War with Iran?

September 11, 2008 - Examining the likelihood of an attack by Israel on Iran. (John)

The way I see it our world has two distinct futures; one if Israel does NOT attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and a very different one if they do. At a recent lunch with Robert Fisk I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to ask for his estimate of what Israel would do, and I suppose I should take some comfort from the way he brushed it off with a firm “definitely not”.

However during the same lunch he also said that he hadn’t believed the US would be mad enough to invade Iraq until he heard Colin Powel speaking at the UN. Which is thought provoking; why did it take this fantastic journalist a year longer than me to see that they really did intend to go into Iraq? The way I'd seen it from early 2002 was that, despite the US administration projecting a sense of process and deliberation, it was a foregone conclusion. I was convinced that they had made their decision from the start and that the rest was just smoke and mirrors produced for public consumption. So Robert Fisk hadn’t believed the US was mad enough to invade Iraq, and now he doesn’t believe Israel is mad enough to attack Iran. Perhaps he underestimates how mad these people are? Robert Fisk’s articles and books are some of the most insightful I’ve ever read on the Middle East, particularly in terms of how he deals with events at a local level. But, I get the impression that, although usually critical of US and Israeli policy, he essentially believes that their intention is to maintain the status quo (albeit perhaps stupidly, selfishly and sometimes dangerously). This seems an entirely rational point of view, yet this is precisely where Robert and I differ in our views.

Unlike most people I do not believe that the disastrous outcome of Iraq has been a big surprise to the inner circle of the US administration. Actually it follows a pattern of post-colonial strategy. Turn a country into a basket case and they become dependent on the west (often via the IMF and the UN). Their position of weakness then keeps them bowed to the interests of multi-nationals who can then strip the country of its natural resources (in this case oil). But in Iraq’s case there is of course far more to it than just oil. No one should miss the massive strategic importance of the US occupation of Iraq to Israel. It neutralizes one potential enemy, geographically shields it from its most powerful foe (Iran), and creates a barrier between Iran and Syria reducing their ability to work together. If Israel is ever to fight a major war in the Middle East, US occupation of Iraq is an obvious pre-requisite. Additionally, it ensures a massive US deployment in a key strategic location to assist Israel if a war started. It’s complete nonsense that the US is unable to fight another Middle East war. When it comes to conventional warfare it is firepower that counts and that is where the US and its allies are strong. It is only guerilla wars they struggle with. Think, what are the US air force and navy, heavily deployed throughout the region, doing right now? Not much. Sure, the army is bogged down, but it could easily leave civilian areas to their own disarray while being redeployed into the border area with Iran. And you know, only the regular US army is currently deployed. Like in Vietnam the draft could swell its numbers greatly. OK, I know this all sounds pretty mad. Why would anyone want to start a major war in the Middle East? Well the same question could be asked of most of the wars in history; in essence ordinary people like us commonly fail to understand the limitless ambition of the powerful. In this case I don’t believe they are after partial hegemony of the Middle East, but complete hegemony. I believe everything that has happened since Bush was elected to office in 2000 has been stepping stones towards a final “end game”. What president Bush’s famous Axis of Evil speech essentially told us was that there are some powerful people who are really unhappy that some countries in the world that are not playing by their rules, and thus not under a general western hegemony. Within these, the biggest single “rouge” influence is radical Islam, which hates the west and its world system. Ultimately the Neocons know that they either confront the Muslim world head on, or it will slowly become more and more powerful, eventually threatening western domination of the world scene. The economics of oil as a limited resource are one reason for this; another is the higher birth rate in the Islamic world and the spread of Islam into western countries, especially in the EU. The US knows it can win a conventional large-scale Middle Eastern war, and they will accept the ensuing costly occupation as long as it debilitates many of the most powerful Islamic countries and gives the west control over their oil at the same time. If it bankrupts the US in the process, do you think they really care? The elite are internationalists and are more interested in achieving a global agenda than in preserving any specific national interest. Israel, their key partner, while definitely a player in the globalist agenda, also has its own nationalistic reasons. They will never feel safe unless all the neighboring countries who hate them are weak and disorganized. Israel, as a flashpoint of Arab anger, is also the most likely trigger point for any major conflict in the region. I suspect that the globalist end goal is for the US, Israel, UN, or more importantly the western system in general, to control the entire area from Pakistan to Egypt. To this end I believe that both the US and Israel are quite prepared to disrupt the status quo and plunge the world through some pretty dark times to achieve this. Robert Fisk believes we are dealing with sane, though slightly stupid men. My fear is that we are dealing with highly intelligent men who simply mask their insane ambition with this outward bumbling.

Robert has over 30 years on the ground in the Middle East, but he has an interesting blind spot - he hates the Internet. I can understand him being angry with those people that have written lies and rubbish about him and published it on the Internet. I can also understand his frustration with lack of journalistic process. But hating the Internet is actually the equivalent of hating paper. You can’t really hate a medium. It’s not the medium; it’s what is written on it. Yes the Internet is full of trash that we have to learn to filter out, but it is also the last bastion of free media expression. He told the journalism students at his lunch to only write for publications that don’t change their words, not to bother with blogging, and not to work for alternative publications (because they only preach to the converted). Does that really leave anything unless you have a name as big as Robert Fisk? Perhaps if he did read more on the Internet he would have read the Neocon plans for a US dominated world in the PNAC document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, which has a strange obsession with the Middle East and South East Asia. Perhaps he would have also read about Bush’s membership of Skull and Bones, and what that fraternity / old boys club is all about. Perhaps he would have read about George Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his involvement in funding the German Nazi party in the 30’s, and many more things besides these which seldom make it into mainstream media. If he had read more on the Internet then maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to believe politicians and generals. Strangely, for someone so critical of these people, these were actually the sources he referred to when backing his view that Israel would not attack Iran. He mentioned Shimon Perez’s statement in particular.

Maybe Israel will hold back until Iran practically has a nuke in a silo ready to go. But on the other hand, having consistently talked about it, and prepared the public conscience for it over the last two years, could it be possible that the lineup of people now saying they shouldn’t risk an attack is just part of the same smoke and mirrors game we saw leading up to Iraq? Is it possible that all these US generals travelling to Israel recently and saying they are warning the Israeli’s of the dangers of an attack, could actually be involved in planning exactly that? After all, putting out disinformation to keep the enemy off guard is practically a military strategy. Look, don’t mistake me here, I hope that I’m wrong about my impression of all this. I don’t relish seeing the results. But I’ve read everything I can on this situation over the last seven years and at the end of it I feel certain that an end game of some kind is intended. I also feel that everything is in place for it to go ahead pretty much whenever they choose. I’ve also wondered for over a year if they will perhaps wait for a new president to be in the Oval office; a fresh and untarnished leader who could come along and be the hero for everyone to rally around as he sorted out a middle-east mess than was “not his fault”.

Two world wars have shaped much of the geo-political world we live in now. We would all like to think that times have changed, and yet the political state of the world is arguably more unstable than it has ever been. Potential for conflict simmers between US backed Taiwan and China, between US backed Georgia and Russia, between Israel and a host of Middle Eastern countries, between Pakistan and India, between Turkey and Iraq, and in many many more hotspots around the world. We would be mad to believe that powerful men are no longer mad enough to start new wars that may reshape the world even further. Let me be wrong by all means, but let’s also be awake and thinking, not just leaves blown around by the seemingly random winds of mass media.

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