[WCUSP] Analysis: Goodbye Al Qaeda, hello Iran (Asia Times 2/1)

[yvonne simmons]

--- Peace and Justice Works <pjw at pjw.info> wrote:

> Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:08:24 -0800 (PST)
> From: Peace and Justice Works <pjw at pjw.info>
> To: Peace and Justice Works Iraq Affinity Group
> <iraq at pjw.info>
> Subject: Analysis: Goodbye Al Qaeda, hello Iran
> (Asia Times 2/1) 
> 
> Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2007 11:18:18 -0800 (PST) From: jim
> rissman
> 
>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB02Ak01.html
> Asia Times  February 1, 2007
> The 'axis of fear' is born
> By Pepe Escobar
> 
> The Bush administration, in a sense, is getting what
> it wants in the wider 
> Middle East. To battle a fictitious Shi'ite crescent
> (a construct by 
> Jordan's King Abdullah), it has emboldened even more
> a reactionary Sunni 
> crescent (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and
> the United Arab 
> Emirates), thus exacerbating to a paroxysm the
> "strategy" it has already 
> applied in Iraq: sectarianism as the golden
> parameter of imperial divide 
> and rule. Historically, Sunnis and Shi'ites have
> co-existed amid social 
> tensions. But never have these tensions been so
> cynically exploited - by 
> Washington - as in post-invasion Iraq and the wider
> Middle East.
> 
> The administration of US President George W Bush was
> forced to acknowledge 
> that the monumental disaster of occupied Iraq had to
> be blamed on a new 
> scapegoat. Thus the umpteenth twist in the "war on
> terror": exit al-Qaeda, 
> enter Iran.
> 
> The Sunni Arab "axis of fear" is merrily playing
> along. King Abdullah of 
> Saudi Arabia even complained in a Kuwaiti newspaper
> that Iran is trying to 
> convert Sunni Arabs to Shi'ism. Even Israel is now
> by all means allied 
> with Saudi Arabia against Iran - Mecca/Jerusalem
> against Qom; Muslims and 
> Jews battling Muslims.
> 
> It's enlightening to compare this development with
> how Iran's ambassador 
> to Syria, Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, sees it - as
> nothing other than a 
> replay of the British Empire's divide-and-rule.
> Washington is once again 
> sowing the seeds of discord among Muslims: "Bush and
> his allies are in 
> favor of further unrest, turmoil and crises so that
> they can justify 
> deployment of their troops in the region."
> 
> Shi'ites also happen to live in the midst of the
> "axis of fear" - such as 
> in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies.
> Beyond sectarianism, Arab 
> popular perception is alert enough to identify this
> for what it is: a war 
> of the US - supported by dictatorial Arab regimes -
> against Islam. And the 
> target is not only Iran: the Saudi/Israeli link is
> also anti-Hamas - an 
> obvious point as the House of Saud is little else
> than an annex of 
> Washington.
> 
> A recent survey of Arab public opinion by the
> British YouGov group 
> revealed that Israel (88%) is the "greatest threat
> to the security and 
> future" of the Middle East, followed by the US,
> al-Qaeda and finally Iran 
> (33%). This has not prevented the bulk of Arab
> mainstream media from 
> engaging in a systematic anti-Iranian propaganda
> wave.
> 
> But as Iran strives to position itself in practice
> as the key supporter of 
> the Palestinian national-liberation movement, it is
> bound to solidify its 
> pre-eminent popular role in the Middle East.
> Washington, once again, will 
> not be amused.
> 
> Patriot games
> 
> # As even the mineral kingdom is aware, the Bush
> administration's war on 
> Iran is already on. Escalation and provocation are
> fast reaching fever 
> pitch. This includes: The - bogus - White House
> claim that Iranian 
> "networks" are helping to target US troops in Iraq.
> # An imminent Bush  administration-peddled dossier
> detailing alleged 
> Iranian "subversion" in Iraq, which is bound to
> include the surrealistic 
> notion of Iranian "agents" collaborating with the
> Sunni Arab muqawama 
> (resistance) in an anti-American orgy.
> # US Special Forces destabilizing Iran on the ground
> (especially in 
> Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan provinces).
> # United Nations sanctions.
> # The blacklisting of Iranian state-owned Bank
> Sepah. 
> # The deployment to Israel and Gulf states of
> defensive Patriot missiles 
> (theoretically to shoot down any retaliatory,
> incoming Iranian Shihab-3 
> missiles).
> # The deployment toward the Gulf of the USS John C
> Stennis nuclear strike 
> force plus the USS Eisenhower nuclear strike force -
> in practice two huge 
> floating airports accompanied by guided-missile
> cruisers, frigates, 
> destroyers, and submarine escorts and loaded with a
> deluge of missiles 
> and helicopters. In the event the Nimitz strike
> force - currently in San 
> Diego - also heads to the Middle East, the attack on
> Iran will be a 
> certainty.
> 
> And there is the non-stop disinformation avalanche.
> As in 2002, pre-shock 
> and awe, where the focus was shifted from Osama bin
> Laden to Saddam 
> Hussein, in the 2007 remix (with a nuclear twist)
> the focus is being moved 
> from the quagmire in Iraq to the Iranian "threat".
> 
> The London-based International Institute of
> Strategic Studies has joined 
> the fray, insisting Iran "could" be only two years
> away from building a 
> nuclear bomb. This curiously ties with Likud supremo
> Benjamin Netanyahu 
> claiming that Iran is "1,000 days away" from going
> nuclear. CNN and Fox 
> News are mercilessly slugging it out to get prime
> Pentagon handouts - the 
> best ringside view to watch the next war.
> 
> Meanwhile in Tehran, everything hinges on a crucial
> decision to be made by 
> the nationalist theocracy's leadership. What path to
> choose: cooperation 
> with the US, or confrontation? President Mahmud
> Ahmadinejad and his 
> faction favor confrontation. Hashemi Rafsanjani, in
> practice the regime's 
> No 2, favors cooperation (as does a crucial player,
> reformist Ayatollah 
> Hossein Ali Montazeri). Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
> al-Khamenei has taken 
> steps to isolate Ahmadinejad. But it may be too
> late: whatever the path 
> chosen, the Bush administration is already on a war
> footing. Options 
> abound.
> 
> As under the new White House-defined rules the
> guerrillas in Iraq are now 
> led by Iran and not al-Qaeda, Iran can be attacked
> with no further 
> authorization. The crucial missing piece is how to
> fabricate the new 
> (Persian) Gulf of Tonkin incident, as in 1964 when
> Vietnamese naval 
> vessels attacked US destroyers, setting in motion
> the impetus toward the 
> Vietnam War.
> 
> Pray and then I'll kill you
> 
> The US-stoked Sunni-Shi'ite divide had to involve
> oil. Saudi Arabia is 
> directly confronting Iran inside the Organization of
> Petroleum Exporting 
> Countries. Traders take for granted that the Bush
> administration is once 
> again allied with the House of Saud. Iran wants oil
> to be sold for at 
> least US$70 a barrel. Saudi Oil Minister Ibrahim
> al-Naimi, on the other 
> hand, keeps repeating that oil prices are going "in
> the right direction", 
> ie down.
> 
> The US/Saudi nexus pulls no punches to squeeze Iran
> economically (fewer 
> oil sales, less hard currency, mounting problems for
> Ahmadinejad, whose 
> notoriously incompetent administration has not
> managed a better 
> distribution of Iran's oil revenues). To top it off,
> to extract a barrel 
> of oil Saudi Arabia may spend as little as $2. Iran,
> on the other hand, 
> may spend as much as $18. And it will get worse.
> Iran is barred from 
> buying the best exploration and drilling equipment,
> which is basically 
> made in North America.
> 
> No wonder Tehran is proceeding with extreme caution
> - while bracing for a 
> possible attack. Diplomatically, Tehran has invited
> International Atomic 
> Energy Agency scientists and diplomats from the
> Non-Aligned Movement, the 
> Group of 77 and the Arab League to visit Iran's
> nuclear sites. Ali 
> Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security
> Council and chief 
> nuclear negotiator, went to Saudi Arabia and
> personally talked to King 
> Abdullah - conveying the Supreme Leader's offer of
> Iranian help to 
> stabilize Iraq. But this won't be enough to appease
> Bush.
> 
> Bush's green light for the assassination of Iranians
> inside Iraq has been 
> no less than absurd - apart from being illegal. The
> majority of Iranians 
> in Iraq are pilgrims, who go predominantly to the
> holy sites in Najaf and 
> Karbala (Iran is actually financing the construction
> of an airport in 
> Najaf). Anyone now can dub the pilgrims "spies" or
> "terrorists" or worse, 
> and engage in targeted assassinations. What Iranian
> agents do is sell 
> mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades to
> Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi 
> Army commanders. The Mehdi Army is not killing
> Americans - at least not 
> yet.
> 
> American casualties are not produced by Shi'ite
> pilgrims. The killers are 
> Sunni Arabs - from al-Anbar province to Salahuddin,
> from Mosul to western 
> Baghdad. These Sunni Arab killers are sponsored by
> none other than wealthy 
> individuals living in the "axis of fear" - Saudi
> Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, 
> Kuwait and the Emirates. Of more than 10,000
> prisoners in US jails in 
> Iraq, the majority of foreigners are Saudis,
> followed by Jordanians. There 
> are practically no Iranians.
> 
> In a January 19 interview with the Arab satellite
> channel al-Manar, 
> Hezbollah secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah
> sharply analyzed how 
> Lebanonization is linked to Iraqification and to the
> larger Sunni-Shi'ite 
> divide in the Middle East. It all has to do, of
> course, with Bush's "New 
> Middle East".
> 
> In Nasrallah's view, "In short, the 'New Middle
> East' signifies a 
> collection of statelets that are divided along
> religious, sectarian and 
> racial lines from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran
> to Turkey to 
> Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia
> and Yemen and the 
> rest of the Gulf states, reaching North Africa. And
> here ... I would like 
> to warn everyone in the Arab and Islamic world,
> whichever sect or religion 
> they identify with, whether they be Muslim or
> Christian, Shi'ite or Sunni 
> or Druze, whichever race they belong to, Arabs,
> Kurds, Turks, etc ... 
> Whoever believes that the 'New Middle East' will
> grant him his own 
> independent state, that may be the case, but they
> should not ignore that a 
> founding pillar of the 'New Middle East' is
> continuous conflict between 
> these statelets."
> 
> Reality proves it. The Bush administration thrives
> on chaos - internal 
> sectarianism and state-to-state sectarianism. It
> orders an Iraqi client 
> regime (the Nuri al-Maliki government) to kill Sunni
> Arabs (or nationalist 
> Shi'ites, such as the Sadrists). It orders a
> supplicant client in 
> Palestine (Mahmoud Abbas) to kill people from Hamas.
> It orders a client 
> regime in Lebanon (the Fouad Siniora government) to
> kill people from 
> Hezbollah. This is what Washington calls
> "democracy". Compare it with the 
> fact that Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas and
> Ahmadinejad are the 
> three most popular Muslim leaders among the Egyptian
> masses.
> 
> If "Sunni solidarity" were something more than a
> meaningless slogan in the 
> war for the soul of Islam, the "axis of fear" would
> have had to support 
> the Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq to drive out the
> US. They could never 
> have summoned the courage, of course - unlike their
> populations - so they 
> fabricated the threat of a "Shi'ite crescent". The
> US is more than 
> comfortable attributing to hardcore Sunni Saudi
> Arabia the role of key 
> "axis of fear" player in the war of the US against
> Shi'ite Iran. 
> Taliban-friendly Pakistan may soon join.
> 
> The fact that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
> fabricate "terrorists" in 
> industrial quantities is a minor detail. What
> matters now for the Bush 
> administration is yet another wild bunch of even
> more evil "terrorists" 
> who threaten "civilization" with (non-existent)
> nuclear weapons.
> 
> Should a mini-September 11, 2001, come, the US will
> blame it on Iran. 
> Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress will have
> to say "yes" to US 
> bombs. And meanwhile, Muslims will be killing
> Muslims all over the Middle 
> East for the United States' greater benefit.
> 



 
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