Iran on the Precipice

by JONATHAN POWER

Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0

There’s never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran one day did cross the nuclear threshold the same deterrence will apply. No one rational would want to provoke their own incineration.

Columbia University professor, Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, wrote in Foreign Affairs that with Israel possessing over 200 nuclear weapons (which the US refuses to publically admit) Iran having a bomb would bring stability.

I would never go as far as Waltz on that last point. The launch of nuclear weapons can always be done by accident or by the rogue action of one or two of the members of the launch team in the silo.

It has nearly happened in the US a number of times, and probably in the Soviet Union too. Moreover, if Iran got really close to building a bomb, Saudi Arabia would follow in short order, and perhaps Egypt too somewhat later. That would really be Iran cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The arguments between Iran, the US and Europe over the supposed bomb question are becoming confused. To be frightened or not to be? If clear thinking is not quickly restored everyone will lose out.

When President Barack Obama and his team successfully negotiated a long-term freeze in Iran’s nuclear research a milestone in international cooperation on nuclear proliferation was passed.

Russia and China joined the EU and the US as negotiating partners and made a unanimous front when presenting the agreement to the UN Security Council for approval.
Donald Trump unilaterally upended this soon after taking office. In breaking apart a deal approved by the Security Council he broke international law.

The recent UK ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, reckoned Trump’s primary motivation was not US security or anything of that ilk but was purely motivated by a gut hatred of Obama.

Now the old untruths that were churned out by the Republicans and the Israelis during the Obama-era negotiations are being recycled.

They predicted during the 1990s that Iran would have nuclear weapons by 2000. Then the estimated date was bumped up to 2005. Then to 2015. Now some are saying next year.

The CIA, for its part, has never put its name to these Iranian estimates. Apparently it still thinks that the probability is that Iran was never building a bomb.

They would have been better to focus on Brazil, now led by the extreme right wing nationalist, Jair Bolsonaro, who has close ties with the military, which is now engaged in enriching uranium to 90%, suitable for nuclear bombs, as against Iran’s just announced 5%, suitable for its Bushehr civilian power reactor and a long way from what is necessary to build a bomb.

Brazil needs this high degree of enrichment to fuel its new nuclear submarine, but it could easily be diverted to build a bomb.

There’s a danger, once removed but now back in circulation, that this negative attitude towards Iran could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if it leads to a military attack.
As two former US National Security Advisors to the president, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, have written, “a military attack by Israel or the US “would significantly increase Iran’s motivation to build a bomb.”

An attack “would also increase the recruiting ability of radical Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

Does Trump want to attack Iran or not? Last month US planes were within ten minutes of bombing Iran before he had a last minute change of mind and called off the raid.

The last few days some smoke has been thrown into the air with the somewhat autonomous Iranian Revolutionary Guards seizing a British-owned ship steaming through the Persian Gulf.

Wisely, on the eve of a change in its leadership, the UK is not upping the ante with threats of retaliation. Trump has been careful not to get out in front of the British.

Nevertheless, these incidents go to show how a gunpowder trail can easily be laid. Meanwhile, the American sanctions that were supposed to be lifted because of the Obama agreement are being tightened.

Iran is suffering, especially the poor. Similar sanctions when used against the Iraq of Saddam Hussein resulted in over 30,000 children dying, according to UNICEF.

There are some hints that Trump wants to act as he has with North Korea- jump straight to the top of Iran’s decision making tree and make his own deal.

Never mind that a new deal might only have cosmetic changes, it would enable him to claim he had got a better deal than Obama. He did this with the North American Free Trade Area agreement.

Is it all a fuss about nothing? Only those who live inside Trump’s head know the answer. In this case he is truly master of the universe.

Iran, Venezuela and the Throes of Empire

by ROB URIE

Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair

With the Trump administration threatening war against Iran and Venezuela, the question of how the U.S. was brought to this point needs to be considered. To argue that current circumstances are particular to this administration is to overlook U.S. history vis-a-vis both Iran and Venezuela and that between them they possess a material proportion of the world’s proved oil reserves (graph below). In 2019, the pretense that local provocations explain anything beyond domestic political posturing is absurd.

However, domestic political considerations do explain threats of war to a greater degree than should rationally be the case. Removing Americans from the risks of wars the U.S. starts has produced a form of technological nihilism. Just because technology can be used to kill large numbers of people without risk to self doesn’t mean that it should be. Combined with economic motives for launching wars, death, destruction and misery have become just another business opportunity. At this point in history, war is what America does.

More insidiously, and admitted into evidence that the national Democrats just aren’t very politically astute, two- and one-half years into a soft coup staged by key members of the surveillance and warfare states and national Democrats against his administration, Donald Trump now apparently undertsands the domestic political benefits of unhinged militarism. Through a sycophant press predisposed to support any manner of unprovoked slaughter and the myriad business interests that see their stocks rise with the same, war is apparently a good business to be in.

Graph: the American defense industry, in this case aerospace, generally gives more in campaign contributions to Republicans than to Democrats. However, the contributions appear to be tactical. When Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were running for the presidency, the balance of contributions shifted to Democrats. This tactic keeps Democrats ‘competing’ for contributions from people that profit from war. Source: https://www.opensecrets.org.

The political logic of Russiagate was to re-assert the unity of nation as rising class tensions threaten breaks and fissures. The Democratic candidate in 2016 spent prior decades pledging allegiance to the warfare state. Her ascension would have guaranteed persistent and murderous geopolitical tensions that she had already begun instigating during her husband’s administration and as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. Whether Donald Trump’s non-interventionist campaign posture was sincere, opportunistic, a ‘Chance-the Gardiner’ moment or a total fraud is irrelevant for present purposes.

There is every chance that Mr. Trump would have fallen in line with respect to warfare state designs on Iran and Venezuela anyway. The business case for murdering a lot of people and stealing their shit is as old as the country. The imperial view that foreign oil and gas belong to the U.S. and its allies is one that he appears to be comfortable with. That ‘crazed dictator’ Hugo Chavez used Venezuela’s oil wealth to feed, house and educate the poor isn’t what American oligarchs want getting around. So, while the claim is that foreign oil and gas belong to ‘us’ in some collective imperial sense, the bank accounts of the rich suggest no such confusion at the top.

Graph: were no mention made of oil, the countries listed here would constitute a who’s who of American foreign policy imbroglios. Between them, current targets Iran and Venezuela hold a significant proportion of the world’s oil reserves. Blather about dictators and freedom is standard fare when American oligarchs want to control global resources like oil. Current propaganda ties to a long history of American wars for resources. Source: worldatlas.com.

With respect to Mr. Trump’s prospects in the 2020 presidential election, joining his warfare-state tormenters will accomplish two things. First, it will get them off his back politically. The anti-interventionist vote that helped get him elected didn’t arise until a decade or more after George W. Bush left office. So, his move toward militarism probably won’t hurt him politically until the body bags start piling up. Second, such a move would deny national Democrats support from weapons manufacturers and the oil and gas industry. As the graph above suggests, defense ‘industry’ contributions appear to be tactical.

With the Cold War playbook now sufficiently dusted off to support another round of wars against resource-rich ‘adversaries,’ American political and business interests are moving to choose the most profitable targets. Through economic sanctions, ‘passive’ war has already been declared against both Iran and Venezuela. Economist Mark Weisbrot estimates that these sanctions have caused 40,000 civilian deaths in Venezuela since 2018. And the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Iran in early 2018 that are now taking a toll on the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

These sanctions are premised in the theory that if enough people are starved and enough misery is created ‘below,’ the political consequences will eventually work their way ‘up’ to force the hands of political leaders. After Bill Clinton imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, half a million women and children died from starvation and treatable illnesses, with little determinable effect on the actions of former CIA ‘asset’ Saddam Hussein. As with Mr. Trump in the present, Bill Clinton was working to reduce the social safety net in the U.S. as he deprived the poor and vulnerable of food and medicine abroad.

This point is made because the human consequences of sanctions don’t appear to be clear to Americans. Economic sanctions were called ‘sieges’ in olden times. And they were understood to be a tactic of war. Their political value lies in the dubious moral distinction between active and passive starvation, torture and murder. Had those killed by American sanctions in the 1990s been lined up and shot, it likely would have produced political repercussions in the U.S. It was liberal icon Barack Obama who imposed economic sanctions against Venezuela in 2015, again illustrating the bi-partisan use of ‘passive’ warfare.

This isn’t to argue that there are no differences between the political parties on the road to war. For the last 2.5 years liberals and Democrats have been attacking Mr. Trump from the geopolitical right. By valorizing representatives of the warfare-state like James Clapper, John Brennan and Robert Mueller in order to discredit Mr. Trump politically, little political space was left for substantive criticism when hard lines are drawn. This explains in part why nationalistic rhetoric overtook the putative left. Framed as geopolitics, their bases in warfare-state propaganda would have been distressingly evident.

To point out that weapons manufacturers and the oil and gas industry are businesses isn’t to reduce geopolitical motivations to profit and loss calculations. Following the end of WWII, the fear amongst American officials was that the U.S. would sink back into the Great Depression. Military Keynesianism, the use of federal defense spending to create jobs and profits, turned warfare into the business of America. Seen through a lens of Marxian / Gramscian hegemony, militarism was made the guiding ethos of the warfare-state. And militarism will remain the path of least resistance for American politicians until political economy is redirected away from it.

In his own ‘attention span of a gnat’ way, Donald Trump challenged this hegemony. Liberals, progressives and Democrats used militaristic chides against him every chance they got. Détente with North Korea? Traitor! Détente with Russia? Traitor! The tyranny of the oligarchs, business interests and the warfare-state that supports them has been rendered invisible. And so, ‘passive’ war against Iran: population 83 million, and Venezuela: population 32 million, has been launched. Surprisingly (not), the early reports of civilian casualties have the most vulnerable and least powerful bearing the brunt of this passive warfare.

As Mr. Trump correctly adduces here, the military industry is driving the push for war. The relationship between the intentions of American Generals and Russiagate can be found in allegations of Iran’s ‘footprint’ across the Middle East. Through the client-state relationship, Iran’s footprint is also Russia’s footprint. The antiquated Cold War chessboard, complete with an Evil Empire supporting ‘dictators’ in Venezuela and Iran, has been re-imagined. Unfortunately, it hasn’t be re-purposed. The problem isn’t that this framing is wrong. It is that other equally cogent and demonstrable explanations exist.

The Cold War was more than anything else, a business enterprise. A more artful quote would have been found were it not for the infliction of Russiagate:

“(T)he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” Hermann Goering, 1946.

Russiagate was used to restore the political fortunes of the death and destruction business to promote the class interests of American oligarchs. Now that the gauntlet of war has been cast into open waters, it is incumbent upon Washington’s incumbents to dive in after it. Alternatively, the history of the CIA and MI6 using the pretext of ‘communist influence’ to overthrow democratically elected governments in order to steal resources and prevent increases to the minimum wage and land reform doesn’t help the argument that the Cold War was motivated by ideology.

But again, this isn’t to suggest that complex relationships and motives aren’t at work. However, the ‘how stupid are you people?’ question must be asked. Venezuela has the world’s largest proved oil reserves. Iran has the world’s fourth largest proved oil reserves. John Bolton stated that the goal of regime change in Venezuela is to gain control of Venezuela’s oil. Russia has the eighth largest proved oil reserves plus strategic access to major markets in Europe. The Obama administration engineered a coup in 2014 in the same Ukraine that is placed geographically between Russian oil and European customers for it.

Furthermore, Iran is a former client state / colony that gave the U.S. the diplomatic boot after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, leaving Israel as the only remaining client state in the region. Earlier still, in 1953 the U.S. and Britain engineered a coup after the democratically elected Mohamed Mosaddeq moved to nationalize Iran’s oil. The pretext of the coup was ‘communist influence’ over the Iranian government, which was a complete fabrication. The coup was engineered to seize control of Iran’s oil. Leading American neocons, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, started the Iranian nuclear program a decade or so later.

Assertions that Donald Trump’s saber rattling is a deviation from American history, prior policies and the intentions of warfare and oil and gas industry functionaries, are based on technical quibbles, not fundamental policy differences. As with Iran, American neocons started Israel’s nuclear weapons program through the Atoms for Peace program of the 1950s and 1960s. American deference towards Israel is likewise an ethos that emerges from the client state role that it plays in oil and gas industry machinations and the distribution of American made weapons.

As a client state, Israel serves an economic role at the behest of American oligarchs that in turn supports related industries. The power that Israel holds over American politicians ultimately derives from American military and oil and gas (public) expenditures. This is the same circumstance the American political class finds itself in. Campaign contributions from ‘private’ military and oil and gas companies have genesis in Federal expenditures. The influence they wield is in this sense circular— government expenditures fund ‘private’ influence. The ethos that emerges is self-legitimating for the private interests that benefit.

Two years plus of taunting Donald Trump from the right has left the left holding the baggy for untethering his steely anti-interventionist resolve from the hitchin’ post. And while it’s proper to question the metallurgical integrity of said resolve, he did ask questions in his run for President that landed like an oriole’s chide at Spring’s late arrival apropos the American military’s history of cluster-fuckery. The impeachment plan seems about as well considered. Supposing success that won’t occur because the Republican controlled Senate is needed to convict, Mike Pence becomes president and then what— Joe Biden? If it’s the principle, why didn’t Barack Obama prosecute the George W. Bush administration for War Crimes and Wall Street executives for financial crimes?

It’s the selectivity of the rage that seems suspect. If what you want is Democrats, then win a fucking election.

The related question from 2016 that isn’t going away anytime soon is: how do we get rid of these people, meaning the entire American political establishment? Otherwise, do ‘we’ really need four or eight more years of Democrats not ending America’s unhinged militarism, rapidly compounding climate crises, dysfunctional health care and educational systems and predatory political economy? The idiocy of Russiagate is that any jackass can play the militarist. And now, absolutely any jackass is. Mr. Trump is positioning himself for the job. Well played progressives.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

A ridiculous war – How the US military feeds at the terror trough

by Tom Engelhardt

Without the least doubt, the United States of America is the godfather of terrorism worldwide, irrespective of the administrations that march in and out of the White House – whether Republicans or Democrats.

Stay with us for a well-researched article in this regard for the ‘TomDispatch’ site by Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of “A History of the Cold War”, titled: “A Ridiculous War – How the US Military Feeds at the Terror Trough.”

Here’s a statement it might be hard to disagree with: American war is off the charts.

Still, I’d like to explain – but I’m nervous about doing so. I know perfectly well that the next word I plan to write will send most of you tumbling elsewhere in a universe in which "news" is the latest grotesque mass shooting; the craziest tweet from you-know-who; celebrities marching into court over college-admissions scandals; or even a boy, missing for years, who suddenly turns up only to morph into a 23-year-old impostor with a criminal record.

How can America’s wars in distant lands compete with that? Which is why I just can’t bring myself to write the next word. So promise me that, after you listen to or read it, you’ll hang in there for just a minute and give me a chance to explain.

Okay, here it goes. We start with Somalia. A country in the horn of Africa, it once glued American eyeballs, but that was so last century, right? We mean, there was that bestselling book and that hit Hollywood movie directed by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien!) about the disaster early in Bill Clinton’s presidency that came to be known as Black Hawk Down (aka the Battle of Mogadishu).

In the age of Donald Trump, wasn’t that a million presidencies ago? Honestly, can you even tell me anymore what in the world it was all about? I couldn’t have, not without looking it up again. A warlord, starvation, US intervention, 18 dead American soldiers (and hundreds of dead Somalis, but that hardly mattered) in a country that was shattering. President Clinton did, however, pull out those troops and end the disastrous mission – and that was that, right? I mean, lessons learned. Somalia? Africa? What in the world did it all have to do with the Americans? So Washington washed its hands of the whole thing.

And now, on a planet of outrageous tweets and murderously angry white men, you probably didn’t even notice, but more than two years into the era of Donald Trump, a quarter-century after that incident, American air strikes in… yep, Somalia, are precipitously on the rise. Last year’s 47 strikes, aimed at the leaders and fighters of ash-Shabaab, a terror outfit, more than tripled the ones carried out by the Obama administration in 2016 (themselves a modest increase from previous years). And in 2019, they’re already on pace to double again, while Somali civilians – not that anyone (other than Somali civilians) notices or cares – are dying in significant and rising numbers. And with 500 troops back on the ground there and Pentagon estimates that they will remain for at least another seven years, the US military is increasingly Somalia-bound, Congress hasn’t uttered a peep on the subject, and few in this country are paying the slightest attention.

So consider this a simple fact of the never-ending global war on so-called terror. The US military just can’t get enough of Somalia. And if that isn’t off the charts, what is? Maybe it’s even worth a future book (with a very small print run) called not ‘Black Hawk Down II’ but ‘US Down Forever and a Day’.

And now that I’ve started on the subject, when it comes to the US military, it’s not faintly just Somalia. It’s all of Africa. After all, this country’s military uniquely has a continent-wide Africa Command (aka AFRICOM), founded in 2007. As Nick Turse has often written for TomDispatch, that command now has its troops, thousands of them, its planes, and other equipment spread across the continent, north to south, east to west – air bases, drone bases, garrisons, outposts, staging areas, you name it. Meanwhile, AFRICOM’s outgoing commanding general, Thomas Waldhauser, only recently told Congress why it’s bound to be a forever outfit – because, shades of the Cold War, the Russians are coming!

And honestly, 600-odd words in, this wasn’t meant to be a piece about either Somalia or Africa. It was meant to be about those US wars being off the charts, about how the Pentagon now feeds eternally at the terror trough, ash-Shabaab being only a tiny part of the slop it regularly digests. So let me change the subject to something a little more appealingly – to quote a well-known authority – "ridiculous" when it comes to American war.

Maybe you won’t be surprised to learn that what I have in mind is the war in Afghanistan, another of Washington’s off-the-charts affairs. It might even qualify as the original one (if you don’t count Vietnam, which would take you back to the Neolithic Age of the US military’s infinite wars). Lest you think I only mean the war that began in Afghanistan after the incident of 9/11/2001 in New York, think again. I’m talking about the American war in that distant land that started in 1979, the decade-long conflict in which the US supported extremists (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden) – they were our guys, then – to successfully force the Red Army out of Afghanistan.

That was in 1989, 30 years ago, and a triumphant Washington promptly took more than a decade-long holiday, while a brutal set of civil wars continued in already devastated Afghanistan and the Taliban rose to power in most of the country. Then, as in Somalia, having learned their lesson (the wrong one, of course), George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and crew decided after 9/11 to emulate… well, the Red Army and occupy the Afghan capital, Kabul – even though the Soviet Union had imploded a decade earlier. For the only great power left on the planet, facing a lightly armed extremist group, what could possibly go wrong?

Seventeen and a half years later, Congress has rarely focused on the war (not) to end all wars and there are still 14,000 American troops (and the usual set of private contractors) there, along with enough US air power to… well, blow up a lot but not change anything decisively. Of course, the Taliban was long ago supposedly finished off in a hand basket…

…Whoops!  The Taliban in 2019 is stronger and in control of more territory than at any moment since it was driven from power in November 2001. Staggering billions of American taxpayer dollars have gone into the "reconstruction" of Afghanistan to little effect (while the domestic infrastructure of the United States has begun to crumble without significant new federal investment). Meanwhile, the security forces of the American-backed Afghan government have been taking casualties at a reportedly unsustainable rate.

After not paying much attention to all of this for something like a decade and a half, the American people did, however inadvertently, vote into the White House a presidential candidate who had long had dissident thoughts about the Afghan War. Typical was this 2012 tweet of his: "Why are we continuing to train these Afghanis who then shoot our soldiers in the back? Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home!"

And it’s not a set of thoughts Donald Trump tossed overboard once he entered the Oval Office either. Only the other day, he ludicrously praised the "great strides in Afghanistan" that the US military and NATO are(n’t) making in an awkward meeting with that alliance’s secretary general (in which he also managed to claim that his father – distinctly from the Bronx, New York – had been born and raised in Germany). He then doubled back and termed the Afghan War "ridiculous" and "unfortunate." And last December, soon after he announced that he was pulling all US troops out of Syria (on which more in a moment), he essentially demanded that the US military cut its forces in Afghanistan from 14,000 to 7,000 as part of its route (not rout!) out. That number was assumedly meant to include the 3,000 troops he had been persuaded to add to US forces there in his first year in office.

As it happened, however, the Pentagon had its own forward-looking ideas on how to "withdraw" from Afghanistan. Having already turned that war into the longest in American history, the high command was now evidently vying for another awe-inspiring record: the longest withdrawal of American forces from a war zone ever – a three-to-five-year span of time with perhaps an initial cut of 7,000 somewhere in the months to come (though I wouldn’t hold my breath on the subject). In that way, they were working to produce an American war of at least 21 years, while perhaps also hoping to outlast this president and get one willing to commit to forever war forever.

Admittedly, the Trump administration has also launched peace talks with the Taliban and who knows where they might lead sooner or later. Still, when it comes to the "ridiculous" war the president continues to belittle, give credit where it’s due. It remains robustly, even disastrously, ongoing and off the charts.

And none of that compares to Trump’s Syrian debacle. In December, the US president publicly overruled his advisers and ordered that the 2,000 US troops stationed in that country be withdrawn within 30 days. "We have won against Daesh," he declared in a video posted on Twitter. "Our boys, our young women, our men – they’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now."

I think of what followed as "the Trump surge," the third of the era. The first, of course, was General David Petraeus’s 2007 surge into Iraq with more than 20,000 American troops. Its aim: to turn the disastrous occupation of that country that followed George W. Bush’s May 2003 "mission accomplished" moment into a raging success. Petraeus, in fact, made his reputation on that turn-around of a surge… until, of course, it wasn’t, and by then he had moved on.

The second surge was President Obama’s decision to send more than 30,000 new US troops into Afghanistan in 2009 – and, of course, you know how that turned out.

Now, appropriately enough, we’ve had an upside down, inside-out surge in Syria. Honestly, it could have been a Saturday Night Live routine, complete with Alec Baldwin.

In response to Trump’s withdrawal decision, Secretary of Defense James Mattis promptly resigned and was almost instantly lauded as an all-American hero by a Congress and a media in an uproar over the decision. We’re talking, of course, about "Mad Dog" Mattis, the former Marine general who so classically said of fighting the Taliban, "It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling."

And then, in February, as the pressure on Trump ramped up, there was the first partial retreat. Think of it as the beginning of a withdrawal from the withdrawal.  The news leaked out that, in a "concession" to Pentagon officials, 200 US troops would be left in Syria "for a period of time." It only took another day for that number to rise to 400. Then, in mid-March, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in reality, 1,000 troops would be left in that country, a figure promptly and definitively denied ("factually incorrect") by no less a personage than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford. By month’s end, however, that factually incorrect figure had been confirmed – 1,000 US personnel would indeed remain indefinitely, or at least until the fall of 2020.

Where the Trump surge will go from here we simply don’t know as the subject has largely dropped from the news about the American president from Riyadh?

Meanwhile, don’t forget the war that, unlike Afghanistan and Syria, Donald Trump may not be able to imagine ending, the only one on which, since 2001, Congress has taken a stand.

I’m thinking, of course, about the grim US-backed Saudi and Emirati war in Yemen. As April began, Congress passed a resolution calling on the president to "remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting" Yemen within 30 days. (Of course, you already know how well such 30-day deadlines work when it comes to America’s wars.) In the single most obvious situation in which a war (or at least American involvement in it) might possibly be ended, in which the president with the help of Congress might actually override the national security state’s urge to fight on anywhere and everywhere, President Trump may sign the second veto of his term in office and successfully nix the congressional resolution.

And if so, who could be surprised. It’s obviously the wrong off-the-charts war for the president from Riyadh to end – or have I, like the president himself, gotten confused about which Trump was born where?

Oh yes, and talking about learning one’s lessons, as well as truly going off the charts…

As the 2020 elections approach, watch out. There’s one possible American war still to come in the West Asia. I’m thinking, of course, about a potential war with Iran (the one the Bush administration’s top officials wished for before they bogged down so disastrously in Iraq and Afghanistan). President Trump’s foreign-policy team – National Security Advisor John Bolton (a relic of the Bush years) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – are visibly dying (if that’s the right word) for just such a war and the president who ripped up the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, recently labelled the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) a terror group, and has been threatening Iran ever since, seems all too open to it as well.

So, for the last few of us still here thinking about American wars, I would say that if it comes to off the charts, it’s possible that you haven’t seen nothing yet – It will be suicidal and self-destructive for the US with the CENTCOM, which Iran in retaliation has designated as ‘terrorist’ driven to the last man out of the whole region of West Asia, North Africa and Afghanistan.

“Israel first” is Making “America last”

Abu Dharr

It goes without saying that American decision makers are Israeli politicians: Americans by citizenship, Israelis by public spirit — with very few exceptions. No one could have demonstrated this better than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month during his bossy presence in Cairo, Egypt.

In his speech at the American University of Cairo (AUC) he swanked about being an evangelical Christian with a Bible on his office desk. He also prided himself on 2019 being the 100th year of the establishment of the AUC in Cairo. Aside from these self-congratulatory introductory remarks Pompeo indulged in the fallacies of US foreign policy presenting them as righteous and unselfish!

He began by stating that Christians, Muslims, and Jews are all the children of Abraham. Looks like he hasn’t been studying his Bible carefully. Biblical interpretations equate the sons of Abraham through his son Isma‘il with illegitimate children and in some non-religiously correct interpretations as bastards. Dare any religious or political Egyptian bring that to the attention of their superior Mr. Pompeo?

Mr. Pompeo thinks he is speaking to a dumbed down crowd when he asserts that America is a “force for good” in the Middle East. No common man in the street from Quneitrah (Morocco) to Cairo to Qatar will agree; US presence in the Muslim East has been caustic and catastrophic. Look at the US involvement in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and Somalia — not to mention Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine.

Mr. Pompeo said that US leaders (alluding to the Obama regime) have misread US history and the historical moment of the Middle East. This was his jab at Obama’s eight years when policies were made apparently to quiet down Islamic Iran. The secretary of state mentioned his and his regime’s determination to put an end to ISIS (by bombing them into defeat). He said that ISIS drove to the outskirts of Baghdad as America hesitated [to confront them]… they raped and pillaged and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents… What he either knowingly or unknowingly left out of his speech is the fact that successive US regimes fully backed the supporters of ISIS. If US foreign policy really intended to pull the plug on ISIS all that had to be done was to tell US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab(ian) Emirates, and Turkey in particular to stop their financing and arming of ISIS and its offshoots and equivalents throughout the Muslim East. Had the US done that, it would have terminated ISIS and its bloody associates all over the Muslim world.

Mr. Pompeo went on to say that the US was timid in asserting itself when needed. “Asserting itself”! What are hundreds of thousands of US troops doing in the Muslim East? What is the meaning of hundreds of US military bases proliferating within and around the Muslim East? And he had the chutzpah to say that America hesitated to wield power that caused ISIS to spread… As if the US did not want ISIS to spread… US policy has been to setup, entrap, and kill Muslims through the vehicle of ISIS and its counterparts. Naive and susceptible Muslim youth fell into that deception. The ISIS trap would not have worked were it not for the Saudi supervised and financed atavistic religious Wahhabi institutions.

After this stretched starter Pompeo finally made it to his real intent and purpose: Islamic Iran and Zionist Israel. He said that the US must confront the Ayatullahs, not cuddle them. He also said that the US will support in a decisive manner Israel to defeat its enemies (Islamic Iran, Hizbullah, etc). Netanyahu couldn’t have expressed himself better.

Now let us probe the propositions of this pompous Pompeo performance. President Barack Obama went to Cairo to kick off his regime’s version of protecting Israel: the American carrot approach. Here we have Pompeo also going to Cairo, but to kick off his regime’s stick approach.

The pivotal point in Pompeo’s Cairo contention is that Iran should not be contained (that was Obama’s failure) but should be confronted (that, he assumes, will be Trump’s success). This is a very discreet and diplomatic way of saying the US is preparing for war with Islamic Iran. The objective of a conference scheduled to be held in Poland (February 13–14, after Crescent press time) will be to fuse together certain “Sunni-Arabian” nation-states to become the spearhead in a military campaign that will be controlled remotely by evangelical imperialist Washington on behalf of talmudic Zionist Israel. The way information is coming out, the Arabian regimes that will be called to Zionist military duty against Islamic Iran are: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab(ian) Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt; the jury is still out on Qatar and Oman.

The second target in Pompeo’s speech is Hizbullah. Expect in this coming year Israeli maneuvers or false-flag operations to commence military operations or even a war in Lebanon with US backing and blessing. Pompeo mentioned that Hizbullah has 130,000 missiles in Lebanon equipped with precision Iranian technology to be used against Israel. He (calculatingly) forgot to tell his listeners how many missiles and what type of missiles (among them atomic ones) Israel has and will use against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims when its Masada moment arrives.

Pompeo said that the US is not an occupying force. What are US military forces doing in Afghanistan and Iraq? What have US forces been doing in Somalia, Libya, Yemen, and Syria? Wasn’t it Pompeo’s president — Mr. Trump — who bemoaned the fact that the US spent over $6 trillion in the Muslim East without any revenue or profits to show for it? Aren’t ill-advised American policies responsible for the death of over three million Iraqis in the past 40 years, 30,000 Libyans in the past seven years and over a million Afghans in the last four decades? Erroneous American policies rationalized by an “Israel can’t be wrong” bottom line have littered the Muslim East with instability and chaos, murder and mayhem, extremism, violence, and terrorism. Ethnic breakaway tendencies and sectarian wars rage on because of the American foreign policy masterplan of blindly supporting Zionist Israel in its colonizing and expansionist strategy.

The trillions of dollars that the US poured into the hellhole of the Middle East, were they spent on building infrastructures and hospitals, research centers and an industrial base, orphanages and churches (you can’t expect the US to fund the building of any masjids), the political landscape would be very different. US wars for the sake of Israel in the Muslim East have left the Muslim populations with hunger and starvation, tens of millions of refugees, and un-depleted uranium that has polluted the agriculture and water supply for hundreds of thousands of years, not to mention the US policies of beefing up the militaries of its allies for American-Israeli manufactured future conflicts and wars.

The imperialist-Zionist deep state has come to realize that its proxies in the Muslim East are unable to overthrow the Syrian leadership nor are they capable of unseating the Qatari rulers. So don’t be surprised if in this coming year the Saudi and Qatari rulers make up (by the Saudis withdrawing their 13 demands), and both march in cadence with the American Israeli beat against Islamic Iran.

When you closely think about these Zio-American strategies you cannot avoid noticing that most of these reactions by Arabian regimes are because of their inability and unwillingness to sit down and discuss their differences with their Islamic neighbor in Iran.

We should not lose sight of the loss of credibility bordering on the loss of legitimacy of the three stooges: Trump, Netanyahu, and Bin Salman. All three are under growing internal public pressure: the Americans are increasingly fed up with Trump, the people in Israel are showing more willingness to put Netanyahu on trial for his serious legal problems, and the people in Arabia have had it with Bin Salman. These mounting domestic pressures may hasten the American-Israeli-Saudi break out of war against Islamic self-determination from Iran to Lebanon.

To put it succinctly: Israel is making America the sick man of the world. And none dare say so for fear of being called “anti-Semitic.”

If such a war breaks out, and there is no reason to believe that it will not, then let it be known that corporate America, racist Israel, and tribally ruled Arabia are on the wrong side of history when they declare war on 2 billion Muslims who will never cede the rights of the Palestinians to live in their historical fatherland and ancestral motherland. Vietnam will look like a picnic and Masada will be expanded by the thousands.

Israel is Israel; but America is Israel major and Saudi Arabia is Israel minor. If you can’t understand that, you can’t understand today’s world, “Attention! Allah’s help and triumph is near” (2:214).

Abu Dharr

A glance at historical documents of 1953 Iran coup

As a historical event, the August 19, 1953 coup against the government of then democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq is inextricably interlinked with Iran’s ongoing situation.

This is because, on the one hand, Iran is presently dealing with issues pertaining to oil exports and US sanctions. Furthermore, the coup has had a significant impact on Iran’s foreign policy.

On the other hand, documents have been released which shed light on the US role in the coup.

The British government plotted a military putsch against the Mosaddeq government because the premier played a key role in the country’s 1951 movement that resulted in the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry.

The US was initially opposed to the coup. However, in August 1953, British and American intelligence agencies initiated the coup by the Iranian military, setting off a series of events, including riots in the streets of the capital, Tehran, which led to the overthrow and arrest of Mosaddeq.

Sixty-five years have passed since the Mosaddeq government was toppled. The documents that have been released by the US government show that it was behind the coup.

However, some believe the ouster of the Mosaddeq government was not a coup. A glance at historical sources suggest that such a belief is incorrect. Since the coup was launched, the US expanded its influence in Iran for more than 30 years.

According to a declassified document published in 2003, the CIA admitted to orchestrating the August 1953 coup.

The document which was obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, said, “The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy.”

In July 2017, the US State Department released papers, known as the 1,007-page report, which showed Washington was behind the coup.

In 2000, then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright admitted that the US had “played a significant role” in the overthrowing of the Mosaddeq government. “The coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development, and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs,” Albright said at the time.

Former president Barack Obama also made a similar admission after taking office in 2009.

These admissions show that the US had an undeniable role in orchestrating the coup.

Since the coup was carried out, the US extended its influence in Iran, but the 1979 Islamic Revolution brought an end to Washington’s meddlesome policies in the country.

Zionism and Islamophobia Convergence of interests

By Jamshed Abbas 


 Back in 2008, a Zionist Jew named Barre Seid living in the US issued a check for just under $17 million. The purpose was to fund the distribution of 28 million copies of a hate-filled documentary whose premise was that Islam is equivalent to Nazism and is the greatest threat the West faces. The CDs were distributed by the Clarion Fund, which has been linked to the Israeli group Aish HaTorah.

Clarion is listed as a non-profit foreign organization in the US. That was at the height of the campaign between John McCain and a new kid on the block: Barack Husain Obama. Seid’s contribution to this attempt to spread hatred and fear against Muslims was supposed to remain a secret. Fortunately for us, his accountant made the mistake of including his name in a public filing.1

Muslims in America are very scared these days. Donald Trump is president. The right wing is in the ascendency. It is easy to fear the throngs of white voters who turned up for Trump. They are the ones with red, angry faces who often get caught on camera saying things about Muslims and minorities that send shivers down the spine of Muslims.

Many Muslims wish Hillary Clinton had won. After all, she had hijab-clad women at her campaign rallies, she gave speeches defending Muslims and their rights under the constitution. And who can forget the Harvard-trained Pakistani lawyer who spoke out at the Democratic convention where he held up a small booklet of the constitution and assailed Trump with the words, “Let me ask you: have you even read the United States constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.” Khizr Khan’s words appealed to many Muslims who were (and are) scared and confused.

It didn’t matter that President Obama had embarked on a deadly campaign of mass killings by indiscriminately bombing Muslims all over the world. It didn’t matter that Hillary Clinton had threatened to “obliterate Iran” if Israel were ever threatened with attack during a speech punctuated by frequent applause at the AIPAC convention. It also didn’t matter that all the neoconservatives who were responsible for the disastrous invasion of Iraq had endorsed Clinton. Palestine or the issue of Palestinian rights wasn’t on anyone’s radar. In fact, Clinton went out of her way to show her unflinching support for Israel, but most Muslims still flocked to her. None of that mattered. As far as most American Muslims were concerned, domestic considerations came first. And that is all that mattered.

If these Muslims had ever bothered to dig a little deeper, they would find that the main engine of hatred against Muslims in America, Europe, and Canada isn’t disgruntled white people and their orange saviour; it is Zionists. The Zionists have contributed huge amounts of money to fund books, videos, think tanks, radio talk shows, websites, and other platforms with one and only one goal in mind: to solidify in the minds of angry whites the notion of Islam — and by extension Muslims — as an existential threat.

Disgruntled white people are angry because they feel the elites have cheated them. They are right. Their hatred and anger isn’t exclusively for Muslims. They are equal opportunity haters. Furthermore, the caricature of all “right wing” white voters as racist and Muslim haters is unfair and perhaps untrue.

Pro-Israel individuals and groups are dedicated to destroying Islam and making life for Muslims in the West untenable. They have expended vast amounts of money in this effort. For example, in the 10-year period from September 11, 2001 to 2011, a total of $42 million in donations were made to organizations that the Center for American Progress deemed anti-Muslim hate groups. Of this, almost 50% was contributed by one man: the aforementioned Barre Seid,2 a Zionist Jew awarded an honorary degree by the Israeli university Bar-Ilan for his many works that “fortify Israel’s position in the world.”3 They do so because they feel that Islam poses the greatest challenge to the illegal Zionist entity. They are right. Islam does not tolerate oppression, whether it be against Muslims or non-Muslims. And none but the most indoctrinated and/or ignorant would argue that the Zionist entity is anything but unjust.

Barre Seid, Chicago industrialist and funder of right wing causes, especially the denial of climate change and the demonization of Islam, through his foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation. Choosing to remain out of the public eye, his net worth is not known, at least through the usual channels. He has been thoroughly lauded and awarded by the Zionist colonizers of Palestine, in more ways than one.

Of course, this is not to deflect from the inherent racism that white, working class individuals in many Western countries exhibit. The issue of the West’s imperial history and racist attitudes that underpin this imperial legacy deserve an article or book of its own. But the point here is this: the racism that the right wing of the political spectrum displays is not exclusively directed at Muslims. It is a burning rage that often finds succour in Islamophobia. The reason that Zionist groups and individuals are dangerous is because they want to exploit this hatred to crush any political dissent by Muslims in the West. Israeli officials meeting with right wing groups with a pro-Nazi past is just one example of this effort by the Zionists to partner with anyone who is willing to stem the potential political clout of Muslims before it grows.

There is a tendency within the Muslim community in North America to compartmentalize their lives from the rest of the Muslim world. This applies to all issues, but especially when it comes to the issue of Palestine. The argument is often framed thus: the issue of Palestine, or Kashmir, Afghanistan, Syria, Burma, Chechnya, or any other place in the world where Muslims are being oppressed is secondary. The well-being and prosperity of local Muslims is primary.

When pressed on the lack of moral substance to this argument, the plaintive response is often along the lines of “if we can’t take care of ourselves first how can we help others?” But the reality is, Muslims in the West and their brethren the world over face the same existential threat: Zionism. Whether it be Fox News and its Zionist Jewish owner or Israeli organizations and their secret funding of hatred against Muslims, Muslims need to unite. Indeed, if one examines conflicts that involve Muslims, whether it be Kashmir, Iraq, Syria, or others, Zionist hands are at play behind the scenes. Israel is one of the main backers of the corrupt Saudi regime and has provided medical and other aid to ISIS and other groups. The former defense minister of the Zionist entity recently gave a speech in which he said that ISIS apologized when it mistakenly attacked Israel in November of 2016.4

More ominously, the Zionists have dedicated vast resources to conflating takfiri groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and others with liberation movements like Hizbullah, Hamas, etc. The goal is to turn Israel’s fight into the West’s fight when in fact Hizbullah and Hamas and others have made it clear that they have nothing against the West other than its support for Israel and blatant interference in their internal affairs. For instance, Pentagon officials have branded Hizbullah, the “A-team of terrorism.”5 This begs the question: why hasn’t Hizbullah ever attacked the US mainland? The answer is obvious, but the Zionists are determined to obfuscate the truth. They want the West to fight the very groups that are the vanguard of fighting ISIS, al-Qaeda and other groups dedicated to killing Western civilians.

One important caveat here: Muslims need to stop being fooled by “liberal” and “conservative” Zionism. This is the good cop bad cop routine that has beguiled a lot of Muslims and makes them lose focus. Instead of swooning every time a liberal Zionist such as Jon Stewart defends Palestinians and criticizes Israel, we should ask, is Jon Stewart in favour of the Zionist entity’s theft of Palestinian lands? The very existence of the apartheid state should be opposed and nothing less should be settled for. Having said that we should educate Jews and unite with those people of the Jewish faith that are dedicated to the dismantlement of the Zionist entity. Israel has not made Jews any safer. Safety was one of the most important factors that contributed to the brainwashing of world Jewry in favor of the Zionist State. This is not a minor point, and should be used effectively as a counter propaganda tool. The safety of Jews has nothing to do with Israel. In fact, one state that affirms and protects the civic rights of all — Jews, Christians, and Muslims as well as others in Palestine — is a much better guarantee of long term Jewish safety in the Muslim East and around the world.

Zionism in the West is the true fifth column within our midst. When I say “our” I mean all the people who inhabit Western societies. Muslims need to cultivate an understanding that the countries they live in belong to them just as much as their neighbours. Their anti-Zionist rhetoric should rest on defending Muslims around the world and defending the interests of gullible Westerners who often fall victim to the platitudes of their political elites. Again, Jews cannot be ignored in all of this. It seems that increasing numbers of Jews are waking up to the reality of Zionism and the indoctrination they have undergone.

Instead of always being on the defensive, Muslims in the West need to unite against Zionism. This begins by setting all their sectarian, nationalist, ethnic, and tribal differences aside. Muslims need to embrace the Qur’anic notion that only the most muttaqi are superior (49:13). All petty disagreements should be subsumed within the fight against Zionism. Its credibility should be uprooted from the very fabric of the Western body politic. Zionism does not pose a threat just to Muslims, it poses a threat to all Westerners in its desire to draft young men and women in its fight against Islam and Muslims. An example of how this can be done is to fund think tanks that produce white papers detailing the strategic liability that Israel is to the West in the Muslim East, for instance.

Zionism is an existential threat to Muslims, both in the West and abroad. It is also an existential threat to the West because it sees a clash between Islam and the West as one of the tools for its survival. All peace-loving people, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, should unite and dedicate themselves to uprooting Zionism by identifying and uprooting agents and influences of Zionism within the Western body politic. If the Zionist apartheid state loses the backing and funding of America and others, it wouldn’t last long.

Further, the role of imperialists should not be ignored either. The focus should be on helping people realize that the very elites they are fighting are also the ones with whom the Zionists are hand in glove. It is these very elites that birthed the Zionist entity to further their criminal activities. This point is important. By focusing on Zionism, one should not fall into the trap of thinking that the Western elites are gullible children in the hands of some vast Zionist conspiracy. As Sayyid Hasan Nasrullah noted in a speech, it is not necessarily Israel that controls the West; Zionists have great power in the West but it was the Americans who pushed the Israelis to viciously attack Lebanon, not the other way around. Western elites are motivated by what they perceive as their global, capitalist interests. Zionists are motivated by the survival of the Zionist entity. The difference here is crucial in terms of the political future of Muslims in the West. Zionists want to destroy Muslim political capital and influence. Imperialists want to control it.

Both must be confronted, but the former is a greater short term threat and needs to be tackled quickly. In addition, both are inextricably bound. Zionism is the illegitimate child of imperialist Britain and America. The eradication of its political influence in Western public and political discourse will lead to a simultaneous weakening of the imperialist, capitalist elites who are at the root of many wars and misery around the world. So, how do Muslims rid the West of Zionist political influence when Zionism is a tool of Western imperialism and is supported by the elites for self-preservation? Public opinion should become so overwhelming that they are forced to back track. And Muslims must be at the forefront of shaping public opinion, not being buffeted by it. This point must inform all political decisions.

Finally, a cause must not be abandoned because it seems difficult or impossible. A monotheist is not intimidated by any man-made obstacles. All justice seeking people need to unite and fight against injustice. Zionism is just one aspect of the political reality in the West that Muslims face, albeit a significant one. Timing, political strategy, political vision and a united Muslim body politic are crucial if Zionism is to be confronted effectively. The purpose here is that Muslims need to be aware of the threat that Zionism poses. Muslim interaction in all spheres of Western life along with the goal of fostering interfaith dialogue and humanitarian works are just as important.

References

1. J. Elliot, Mystery of who funded right-wing “radical Islam” campaign deepens. (Salon.com website, November 16, 2010). http://www.salon.com/2010/11/16/clarion_fund_obsession_dvds/
2. W. Ali, E. Clifton, M. Duss, L. Fang, and S. Keyes, Fear, Inc: The roots of the Islamophobia network in America. (Center for American Progress website, 2011). https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/issues/2011/08/pdf/islamophobia.pdf
3. J. Elliot, Mystery of who funded right-wing “radical Islam”…
4. Chloe Farand, Isis fighters “attacked Israel Defense Forces unit, then apologised” claims former commander. (The Independent website, April 25, 2017). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-israel-defence-force-apology-attack-unit-golan-heights-defense-minister-moshe-ya-alon-a7700616.html
5. E. Bradley, Hezbollah: “A-team of terrorists”. (60 Minutes program, CBS News, April 18, 2003). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hezbollah-a-team-of-terrorists/

 

Jamshed Abbas