ROVING
EYE Morsi
delivers his calling card By
Pepe Escobar
You'd better not mess with
Muslim Brother Morsi.
Straight out of
"communist" China - where he secured a red carpet
welcome from President Hu Jintao and
vice-president Xi Jinping - the Egyptian president
lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader.
[1]
Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa,
Florida, among delegates at the Republican
convention anointing the dodgy Mitt Romney-Paul
Ryan duo as their presidential ticket. Chances are
Morsi would be ranked worse than Hitler (oh no;
that was Saddam. Or maybe Osama. Or maybe
Ahmadinejad ... )
Tampa-Tehran. Talk about
the ultimate snapshot of the current
geopolitical divide. On
one side, the 1% crowd yelling for blood - be it
from Barack Obama or from assorted Muslims. On the
other side, the bulk of the real "international
community", practically the whole global South
(including observers such as China, Brazil,
Argentina and Mexico) refusing to bend over to
imperial military/financial diktats. Reaffirming
its impeccable journalistic credentials, US
corporate media dismisses it all as just "a Third
World jamboree".
Anyway, the big news is
that Egypt is back. In other news, the
Washington-Tel Aviv axis is apoplectic.
Morsi may be walking like the proverbial
Egyptian in popular imagination; sideways. In fact
he's advancing all the time. By now it's clear
that Egypt's new foreign policy if focused on
restoring Cairo, historically the intellectual hub
of the Arab world, to its leadership position -
usurped by the oil-rich barbarians from the House
of Saud during those decades when Egypt was a mere
lowly servant of Washington's geopolitical
designs.
Those were the (long gone) days -
over three decades ago - when Tehran broke
relations with Cairo over Egypt's signing of the
Camp David accords. Morsi's attendance of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran may
not yet signal the return of full diplomatic
relations, as Morsi spokesman Yasser Ali has been
spinning. But it's an earth-shattering diplomatic
coup.
Enter the new great game A
quick recap is in order. Morsi's first crucial
foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia, for the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
meeting in Mecca. The House of Saud regards the
Muslim Brotherhood with extreme suspicion, to say
the least. Right after that Morsi got a personal
visit from the Emir of Qatar, and a US$2 billion
check with no strings attached; then he
immediately sacked the old leadership of the
Orwellian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF).
Meanwhile, Morsi had already
launched Egypt's plan to solve the interminable
Syrian tragedy; a contact group uniting Egypt,
Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. No Syrian solution
will be achieved without these key foreign players
- with Egypt being careful to position itself as
the mediator between Iran and Turkey/Saudi
interests (which amount to the same; in 2008
Turkey struck a strategic, political, economic and
security accord with the GCC).
With just
one stroke, Morsi cut off the head of a fake snake
being sold to Washington for years by the
Jordanian King Playstation and the House of Saud;
that of an "evil" Shi'ite crescent from Iran to
Lebanon via Iraq and Syria undermining the
"stability" of the Middle East.
What Saudi
Arabia's King Abdullah and Jordan's younger
Abdullah II in fact fear is the unrest and rage of
their own populations, not to mention the mere
idea of democracy; it's easy to blame rampant
Shi'ism for everything because Washington is
gullible - or expedient - enough to buy it.
The "Shi'ite crescent" myth can be
debunked in a number of ways. Here's just one -
that I have witnessed in person, on the spot, for
quite a while during the mid-2000s. Tehran knows
that the majority of Iraq's powerful clergy are
totally adverse to the Khomeinist concept of the
Islamic Republic. No wonder Tehran is very much
worried about the renaissance of Najaf in Iraq as
the premier holy city in Shi'ite Islam, to the
detriment of Qom in Iran.
Washington buys
this propaganda because it's right at the heart of
the New Great Game. Whatever the administration in
place, from Bush to Obama and beyond, a key
Washington obsession is to neutralize what is seen
as a Shi'ite axis from Lebanon, via Syria and
Iraq, across Iran and all the way to Afghanistan.
A mere look at the map tells us this axis
is at center of the humongous US military
deployment in Asia - facing China and Russia.
Obviously the best intel in Beijing and Moscow has
identified it for years.
The Russians and
the Chinese see how the Pentagon "manages" -
indirectly - a great deal of the region's oil
reserves, including the Shi'ite northeast of Saudi
Arabia. And they see how Iran - as the gravity
center of the whole region - cannot but be
Washington's ultimate obsession. The nuclear row
is just a pretext - the only one in the market,
actually. Ultimately, it's not a matter of
destroying Iran, but of subjugating it to the
condition of a docile ally.
Into this
hardcore power play steps in Brother Morsi,
reshuffling a deck of cards as lightning quick as
a Sheldon Adelson-employed Macau croupier. What
might have taken months and perhaps years - the
sidelining of the old SCAF leadership, Qatar being
privileged to the detriment of Saudi Arabia, a
presidential visit to Tehran, Egypt stepping up as
a leader of the Arab world - was accomplished in
barely two months.
Of course it will all
depend on how the Egypt-Iran relationship
develops, and whether Qatar - and even Iran - are
able to help the Muslim Brotherhood to keep Egypt
from not collapsing (there's no money for
anything; a $36 billion annual deficit; nearly
half the population is illiterate; and the country
imports half of its food).
Take me back
to Camp David The immediate problem with
Egypt's contact group for Syria is that Turkey -
in yet another stance of its spectacularly
counter-productive foreign policy - decided to
boycott NAM. Yet Egypt is undeterred, proposing to
add Iraq and Algeria to the contact group. [2]
And in steps Tehran with yet another
diplomatic "sweeping" proposal, according to the
Foreign Ministry; a NAM troika of Egypt, Iran and
Venezuela, plus Syria's neighbors Iraq and
Lebanon. So everybody wants to talk - apart, given
the evidence, from Turkey. Tehran's proposal is
fully supported by Russia.
And just as US
corporate media coverage was reveling in the hate
speeches at the millionaires' convention in Tampa,
"isolated" Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei meets with UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon in Tehran and calls for a nuclear-free
Middle East. [3]
Not exactly the stance of
a "new Hitler" who wants a nuclear bomb ...
yesterday, as the warmongering Bibi-Barak duo in
Israel ceaselessly spin. And certainly a very
popular global South denunciation of Washington's
cosmic hypocrisy of willfully ignoring Israel's
nuclear arsenal while squeezing Iran for its
nuclear program.
Needless to say, none of
this has been reported by US corporate media.
Meanwhile, all global South eyes are on
Morsi. They way things are moving, it's not
far-fetched to imagine the Muslim Brotherhood
playing the Camp David card sooner or later. In
that case, expect Washington to go ballistic - and
even time travel to 1970s Latin America, as in
promoting (yet another) military coup.
The
bottom line is, if the Muslim Brotherhood really
articulates an independent foreign policy over the
next few months, with even a hint that Camp David
should be renegotiated (over 90% of Egyptians
would support it), the warmongering Bibi-Barak duo
had better get real.
Notes: 1. See here
for China Daily report. 2. See here 3.
See here
He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com (Copyright 2012 Asia Times
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