THE
ROVING EYE Evildoers, here we come Comment by Pepe Escobar
"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
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.
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