Iran Deal: Ploy for Future Sabotage?
By Brandon Martinez
Many are hailing the recent nuclear agreement between the P5+1 powers and Iran as “historic” and a political “breakthrough,” the turning of a new leaf of peace and reconciliation between the West and the Islamic Republic.
Such sentiments, while good intentioned, are naïve at best. As we learned all too clearly with the US-led deposition and destruction of numerous regimes once held up as allies, such as those of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Panama’s Manuel Noriega among others, the US-led West has never been an honest broker in international relations, but rather a habitually deceitful and untrustworthy wildcard.
Geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci mined a prescient quote from a June 2009 strategy paper produced by the Zionist-dominated Brookings Institution, an influential foreign policy think tank.[1] The paper titled “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran,” a virtual manifesto for regime change in Iran, outlined a plethora of duplicitous and downright criminal strategies to effect the downfall of Tehran, including the sponsoring of terrorists within Iran’s borders to weaken the regime, financing opposition groups and protestors to cause internal strife, instigating and backing a military coup, economic sabotage and outright military invasion. Cartalucci discovered that the authors of the paper also proposed an elaborate ploy involving a too good to be true “deal” that would be offered to Iran but which would be surreptitiously scuttled so that Washington could then portray the Iranians as belligerent, and thereby win public support for a “military solution” as the only viable option against an “uncompromising” Tehran.
They wrote:
“… any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians ‘brought it on themselves’ by refusing a very good deal.”[2]
Such a scenario fits nicely with the current predicament. As suggested by the Brookings neocons years ago, a “deal” with Iran such as the one just signed and dated in Vienna could be intentionally sabotaged at a later date as a prelude to instigate future aggression against the Iranian government under the pretext that it did not uphold its end of the bargain.
Signals in that direction have already begun to manifest. Immediately following the conclusion of the P5+1-Iran negotiations, Hilary Clinton, the top Democratic contender in next year’s American election, issued a veiled threat against Iran, suggesting that regardless of the new deal “military options” are still on the table should Iran fail to live up to its obligations under the new arrangement.[3]
In a display of solidarity with the Zionist extremists, Clinton has pledged to invite the Israeli leadership to Washington immediately if she becomes president next year to allegedly ‘strengthen ties’ (as if such ties weren’t already engraved in stone). A more plausible motive for the hurried potential meeting may be an effort by Clinton to coordinate with the Israelis some sort of exit strategy out of the nascent US-Iran accord.
Clinton’s hawkish position on Iran echoes the bellicose line taken by Israeli Zionists who have, since at least the 1990s, sought to weaken and ultimately overthrow the government in Tehran. A 1996 strategy paper authored by Jewish neocon stalwarts (and later Bush Administration officials) Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a Jerusalem-based pro-Israel think tank[4], contained some telling prescriptions which would presage later developments in the region. For example, it specifically called for a regime change in Iraq as well as destabilization operations directed towards undermining Syria and Iran.
In the document, which was titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” and offered as advice for the Likud regime of Benjamin Netanyahu,[5] the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was hailed as an “important Israeli strategic objective” that would serve to precipitate the demise of both Syria and Iran. The Zionist militarist thinkers encouraged proxy warfare against Syria using Israeli-controlled “proxy forces” emanating from Lebanon to launch attacks against Damascus – a near exact foreshadowing of what is currently transpiring with ISIS and its affiliates rampaging across the Levant. They further advised that Israel should conduct air strikes against Syrian targets to weaken the regime as insurgents lay siege to the country from within. That suggestion has come to pass exactly as inferred, which has prompted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to refer to Israel as “al-Qaeda’s air force.”[6]
In a March 2007 report published in the New Yorker, award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed a US-Israeli-Saudi conspiracy to organize and execute a rebel invasion of Syria.[7] Hersh’s reportage disclosed that the Americans and Israelis, using the Wahhabi regime of Saudi Arabia as a conduit for plausible deniability purposes, planned to finance and bolster “Sunni extremist groups” and other malcontents that would be thrust against Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, serving as a precursor to a confrontation with Iran. The interested parties looked upon removing Iran’s principal ally in Damascus as a necessary precondition to clear the way for military action against Tehran.
2007 was also the year that the Bush Administration initiated a covert war against Iran. In a May 2007 article titled “Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran,” ABC News unveiled that the American CIA “received secret presidential approval to mount a covert ‘black’ operation to destabilize the Iranian government.”[8] Citing then-current and former US intelligence officials, the investigative report explained that Washington commenced a CIA sabotage operation against Iran that “include[d] a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.” The White House plan further instructed the CIA to provide largesse and other forms of support to anti-Iranian terrorists, primarily the Jundullah and People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MEK) terror groups that have vowed to destroy the “clerical regime” in Tehran. A related ABC News report from a month earlier noted that the Jundullah terror group was “responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran” and “has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005.”[9]
Seymour Hersh confirmed much of this in a July 2008 report for the New Yorker. In the article titled “Preparing the Battlefield,” Hersh explained:
“Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.”[10]
Hersh elucidated that while clandestine activities against Iran were not new (as of 2008) “the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded.” Hersh also mentioned that the MEK, an organization that was for years on the US government’s list of proscribed ‘terrorist groups,’ was benefitting from American largesse and received weapons caches and logistical support from the CIA to coordinate attacks against Iranian targets.
A February 2012 NBC News story highlighted the substantial support given to MEK by Israel’s secret service, Mossad, which has for years been sponsoring the militant group to conduct assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. US officials told NBC News that “[d]eadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group [MEK] that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.”[11] The Israeli-backed assassinations, the NBC article continued, “which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.”
Such unscrupulous scheming against the sovereignty and well-being of Iran is designed to weaken its resolve and force it to capitulate if not collapse entirely. While US and Israeli officials spew absurd canards about the ‘threat’ Iran poses, the shadow policy makers in the Washington ‘think tank’ community freely acknowledge that Tehran’s foreign policy is purely security-oriented and defensive in nature.[12] It is the Islamic Republic’s ability to maintain its territorial integrity and stave off foreign aggression that truly worries the imperialists in Washington and Tel Aviv who seek to convert Iran into just another subservient appendage of the American-Zionist imperium.
Unlike the Persian nation, which has not attacked any of its neighbours in hundreds of years, it is the war-makers in the West and Israel who represent the real ‘threat’ to global peace and stability, having perpetually invaded and interfered in the internal affairs of sovereign states for decades.
The aforementioned “Which Path to Persia?” strategy document lays bare who the true aggressors are.[13] In the absence of any legitimate rationale for the US to launch an invasion of Iran, the warmongers behind the report advised that “it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation.” Conceding that such a provocation was unlikely to manifest any time soon, if at all, they recommended that Washington “could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would” do something that could be used as a justification for war. They went even further with this line of thought, stating that,
“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. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)”[14]
In plain words, the Brookings strategists shamelessly advocate breaching international law to deliberately provoke a peaceful nation into a retaliatory action that would then be propagandistically used to rubber-stamp a pre-arranged military assault designed to expedite US-Israeli imperial purposes. Should these people not be on trial for pre-meditated mass murder and incitement to genocide?
Zionist billionaires Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson at a pro-Israel event.
The reprehensible anti-Iranian document was published under the patronage of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy[15], established in 2002 by Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban, a man who has said that his primary commitment in life is “to protect Israel” by “strengthening the United States-Israel relationship.”[16] At a 2009 conference in Israel, Saban outlined his winning strategy aimed at harnessing the American Empire in Israel’s favour: “make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.”[17] Of the six contributors to the “Which Path to Persia?” paper, four are Jewish: Kenneth M. Pollack, Daniel L. Byman, Bruce Riedel and Martin Indyk (the former US ambassador to Israel).[18]
Richard Clawson, another neocon foreign policy hawk from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)[19], publicly advocated similarly treacherous tactics as the folks at Brookings. In a 2012 speech he forthrightly called for the US or Israel to engineer a false-flag ‘war trigger’ incident to ignite a full-scale military collision with Iran. “Crisis initiation is really tough. And it’s very hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran,” Clawson said with demented hubris.[20] He then outlined how nearly every major American war was precipitated by a calamitous “event” that plunged the nation into combat: the attack on Fort Sumter (US Civil War), the explosion on the USS Maine (Spanish-American war), the sinking of the Lusitania (World War I), Pearl Harbour (World War II), the Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnam war). He implied that all of these episodes were tacitly desired (and perhaps provoked) by various US administrations that otherwise had paltry grounds to involve America in those conflicts. Clawson further remarked that if the Iranians refuse to bow to American pressure by way of economic sanctions, then “covert means” of subversion could be employed to escalate the situation. Specifically, he said:
“So if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war. One can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down, and some day one of them might not come up. Who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wished to increase the pressure. I’m not advocating that, but I’m just suggesting that this is not an either or proposition… We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.”
Clawson’s think tank employer WINEP is an offshoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington. WINEP was founded by AIPAC’s former Deputy Director of Research Martin Indyk who now serves as Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution.[21] Former AIPAC member MJ Rosenberg described WINEP as an “AIPAC controlled think-tank that would disseminate the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections.”[22]
In early 2007, foreign policy veteran Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former advisor to ex-US President Jimmy Carter, warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that these Zionist neocons might be preparing a false-flag provocation to kick-start the pre-planned war with Iran, which he opposed.[23] Whether Brzezinski had been drawing from the odious output of Zionist-sponsored think tanks like PNAC, Brookings and WINEP or had inside information through his contacts in the US intelligence community is unknown.
Some geopolitical analysts have over-emphasized Brzezinski’s role in recent US foreign policy gambits, even today portraying him as the ‘master strategist’ behind the Obama presidency. This effort appears designed to assist disinformation intended to shift attention and focus from Israel and US-based Jewish Zionists who are the driving force, and indeed the ideological godfathers, behind neoconservatism itself.[24] While Brzezinski and other US foreign policy “realists” are contemptible in their own right, the ever more adventurous and militant Jewish-Zionist faction of the elite appears to have sidelined the likes of Brzezinski and other “traditional” US imperialist types. The analysts who do this should perhaps be scrutinized for undisclosed sympathies with Israel and Zionism.
All in all, it is incontestable that the US and Israel are the foremost belligerents, aggressors and destabilizers throughout the world. These imperial forces relentlessly target countries like Iran that simply seeks to exercise its right to self-determination. This self-evident truth is plainly discernable and hidden in open view if one took the care to read through the hubristic musings of imperial-oriented think tanks that have set the West on an endless warpath towards Armageddon.
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
Notes
[1] Tony Cartalucci, “Warning: Nuclear Deal With Iran Prelude to War, Not ‘Breakthrough’,” Land Destroyer Report, July 14, 2015. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2015/07/warning-nuclear-deal-with-iran-prelude.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Clinton: Military options against Iran ‘not off the table’ if necessary,” Press TV, July 15, 2015. http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/15/420301/Clinton-Military-options-Iran
[4] http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Institute_for_Advanced_Strategic_and_Political_Studies
[5] Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1996. Full paper: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm
[6] “Assad: Israel is al Qaeda’s air force,” Ynet News, Jan. 25, 2015. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4619141,00.html
[7] Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” The New Yorker, March 2007. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
[8] Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, “Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran,” ABC News, May 24, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20080331070405/http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/bush_authorizes.html
[9] Brian Ross and Christopher Isham, “ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran,” ABC News, April 9, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20100328134429/http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html
[10] Seymour Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield,” The New Yorker, July 7, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20150714110051/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/preparing-the-battlefield
[11] “Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News,” NBC News, Feb. 9, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20130310042855/http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news
[12] Tony Cartalucci, “Brookings’ ‘Which Path to Persia?’”, Land Destroyer Report, 2011. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2011/02/brookings-which-path-to-persia.html
[13] Tony Cartalucci, “Which Path to Persia?: Redux,” Land Destroyer Report, May 18, 2011. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2011/05/which-path-to-persia-redux.html Original document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/108902116/Brookings-Institution-s-Which-Path-to-Persia-Report
[14] Ibid.
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Middle_East_Policy
[16] Connie Bruck, “The Influencer: An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2010. http://web.archive.org/web/20110606231320/http:/www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_bruck
[17] Ibid.
[18] http://www.scribd.com/doc/108902116/Brookings-Institution-s-Which-Path-to-Persia-Report
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Institute_for_Near_East_Policy
[20] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfoaLbbAix0
[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Indyk
[22] Geoffrey Ingersoll, “Lobbyist Says Israel Should Create A ‘False Flag’ To Start A War With Iran,” Business Insider, Sept. 26, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/top-researcher-suggests-israel-get-nastier-with-iran-sink-sub-illicit-false-flag-2012-9
[23] Paul Watson, “Brzezinski Suggests False Flag Event Could Kick-Start Iran War,” Prison Planet, Feb. 6, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20110428203445/http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/060207falseflag.htm