Page 1 of
2 THE ROVING
EYE From al-Qaeda to
al-Quds By Pepe Escobar
PARIS –In 2002, in the runup to the war
against Iraq, the George W Bush administration
changed the subject from its failure to destroy
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq's
non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
In 2007, in the run-up to the coming war
against Iran, the administration has changed the
subject from its abject failure in Iraq to Iran's
also non-existent nuclear weapons. The
manufacture-of-consent
techniques are exactly the same - the apocalyptic
2007 Bush forecast of an Iranian-orchestrated
"nuclear holocaust", echoing Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's apocalyptic 2002 prediction of
a Saddam Hussein-orchestrated "mushroom cloud".
Vastly experienced European diplomats,
from Paris to the European Union headquarters in
Brussels, confess their helplessness and
impotence. They also confirm off the record that
Bush's brand-new European poodle, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy, is convinced the US president
will order the bombing of Iran's nuclear sites
–not to mention general infrastructure. A number
of chancelleries are already working under this
premise.
The Democrat-controlled US
Congress, for its part, has elevated its
irrevocable irrelevance to the starry skies by
virtually - and ignominiously - playing itself out
of the Bush administration's decision to attack
Iran. In the unlikely event Congress would object,
Rice already has the anti-virus vaccine: the
stamping out of the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e
Eslami - known in the West as the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - as a
"terrorist organization".
It doesn't even
matter - from the point of view of the Bush
administration - if the whole 125,000-strong IRGC
or just its elite Quds Force is branded as
terrorists. The transition will be covered by the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force issued
on September 18, 2001. Moreover, the US Senate has
already approved - by a Stalinist 97 votes to 0 -
an amendment accusing Iran of committing acts of
war against the US.
It also doesn't matter
that Gabriel Kolko - arguably the best historian
of the Vietnam War - keeps stressing that since
1950, the US has never lost a battle; but it has
never won a war either.
And now for the
laundry list Every serious observer of the
hysterical manufacture-of-consent rampage is now
aware of Vice President Dick Cheney's mandate for
US corporate media and selected think-tanks to
declare war on Iran - that is, the Office of the
Vice President telling the Wall Street Journal,
Fox News and assorted usual suspects what to do,
all under the aegis of the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI), the de facto policy
think-tank of the Bush administration. AEI's
stalwart Michael Ledeen's new book - a prodigy of
subtlety titled Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah
Zealot's Quest for Destruction - is a key part
of this package.
Everyone is aware of the
shrill Pentagon-concocted blitzkrieg about
made-in-Iran explosive devices and roadside bombs
penetrating Bradleys and Abrams tanks and killing
scores of US soldiers in Iraq - with no proof
being volunteered to, or asked for, by cowed
mainstream media.
Many are now aware of
the report by Daniel Plesch and Martin Butcher
summarized last month by the Raw Story website
[1], according to which the Pentagon, in the
impossibility of a land invasion, plans a
"massive, multi-front, full-spectrum" new "shock
and awe" against Iran, destroying not only the
Quds force and the IRGC but all nuclear energy
sites and the country's whole economic
infrastructure. The objective is clearly "regime
change" - or at least to reduce Iran to Iraq
status, that is, a feeble, failed state.
The paper was written by British scholar
and arms expert Dan Plesch, director of the Center
for International Studies and Diplomacy of the
School of Oriental and African Studies at the
University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former
director of the British American Security
Information Council and former adviser to the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the European
Parliament.
The neo-conservatives for
their part are plugging a new "shock and awe" in a
slightly watered down version - the destruction of
no less than 1,200 Iranian military/nuclear
targets in a mere three days (no attacks on
civilian infrastructure are mentioned).
The to-be-destroyed list certainly
includes the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power
plant; the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz; a
heavy-water and radioisotope plant in Arak; the
nuclear fuel unit in Ardekan; the uranium
conversion and nuclear technology center in
Isfahan; the Tehran Nuclear Research Center; the
Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope
production plant; and the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan
Multipurpose Laboratories. No one of course is
talking about "collateral damage", or the fact
that hundreds of Russian experts may be
obliterated in Bushehr (how about that as a
declaration of war?), or the fact that hundreds of
thousands of civilian residents of fabled Isfahan
may become victims of radiation provoked by US
mini-nukes.
Meanwhile, Bush and "new Adolf
Hitler" Mahmud Ahmadinejad keep feeding on each
other. The Iranian president has dismissed a US
attack ("they cannot implement it") as well as the
new, Sarkozy-coined ("he's inexperienced") Western
choice: "The Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."
As far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, "Iran's
nuclear case is closed. Iran is a nuclear nation
and has mastered the nuclear fuel cycle."
Cleverly diverting attention from
gargantuan US problems - from the economy to
energy dependence to the emergence of multilateral
powers - the Bush administration nevertheless
seems to be winning the propaganda war as well, at
least in the US, Western Europe and great swaths
of the Arab world. Iran, internationally, looks
very much isolated.
Asymmetrical war
ahead The Iranian regime anyway is clearly
getting ready to face the coming attack.
Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian ambassador in
Baghdad, hails from the IRGC. Speaking this week
to official news agency IRNA, he has
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