{"id":6303,"date":"2009-10-26T19:43:47","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T03:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6303"},"modified":"2009-10-30T18:31:56","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T02:31:56","slug":"riding-that-afpak-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/26\/riding-that-afpak-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving That Af\/Pak Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 18th’s\u00c2\u00a0suicide bombing in Iran near the Pakistan border was the subject of the top three articles in\u00c2\u00a0October 20th’s\u00c2\u00a0Asia Times.
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\n“Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or Britain,”\u00c2\u00a0M K Bhadrakumar\u00c2\u00a0opens\u00c2\u00a0the first.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Yet “clearly,” he concludes,\u00c2\u00a0Obama would have to be “out of his mind to have his intelligence agencies mount a terrorist attack on Iran which would torpedo his own gameplan to address the Iran nuclear file at the present sensitive juncture” (Saudi-Iranian hostility hits boiling\u00c2\u00a0point<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0
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\nIn the second, Pepe Escobar cautions\u00c2\u00a0“but one thing is the Obama administration’s priorities;\u00c2\u00a0another is the agenda of ‘full spectrum dominance’ types at the Pentagon and the CIA…Chaos in Iranian Balochistan derails the [Iran-Pakistan] pipeline – something that is an absolute priority for full spectrum dominance: Washington wants its horse, the Trans-Afghan (TAP) pipeline, to win at all costs. A ‘victory’ of the IP pipeline means Gwadar port in [Pakistani] Balochistan falling into China’s orbit, not the US’s”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0(Jundallah versus the mullahtariat<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0
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\nIn the third, Kaveh L Afrasiabi quotes a Tehran professor, “‘There is now a serious crisis of Iranian confidence in Mr Obama and many people are asking: is he really in charge and who calls the shots on US policy in the region? Did Mossad pull this off without notifying the White House, or in cahoots with them [the US]?'”\u00c2\u00a0(Iran’s nuclear talks also hit<\/a>)
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\nHere at Antiwar, in\u00c2\u00a0Our Two-Faced Iran Policy<\/a>, Justin Raimondo raises the possibility that the U.S.’s “terrorism”\u00c2\u00a0complements its\u00c2\u00a0“talk,”\u00c2\u00a0the idea being “to keep the Iranian regime off-balance, and make them more amenable to compromise…In any case, we are walking a tightrope” and the presence\u00c2\u00a0of\u00c2\u00a0“the very powerful<\/span><\/a> Israel lobby” is a major\u00c2\u00a0reason why\u00c2\u00a0“military conflict with Iran may be unavoidable.”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0
\n\u00c2\u00a0
\nWith the\u00c2\u00a0suicide bombing\u00c2\u00a0in Iran occurring as the Pakistan situation degenerates (and now,\u00c2\u00a0Baghdad blasts echo far and wide<\/a>),\u00c2\u00a0Reuters blogger Myra MacDonald\u00c2\u00a0is almost reduced to prayer:\u00c2\u00a0 “In my 25 years of journalism, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve rarely seen a situation move so quickly.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to think there is someone in power who is not only keeping pace,\u00c2\u00a0but keeping ahead”\u00c2\u00a0 (Afganistan, Pakistan … and all the other countries involved<\/a>).
\n\u00c2\u00a0
\n“Someone?”\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think she has in mind\u00c2\u00a0Osama bin Laden, so, if it’s not the Obama administration and\/or\u00c2\u00a0a CIA-Pentagon cabal\u00c2\u00a0and\/or the Mossad, that leaves—The Duchy of Grand Fenwick!
\n\u00c2\u00a0
\nLeaving aside the question of who, if anyone, is\u00c2\u00a0driving,\u00c2\u00a0to where is the train hurtling?\u00c2\u00a0What humongous wreck awaits?
\n\u00c2\u00a0
\nThe U.S. falling off the “tightrope” into an Iranian “quagmire” is one possibility, but\u00c2\u00a0even as I\u00c2\u00a0write, the words “unprecedented” and “spin out of control” appear in a Reuters article, the subject of which\u00c2\u00a0is “India-China tensions” (Afghanistan in focus at trilateral meet in India<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0For a bigger dip into an\u00c2\u00a0“electrified” atmosphere,\u00c2\u00a0with a similar warning that “an accidental slip or go-off at the border would erode into war,” see M K Bhadrakumar’s The dragon spews fire at the elephant<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 For a treatise on\u00c2\u00a0how “the wider struggle between the powers of Eurasia and the nations of the Periphery,\u00c2\u00a0led by the United States,”\u00c2\u00a0could manifest itself\u00c2\u00a0in\u00c2\u00a0a nuclear war, there’s\u00c2\u00a0Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s Geo-Strategic Chessboard: War Between India and China?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 18th’s\u00c2\u00a0suicide bombing in Iran near the Pakistan border was the subject of the top three articles in\u00c2\u00a0October 20th’s\u00c2\u00a0Asia Times. \u00c2\u00a0 “Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or Britain,”\u00c2\u00a0M K Bhadrakumar\u00c2\u00a0opens\u00c2\u00a0the first.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Yet “clearly,” he concludes,\u00c2\u00a0Obama would have to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"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-6303","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\/6303","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6338,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions\/6338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}