iran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13689"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13696,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13689\/revisions\/13696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13689"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}