School of Thought & Geo-Political Think Tank of Islamic World
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The Target is Iran |
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School of Thought & Geo-Political Think Tank of Islamic World
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The Target is Iran |
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The aerial war against Gaza launched by Israel just after Christmas, and the ground offensive, with which it rang in the New Year, were shocking in their brutality, but should constitute no surprise, if viewed from the standpoint of long-term Israeli strategic aims. The Israelis have argued that the offensive was launched in response to eight years' of relentless attacks by Hamas rockets into Israel. But then, one asks: why now? Why should they wait eight years?
Perhaps
the massive military onslaught, which has killed over 1000 Palestinians
and wounded thousands, has nothing to do with Kassam rockets. Perhaps it
is not a tactical military operation by Israel, but a strategic decision
on the part of Israel Anglo-American backers, whose ultimate aim is war
against Iran. Perhaps the military calculations in Tel Aviv are that
continued massive pounding of Gaza by air and in house-to-house
fighting, will take such a ghastly toll on the Palestinian civilian
population, that Iran, touted as the backer of Hamas, will be forced to
move into the conflict. Perhaps that is precisely the reaction Israel
desires, in order to justify launching its war against the Islamic
Republic, a war which has been on the drawing boards of the Israelis and
their neocon sponsors for many years. If
that is the name of the game, it may well be that it will backfire
totally. Not only will Iran not be drawn into the trap, but the
continued genocidal campaign against the Palestinians may utterly
discredit Israel politically and morally, and contribute to a shift in
attitudes even in Europe and, most importantly, in the U.S. That, in
turn, may open the way to redefining the conflict and therefore opening
the way for real solutions. The
Clean Break Doctrine What
we have witnessed in Gaza since December 27 is the implementation of one
crucial part of an Anglo-American strategic doctrine for redrawing the
map of the Middle East (within a broader context), known as the Clean
Break.This doctrine had been cooked up by Dick Cheney's neocon task
force in 1996 and served to then-aspiring PM Benjamin Netanyahu, on a
silver platter. The policy had been fashioned by Richard Perle, Douglas
Feith, David Wurmser and his wife Meyrav, among others, under the
auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
in Jerusalem. The paper, which was one in a series of strategic policy
papers from 1992 on, outlining how the Anglo-Americans could establish
world hegemony in the post-Cold War world, derived its name from the
idea that Israel must make a clean break with the historic 1993 Oslo
Accords between it and the Palestinian Authority, and revert to a peace
process and strategy based on an entirely {new intellectual foundation}
one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room
to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting
point of which must be economic reform. (http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm). This new approach involved Israeli initiatives to secure its northern borders: Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents in Lebanon. This did not exclude attacks by proxy Israeli forces on Syria from Lebanon, targetting Syrian sites in Lebanon as well as in Syria proper.
The
doctrine went on to develop the idea that Israel, in cooperation with
Turkey and Jordan could shape the strategic environment by weakening,
containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on
removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, the paper specified. As for
the Palestinian question, Clean Break was equally explicit: Israel has a
chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians.
First and foremost, Israel efforts to secure its streets may require hot
pursuit into Palestinian controlled areas, a justifiable practice with
which Americans can sympathize. This
1996 policy paper was enthusiastically endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu,
who presented its basic tenets in a speech to a joint session of the
U.S. Congress days later, as his policy. However, before it could move
accordingly, Israel would have to wait until the neocon establishment
which had prepared the doctrine, regained power in Washington. This
occurred promptly, in the wake of the dubious results of the 2000 U.S.
presidential elections, and the events of September 11, 2001. It was
9-11 which made it possible for the Clean Break strategic doctrine to
become U.S. military policy. After
the neocons had succeeded in their 2003 war against Iraq to actually
depose Saddam Hussein, they followed up with regime change by other
means in Lebanon (with the Hariri murder laid at Damascus's door). The
Israeli 2008 bombing of a site in Syria alleged to be a nuclear
installation, was the ultimate humiliation to Damascus. What remained on
the Clean Break agenda were Iran and those militant Islamist Arab forces
said to be allied to Tehran, to wit, Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It
was widely acknowledged in the press and political realm that, were the
Cheney faction to endorse an Israeli bid to attack Iran -- whether by
bombing its presumed nuclear installations, and/or fomenting subversive
processes within the country, -- then those elements which could engage
in an effective asymmetric response against forces allied to the
aggressors, must be taken out first. That was the rationale behind the
2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, a war which, however, did
not proceed according to Tel Aviv's script. Hezbollah prevailed
militarily and politically, much to the chagrin of the Cheneyacs in the
US/UK and Israel. The
Target is Iran Throughout
2007 and 2008, the debate raged among concerned parties, including on
the www.globalresearch.ca website, as to whether the war party would or
could mount a military attack against Iran, using the pretext that
questions regarding its nuclear program remained open, etc. Statements
attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatening the
existence of Israel, were hyped up, to justify a preemptive strike
against Tehran. But certain military realities had to be taken into
consideration, at least by those who knew something about warfare. The
concern raised by competent military professionals, including those
inside the U.S., was that, were Iran to be attacked (by the U.S. and/or
Israel), the asymmetric response on the part of pro-Iranian factors in
the region would unleash regional conflict with an immediate potential
to become global. This was the thinking which led U.S. officials to tell
Israel point blank that they would not endorse a military attack on
Iran. Now, further confirming this report, the New York Times has
released a timely article detailing Israel's bid and Washington
rejection of permission to bomb Iran's plant at Natanz. Among
those factors catalogued as pro-Iran, which might be activated in the
event of an attack against Iran, were Shiite communities as well as
armed militias in Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, Kuweit etc., and of course
Iraq. Hezbollah remained the leading danger in Lebanon. In addition, the
Palestinian Hamas movement, though not Shi'ite, was considered a serious
threat. Thus, if any serious Israeli move against Iran were to be
considered, one would have to figure out how to deal with Hamas first;
not because it were such a powerful military force, comparable, say to
Hezbollah, but because its self-conceived role as leading opposition to
belligerent Israeli intentions would ensure its immediate mobilization
in case of an Israeli move, a mobilization which would not be
generically political, but pointedly military, and aimed at any Israeli
vulnerabilities. Thus
the move against Hamas. Contrary to Israeli and other propaganda, the
onslaught against Hamas in late 2008 had {nothing} to do with that
Palestinian faction's alleged violation of the ceasefire, since it was
Israel's continuing blockade of Gaza which was in violation. Rather, the
Israeli military assault constituted a repetition of the strategy tried
in 2006 against Hezbollah: to wipe out a potential nuisance, while
proceeding to target Iran. The outgoing U.S. administration's military
had signalled its rejection of a new war against Iran, but would
obviously not object to Israeli aggression against Hamas, if presented
as a thing-in-itself. The
neocon faction, led by outgoing Vice President Cheney, is viewing the
Gaza war as a preparation for aggression against Iran, and the spark
that ignites regional conflict. John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to
the U.N., and one of the most outspoken among the neocon war party,
announced on December 31, that the Gaza war was the first step towards
an attack against Iran, which he deemed necessary. I dont think there
anything at this point standing between Iran and nuclear weapons other
than the possibility of the use of military force possibly by the United
States, possibly by Israel, he was quoted by Fox News. So while our
focus obviously is on Gaza now, he went on, "this could turn out to
be a much larger conflict. We're looking at potentially a multi-front
war. And, as Daniel Luban summarized in a January 10 piece for http://www.antiwar.com
the general consensus among the neocons was that the Gaza war was a
proxy war against Iran. Israel
chose the timing of its Gaza war most carefully, with these
considerations in mind: the lame duck, lame-brained U.S. President could
be counted on to assert publicly that Israel had every right to defend
itself from Hamas deadly rocket attacks. President-elect Barack Obama
would not venture to denounce the Bush administration's policy as long
as it were still officially in power. Any initiatives launched by the
European Union would be rebuffed by Israel. Israeli Foreign Minister
Livni and Prime Minister Olmert, in fact, ignored any and all calls for
a cease-fire on grounds that Israel alone would decide if and when any
such a cease-fire could be organized. Israel's demands have been that
the international community (in whatever form -- UN peacekeeping troops
or whatever) would have one and only one task: to ensure that Hamas
could no longer fire rockets on Israel, and that no weapons could be
delivered to Gaza through the Egyptian border. The power of the Israeli
establishment to blackmail any European or other attempts at mediation,
-- on utterly unspoken, totally implicit, but universally understood
grounds that any criticism of Israeli policy can be misconstrued as
anti-semitic, -- has been demonstrated. The attempt of the EU troika to
plea for a ceasefire, like the moves by the Russians too, have been
ineffective. Israel
may be seriously miscalculating the total situation. It is to be mooted
that the Israelis thought, -- and perhaps still think -- that, if they
continue with their inhumane aggression in Gaza, killing women and
children and obliterating anything that has to do with civil life in
Gaza, then the other side will give up. This will not occur. Anyone who
knows how the militant Hamas leaders think, realizes that their
resistance even with their relatively modest missiles, will continue to
be launched, up to the last man. For militant Hamas members, there is no
fear of dying in struggle; on the contrary, a fighter killed in the
battle for liberation is a martyr. By
the same token, if the Israelis believe that their escalation of the war
will provoke Hezbollah, but more importanly, Iran, to enter the fray,
they may be as badly mistaken. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
delivered a major speech on December 30, denouncing the Israeli
aggression and calling for the defense of Palestinians. Significantly,
he explicitly compared the Gaza war to the Israeli war on Hezbollah
(Lebanon) in 2006. What is happening today in Gaza is not similar but
identical to what happened in July of 2006 (http://www.presstv.ir/pop/print.aspx?id=79953).
He charged that the same international forces, and certain Arab states,
are asking Israel to eliminate Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the rest of
the resistance factions. The marching orders that Nasrallah issued were
{not} that others should join the armed struggle. Rather, he called on
Arabs to take to the streets by the thousands, by the tens and hundreds
of thousands, and demand from these [Arab] governments to act
responsibly. This included emphatically the demand that Egypt open the
Rafah border to Gaza, but, he added, I am not calling for a coup in
Egypt. Days later, on January 7, Nasrallah warned Israel against
expanding the hostilities to Lebanon, but that was it. The rocket
reportedly fired from southern Lebanon against Israel, was not the work
of Hezbollah, the group declared. As
for Iran, its leadership response has been most cautious. Immediately
after the aggression, demonstrations took place in Iran unhindered, but
the leadership explicitly warned demonstrators not to attack or occupy
diplomatic missions of foreign nations, for example, the British
Embassy, which some protestors had targeted. When, on January 5, it was
reported that 70,000 Iranian students had declared their readiness to go
to Israel as suicide bombers, the regime responded unequivocally that
that was {not} the answer. Supreme Leader of the Revolution Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei was quoted on January 10, saying, I thank the pious and
devoted youth who have asked to go to Gaza but it must be noted that our
hands are tied in this arena.Iran criticized the inaction of Arab
governments, but that was it. Iranian Speaker of the Parliament Ali
Larijani had met in Damascus with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad on January 7 to discuss the crisis. Although
some commentators have tried to cast these events in Iran as part of a
domestic political faction fight between Ahmadinejad, seen as the
militant, and Khamenei, seen as the elder statesman, the issue
transcends any such internal political controversy. The issue is
strategic, and the Iranians know it. In
short, it appears that both Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership have
realized what kind of a trap was being laid for them, and have wisely
refrained from taking any irrational step that might entrap them. It is
to be expected that they will continue to lie low, and bide their time,
in hopes that the Palestinians can hold out until the regime change in
Washington is completed. The
Change in Washington The leading political power which could effect a major shift in the crisis, force Israel to pull back from its genocidal war, and impose serious negotiations aimed at an end to the bloodletting and a just peace, is the United States. History has shown, from Eisenhower's intervention in the Suez crisis, to later U.S. moves for Middle East peace, by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, et al, that, if the power of the U.S. presidency is brought to bear on the issue, something can be done. The hope is that incoming President Barack Obama will make good on his campaign promises to introduce a fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy, engage in dialogue with perceived adversaries (Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria), in the pursuit of viable solutions to the regional crises involved.
Although
nothing will be certain until Obama delivers his inaugural speech on
January 20, there are signs that he may make good on his campaign
pledges. First, he has announced a number of encouraging appointments.
His naming Leon Panetta as head of the CIA, was a courageous step;
although Panetta has no intelligence experience, he has gone on record
as principally opposed to any kind of torture, and can be expected to
help implement Obama's pledge to shut down the infamous Guantanamo
prison, and to reverse the Bush administration's anti-constitutional
policy and practices. Obama's Vice President Joe Biden has been a
relatively rational voice in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Several other appointees, from the economic policy team, to those in the
justice area, like Dawn Johnsen, Elena Kagan and Tom Perelli, come from
the Bill Clinton administration. As
for his foreign policy team involved in the Middle East directly,
Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is obviously central. Many in the
region will recall that Mrs. Clinton made an unfortunate reverse
conversion on the road to Damascus, some years back. Although she had
made headlines, and friends, after having engaged politically and
personally with Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian Authority president
Yassir Arafat in 1999, she soon thereafter made a U-turn, in the course
of her first campaign for a seat in the Senate from the state of New
York, where the pro-Zionist vote is significant. That said, Mrs. Clinton
is the wife of former President Bill Clinton, who strove to forge a just
peace between Israel and the Palestinians, at Camp David, until his bid
was sabotaged by Ehud Barak. During the presidential campaign, Mrs.
Clinton uttered carelessly formulated statements on Iran, -- which she
later rectified -- and of course stood by Israel and its right to
self-defense, etc., as is expected of any U.S. political figure. It is
to be hoped that what she will represent in her new position, will more
depend on what the general policy of the Obama presidency will be, than
her personal views. As
for Obama, he repeatedly asserted in the campaign that he would meet
with perceived adversaries, including the leaderships of Iran, Hamas,
Hezbollah, etc., on grounds that diplomatic progress can be made with
enemies, not just with friends. He recently repeated this, saying he
thought Iran constituted a threat, but should be dealt with through
diplomacy. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, reports have been leaked,
and then perfunctorily denied, that the Obama tream would be willing to
establish contacts with Hamas. The London Guardian reported on January 9
that three people close to the Obama camp had said, on conditions of
confidentiality, that Obama would be open to low-level contacts with
Hamas Considerable
attention has been given to the policy orientation of several of Obama's
advisors and other appointees. It has been mooted that Richard Haas will
be an important Mideast envoy. Haas was the co-author of a recent CFR
study, Restoring the Balance, (http://www.cfr.org/publication/17791/),
with other individuals who might be Obama advisors, which argues that a
"new U.S. strategy" in the Mideast is required, that "a
comprehensive diplomatic initiative" towards Iran is on the agenda,
that Arab-Israeli peacemaking needs to become a priority and so forth.
Other members of the Obama team have been involved in the Iraq Study
Group, which called for talks with Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, to
solve the Iraq mess. Among them is Defense Secretary Gates, who is to
stay on. The
intervention of former President Jimmy Carter, has also been most
useful. Carter, who oversaw the Camp David peace agreement between
Israel and Egypt, is the author of an insightful book, Peace not
Apartheid. In the context of the raging Gaza war, Carter presented an
OpEd in the Washington Post on January 8, entitled An Unnecessary War,
in which he argued, from the standpoint of his experience in the region,
that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been
avoided. The
Boomerang As
the war continues and Israel threatens a further escalation of the
conflict, reports of atrocities multiply, and the response of
international public opinion is affected. Thus far, we have been
informed that a UN school, designated as a refuge for civilans, was
bombed; that a UN convoy of humanitarian aid was attacked, killing a
driver and injuring others; that a house in which Israeli military had
told 110 Palestians to seek safety, was shortly thereafter bombed, and
30 killed; that a UN building outfitted for refugees, was bombed. Although
the Israelis have systematically either denied the facts or pleaded
ignorance, there are enough eyewitnesses, especially among Red Cross and
UN personnel, to set the record straight. What emerges from the overall
picture, is that the Israelis are doing in Gaza what the Anglo-Americans
did in Iraq, only in a much shorter time frame and with more devastating
consequences. Compare events in Gaza to the drama of Iraq: between 1990,
after the invasion of Kuwait, and 2003, when the U.S. declared victory
in its war against Saddam Hussein, Iraq had been subjected to a
genocidal embargo, which deprived its 18 million citizens of food,
medicines and other vital goods. The embargo continued even after Desert
Storm had totally destroyed the country's infrastructure (energy, water,
transportation, health, etc.), and in the interim period, the U.S. and
U.K. air forces systematically bombarded Iraq's anti-aircraft defenses,
under the rubric of the no-fly-zones. What
the Israelis have done in Gaza, is remarkably similar: through their
closure of Gaza, sealing the borders from Israel and Egypt, they put the
Palestinian people in the situation of a concentration camp, as
Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino of the Vatican Justitia et Pax recently
stated. The population has been cut off from normal imports of food,
medicine and energy, and then subjected to aerial bombardments and
artillery attacks by a vastly superior force. The only result can be
genocidal. After
the Israeli war against Hezbollah in summer 2006, Israeli senior analyst
Dr. Martin van Krefeld told a seminar in Germany, that in that event,
the response of the Israelis had been that of a mad dog! He described
the utterly disproportionate Israeli response as showing that the
Israelis were mad dogs. Certainly, his characterization would apply
today to the Gaza war in spades. But instead of producing awe, such mad
dog violence is provoking justified outrage. Statements
by Israeli leaders, featured in news reports in Europe, have contributed
to the outrage. Foreign Minister Livni, for example, stated early on in
the war, that the great disparity in casulaties between Palestinians and
Israelis, was inconsequential. If hundreds of Palestinians were killed
by the air bombardments, as compared to less than ten, from Hamas-fired
rockets, no matter; it's not the numbers, she said, but that fact that
Hamas was targeting civilians. Israeli President Shimon Peres made an
even more offensive statement. When asked about the high number of
Palestinian children killed, he said, yes, that's true, there are many Palestinian
children and very few Israeli children causalities, but that is because
we take care of our children. The
psychological control exerted on large parts of the population in
Western countries, in Europe and the U.S., as a result of the horrendous
crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in World War II against the Jews, has
been massive. But, now, in light of the atrocities committed against
Palestinian civilians in Gaza, that control is being broken. Tens of
thousands of Germans have taken to the streets since the New Year, to
protest the war in Gaza, political figures have spoken out, and letters
to the editors of leading German dailies have documented the fact that
the psychological blackmail no longer works. The
most eloquent response in Germany to the ongoing Gaza catastrophe has
been provided by musician and director Daniel Barenboim, who, prevented
by the hostilities from performing as scheduled in Qatar, quickly
reorganized his concert program, to bring his historic Arab-Israeli
orchestra to Berlin on January 12, and then to Moscow, Milan and Vienna.
Barenboim's commitment has been to define a completely new, higher
level, from which standpoint this insane conflict, manipulated over
decades by geopolitical forces, can be overcome. The fact that his
concert was sold out in 24 hours, and a second concert in Berlin had to
be added to accommodate the demand, testifies to the desire among many
Germans, to seek solutions to conflict through the medium of the
universal ideas of great music Written by Muriel
Mirak-Weissbach |
