{"id":1358,"date":"2011-11-18T07:46:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T07:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2011\/11\/18\/jooneed-jeeroburkhan-10\/"},"modified":"2019-12-08T20:41:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T16:41:01","slug":"jooneed-jeeroburkhan-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/jooneed-jeeroburkhan-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Drumbeats of war against Iran and Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jooneed Jeeroburkhan<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Iraqi d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> all over again<\/span><\/p>\n

If you thought the $4-trillion Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan quagmire, and the loss of standing and credibility that goes with it, would bring the declining West to its senses, well, think again. Even as I write this, drums of war are beating in Israel and across Natodom<\/em> to \u201cbomb, bomb, bomb\u201d Iran and Syria, and go \u201cfree\u201d them with the drones and the missiles of \u201cr\u00e9gime change\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

With Libya in ruins, and its oil pledged to NATO multinationals, the screws are now tightening on Iran and Syria. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is meeting in Vienna to discuss its latest report on Iran, while Israel openly threatens to strike Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. And the Arab League (AL) has suspended Syria to force \u201cr\u00e9gime change\u201d in Damascus.<\/span><\/p>\n

In our \u201cUpside Down\u201d world, as Eduardo Galeano put it, it\u2019s the least of paradoxes that Israel is itself a widely proven though undeclared nuclear power, which has not signed the NPT (Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty), of which Iran is a member. Yet Israel, which just tested a long-range missile capable of carrying atomic warheads, is never questioned on its military nuclear activities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US and its NATO allies have invested much over the years, in terms of both overt sanctions and covert operations, to shake Iran\u2019s and Syria\u2019s support for the Lebanese (Shiite) Hezbollah and the Palestinian (Sunni) Hamas. The resistance of Iran and Syria to Western plans has stymied Israel, NATO\u2019s regional cop. Those sustained preparations are now coming to a head.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Empire mobilizes new regional cops<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So new \u201ccops\u201d are being mobilized. Saudi Arabia, which recently bought $75-billion worth of arms from the US, has been playing a crucial role in turning the popular, democratic Arab Spring into an Arab Winter \u2013 sending troops and tanks to crush the uprising in Bahrain and uphold the British-installed Al-Khalifa dynasty, and supporting pro-Wahhabi Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Jordan and Morocco.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moubarak\u2019s army, a long-term client of the Pentagon (with close to $2-billion-a-year in military aid), is still running Egypt under the old system, blocking popular demand for real \u201cr\u00e9gime change\u201d. Yemen is a Republic, not a monarchy, but the r\u00e9gime is solidly in the Saudi (and US) camp. Over more than 30 years in power, Ali Abdallah Saleh has been close to Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq and has even flirted with Iran. But he is now a Saudi client, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has not ostracized him; instead it is helping him to crush the Yemeni popular uprising.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conservative monarchies of Morocco and Jordan have been invited to join the GCC \u2013 which would make for a pretty huge Gulf! Petty oil emirates of the Gulf, who make up the GCC, are turning into roaring mice. Qatar, run by the British-installed Al-Thani dynasty and known for its Al-Jazeera TV<\/em> called the \u201cArab CNN<\/em>\u201d, also had troops in Libya. It chaired the Arab League meeting in Doha which suspended Syria. The Algerian El Watan<\/em> daily reported that the Qatari PM, Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani, openly threatened Algerian FM Mourad Medelci for opposing Syria\u2019s suspension.<\/span><\/p>\n

Erdogan and the return of the Ottoman Empire<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/em> reports the US plans to sell thousands of advanced “bunker-buster” bombs and other munitions to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a way to keep Iran in check. This was announced in the midst of sensational media \u201cleaks\u201d of the confidential IAEA report on Iran. Six months after it normalized relations with Kuwait, Iran arrested two Kuwaiti citizens in Abadan, charged them with possession of spying equipment and accused the oil sheikhdom of espionage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All these Arab r\u00e9gimes have got their peoples entrapped in a US-run protection racket. Israeli hype over the bugbear of a nuclear Iran has further terrified them, stirring atavistic distrust of the hereditary Persian enemy. Turkey, which ruled the Arab world via the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, is also roped in: as a contract player for the US Empire and a member of NATO, its Islamist (Sunni) government has challenged Iran\u2019s and Syria\u2019s pro-Palestinian credentials by making a public show of taking issue with Israel. A grand coalition is in sight for the Great Sunni-Shia War the Israelis and the Neo-Cons have been working so hard and so long to bring about.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Turkish PM Recep Erdogan toured the Arab Spring in the summer as a latter-day Ottoman Emperor, hedging about the Libyan war yet fully supportive of the NATO-Africom operation. He lectured the Egyptians and Tunisians on their choice of new r\u00e9gimes, while enhancing the credibility of the UK-friendly Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al-Nahda movement in Tunisia. Above all, he is host to the Syrian opposition, dominated by Sunni fundamentalists linked to Lebanese anti-Hezbollah Sunnis and which is launching armed operations inside Syria from Turkish and Lebanese soil.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Libya and Disaster Capitalism at work<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Libya, NATO and Africom successfully turned the Arab Spring to their favour – even though the 8-month war decimated many more civilians than the West falsely accused the Qadhafi r\u00e9gime of killing to justify its so-called \u201cResponsibility to Protect\u201d mission, and even though it destroyed major cities and left vast areas strewn with lethal spent and unexploded bombs and explosives.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Disaster Capitalism actually works. On the old Maoist principle of \u201cTo build, you must first destroy\u201d, perverted to set up a \u201clevel(led) playing field\u201d on which neo-liberalism can be pasted and from which juicy contracts for reconstruction can flow.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this is great for Western geo-strategy and business, as China, India, Russia, Iran rise, and as the Euro teeters \u2013 while the Dollar may be next.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stockpiles of arms and ammunitions are expended in wars, and also recycled into petrodollars, to make way for ever more production. Obscurantist \u201callied\u201d monarchies are propped up, and secular republics are toppled by NATO\u2019s self-proclaimed \u201cdemocracies\u201d, which then allow pro-Saudi Islamists and tribal warlords to fill the vacuum they create.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The US Empire seeks to reach out to the limits of Eurasia, and to strengthen its hold on Mid Eastern oil, even if, at home, the Occupy Wall Street movement rises again and again after each brutal repression.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The US chimera hits a Russo-Chinese Wall<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But this US-Israeli Neo-Con chimera is foundering against the belatedly hard-nosed realism of Russia and China, two of the five veto members in the Security Council of a very imperfect United Nations. By abstaining, both countries allowed the US, the UK and France to pass UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973, which gave NATO the green light for the massive lynching of Libya.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the NATO triad wants a similar mandate against Syria, but Moscow and Beijing are saying no to a Libya-II. Western media inflates the narrative of \u201cunarmed, innocent civilians\u201d being \u201cmassacred\u201d on a daily basis by Syria\u2019s army, and the Syrian opposition keeps crying for UN help. Russia and China maintain there are armed opponents and victims on both sides. They want the opposition to come to a negotiated settlement with the Assad government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hence the US recourse to the Arab League, and the latter\u2019s quick delivery of Syria\u2019s suspension, which could just be the diplomatic fig leaf NATO needs to go barging into Syria. On the rebound from the death of 241 Marines in a massive bomb attack in Beirut in October 1983, Ronald Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada, claiming a call for US help had come from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)! But then George W. Bush bombed and invaded Iraq in 2003 without any invitation!<\/span><\/p>\n

Within days of the Arab League suspension of Syria, Western media began writing about armed attacks on Syrian security forces \u2013 but kept calling the attackers \u201carmy defectors\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Republican warmongering one-upmanship<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s case is more problematic, though here too widespread skepticism over the IAEA report may not prevent Israel from putting the US, NATO and the world before a fait accompli<\/em> by bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities unilaterally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leaks from the confidential report to the Western media stress that Iran has an ongoing secret nuclear weapons programme. Critics retort the document contains no new information and just rehashes old data which led the Bush administration to conclude, in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n

The present war propaganda against Iran is a repeat of the war propaganda against Iraq in 2002-2003, said Ron Paul, Republican presidential hopeful, in a recent candidates\u2019 debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney vied for the most bellicose posture, saying they\u2019d had enough of Obama\u2019s sanctions on Iran. Gingrich called for \u201cdeniable covert operations\u201d like the targeted killing of Irani nuclear scientists, which Iran has accused the US and Israel of already perpetrating \u2013 through terrorist attacks, targeted assassinations, and support for the MKO, the Jundullah (Sunni) and the Kurdish PJAK armed groups. Romney outbid him by saying he would pre-emptively bomb Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities to make sure Tehran never has the bomb.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s \u201cCurveball\u201d and Iran\u2019s \u201cLaptop of Death\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One detail is a throwback to the \u201cCurveball\u201d saga, the story of an Iraqi refugee cab driver in Germany, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who claimed in 1999 that he was a chemical engineer in Iraq, making \u201cmobile biological weapons laboratories.\u201d German Intelligence doubted his claims, but the CIA pounced on them and the Bush-Cheney administration used them to build its case for the invasion of Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

The claims were proven false in 2004, and in February 2011, Al-Janabi, for the first time, admitted to The Guardian<\/em> that he had indeed lied about his story. The CIA had given him the code-name \u201cCurveball\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of Iran, there is a so-called \u201cLaptop of death\u201d, a computer that US Intelligence has shown to the IAEA in 2005. It is said to contain data on Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons programme, including satellite pictures taken at the Parchin military facility. The Hindu<\/em> writes about \u201ca steel container that can be used for testing explosives\u201d and \u201ctriggering pressure waves that can detonate fissile material\u201d. \u201cIt is also claimed that Tehran is building computer models of a missile cone that can carry a nuclear payload\u201d, the paper adds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics fault the IAEA for \u201cunprofessionalism\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Iran rejects these claims, calling them \u201cobsolete and repetitive,\u201d and saying it had given \u201cprecise responses\u201d in a 117-page document. Ali Asgar Soltaniyeh, Iran\u2019s representative to the IAEA, described the report as \u201cskewed, unprofessional and political,\u201d and accused IAEA boss Yukiya Amano of making a \u201chistorical mistake\u201d and \u201cimpairing the agency\u2019s credibility\u201d. He also accused the IAEA of refusing to give Iran access to all the data, and especially to the \u201claptop\u201d in question.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know if this \u2018Laptop of Death\u2019 is a computer or a dvd nor how trustworthy it is\u201d, says Robert Kelly, a former IAEA inspector who now works for the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Questioned on the Real News Network, <\/em>he said: \u201cIran may well have a nuclear weapons programme, but this AIEA report contains nothing new that can take us there.\u201d He thought the IAEA had been \u201ccareless\u201d in allowing leaks of its report \u201cin the midst of drumbeats of war from Israel\u201d and not \u201ctechnically correct\u201d enough in its observations. He cited the example of Exploding Bridge Wires (EBW) \u201cwhich have a widespread use in the oil industry and not exclusively for nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many analysts on Iranian Press TV<\/em> pointed out that the report was replete with vague conditionals like \u201ccan\u201d, \u201ccould\u201d, \u201cmay\u201d, and that the old WMD concept (Weapons of Mass Destruction) used against Iraq has now become the PWD concept (Potential weapons of Destruction) in the case of Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neo-cons and the Empire\u2019s 4-pronged strategy<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The neo-con designers of George W. Bush\u2019s \u201cProject for a New American Century\u201d <\/em>have faded into the background, but their malevolent will to cling to the top continues to operate behind the fa\u00e7ade of Barack Hussein Obama, the \u201cYes, We Can\u201d democrat and Nobel Peace Laureate turned warmonger for the American Empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

The military push for Iran and Syria, blared openly by Israel with quiet but insistent support from the US and Europe, (\u2026) is part of a 4-pronged strategy aimed at strengthening control over the Arab Middle East, deepening involvement in South Asia, militarizing Africa with Africom participation, and reinforcing Western power projection in the Indian Ocean.<\/span><\/p>\n

The modern deep-water port built by China in the Pakistani city of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, with road links for Chinese imports and exports over the Karakoram Mountains, is seen as a threat by the US Empire. As indeed nuclear Pakistan is itself seen as \u201ca threat bigger than Iran\u201d, as explicitly denounced on US webzines and blogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

This US Empire, with 250 000 servicemen spread over 750 military bases around the world and mega-nuclear-powered fleets of war deployed on all oceans (including the Indian Ocean and Diego Garcia), and its allies, call themselves the \u201cinternational community\u201d. Yet, as the vote on the admission of Palestine to UNESCO showed a couple of weeks ago, the 14 No voters make up only 17% of the world population of 7-billion! Maybe there\u2019s hope for sanity yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

jooneed.khan@gmail.com<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 18 November 2011<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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