How We Launched Our Forever War in the Middle East

by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN

Photograph Source: US Government – Public Domain

Late on the night of July 14, 1958, I navigated our KC-97 aerial tanker to refuel a lone B-52 on a secret radio-silence mission near the Arctic Circle. On our way home, our number three engine conked out as we approached the Gaspé Peninsula. We got permission to make an emergency landing at Loring, the big B-52 base in northern Maine. As soon as we touched down, we were ordered to clear the runway. Suddenly the squawking of Klaxon horns pierced the night. Jeeps flashing red lights materialized out of the darkness and sped to the row of giant B-52s on standby alert, each loaded with thermonuclear bombs. Flight crews raced from the jeeps to the planes. One after another, the B-52s started their eight engines, taxied out, and launched into the black sky.

When our crew of six finally got to the operations building, we stopped one of the men wildly scurrying around and asked, “What’s going on?”

“We’re going into Lebanon!” was the answer shouted over his shoulder as he darted off.

We returned with our repaired plane to Dow early the next day, July 15, where we found all crews on full-scale alert. Later that day the combat crews of both squadrons were to have a briefing on the situation from the wing intelligence officer. Meanwhile radio bulletins were excitedly updating the news. Yesterday’s overthrow of the king of Iraq had been led by left-wing revolutionary officers. In response, the United States was sending a nuclear-equipped armada of seventy-four ships, including three aircraft carriers and two squadrons of destroyers, to Lebanon. American marines were landing in Lebanon to quell disorder.

For a time at Amherst, I had intended to become a historian of the Middle East. So I was aware of the enormous historic forces that were colliding in the region, and I was trying to figure out what role our SAC bombers were supposed to play in the collision.

The Arab world in the early and mid-1950s was being swept by rebellion against European colonialism and its own feudal monarchies. By 1956, Syria, Morocco, and Tunisia had all won independence from France, which was being torn apart by Algeria’s long and bloody war of independence. Britain’s vast global empire was rapidly disintegrating. It had lost its greatest colony, India, which it had divided into India and Pakistan in 1947. The next year it lost Burma. The empire was desperately struggling to maintain its dominance over Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq through ties to their puppet monarchies, but had suffered a huge setback in Egypt when nationalist forces, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Farouk and established a secular republic. So in 1955 Britain instituted the counter-revolutionary Baghdad Pact among the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Two years earlier, the United States had orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government and the establishment of Shah’s brutal dictatorship. Nasser opposed the Baghdad Pact, supported the Algerian war of independence, and linked up with India in pushing a global movement of the nonaligned nations that would accept aid from either side in the Cold War while allying with neither. As punishment, the Eisenhower administration on July 19, 1956, withdrew its promised offer of aid in building the giant Aswan Dam, designed to harness the power of the Nile and expand agriculture in its floodplain.^[1] Nasser responded a week later by nationalizing the Suez Canal. Israel, Britain, and France promptly invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the Suez, leading to the closure of the canal for several months. Like most Americans, Jane and I were relieved when President Eisenhower in October vowed “there will be no United States involvement in these present hostilities” and felt proud of our nation when he rebuked the invaders and led the United Nations to force their withdrawal from Egypt.^[2]

But just three months later, in January 1957, the president in his “Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East,” announced a policy soon known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, which was codified into U.S. law by Congress in March. The law empowered the president to use our armed forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence” of any Middle East nation “requesting such aid against armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.” So was Lebanon requesting such aid? If so, what nation “controlled by international communism” was engaged in “armed aggression” against it? Was it Iraq, the home of the Baghdad Pact, whose king, a staunch ally of Britain and the United States, had been overthrown just the day before? A more likely culprit was the United Arab Republic (UAR), formed in February 1958, when Syria had merged with Egypt. But because Nasser had outlawed the Communist Party, Syria had to outlaw its own Communist Party as a condition of the merger.^[3]

To find out what was really going on, I eagerly awaited the wing briefing, an assembly of all the officers and flight crews of both squadrons. The wing intelligence officer, a captain in a spiffy starched uniform, strode to the map in front of the large auditorium where we sat, now not in uniforms but in flight suits.

“Over here is Egypt,” he indicated with a tap of a long wooden pointer. “It is now run by a man named Nasser. Nasser is a Communist dictator. The first thing he did when he took over was to seize the Suez Canal from its legal owners and start to run it in the interest of his bosses in Moscow. A few months ago he grabbed Syria, which is over here,” he said, tapping with his pointer. “This country over here is Iraq.” Tap, tap. “Yesterday, Nasser’s fifth column inside Iraq overthrew the democratic government and set up another Communist state.

“Now, notice the position of Lebanon.” Emphatic tap, tap, tap. “Lebanon is right in the middle. It is the next target for Nasser’s Communist aggression. Last month the Communists in Lebanon began open warfare against the democratically elected government. We have landed in Lebanon to protect the legitimate government, to safeguard world peace, and to show the Communists they can’t keep making incursions into the Free World. If we don’t hold the line here, the entire Mideast will fall to Moscow.”

Of course our lecturing captain had not written this script. Much the same briefing was no doubt being given to every SAC unit and throughout the U.S. military. In truth, it was just a slightly dumbed-down application of the Eisenhower Doctrine. In order to invoke the doctrine, the president needed to brand the UAR as a nation controlled by the international Communist conspiracy to take over the world. This was indeed central to the speech that he delivered on national radio and TV at 6:30 p.m., a few hours after the wing briefing, in which he cited “Soviet and Cairo” support of the revolution in Iraq and turmoil in “tiny Lebanon” as part of the Communist campaign of “direct and indirect aggression throughout the world.” This was how, Eisenhower declared, “the Communists attempted to take over Greece in 1947,” “took over the mainland of China in 1949,” and “attempted to take over Korea and Indo China, beginning in 1950.”^[4]

“Any questions?” the captain asked, as he concluded his briefing. “Lieutenant Franklin, you have a question?”

“Well, sir,” I said, standing up with an acceptable military posture, “it’s more of a statement. Nasser is not a Communist, and there are no Communist governments in the Mideast. In fact, Nasser actually outlawed the Communist Party in Egypt. I think that we’re driving these people into the arms of the Communists by invading their country. And I think we here in the wing should be told the truth about what’s going on.”

I hastily sat down. A wing briefing was not a college class, so what were they going to do with me? To make matters worse for the captain, the smart-ass guy who was arguing with him was the intelligence officer of one of the wing’s two squadrons. He reddened, looked around uncertainly, and then walked over to whisper with Colonel Zethren, the wing commander.

“Lieutenant Franklin,” the captain said finally, “we just want the men here to understand the basic facts of the situation. I’ll be glad to discuss these more intricate details with you privately. Please report to me at wing headquarters.”

This was my one and only political act in my Air Force career. If one can even call it a political act. Maybe it was more like all my talking out of turn that had kept getting me suspended from P.S. 99 in Brooklyn. I had no idea in 1958 how many times in the future my big mouth would get me in trouble.

When I went up to wing headquarters, I expected at least a reprimand and maybe the threat of a court-martial. But all I encountered was the captain, who seemed flustered and embarrassed as he asked me, as a favor, “not to confuse the men.” “After all,” he said, “we’re not being asked to make policy, just implement it. Our responsibility in Intelligence is to explain it in such a way that the men are willing to carry it out.”

What a revealing statement. Would any intelligence officer have uttered such words on December 8, 1941?

The captain’s words, however, apply beautifully to all of our wars ever since, most obviously in the Middle East and southern Asia stretching from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Each requires some simple rationale that ignores history.

Life for all the intelligence officers, presidents, and other Pied Pipers leading us off to war was sure a lot easier when they had that good old Cold War narrative about the international Communist conspiracy against the Free World, even though it did take lots of red makeup to make Gamal Abdel Nasser look anything like a Soviet puppet and total ignorance of Middle East reality to justify a U.S. invasion of Lebanon. After the final dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 flushed that handy Cold War narrative down the garbage disposal, the hawks had to work much harder to create narratives to feed to the public.

So the 1991 invasion of Iraq relied on spurious narratives, such as one concocted by PR firm Hill & Knowlton of Saddam Hussein’s army murdering babies by throwing them out of incubators in Kuwait, as well as the extremely effective myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran, which was used to turn the impending war into a demonstration of our loyalty to the American soldiers sent to fight it.^[5] Our 2003 invasion of Iraq depended on a melodramatic fantasy about Saddam’s fictitious arsenal of nuclear bombs and chemical weapons raining down on America. In 1958, President Eisenhower could safely count on Congress, the media, and the American people to back all necessary military action—even by those nuclear-loaded B-52s and Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers—to defend “tiny Lebanon” from “armed aggression” by “international Communism.” In 2003, faced with a skeptical Congress and a swelling antiwar movement, President George W. Bush had to scare us into war with the specter of Iraq’s alleged intercontinental drones, part of its “growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons” on “missions targeting the United States,” as well as a “mushroom cloud” looming over America.^[6]

So now we have a tangle of narratives that resembles a box of miscellaneous fishing worms, any of which we are free to bite on. Besides those weapons of mass destruction now casually known as WMDs (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Libya), there’s the Brutal Tyrant (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin) and the Axis of Evil (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea). Then of course there’s the omnipresent and eternal War on Terror with its cast of generic “bad guys,” not to be confused with the heroic Freedom Fighters—such as the jihadists we armed and organized in Afghanistan in 1978, who would ride victory in 1988 as those glorious Mujahedeen led by Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III.

Looking backward from today’s Forever War to what we now know about the events of the 1950s, we can clearly see a continuum of U.S. Middle East policy, remarkably consistent in its hidden and masked real purposes.

Since 1952, Washington had been financing Camille Chamoun, Lebanon’s Christian president, who served as a reliable guardian of U.S. economic interests, particularly the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, constructed by the Bechtel Company to bring the oil from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon’s port city of Sidon, from which it was shipped to Europe and the United States.^[7] Owned and run by Aramco (the Arab-American Oil Company), then a consortium of U.S. companies now known as Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Chevron, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline seemed threatened by the waves of anti-imperialism rising throughout the Arab world, especially after the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel. Planning for Operation Blue Bat, the official title of the 1958 invasion of Lebanon, began in the fall of 1957, a few months after Congress signed off on the Eisenhower Doctrine.^[8] Civil war soon broke out in Lebanon, with much of the Muslim population and even many Christian Arabs eager to link up with the UAR. On May 13, 1958, Secretary of State Dulles sent detailed instructions to Chamoun on how to word a request for U.S. military aid, explaining that since there was no “armed aggression from any country controlled by International Communism,” the request would simply have to ask for help “in protecting American life and property” and preserving “the independence and integrity of Lebanon.” On the same day, the Sixth Fleet was ordered to sail toward Lebanon. By May 26, the Sixth Fleet was routinely stopping merchant ships off the Lebanese coast. By late June, Chamoun’s government, despite U.S. military aid, controlled at most 30 percent of Lebanese soil, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.^[9]

Washington turned for help to King Faisal of Iraq, asking him to back up the regimes of both Jordan (ruled by his cousin King Hussein) and Lebanon, and thus provide an Arab component to any U.S. intervention. Faisal responded by ordering Iraq units from its frontier with Iran to move to Jordan. Since the intended route would take the troops near Baghdad, their officers decided to seize the opportunity to overthrow the hated royal regime. They met practically no resistance in Baghdad. At 6:30 a.m. on July 14, the rebels proclaimed on Baghdad radio the end of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic of Iraq, to be governed by a democratically elected president and parliament. The army units stationed in Baghdad joined the revolution, and the population of the city jubilantly poured into the streets, shouting anti-imperialist slogans, destroying the statues of King Faisal and the British general who had seized Baghdad in 1917, and burning down the old British Chancellery.^[10]

When Chamoun heard the news from Baghdad, he sent the request dictated to him by Dulles a month earlier when Washington, despite its secret funding of the monarchy, had no inkling of any impending revolution in Iraq.^[11] By the afternoon of July 14, Eisenhower ordered the Sixth Fleet to commence Operation Blue Bat. According to the official chronology, the first military action came just before 1 p.m. Lebanon time (7 a.m. EDT) on July 15, as the Marines were landing. But, as I knew from our experience at Loring, those B-52s had launched on their SAC Emergency War Plan hours earlier, speeding with thermonuclear bombs toward the Soviet Union late in the night of July 14–15.^[12]

Like the wing briefing, President Eisenhower’s speech to the nation in the late afternoon of July 15 was also a briefing designed to explain policy in a way to get us all willing to carry it out. When he included what he called the Communist attempt to “take over” “Indo China, beginning in 1950,” it meant little or nothing to me in 1958. Within a few years, trying to undo that little falsification of history would become central to my life.

This essay is adapted from H. Bruce Franklin’s Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War.

Notes.

1) David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Bantam, 1965), 125. ↑

2) President Eisenhower’s speech to the nation, October 31, 1956, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10685, accessed October 10, 2016. ↑

3) Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: America’s Confrontation with Insurgent Movements around the World (New York: New American Library, 1968), 147–151. ↑

4) “Statement of the President following the Landing of United States Marines at Beirut, July 15, 1958,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11133, accessed January 27, 2018. ↑

5) Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 20; Lembcke argues persuasively that the myth of the spat-upon vet was what won widespread emotional support for the war. ↑

6) “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat,” White House news release, October 7, 2002, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html, accessed January 27, 2018. ↑

7) Wise and Ross, U-2 Affair, 337; Irene Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945–1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), passim. Deeply researched in previously classified documents, this updated edition shows the central role of U.S. oil interests; it is indispensable for any understanding of the history and chronology of events. ↑

8) Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 310–311. ↑

9) Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield, 13, 245–249, 253. ↑

10) Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), chap. 41, which is the primary source for all other accounts of the 1958 revolution. Widely recognized as the indispensable history of modern Iraq, this 1,300-page masterpiece of scholarship and analysis is difficult to obtain. Therefore, references are to the Kindle edition (London: Saqi Books, 2012), Kindle locations 16904–16918, 16936–16942, 16987–16994. ↑

11) Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Anchor Books, 2008), 258, 262. ↑

12) While writing this, I wondered if my memory might be wrong and the B-52 launch was really on the night of July 15. But my Air Force Form 5A, the official log of my flights, records my night flight from Dow to Loring on July 14 and my day flight from Loring to Dow on July 15.

War With Iran Would Not Mean Happy Ending For Middle East

by Shireen T. Hunter

A recent article by veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius urges Democratic Party politicians to adopt a harder posture on Iran. He seems to suggest that if Iran were to stop interfering in Middle East politics, all of the region’s problems would be solved. Ignatius quotes Karim Sajadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace: “Tehran’s behavior is a constant source of friction in the region; really stability and security won’t be possible until Iran backs off.”

Such reasoning implies that Iran is at the root of all of the region’s problems. Yet a more balanced look at the history of Middle East’s problems and conflicts shows that since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran’s activities have at most complicated some of these conflicts rather than caused them.

Indeed, the Islamic revolution itself was partly the consequence of these disputes. For example, throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, various radical Arab states—from Nasser’s Egypt to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi plus various Palestinian groups—helped Islamist and leftist opposition groups in Iran with money and training, including in the PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon.

The Israeli-Palestinian Dispute

According to a pervasive view since the 1990s, had it not been for Iran’s nefarious activities, the Palestinians and Israelis would now be living in peace.

True, Iran has supported some Palestinian groups such as Hamas. However, Iran has never been in a position to dictate to these groups or to prevent agreements between Israel and the Palestinian groups. For example, Iran could not prevent the Oslo accords of 1993. Nor was Iran responsible for their failure. Rather, the political dynamics of Israel and the Palestinians played the more decisive role.

Today, if President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” is less than a resounding success—despite the support of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE along with the acquiescence of Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco—it will be because of the intrinsic dynamics of the problem. The bottom line is that no country can either force the Palestinians into an accommodation that they view as unfair or prevent them from reaching an accommodation if the offer is fair.  In short, no country can either deliver the Palestinians or block peace between them and Israel. Therefore, even in the aftermath of a war with Iran, the Palestinian issue would remain as intractable as it is today.

Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq

Lebanon’s present-day predicament is also a direct consequence of the Palestinian problem. Lebanon plunged into a long civil war when King Hussein of Jordan, during the so-called Black September Operations of 1970, kicked the PLO out of Jordan and into Lebanon. Then came the 1982 Israeli invasion of the country. This opened the way for now revolutionary Iran to create a toehold for itself. Iranian influence, through its relationship with the Hezbollah, has made Lebanese relations with Israel more problematic. However, Hezbollah is only able to do so because of the ongoing and unresolved Palestinian problem. If a viable agreement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians, Hezbollah’s ability to influence Arab politics would plummet.

No doubt, Iran’s help to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria has helped bolster it. But the real game- changer in the Syrian drama was Russia’s decision to stick by Assad. It was Russia’s entry into the conflict that raised the stakes of an extended American military intervention in Syria, not the presence of some ragtag Shia militia. Again, if the Israelis and the Western powers had offered Assad an attractive enough deal, such as the return of the Golan Heights, he would have ended his alliance of convenience with Iran. Even if Assad goes, no Syrian government with any legitimacy would forgo claims to the Golan. Thus Iran or no Iran, there would always be tension between Israel and any viable Syrian government. Only a truncated Syria could be persuaded to give up its claim to Golan.

Iran’s influence in Baghdad, which is much exaggerated, is the direct result of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. This war was also waged under the misapprehension that once Saddam Hussein was gone, a thousand democratic flowers would bloom and the winds of democratic change would also topple Iran’s Islamist regime.

Yet the war only succeeded in bringing into the open Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian divisions and unleashing intense regional competition for influence within Iraq’s new political setup. If Iran disappeared from the map of the Middle East, Iraqi Shias would not likely submit to Saudi Arabia. In fact, more than Iranian machinations, it was the behavior of Iraq’s Sunnis towards the new government in Baghdad and the Saudi, Turkish, and Qatari sabotage of Iraq’s Shia-dominated government that led the country to turn towards Iran. It would also be naïve to assume that any Iranian government would have allowed Iraq to become a source of threat. The memory of Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran and the eight-year-long war is still very much alive.

Meanwhile, war with Iran would almost certainly extend into Iraq and could result in its total dismemberment.

Yemen

Yemen’s problems, too, have deeper roots related to its own ethnic and sectarian makeup and the impact of intra-Arab politics going back to the pro-Nasser coup d’etat of 1962 and the ensuing civil war. Saudi Arabia’s predatory approach to Yemen also dates back to the 1930s as part of the House of Saud’s conquest of Arabia. The current Houthi rebellion is the continuation of an as-yet-unresolved civil war.

Iran has used the Houthi rebellion as leverage against Saudi Arabia. However, when the Saudi King asks the United States to “cut the head of this snake”—Iran—no wonder Tehran wants to create trouble for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is currently facing an utter mess not because of Iran but as a result of the behavior of its reckless crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. In a hurry to assert his position at home and in the Arab world, he embarked on a foolish adventure by launching the attack on Yemen. Moreover, the Yemen situation has become more complicated because another reckless crown prince, in the UAE, has seen the war as an opportunity to stake his claim to regional influence.

A war against Iran is more likely to complicate the situation in Yemen than to resolve it in any way satisfactory to the West and its Arab allies.

The notion that the Middle East’s problems are caused by a single country or a single personality has always been faulty. In the 1950s, it was thought that once you got rid of Mossadegh and later Gamal Abdel Nasser then everything would be fine. Then the focus shifted to Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qadhafi. Even the shah of Iran, whose ambitions were once seen in the mid-1970s as dangerous for the Middle East, did not escape unscathed from this mind set.

None of these personalities has survived, and their countries are in turmoil. So is the Middle East despite many wars and coup d’etats. Another war would only make the situation worse for all concerned. In fact, the Middle East’s problems are partially the result of these external interventions. Real peace in the Middle East will come only if the legitimate security interests of all countries and peoples are addressed. Efforts at absolute subjugation always lead to new rebellions.

SHIREEN HUNTER

Shireen T. Hunter is a Research Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Her latest book is Iran's Relations with Arab States: Dynamics of Conflict and Accommodation (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming May 2019).

The Queen's Secret (2)

In the previous episode, we talked on the formation of Britain and its political regime. This time we will dwell upon the coming to power of Elizabeth II, the 93-year-old queen of the country.

Between the two World Wars, in the waning days of the British colonialist power, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21, 1926. In those days, nobody imagined that the newborn girl would one day become the Queen of the country. Her father Albert was the second son of George V. In 1936, George V died and his elder son Edward became the king as Edward VIII. The new king fell in love with and wanted to marry with a divorced American woman called Wallis Simpson. However, according to the British Church, the second marriage was possible only when the former spouse had died. But Simpson's husband was alive and she was not allowed to marry again.

This was not the first time that the marriage of the English king was making a problem. In the 16thcentury, Henry VIII faced problem when he wanted to divorce his wife and marry with another woman; since in those days, the English obeyed the Roman Catholic church which deemed divorce as forbidden. Thus, the king separated the English church from the papal authority and called himself as the head of religion in England; hence he decreed the permission for divorce. His chief minister was executed due to his opposition to the action.

The licentiousness of Edward VIII coupled with the reports of the British intelligence staff on the immorality of Wallis Simpson caused scandal for the residents of Buckingham Palace. Edward VIII would oppose the policies of the British government, too. The prime minister's threatening on resignation of the cabinet and reluctance of the parties to form a government forced Edward to resign on December10, 1936. Thus, his brother Albert ascended the throne as George VI. Now Elizabeth was the heir apparent of Britain. Three years after the breakout of WWII, Europe and some other countries were plunged in war.

Buckingham Palace is the residence of the British royal family. With an area of 77 thousand square meters, it has 775 rooms, 760 windows, 1514 doors and 800 personnel. Behind the doors, a woman lives who has been the longest reigning monarch and everything in Britain leads to her. Britain or United Kingdom is the name given to a land which comprises England and the usurped lands of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Elizabeth II is considered the queen of the Commonwealth countries (aka the lands which had long been colonized on gunpoint during the last centuries). Some of these colonies got their independence and possessed separate government and parliament; while the head state is considered the chief political person in their system and exercises its influence on them through the appointment of a governor general. The governor general is indeed the representative of the Queen in the country and enjoys a position superior to that of the prime minister of the country. These are called the Commonwealth countries. Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Canada and Granada are among these countries. All of these countries are under London's influence especially while voting in the UN.

MI6 is one of the most horrific intelligence apparatuses in the world. The British media pretend that this apparatus is working under the government and the Queen has no influence on them while in reality it is the tool in the hand of the Queen and has staged many coups in different countries. Perhaps Iran was the first country where the British Queen thought of wielding her trans-border power. In 1953, Britain in complicity with the US, toppled the legal government of Mohammad Mosaddeq and reinstated the Shah. After the coup, the British Queen entered the scene in 1961 in favor of the coup leaders and the illegal despotic regime of Shah. She came to Iran to show that she was ready to preserve the Iranian monarchy at any cost.

Egypt was the second destination of the Queen's intervention abroad. Gamal Abdel Nasser annulled monarchy and nationalized the Suez Canal after taking power. Both of the governments of Iran and Egypt were opposed to the illegal Zionist regime of Israel. Iran severed political ties with Israel and Abdel Nasser intended to bring Israel to its knees. Was the Queen supporting the royal system in Egypt? In response, it should be said that shortly after the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the British Royal Army fought alongside France and Israel against Egypt with the permission of Elizabeth II. The onslaught of the colonialist countries against the Egyptian nation caused grave scandal for the Queen. The designation of Harold Macmillan to premiership by the Queen, without referring to the votes of the conservative majority party, stirred ample criticism against the Queen. In 1963, with the resignation of Macmillan, the Queen appointed Alec Douglas-Home as the next prime minister. Thus, the Queen showed that the appointment and dismissal of ministers is actually in the hand of the Queen and she doesn’t consider it necessary to abide by the majority vote.   

Tel Aviv fears Hezbollah more than ever

By: Mohammad Ghaderi

TEHRAN, Jan. 07 (MNA) – Israelis are riddled with fear, fear of Hezbollah missile capability and the invaluable experience of Lebanese resistance fighters in the Syrian War.

Israeli troops in the newly created Gates of Fire Battalion simulated war with Hezbollah in northern occupied land in December 2018. The battalion held a training program during the past month in which it practiced a wide range of scenarios it might encounter during a war.

Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Yuval Steinitz, Israel's Minister of Energy, saying that “Hezbollah missiles may target all of Israel. Zionists consider Hezbollah a very dangerous and highly experienced enemy.”

The Israeli Defense Forces, referring to the precision of the Lebanese Hezbollah missiles, writes: “Hezbollah is capable of targeting Israel's critical facilities, and the 2006 Lebanon War seems nothing compared to a conflict with Hezbollah in future.”

Daniel “Danny” Rubinstein, an Israeli journalist, said that “Hassan Nasrallah is a great figure. Gamal Abdel Nasser fought for six days, but Hassan Nasrallah kept Israelis four weeks in their place in 2006.”

Tamir Yadai, the head of Israel's Home Front Command warned that “Hezbollah is capable of targeting deep inside Israel massively. In 2019 there will be a more complex and challenging threat to Israel.”

Today, Hezbollah has an arsenal that stores high-precision missiles that can reach all over Israel.

Hezbollah is now considered Israel’s first enemy, and this prediction says it all. The Israeli regime has announced a plan to evacuate 22 settlements in the northern part of occupied Palestine in the wake of a war with Hezbollah.

Lately, in a video message with Hebrew subtitles, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement has warned Israel against any offense in Lebanon. The video titled, “If you are impudent, you will regret it”, is part of Nasrallah’s speech against the Zionist regime. The Lebanese Secretary-General says in the clip that any Zionist attack on Lebanon will have a response by Hezbollah. “We will definitely answer any aggression, air strike, and bombing of Lebanon.” The video has brought terror among the Israelis, particularly that 80 percent of Israelis who believe what Nasrallah says while having no faith in their own officials.

They are fearful of Nasrallah's threats because they know all too well that the Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrullah does what he says he will.

An Israeli expert bin Ami says, “The problem that Israel faces is that Nasrallah has already proved to be honest and he continues to deter a battle with his threats.”

In contrast, Zionist authorities, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have taken measures to fight Hezbollah to reassure the Israeli Home Front Command. For example, they launched the so-called Operation Northern Shield on December 4 to allegedly locate and destroy Hezbollah tunnels that cross the Blue Line from Lebanon into northern Israel.

On Nasrallah’s reaction to the Israeli operation, Ray Al-Youm newspaper wrote “since Israel started the Operation Northern Shield to destroy the alleged Hezbollah tunnels, the Israeli media have not been able to get a reaction from the Lebanese Secretary-General, and that has frustrated the Tel Aviv policymakers.” The print media also points out the dispute between Prime Minister Netanyahu and commanders of the Israeli army and says that “Netanyahu has called for the renaming of the operation, but the commanders of the Israeli army opposed it.”

At the request of the US - to discuss Hezbollah's cross-border attack tunnels - the UN Security Council was scheduled to meet on December 19. However, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) confirmed the tunnels do not appear to surface in Israel and thus far to have exit points on the Israeli side.

Following that failed Operation Northern Shield in the early days of the New Year, Israelis established a new battalion, called the Fire Gates, to defend the Northern Front against Hezbollah.

According to the Times of Israel, the newly formed battalion is under the command of Amir Baram Brigade general in the northern Palestine territories. The unit is made up of reservists freshly released from the Golani Infantry Brigade's Reconnaissance Battalion. The drill lasting about five days and focused on “conquering Hezbollah.”

The Israelis Gates of Fire battalion has been ridiculed in Lebanon. Ali Shoeib, a prominent Lebanese journalist said on his Twitter “thank God we live in a time when our enemies, because of the fear of our resistance, launch defensive battalions, after they said they were capable of occupying our capital with only military music.”

What remains certain is that the operations carried by the Israeli forces show they fear the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance fighters and live in fear. 

EGYPT A spring far away

By K.P. FABIAN

February 2, 2011: Pro-government demonstrators, below, and anti-government demonstrators, above, clash in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Events that followed Hosni Mubarak’s ouster prove that Egypt was pregnant with a revolution that was abortable. Now the military’s hold over the country is real.

WE need to answer first where Egypt has come from if we need to understand where Egypt is now, five years after the 2013 military coup that toppled the first democratically elected President, and why it is, where it is? Where do we start? Our question can be phrased differently: Why Egypt, “where it all began” as Egyptians rightly remind visitors to their historically rich country, is not yet a democracy, not even moving towards being one?

It is not generally known that Egypt made a move towards democracy way back in 1881 when Col. Ahmad Urabi (1841-1911) successfully revolted against the ruler and compelled him to proclaim a new constitution providing for a constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately for Egypt and the Arab world, the imperial powers, the United Kingdom and France, worked together and stopped Egypt’s march towards democracy. The U.K. resorted to “gunboat diplomacy”; the ruler surrendered with alacrity; and Col. Urabi was exiled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where he died. The imperial powers saw a danger to their interests in a democratic Egypt. They had lent huge amounts to the ruler, partly to support his extravagant lifestyle, and they were not sure whether a Col. Urabi-led democratically elected government would resort to the needed austerity measures to pay back the loan that was earning unconscionably high interest rates.

Similarly, the imperial powers prevented Iran from consolidating its democracy under Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953. To safeguard its unjustified hold on Iran’s oil, Britain persuaded the United States to carry out a coup in Iran when that country moved towards a constitutional monarchy. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spent about $10,000 to arrange that coup to overthrow Mossadeq and restore Mohammad Reza Shah, whose rule lasted until 1979.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser (right) with visiting Indonesian President Sukarno at Cairo airport. Nasser, who used the military to consolidate his power, was succeeded by Anwar Sadat from the military.

The next question is why Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), who led the 1952 revolution, did not set Egypt on the road to democracy. Of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru was the only true democrat. Josef Tito in Yugoslavia, admired by the West because he stood up to Joseph Stalin, Sukarno in Indonesia, and Nasser had no intention of ushering in democracy as they wanted to consolidate their personal power as rulers.

Nasser, who used the military to consolidate his power was succeeded by Anwar Sadat from the military. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 because he signed a peace deal with Israel. Hosni Mubarak from the Air Force took over and ruled until he fled to Alexandria on February 11, 2011.

Let us briefly recall the events that led to Mubarak’s fall. The virtuous virus of the Arab Spring originating in Tunisia, the first country in the Arab world to fell an uncrowned dictator, spread to Egypt, and some Egyptians demonstrated before the Tunisian Embassy in solidarity with the Tunisian revolution in January 2011.

However, even after the Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled on January 14, 2011, the West was convinced that Mubarak was invincible. The author asked some Western ambassadors in Cairo in June 2014 whether following the big demonstration in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, they anticipated Mubarak’s fall within 17 days. Their unanimous answer was that they expected Mubarak to survive the agitation.

On January 17, 2011, Jon Leyne, BBC’s Cairo-based correspondent, reported that Mubarak was unlikely to be toppled. His argument is worth looking at:

“The simple fact is that most Egyptians do not see any way that they can change their country or their lives through political action, be it voting, activism, or going out on the streets to demonstrate. Maybe what is happening in Tunisia will change that. But, in Egypt there are decades of inertia to overcome.”

Jon Leyne was wrong in attributing so much inertia to the Egyptian people. In 1977, Egypt saw “bread riots”, provoked by a steep increase in the price of bread at the behest of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank when Sadat wanted a loan. In the riots 79 people died and 556 were injured. The price rise was reversed.

Cairo-based ambassadors had said that the BBC’s assessment tallied with theirs. Obviously, wish becomes father to thought so often in the diplomatic world as the ambassador accredited to the ruler might be tempted to believe that the ruler cannot be felled. This was the pattern in 1979 in Tehran, too, as the author knows from his personal experience when he was posted there.

Mubarak’s pledge

Mubarak used all the tricks in the trade to remain in power. The January 25 demonstration shook him. On the 28th, a “Friday of Rage”, there was a huge demonstration, and Mubarak came on television and dismissed his Cabinet. The protesters were not impressed; to their delight, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Mubarak urging him to “give meaning to his pledges to provide better economic and democratic opportunities to the Egyptian people”. Washington signalled that it might “review” the $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt. An enraged Saudi Arabia asserted that it would replace the U.S. aid.

The next day, Mubarak appointed his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as Vice President to signal that he no longer wanted his son Gamal Mubarak to succeed him. Ahmed Shafiq became the Prime Minister.

The protests continued with renewed vigour. Mubarak met with the military, and that meeting was projected by the government-controlled media to prove that Mubarak had the support of the military. But, the military was facing a dilemma. It was relieved to see that Gamal, a civilian, would not succeed Mubarak. But, the military wanted a man in uniform to be President and it did not want the anti-Mubarak campaign to bring in a civilian President. Further, a large number of men were serving in the military as part of compulsory military service and getting only a pittance. Would they obey the order to shoot at people?

On February 1, there was the “millioneya”, or gathering of a million, and the army decided that it had to stop supporting Mubarak. The top leadership of the military, known as the SCAF (Supreme Council of Armed Forces), came out with a statement that the armed forces “will not resort to use of force against this great people”. This marked a turning point.

Toppled President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa Mubarak (right) and Gamal Mubarak, behind bars during their trial at the Police Academy in Cairo on September 14, 2013.

Mubarak-supporters arranged for a demonstration in his favour, which did not fool anyone. Anderson Cooper of CNN was assaulted; he reported that it was a demonstration by “hired thugs”.

On February 10, in a long address to the nation, Mubarak promised to hand over power by September 2011. Tahrir Square demonstrators were not impressed; video screens there were hit by “a hail of hurled shoes and sandals”. That day, for the first time, the SCAF, until then always chaired by the President, met without him, sending a clear signal to Mubarak and to those occupying Tahrir Square. It was decided that the SCAF would remain “in continuous session to consider what procedures and measures that may be taken to protect the nation, and the achievements and aspirations of the great people of Egypt”.

On February 11, the SCAF came out with another communique stating that it had taken control. Hours later that day, Suleiman issued a 57-word statement announcing Mubarak’s decision to step down and asking the SCAF to take over.

President Anwar Sadat. He was assassinated in 1981 because he signed a peace deal with Israel.

We need to note that contrary to the popular impression, the SCAF took over power before Mubarak stepped down. In other words, Mubarak stepped down not because of the thunderous roar of the people from Tahrir but because the military had unseated him. Incidentally, Mubarak violated the constitution by asking the SCAF to take over. He should have handed over power to the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament.

When Mubarak fell, it was generally assumed that he fled in response to the demand from his people. Many in Egypt and Egypt’s well-wishers the world over, including this author, were prepared to recall William Wordsworth’s immortal lines on the French Revolution, written when he was 21:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

An abortable revolution

The common notion that there was a revolution in Egypt in 2011 needs correction. Events that took place post-Mubarak proved that it would be more correct to say that Egypt was pregnant with a revolution, which was easily abortable.

There is a widespread misconception about Egypt’s post-Mubarak political journey: President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to transform Egypt into a Sharia-ruled state where Coptic Christians and women would be second-class citizens; there would be separate swimming pools for men and women in five-star hotels, damaging the country’s tourism traffic. Moreover, Egypt would cease to be Egypt under Morsi who made himself above the law by his November 22, 2012, decree. The people of Egypt revolted, and there was a huge risk of civil war and chaos and the military, which never wanted political power, was compelled to step in and remove Morsi to rescue Egypt from perdition.

The deep state

This account is historically flawed. Here is a brief account of how the revolution was aborted. The SCAF had no intention of relinquishing power and taking Egypt towards a true democratic destiny where the military would have no political power. The SCAF looked around and formed an alliance with all those who had benefitted from Mubarak’s rule; the members of that alliance were the higher judiciary, intelligence and security services, the higher bureaucracy, corporate barons and media barons. That alliance is best described as a deep state, which arranged for creating the conditions to “justify” a military coup in July 2013.

After Mubarak fell, the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood did a SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) analysis and concluded that each benefitted from working with the other. The Brotherhood, delegitimised by Nasser in the 1950s, got legitimised and could stand for election. The SCAF came under pressure from street demonstrators to move faster towards election so that power could be handed over to a civilian government. It could play games and delay the move thanks to support from the Brotherhood. The two partners worked together for a while, but the SCAF was Machiavellian and started cheating by dissolving Parliament where the Brotherhood-led coalition had a majority on flimsy “legal” grounds when it appeared that Morsi was likely to win the second round of the presidential election. In short, the military did not want a combination of Brotherhood-dominated Parliament and a Brotherhood President. Further, days before Morsi assumed office on June 30, 2012, the SCAF promulgated a decree taking away all his powers and arrogating to itself the full gamut of executive powers.

President only in name

Morsi was President only in name. He summoned the dissolved Parliament, but the judiciary overruled him; he hastened with the drafting of a constitution by a Constituent Assembly, but his foes walked out of the Assembly and falsely complained that the draft constitution endangered Egypt.

With a non-cooperative bureaucracy, Morsi could not improve the economy. Artificial shortages of petrol were created. The deep state begat a movement called Tamarod (“revolt” in Arabic) that mysteriously appeared on the political scene. It was funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Naguib Sawiris, a Coptic billionaire businessman who owed $1 billion in tax. He donated $28 million to Tamarod and lent it office space. The media cooperated, and a huge disinformation campaign was unleashed against Morsi to portray him as a pharoah with absolute powers.

The intention of the deep state was to dislodge Morsi from power by the time he completed one year in office. The Tamarod arranged for street demonstrations and collected signatures endorsing Morsi’s ouster. It claimed that it had 22 million signatures. The media gave currency to that claim without any verification. Similarly, the claim that “14 to 33 million” Egyptians came on to the street seeking Morsi’s ouster was never scrutinised by the media. Max Blumenthal, an eminent investigative journalist, has exposed the myth about “these millions on the street”.

Ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in the defendant’s cage during a court hearing on charges of inciting the murder of his opponents, in Cairo. A file photograph. Morsi was president only in name.

On June 23, 2012, the SCAF gave an ultimatum to Morsi to talk to the opposition and reach a settlement within seven days. The signalling was perfect. All that the opposition had to do was to reject Morsi’s invitation to talk and it did precisely that. On July 1, General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued another ultimatum to the government settle matters in 48 hours. On July 3, the security guards of Morsi suddenly disappeared and he was kidnapped and removed to an undisclosed place by the military. Obviously, it was an elaborately planned military coup enacted with an impressive choreography reminiscent of a Wagnerian opera that Hitler was fond of.

Uncontested in power

El-Sisi has been in power uncontested. He was elected President in 2014 with 96.9 per cent of the votes. The only other candidate who contested was Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist, who ran against Morsi in 2012. He was reluctant to run but the SCAF detained his daughter and blackmailed him to run. El-Sisi got re-elected in April 2018 with 97.08 per cent of the votes. It may be interesting to recall that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did a shade better than El-Sisi. Hussein got 99.96 per cent of the votes in 1995 and 100 per cent in 2002.

In 2011, Egypt showed interest in India’s electronic voting machines (EVMs), and the Indian Election Commission discussed the matter with its Egyptian counterpart. Later, Egyptian officials told their Indian counterparts that EVMs were not “suitable” for Egypt. The unspoken implication was that EVMs might make rigging more difficult.

Yet another peculiarity of the 2018 election is that El-Sisi’s rivals were either jailed, “kidnapped”, or had to withdraw. Once again there was fear that it was going to be uncontested. The SCAF compelled a long-time El-Sisi supporter, Mohammed Moustafa Moussa, who got 3 per cent of the votes to be contrasted with 7 per cent of “spoiled votes”. Moussa filed his nomination just hours before the deadline. A widely circulated video by Wael Eskander shows a man looking like El-Sisi winning a 100-metre race shooting down fellow runners though he was much ahead of them as he had a head start.

Egypt’s economy under El-Sisi presents a mixed picture. Inflation at 33 per cent in mid 2017 has come down to 15 per cent. Unemployment at 13.2 per cent in 2013 has come down to 11.6 per cent in 2017. Female literacy at 83 per cent in 2005 has come down to 68 per cent in 2015. El-Sisi devalued the Egyptian pound drastically. The national minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds a month equal to $176 in 2013 is only $68 in 2018.

While El-Sisi has had limited success in improving the economy, there are other areas where he has registered considerable success: Unleashing state terror on dissent from the Muslim Brotherhood or elsewhere; suppressing independent media; and moving Egypt away from democracy as fast as possible.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at the House of Representatives on June 2, after he was sworn in as President for a second term. He got re-elected in April with 97.08 per cent of the votes. In 2014, he was elected with 96.9 per cent of the votes.

State terror

The worst manifestation of state terror was the unprovoked and unjustified firing on unarmed gatherings of protesters at two places in Cairo: Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda on August 14, 2013, killing at least 800 people. That atrocity is reminiscent of the 1919 Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, the only difference being that El-Sisi scored a point over the imperialist British by carrying out a huge disinformation campaign to convince a substantial section of the Egyptian population that the state had no option but to kill the “assembled terrorists”.

Mahmoud Abu Zeid, popularly known as Shawkan, was picked up while covering the August 14, 2013, atrocities and has been in jail since then. UNESCO awarded him the World Press Freedom Prize even as he is languishing in jail deprived of medical attention despite suffering from a serious illness.

There is no accurate statistics of journalists in prison as at times they just “disappear”. Journalists who dared to report on “vote buying” in the 2018 presidential election or interviewed opposition candidates were detained or publishers were fined heavily.

By unleashing state terror on the Muslim Brotherhood and by branding its members as terrorists, El-Sisi has taken Egypt away from democracy at a rapid pace. Morsi is in jail, accused of fabricated crimes, including selling state secrets to Qatar. One of the most absurd charges against Morsi is that he walked out of jail in January 2011. Morsi is seriously ill and he is deprived of medical care.

In short, the military, which holds that Egypt should always be ruled by a man in uniform, has succeeded in capturing and retaining power. The best description of what has happened since the January 25, 2011, revolution is best left to Shakespeare:

O, how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day;

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away

We know that the military made the clouds. But, does it mean that the sun of democracy will not shine again in the Egyptian firmament? Democracy needs democrats, and Egypt is currently short of them though the 60,000 people incarcerated by El-Sisi gives some hope that one day the clouds will be dispelled. As the Persian adage says: This too shall pass!