- Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in discussions with colleagues
on Nov. 22, accusing Vice President Dick Cheney and the "Israeli Mafia"
of being behind the latest destabilization of Lebanon-the assassination
on Nov. 21 of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. LaRouche cited other Israeli
provocations since the Lebanon War of July 2006, including a string of
confrontations with French peacekeepers, and threats to attack German ships
in the Mediterranean that are part of the Lebanon peacekeeping effort,
as "state-of-mind" evidence of the war intent.
-
- Things have become so tense between the French and Israeli
governments over the Lebanon crisis, that French soldiers serving in the
Lebanese peacekeeping mission are now authorized to shoot at Israeli Air
Force jet fighters overflying Lebanon, after a failed Paris meeting in
mid-November between French and Israeli military officials.
-
- LaRouche warned that the climate is being set for an
Israeli military raid on Iran's purported nuclear weapons sites, which
would lead to a mobilization of support for a larger attack on Iran, involving
the United States and other nations-with the quiet but enthusiastic backing
of many frightened Sunni Arab regimes, which are being stampeded by the
Cheneyacs in Washington into this suicidal stance.
-
- LaRouche characterized the Gemayel assassination as a
signal of Israeli plans to launch a military strike against Iran in the
near future-at the urging of Cheney and his own masters within the Anglo-American
"war party."
-
- Evidence of these Cheney-encouraged Israeli attack plans
have been visible in recent weeks, including in President Bush's widely
reported comments to French President Jacques Chirac that, "I do not
discount the possibility that Israel will attack Iran, and if it does this-I
will understand it." Those comments were reported in the Israeli daily
Ha'aretz on Nov. 22. And President Bush has reportedly repeated the point
recently in several other venues.
-
- A Nov. 22 editorial in Ha'aretz signed by Gideon Samet
further warned of just such an Israeli sneak attack on Iran: "Close
your eyes and think about the possibility that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
together with the chief of staff, the minister for strategic threats, and
his other advisers, will wrack his brain and decide to act against the
Iranian nuclear threat-and imagine what this means for you. This is the
man," he warned, "who is responsible for managing a failed war
against a guerrilla army in Lebanon. Does this make you feel calm?"
Samet referenced the Seymour Hersh article, published in the Nov. 20 New
Yorker magazine, which warned that Cheney is still intent on a military
attack on Iran, and that U.S. and Israeli special forces commandos are
already operating on the ground inside the country, planting site markers
for future bombings, and organizing sabotage operations by Kurds, Baluchis,
and Azeris.
-
- Bibi Rants
-
- On Nov. 24, speaking in Jerusalem at a conference of
the Orthodox Union, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close Cheney
ally, openly called for Israeli action against Iran in the most rabid of
terms. Describing Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as representing
a greater danger for the Jewish people than did Adolf Hitler, because of
Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, Netanyahu declared, "The
future of the Jewish state is as in danger as it has ever been in the last
half-century." Making a not-so-veiled reference to Israel's own extensive,
undeclared nuclear weapons program, Netanyahu said, "We must use the
powers that we've amassed to make the Jews no longer defenseless and able
to shape their destiny and protect their future. This is the most important
thing that we can do today. Everything else is secondary." Several
weeks earlier, in a speech in Los Angeles, Netanyahu was even more blunt:
"It's 1938, and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself
with atomic bombs."
-
- LaRouche concluded his warning of an imminent Cheney-encouraged
Israeli attack on Iran with a caution against what he called "kinematic
thinking." Do not look for narrow cause and effect, LaRouche warned.
There has been a long-term master plan to blow up the entire extended Southwest
Asia and Persian Gulf region, to bring about an end to the post-1648 Westphalian
era of the nation-state system, and in particular, to destroy the United
States. This, he concluded, is what is driving Cheney and company to now
seek to play the Israeli "breakaway ally" game to detonate that
long-standing plan.
-
- Such a U.S.-backed Israeli strike against Iran, though
militarily inconsequential-unless Israel were to use nuclear weapons-would
trigger a wave of global asymmetric warfare, the kind of permanent "clash
of civilizations" that Britain's Arab Bureau operative Dr. Bernard
Lewis has been promoting for decades. Lewis, like long-time British agent-of-influence
Dr. Henry Kissinger, has been a top advisor to Vice President Cheney, frequently
leading informal seminars at the Vice President's residence at the Naval
Observatory in Washington.
-
- Kissinger Speaks-and Cheney Acts
-
- Kissinger himself weighed in for an Israeli strike against
Iran in a ponderous op-ed piece, published in the Nov. 24 Washington Post,
and several European newspapers. While ostensibly promoting diplomatic
dialogue among the United States, Europe, the Sunni Arab states, and Tehran,
Kissinger pointedly wrote: "The nuclear negotiations with Iran are
moving toward an inconclusive outcome. The Six [the UN Security Council's
permanent five plus Germany-ed.] eventually will have to choose either
effective sanctions or the consequences of an Iranian military nuclear
capability and the world of proliferation that implies. Military action
by the United States is extremely improbable in the final two years of
a Presidency facing a hostile Congress-though it may be taken more seriously
in Tehran. Tehran surely cannot ignore the possibility of a unilateral
Israeli strike if all negotiation options close."
-
- Later in the same op-ed, Kissinger also promoted the
idea, already being peddled by neo-conservatives in the Vice President's
office and at the American Enterprise Institute, of an American-European-Sunni
Arab alliance with Israel against Iran-what Kissinger euphemistically called
a "policy of equilibrium" between Iran and the Sunni regimes.
- The same time that Kissinger's rant appeared in the Post,
the Wall Street Journal published a Nov. 24 wildly provocative lead front-page
story, titled "Religious Divide: To Contain Iran, U.S. Seeks Help
From Arab Allies." Mischaracterizing the flurry of U.S. diplomacy
as "a bid to stabilize the region and build a coalition to contain
Iran's Shi'ite regime," author Jay Solomon accurately catalogued a
full-court press by top Bush Administration officials, to align Sunni Arab
regimes against Tehran, in what amounts to a bizarre war alliance of Washington,
Tel Aviv, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Solomon did quote Middle East scholar Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterrey, California, warning against such a campaign: "The
whole rhetoric of containing Iran could spark competing extremism,"
he warned. "Washington doesn't want to be seen as actively encouraging
this."
-
- Or do they? The fact that Vice President Cheney, the
leading war-hawk in the Bush Administration, kicked off the Sunni Arab
dialogues, with a Nov. 24 trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, underscores that
some in the Bush Administration are in no way backing off from plans for
hard military confrontation before leaving office-perhaps, even before
the 110th Congress is sworn in at the beginning of January 2007.
-
- Joshua Muravchik, an AEI resident scholar and leading
neo-con propagandist, put it bluntly in an article published in the November/December
2006 issue of Foreign Policy. "Make no mistake," he wrote, "President
Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office.
It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements
to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics
who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power
status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed
Iran will negate any progress there."
-
- Muravchik warned, "The global thunder against Bush
when he pulls the trigger will be deafening, and it will have many echoes
at home.... We need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared
to defend the action when it comes.... The defense should be global in
scope. There is a crying need in today's ideological wars for something
akin to the Congress for Cultural Freedom of the Cold War, a global circle
of intellectuals and public figures who share a devotion to democracy.
The leaders of this movement might include Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, and
Anwar Ibrahim."
-
- Other War Councils
-
- In addition to Cheney's meetings with King Abdullah and
other top Saudi officials, President Bush is also scheduled to be in Amman,
Jordan at the end of November, to meet with King Abdallah II and with Iraq's
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite who has fallen out of favor with
Washington, amidst talk of a U.S. "Sunni turn," which has also
been dubbed "re-Baathification."
-
- Both Tom Hayden and Paul William Roberts wrote on Nov.
24 that secret talks have already taken place between leading Iraqi Sunni
insurgents and Bush Administration officials in Amman. One meeting, according
to Jordan's Prince Hassan, included former Iraqi Vice President and Foreign
Minister Tariq Aziz, who is being looked to as a key interlocutor between
Washington and leading Sunni insurgents. Prince Hassan told journalist
Roberts that Secretary of State Condi Rice has "made a personal appeal
to the Gulf Cooperation Council last month to act as intermediaries between
the U.S. and the armed Sunni resistance, not including Iraq's Al Qaeda
leaders."
-
- A further indication of this policy turn was also cited
in the Wall Street Journal: On Nov. 30, Rice will hold meetings with the
foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, and the member states of the GCC, the
six Persian Gulf Sunni oil sheikhdoms. According to the Journal, "They
are expected to discuss how to deter Iran from meddling in the politics
of neighbor countries and from developing a nuclear arsenal.... The visits
come amid U.S. efforts to build a Sunni-based regional alliance. U.S. naval
fleets have engaged in training exercises with several Persian Gulf countries.
Last month, the U.S. conducted war games with Bahrain, Qatar, the U.A.E.
and about two dozen other countries about 20 miles outside of Iran's territorial
waters. The exercises were part of the Bush Administration's Proliferation
Security Initiative, which seeks to stanch weapons trafficking."
- New Stovepipes for Old
-
- Much hoopla has been made of the pending release of the
recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, a Congressionally sponsored
and White House-endorsed Iraq Study Group (ISG). But there are growing
signs that the Cheney gang inside the Bush Administration has already moved
preemptively to undercut the impact of the effort, by launching an in-house
Iraq policy review, to be completed simultaneous to the Baker-Hamilton
effort. The primary input of the Baker-Hamilton group has been long anticipated:
Start direct talks, with no preconditions, with Tehran and Damascus. But
a Nov. 23 Newsday story by Washington bureau chief Tim Phelps warned that,
"Internal strife within the Baker Commission, outright opposition
from President George W. Bush and Tuesday's assassination of a cabinet
member in Lebanon are complicating the prospect of U.S. overtures to Syria
and Iran over Iraq, informed sources say. A source who spoke recently to
a leader of the Iraq Study Group said he complained bitterly about internal
dissension and partisanship among members of the supposedly bipartisan
group, and was worried about reaching consensus on the key issues."
-
- Further threatening the efforts of the ISG is a revival
of the pre-Iraq war "stovepipe" of dubious intelligence directly
to the Vice President's office from the Pentagon, bypassing the CIA and
other major intelligence community components. The existence of this stovepipe
was featured in the latest Seymour Hersh New Yorker piece, "Iran:
The Next Act," but earlier reports that the chief Iraq pre-war intelligence
spinmeister, Abraham Shulsky, of the Office of Special Plans, had been
reassigned to work on "the Iran problem" at the Pentagon's Office
of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, had already raised eyebrows.
-
- Hersh revealed that a new, highly classified CIA study,
based on U.S. technical intelligence efforts, raised serious doubts that
Iran was conducting an ambitious secret nuclear weapons program. But that
CIA assessment has been challenged by "intelligence from Israeli spies
operating inside Iran," who "claimed that Iran has developed
and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb." According to Hersh,
the details of the Israeli spies' findings have been withheld from the
CIA, but the "raw" intelligence has been passed from the Pentagon
to Cheney's staff, and is being used as powerful ammunition in the faction
fight inside the Bush White House.
-
- The stakes in this fight are enormous. An Israeli or
American bombing attack against Iran would unleash chaos on a regional
or global scale; and a new oil price shock, an almost certain consequence
of a hard confrontation with Iran, would blow out the global financial
system, adding to the chaos.
-
- Which brings us back full circle to Lyndon LaRouche's
warning that the events now unraveling in Southwest Asia are not the result
of tragic reactions and counter-reactions. They are the playing out of
a master-plan for global disaster, that would destroy the United States,
en route to plunging the planet into a New Dark Age. This is why LaRouche
insists that the path to peace in the war-torn Middle East begins with
the impeachment of Dick Cheney and George Bush.
|
