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As alliances shift, Iran
wins. Again
By Pepe Escobar
06/03/08 "Asia
Times"
-- --
It's no secret that a great deal of the alleged success of the
George W Bush adminstration's "surge" - or at least the way it's
being spun in the US - is related to a diminished flow of
Iranian-made weapons towards militias in Iraq. The weapons
anyway were being sold by Iranian and or Gulf black market
dealers - and not by the central establishment in Tehran.
At the same time, the publication of the 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in the US virtually debunked the
idea that Iran was conducting a secret nuclear program for
military use.
These two overlapping developments have alarmed Israeli
intelligence - which believes that Washington and Tehran have
concluded a secret deal brokered by Saudi Arabia. That's what's
being spun, for
instance, by the Debka website - which is basically an Israeli
military intelligence outlet.
The Bush administration, according to this narrative, is
developing a new multi-point strategy for the Middle East (it's
useful to remember that no one even mentions Bush's
spun-to-death "democratic" Greater Middle East anymore). And
Saudi Arabia is the new strategic go-between.
Via the Saudis, the Bush administration will demand no more
Iranian weapons in Iraq used against the US military (as if
Tehran could order black market weapons' cartels how to conduct
their business). It will demand no more Iranian weapons sent to
Afghanistan (these weapons are not from Iran in the first place,
but bought by the Taliban from Pakistani and Sunni Arab
sources).
The Bush administration will also demand Iran to tell Hezbollah
to allow the election of a new president in Lebanon; as a
reward, Hezbollah will be allowed as a partner in government (a
ludicrous proposition; as if Hassan Nasrallah, who has the
numbers, the popular appeal and grassroots organization would be
ordered to accept a Saudi-friendly and US-friendly puppet
president).
Israel seems to be concerned of what it perceives as a Saudi
Arabian "betrayal" - but in fact the Israeli right's problems
lie elsewhere. The NIE denied any possibility of a Bush
administration push towards regime change in Iran - not to
mention an Israeli attack. To compound the problem, Tehran does
not even bother with United Nations Security Council sanctions
anymore, even if the leadership in Tehran does not expect the
US's formidable firepower to vanish from the Persian Gulf.
Iran's Foreign Ministry has bluntly dismissed the Security
Council's third round of sanctions against Iran as "based on
political intentions and double standards" - especially because
it ignored the February 22 report by International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) director general Mohammad ElBaradei, according to
which the IAEA had found no diversion of Iran's nuclear program
for military use. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad called the new
resolution "a new mistake". He may have a point. The IAEA itself
decided not to impose sanctions on Iran.
But for the Israeli troika - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak - that's
never enough. They want more, and tougher, sanctions. As for
Iran, it has demanded that the IAEA investigate "how Israel
became a nuclear superpower".
Bush's love affair with civil war
According to a frightened Debka, Israel's "special relationship
with the United States has collapsed amid its worst foreign
policy debacle in decades. The Olmert government is paying the
price for the military and diplomatic mismanagement of the war
against Lebanon's Hezbollah of 2006".
This may go a long way to explain Israel's current bombing
rampage which has killed more than 100 Gaza residents, more than
50% civilians and most of these women and children. Middle East
diplomats confirmed to Asia Times Online Hamas was talking to
the Saudis and the Syrians about the possibility of a truce with
Israel. But Israel does not want anything that would legitimize
Hamas - the Israeli troika is now even floating the idea of the
reoccupation of Gaza.
The Israeli right clearly knows what Asia Times Online has
revealed - that Bush approved a dirty Palestinian civil war, a
lethal mix of the Bay of Pigs and Iran-Contra supposedly to be
implemented by the State Deptartment to overthrow Hamas shortly
after Hamas won the free and fair January 2006 parliamentary
election in Palestine. (See
Document details 'US' plan to sink Hamas
May 16, 2007 and
No-goodniks and the Palestinian shootout
January 9, 2007.)
According to this scenario, Mohammad Dahlan - Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas' head of the National Security Council -
awash with US weapons, was anointed leader of the "revolution",
to the delight of the Israeli right.
It didn't work - of course; Hamas, as a popular resistance
movement, would rather have all its supporters dead than
surrender. The State Department has declined to comment,
although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just offered a
spirited defense of US aid for Fatah, playing once again the
same old scratchy tune: it is imperative to counteract Iran.
Ahmadinejad, the not-accidental tourist
Israel's concern also centers on a few key, recent
developments such as Ahmadinejad's visit to Saudi Arabia a year
ago, Iran-Egypt talks in Egypt (the countries had had no formal
relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution) and the invitation
for Ahmadinejad to sit at a key Gulf Cooperation Council meeting
- a first for an Iranian leader. This year, at an Iran-Saudi
parliamentary friendship meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Foreign
Minister Saud al-Faisal stressed all sorts of efforts should be
made to solidify Saudi-Iranian relations. And, more tellingly,
both should "stand vigilantly against all conspiracies".
Abdel Monem Said, director of the al-Ahram Center for Political
and Strategic Studies in Cairo, has interpreted the process in
terms of "Saudi Arabia did what people have been asking the US
to do for so long, which is to extend a hand out to the
Iranians". The detente, of course, is a work in progress, but
any Saudi realist will see that it certainly does not entail the
end of Iran's nuclear program.
The Bush administration had been promoting a Turkey-Israel axis,
then a Sunni Arab "axis of fear" (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan,
Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates) and then a Saudi-Israeli axis,
always trying to isolate Iran. None of these concoctions seems
to have worked.
Hanif Ghaffari, writing in the Farsi-language, conservative
Iranian daily Resalat, has pointed out how the recent, very
successful Ahmadinejad trip to Iraq had to be considered in the
context of "Iran after the Iraq war" and "Iraq after occupation
by America". The message could not be more graphic. When Bush
went to Iraq he saw an ultra-fortified military base, and that
was it. Ahmadinejad went everywhere in broad daylight, welcomed
like a brother. This is how Tehran sees itself - as the ultimate
victor of the US war on Iraq. And no "surge" or spin - not to
mention Israeli paranoia - can or will make it go away.
Pepe Escobar is the
author of
Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War
(Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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