AMERICA’S MILITARY ADVENTURISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST . . .

. . . and the Scapegoating of Iran!

by Selvam Canagaratna

"The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power on unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling."

– François Mauriac, Second Thoughts, 1961.

Seventeen years of war in the Middle East, noted Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, before posing the inevitable question: "and what does the United States have to show for it?"

Someone has to be blamed for debacles that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead, including at least 200,000 civilians, and millions driven from their homes, he wrote. ‟Someone has also to be blamed for the proliferation of radical jihadist groups throughout the Middle East, the continued worldwide terrorist attacks, the wholesale destruction of cities and towns under relentless airstrikes and the abject failure of US and US-backed forces to stanch the insurgencies."

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘scapegoat’ as ‟a person bearing the blame for the sins, shortcomings, etc. of others, esp. as an expedient."

But you can be sure it won’t be the generals, the politicians such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the rabid neocons such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who sold us the wars, the Central Intelligence Agency, the arms contractors who profit from perpetual war or the celebrity pundits on the airwaves and in newspapers who serve as cheerleaders for the mayhem.

Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, although Iran was in compliance with the agreement, was the first salvo in this effort to divert attention from these failures to Iran. Bolton, the new National Security Adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, advocate the overthrow of the Iranian government, with Giuliani saying last month that Trump is "as committed to regime change as we [an inner circle of presidential advisers] are."

"The Iran nuclear deal was possible following several letters by President Barack Obama assuring the Iranian leadership that America had no intention of violating Iranian sovereignty," the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, told me. "America said it wanted to engage in a serious dialogue on equal footing and mutual interests and concerns. These assurances led to the negotiations that concluded with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."

Donald Trump, however, even as a candidate, called the agreement with Iran ‘the worst deal America ever made’, Ambassador Khoshroo reminded the world. "He called this deal a source of embarrassment for America. Indeed, it was not the deal but America’s unilateral decision to walk away from an agreement that was supported by the United Nations Security Council, and in fact co-sponsored and drafted by the United States that is the source of embarrassment for America. To walk away from an international agreement and then threaten a sovereign country is the real source of embarrassment since Iran was in full compliance while the US never was."

Iran announced recently that it has tentative plans to produce the feedstock for centrifuges – the machines that enrich uranium – if the nuclear deal is not salvaged by European members of the JCPOA. European countries, dismayed by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, are attempting to renegotiate the deal, which imposes restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.

"Why go to war with a country that abides by an agreement it has signed with the United States?" asked Chris Hedges. "Why attack a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other jihadist groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State, that now threaten us after we created and armed them? Why shatter the de facto alliance we have with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?"

The architects of these wars are in trouble, explained Hedges. "They have watched helplessly as the instability and political vacuum they caused, especially in Iraq, left Iran as the dominant power in the region. Washington, in essence, elevated its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse its mistake, beyond attacking Iran. Those both in the US and abroad who began or promoted these wars see a conflict with Iran as a solution to their foreign and increasingly domestic dilemmas."

Hedges noted that it was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, facing internal unrest, who launched the war in Yemen as a vanity project to bolster his credentials as a military leader. Now he desperately needs to deflect attention from the quagmire and humanitarian disaster he has created.

And then there is President Trump, desperate for a global crusade he can use to mask his ineptitude, the rampant corruption of his administration and his status as an international pariah when he runs for re-election in 2020.

"Of course, blaming and threatening Iran is not new," Ambassador Khoshroo said. "This has been going on for 40 years. The Iranian people and the Iranian government are accustomed to this nonsense. United States intervention in the internal affairs of Iran goes back a long time, including the [Iranian] war with Iraq, when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. Then America invaded Iraq in 2003 in their so-called ‘intervention for democracy and elimination of WMDs.’ Iran has always resisted and will always resist US threats."

"America was in Iran 40 years ago," the Ambassador recalled. "About 100,000 US advisers were in Iran during the rule of the Shah, who was among the closest allies of America. America was unable to keep this regime in power because the Iranian people revolted against such dependency and suppression. Since the fall of the Shah in 1979, for 40 years, America continued to violate international law, especially the Algeria agreements it signed with Iran in 1981."

The Algeria Declaration was a set of agreements between the United States and Iran that resolved the Iranian hostage crisis. It was brokered by the Algerian government.

The warmongers have no more of a plan for "regime change" in Iran than they had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. European allies, whom Trump alienated when he walked away from the Iranian nuclear agreement, are in no mood to cooperate with Washington. The Pentagon, even if it wanted to, does not have the hundreds of thousands of troops it would need to attack and occupy Iran. And the idea – pushed by lunatic-fringe figures like Bolton and Giuliani – that the marginal and discredited Iranian resistance group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), is a viable counterforce to the Iranian government is ludicrous.

In all these equations the 80 million people in Iran are ignored just as the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were ignored. Perhaps, they would not welcome a war with the United States. Perhaps if attacked they would resist. Perhaps, they don’t want to be occupied. Perhaps a war with Iran would be interpreted throughout the region as a war against Shiism. But these are calculations that the ideologues, who know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate, are unable to fathom.

The issue of Palestine is at the heart of turmoil in the Middle East for Muslims. Americans say they want the Middle East to be free from violent extremism, but this will only happen when the Middle East is free from occupation and foreign intervention.

The Americans are selling their weapons throughout the Middle East. They calculate how much money they can earn from destruction. They don’t care about human beings. They don’t care about security or democratic process or political process. This is worrisome."

"What are the results of American policies in the Middle East?" asked Hedges. "All of the American allies in the region are in turmoil. Only Iran is secure and stable. Why is this so?"

Courtesy- The Sunday Island