News & Analysis
Is Iran War Up Next?
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, an important Iranian nuclear scientist, was killed yesterday by a bomb planted outside his home. Iran has accused Israel and the United States of assassinating Mr. Ali-Mohammadi in an attempt to disrupt Tehran's nuclear program. If true, such short-of-war methods could be seen as a means of preventing a larger conflict or paving the way for more deadly operations. The Obama administration's diplomatic outreach effort is dead, too. The mullahs met President Obama's outstretched hand with an extended middle finger. Iran announced in November that it planned to construct 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a development former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Hans Blix called "puzzling" because "even big countries don't have ten enrichment plants." Last month, top-secret technical notes from Iran's nuclear program were leaked that detailed research on a neutron initiator, the triggering mechanism for an atomic bomb. It is increasingly difficult to claim that Iran's nuclear effort is intended for peaceful civilian purposes. The Dec. 31 deadline for Iran to reply to a proposed nuclear deal passed with no response. The debate in Washington has shifted toward how best to target sanctions and whether they should – or can – be crafted in a way to support the reform movement in the country. But time is running out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the Obama White House a year to make progress with Iran, and instead, the situation has grown worse. Israel repeatedly has stated that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, and the Jewish state is receiving significant behind-the-scenes encouragement from Sunni Arab states wary of the possibility of Iranian regional hegemony. – Washington Times
Dominant Social Theme: Another front?
Free-Market Analysis: The Washington Times, which never looked in the direction of Iran without seeing military enterprise, is beating the drums for war again. Whenever there is a decisive violent event in Iran the Washington Times trots out another story about the coming Western war with the Shias – now it is claimed on behalf of the Sunnis.
We wonder if this coincidence? Here's an indisputable fact: The French kept Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini sheltered in France just the way they sheltered Lenin before injecting him back into Russia "like a bacillus" during the White/Red war that led to the formation of the communist state. And when we looked into Khomeini's background years ago (an unpleasant task) it became fairly clear that there was a good deal of speculation as to whether his father had worked for British intelligence. (His mother apparently was Indian). Finally, there is a good deal of speculation that the Carter administration was pressuring the Shah over some commercial port facilities and that this is what eventually led to his downfall. You connect the dots, dear reader, if you wish.
We have decided that war with Iran was possibly a process-in-planning that was to be a very long-term enterprise. And we wonder if, after so many years at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American public is ready for a third front with Iran. We think maybe the power elite could have gotten away with a three front war five or six years ago, but the public is not just jaded and tired – a significant amount of the American and British public (the two countries fighting the "war on terror") have considerable questions about the war, in our opinion, its antecedents and the seeming public manipulations that have accompanied it.
We were just reading (in the feedback section of another website) what we have maintained for a number of years – that the power elite in its desperation to cement a nascent global government has moved faster in the past decade than in the past fifty years. This will go down in the annals of alternative press coverage and analysis as a decisive mistake and a monumental miscalculation.
Afraid of the Internet and the promotional schemes it was exposing, the elite in our opinion made a calculated bet to try to beat the damaging dispersal of information. But they didn't have nearly enough control. Americans have guns and computers and despite a hundred years of trying, the American culture remained small-r republican. Freedom lived. Even government workers in America ran entrepreneurial businesses on the side. The New World proved recalcitrant and someday it may be seen that it saved the Old. The power elite, with all it's trying, could not socialize the USA.
What have they accomplished? In moving anyway, they have ended up, instead, exposing every single machination on line, where it is endlessly discussed and debated – in America and increasingly in Europe. This is not preternatural power, this power elite, it is a handful of families and powerful individuals who have made a radical miscalculation based on fear and desperation. It is obvious if one chooses to look (obvious to us, anyway).
What can you see? Well ... there is more coverage of the Bilderbergers online on any given day than that organization received in its entire 20th century history. Indeed, the powers-that-be have revealed their entire organizational discipline, illustrated how these promotions work and given anyone who wishes to look an education in how one controls a campaign of perpetual fear and promotes authoritarian solutions.
The war on terror is just such a promotion. From questions about the installation of Khomeini in Iran, to whatever really happened on 9/11 (certainly it is not the official story in all its details), to the lies told by the Bush and Blair administrations to justify a war against Iraq, to more government lies that caused the lead attorney of the 9/11 Commission to write about an extensive and unsolved cover-up, to the ongoing fiction that Britain and the US are engaged in a war against "Al Qaeda" (which the BBC claims doesn't exist) when it is obviously the stiff-necked Pashtun tribe that the US, especially, is trying to defeat – the promotion winds its way through a river of blood. War is a racket, Major General Smedley D. Butler wrote.
Conclusion: We are not sure the West, or even Israel, will go to war with Iran. If it does, we think it will not result in an inevitable widening of the war on terror – or not long-term. We think there are already too many questions about the war on terror and its antecedents as a result of Internet exposure. Thus, contrarily (wouldn't you expect it from us?) if an Iran-West faceoff does occur we wonder if it will ultimately have the effect of reducing the rhetoric and activity of the overall war on terror. We think the power elite may realize that they will have no choice eventually but to "dial it back." That would be an ignominious end, or substantive diminishment, of the 100-year war that Dick Cheney seemed to anticipate not so long ago.
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Posted by S. A. Williams on 01/15/10 12:34 AM
My suspicion is that even if the Iranians developed nuclear warhead technology, they are very smart and tough negotiators and might not resort to a pre-emptive strike against Israel. It's more likely that a nuclear strike at Israel would come from a failing state like Pakistan.
The US has made no secret of its desire to control Pakistan's confirmed nuclear arsenals. Contrast that with the US intelligence information on Iran's nuclear capability which is uncertain at best, manipulated at worst.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Good point.
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Posted by Dave Anderson on 01/14/10 02:50 PM
Every time Israel, the U.S. or another Western power rattles rockets at Iran for developing nuclear weapons, I become mindful of two facts:
1) The U.S. has never invaded a country that possesses nuclear weapons and
2) Iran has not invaded any country since Darius the Great in the fourth century B.C.E.
I think that the Persians look upon a nuclear bomb as insurance that the U.S. will not invade them.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Good points.
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Posted by Shawn on 01/14/10 02:44 PM
The people of Iran still remember the time when they were called Persians, if you speak to a person from Iran they still refer to themselves as Persians once the most powerful people in the world.
The pride of this once powerful people will not be tempered by the arrogance of the west to imposed restrictions on their lives, while the west baths in the light created from nuclear power. The respect a country receives from controlling nuclear weapons is a necessary tool if you want to be a player in world politics, the Persians know this all to well.
Americans are tired of war? I'm not so sure about that, they voluntary send their children to fight wars that are designed to never end. Even when they are mislead and lied to by their leaders. These wars are there to keep countries on the boarders busy with concerns of the a US presence in thier backyard and by keeping them occupied, it retards efforts to create there own conflicts.
The US will never leave these regions, they have a full Army, Navy, and Air-force smack in the centre of the world, with most powerful weapons by far in the world. That kind of power is a sickness that knows no cure, an addiction that needs to be feed.
Iran does a lot of posturing but they are witnessing the dilution of America forces with serious problems of every kind at home and abroad, if Iran is going to make a move THIS IS THE TIME.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks for the interesting feedback.
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Posted by Robin Roush on 01/14/10 07:46 AM
So Iran only wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes?
Reply from The Daily Bell
And Israel? And America? And Nato? Who is to say? What is fairly certain is that the Iranian leaders would be wiping IRAN off the face of the earth if they attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. We still remember the communist scourge was going to come to America's shores if the war was lost in Vietnam. It was lost. But communism never arrived from abroad. Instead, the USSR collapsed, The socialism that HAS arrived in American is being brought by the same elite that carried the dire messages about Vietnam, etc.
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Posted by Bill Ross on 01/14/10 07:37 AM
Iran is NOT stupid (defined as valuing survival). They can clearly see that have nukes equals greater respect from large international predators. This is the nature of predators: They prefer weak prey since dealing with the strong costs more resources due to defense ability.Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) may be insane but it works.
Balance of power and thus peace is maintained. This is no different than the old west in the US, a very polite place since any slight was met with guns. Ditto for US states with concealed carry laws - less crime since criminals are unaware of whether prey may be armed.
Same for the Swiss - left alone during WW2 due to civilian militia and heavily armed population. The Swiss can be conquered, but never subjugated.What we now imperfectly achieve (balance of power, peace) by very expensive conflict, weapons, escalating military expenses was once perfectly achieved by the "rule of law":
Click to view link
Reply from The Daily Bell
Well put! We have long maintained that common law, with private justice was quite superior to the millions incarcerated via modern socialist justice in which the state is rule maker, prosecutor and incarcerator. It is merely a recipe for eventual totalitarianism. The Western system of "justice" will likely be among the last dominant social themes - or power elite promotions - to collapse because it is a lynchpin meme.
In any event, dueling, or more likely the threat of a duel, was part of common law - as honor and morality are always part of societies with little government involvement. One can see this sort of society at work in Afghanistan among one of the last of the powerful tribal societies, the Pashtuns - now in danger of being wiped out by the West.
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Posted by De Eddleman on 01/14/10 01:48 AM
I disagree with the pooh-pooh attitude as a correct air to assume in response to anyone foolish enough to assume responsibility for developing an additional ten uranium enrichment facilities, and I do hope there is truly a cure for the Iranian Shah's stupidity.
Reply from The Daily Bell
You are one, then, who believes that as soon as Iran has a nuclear bomb they will lob it at Israel, thus turning their country (Iran) into a wasteland?
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Posted by Frank Ross on 01/14/10 01:32 AM
The Wash Times is pretty much finished, although this may not be apparent if you are not local. The paper was slashed to its core political and news coverage on Jan 4 and home delivery ceased. It is only "printed" Mon-Fri now; I think it is still available in shops but I think this outlet will disappear soon. Reverend Moon has pulled his support for the enterprise; the left alleges that he burned through billions of dollars since 1982. It's too bad in a way. Their foreign policy opinion is boneheaded but on other issues it is a nice alternative to the leftist propaganda of other mainstream media.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Didn't realize Moon was entirely out. Thanks.
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Posted by Danniel on 01/14/10 12:38 AM
Lord charge for this! Blows it up ...
Reply from The Daily Bell
No charge.
