General Martin Dempsey

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders January 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.

Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.

But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to make war on Iran, and it is counting on the influence of right-wing extremist views in U.S. politics to bring pressure to bear on Obama to fall into line with a possible Israeli attack during the election campaign this fall.

Obama still appears reluctant to break publicly and explicitly with Israel over its threat of military aggression against Iran, even in the absence of evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.

Dempsey’s trip was highly unusual, in that there was neither a press conference by the chairman nor any public statement by either side about the substance of his meetings with Israeli leaders. Even more remarkable, no leak about what he said to the Israelis has appeared in either U.S. or Israeli news media, indicating that both sides have regarded what Dempsey said as extremely sensitive.

The substance of Dempsey’s warning to the Israelis has become known, however, to active and retired senior flag officers with connections to the JCS, according to a military source who got it from those officers.

A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commander Patrick McNally, offered no comment Wednesday when IPS asked him about the above account of Dempsey’s warning to the Israelis.

The message carried by Dempsey was the first explicit statement to the Netanyahu government that the United States would not defend Israel if it attacked Iran unilaterally. But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had given a clear hint in an interview on “Face the Nation” January 8 that the Obama administration would not help defend Israel in a war against Iran that Israel had initiated.

Asked how the United States would react if Israel were to launch a unilateral attack on Iran, Panetta first emphasised the need for a coordinated policy toward Iran with Israel. But when host Bob Schieffer repeated the question, Panetta said, “If the Israelis made that decision, we would have to be prepared to protect our forces in that situation. And that’s what we’d be concerned about.”

Defense Minister Barak had sought to dampen media speculation before Dempsey’s arrival that the chairman was coming to put pressure on Israel over its threat to attack Iran, but then proceeded to reiterate the Netanyahu-Barak position that they cannot give up their responsibility for the security of Israel “for anyone, including our American friends”.

There has been no evidence since the Dempsey visit of any change in the Netanyahu government’s insistence on maintaining its freedom of action to attack Iran.

Dempsey’s meetings with Netanyahu and Barak also failed to resolve the issue of the joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise geared to a missile attack, “Austere Challenge ’12″, which had been scheduled for April 2012 but had been postponed abruptly a few days before his arrival in Israel.

More than two weeks after Dempsey’s meeting with Barak, the spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby, told IPS, “All I can say is that the exercise will be held later this year.” That indicated that there has been no major change in the status of U.S.-Israeli discussions of the issue since the postponement of the exercise was leaked Jan. 15.

The postponement has been the subject of conflicting and unconvincing explanations from the Israeli side, suggesting disarray in the Netanyahu government over how to handle the issue.

To add to the confusion, Israeli and U.S. statements left it unclear whether the decision had been unilateral or joint as well as the reasons for the decision.

Panetta asserted in a news conference Jan. 18 that Barak himself had asked him to postpone the exercise.

It now clear that both sides had an interest in postponing the exercise and very possibly letting it expire by failing to reach a decision on it.

The Israelis appear to have two distinct reasons for putting the exercise off, which reflect differences between the interests of Netanyahu and his defence minister.

Netanyahu’s primary interest in relation to the exercise was evidently to give the Republican candidate ammunition to fire at Obama during the fall campaign by insinuating that the postponement was decided at the behest of Obama to reduce tensions with Iran.

Thus Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman, explained it as a “joint” decision with the United States, adding, “The thinking was it was not the right timing now to conduct such an exercise.”

Barak, however, had an entirely different concern, which was related to the Israeli Defence Forces’ readiness to carry out an operation that would involve both attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and minimising the Iranian retaliatory response.

A former U.S. intelligence analyst who followed the Israeli military closely told IPS he strongly suspects that the IDF has pressed Barak to insist that the Israeli force be at the peak of readiness if and when they are asked to attack Iran.

The analyst, who insisted on anonymity because of his continuing contacts with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, said the 2006 Lebanon War debacle continues to haunt the thinking of IDF leaders. In that war, it became clear that the IDF had not been ready to handle Hezbollah rocket attacks adequately, and the prestige of the Israeli military suffered a serious blow.

The insistence of IDF leaders that they never go to war before being fully prepared is a primary consideration for Barak, according to the analyst. “Austere Challenge ’12″ would inevitably involve a major consumption of military resources, he observes, which would reduce Israeli readiness for war in the short run.

The concern about a major military exercise actually reducing the IDF’s readiness for war against Iran would explain why senior Israeli military officials were reported to have suggested that the reasons for the postponement were mostly “technical and logistical”.

The Israeli military concern about expending scarce resources on the exercise would apply, of course, regardless of whether the exercise was planned for April or late 2012. That fact would help explain why the exercise has not been rescheduled, despite statements from the U.S. side that it will be.

The U.S. military, however, has its own reasons for being unenthusiastic about the exercise. IPS has learned from a knowledgeable source that, well before the Obama administration began distancing itself from Israel’s Iran policy, U.S. Central Command chief James N. Mattis had expressed concern about the implications of an exercise so obviously based on a scenario involving Iranian retaliation for an Israeli attack.

U.S. officials have been quoted as suspecting that the Israeli request for a postponement of the exercise indicated that Israel wanted to leave its options open for conducting a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the spring. But a postponement to the fall would not change that problem.

For that reason, the former U.S. intelligence analyst told IPS he doubts that “Austere Challenge ’12″ will ever be carried out.

But the White House has an obvious political interest in using the military exercise to demonstrate that the Obama administration has increased military cooperation with Israel to an unprecedented level.

The Defense Department wants the exercise to be held in October, according to the military source in touch with senior flag officers connected to the Joint Chiefs.

Gareth Porter
IPS News 

An oil-rich country takes control of its own oil fields and cuts out the Western oil companies.

What follows as the night the day, the western countries overthrow the offending government and reinstall their favorite oil companies.

This has happened in both Iran and Iraq.

Right now, the U.S. is threatening Iran with war on grounds that it is making a nuclear weapons.

To begin with, Iran is a peaceful country. It hasn’t started a war in hundreds of years. It only fought when Iraq invaded it in 1980.

In that war, Iraq used chemical weapons that it got from the United States — so here we have an example of an American attack by proxy on Iran without any provocation.

But the United States attacked Iran on its own without using intermediaries in 1953 and overthrew the legitimate government.

Most Americans don’t know about that overthrow. It was engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Since Iran did not even have a nuclear facility in 1953, what could have been the excuse for the attack?

The answer is oil. Iran kicked out the British oil company it felt was cheating it out of a fair profit for the oil it was extracting and took the oil field over from the British.

The British tried to overthrow the “insolent” Iran government but failed. Iran kicked the British spies out of the country.

So Britain asked the American CIA to overthrow the government and the U.S. did, deposing Prime Minister Mossadegh and putting a king on the throne.

And guess who got the contracts? The western oil companies: Gulf, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco and Mobil — got a 40 percent share of the new National Iranian Oil Company.

And what happened in Iran in 1953 was also going to happen in Iraq in 2003 — the U.S. attacked Iraq after which the Western oil companies got the plum contracts.

“Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera wire service. “But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973.”

And, adds Business Week magazine, “Western producers like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell are enjoying their best access to Iraq’s southern oil fields since 1972,” 1972 was the year Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq’s oil fields. Another big winner of the U.S. invasion: Hunt Oil Co., of Dallas, Texas, run by Ray Hunt, President George W. Bush’s friend and fund-raiser.

Oil industry analyst Juhasz says that ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell aggressively lobbied their governments “to ensure that the invasion would result in an Iraq open to foreign oil companies” and that “they succeeded.” Sure they succeeded. Because the Pentagon works hand-in-glove with the oil industry.

So what we have here is history repeating itself. Whenever Iraq or Iran have been attacked by the U.S. in the past it’s been over oil. That’s the record. Those are facts. But if you like you can believe the U.S. and Israel are threatening to attack only because they’re trying to stop Iran from getting a nuke. That’s an echo of President George Bush’s lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

There’s an inscription from Shakespeare etched on the National Archives building in downtown Washington, D.C. It says, “What’s past is prologue.” Shakespeare was right. Better believe it. And history will repeat itself with a new U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran unless the American people rise up and declare: “No blood for oil.”

Sherwood Ross

Since Egypt remains under control of the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces); the revolution seemingly replaced one corrupt military regime with another; Islamist parties just won 60% of the Parliamentary seats causing some pundits to claim the nation is headed towards a theocracy… some now say the Revolution that toppled Mubarak, ignited to the Arab Spring, and spawned the global Occupy movements has failed.

They would be wrong.

Revolution is the relatively ‘easy’ part. It unites people against someone or something. Seeming anarchy inflames passionate patriots and they can create a groundswell that achieves great results quickly. Democracy and governing? That’s the messy part.

The Tea Party movement of 2009 vocally fought US government tax and spend policies. The Republican Party embraced and took them in. Once they achieved their goals electing 84 Tea Party freshmen (Republicans) to Congress, they were shunted aside by big money Astroturf issues. Despite huge electoral gains in 2010, in the 2012 Presidential election they are a non-factor.

Liberals in Egypt are up against a party that spent 83 years in hiding as an illegal entity, yet remained, quietly, very well organized. When it came time to campaign for Parliamentary seats, The Muslim Brotherhood were visibly campaigning, rebuilding neighbourhoods and villages whilst liberal parties were involved in esoteric discussions debating the size and shape of the peace talks table. Consensus was needed on every point and the lack of leadership, which was critical to winning the 18 days, cost them when it came to broader electoral contest. The MB knew how to campaign. The liberal parties who’d done the heavy lifting of the Revolution were similarly patted on the head and told, “well done, we’ll take it from here.”

And thus has it always been. The ragtag Minutemen fighters of 1776 were replaced by the founders; scholars and thinkers of their day in the Constitutional Congress. What many forget is the USA needed 11 years after declaring independence from the Crown to settle internal battles over states’ rights vs. a more federalist system. It was not all harmonious discourse and Britain was not giving up control of the Colonies without a fight. Two more wars were fought and the discussions were often heated pitting brother against brother. France also needed four years after their revolution. Egypt has had less than 12 months and the fear on the first day remains legitimate, will the military relinquish control to an elected government.

Why is this not headed towards abject failure? Because on January 25th, Egypt’s revolutionaries opened a 60+ year Pandora’s Box of systemic military abuse of the economy and that Genie is not going to ever fit back into the bottle. The people of Egypt suffered attack after attack by a regime that will not easily give up control. There are billions of dollars and military control at stake. The economy though is in a shambles and the tourism lifeblood is off 35%, hammered by scenes of violence in a 10-square block area as people think the entire country is still ablaze. Millions did not march in early February of last year to return to the same system with a different figurehead. Change will come. There will be more protests. More people will die. And all of it is part of a process of becoming free.

The final chapter of Egypt’s Revolution is far from written. The courts could do anything from make Mubarak, his sons and El Adly the scapegoats, convict and even execute them, to set him free and everything in between. The new Parliament will be charged with appointing a committee to write the nation’s new constitution which will affect 80 million Egyptians. They will take this very seriously, are a moderate more secular nation and fears of an Iranian style theocracy are unfounded.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not, as FOX and SKY try to say, a radical party. They are moderates and control 40% of the seats. The more conservative, breakaway Al Nour party alliance has less than 20% of the seats so expect a mostly moderate Egyptian government. The question is how much power will the military allow it to have? Who will lead this government as President? Will he/she be part of a freely elected bicameral government or will a party leader form a coalition government and assume parliamentary style control over the Presidency? These are the question to answer and stories to be told. We will continue to watch with great interest as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya try to become examples for Syria and other Arab, Persian and African states.

The original 18 days live as a testament to the will of the people to be free. These are to be celebrated because they achieved the seeming impossible. For each day starting tomorrow and ending on 11 February, we will publish a brief excerpt of that day’s events 1 year ago from the book Egypt Unshackled: Using Social Media to@#:) the System.

Those 18 days are what Egyptian schoolchildren will read about as avidly as they now read the exploits of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. 25 January – 11 February will forever be the days Egypt welcomed itself back.

Denis Campbell
UK Progressive 

Netanyahu and Obama

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu’s aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.

Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran.

Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.

New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu has been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left his job in September 2010, revealed in his first public appearance after Mossad Jun. 2 that he, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) chief Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin had been able to “block any dangerous adventure” by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

The Hebrew language daily Maariv reported that those three, along with President Shimon Peres and IDF Senior Commander Gadi Eisenkrot, had vetoed a 2010 proposal by Netanyahu to attack Iran.

Dagan said he was going public because he was “afraid there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak”. Dagan also said an Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a war that would “endanger the (Israeli) state’s existence”, indicating that his revelation was not part of a psywar campaign.

It is generally agreed that an Israeli attack can only temporarily set back the Iranian nuclear programme, at significant risk to Israel. But Netanyahu and Barak hope to draw the United States into the war to create much greater destruction and perhaps the overthrow of the Islamic regime.

In a sign that the Obama administration is worried that Netanyahu is contemplating an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta tried and failed in early October to get a commitment from Netanyahu and Barak that Israel would not launch an attack on Iran without consulting Washington first, according to both Israeli and U.S. sources cited by The Telegraph and by veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale.

At a meeting with Obama a few weeks later, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey and the new head of CENTCOM, Gen. James N. Mattis, expressed their disappointment that he had not been firm enough in opposing an Israeli attack, according to Sale.

Obama responded that he “had no say over Israel” because “it is a sovereign country.”

Obama’s remark seemed to indicate a desire to distance his administration from an Israeli attack on Iran. But it also made it clear that he was not going to tell Netanyahu that he would not countenance such an attack.

Trita Parsi, executive director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), who has analysed the history of the triangular relationship involving the United States, Israel and Iran in his book “Treacherous Alliance”, says knowledgeable sources tell him Obama believes he can credibly distance himself from an Israeli attack.

In a December 2 talk at the Brookings Institution, while discussing the dangers of the regional conflict that would result from such an attack, Panetta said the United States “would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, sinking our ships, striking our military bases.”

Panetta’s statement could be interpreted as an effort to convince Iran that the Obama administration is opposed to an Israeli strike and should not be targeted by Iran in retaliation if Israel does launch an attack.

Parsi believes Obama’s calculation that he can convince Iran that the United States has no leverage on Israel without being much tougher with Israel is not realistic.

“Iran most likely would decide not to target U.S. forces in the region in retaliation for an Israeli strike only if the damage from the strike were relatively limited,” Parsi told IPS in an e-mail.

The Obama administration considers the newest phase of sanctions against Iran, aimed at reducing global imports of Iranian crude oil, as an alternative to an unprovoked attack by Israel. But what Netanyahu had in mind in proposing such an initiative was much more radical than the Obama administration or the European Union could accept.

When Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is closely aligned with Netanyahu’s Likud Party, pushed the idea of sanctions against any financial institution that did business with Iran’s Central Bank, the aim was to make it impossible for countries that import Iranian crude to continue to be able to make payments for the oil.

Dubowitz wanted virtually every country importing Iranian crude except China and India to cut off their imports. He argued that reducing the number of buyers to mainly China and India would not result in a rise in the price of oil, because Iran would have to offer discounted prices to the remaining buyers.

Global oil analysts warned, however, that such a sanctions regime could not avoid creating a spike in oil prices.

U.S. officials told Reuters Nov. 8 that sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank were “not on the table”. The Obama administration was warning that such sanctions would risk a steep rise in oil prices worldwide and a worsening global recession, while actually increasing Iranian oil revenues.

But Netanyahu used the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over Congressional action related to Israel to override Obama’s opposition. The Senate unanimously passed an amendment representing Netanyahu’s position on sanctions focused on Iran’s oil sector and the Central Bank, despite a letter from Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner opposing it. A similar amendment was passed by the House Dec. 15.

The Obama administration acquiesced and entered into negotiations with its European allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on reducing imports of Iranian crude oil while trying to fill the gaps with other sources. But a number of countries, including Japan and Korea, are begging off, and the EU is insisting on protecting Greece and other vulnerable economies.

The result is likely to be a sanctions regime that reduces Iranian exports only marginally – not the “crippling sanctions” demanded by Netanyahu and Barak. Any hike in oil prices generated by sanctions against Iran’s oil sector, moreover, would only hurt Obama’s re- election chances.

In an interview with CNN in November, Barak warned the international community that Israel might have to make a decision on war within as little as six months, because Iran’s efforts to “disperse and fortify” its nuclear facilities would soon render a strike against facilities ineffective.

Barak said he “couldn’t predict” whether that point would be reached in “two quarters or three quarters or a year”. The new Israeli “red line” would place the timing of an Israeli decision on whether to strike Iran right in the middle of the U.S. presidential election campaign.

Netanyahu, who makes no secret of his dislike and distrust of Obama, may hope to put Obama under maximum pressure to support Israel militarily in a war with Iran by striking during a campaign in which the Republican candidate would be accusing him of being soft on the Iranian nuclear threat.

If the Republican candidate is in a strong position to win the election, on the other hand, Netanyahu would want to wait for a new administration aligned with his belligerent posture toward Iran.

Meanwhile, the end of U.S. Air Force control over Iraqi airspace with the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq has eliminated what had long been regarded as a significant deterrent to Israeli attack on Iran using the shortest route.

Gareth Porter
IPS News 

Sections of the country that saw the greatest resistance to the U.S. occupation remained unbending. In Fallujah, a thousand protesters burned American flags, and in Sadr City, protests welcomed the withdrawal of the U.S. troops. “The Americans are leaving behind them a destroyed country. The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them,” said Mariam Khazim. “They left thousands of widows and orphans.”

Drums of War

By late 2001, it was clear that the Bush administration wished to extend the battlefield in its Global War on Terror from Afghanistan to Iraq. Hours after 9/11 itself, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scrawled, “Hit S.H. @ same time – not only UBL,” which is to say hit Saddam Hussein (Iraq) at the same time, not only Osama bin Laden (Afghanistan).

The drums of war beat louder and louder into 2002. By the end of the summer, it appeared as if war would be inevitable with pressure on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and on the European partners moving in one direction alone. By the summer of 2002, President George W. Bush had been making noises about the need to strike Iraq before it completed production of an array of biochemical weapons. Bush went to the United Nations in September, warning: “Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.” A few weeks later, in his weekly radio address, Bush said: “Saddam Hussein recently authorised Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons – the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.” The narrative from the White House was simple: Iraq had chemical weapons, and if the U.S. does not act in some way (preferably militarily) then Saddam Hussein would use those weapons in a replay of 9/11.

Washington’s narrative was thin. There was no evidence that Iraq had anything
to do with 9/11, and less that it had the capability or investment in a strike on the U.S. The IAEA’s then Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei cautioned the U.N. on the authenticity of the U.S. claims (the IAEA and ElBaradei won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2005). Nothing seemed to add up. In 2007, ElBaradei told Le Monde that the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was “a glaring example of how, in many cases, the use of force exacerbates the problem rather than solves it”.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, otherwise quite amenable to Washington, brought back the Swedish politician Hans Blix to run a U.N. study team of Iraq’s weapons programme. Blix, who was quite outspoken about Iraq’s obduracy in the 1990s, was nonetheless cautious in 2002. There was simply no evidence that required the international community (namely the U.S.) to go to war. “I have detractors in Washington,” Blix told The Guardian. “There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media, not that I cared very much.” Blix is not known for such colorful language. He had, however, run up against a massive media blitz orchestrated by the White House and conducted enthusiastically by the Murdoch machine. (At Davos in 2007, Charlie Rose asked Murdoch if News Corp. had shaped the agenda for the Iraq War. “No I don’t think so,” replied Murdoch. “We tried. We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East [West Asia]”.)

As debates continued in the U.N., with the White House eager for Security Council sanction for its new war, the anti-war movement germinated in the U.S. and elsewhere. It would come to a head when 10 million people marched against the impending war on Iraq in February 2003, perhaps the largest coordinated protests of all time (some estimate that the number is closer to 30 million). Three million people took to the streets of Rome, while about a million staggered through the very cold avenues of New York City.

The alliance against the war was vast: it included those who were generally anti-war to those who were against what they saw as an unnecessary war. Among the latter was a State Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who gave a well-regarded anti-war speech in Chicago in October 2002. “I don’t oppose all wars,” Obama told the crowd. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

The war nonetheless began on March 19, with a campaign known as “Shock and Awe”. Saddam Hussein’s military collapsed. Resistance to the U.S. forces came not from the organised units of the Iraqi military but from new guerilla fighters, some Baathists, but mostly Iraqi nationalists of various stripes. Even as Bush declared that combat operations ended in May, this was far from the case. Combat operations would continue into 2010, with more U.S. personnel killed in Iraq (over 4,000) than Americans in the attacks on 9/11. The death toll of Iraqis is too horrendous to comprehend (some count a million dead, with The Lancet offering a slightly smaller number – near 700,000).

Soon after the invasion phase morphed into a U.S. occupation of Iraq, it became clear that all the reasons for the war had been false. As U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq, there is little discussion about this particular problem: that no chemical or biological weapons, or weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), were found, that no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda could be established, and that Saddam Hussein had no plans to attack the U.S.

In the past few years, memoirs by the main players in the Bush administration have appeared, with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld defending their roles and State Department head Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice putting the onus on Cheney and Rumsfeld. Few recall the lies that led to war. Part of the problem for the Bush team is that despite the outcome, when the war was being planned they were all in agreement. “On one major issue, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld were in total agreement – the war in Iraq,” writes Elisabeth Bumiller in her biography of Rice. “Rice helped conceive it and was one of its chief advocates, and when the President finally asked her if he should take the country to war, she said yes.” No one has taken responsibility for the Iraqi fiasco. At most the former managers of the country simply blame each other for poor execution of the war (too little planning, say some, too few troops, say others).

Obama, who had made his own position clear in 2002, could not revisit them in 2011: he is now the Commander in Chief and would find it awkward to belittle the sacrifices of troops who were sent to fight a false war. At most Obama could acknowledge the debate before the war, with the lead-up “a source of great controversy here at home, with patriots on both sides of the debate”. The Iraq war was not perfect, he accepted, but its outcome was good, with the troops leaving behind “a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people”. American liberalism is not capable of any more than that.

To go beyond this is to accept that Iraq was not a “dumb war” but the outcome of a system premised on militarism and one that is capable of the harshest violence against its enemies. During the week of the pull-out, a reporter for The New York Times found 400 pages of U.S. military investigations on the 2005 massacres at Haditha, where U.S. marines killed 24 Iraqis (including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, children and toddlers). Most of the U.S. troops had been acquitted by their justice system, leaving a bad taste in the Iraqi body politic. As Michael Schmidt put it in The Times, “That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House could not accept.”

It was the aftermath of Haditha that forced the Iraqi government to no longer give a carte blanche to the U. S. troops (with the Sadrites, a parliamentary partner of Maliki’s government, putting pressure on the Prime Minister not to allow U.S. troops to continue on such terms that allow Iraqis to be humiliated). The Iraqi Parliament, in a sense, ejected the U.S. because Washington would not allow its troops to come under Iraqi jurisdiction.

No one mentioned Haditha, nor did they remember Abu Ghraib, now renamed the Baghdad Central Prison. The same week as the withdrawal, the U.S. will finally bring Private First Class Bradley Manning to court. Manning is accused of handing over secret files to WikiLeaks. Among those files lay a secret video that documented the 2007 killing in cold blood of Reuters’ photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Like Haditha, the impunity towards the Apache helicopter pilots rankled the Iraqis.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees counts about two million Iraqis as displaced. That is a conservative estimate. Others would like to see the figure doubled. Either way, this is the largest displacement in West Asia, and it is entirely a product of the war. Instead of a discussion on how the war created this massive and ongoing refugee crisis, the U.S. tightened its own policy towards allowing in asylum seekers (when the Vietnam War went badly, the U.S. allowed its allies in Vietnam to seek entry into the U.S. – not such an open policy for its Iraqi allies).

The Bush war cost at least $1 trillion, if not more. It was to make Iraq a model private-sector country. All this failed as the Iraqis refused to be utterly pliant. The U.S. miscalculated the neighbourhood. The assumption was that the U.S. forces would be able to create a satellite in the area that could checkmate Iran’s ambitions in the region and provide some relief to Israel. Instead, the wave of democracy that swept the region was not inclined to U.S. power but was against it. Even Iraq’s government was not as docile as hoped.

The costs of war suggest the law of intended consequences. The anti-war movement suggested that the bloodshed would not welcome U.S. troops into Iraq “with sweets and flowers”, but it would open up sectarian fissures and create far more human suffering than imagined. Iraq has been resilient enough to demand more than a public relations withdrawal. Having Iraq exercise its sovereignty is not sufficient to justify the war in the first place. Eight years after the war, no justifications remain. It was a dumb war, and it remains so.

Vijay Prashad
Counterpunch

Republished with the author’s permission.

In Syria, the Libya war formula is being implemented with precision: in the name of protecting “human rights,” the U.S. is enlisting the Arab League to open the gates for a U.S.-backed “coalition” of regional countries to implement a “no fly zone,” i.e. war.

Numerous U.S. news outlets reported–without verification– that protesters in Syria were “demanding a no fly zone” and an “Arab army” to invade and topple the Syrian government.

The U.S. is attempting to channel the popular protests in Syria into “regime change,” with the end goal of having a future regime that will serve U.S. interests better than the present one. The “leaders” of the Syrian opposition are handpicked and very friendly with the United States. This non-representative leadership is now asking the United States for military intervention. The Daily Beast reports:

“… the Obama administration is preparing options for aiding the Syrian opposition directly [militarily]. Two administration officials tell Foreign Policy that a small group of representatives from several [U.S.] agencies has convened to discuss extending humanitarian aid [military aid] to the Syrian rebels and appointing a special coordinator to work with them. They also discussed establishing a humanitarian [military] corridor along the Turkish border, but that would require establishing a no-fly zone…” (December 29, 2011).

The above usage of the word “humanitarian” to describe military action is used unquestionably by the U.S. government and media alike, after having been media-tested in Libya. It is highly unlikely that working people of any Middle Eastern country would invite the U.S. Army in to “help” them, especially after the U.S. military destroyed Iraq and left the country on the verge of civil war while continuing to pummel Afghanistan, pretending this is a war it can win. Libya is still smoldering from the U.S. assistance.

The lie of humanitarian intervention is best exposed when U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are considered: On December 29th the Obama Administration agreed to send $30 billion worth of sophisticated weaponry to one of the most repressive regimes in human history. The U.S. media publishes anti- Syria “humanitarian” news and Saudi arm sales on the same page, on the same day, without a second thought as to the hypocrisy in plain sight.

To shield the U.S. motives and U.S. weaponry used in a possible Syria attack, the Arab League will again be enlisted. What is the Arab League? Most of the Arab League consists of nations that have very close political/military ties to the U.S. and are utterly dependent on the U.S. for weaponry and political support. is not an exaggeration to call the Arab League diplomatic puppets of the U.S. The membership of the Arab League includes the brutal dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, United Arab Emigrates, Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Sudan, etc., nearly all exist purely because of U.S. military/police support.

Syria has pointed out the hypocrisy of the Arab League’s humanitarian “monitors,” headed by a Sudanese General long known for being an enemy of human rights. The Associated Press correctly noted that Syria’s complaints about the Sudanese General:

“…raises troubling questions about whether Arab League member states, with some of the world’s poorest human rights records, were fit for the mission to monitor compliance with a plan to end to the crackdown on political opponents by security forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.” (December 29, 2011).

If the Arab League expels Syria from its membership, as it did Libya, the U.S./ Arab “coalition” will have been given the green light for a military “humanitarian” invasion. If an “Arab army” does invade Syria for “humanitarian” purposes, it be under the direction and assistance of the U.S. military, which will–as in Libya– be the behind-the-scenes leader, coordinating actions while providing military intelligence for the invasion. All of the dropped bombs will be “made in the USA.”

The Iranian situation is no better. The new economic sanctions that the Obama administration plans to implement equal an act of war against Iran, since they would have a crippling effect on Iran’s economy. Sanctions are used in this case to provoke, and when Iran reacted by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz (a vital trade point), the U.S. military instantly responded. The spokesperson for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, threatened Iran by saying: [the U.S. Navy] is always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.” This is a blatant threat of war. Obama’s silence implies agreement.

Many other high-ranking U.S. government officials have recently made highly provocative war comments against Iran in the media, focusing on the “near future” threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon. There is no concrete evidence that Iran is anywhere near having a nuclear weapon, just like no evidence existed proving that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The constant rhetoric against Iran having a nuclear weapon is dishonest hyperbole; even if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons it would have little motivation to use them, since Israel could easily obliterate Iran with its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Attacking Syria and/or Iran opens the door to a wider regional or even international war. Reuters reports:

“Russia is sending a flotilla of warships to its naval base in Syria in a show of force which suggests Moscow is willing to defend its interests in the strife-torn country as international pressure mounts on President Bashar al-Assad’s government…Russia, which has a naval maintenance base in Syria and whose weapons trade with Damascus is worth millions of dollars annually, joined China last month to veto a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s government.” (November 28, 2011).

Russian military officials have stated that having a military presence in Syria is meant, in part, to act as a deterrent against foreign attacks. This is because Syria is an ally and trading partner of Russia. If Russia were to invade Saudi Arabia for “humanitarian” purposes, would not the United States jump to defend it?

The international situation is on the verge of a larger explosion, with Russia and China viewing the U.S. actions in Libya– and possibly Syria and Iran–as attacks on their border, threatening their own national security.

The U.S. is assuming that Russia or China will not respond militarily, but they’ve been wrong before. When President Bush Jr. gave the green light to the President of Georgia–a U.S. puppet– to attack South Ossetia, Russia surprised everyone by responding militarily and crushing Georgia’s invasion. If an “Arab army” invades Syria and Russia again responds, the U.S. will no doubt become directly involved.

The game of war is often played like poker, where one nation bluffs and hopes the other folds. Obama’s reckless provocations have a limit that may soon be reached, at the expense of the Middle Eastern people and possibly the rest of us. If the U.S. becomes militarily involved with Syria and Iran, it is up to the working people of the U.S. to mobilize in massive numbers in the streets to prevent such an attack.

Shamus Cooke

The AP story offers no indication of the nature of the evidence in the case except that former members of the 9/11 Commission and three Iranian defectors provided testimony. What it didn’t say was that at least two of the Iranian defectors have long been dismissed by US intelligence as “fabricators” and that the two “expert witnesses” who were supposed to determine the credibility of those defectors’ claims are both avowed advocates of crackpot conspiracy theories about Muslims and Shariah law who believe the United States is at war with Islam.

The ostensible purpose of the case brought by families of 9/11 terror attack victims was to win damages from those responsible for 9/11. Dozens of such cases involving different terrorist attacks have been brought to US courts over the years, in which “default judgments” have been made against Iran over various attacks in which Iran was allegedly involved, but there is no chance of getting any money for the families.

The only real effect of the case is to promote right-wing political myths about Iran. One of the peculiarities of such cases is that the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court. The witnesses have every incentive, therefore to indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them.

“A Fabricator of Monumental Proportions”

The lawyers and the “expert witnesses” behind the accusation of Iran in regard to 9/11 hoped to sell the press and public on recycled claims first made by Iranian “defectors” several years ago that they had personal knowledge of Iranian participation in the 9/11 plot. The lawyers produced videotaped affidavits by three such defectors who were identified, with a dramatic flourish, as Witnesses “X,” “Y” and “Z.”

In the one public hearing held on the case, the lawyers revealed the identity of purported former Iranian intelligence official Abolghasem Mesbahi – probably a pseudonym – and described his testimony that he had received a series of “coded messages” from a former colleague in the Iranian government in the late summer and early fall of 2001 warning that a terrorist attack against the United States was being planned, and that it was a plan that had been concocted by Tehran in the late 1980s.

Although the judge and the public were being led to believe that this is somehow new information going beyond what was known by the 9/11 Commission report, it is, in fact, very old information and has long been completely discredited. Mesbahi’s story doesn’t hold up, for several reasons, and the most obvious is that, despite his claim that he was warned nearly a month before the 9/11 attacks that civilian airliners would be crashed into buildings in major US cities, including Washington and New York on September 11, he never conveyed that information to the US government before that date.

In October 2001, Mesbahi claimed to right-wing journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman, as reported in Timmerman’s 2005book that he had tried calling the legal attaché at the US Embassy in Berlin, but was “unsuccessful in several attempts.” But he did not claim any other attempt to reach a US consulate or the US Embassy in Germany by fax, e-mail or letter before September 11, nor did he go to the US Embassy in person to convey this warning. He told Timmerman that he called an Iranian dissident contact in the United States who, he believed, had contacts with US intelligence agencies only some hoursafter the attacks on New York and Washington.

It wasn’t the first time Mesbahi had claimed inside information about Iranian involvement in a terrorist attack only after the attack had taken place. He had told investigators working on the December 1988 terror bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal to carry out the attack on the personal orders of Ayatollah Khomeini. Unfortunately for his credibility, however, he had not come forward with the allegation until after the bombing had happened.

He had also provided affidavits to Argentine investigators in the case of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, claiming his well-informed friends in Iranian intelligence had tipped him off that the decision to bomb the Jewish Community Center had been made at a meeting attended by top Iranian officials in August 1993.

But in fact, by his own admission Mesbahi had not worked for Argentine intelligence since 1988, and the FBI’s Hezbollah Office’s James Bernazzani, who had helped the Argentine intelligence service with the investigation in 1997, told me in a November 2006 interview that American intelligence officials had concluded Mesbahi did not have the continued high-level access to Iranian intelligence officials throughout the 1990s and beyond that he was claiming. They regarded him as someone who was desperate for money and ready to “provide testimony to any country on any case involving Iran,” according to Bernazzani.

Mesbahi wasn’t even consistent in the story he told about the alleged “coded messages.” In an interview with Timmerman, Mesbahi stated that he had gotten two messages from his contact, one on September 1, 2001 and a second three days later. And Timmerman wrote that his alleged contact had “phoned him again” on September 4, indicating that Mesbahi had made no reference to an elaborate scheme to send coded messages through articles in Iranian newspapers.

But in his affidavit to the 9/11 court case, he said he had gotten three messages – on July 23, August 13 and August 27 – and that the coded messages were placed in newspaper articles. Timmerman, who referred the lawyers to Mesbahi, discretely avoided pointing out the huge discrepancy between the two stories, which clearly indicates that Mesbahi fabricated the tale of messages in newspaper articles to make it more dramatic and convincing.

The second defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, claimed he had been an officer of Iran’s Ministry of Information and Security and had provided security for a meeting at an airbase near Tehran on May 4, 2001 attended by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Osama bin Laden’s son Saad bin Laden. He also claimed to have seen replicas of the twin towers, the White House, the Pentagon and Camp David in the entry hall to the main headquarters of the MOIS with a missile suspended above the targets, and “Death to America” written in Arabic (rather than Farsi) on the side.

Like Mesbahi, Zakeri also first told his tale to Timmerman, who recounts it in his 2005 book. Zakeri, who apparently defected from Iran in late July 2001, claimed he had told the US Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 26, 2001 about the alleged meeting and replicas, warning them that he believed the Iranians and al Qaeda were planning an attack on those targets that would occur September 11. But CIA officials denied categorically to Timmerman that Zakeri had given any such warning to the Embassy and called Zakeri “a fabricator of monumental proportions” and “a serial fabricator.”  Zakeri failed an FBI polygraph test in 2003, according to Timmerman.

Harvard’s Professor Stephen Walt has savaged an article in the forthcoming “Foreign Affairs” magazine (Jan.-Feb.) by Matthew Kroenig titled, “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option.” Kroenig is an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University who wrote:

“The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.”

Calling this “a remarkably poor piece of advocacy,” Harvard’s Walt writes that Kroenig “makes the case for war by assuming everything will go south if the U.S. does not attack and that everything will go swimmingly if it does. This is not fair-minded ‘analysis’; it is simply a brief for war designed to reach a predetermined conclusion,” Walt writes of the “Foreign Affairs” piece.

“He (Kroenig) is openly calling for preventive war against Iran, even though the United States has no authorization from the U.N. Security Council, it is not clear that Iran is actively developing nuclear weapons, and Iran has not attacked us or any of our allies—ever.”

“He is therefore openly calling for his country to violate international law. He is calmly advocating a course of action will inevitably kill a significant number of people, including civilians…and Kroenig is willing to have their deaths on his conscience on the basis of a series of unsupported assertions, almost all of them subject to serious doubt.”

Writing in UK’s “The Guardian” newspaper December 7th, journalist Seumas Milne points out that Iran is a peaceful nation that “has invaded no one in 200 years” while “the US. and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade.” What’s more, Milne adds, “Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?”

He goes on to write,

“For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.”

Milne also called it an “extraordinary admission” that British defense officials said if the U.S. planned to attack Iran, as they believed it might, America would receive “UK military help,” including sea and air support. “The British military establishment fully expects to take part in an unprovoked US attack on Iran—just as it did against Iraq eight years ago,” he said.

(This admission shouldn’t be that astonishing as the U.S. and U.K. are inextricably tied together militarily and in a number of other significant ways and appear to be bent on advancing the imperial goals of the old British Empire. A superficial difference today is that the Empire’s capital has moved from London to Washington. In reality, from their joint intelligence operations to their collaborating oil companies to their defense contractors, etc., US/UK operate as One. Maybe the long-time partners should rebrand themselves the United States of England?)

Meanwhile, American journalist Patrick J. Buchanan pointed out that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “dropped some jolting news” when he told CBS, “If we get intelligence they (Iranians) are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapons, then we will take whatever steps necessary to deal with it.”

In his column of December 22, Buchanan charged, “Panetta is raising the specter of preemptive war,” adding, “This is no minor matter. For not only have Panetta and Barack Obama talked about ‘all options on the table’ regarding Iran—i.e., we do not rule out military strikes—so, too, have the GOP presidential candidates, save Rep. Ron Paul.”

Responding to Pentagon Press Secretary George Little’s statement, “We have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapons,” Buchanan wrote it “coincides with the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, in December, 2007.”

Or, to put it another way, in the blunt words of “The Guardian’s” Milne, “The case against Iran is…spectacularly flimsy.”

Sherwood Ross

“A more creative Israel would embrace Palestine’s recognition, which it has already endorsed in principle, and then rally allies to its side, to leverage their support in decisive settlement talks,” writes Steve Coll in the September 26th issue.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak allegedly privately told his nation’s leaders, “By sharpening tensions with the Palestinians, we are inviting isolation on Israel.”

Coll terms the case for Palestinian statehood “compelling.” “Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian leaders have been told repeatedly that if they organized themselves peacefully and negotiated in good faith with Israel they would win statehood.”

“Their performance has often disappointed,” he continues. “Yasir Arafat eschewed a deal with Israel in 2000; Hamas has persistently launched indiscriminate attacks and broadcast anti-Semitism. Yet, under the Palestinian Authority’s sway, the West Bank now resembles a legitimate state more closely than at any time since 1967.”

Two years ago, under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority began to improve governance and while its security forces “still mete out abuses,” Coll writes, “Palestinian leaders have delivered on many of their pledges.” What’s more, last April the World Bank said that the Authority is “well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.”

Although President Obama told the UN’s General Assembly last year that renewed talks could lead to “an independent sovereign state of Palestine” real progress has gone no further than words. “Many Palestinian leaders,” Coll writes, “have therefore concluded that it may be impossible to achieve statehood through negotiations with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.”

“Their pessimism is well grounded,” Coll continues. “The evidence suggests that he seeks only to fob off the Palestinian Authority, as well as his allies in the United States and Europe, in order to buy more time to bankroll more settlements on the West Bank, which will change the contours of the conflict.”

Far from doing it any good, Israel’s intransigence is turning once friendly nations against it. “Five years ago, Turkey was, with Egypt, Israel’s most important ally in the Muslim  world,” Coll writes. Now the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan derides Israel as “the West’s spoiled child.”

“The loss of Turkey’s allegiance is an unnecessary calamity for Israel, one that is symptomatic of the country’s self-defeating paralysis,” Coll writes.

Sherwood Ross