OPINION BY GREG RAY
Well, as expected and dreaded, the attack on Iran has materialised and now the dice of war are rolling in a new direction. As always they are heavily loaded, but the element of uncertainty is always present. No matter how the dice fall many more innocent people must suffer and die.
A deadly alignment of narcissistic and megalomanic opportunists in charge of the USA and Israel has brought this conflict into being, but even these two characters are merely puppets whose strings are being pulled by forces well beyond their control. Netanyahu, who just two years ago seemed set to be toppled as Israeli prime minister over a combination of corruption charges and a ham-fisted attempt to take control of his country’s court system, is now incentivised to keep Israel in a permanent state of war. He stays in power at the whim of far-right extremists whose goal is to expel all Palestinians from Israel, to expand Israel’s influence into the territories of its neighbours and to eliminate all potential rivals in the region.
For Netanyahu, attacking Iran in the full-throated way he has has forced a massive response from Iran which in turn must almost certainly result in the USA openly joining the assault. If all goes to plan Israel will get to see Iran smashed into submission and either left in chaotic ruins like Libya, Syria and Iraq or put in charge of a trusty puppet. As a bonus, the continuing slaughter in Gaza and the de-Palestinianisation of the occupied West Bank will fade from the world’s view as the larger assault takes centre stage. Netanyahu will be remembered by future Israelis as the leader who brought the most extreme wishes of Zionism to final fruition.
“Armageddon”
For his part Donald Trump is avowedly beholden to Israel’s Zionist aspirations, has declared he wants Gaza cleared of Palestinians and is the poster-child of America’s Christian extremists who believe that “Armageddon” in the Middle East is needed as a prophetic catalyst for the second coming of Christ. Trump’s most lunatic followers want war with Iran, but so also does the “deep state” he so loves to revile – albeit for different reasons.
The “West” – that globe-spanning empire of money that rules most of the world – has had Iran in its sights for decades. Since Iran dumped the West-backed “Shah” in 1979, opting to go its own way and to keep its own oil revenues, it has been a priority for “regime change”. (Indeed, the West’s history of meddling over Persian oil and money goes back much further and there are volumes to be read on the topic.) Since Iran’s revolution the nation has been subjected to deeply damaging economic sanctions, political isolation, propaganda demonisation and even a full-scale invasion from neighbouring Iraq. I don’t remember a time when Iran has not been high on the Empire’s hit-list.
Indeed, in 2009 one of America’s “foreign policy” think-tanks, the Brookings Institution, published this illuminating study – “The Path to Persia” – deeply pondering the ways that might be adopted to bring about the longed-for regime-change. Pages were spent discussing the pros and cons of violent and non-violent methods to make Iran “behave”. Options included supporting a “popular uprising” in Iran, “inspiring an insurgency” and supporting a military coup. The underlying argument then – as now – was that Iran had to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. “Weapons of mass destruction”, no less, as the notoriously familiar phrase goes.
When it came to weighing up military intervention to bring Iran and its oil safely back into Empire control (my assessment of the true motive), the report noted that “only an invasion offers the United States finality when it comes to its 30-year conflict with the Islamic Republic”. But without a “legal predicate to justify the use of force” . . . “it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation”. “Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it.”
Indeed, when it comes to manufacturing consent for Empire aggression against non-compliant states, this question of provocation has usually been considered key. From the Gulf of Tonkin to Pearl Harbour and 9/11, provocations (real or otherwise) have been part of the formula. The 2009 analysis lamented that Iran would not voluntarily supply “an overt, incontrovertible, and unforgivable act of aggression”. In fact, Iran has a history of not responding to direct US assaults. It didn’t retaliate when the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air flight 455 in 1988, “Nor did Iran retaliate for America’s Operation Praying Mantis, which in 1988 resulted in the sinking of most of Iran’s major warships,” the Brookings Institution report continued.
It would be hard to win the necessary domestic and international support to attack Iran without some kind of provocation, and the next-best option – arguing that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon, was also fraught with evidential and political problems.
“Leave it to Bibi”
Which brings us to one of the 2009 paper’s most relevant sections, titled: “Leave it to Bibi. Allowing or encouraging an Israeli military strike.” Essentially, this section argues that Israel is already very keen to attack Iran and allowing it to do so would be a quick and easy way to get the war rolling – even though nobody would believe that the US had no hand in such an attack, since it would obviously have to be done with American equipment and assistance. “Leaving it to Bibi” relieves the US of having to wait for or manufacture a provocation in order to justify an attack. Indeed, Iran’s retaliation against Israel will probably satisfy the West’s media and governments – if not its general populations – as sufficient grounds to join in the assault.
In the case of the destruction of Iraq, the US was criticised over “mission creep” since the avowed intention at the beginning was to remove the alleged “weapons of mass destruction” but soon became “regime change”. Leaving it to Bibi has pre-emptively fixed this problem too, since Netanyahu has already declared that the attacks on Iran are aimed at achieving regime change. It’s hard to imagine the US arguing with this starting aim, under all the circumstances.
To my mind, one of the most notable quotes in the 2009 Brookings analysis is the following: ” . . . if Iran were to
detonate a nuclear weapon, this would dramatically alter the calculus of any U.S. administration considering various options toward Iran. Because of the risk of nuclear retaliation, the desirability of an invasion—and even of airstrikes—would become vanishingly small. The United States has never attacked another nuclear-armed state and has done everything it could to avoid doing so. Containment would become more necessary, while engagement might become far more palatable and popular as an alternative to conflict”. A greater incentive for Iran to try to obtain nuclear weapons capability is hard to imagine.
Of course 2009 was a long time ago. Much has changed since then. Iran, having long lived under the threat of a major assault and with the reality of sanctions and relatively minor assaults, has used the years to arm itself and to prepare what defences it can in readiness for the apparently inevitable. Few would argue that the Iranian regime is inherently kindly or benign, but the treatment meted out to it hasn’t been calculated to make it become so. As for whether or not it really is just weeks or months away from having a viable nuclear weapon, we only have Israel’s word on this. Many have pointed out that Israel has been making exactly this claim for the past four decades and, if that fact were not enough to make its statements unreliable, Israel’s recent actions under its undeniably extremist regime have caused grave injury to its credibility and moral standing. Netanyahu had many incentives – not least his own political survival – to keep crying wolf on Iran and to finally to pull the trigger on the war.
A very cynical Israeli leader (if there was one) might even be inwardly pleased to see some serious retaliation from the enemy in order to galvanize a wavering and war-weary population to renew support for a shaky government. It has certainly been unedifying to witness the unseemly joy with which many in the West have reacted to the spectacle of Israel being hit by Iranian missiles. This too, may play into the hands of cynical Israeli leaders who feed their population on the line that they are alone and friendless in the world – ignoring the role of the Gaza massacre in wrecking their nation’s reputation and standing.
At any rate, the fact is that Israel has committed itself as deeply to the assault on Iran as it had already committed itself to ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine. It expects, almost certainly with good reason, that the US will smash Iran with an Iraq-style “shock and awe” campaign. If this proves the case one wonders whether the US will be so delicate as to await some further kind of symbolic “provocation” from Iran. Some commentators have noted the recent move of the rather aged aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, into the danger zone and have cynically suggested that the ship – which was reportedly due for an extremely expensive decommissioning in a year or so – might fall victim to some mishap for which Iran could be rightly or wrongly blamed. Another USS Liberty incident, even. Sadly, many decades of official dishonesty have prepared the field for such a cynical and skeptical crop.
I hold that there are no “good guys” in great power politics. There are many innocent people in the world, however, who deserve better than to be dishonestly and disgracefully sacrificed on the altar of wealth and power. For now, unfortunately, the warmongers are having their way and it seems that many more of the innocent will die before this appalling chapter is played out.
