IRAN: THE LAST BIG STUMBLING BLOCK TO THE RIGHT-WING ZIONIST DREAM OF A ‘GREATER ISRAEL’.

The right-wing Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative allies within the US administration, together with their colleagues in the media and right-wing think-tank organisations, have already managed to get the US and their allies to invade and occupy Iraq thus ridding Israel of one of its enemies. Now those same people are trying the same kind of lies they told about Saddam Hussein in an effort to get the world to support an attack against the Islamic state of Iran.

The first time around with Iraq they had little trouble convincing many of the governments of the world that Saddam Hussein was a threat to them and must therefore be gotton rid off. They took advantage of the sympathy gained from the events of 11 September 2001, milking it for all it was worth, including claiming that Saddam Hussein had connections with al Qaeda who the US alleged were responsible for 9/11, in order to get the UN to endorse an attack against Iraq. Even then most of the peoples of the world could not be so easily fooled and knew that the US and its allies had ulterior motives. They argued that, despite being a disgusting dictator, Hussein was not a threat to the world as we were being told and that ousting him would end up being more trouble for the Middle East than it was worth. In the end, the US and their so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ were unable to get the support they wanted from the UN and decided to attack Iraq without a mandate.

Their adventure quickly began to fall apart soon after their invasion and they began losing what little support they had mustered when it became apparent that there were no WMDs to be found. The allied governments began to grasp at straws when they discovered some trucks, which they claimed were mobile chemical or biological weapons factories. They turned out to be nothing more than mobile hydrogen generators used for weather and artillery ranging balloons. Their credibility foundered further when they made the mistake of continuing to claim they were mobile chemical or biological weapons factories despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Then some of the other lies that were told also began to fall apart. The claims about Saddam seeking uranium from Niger were found to be false. Tony Blair’s famous ‘dossier’ turned out to be nothing more than lies plagiarised from a student’s assignment. And, on top of all that, the war quickly began to look like it wasn’t going to be the ‘cakewalk’ that neocon Ken Adelman, a close friend and government colleague of Donald Rumsfeld, said it was going to be.[1] Instead of welcoming the American troops and their allies as ‘liberators’ as Dick Cheney had boasted,[2] the Iraqi people began to fight back. It soon became obvious to the Iraqis why the Americans had invaded and they quickly realised that the combination of their oil resources were one attraction and that regional influence and hegemony was another, all of which in turn served the purposes of Israel who had been plagued by Saddam Hussein’s financial support of the Palestinians in their fight to free themselves.

Not only did the Iraqis begin to fight back but they also began to take advantage of the lawlessness that ensued in order to fight each other, not just in order to jockey for political power within the new set of circumstances but also to extract revenge for the years that one ethnic group had had domination over another reducing Iraq into chaos.

During the almost four years that have passed since the invasion of Iraq, Israel and the US have steadily increased their rhetoric against Iran. Ever since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah by the Iranian Islamic militants, successive Israeli and US administrations have to varying degrees been at loggerheads with successive Iranian leaders with a slight thaw in relations only when the more moderate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came to power after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The thaw was short-lived and by the end of the first Gulf War tensions again began to mount as the US and Israel accused Iran of supporting ‘terrorism’ and embarking on a nuclear program designed to build nuclear weapons.

Israel’s main grievance about Iran was its support of Hizbollah, a mainly Shia militant group that began to flourish in the late 80s as a result of the civil war in Lebanon and the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that resulted from that civil war.

The civil war in Lebanon also saw the emergence of complex alliances among the various Muslim groupings, particularly between many of the Palestinian refugees that now lived in southern Lebanon who had suffered terribly at the hands of both the Israelis and the Christian Phalange militias that were allied with the Israelis. This has resulted in a somewhat confusing and often seemingly contradictory relationship between various factions, both religious and secular, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The bottom line for the Israelis, however, and their pro-Zionist neoconservative allies in the US, is that Iran, ever since the overthrow of the Shah, has been a thorn in the side of Israeli ambitions to create a Greater Israel that is inclusive of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Golan Heights, the Gaza and the West Bank.

For the Israelis the neutralising of Iran is more important than the problem Israel has with Syria. Syria, being on Israel’s doorstep, can be taken care of at anytime by the Israelis and the neutralising of Iran will also enhance Israel’s ability to neutralise Syria later.

There are many reasons why Israel sees Iran as the priority for neutralising before going for Syria. The main reason is that Iran is by far the more dominant of the two. Militarily Israel would be able to overwhelm Syria in a full scale attack with relative ease – but only if Iran is out of the picture. Iran and Syria have a current mutual assistance treaty which means that Iran would come to Syria’s assistance if Israel attacked Syria.[3] Since Iran has missiles that are able to reach Israel it would be prudent of Israel to first ensure that Iran was neutralised before taking on Syria. The hope is, of course, that in the event of Iran being neutralised, Syria would then capitulate to Israel’s demands leaving Israel free to confront, yet again, Hizbollah. The Israeli hope is that, with a defeated Hizbollah, there will follow a collapse of Palestinian resistance in the Gaza and the West Bank.

That’s the theory. The problem for Israel is; how to neutralise Iran.

This is where we came in. The Israelis have already managed to get the West to take care of Iraq for them by using lies and deceit. Since it worked once, the Israelis and their neoconservative allies reason, then it should work again if the lies can be even bigger and more convincing. With the support of a compliant mainstream media they are certainly, it seems, going to give it a try.

The role of fear-mongering plays an important part in right-wing Zionist propaganda and what better fear-mongering can there be for the right-wing propagandists to evoke the threat of a second Holocaust by playing on President Ahmadinejad’s re-contextualised and misinterpreted words regarding ‘wiping the Zionist entity’ from the map. This was seized upon by the propagandists who, coupling it with the lie about Irans nuclear ambitions, has played the deceitful scenario for all its worth to the UN and the people of America and Israel and the peoples of the world. However, the IAEA, the authority that the Israelis and the US are relying on to support their claims about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, have found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Iran is doing anything more than enriching uranium for use in energy generation. Nonetheless, the US and Israel have stirred up big enough waves to at least get the international community, the UN, to invoke some sanctions against Iran, none of which are actually likely to hurt Iran directly with most of them being put in place just to placate the US and Israel to make them feel as though the UN is actually doing something. Naturally, the US and Israel would have preferred sanctions that were a lot stiffer and offered military options but there was never anyway that that was going to happen while the Russians and the Chinese have veto power.

President Bush is now all but isolated politically in terms of being able to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran. He certainly would not be able to get congressional approval to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran. As a consequence Bush and his administration are trying really hard to implicate Iran with the insurgency in Iraq as this, arguably, would then, if he could provide direct evidence of such Iranian interference in Iraq, be the legitimate casus belli that would allow Bush to launch an attack directly on Iran as he already has authority as commander-in-chief to wage war in Iraq and an attack on Iran in circumstances where Iran was interfering in Iraq would, Bush’s team argues, be legal.

This is the stage that the Middle East is at now. All the US needs is some provocation from Iran, either by Iran making a pre-emptive strike (real or imaginary) against some American target, perhaps somewhere in the Straight of Hormuz where US carrier battle fleets are gathering, or ‘provably’ involving itself in the Iraq conflict against the interests of the US. Of course, the US is also just as likely to point the finger of blame to Iran for just about any major incident that occurs in Iraq regardless of whether or not Iran actually did have anything to do with it.

Since the US are ramping up the rhetoric to make this scenario look more likely, it would seem that the other possible scenario, that of Israel making a pre-emptive strike off its own bat, is on the back-burner for the moment. Even that scenario, however, would still require US cooperation; the logistics of overfly routes, fuelling, target acquisition, etc., would be impossible without US help and, besides, the Israelis wouldn’t dream of embarking on such an operation without being assured of US help in the event of an Iranian retaliatory strike.

The reality is that what this ‘crisis’ is really all about is not Iran seeking nuclear weapons, or President Ahmadinejad wanting to destroy Israel, or stopping Iran supporting ‘terrorists’, but about Israel being rid of its enemies so that it can move ahead with its long held dream of a Greater Israel that encompasses lands which currently do not belong to them and which are protected by the presence of Islamic nations hostile to Israeli interests and aspirations. Slowly the world is waking up to this reality and the lies and deceit are becoming exposed.

Unfortunately, we are living in a world where our leaders who are in league with each other in Israel’s quest for a Greater Israel aren’t listening to their peoples anymore; they are just as likely to go ahead with their plans for US and Israeli domination of the Middle East regardless of what he rest of the world has to say about it – just as they ignored the masses of a protesting world prior to invading Iraq.





ENDNOTES
[1] Ken Adelman, ‘Cakewalk In Iraq’, Washington Post, 13 February 2003. Available online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1996-2002Feb12?language=printer Accessed 28 December 2006.
[2] Dana Milbank, ‘Upbeat Tone Ended With War’, Washington Post, 29 March 2003. Available online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44801-2003Mar28?language=printer Accessed 30 January 2007.
[3] Farhad Pouladi, ‘Iran, Syria Sign Defence Agreement’, DefenseNews.com, 15 June 2006. Available online: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1872085&C=mideast Accessed 30 January 2007.