European Union foreign ministers have formally adopted an oil embargo against Iran over its nuclear program

By Ismail Salami   Intifada-Palestine.com

Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well.

Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

In a recent stance, Iran has threatened that it would never let a situation prevail where regional states could sell their oil while Iran couldn’t. Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has said, “When there is an absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will soar up dramatically and the western countries are well aware of this fact; However, Iran will never allow itself to land in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can.”

It hardly needs saying that such a firm stance on the part of Iran has been given considerable thought and that the European Union should be prepared to face the consequences of their irrationality and blind servitude to Washington.

Earlier Iran had warned that it would close the Strait of Hormuz, a move which, as the IMF has said, “could trigger a much larger price spike including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region.”

The sanctions on Iran oil, which will be effective in July, will surely have drastic repercussions for the European Union as Iran is mulling banning the sale of oil to Europe, a proactive move which will salvage the country’s economy on the one hand and will also lead to a drastic hike in oil prices on the other.

Undoubtedly, the EU decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports is, as Velayati has said, “a political maneuver,” and that “Iran doesn’t need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there.”

In the long run, Western oil firms and consumers may “emerge the biggest losers.” The IMF has predicted that crude oil prices could rise up to 30 percent namely to over USD 140 per barrel if Iran ever decided to retaliate by halting its oil exports altogether. Saudi Arabia has vowed to fill the gap.

But what if Saudi Arabia is bluffing? What if she cannot make up for the supply deficiency?

At all events, oil is fungible and Iran will easily find its own customers in Asian markets.

Europe has seen better days and now is not surely the best time for the imposition of sanctions on Iran’s oil as they will suffer most. For some European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, it will not be really easy to participate in the ban on Iran oil as they largely rely on Iran imports. As for Greece which is receiving oil from Iran on credit, it will be an utterly wrong decision to join other European countries which have secret plans to disintegrate the country.

Much to the chagrin of Washington and the Zionist regime, a number of countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea have already refused to abide by the new measures. Russia has slammed the new package of sanctions and in a tough-worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the EU move as “deeply erroneous.”

“Under such kind of pressure Iran will make no concessions and no correction of its policy,” it said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that there was nothing to prove that Iran was trying to build an atomic weapon.

Russia has also warned the West against a US-led invasion of Iran, saying that this would incur a chain reaction and that the catastrophic consequences will affect the entire region.

It is manifest that Iran will do without the EU and will find its customers elsewhere in Asian markets. In other words, Iran will not lose in the passive war of sanctions engineered by Washington.

Indeed, sanctions are to be seen as part of Washington’s policy of coercion to break the back of the Iranian government and bring the nation to its knees. However, it should be noted that Iran has been mercilessly under severe sanctions for over 30 years and that it has turned the sanctions into opportunities to attain self-sufficiency and stand on its feet again. The entire gamut of the sanctions designed and spurred by the US and now followed by the EU is also tailored to suit the interests of Israel, the archenemy of Iran and thus the bosom buddy of Washington.

Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been the target of Washington’s inveterate animosity.

In his book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (1993), Alan Friedman reveals how the US government aided the regime of the executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran. Ironically, the once good pal of the United States suddenly turned into a parasite to be eliminated from the face of the earth. According to Friedman, Washington generously doled out its assistance in various forms to Iraq including billions of dollars worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-US arms, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and active participation in war against Iran. An Atlanta branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro funneled over USD 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. This piece of information had been concealed by the CIA.

An appalling report revealed that the US government provided Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons. Released on May 25, 1994 by the US Senate Banking Committee, the report detailed the export of pathogenic (‘disease producing’), toxigenic (‘poisonous’), and other biological materials to Iraq after licensing by the US Department of Commerce. The report revealed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the US to Iraq over a span of three years.

The Iraqi regime used the chemical weapons provided by the US against the Iranian combatants and civilians, thus leaving them in a life-in-death situation. Around 100,000 Iranians were affected by nerve and mustard gases, and around one in 10 died before receiving any medical treatment. About five to six thousand are still under medical treatment, of whom around a thousand are critically ill.

The Iranian chemical victims are still dying on a daily basis.

So, Washington’s enmity towards the Islamic Republic goes far beyond its peaceful nuclear program which has constantly been used as a political leverage to stunt the economic and political growth of an anti-imperialism state and prevent the emergence of a Muslim superpower.

The depiction of Iran as a nuclear nightmare and as a global threat is only a saga manufactured by Washington in order to smother a voice so overpoweringly critical of the myriad morbid policies of a government whose American dream is dead and gone.

********

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

October 2011: Egyptians in Talat Harb square, Cairo, protest against military rule; October 1956: Egyptians demonstrate in the same square against British-French invasion. Photograph: Getty/Associated Press

by Seumas Milne

There’s a real sense in which, more than any other part of the former colonial world, the Middle East has never been fully decolonised. Sitting on top of the bulk of the globe’s oil reserves, the Arab world has been the target of continual interference and intervention ever since it became formally independent.

Carved into artificial states after the first world war, it’s been bombed and occupied – by the US, Israel, Britain and France – and locked down with US bases and western-backed tyrannies. As the Palestinian blogger Lina Al-Sharif tweeted on Armistice Day this year, the “reason World War One isn’t over yet is because we in the Middle East are still living the consequences”.

The Arab uprisings that erupted in Tunisia a year ago have focused on corruption, poverty and lack of freedom, rather than western domination or Israeli occupation. But the fact that they kicked off against western-backed dictatorships meant they posed an immediate threat to the strategic order.

Since the day Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, there has been a relentless counter-drive by the western powers and their Gulf allies to buy off, crush or hijack the Arab revolutions. And they’ve got a deep well of experience to draw on: every centre of the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Yemen, has lived through decades of imperial domination. All the main NATO states that bombed Libya, for example – the US, Britain, France and Italy – have had troops occupying the country well within living memory.

If the Arab revolutions are going to take control of their future, then, they’ll need to have to keep an eye on their recent past. So here are seven lessons from the history of western Middle East meddling, courtesy of the archive of Pathé News, colonial-era voice of Perfidious Albion itself.

1. The west never gives up its drive to control the Middle East, whatever the setbacks

Take the last time Arab states started dropping out of the western orbit – in the 1950s, under the influence of Nasser’s pan-Arabism. In July 1958, radical Iraqi nationalist army officers overthrew a corrupt and repressive western-backed regime (sounds familiar?), garrisoned by British forces.

The 1958 revolution in Iraq. Link to this video

The ousting of the reliably pliant Iraqi monarchy threw Pathé into a panic. Oil-rich Iraq had become the “number one danger spot”, it warned in its first despatch on the events. Despite the “Harrow-educated” King Faisal’s “patriotism” – which “no one can question”, the voiceover assures us – events had moved too fast, “unfortunately for western policy”.

But within a few days – compared with the couple of months it took them to intervene in Libya this year – Britain and the US had moved thousands of troops into Jordan and Lebanon to protect two other client regimes from Nasserite revolt. Or, as Pathé News put it in its next report, to “stop the rot in the Middle East”.

British troops fly out to Jordan, 1958. Link to this video

Nor did they have any intention of leaving revolutionary Iraq to its own devices. Less than five years later, in February 1963, US and British intelligence backed the bloody coup that first brought Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athists to power.

Fast forward to 2003, and the US and Britain had invaded and occupied the entire country. Iraq was finally back under full western control – at the cost of savage bloodletting and destruction. It was the strength of the Iraqi resistance that ultimately led to this week’s American withdrawal – but even after the pullout, 16,000 security contractors, trainers and others will remain under US command. In Iraq, as in the rest of the region, they never leave unless they’re forced to.

2. Imperial powers can usually be relied on to delude themselves about what Arabs actually think

Mussolini visits Libya, 1937. Link to this video

Could the Pathé News presenter – and the colonial occupiers of the day – really have believed that the “thousands of Arabs” showering petrified praise on the fascist dictator Mussolini as he drove through the streets of Tripoli in the Italian colony of Libya in 1937 actually meant it? You wouldn’t guess so to look at their cowed faces.

No hint from the newsreel that a third of the population of Libya had died under the brutality of Italian colonial rule, or of the heroic Libyan resistance movement led by Omar Mukhtar, hanged in an Italian concentration camp. But then the “mask of imperialism” the voice over describes Mussolini as wearing fitted British politicians of the time just as well.

The Queen visits Aden, 1954. Link to this video

And Pathé’s report on the Queen’s visit to the British colony of Aden (now part of Yemen) a few years later was eerily similar, with “thousands of “cheering loyal subjects” shown supposedly welcoming “their own Queen” to what she blithely describes as an “outstanding example of colonial development”.

So outstanding in fact that barely a decade later the South Yemeni liberation movements forced British troops to evacuate the last outpost of empire after they had beaten, tortured and murdered their way through Aden’s Crater district: one ex-squaddie explained in a 2004 BBC documentaryon Aden that he couldn’t go into details because of the risk of war crimes prosecutions.

A British soldier seizes a demonstrator in Aden's Crater district in 1967. Photograph: Terry Fincher/Getty

But then it’s far easier to see through the propaganda of other times and places than your own – especially when delivered by preposterous 1950s-style Harry Enfield/Cholmondley-Warner characters.

The Neocons famously expected a cakewalk in Iraq and early US and British coverage of the invasion still had Iraqis throwing flowers at invading troops when armed resistance was already in full flow. And UK TV reports of British troops “protecting the local population” from the Taliban in Afghanistan can be strikingly reminiscent of 1950s newsreels from Aden and Suez.

Even during this year’s uprisings in Egypt and Libya, western media have often seen what they wanted to see in the crowds in Tahrir Square or Benghazi – only to be surprised, say, when Islamists end up calling the shots or winning elections. Whatever happens next, they’re likely not to get it.

3. The Big Powers are old hands at prettifying client regimes to keep the oil flowing

When it comes to the reactionary Gulf autocracies, to be fair, they don’t really bother. But before the anti-imperialist wave of the 1950s did for a slew of them, the British, French and Americans worked hard to dress up the stooge regimes of the time as forward-looking constitutional democracies.

Sometimes that effort came rapidly unstuck, as this breezy report on Libya’s “first major test of democracy” under the US-British puppet king Idris makes no effort to conceal.

Rioting in Libya, 1952. Link to this video

The brazen rigging of the 1952 elections against the Islamic opposition sparked rioting and all political parties were banned. Idris was later overthrown by Gaddafi, oil nationalised and the US Wheelus base closed – though today the king’s flag is flying again in Tripoli with Nato’s assistance, while western oil companies wait to collect their winnings.

Elections were also rigged and thousands of political prisoners tortured in 1950s Iraq. But so far as British officialdom – entrenched as “advisers” in Baghdad and their military base at Habbaniya – and the newsreels shown in British cinemas at the time were concerned, Faisal’s Iraq was a benign and “go-ahead” democracy.

The oilfields of Basra, 1952. Link to this video

Under the watchful eyes of the US and British ambassadors and “Mr Gibson” of the British Iraq Petroleum Company, we see the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Said, opening the Zubair oilfield near Basra in 1952 to bring “schools and hospitals” through the “joint labour of east and west”.

In fact that would only happen when oil was nationalised – and six years later Said was killed on the streets of Baghdad as he tried to escape dressed as a woman. Half a century on and the British were back in control of Basra, while today Iraqis are battling to prevent a new takeover of their oil in a devastated country US and British politicians again like to insist is a democracy.

Any “Arab spring” state that ditches self-determination for the west’s embrace can of course expect a similar makeover – just as client regimes that never left its orbit, such as the corrupt police state of Jordan, have always been hailed as islands of good government and “moderation”.

4. People in the Middle East don’t forget their history – even when the US and Europe does

The gap could hardly be wider. When Nasser’s former information minister and veteran journalist Mohamed Heikal recently warned that the Arab uprisings were being used to impose a new
“Sykes-Picot agreement” – the first world war carve-up of the Arab east between Britain and France – Arabs and others in the Middle East naturally knew exactly what he was talking about.

It has shaped the entire region and its relations with the west ever since. But to most non-specialists in Britain and France, Sykes-Picot might as well be an obscure brand of electric cheese-grater.

The same goes for more than a century of Anglo-American interference, occupation and anti-democratic subversion against Iran. British media expressed bafflement at popular Iranian hostility to Britain when the embassy in Tehran was trashed by demonstrators last month. But if you know the historical record, what could be less surprising?

The overthrow of Mossadegh, 1953. Link to this video

The Orwellian cynicism of Britain’s role is neatly captured in Pathé’s take on the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh after he nationalised Iran’s oil.

Pro-Mossadegh demonstrators are portrayed as violent and destructive, while the violent CIA-MI6 organised coup that ousted him in favour of the Shah is welcomed as a popular and “dramatic turn of events”. The newsreel damns as a “virtual dictator” the elected Mossadegh, who at his subsequent treason trial expressed the hope that his fate would serve as an example in “breaking the chains of colonial servitude”. The real dictator, the western-backed Shah whose brutal autocracy paved the way for the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic 26 years later, is hailed as the people’s sovereign.

Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's ousted prime minister, during his trial in the wake of the CIA-MI6 orchestrated coup that overthrew his elected government in 1953. Photograph: AFP

Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s ousted prime minister, during his trial in the wake of the CIA-MI6 orchestrated coup that overthrew his elected government in 1953. Photograph: AFP

So when western politicians rail against Iranian authoritarianism or claim to champion democratic rights while continuing to prop up a string of Gulf dictatorships, there won’t be many in the Middle East who take them too seriously.

5. The west has always presented Arabs who insist on running their own affairs as fanatics

The revolutionary upheaval that began last December in Sidi Bouzid is far from being the first popular uprising against oppressive rule in Tunisia. In the 1950s the movement against French colonial rule was naturally denounced by colonial governments and their supporters as “extremist” and “terrorist”.

Pathé News certainly had no truck with their campaign for independence. In 1952, it blamed an attack on a police station on a “burst of nationalist agitation” across North Africa. And as colonial police conduct a “vigorous search for terrorists” – though the bewildered men being dragged from their homes at gunpoint look more like Captain Renault’s “usual suspects” in Casablanca – the presenter complains that “once again fanatics intervene and make matters worse”.

Tunisian nationalist riots, 1952. Link to this video

He meant the Tunisian nationalists, of course, rather than the French occupation regime. Arab nationalism has since been eclipsed by the rise of Islamist movements, who have in turn been dismissed as “fanatics”, both by the west and some former nationalists. As elections bring one Islamist party after another to power in the Arab world, the US and allies are trying to tame them – on foreign and economic policy, rather than interpretations of sharia. Those that succumb will become “moderates” – the rest will remain “fanatics”.

6. Foreign military intervention in the Middle East brings death, destruction and divide and rule

It’s scarcely necessary to dig into the archives to work that out. The experience of the last decade is clear enough. Whether it’s a full-scale invasion and occupation, such as Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have been killed, or aerial bombardment for regime change under the banner of “protecting civilians” in Libya, where tens of thousands have died, the human and social costs have been catastrophic.

And that’s been true throughout the baleful history of western involvement in the Middle East. Pathé’s silent film of the devastation of Damascus by French colonial forces during the Syrian revolt of 1925 might as well be of Falluja in 2004 or Sirte this autumn – if you ignore the fezzes and pith helmets.

The defence of Damascus, 1925. Link to this video

Thirty years later and Port Said looked pretty similar during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 that marked the replacement of the former European colonial states by the US as the dominant power in the region.

Anglo-French operation on the Suez canal, 1956. Link to this video

This newsreel clip of British troops attacking Suez, invading troops occupying and destroying yet another Arab city, could be Basra or Beirut – it’s become such a regular feature of the contemporary world, and a seamless link with the colonial era.

British troops surround hungry crowds in front of the ruins of Port Said, destroyed during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. Photograph: Getty

British troops surround hungry crowds in front of the ruins of Port Said, destroyed during the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. Photograph: Getty

So has the classic imperial tactic of using religious and ethnic divisions to enforce foreign occupation: whether by the Americans in Iraq, the French in colonial Syria and Lebanon or the British more or less wherever they went. The Pathé archive is full of newsreels acclaiming British troops for “keeping the peace” between hostile populations, from Cyprus to Palestine – all the better to keep control.

And now the religious sectarianism and ethnic divisions fostered under the US-British occupation of Iraq have been mobilised by the west’s Gulf allies to head off or divert the challenge of the Arab awakening: in the crushing of the Bahrain uprising, the isolation of Shia unrest in Saudi Arabia and the increasingly sectarian conflict in Syria – where foreign intervention could only escalate the killing and deny Syrians control of their own country.

7. Western sponsorship of Palestine’s colonisation is a permanent block on normal relations with the Arab world

Israel could not have been created without Britain’s 30-year imperial rule in Palestine and its sponsorship of large-scale European Jewish colonisation under the banner of the Balfour declaration of 1917. An independent Palestine, with an overwhelming Palestinian Arab majority, would clearly never have accepted it.

That reality is driven home in this Pathé News clip from the time of the Arab revolt against the British mandate in the late 1930s, showing British soldiers rounding up Palestinian “terrorists” in the occupied West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarm – just as their Israeli successors do today.

British troops in Nablus, 1939. Link to this video

The reason for the security of Jewish settlers, the presenter declares in the clipped, breathless tones of the 1930s voiceover, are “the British troops, ever watchful, ever protective”. That relationship broke down after Britain restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the second world war.

Britain’s colonial reflex, in Palestine as elsewhere, was always to present itself as “guardian of law and order” against the “threat of rebellion” and “master of the situation” – as in this delusional 1938 newsreel from Jerusalem.

British troops in Jerusalem, 1938. Link to this video

But the original crucial link between western imperial power and the Zionist project became a permanent strategic alliance after the establishment of Israel – throughout the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians, multiple wars, 44 years of military occupation and the continuing illegal colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The unconditional nature of that alliance, which remains the pivot of US policy in the Middle East, is one reason why democratically elected Arab governments are likely to find it harder to play patsy to US power than the dictatorial Mubaraks and Gulf monarchs. The Palestinian cause is embedded in Arab and Islamic political culture. Like Britain before it, the US may struggle to remain “master of the situation” in the Middle East.

Source: The Guardian

*******

Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. He was the Guardian’s comment editor from 2001-7 after working for the paper as a general reporter and labour editor. He has reported for the Guardian from the Middle East, eastern Europe, Russia, south Asia and Latin America. He previously worked for the Economist and is the author of The Enemy Within and co-author of Beyond the Casino Economy

Doctored photo showing event that didn’t happen, which was used in an experiment designed to illustrate how easily memories can be manipulated. Source: William Saletan

 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The New York Times made it public that the Obama Administration had sent an important letter to the leadership of Iran on January 12, 2012. [1] On January 15, 2012, the spokesperson of the Iranian Foreign Ministry would acknowledge that the letter was delivered to Tehran by way of three diplomatic channels:
(1) one copy of the letter was handed to the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Khazaee, by his U.S. counterpart, Susan Rice, in New York City;
(2) a second copy of the letter was delivered in Tehran by the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, Livia Leu Agosti; and
(3) a third copy went to Iran by way of Jalal Talabani of Iraq. [2]

In the letter, the White House spelled out the position of the United States, while Iranian officials said it was a sign of things as they really are: the U.S. cannot afford to wage a war against Iran.

Within the letter written by President Barak Hussein Obama was a U.S. request for the start of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end Iranian-U.S. hostilities. “In the letter, Obama announced readiness for negotiations and the resolution of mutual disagreements,” Ali Motahari, an Iranian parliamentarian, has said to the Mehr News Agency.] [3] According to another Iranian parliamentarian, this time the Deputy Chairperson of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Hussein Ebrahimi (Ibrahimi), the letter went on to ask for Iranian-U.S. cooperation and negotiations based on the mutual interests of both Tehran and Washington. [4]

Obama’s letter also tried to assure Tehran that the United States would not engage in any hostile action against Iran. [5] In fact, in the same timeframe, the Pentagon cancelled or delayed major joint drills with Israel. [6] To the Iranians, however, the gestures are meaningless, because the Obama Administration’s actions with Iran have always contradicted its words. Moreover, Iran believes that the U.S. will not attack, because it knows that the costs of a war with an opponent like Iran are too high and its consequences far too risky.

This, however, does not mean that an Iranian-U.S. showdown has been avoided or will not eventually happen. The currents can go either way, so to speak. Nor does this mean that the Obama Administration is not currently waging a war against the Iranians and their allies. In fact, Washington’s bloc and Iran’s bloc have been fighting a shadow war from the digital arena and television airwaves to the valleys of Afghanistan and the bustling streets of Beirut and Baghdad.

The War Against Iran Started Years Ago

The war in Iran did not start in 2012 or even 2011. Newsweek Magazine even stated the following on a cover title in 2010: “Assassinations, cyberattacks, sabotage – has the war against Tehran already begun?” The actual war may have started in 2006.

Instead of attacking Iran directly, the U.S. has started a covert and proxy war. The covert dimensions of the war are being fought by intelligence assets, cyber attacks, computer viruses, secretive military units, spies, assassins, agent provocateurs, and saboteurs. The kidnapping and assassination of Iranian scientists and military commanders, which started several years ago is a part of this covert war. In this shadow war, Iranian diplomats in Iraq have been abducted and Iranians visiting Georgia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been detained or kidnapped. Syrian officials, various Palestinian figures, and Hezbollah’s Imad Fayez Mughniyeh have also all been assassinated in this shadow war.

The proxy wars started in 2006 when Israel attacked Lebanon with the intention of expanding the war against Syria. The road to Damascus goes through Beirut, while Damascus is on the way to Tehran. After their failure in 2006, realizing that Syria was the lynchpin of the Resistance Bloc, which Iran dominated, the U.S. and its allies spent the next five to six years trying to de-link Syria from Iran.

The U.S. is also fighting Iran and its allies on the diplomatic and economic fronts through the manipulation of international bodies and proxy states. In the 2011 to 2012 context, the crisis in Syria on a geo-political level is a front in the war against Iran. Even the Israeli-U.S. drill Austere Challenge 2012 and the U.S. deployment of troops were primarily aimed at Syria as a means of combating Iran.

Syria in the Eye of the Storm

What Washington is doing is exerting psychological pressure on Iran as a means of distancing it from Syria, so that the United States and its cohorts can go for the kill. Up until the start of January 2012, the Israelis have continuously been preparing to launch an invasion of Syria in a rematch of 2006, while U.S. and E.U. officials have continously tried negotiating with Damascus for a deal to de-link from Iran and the Resistance Bloc. The Syrians, however, have always refused.

Foreign Policy, the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article in August 2011 stating what was on the Saudi King’s mind about Syria in context of attacking Iran: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.” [7] Whether the above statement genuinely came from Abdul Aziz Al-Saud or not, this strategic outlook is representative of the reasons for the targeting of Syria. Obama’s own security advisor has also said the same thing, just a few months after the piece by Foreign Policy was released, in November 2011. National Security Advisor Donilon gave a speech saying that the “end of the Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.” [8]

The Kremlin has also made statements that corroborate that Washington wants to de-link Syria from its Iranian ally. One of Russia’s highest security officials has announced that Syria is being punished, because of its strategic alliance with Iran. The Secretary of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai (Nikolay) Platonovich Patrushev, has publicly stated that Syria is the subject of Washington’s pressure due to geo-political interests tied to cutting Syria’s ties with Iran and not due to any humanitarian concerns.] [9]

Iran has also given signals that should the Syrians be attacked, it will not hesitate to intervene militarily to come to Syria’s aid. Washington does not want this. The Pentagon would much rather swallow Syria first, before turning its full and undivided attention to Iran. The Pentagon’s objectives are to fight its targets piecemeal. Despite the U.S. military doctrine of fighting simultaneous wars in multiple theatres and all the Pentagon literature about it, the U.S. is not ready yet to wage a conventional regional war against both Iran and Syria or risk an expanded war with Iran’s Russian and Chinese allies yet. The march to war, however, is far from over. For now the U.S. government will have to continue the shadow war against Iran and intensify the media, diplomatic, and economic war.

Source: Voltairenet.org

*********

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Canadian-based sociologist and scholar. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), specializing in geopolitical and strategic issues.

by Franklin Lamb

Increasingly a marionette of the US Zionist lobby, Ms. Brigitte Gabriel has enjoyed a few lucrative and unobstructed years of increasingly hysterical Muslim and Arab bashing. Recently however, she has attracted the attention of the FBI investigating her organization, “Act for America!” (actforamerica@donationnet.net) for possible hate crimes and financial irregularities, according to US Congressional Judiciary Committee sources.

Who is Bridgette Gabriel?

“The difference, my dear Christian friends, between Israel and the Arab world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil and this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic and Islamic world. I am angry. They have no SOUL! They are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah,” which is very different from the God we believe in, because our God is the God of love”. – Brigitte Gabriel, speaking at John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Convention, July 27, 2007

Marjayoun, Lebanon — One imagines that all Americans, and people from every part of the globe and of sundry faiths, are touched emotionally upon encountering the natural beauty of the northern Biblical Holy Land that is South Lebanon. With its rugged vegetation-covered hills and valleys and more than 500 picturesque villages, many quite ancient and populated by warm, devout, and peaceful people, the area is hypnotic.

Marjayoun towards the east

So it is for this observer, visiting Marjayoun (“meadow of springs” in Arabic), one of Lebanon’s most stunning towns and the home of the historic Cathedral of Saint Peter as well as beautiful historic mosques.

A lovely, modest, bucolic town of roughly 2,300 residents in winter and 3,500 in summer, Marjayoun sits majestically on a hill facing Mount Hermon to the east, Beaufort Castle, the 1,000-year old Crusader Castle above the Litani River and overlooking Mount Amel (jabal amel) to the west. Marjayoun’s fertile plains, some of the richest in the Middle East, extend southward into the Galilee and Syria’s Golan Heights.

Maid Brigitte of Marjayoun
Marjayoun has become notorious recently, in some circles, not just for decades of Israeli crimes, but also as the base whence Ms. Brigitte Gabriel, a local woman, appeared and launched her virulent strain of Islamophobia. Joining with the US-Israel Lobby, she has been organizing perhaps the most vicious hate campaign against Islam, Arabs, and Muslims ever witnessed in America.

There is no shortage of people in Marjayoun with varying views of “what happened to Miss Brigitte” and how she became so hateful toward her countrymen and became an Israeli collaborator. “She always loved the Israeli occupation of Marjayoun and over time just came to dislike Arabs of all types, even though as a Lebanese she is totally Arab,” one of her former neighbors explained.
Another disagreed, “Brigitte never really thought of herself as an Arab at all, rather she fantasized that she was ‘Phoenician’ and pointed out to her Arabs neighbors that ‘Phoenicians were in Lebanon long before the Arabs invaded and it belongs to us!’” According to a former classmate, when she was in middle school, Brigitte preferred French and would announce to classmates in Arabic class, “I don’t speak Arabic, I speak Lebanese!”

Before moving to Israel and eventually to the United States, Brigitte worked for Middle East TV, a Marjayoun-based station run by the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and funded by Israel. It moved to Cyprus for a period and was later purchased by Pat Robertson, who is now building a Christian Zionism Center in Israel.
After obtaining a green card by marrying an American, Brigitte set up a business selling her new country “insider information not available elsewhere “about the existential dangers posed by Islam and Arabs, based, she announced, “on my unique perspective having been nearly killed by them and rescued by Israel.”

Samir Geagea

Regarding recent Lebanese affairs, according to her former neighbors in South Lebanon, Brigitte has been a close supporter of the Phalange militia and SLA since her teenage years. According to her ACT office in Virginia Beach, Brigitte hopes to host the current Lebanese Forces warlord, Samir Geagea—five times convicted of murdering various Christian opponents and their children—during his upcoming March visit to the US.
Brigitte As Student of American History

One can just forget about Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine, the Bush Administration invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its threatening much of the world, Brigitte sees a jihadist campaign against her adopted country going back to the very day America was founded. While Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Washington and Madison considered the Barbary pirates, who had operated for centuries along the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, “nothing but petty tyrants” and “nests of banditti,” Brigitte knows better.
In her view, the founding fathers were simply duped because the Muslim pirates were in fact serious Jihadists using a promise in the Koran of Paradise and virgins if they warred against infidels, so they became pirates.

Nor is Brigitte, who lives not far from Monticello, Jefferson’s birthplace, impressed by Jefferson’s liberal views about religion. It may be recalled that the author of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Act for Religious Freedom was most proud of his role as a resistance leader against British occupation:

“Where the preamble [to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom —Ed.] declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment that was proposed for the insertion of the words ‘Jesus Christ’ into the preamble was specifically rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu, and Infidel of every denomination.” (Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom)

Jefferson might have had people like Brigitte in mind when he wrote:

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

While religious tolerance and the existence of other religions did not pick Jefferson’s pocket, they are filling Brigitte’s as she panders to the uninformed, the bigoted, and the xenophobic.

Brigitte attracted attention from this observer, who previously had not heard of her, when she posted her July 2006 ‘Thank You Israel!’ letter expressing “heartfelt gratitude” for Israel’s attack on Lebanon. According to a former colleague of hers, this was drafted at Virginia Beach while working on her suntan in a period during which much of her birth country was being destroyed.
In nearly every speech, Marjayoun’s Maid routinely mentions the essential reminder that Israel, with its estimated 250-plus nuclear weapons and superpower military, needs more US money and servicemen to die in order to protect the apartheid regime from the fantastic threats from the Lebanese resistance and its supporters, which include a majority of her fellow Lebanese Christians.

Not your run of the mill democrat, Brigitte regularly complains to her audiences that:

“Hezbollah’s Shiite extremists began multiplying like rabbits and are out producing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five years later they have produced enough people to vote themselves into 24 seats in the Lebanese parliament and now are a majority in Lebanon. Hamas is doing the same thing with the Palestinians as part of their ‘Resistance to Occupation.’

This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon to bomb Israel. They have cells in over 100 cities in the United States. Hamas has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away.”

Recently Brigitte has been telling her audiences about a Des Moines, Iowa imam who not long ago offered the prayer to open the Iowa legislature. In this prayer the Muslim gentleman made a plea for “victory over those who disbelieve,” i.e., those who are atheists. That John Hagee and his ilk and countless rabbis say the same thing every day does not appear to have dawned on Brigitte.
While reassuring her audiences “that Islamic terrorism is, of course, a serious, global threat that we must — repeat, must — defeat,” Brigitte has recently been seeing another dark penumbra on the horizon: “But there is another threat to our safety, security and liberty that we must also defeat and that is the increasing threat of Cultural, Social and Civilization Jihad aided by the forces of American political correctness”:

“I am very troubled that in the name of tolerance and educating American children about the Muslim empire in history liberal American teachers get away with giving beginning Islamic teaching which may cause many to perhaps one day become Muslims. We have reports that in some classes teachers are allowing students to use calligraphy to copy parts of the Quran in Arabic as an enrichment activity. This has got to stop!

Westerners must mount a united front against Islamic law!

“I believe that the way Sharia will insinuate itself into our law would be through arbitration and mediation of domestic and financial disputes through an extra-judicial arbitration system condoned by our courts. That would entail setting up separate a Sharia law section of the American Arbitration Association overseen by Islamic law panels. Many agree with me and this should be a warning to all about how Sharia will spread through the proverbial legal back door.”

Brigitte urges Americans not to allow mosques to be built and suggests that if citizens observe one being constructed, it should be immediately reported to the FBI. Brigitte has joined Daniel Pipes and the thought-policing and silencing actions of AIPAC and its Zionist affiliates and instructs students that “if a college professor or public figure criticizes U.S. policies you have a patriotic duty to report this un-American activity to the Dean, or alert the media and authorities.”

For her Valentine’s Day message nest month Brigitte warns that “We must start doing more than exposing or resisting the advances of Islamofascism — we must go on the offensive to roll it back and fight for the bedrock values that made America the beacon of hope to the world. … The only real question is: Do we have the will to do what is necessary to stop Islamofascism, in whatever form it takes? Because, simply put, if we do, we will. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s it. Bottom line.”

Her message of hate, ridicule, and incitement to action against Islam is akin to shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre, and constitutes egregious and condemnable hate speech. Her rantings and extreme vitriolic hate speech are fundamentally un-American, un-Lebanese, and un-Christian. Her campaign should be vigorously rejected by all people of good-will, including those seeking simplistic explanations and solutions for the consequences of a catastrophic Bush Administration Middle East policy, which has caused so much death, destruction and desperation across the region.

The coming weeks may shed light on what US authorities intend to do about Bridgette’s violations of American hate laws.

In Solidarity

Source: Al-Manar Website

*******

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Franklin Lamb , a former Assistant Counsel of the US House Judiciary Committee at the US Congress and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil, and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon

“The revolutionary public opinion and demands that were created in Tahrir square needed to be politically purused by revolutionary cadres and leadership.”

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

“Mubarak is neither a tyrant nor a bloodthirsty man …

He is a clean man, who could say no wrong. Mubarak has seriously and faithfully worked to the best of his abilities and energy for Egypt and its people and lived a life burdened by his nation’s problems” Said Fareed El-Deeb, Mubarak’s lawyer as he argued his case at a latest hearing and just days prior to the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.

“Mubarak is worthy of justice and no one should discredit his efforts, question his loyalty or history. There is no evidence to prove that Mubarak gave orders to open fire on the protesters or even to prove he sealed the natural gas deal with Israel … and how could you accuse Mubarak of killing the protesters when he, in fact, supported the revolution” added El-Deeb.

Mubarak can’t be proven guilty and his lawyer hails him as a pro-democracy liberal who looked favorably on the Egyptian uprising. … It’s funny and almost surreal but that’s how Mubarak’s trial is proceeding. It’s true that Egyptians like jokes but not this kind of mockery of justice.

Field Marshal, Hussein Tantawi

Key witnesses in the deposed president’s trial, Mr. Omar Soliman, Mubarak’s vice president and former chief of intelligence and Field Marshal Houssein Tantawy, the minister of defense and the current head of the supreme council of armed forces (SCAF) declined to attest that Mubarak gave direct orders to shoot the peaceful protesters.

This Actually comes as no surprise, after all, those were Mubarak’s long time loyal aides and anyone thought or expected differently was probably living in a world of make believe.

And on the other hand any down to earth reading of a post-Mubarak Egypt would have most likely excluded the guards of the old regime out of the newborn political scene. But we’re talking here of the reality of a revolution that only managed to topple the head of the despotic regime … but not the regime itself.

The 18 days (January 25- February 11) of the Egyptian uprising have been the most fantastic story in Egypt’s modern history but unfortunately every story has to come to an end. And what we’ve been witnessing throughout an entire year is the gloomy and systematic hijacking of that revolution.

Academically, the revolution is defined as a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.

What the millions of Egyptians did in 18 days was absolutely revolutionary in every sense of the word, but the mass mobilization, a rare phenomenon in a society known for its propensity for stability and obedience , was not the only recipe for a successful regime change.

Other factors had to be incorporated; the miraculous mass mobilization in Tahrir Square the whole world was mesmerized by had to somehow turn into a political force. The revolutionary public opinion and the revolutionary demands that were created in Tahrir square needed to be politically purused by revolutionary cadres and leadership.

The public opinion, no matter how strong, in and of itself is not capable of changing the political direction, and that is one lesson the Tahrir revolutionaries had to learn the hard way throughout the last year.

The lack of organized secular political parties that really believed in the necessity for a regime change in Egypt, that could have reflected the revolutionary tide on the street, and somehow could have offered a considerable counterweight to the Islamists, is what really crippled the Egyptian revolution and hindered its tide.

Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei

The Egyptian revolution couldn’t stay grassroots forever; Tahrir square needed a leader as powerful and vibrant as the Tahrir protests. And that is what the saga of Tahrir square critically lacked.

Indeed Mr. Mohamed El-Baradei could have made a good president for post-Mubarak Egypt- of all the presidential hopefuls he was and still is my personal choice- but unfortunately, while the man had the right vision and the most impressive portfolio of political expertise he lacked the charisma and the perseverance needed to lead the revolution out of Tahrir square and advance it into the political arena.

El-Baradei could be active on the internet social media where he communicates with the liberal and educated factions of the Egyptian society, but he has no popularity on the Egyptian street, and if the Egyptian revolution was a facebook/Twitter revolution the man could have easily secured his bid for the presidency.

With the withdrawal of El-Baradei from the presidential race, a move that relieved many in the Israeli political circles for they knew beyond doubt that a politician of his caliber could turn Egypt into a vibrant and powerful democracy, the presidential race hasn’t only narrowed but also weakened with the remaining candidates merely representing the old regime and the political Islam.

The Egyptian revolution is only one year old and the situation will probably get worse before it gets better as the military eyeing to preserve its own political and economic autonomy and maintain its de facto status as a state within the state.. The first post-revolution parliament has just held its first meeting, and if it is anything it is certainly not the revolution parliament.

But we are where we are, so the next question is whether the Tahrir square revolution will actually fulfill its promise of “dignity, freedom and social justice” or whether it will simply usher in an era of extremist Islamist regimes or new forms of military authoritarianism.

The thousands of Egyptians who packed Tahrir square and other squares in Egypt’s major cities on January 25, the first anniversary of the revolution, will not be celebrating the day as most of the revolution’s demands remain unmet, but they will be protesting again, they will make it clear for all the people in power that the Egyptian revolution continues to empower its people.

*********

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat works as a Medical Doctor. Apart from the medical experience, he’s always been engaged in writing activities. He writes articles about ancient Egyptian history, Ancient Near Eastern history, comparative religion and politics especially the Arab- Israeli conflict. Founder and board member of the bibliotheca Alexandrina friends society. Some of His articles have been published in Egyptian magazines and online publications

RT Interview with Michael Scheuer

Americans are in the crosshairs of terrorists worldwide purely due to Washington’s policy in the Muslim world, not because there is an Islamic enemy whose only aim is to kill Americans for their freedoms and lifestyle, insists a former CIA officer.

Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of “Through our enemies’ eyes”, who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA’s ‘Bin Laden unit’, says America’s greatest enemy – radical Islam – never existed: neither when Bin Laden was alive, nor now.

­Israeli lobby drag America into wars

Actually, “it is America’s relationship with Israel that is causing this war [on Islam]”, and until Americans accept this, “we are not going to defeat this enemy,” the author says.

Michael Scheuer believes it is the Israeli lobby in America that is dragging the US into wars.

“In Israel itself as a country, it is not a problem. The real problem is the leaders of the Jewish American community in the US, who influence and corrupt our Congress to support Israel when we have no interest there,” he states.

“The American political establishment is caught between two things. They are extremely pro-Israel and they are almost Marxist in their belief that the spread of democracy is inevitable in all places, in all peoples, in all time,” evaluates the former CIA officer, adding that in their desire to protect Israel, the US establishment cannot tell what’s real.

­Radical islamists will benefit

­Michael Scheuer predicts that in countries caught up in the Arab Spring like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, “there is not going to be a democracy that in any way resembles democracy in the west.”

At the same time, the anarchy being created in the Muslim world will make radical Islamists the only beneficiaries of the chaos engulfing the Arab countries.

According to Michael Scheuer, further radicalization of Islamist groups, particularly in Africa, is inevitable – thanks to guns becoming more affordable.

The endless flow of uncounted weapons and the opened prisons in the above countries have reinforced Islamist groups around the world, believes Scheuer.

“Their [American political establishment’s] mindless pursuit of secular democracy at the end of the day endangers the stability of the region and probably the whole world,” he says.

­If Syria falls to Islamists – Israel will go down

­As for the situation in Syria – it has been interfered in by the US unconscionably.

“Until they [the Syrians] removed the US ambassador, he was running around their country trying to encourage groups to overthrow the Syrian government. That is not the role of any diplomat, US, Russian, Chinese or British,” the author points out, saying that “Syrians were urged onto the streets cold-bloodedly,” without mention of the possibility of being shot dead by the government.

The author recalls that Syria, with its traditional support of Hezbollah, is naturally an Israeli zone of interest, not an American one.

“Syria is a country with no US interest. Since I was a little boy, we’ve been afraid of the Syrians,” the author says, laughing at the fact that “if you look at the map – it’s hard to imagine that this little blat of country called Syria could be a threat to the US.”

Clarifying a possible result of any American success in Syria, Scheuer says that “this is another good example of dichotomy in the thinking of the American leaders. Because as we call for democracy in Syria, if Assad goes – Israel’s security goes straight down.”

­Israel sets US plans on Iran

­Michael Scheuer reveals that America’s ‘plan on Iran’ depends on that of Israel.

“Both Republicans and Democrats are deathly afraid that Israelis will attack Iran off their own work. If Israel attacks Iran, the Americans will get blamed for condoning it, whether we did or not,” he explains.

“What we are seeing is a slow, almost non-accelerable advance toward some kind of a conflict with Tehran.”

He labels the alleged plot of eliminating a Saudi Arabian ambassador in the US with the help of a Mexican drug cartel “a comic uproar”, saying he can hardly believe Iran would risk a war with the US, Israel and much of NATO, just to kill somebody who is not even a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.

“They’ve come down under belief that democracy is better for everybody. The truth is, American and western foreign policy interests in the Middle East have depended for 50 years on the maintenance of tyranny that gave us access to oil, that protected Israel and persecuted Islamists to protect us. All of that going by the wayside,” acknowledges the author, recalling the Israelis, who were first to realize that democracy might not be good for their security.

­‘Libya will be anti-American’

­Answering a question about war-torn Libya, the author pointed out that this country is notorious for having its Islamists fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then the same men encountering the Americans in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. Michael Scheuer is uncertain whether Libya will become a hotbed for terrorists, but “it will decidedly be anti-American and anti-NATO”.

­‘We are fighting a religious war’

Despite being largely well-educated and technologically advanced,

“America lacks common sense”, claims the former CIA officer, maintaining that for the last 20 years, the US has been very efficient in creating enemies and endangering security. The last four American presidents have been telling the population that the wars the US wages abroad are against a bunch of madmen, and in no way religious wars.

“We are definitely fighting a religious war. And until we come to realize that – we are never going to be able to defeat it,” Scheuer concludes.

“Let the Chinese deal with these [Islamist] people for the next 50 years, we’ve had enough of it, but the point is – the Americans cannot get out.”

Courtesy Gawker.com

By: Jamal Kanj* - Intifada-Palestine.com

In a “What would you do*” article on January 13, 2012, Andrew Adler, owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, suggested that Israel should consider three options, one of which “order a hit on a president [Obama] in order to preserve Israel’s existence.”

Alder, like members in the Lib/Zioncon club, was frustrated with the US diplomatic efforts seeking international consensus to stop the purported Iranian nuclear program. He accused the US government of naivety for “… never ending ‘Alice in Wonderland’ belief that diplomacy is the answer.”

The Zionist writer was troubled the weak US economy and the “newly implemented [Pentagon] military budget” cuts might curb the US ability to finance future proxy wars on behalf of Israel.

In his article, the owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times was addressing Israeli loyalists; hence and unlike Zionist writing in mainstream US media, he had no need to befuddle his war mongering message with fabrications like “preserving” US interests or defending America …etc.

The Jewish publisher was disappointed with the President not because Obama was not doing enough to protect America’s interest or securing Atlanta (the publisher’s city) from Iran or Syria. The writer did not care about economic hardships American taxpayers suffer bankrolling Israel’s proxy wars.

Alder was livid for US [Obama] was more concerned with “… preserving a healthy, worldwide economic climate” than fighting wars “… to preserve Israel’s existence.”

Mind you that while the US economy suffered serious recession funding Israel’s surrogate wars, Israel experienced steady economic growth and lower unemployment rate from pumping annually more than $5 billion of American taxpayer’s money.

In his article, the publisher called to replace the President with “the current vice president… to… forcefully dictate… United States ‘ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.” The Zionist writer bluntly calling on Israel to kill a US president for the VP is better positioned to eradicate Israel’s foes.

The publisher’s commentary was prompted by a fictional scenario postulated by the Jerusalem Post, another Zionist medium, on January 3 predicting that “… a war in 2017 would likely include the firing of 15,000 rockets and missiles into Israeli cities…” To mitigate this new imaginary scenario (first was Iraq ,) the Zionist community leader posited three options:

One, a pre-emptive attack against Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas; second, “the destruction of Iran’s [purported] nuclear facilities at all costs,” and lastly authorize “US based Mossad agents to take out a president unfriendly to Israel …”

Then to make it blatantly unambiguous, Alder reasserts again his third option declaring “Yes, you read ‘three’ correctly… Think about it… don’t you think that this… has not been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

It was interesting how the writer spoke openly of long denied, yet best known secret in the US capital, when calling on Israeli Mossad agents operating and spying on US soil, to “order a hit” on US president.

Unlike an unscripted impromptu speech, Alder’s incitement in the Atlanta Jewish Times to kill the President was a well thought of editorial. The “hit” option was repeated in two paragraphs and reasserted in third.

Now after it became public, it presents America with a taste of Zionists’ self-righteous arrogance. Apparently, no one, including America, can possibly satisfy Israel’s rapaciousness.

*The “What would you do” article can be accessed at http://www.jamalkanj.com/AJT-Document.php.

See Also:

INTIFADA PALESTINE INTERVIEW WITH JAMAL KRAYEM KANJ: AUTHOR CHILDREN OF CATASTROPHE

**********

Jamal Kanj

Jamal Kanj writes frequently on Arab World issues and the author of “Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America ”, Garnet Publishing, UK . Jamal’s articles can be read at www.jamalkanj.com, his email address is jkanj@yahoo.com

The ‘consultation’ on a statutory lobby register may be a window of opportunity

by Stuart Littlewood  -  Intifada-Palestine.com

The Queen needs a new royal yacht. But the British government says it can’t afford to buy her one. The £80 million for the project must come from private sources.

“Leading British companies will… be asked to donate funds in exchange for naming rights to various decks and facilities on board,” says The Guardian. Does this mean Her Majesty will be seen entertaining in the Goldman Sachs stateroom and sipping daiquiris on the Starbucks sun-deck? Will she shelter from squalls in the Murdoch salon and arrive and depart via the Revlon helipad?

The last royal yacht, Britannia, was a highly successful tool for promoting Great Britain Limited. That being the case, such an important national asset ought to be government funded, not sponsored by tacky brand names.

£80 million is chickenfeed in the great scheme of things. Why are we so hard up that there’s not enough in the public purse to pay for a new boat for our beloved sovereign? One reason, of course, is because for years we’ve been suckered into joining the United States in fighting Israel’s wars of aggression. Given our huge debts it beggars belief that we’re gearing up for another one… this time against Iran… and pushing the oil markets to the edge of panic.

Haven’t we had our fill of warmongering idiocy?

War fever was magnified at the weekend with an announcement that the Ministry of Defence had splashed out another £14 million on building a replica Middle East village in Thetford Forest for training our troops. It’s complete with shops, fully furnished homes, the stench of rotting meat and a bomb survivor with limbs blown off. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/5256219/MoD-builds-Afghan-village-in-Norfolk.html

The site was originally a replica Nazi village built in 1942, but that was training for a war of a very different kind… a war in defence of our realm and for our very survival.

Why do we get dragged into these illegal and inhuman expeditions to devastate countries that are no threat to us? Because a team of Israel-firsters in our midst think it’s smart to promote the ambitions of a foreign power at the expense of our own national interest and everyone else’s. They have taken command and control of our country by infiltrating the highest levels of government. For example they hold the key jobs in the Foreign Office.

Our watchdogs ought to have booted them out for violating the sacred principles of conduct in public life, but these leeches are now permanently attached while the dogs are de-fanged and petted.

Channel 4's film alleges that William Hague faced threats of a withdrawal of funding from CFI after he described a retaliatory attack by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 as 'disproportionate'. Photograph: Martin Godwin

I can imagine just how robustly the criminal regime in Israel is reprimanded by prime minister David Cameron, a self-declared Zionist, by foreign secretary William Hague, an avid fan of Israel since his teenage years, by Alistair Burt a former officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel and now minister for Middle East affairs, and by Ambassador Gould in Tel Aviv who I’m told is the first Jew appointed to that post.

The proposed lobby register

Our coalition government has just provided a glimmer of hope for a solution – an unintended consequence no doubt – by releasing a woolly discussion document on proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists. This is part of a promise to clean up politics and provide greater transparency in the wake of scandals that destroyed the last shred of public confidence in our political system.

The government defines lobbyists as ‘those who seek to influence or change government policy on behalf of a third party’. The document itself http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Introducing%20a%20Statutory%20Register%20of%20Lobbyists.pdf says that a register should include information about the names of individual lobbyists and lobbying firms and the names of their clients. “In addition, we propose that the register should include whether a lobbyist was previously a Government Minister or a Senior Civil Servant. The Government does not propose that any information on meetings should be included in a register.”

However, only third-party lobbying firms will have to declare their clients and record former ministers and government officials they have on their books. Firms employing in-house lobbyists needn’t register at all.

The register should also offer the same transparency as provided for Ministers, special advisers and senior officials. The recent Fox-Werrity outrage showed how unreliable that is. It took determined digging by a retired former ambassador to shine light into the dark and sinister corners of that affair.

Tamasin Cave from the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, an organisation representing a number of charities, unions and campaign groups, said the proposals “are fundamentally flawed and have the lobbyists’ fingerprints all over them. We need a statutory register to require lobbyists to reveal who is lobbying whom, what they are seeking to influence and how much money they are spending.”

The Independent has already blasted the government for attempting a ‘”whitewash” while campaigners say the move does nothing to clean up the lobby industry’s reputation for forging unhealthy relationships between senior politicians and leading lobbying firms.

Will ministers be required to declare why they are meeting lobbyists or which firms or groups they are representing? Apparently not, says The Independent.

Now’s your chance!

What about those who lobby on behalf of a lawless foreign power? It is vitally important to halt lobby groups like Friends of Israel in their tracks. Consultation closes on 13 April, so now’s your chance. Members of the public can make their views known to: Statutory Register of Lobbyists, Cabinet Office, Fourth Floor, 1 Horseguards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. Alternatively, email registerlobbyists@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk marking your response with ‘Statutory Register of Lobbyists’ in the subject field of your email.

Make sure you let the government know that you know what a rotten, treacherous game they are playing. The three main political parties in the UK each have a ‘Friends of Israel’ group to ensure pro-Israel members are embedded at all levels in the British political establishment and at the very heart of government, no matter who is in power.

Campaigners argue that these placemen inhibit the government when it comes to taking a principled stand on foreign affairs issues and especially on matters relating to Israel’s criminal acts.

Or the unjustified ganging up against Iran.

The aim of Friends of Israel is to promote the interests of Israel within the British Parliament. The Israeli regime is racist in its treatment of the Arab population and criminal in its territorial ambitions. The manifestos of Israel’s political parties are horrific. MPs who align themselves with Israel and endorse its practices are contradicting our own anti-racist laws and international and human rights laws.

Should MPs and ministers be acting on behalf of a foreign military power at the expense of our own interests and security? Of course not. They are expressly forbidden to let outside influence cloud their judgment. To do so would breach the second of the Seven Principles of Public Life, namely Integrity – “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”

Yet Friends of Israel lobby groups go to great lengths to influence those in power. Some say that FoI membership is a necessary passport to high office.

But the man in the street is entitled to look at the Seven Principles of Public Life and say that the activities of lobbies like Friends of Israel are against the intentions, both in word and spirit, of those Principles. Disgraced defence secretary Dr Liam Fox was quoted on the Conservative Friends of Israel website as saying: “…We must remember that in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression – Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided.” This was when his party was in opposition. Fox presumably spoke for all Friends of Israel in his party (that’s 80 percent of Conservative MPs according to some claims) who were hoping to form the next government. He would have Parliament and the country believe that Israel’s enemy, Iran, must become Britain’s enemy – the sort of dangerous nonsense that could lead our nation to disaster and once again cause hundreds of thousands of innocent people to be shredded and incinerated… Don’t his sort ever learn?

And seldom do FoI members declare an interest when speaking or writing about the Middle East. That is unacceptable in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.

In the United States there are growing calls for the Israel lobby AIPAC, which is so super-powerful that it calls the shots in Congress and has presidential candidates grovelling to Israel’s agenda, to be classified as an agent of a foreign power and treated accordingly.

Double standards prevail

The British government ordered a warship to join the US flotilla steaming through the Strait of Hormuz “to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law”. It’s a response to Iran’s threat to close that seaway if the West imposes an oil embargo.

Royal Navy ships have been patrolling there continuously since the 1980s, but brave Britain hasn’t lifted a finger to keep the sea lanes to Gaza open in response to Israel’s endless illegal blockade and brutal assaults on Gaza’s fishermen and peaceful humanitarian vessels trying to reach the besieged population with aid.

And yesterday the EU announced an embargo on Iranian oil exports, which Britain had been pressing for. It is horribly reminiscent of the bully-boy tactics of the early 1950s, when Britain and America engineered a similar embargo and brought Iran to its knees in order to overthrow the democratic government of Dr Mossadeq and reinstate the hated Shah and his secret police. Why? Because Iran wanted to control its own oil and Britain and the US didn’t like that.

This latest move amounts to another direct attack on Iran’s economic lifeline and smacks of collective punishment and economic terrorism. It will cause hardship to ordinary citizens and further hostility throughout the Islamic world. Nothing pleases Israel more, but why are we so eager to dance to Israel’s tune and damage ourselves in the eyes of world opinion?

Hague said: “Today’s sanctions show how serious EU member states are about preventing nuclear proliferation…” But he and the EU are not in the least serious about nuke-bristling Israel’s refusal to sign up to, or even discuss, non-proliferation. No sanctions there.

Meanwhile hard-pressed British and European motorists are likely to pay a heavy price for this tomfoolery when oil prices rocket. And we are still waiting for proof that Iran has actually done something wrong, are we not? Where does Hague think he’s leading us?

Notice too how the British government’s broadcast regulator has chosen this moment to silence PressTV, Iran’s English-language broadcaster in the UK, by revoking its licence and thus suppressing the other side of the story. PressTV was an inconvenient voice that ruffled too many fine feathers among Britain’s bloodthirsty elite. Truth and free speech, as usual, are the first casualties in softening up the public for war.

Stuart Littlewood

24 January 2012

*********

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.

By Dr. Elias Akleh -  Intifada-Palestine.com

There are increasing indications, although slim but hopeful, that more Israeli Jews are awakening to the satanic realities of the Zionist Greater Israel Project in the heart of the Arab World. The Jews in general and Israeli Jews in particular, had been subjected for thousands of years to an extremist religiously fundamentalist brainwashing sinister scheme. Its goal is to implant in the Jewish collective psyche the satanic ideology of God’s chosen people in God’s promised land, and that it is their “mitzvah”, their religious duty, to terrorize and murder ALL GOYEMS, and to steal all their wealth and their land for the ultimate purpose of creating a Jewish only world with Jerusalem as the center of the world.

Shortly after its inception few thousand years ago Judaism, as a religion, had been grossly distorted and misinterpreted by extremist political rabbis who had morphed it into an aggressive colonial religious ideology with the goal of creating a Jewish-controlled world. Thus Jews (Israelites), rather than the human race, were designated as God’s chosen people, and Palestine (the land of Canaan) in the heart of the old world, rather than planet Earth, as God’s promised land. With a racist, vindictive, murdering god (check the Old Testament) this ideology permits the Jews to kill all non-Jews for the sake of creating a Jewish only state (Israel). This extremist political religious ideology is known at present as Zionism.

The Jews were brainwashed that since they are chosen by God they are envied and hated by the rest of the human races, who are out to persecute them and to kill them. They are taught that all non-Jews are inflicted with an intrinsically pathological disease called anti-Semitism meaning anti-Jewish as if Jews are the only Semitic nation. To protect themselves they are instructed to live under the leadership of their rabbis in their own Jewish only communities (ghettos) separated from the others. Although Jews are citizens of different countries and are members of different ethnicities they are told that they are persecuted in every country and that they had suffered multiple holocausts. They are urged to deny their original citizenships and to immigrate to Palestine, an alleged empty land, their promised land, to establish a Jewish-only state, where they could live safely and peacefully. Those misguided, who followed this calling, discovered that they had to become militarized and to commit genocidal crimes against the indigenous people; the Palestinians, and to steal the land in order to establish their Jewish state. Instead of this promised safety they discovered that they have to live in perpetual wars the rest of their lives.

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jewish musician and writer, born in Israel but left to live in the UK, argued in one of his articles “The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews” that one has to understand the Jewish culture in the light of Judaic teachings in order to grasp the magnitude of the barbaric crimes the Jewish state had committed against humanity. “Zionism was rather effective in transforming the Old Testament from a spiritual text into a land registry” he stated.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education in the Hebrew University in Israel, had lost her young daughter in a suicide bombing. After some soul searching she had discovered that Israeli Jews as well as other Jews in the Western countries who received Jewish education “… were raised on false and racist values; actually on hetero-phobia”. She argues that anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish) is the result of the actions of the only government in the world (Israeli government) who deliberately sends young Jewish boys and girls to their certain death, and who persecute, to the point of genocide, another Semitic nation (the Palestinians). She explains that the reason Palestinian demonstrators carry signs equating the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika is due to the actions of the Israeli government and its army rather than a morbid hatred to the Jews.

Elhanan, similar to Atzmon, blames the false Judaic teachings for turning Jewish children into murdering monsters, killing, torturing and humiliating other non-Jewish children, their parents and their grandparents, and sacrificing their own lives for the megalomania of the Israeli chiefs. She stated in one of her lectures: “In the so-called Western enlightened world everyone feels very well founded when they blame Islam for suicide bombing and terror, but who would ever blame Judaism for murder?  And yet ultraorthodox Jewish children who had never left Brooklyn know that to kill Arabs is a Mitzvah “holy commandment” for they are wild beasts, and Israeli children actually commit the crimes of slaughter and torture. However neither Judaism nor Islam or any religion for that matter is the cause for murder and terror. Racist education is, American imperialism is, an Israeli ruthless regime of occupation is.”

 Lillian Rosengarten is a Jewish pacifist writer, who had sailed to Gaza along with six other Jews aboard a humanitarian boat, but was kidnapped by the Israeli navy to Ashdod. She was then deported and banned entry to Israel for 10 years. It seems that Israel welcomes only warmongering Jews and rejects humanitarian dissenting Jews like Rosengarten.

Rosengarten also criticized the hetero-phobic values instilled in the Jewish psyche due to the “blurring the distinction between Zionist nationalism and Jewish religion”. She states that Israelis in general do not know Palestinians.  They are taught from early age that all Palestinians are terrorists, who hate Jews and want to drive them into the sea. She exposes the myth of Israel as the only peace loving democracy in the Middle East as a deception because “A Jewish state created through subjugation, occupation, collective punishment and humiliation of Palestinians is not a democracy.” She accuses the Zionist Israeli government of gross human rights abuses of Palestinians, actions that create anti Jewish sentiments. She emphasizes that “it is not difficult to understand how brutalization invites hate. We can only guess how the children of Gaza (and all Palestinians as well) who grow up amidst the endless violence, suffering, death and so much hopelessness, will grow up to despise the people (Jews) who are their enemy.” She predicts that the Zionist Israeli Project is doomed to failure due to “Israel’s contempt and intolerance for other religions and cultures, and the desire to be a Jewish state.”

To sustain the momentum of the Zionist Project to reach its sinister goal, it was necessary to feed it with new warmongering young blood to replace the old and the depleted, and what is a better way to do so than programming the Jewish collective conscious of the new generations since childhood when their minds are still gullible, pliable, and open to suggestions. If they believe in the tooth fairy they would believe in Zionism especially if it is reinforced in their mind within every step of their mental and psychological development.

In a previous article, “Israel’s Terrorist Educational System”, I explained how Israel has become a full fledge militarized society through the militarization of their educational system that glorifies military power and war as the only way of Israeli life. It paints military service as the ultimate religious service that their god requests them to perform. It reinforces the concept of might is right. The most prominent characteristic of the Israeli educational system is its militarized color, where military personnel are entrusted with the management of all the educational institutions and the teaching of students. Israel also has rabbi-run and managed religious military institutions, known as “Yishovot Hahsadir”, that combine religious and military extremism, where gullible young Jewish minds are constantly fed with racist Zionist religious indoctrination as well as military training. With an angry, jealous, vengeful and murdering Judaic god, who murders even groups of his chosen people as well as their enemies, Israeli young generations learn that murder is a divine act rather than the ultimate sin.

Many Israeli scholars and writers seem to agree to this analysis. Israeli scholar and writer Erna Kazin noted that Israeli scholastic curriculums are designed to raise students, since childhood, within a militarized atmosphere glorifying the military in order to prepare students to become soldiers in the Israeli army. In his study “Israeli Struggle in the Hebrew Scholastic History Books’ Israeli researcher at Haifa University, Eli Bodia, concluded that the curriculum is deeply distorted by extreme Zionist ideology, breeds hatred against Arabs generally and Palestinians specifically, and had been a contributing obstacle to any real peace treaty with Palestinians.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan had noted, in her lecture, that the most recent history school books are more like military manifests. They justify massacres of Palestinians as allegedly saving the lives of Israelis, or as reprisals that restore the dignity and morality of the Israeli army and the confidence to the Jewish citizens. Dir Yasin massacre, as an example, is described as the incentive for the Palestinian flight that allows the creation of Israeli state and as necessary for Jewish existence. She explains that the cruel and criminal actions of the Israeli army, whose troops are very young in late teens and early twenties of age, can be understood through the study of their grossly distorted school text books that they had been indoctrinated with starting with their elementary through their high school education, that had been instrumental in shaping their values and perceptions of themselves as the elite race, the chosen people, and others as inferior races.

The observer can detect the presence of uniformed soldiers on duty stationed in Israeli schools as part of the school staff. In collaboration with the Ministries of Education and Defense the Israeli army operates two large-scale youth programs; a Teacher-Soldier program to train soldiers to become teacher, and a Youth-Guide program preparing students for military service. In the Youth-Guide program students are almost always in military uniform and report to both civilian and military superiors, promote militarism and exercise war games, and acclimate to viewing themselves as an integral part of the army. A 1974 teachers’ guide titled “When a Nation Reports for Duty” promotes military enlistment stating: “The entire people carry the burden of the war effort, and it is divided between those who wear the IDF uniform and the civilians who are not directly recruited by the IDF. Therefore it should be understood that (every) civilian carries the burden of the war effort”

Besides schooling students are exposed to military ceremonies, commemorations, speeches, field trips to military bases and holiday celebrations of battles with the enemy. Since 1984 training for military service was included in the school curriculum to prepare students for conscription into Youth Battalions. This reminds us of Germany’s Hitler-Youth program Israelis keep complaining about but seem to adopt it for their own youths.

The hetero-phobia, Elhanan sees Israelis raised on, can be detected in all the Israeli literatures starting with the children stories. Her research found that Israeli school books call the Arab citizens of Israel a demographic threat and the enemy from within. They are not represented as intelligent humans but as uneducated, primitive farmers, terrorists, thieves, unskilled, lazy and stupid. Palestinians, specifically, and Arabs generally are described as non-Jews; a clear racist perception. The Israeli history school books define Palestinian refugees living under Israeli occupation as a problem to be solved, not any different than the Nazi definition of German Jews as problem to be solved. Geography text books never show Israel as a state, but represent what is called the land of Israel without any borders and include large parts of the Arab World.

The book “Through the Hebrew Looking-Glass; Arab Stereotypes in Children’s Literature” by Palestinian writer Fouzi El-Asmar is an analytical study of the image of the Palestinian Arab in Israeli commercial story-books for children. El-Asmar concludes that the Israeli children literature “aims to perpetuate a lowly and despicable image of the Arab”. The Arabs are portrait as uneducated, dirty, cursing, corrupt, Bedouins, gangsters, robbers, saboteurs, foreign infiltrators, and land robbers, who stole the Jewish homeland and want to throw Jews in the sea.

The Arab Writers Guild published a study entitled “Racist Inclination in the Israeli Educational Curriculum” in Arabic by scholars Samir Sam’an and Khalil Sawahiri. The study describes the racist Judaic religious curriculum despising other religions; Christianity and Islam. It discusses the Israeli distortions of Palestine’s history and geography. It has a whole section about the racist Zionist values instilled in the Israeli educational system. Another interesting chapter analyzes racism in the Israeli children literature with some examples.

Yet the Israelis have the vulgar audacity to blame Palestinians and Arabs for raising their children to become “terrorists”. The attacks on the Arab and Islamic educational systems intensified after the Zionist-planned/Israeli-perpetrated attacks of September 11. The Israeli and American media concentrated their criticism of Islamic Madrasas (schools) claiming that they breed terrorists. The Bush administration had allocated $270 million of tax payers’ money to what his administration described as Middle Eastern programmes for literacy, education and reform to modernize and decentralize the educational systems of the Arab World to become more tolerable and accepting to other cultures. This endeavor was led by Elizabeth Cheney, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Cheney praised the cooperation of some Arab states (Jordan and Maghreb) especially Egypt who was instrumental in the program. The Egyptian daily “Rosa El-Yusef” reported that Suzan Mubarak, the wife of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, is under investigation for receiving $300 million bribe from the Israeli Consulate in Egypt to affect change in the Egyptian religious and history educational curriculum to become more Israeli friendly. Sarcastically, Benyamin Ben-Eliezar, an Israeli MP, is asking for the money back after deposing Mubarak family from office, according to the Egyptian daily.

The culture of racism and hate of all non-Jews infested in the hearts of the majority of Israelis will be their ultimate doom. Anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments are on the increase all over the world, including within the US, their strongest ally. This sentiment is a natural reaction to the barbaric, Spartan, Nazi Zionist Israeli occupation of Palestine, to the Israeli violations of all international laws and human rights, and to the Jewish contempt, rejection, and usury of all non-Jews. Most important this hate will eat Israelis from within. As has been disclosed recently the hate and discrimination between the different religious and political groups and ethnicities of Israelis are on the rise. Discrimination is rampant in the Israeli society against African Jews (Ethiopians in particular and blacks; “Kushim”, in general) and against Asian Jews (Iraqi, Iranian, Indian, Pakistani, and Chinese Jews). Religious discrimination against women is increasing demanding that women sit in the rear of the bus, similar to American blacks in the 50’s and 60’s. There is a discriminatory war going on between Western and Occidental Jews, and between the different religious factions; Hasidic, Ultra-Orthodox, Hareidi, and Chabad-Lubavitch religious groups.

Breeding hatred in Israel against all others who are differen turns inward against the different factions of the Israeli fabric. War is their only uniting factor. Israeli Jews are caught between a life of hatred and a life of perpetual war. I hope more Israeli Jews will wake up to the ugly realities of their state as Atzmon, Elhanan and Rosengarten had done.

 ************

Dr. Elias Akleh

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

Iranians carry the flag-draped coffin of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. Photo: AP

By Dr. Ismail Salami - Intifada-Palestine.com

The temptation of attacking Iran long entertained by Washington and Israel is gradually crystallizing into a reality of fear and angst and has already become an alarmingly worrisome idea even for those who are wont to see the glass half full.

Amidst an escalating crisis following an exchange of threats between Washington and Tehran, US Army Gen. Martin Dempsey has visited Israel to discuss what is claimed to be an effort to stop a possible Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites. This is at least what Western media has been reporting with the manifest purpose of depicting the US government as Mr. Nice Guy who wishes to stop an Israeli attack without having any intention of its own to participate in another military expedition in the Middle East. Is this a sudden political volte face?

Indeed, Washington has been acting very strangely lately.

US President Barack Obama has recently sent a letter to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei through three different channels; the Swiss envoy to Tehran Livia Leu Agosti–the United States’ official diplomatic proxy in Iran; Obama’s UN envoy Susan Rice and the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York Mohammad Khazaei and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The letter is reportedly an invitation to talks between the two parties in order to resolve the so-called nuclear stand-off. Strange as it may be, Swiss envoy to Tehran Livia Leu Agosti delivered the letter to Iran and reportedly quoted Obama as saying, “We (the US) have recognized Iran’s nuclear rights.”

Yet, in another development of note, an article appears on Foreign Policy and suggests that the Mossad agents passed themselves off as CIA operatives, approached and hired some elements of the Jundallah terrorist group in order to carry out acts of terrorism in Iran. Parenthetically, Jundallah, an offshoot of al-Qaeda and a favorite of the US government, is an anti-Iran terrorist group based in Baluchistan of Pakistan which has repeatedly embarked on spree of assassinations (from women and children to government officials) in Iran.

As to the report in Foreign Policy, there are two assumptions:

1. Why should the Mossad agents pass themselves off as CIA operatives in the first place? Does it mean that the Jundallah terrorists would have acted differently if they had been approached by Mossad agents directly? Well, the answer is no. Terrorists are terrorists and there is no point in thinking that they would say ‘yes’ to one spy agency and ‘no’ to another. In case of Jundallah which follows no other agenda but to inflict a lethal blow on Iran, it seems quite far-fetched to imagine that their ultimate objectives would be in substantial conflict with those of the Mossad.

2. Even if we naively concur with the assumption that Mossad agents engaged in some sort of ‘false flag operation’ (as Mark Perry artfully proposes to convey) in recruiting the Jundallah elements, we are left with yet another bigger question: does this exonerate the CIA in their sabotage activities in Iran? Is this meant to direct all the blame for the assassinations in Iran on Israel and cleanse instead the notorious CIA considering the fact that the duo for the most part (at least on the Iran’s issue) have worked in collusion with each other? Let us not forget that only in recent weeks, US Republicans have openly asked the US government to engage in more nuclear assassinations. Behind this arras of political chicanery, one tends to see a mega plot intelligently being woven.

Mark Perry’s article on Foreign Policy titled ‘False Flag’ (13 January) contains an interesting point which needs critical attention. The writer builds his claim on the basis of what he has gained from two unnamed intelligence officials who refer to a series of memos “buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services”. These two hypothetical figures, “one of whom has read the memos and another who is intimately familiar with the case,” say the “Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting US passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives-what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.”

While the article is per se an open confession to covert operations including assassinations carried out by the Mossad against the Iranian people, it does not render null and void the important role of the CIA in the sabotage activities in Iran. So the report by Mr. Perry does little to change the situation in favor of Washington.

Be that as it may, the US agenda on Iran is heavily influenced and determined by Israel; the US is the body which cannot be separated from its head i.e. Israel. In fact, Washington and Tel Aviv abide by an ominous shared agenda on Iran: war.

A war in the Middle East region, especially if waged on Iran which wields powerful influence, will draw Washington closer to its ultimate objective: global hegemony.

With the Middle East in turmoil, the US will avail itself of the opportunity to set the wheels in motion, indulge in its expansionist polices and play the role of Middle East gendarme.

These new attempts are only new ruses to temporarily alleviate international concerns over another round of US-led adventurism.

But isn’t it easy to see the horror on the horizon?

******

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.