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Evildoers, here we come
"Far more than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the defeat
of the mullahcracy and the triumph of freedom in Tehran would be a
truly historic event."
- Michael Ledeen, neo-conservative and member of the
American Enterprise Institute, June 2003
Comment by Pepe Escobar
12/6/04 "Asia
Times" -- Iran is very much in the US spotlight at present over concerns
that it is developing nuclear weapons, with much talk of
"regime change". Over the next four years of the second
George W Bush term, any of a number of countries could come into
the crosshairs - Syria, Saudi Arabia and "axis of evil"
original North Korea.
Ralph Peters, a former lieutenant-colonel responsible for
"future warfare" at the Office of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and deputy chief of staff for
intelligence before he retired, commented, "It's really
difficult to exactly delineate who our enemies are, but they
number in millions. They're Arab and Muslim ... Our enemy is the
majority of the people who live in what we think of as the large
Arab nations, plus certain other groups. Our enemy is concentrated
in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria, plus the
Palestinians are part of it."
Bush has admitted on the record that the "minds" of his
administration are "borrowed" from the right-wing
think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which rents office
space in Washington to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
- the people who conceived the Iraq war (see This
war is brought to you by ... of March 20, 2003).
Vice President Dick Cheney's concentration of power under Bush II
will be even more complete. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld -
despite Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the quagmire in Iraq - remains in
place. The CIA under Porter Goss has been through a Soviet-style
purge and is being turned into an ersatz Office of Special Plans (OSP),
which everyone remembers was a Rumsfeld-sponsored operation that
specialized in fabricating false pretexts for the invasion of
Iraq. The OSP was directed by neo-conservative Douglas Feith (who
now wants the US to attack Iran). The new CIA is Feith's OSP on
steroids. Goss' job is to make sure the CIA agrees with everything
Bush and the neo-conservatives say. Expect more wars.
The road to Damascus
The road to Damascus is the key node in the Bush/neo-con roadmap
for a new Middle East. Some may think the road starts in Baghdad.
Wrong. It starts, simultaneously, in Washington, Jerusalem and
Beirut. And neo-con think-tanks, the Christian Right and ultra
right-wing Zionists are busy mapping it. A key player to watch is
neo-con David Wurmser, who has been a member of Cheney's staff
since September 2003 and who has for years called for a strike
against Syria.
Bush and the neo-cons must implicate Syria by all means available.
This week Bush warned both Syria and Iran against "meddling
in the internal affairs of Iraq" - as if Baghdad was the
capital of Ohio. On a more serious note, Pentagon military
intelligence officials suddenly discovered a few days ago that the
Iraqi resistance "is being directed to a greater degree than
previously recognized from Syria" and funded by "private
sources in Saudi Arabia and Europe".
The "evidence" was a global positioning system receiver
found in a suspicious "bomb factory" in Fallujah with
directions "originating in western Syria". This,
Pentagon neo-cons say, proves that Syria hosts Iraqi
"terrorists" - who are basically those same Ba'athist
"remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime".
Jordan is not on the neo-con hit list. Of course not: Jordan is a
neo-con ideal. The Hashemite monarchy is endlessly pliable; never
emphasizes its Islamic credentials; has an acceptable degree of
truculence (martial law has been in place for decades); has a very
effective Mukhabarat (secret police); and never criticizes
Israel's excesses in Palestine. King Abdullah is always a
dependable propaganda asset: he has been insisting lately that
"foreign fighters are coming across the Syrian border
[towards Iraq], they have been trained in Syria". The king
also blamed Syria not long ago for being behind a huge al-Qaeda
chemical weapons plot to bomb the US Embassy in Amman that, if
successful, would have killed about 20,000 people. The US State
Department was quick to add that the bombers were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's
people. So not only does Syria host Iraqi "terrorists",
but it is also behind al-Qaeda.
King Abdullah also went on the record saying he does not welcome
the inevitable Shi'ite government that will emerge from the Iraqi
elections after January's elections, implying that a majority of
Iraqis are Iranian agents. His father, King Hussein, would never
be that sectarian. Of course it's a coincidence Abdullah said
these words shortly after a meeting with Bush. The influential
Hawza - the clerics at the Shi'ite "Vatican" in Najaf -
responded in kind, basically accusing Abdullah and his family of
always supporting Saddam and being submissive towards the
Americans, adding sharply that the era of free oil from Iraq to
Jordan (when Saddam was in power) is over.
Lebanon is often a neo-con target because of Hezbollah and because
it's considered a Syrian satellite hostile to Israel. But now the
Lebanese are taking matters in their own hands. All opposition
forces are now united. Former president Amin Gemayel said this
week the atmosphere was just like in 1943, "when all Lebanese
fought side by side to get independence" from the French
mandate. The leader of the socialist bloc, Walid Jumblatt, said he
was "ready to go to Syria" to convey the message: the
Lebanese want a "sovereign and independent state", which
means a recognized political role for Hezbollah and no
interference from Syria.
The neo-cons refuse to acknowledge the fact of a Sunni Iraqi war
of national liberation. It's much easier to blame it all on
elusive Syrians, evil Ba'athists still devoted to Saddam and
Zarqawi - a renegade Jordanian. Ba'athists are only one component
of the resistance, as they were the military establishment under
Saddam. Moreover, the antagonism between Assad's and Saddam's
Ba'athist regimes has always been visceral. Syria as a regime does
not support the Iraqi resistance: a few individual Syrian jihadis
do.
The road to Tehran
"Iran has replaced Saddam Hussein as the world's number one
exporter of terror, hate and instability," Israeli Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom told the United Nations General Assembly
last September. This is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and
the neo-con Likud agenda at work. One month later, Sharon said
that "Iran is making every effort to arm itself with nuclear
weapons, with ballistic means of delivery, and it is preparing an
enormous terrorist network with Syria and Lebanon." This was,
of course, the same Sharon who in February 2002 told the Rupert
Murdoch-controlled London Times that "Iran is the center of
'world terror', and as soon as an Iraq conflict is concluded, I
will push for Iran to be at the top of the 'to do list'."
In August, incoming secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was
already bombarding the European Union's dialogue with Iran, saying
"the Iranians have been trouble for a very long time. And
it's one reason that this regime has to be isolated in its bad
behavior, not quote-unquote, 'engaged'." The same Rice on
September 2002 alarmed the world about Iraq's supposed weapons of
mass destruction, with her "we don't want the smoking gun to
be a mushroom cloud".
It's the same old script, or excuse for war: first Iraq, now Iran.
Last month, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell even alarmed
the world by saying Iran was working on nuclear missiles. He was
relying on a single walk-in source with unverified documents.
European intelligence officials in Brussels are certain the source
was an Iranian exile briefed by neo-cons Richard Perle and John
Bolton.
It doesn't matter that Iran has agreed - at least temporarily - to
stop enriching uranium, in exchange for security arrangements,
trade, investment and support for World Trade Organization
admission offered by the European "Big 3" of Germany,
France and Britain. In the neo-con master plan, Iran is doomed to
be "shocked and awed" by 2006. The chatter at the AEI,
the PNAC and other think-tanks has been thunderous for quite some
time: Iran could be bombed from American bases in Iraq, in
Pakistan, or from warships in the Persian Gulf. There are no
illusions about it at the European Union headquarters. According
to a EU diplomat in Brussels, "This bitter controversy over
the Iranian nuclear program works as a smokescreen. The
neo-conservatives are obsessed with Iran as a fundamentalist
Islamic regime bound on exterminating Israel." Another
diplomat adds that the question is not Iran's virtual nukes, per
se, but how to cripple Iran as a military power: "It's the
same agenda for Israel, the Pentagon and the White House National
Security Council."
Neo-cons privilege a pre-emptive strike with missiles fired from
warships in the Gulf against the Natanz and Arak plants south of
Tehran. European intelligence has also identified another huge
underground complex "with 1,000 gas centrifuges and
components for the manufacture of 50,000 further
centrifuges". Russian engineers are helping to build a heavy
water plant at Arak. Other plants are at Arkadan, east of Natanz,
and near the beautiful, historic city of Isfahan. The leaders in
Tehran swear the whole program is developed for civilian use.
In another striking parallel to Iraq, the CIA does not know much
about the current status of Iran's nuclear program, certainly not
as much as the Europeans. But it seems to have successfully
penetrated the roughly 800,000-strong Iranian diaspora in southern
California, to the extent that a coterie of wealthy Iranians are
eagerly plotting their return home as "liberating"
heroes.
One strident player to watch is neo-con Frank Gaffney, who wrote
on the National Review online that "regime change - one way
or another - in Iran and North Korea, [is] the only hope for
preventing these remaining 'axis of evil' states from fully
realizing their terrorist and nuclear ambitions".
Long and winding roads
The road to Tehran starts both in Kabul and Baghdad. This requires
examination of the Afghan "model" and the Iraqi
"model".
Afghanistan's new democracy rests on the shoulder of the world's
most expensive mayor (US$1.6 billion a month and counting), Hamid
Karzai, who barely controls downtown Kabul protected by 200
American bodyguards, 17,000 American troops and a North Atlantic
Treaty Organization contingent. Without all this heavy metal,
Karzai would never last. The country is essentially ruled by the
Tajiks and Uzbeks of the former Northern Alliance - who now
control most of the world's supply of heroin - powerful regional
warlords and the Taliban (in the south and southeast). So much for
Afghan "democracy".
As for the Iraqi "model", the crucial point is that the
Americans managed to turn Iraq into a replica of Palestine - the
same ghastly litany of occupation, suicide bombings, streams of
refugees and death and destruction. Not only was the Iraq war
entirely based on neo-con lies: these lies led, among other
disasters, to Iraq's infrastructure being completely destroyed and
the US alienating the Muslim world. Fallujah and Baghdad are
replicas of Gaza and the West Bank. A measure of the daily ordeal
is offered by these lines written by Iraqi girl blogger Riverbend:
People are wondering how America and gang [ie Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi, etc] are going to implement democracy in all of
this chaos when they can't seem to get the gasoline flowing in a
country that virtually swims in oil. There's a rumor that this
gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a
minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole
situation is a form of collective punishment because things are
really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad - especially
the suburbs. The third theory is that this is being done
purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the
electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January
before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.
As for the elections, it's fair to say Riverbend echoes the
overall sentiment in secular Baghdad, according to our sources:
"We're watching the election lists closely. Most people I've
talked to aren't going to go to elections. It's simply too
dangerous and there's a sense that nothing is going to be achieved
anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated
with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on
American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes -
tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of
religious parties and tribal sheikhs - can anyone say Afghanistan?
What's even more irritating is that election lists have to be
checked and confirmed by none other than [Grand Ayatollah Ali al-]Sistani.
Sistani - the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war
helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a
dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious
clerics. Now, can anyone say 'theocracy in sheep's
clothing'?"
The crucial Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan trio lies at the heart of the
Pentagon-denominated "arc of instability" which runs
from the Maghreb in Africa to the Kazakh-Chinese border. Of course
it's just a coincidence that the arc holds the majority of the
world's reserves of oil and gas.
Our way or the highway
European diplomats confirm that when they got together with their
American counterparts in Washington last October to discuss Iran,
there was simply nothing to discuss. Under Secretary of State John
Bolton - a man who, on the record, wants the US to invade Iran -
simply read aloud a text where the US refused to back any European
Big 3 negotiations, and wanted Iran immediately dragged to the UN
Security Council. European diplomats remain wary: "The
Americans may be paralyzed at the moment - by the lack of
international support and because they are trapped in Iraq. But we
cannot underestimate the neo-conservatives, and especially Dick
Cheney. He might end up convincing Bush of the need of a
pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear sites." Another
diplomat adds that "the Americans complain all the time about
our dialogue with the Iranians, but they are incapable of
formulating an American strategy".
A "strategy" has been formulated by neo-con Danielle
Pletka of the AEI. She says that in exchange for Iran handing over
all its (non-existent) WMDs and halting support for
"terrorist" groups, Washington should renew diplomatic
relations and remove unilateral sanctions. It's an "our way
or the highway" proposition, no negotiations involved.
Both Iran and the EU have a tremendous stake in the success of the
new round of negotiations, which started this week and will,
according to European diplomats, last for many months. For Iran, a
deal with the EU is a major twofold strategic victory: it
amplifies the political abyss between Washington and Brussels, and
from the point of view of Iranian consumers, it's good for
business. For the EU, it's above all good for big business in the
oil and gas industry. A who's who of European majors - Royal
Dutch-Shell, Total-Fina-Elf, Agip, British Gas, Enterprise, Lasmo,
Monument - already has and looks forward to expanding Iranian
contracts. Not to mention the Chinese, who last month assured the
Iranians in Beijing, after signing a major oil-and-gas deal, that
they would block any move by the International Atomic Energy
Agency to take the nuclear impasse to the UN Security Council.
Ideologues like Reuel Marc Gerecht of the AEI are unfazed, and
keep pushing heavily for a pre-emptive strike. Gerecht boasts that
"you have to be crystal clear with them that whatever they
dream up, we can dream up something much, much worse". These
ideologues are obviously unaware of the fact that a strike will
inevitably alienate the fiercely nationalistic Iranian population,
will lead them to rally en masse in support of the government, and
will be disastrous for business from a oil major/corporate
American point of view. And even with a pre-emptive strike,
experts agree Iran could rebuild its nuclear program before 2008 -
as Iran learned very well from the Israeli pre-emptive strike that
destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981.
Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have extensively
war-gamed the possible consequences of a pre-emptive strike. The
results were disastrous. The neo-cons dismiss it as perceptions of
the so-called "reality-based community".
Neo-cons obviously don't read political scientist Chalmers
Johnson, the author of Blowback, who explained how the CIA
in the 1950s coined the term "blowback" to refer to
"the unintended and unexpected negative consequences of
covert special operations that have been kept secret from the
American people and, in most cases, from their elected
representatives". Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rising to power
in Iran in 1979 was blowback for the CIA toppling the elected
government of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and the American cozying
up to the Shah regime. The rise of al-Qaeda was in part blowback
for the CIA arming the mujahideen in the anti-Soviet jihad in
Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Sharon is an expert in provoking an "excuse" for
starting a regional war - a favorite neo-con tactic. That's what
he did in 1982 as Israeli defense minister, when he invaded
Lebanon in "regime change" mode. Blowback was
inevitable: the invasion of Lebanon led to Hezbollah, the first
intifada, Hamas, suicide bombers, etc.
European diplomats stress that "Pakistan proliferated nuclear
technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, while Iraq was invaded
because it was not fast enough to acquire its own WMDs. The regime
in Tehran certainly took notice." It's a given in the
corridors of the EU that the regime in Tehran may cultivate a
nuclear program - but exclusively for defensive purposes. It's
also a given that having lied so consistently and for so long -
aluminum tubes, yellow cake uranium in Niger, al-Qaeda in secret
meetings in Prague, Osama bin Laden and Saddam sleeping in the
same bed, etc - neo-cons have little chance of convincing the EU
that Iranian nuclear missiles will soon wreak havoc on London,
Paris and Berlin.
The road to Pyongyang
The neo-cons believe the Pentagon should also bomb Kim Jong-il's
North Korea. Bill Kristol, neo-con and chair of the PNAC,
escalated the stakes when he recently faxed a statement,
"Toward Regime Change in North Korea", to a select group
of "opinion leaders" in Washington, alerting on the
emergence of "serious dissident activity" in the country
and urging Bush to promptly deal with it.
Compare it with the sober assessment of Han Ho Suk, director of
the Center for Korean Affairs, "North Korea is one of the few
nations that can engage in a total war with the United States.
North Korea's war plan in case of an US attack is total war, not
the 'low-intensity limited warfare' or 'regional conflict' talked
about among the Western analysts ... If the US mounts a
pre-emptive strike on North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plants, North
Korea will retaliate with weapons of mass destruction: North Korea
will mount strategic nuclear attacks on US targets. The US war
planners know this ... North Korea has succeeded in weaponizing
nuclear devices for missile delivery. North Korea has operational
fleets of ICBMs [inter-continental ballistic missiles] and
intermediate-range missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. And
North Korea's Dong 2 missile may be capable of hitting the West
Coast of the United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii."
The player to watch in this particular "axis of evil"
segment is Victor Cha, recently appointed as Asia director in the
National Security Council. He will be the man responsible for
American policy towards North Korea.
It's interesting to compare the neo-con approach with Selig
Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for
International Policy. He visited North Korea in the spring of
2004. His assessment is that although the leadership is "very
eager for a settlement" with the US, they are "not
prepared to do it in the way the Bush administration is asking
them to do it. The North Koreans say that Washington wants them
to, in effect, simply roll over and disarm unilaterally."
Harrison criticizes the Bush administration's "very rigid
position, not prepared to trade anything". And this only
increases the "risk of war. The point is, the
administration's objective is really regime change in
Pyongyang."
The man in charge of this "very rigid position" is none
other than Cha. Cha has argued that "engagement is the best
practical way to build a coalition for punishment tomorrow. A
necessary precondition for the US coercing North Korea is the
formation of a regional consensus that efforts to resolve the
problem in a non-confrontational manner have been exhausted.
Without this consensus, implementing any form of coercion that
actually puts pressure on the regime is unworkable." Cha
qualifies this policy as "hawk engagement". It
essentially means that any multilateral talks are destined to
fail, because that's the premise of "hawk engagement" -
building support for an attack. So the whole multilateral ballet
in the next few months will consist of how China, South Korea,
Russia and Japan will be able to control the neo-con ideologues
before they snap it and decide on a "Shock and Awe"
against Kim.
The road to Riyadh
Many were abuzz in Washington before the American presidential
election when someone leaked what Bush had said at a donors'
luncheon: "Osama bin Laden would like to overthrow the Saudis
... then we're in trouble. Because they have a weapon. They have
the oil." In the neo-con roadmap, Syria and Iran may be
short-term targets, but only on the way to a big prize, Saudi
Arabia. Osama and al-Qaeda are more than on track to eventually
stage a coup in Saudi Arabia. Simultaneously, European
intelligence confirms there are now even more detailed war plans
than in the 1970s for an American invasion of Saudi oilfields ,
most of them situated in Shi'ite-populated areas.
European diplomats in Brussels hope that this day will not come.
The joint negotiation with Iran has been one more indication of
what these diplomats see as the EU's gradual emergence as a global
political player - a historical inevitability. The EU will
eventually have a collective military force - and then NATO's
existence will be pointless. The EU has already questioned the
neo-con equivalence of "pre-emptive war" with "just
war". The EU - unlike Bush and the neo-cons - heavily
supports the UN, as well as the World Court and the International
Criminal Court. The EU is multilateral - a concept that is
anathema for the neo-cons. Nonetheless, this all leads a diplomat
to be overtly pessimistic: "Iran must prepare for an air
attack from Israel and the US. This time, no one - the United
Nations, the European Union, not even Britain - will be
consulted."
Nuke them all
The Balkanization of the Arab and Muslim Middle East is a
follow-up to the "divide and rule" of British
colonialism. It's in the heart of the neo-con agenda. Arab
nationalism has to be smashed. And Persian nationalism as well.
The neo-con dream is a stable Iraq by the end of 2005 so the US
can concentrate on attacking Iran. With the US still bogged down
in a dreadful Iraqi quagmire, the well-oiled neo-con propaganda
machine is already full speed ahead manufacturing its trademark
brand of fear: Iranian nukes are coming to get us unless we pre-emptively
attack (echoes of Ronald Reagan's "Nicaraguan Sandinistas
about to invade Texas" come to mind). In the weeks and months
ahead fear in the US will be multiplied by myriad echo chambers -
right-wing talk radio, corporate media, Christian rapture
congregations, hardcore militarists still bent on avenging the
debacle in Vietnam by winning what is a de facto war against
Islam.
An American "Shock and Awe" could turn into a nightmare
as Iran is fine-tuning a dizzying array of asymmetrical warfare
options (See How
Iran will fight back Dec 16). Iran has installed
sophisticated anti-ship missiles on the island of Abu Musa, thus
controlling the critical Strait of Hormuz. In a pre-emptive
strike, Iran could easily shut down the Strait of Hormuz - where
all Persian Gulf oil tankers must pass. The immediate result: $100
or more for a barrel of oil - with all the consequences this would
entail. Neo-cons don't bother with reality though: they only see
that whoever controls Persian Gulf oil controls the world economy.
Israel may decide to stage a "Shock and Awe" of its own
- using its precious collection of high-tech fighter-bombers. Last
September, Israel bought 52 F-16Is from Lockheed Martin. Israel
also bought "nearly 5,000 bombs in one of the largest weapons
deals between the allies in years", including "500
bunker busters that could be effective against Iran's [as of yet
unproven] underground nuclear facilities", as Israeli
security sources told Reuters.
Muslims ask how could Israel get away with it. As far as the Arab
world is concerned, Arabs could not be more impotent - or more
co-opted at this historical juncture. Incompetence and corruption
prevails in Cairo, Riyadh, Damascus and Amman. Arabs hold no
significant political, economic or military power on the world
stage. As for the Iranians, descendants of the Persians, a hugely
sophisticated and influential civilization, they are still feared.
In 2002, Israel was saying that Iran could complete its first
nuclear weapon by the end of 2004. Nobody called Israel's bluff
then, nobody is calling it now.
With the American military in its current state, Bush and the
neo-cons cannot possibly reshape the Middle East to suit the
neo-con/Likud agenda. Washington is faced with two options. It
could restore the draft - provoking a minor social earthquake in
the US. Or it could develop - and deploy - tactical nuclear
weapons, mini-nukes. Fallujah - flattened by
"conventional" means - was just a test. On the road to
Damascus, the road to Tehran, the road to Riyadh, the neo-cons
would be much more tempted to go nuclear.
Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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