Is
Iran Being Set Up?
By
Gary Leupp
07/28/05 "Counterpunch.org"
- - -- A recent article by Juan
Cole depicts Iran as the real victor in the Iraq War.
This is because Iran, which Washington officially designates
"evil," has been able to establish warm relations with
the government ushered into power by U.S. occupation forces in
neighboring Iraq.
In his state visit to Iran Prime
Minister al-Jaafari was offered electricity, wheat, pipeline
projects, use of Iranian ports to transship goods to Iraq. Jaafari
paid a pilgrimage to the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the
most vilified characters in the history of U.S. foreign relations.
He blamed the Iran-Iraq War (in which the U.S. backed Baghdad) on
Saddam Hussein and accepted Iraqi culpability. He promised that
Iraq would not allow any attack on Iran from its soil.
Reports about the recent flurry
of Iran-Iraq diplomacy must shock the neocons. Things are not
going at all according to plan. Neocon ally Chalabi should be in
power, hosting the Israeli prime minister's official visit and
mapping a common strategy against Iran. Just 30,000 U.S. soldiers
should be in Iraq, living on permanent bases. The privatized oil
industry should be paying for the nearly completed reconstruction
of the country. Instead, devout Shiites who revere Khomeini are in
power, Iraq is far from recognizing Israel, 130,000 U.S. forces
are bogged down in a guerrilla war, the oil industry hasn't
recovered to pre-2001 levels, and the costs of the war and
reconstruction fall on the American taxpayer. No, this is not at
all what the neocons expected.
Not anticipating that Iraqi
Shiites would either turn on their "liberators" or feel
sympathy towards Iran (with which Iraq fought a long very bloody
war in the 1980s), the neocons instead expected (or at least,
publicly stated that they expected) a welcoming population that
would submit to something like the U.S. occupation of Japan
(1945-52). L. Paul Bremer III, heading the "Coalition
Provisional Authority" in Iraq, said in June 2003 that while
the occupation imposed "no blanket prohibition" against
Iraqi self-rule, and he wasn't personally "opposed to
it," it had to occur in "a way that takes care of our
concerns. Elections that are held too early can be destructive.
It's got to be done very carefully" (Washington Post,
June 28, 2003). The January 2005 election was held not because the
U.S. came with a plan to quickly establish an Iraqi democracy, but
because Shiite demonstrators rallied by Ayatollah Sistani demanded
both an end to the occupation and free elections early on.
Huge demonstrations in early
2004 forced the U.S. to agree to officially "turn over
authority" to an interim Iraqi government that summer and
hold elections for a new administration in January 2005. Chalabi,
fallen from favor in May 2004 due to charges of espionage, was
replaced by Iyad Allawi (another CIA operative) as the leader
favored by the U.S.; he was appointed prime minister June 1, 2004.
He remained the favorite in January 2005, and his party apparently
got several times his expected vote due after receiving U.S.
funds, advice and maybe stuffed ballot boxes. But the lion's share
of the vote (quite a lot lower than expected, suggesting lots of
fraud) went to the SCIRI and Dawa religious-based parties. After
ages and ages of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the present
administration under Jaafari was finally announced in April. Quite
contrary to U.S. intentions, it has turned out to be markedly
pro-Iranian.
Cole concludes with the
observation, "The ongoing chaos in Iraq has made it
impossible for Bush administration hawks to carry out their
long-held dream of overthrowing the Iranian regime, or even of
forcing it to end its nuclear ambitions." He implies that
both because the U.S. is militarily overextended and because the
Iraqi authorities will not approve an attack from their soil. I
do want to believe all that! I also want to believe that,
following the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's advice, the
governments of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will request the removal
of U.S. bases from their territory. The local rulers of these
former Soviet republics in Central Asia were willing to help out
against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan but now seem anxious about U.S.
use of their soil for an attack on Iran. Russia is heavily
invested in Iran's nuclear industry, while China needs its
petroleum.
But the U.S. is applying
pressure. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said "It looks to me like two very large countries
were trying to bully some smaller countries." Rumsfeld has
echoed that, stressing that the U.S. makes agreements with
nations, not the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yesterday
Rumsfeld was back in Kyrgyzstan, suddenly, for the second time in
four months, obviously concerned about the issue of Manas Air
Base. Newly elected president Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, who while
campaigning for office called for an end to the U.S. presence,
says his government will "do its best to avoid spoiling
relations with Washington." In any case, the U.S. presence in
Azerbaijan (not a SCO nation) may be important for war making
purposes. Scott Ritter wrote
last month that in "Azerbaijan, the US military is
preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence
that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture
Tehran."
Meanwhile, my pessimism deepens
as I read an online excerpt from an article by Philip Giraldi, in
the American
Conservative. It indicates that:
(1) the U.S. Strategic Command
(STRATCOM) has been asked to draw up concrete, short term
contingency plans for an attack on Iran, to involve "a
large-scale air assault employing both conventional and tactical
nuclear weapons" and
(2) that Vice President
Cheney's office has specifically told the Pentagon that the
military should be prepared for an attack on Iran in the
immediate aftermath of "another 9-11." That's
"not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act
of terrorism directed against the United States," notes
Geraldi.
Can it get madder than this? The
neocons' plans for a total reorganization of the "Greater
Middle East" have been plain for some time now. Many have
been warning against the prospect of an expansion of the Iraq War
into Syria and Iran. You'd think that reality would smack these
guys in the face and they'd call off anything so stupid. But they
apparently think that by using conventional and nuclear weapons
(first time any nation will do that since Nagasaki); by employing
the Mujahadeen Khalq; by activating agents in place to organize
demonstrations (as the CIA did so successfully in Iraq in 1953);
by attacking from Azerbaijan they can actually pull this off. Do
they even realize that southern Iraq and Iran constitute the
heartland of historical Shiism, and that an attack on Iran will
negate any goodwill among Shiites U.S. forces have acquired in
Iraq?
Maybe, here and there within the
military itself, the madmen meet with quiet resistance.
"Several senior Air Force officers involved in the
planning," writes Giraldi, "are reportedly appalled at
the implications of what they are doing---that Iran is being set
up for an unprovoked nuclear attack" That's encouraging,
surely. Good that senior Air Force officers should be appalled at
their orders. Surely they must ask questions, such as:
What do they mean by
"another 9-11"? Could any, even small-time terrorist
act in the U.S. (say, killing 52 in the Boston subway) be the
signal for us to start bombing Iran?
Does the Vice President's
office anticipate this second 9-11 sometime soon?
Would it be moral to attack
Iran in the aftermath of a terrorist attack if Iran had nothing
to do with it?
Actually, why would Iran ever
give the U.S. pretext for an attack?
Am I going to be complicit in
war crimes if I'm involved in this planned attack? What will
this do for my long-term reputation?
Will our troops in Iraq suffer
as a result of the hatred for the U.S. another unprovoked attack
is likely to generate?
Am I going to be a part of a
military project which will have no support anywhere in the
world, except maybe in Israel?
But the sentence finishes
"---but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any
objections."
That could change quickly, of
course, if the Bush administration starts to sink under the weight
of accumulating scandals. But the plan for the Iran attack is for
it to come quickly, while the nation is in a state of
shock---apparently in some near-future scenario---so that
all those brewing scandals get placed on the back burners. The
propaganda set-up's already been performed as well as possible.
There's a list of charges against Iran, just like there was
against Iraq. If they happen, President Bush will explain the Iran
attacks as strikes reluctantly undertaken, as a last resort, to
protect Americans from terrorist threats emanating out of Iran.
The STRATCOM guys will know that's not true, and have to live with
the knowledge.
Or else they can do what some
have apparently done so far: speak out, if anonymously, and just
maybe force their commanders to abort this criminal war against
Iran.
Gary Leupp is
Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of
Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of
the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
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