The US-led programme of sequential wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has drastically failed through a new crop of anti-colonial liberation struggles. Led by Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Palestinian Hamas, the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia, or stymied by stiff resistance from Iran, the US war of imperialism is being challenged both by resistance movements and civilian opposition covertly or overtly supporting armed conflicts against the United States and its neo-colonial adventure in South and Southwest Asia.
Despite the ‘shrinking power’ of President George W. Bush’s flawed policy of ‘pre-emptive war’ and the ‘war against terrorism’ with the U.S. military bunkered down in isolation in the shrinking ‘Green Zone’ of Baghdad, the colonial coalition has launched a desperate new campaign of indiscriminate bombings of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, while persisting in covert operations targeting Iran.
ZION-CONS SABOTAGE IRAN TALKS
The full scale of the duplicity is apparent even as the United States and Iran engaged in their first direct dialogue in over 30 years. It would seem that the escalating bombings in Gaza and Lebanon were aimed at sabotaging the talks altogether, since war-hawks in Washington around Vice President Dick Cheney’s neo-conservative coterie have already pre-scripted war on Iran.
However, Washington has resorted to fomenting ethnic and religious sectarian wars, territorial fragmentation, and new schemes orchestrated by the Zioncons (Zionist Conservatives) in Washington and the National Security Council, according to Prof. Petras of Birmingham University, New York. Britain’s Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) stated that the war in Iraq has fractured into regional power bases and there is no longer “a” civil war, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving communities and power struggles. (The UK continues to be a key player in the imperial scheme.)
US ‘BLACK’ OPERATONS
The critical events unfolding in the Middle East blatantly point to Washington’s covert operations in the region. Lebanon has been destabilised by fighting between the Lebanese Army and what is labelled a ‘Sunni terrorist group”, Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. The escalation of fighting has undermined Lebanese attempts to avoid a civil war since the withdrawal of the Syrian Army two years ago. Based on Washington intelligence sources, three U.S. transport planes loaded with weapons and ammunition arrived in Lebanon on May 26. While officially these weapons were deliveries for the Lebanese Army, a specialist on the ground questioned the veracity of this as the Lebanese Army would not need three planeloads of weapons to fight 400-500 Fatah al-Islam fighters. The shipments were thus covertly destined for diverse guerrilla and militia groups, such as the Fatah al-Islam itself.
Cheney’s objective in fanning these sectarian and civil conflagrations would be to turn Lebanon into a ‘failed state,’ but more importantly, to use it as another base for ‘pre-emptive strikes.’ (With regard to regional bases for the Americans, the Itar-Tass agency reported that Kyrgyzstan Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev has already stated before reporters on May 24 that Kyrgyzstan would not allow the coalition forces (US-Britain) to use its territory to strike Iran or Iraq.) Nonetheless, the real plan behind Cheney’s putsch into Lebanon is allegedly NATO’s intention to establish a permanent military base in Lebanon at Tripoli, according to the Lebanese Al-Diyar newspaper and other sources. The deterioration of the emerging scenario is based on reports that the siege of the Palestinian refugee camp by the Lebanese Army was approved by the Palestine Liberation Organization through Abbas Zaki, its representative.
ISLAMIC BACKLASH
From the above it is clear the Cheney policy ignored warnings from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on “Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq,” a 220-page report released on May 29. Based on data gathered from intelligence analyses, debriefings of intelligence officers and officials of the military and State Department, the report confirmed the U.S. Administration had been told of the backlash of the war-plan: that political Islam “might take root in postwar Iraq, particularly if economic recovery were slow and foreign troops remained in the country for a long time”; that “militant Islamists in Iraq might benefit from increases in funding and popular support and could choose to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq”; and that “use of violence by competing factions … Sunni against Shia … Kurds, or any against the United States –probably would encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq.”
The report also warns that a “U-.S.-led defeat and occupation of Arab Iraq probably would boost proponents of political Islam.” It also stated that “guaranteeing Iran a role in the negotiations on the fate of post-Saddam Iraq might persuade some Iranian officials to pursue an overt and constructive means to influence the reconstruction of Iraq.” Despite these warnings, the contradiction in American foreign policymaking was demonstrated through the new concessions made by Democrats in Congress to President Bush’s war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. With Bush’s veto on an Iraq measure this spring, the war fund included $21 billion requested by the President, targeted for both military and domestic programmes, bringing the funding for war-profiteering to $1 billion.
CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN
Meanwhile, the coven of neo-cons continued to weave their web of chaos at a meeting in the Bahamas from May 30 to June 1, attended by State Department officials, journalists and politicians of all stripes. The goal of this conference was purportedly to redefine strategy by plotting a new “confrontation” against Iran. Gulf and Middle East specialists reportedly attended the event organised by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD), a neo-con group set up two days after September 11, 2001.
The “policy workshop” over the Memorial Day weekend discussed the U.S. strategy for a confrontation with Iran, according to journalist Jim Lobe. An invitation letter sent out by the FDD president Clifford May read the workshop’s title: “Confronting The Iranian Threat: the Way Forward.” This meeting was expected to gather “30 or so leading experts to analyse the implications of Iran’s activities, the diplomatic challenges, military and intelligence capabilities, the spread of its ideology within and beyond its borders, and other issues, including the prospects for democratisation in the Islamic world, energy security and other related issues that face policymakers in the United Sates, Europe and the Middle East.”
Among the State Department experts and officials expected at the meeting was the Administration’s new UN Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, although his wife, Cheryl Benard, director of the RAND Centre for Middle East Public Policy, accepted to attend; Uri Lubrani, chief Iran advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was expected, besides the inventor of the “clash of civilizations” doctrine, British Foreign Office operative and anti-Islamic crusader, Bernard Lewis, who would open the meeting with a speech on Iran’s “regional ambitions.”
While some US policymakers are pushing for draconian sanctions on Iran, White House sources have recently leaked that last year the CIA received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilise the Iranian government. The operation involved a coordinated propaganda campaign, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.
PERSIAN GULF WANTS PEACE
However, a new wave for peace in the Persian Gulf region is taking root: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is prepared to restore full diplomatic ties with Egypt, after the two cut ties in protest at Cairo’s recognition of Israel, and Egyptian asylum to the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Further, in what is viewed as an attempt to alleviate Arab fears of a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, Tehran has allegedly launched a campaign reaching out to Arab neighbours. Iran sent a high-level delegation to the World Economic Summit in Amman, Jordan, with Foreign Minister Mottaki and the brother of Iran’s National Security Advisor, Javad Largani.
Moreover, the Arab states are not the major challenges to the Iran-US talks. The leaders of the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met after Dick Cheney’s tour at a summit in Riyadh on May 15, to discuss both the visits of Vice President Cheney and President Ahmedinejad to the region. The final statement of the GCC read by the General Secretary of the GCC, Abdulrahman Al-Atiya, called for “the necessity of finding a peaceful solution [to the Iranian nuclear programme issue] which would spare the region more tension.”
He told the press that “the six leaders [of the GCC, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar] discussed the dangers posed by a military strike against Iran,” emphasising that “the summit renewed its commitment to the principled position of the GCC that it would not support a military strike against Iran.”