The Obama Administration's stance toward Iran, while at least refreshingly nuanced, remains caught in the overall grip of provincialism and absence of creativity that has characterized U.S. policy since the Islamic Revolution. Recent remarks by General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, reflect this disturbing combination of insights amid blindness.
The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made important remarks on Iran this Friday which included both realistic caution and continuing evidence of the profound and dangerous degree of self-delusion in Washington. To his credit, General Dempsey supported Panetta's attitude that war is not the answer, but other comments suggested that Washington remains deeply disconnected from reality. Asked if Washington was making efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to avoid accidental incidents that might lead to an undesired conflict, Dempsey said:
We have discussed this but have not come to a decision about opening up links or a hotline to seek an option to de- escalate any incident. It's not our behaviour that's the impediment to progress here.
While this may well have just been a thoughtless and casual response, such lack of sensitivity to a longstanding adversary's perception of reality betrays an astounding degree of provincialism, suggesting that an undesired war is indeed a very real possibility. Evidently the general and, almost surely, the rest of the Administration, would benefit from deeper consideration of which side's behavior constitutes "the impediment to progress."
U.S. and allied behavior includes the following impediments:
- introduction of nuclear arms into the region (Israel);
- threats of aggression;
- establishment of a ring of military bases surrounding Iran;
- highly public economic warfare against Iran;
- sailing of nuclear-capable submarines off Iran's territory waters (Israel);
- a long violent invasion and occupation of Iraq designed to put Iraq firmly in the U.S. camp;
- the belligerent sailing of a powerful U.S. attack fleet in the Persian Gulf.
Iranian behavior includes the following impediments:
- impolite rhetoric demonstrating a lack of sensitivity to Israelis;
- defensive aid to Hezbollah;
- murky nuclear transparency designed to get away with as much as possible without clearly violating Iran's nonproliferation commitments;
- military and financial aid to Iraqi political allies to facilitate resistance to the U.S. invasion;
- a political campaign to promote regional resistance to Israel;
- a political campaign to promote the restructuring of the global political system away from its current U.S.-centric position toward a more "democratic" system that would deny the U.S. its current position of supremacy.
Examine the two lists. While both sides are playing tough, there can hardly be any doubt that U.S./Israeli behavior is vastly more provocative than Iran's. After all, Iran's impediments mostly add up to perfectly legitimate defensive moves and calls for global political reform, while Washington's impediments are focused on the application of force (even if one does not count the appearance of a U.S.-Israeli terrorist campaign to murder Iranian nuclear scientists). Add the overwhelming preponderance of force on the U.S./Israeli side, and the mountain of U.S. impediments to improved relations emerges clearly. Those U.S. impediments may or may not bother Iranian hardliners, who benefit enormously from being able to scare their people into support or submission simply by letting them see what Washington is doing, but they are great cause for concern on the part of anyone hoping for regional peace.
If Washington ever decides that it wants to solve the U.S.-Iranian conflict, at this point, it probably has no effective short-term option; through short-sighted animosity, it has boxed itself into a corner and ceded its freedom of maneuver to the Israeli war party extremists. Over the long term, however, Washington does have an option that would be low-risk since it requires no strategic weakening of the fundamental U.S. power position but which might pull the rug out from under Iranian hardliners: offering Iran a bargain including respect, inclusion, and security in return for cooperation in moving toward a regional nuclear regime based on transparency on the part of all countries either in the region or with military forces in the region. Such words would not ever impress all Iranians (how could they, given the history of U.S. duplicity toward Iranian democratic aspirations?), but over time might well impress enough Iranian national security officials to change Iranian policy. The real impediment is this: as the side with the power, it is up to the U.S. to come to the realization that the first move is up to Washington, not to a weak--if noisy--Tehran that sits nervously in a defensive crouch.
2 comments:
The American people have been propagandize to perceive Iran as evil. The propaganda campaign is waged primarily by, and for the benefit of, zionists in Israel and zionists with influence over US policy.
Zionist multimillionaires, such as Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, and Aubrey Chernick, fund numerous venues that actively promote Islamophobic and Iranophobic rhetoric through numerous media, academic, and political outlets. The message and goal is the dehumanization of Muslims and Iranians in order to convince Americans that killing them is not only acceptable but necessary.
Zionists functioned in precisely the same way to produce anti-German rhetoric in the years before both the first and second world wars. While our public school children are taught that Jews were the primary target and victim of those wars, in fact, as numerous Jewish writers (unwittingly) concede, zionist Jews were the major beneficiaries of those wars that killed and destroyed far more non-Jewish lives and futures than Jewish.
Attempts to incite war against Iran are not only a replay of the 20-year long war against Iraq, they are a repeat of the same pattern and process, by the same players, who provoked the wars in Europe in the 20th century, and the intended beneficiaries are the same.
Toward the end of this conversation between Alan Hart and Gilad Atzmon, Hart states that in the 1980s it was reported that the Rothschilds net worth was approx. $23 trillion. His closing comments are extremely important --he observes that he is 69 yrs. old and thru all of those years has, like all the West, been thoroughly brainwashed to perceive zionists as the victims rather than the perpetrators/ beneficiaries of a century of war. http://vimeo.com/23539189
Those who wish to get a sense of how right wing billionaires living in the U.S. may use their money to influence the supposedly democratic process (1 man one vote, NOT one dollar one vote) may wish to read through this report [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/16/casino-magnate-sheldon-adelson-is-betting-on-newt-gingrich.html] on casino magnate Sheldon Adelson's support for both Gingrich (who sees Palestinians living in Palestine as "not a people" but did not comment on whether or not the various Jewish communities of the world who have pushed these...ah...people out of their homeland do constitute "a people") and extreme Zionist positions. The fact is that Palestinians are people, and those people had their homeland taken from them and are currently being abused. It is also a fact that, for whatever reasons, those individuals and factions that support such ethnic cleansing in Palestine are endangering both Israeli and U.S. national security, not the least by confusing treatment of Palestine with policy toward Iran. Slurs against disenfranchised groups of humans that imply that questions about their "peoplehood" justify their collective punishment not only demean the speaker but cause harm to democracy.
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