[A-List] Re: Fwd: The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign

[Todd Boyle]

Richard Becker among many other observers views 
the British and USG as prime movers, in the 
support of Zionist movement (who are essentially 
gangsters wrapped in religious narrative, 
afaics).  Becker views the creation of Israel as 
wedge against the arab and muslim world, by the west.

The USG has worked to balance the Persian region 
against Saudi Arabia.  I can remember hearing and 
reading about this as far back as high school in 
the 1960s, certainly the 1970s.   The USG was not 
unhappy with the Iran-Iraq war.

However, the greater Sunni world are such retards 
they haven't nearly caught up with the 
intellectual, cultural, scientific power and 
influence of Iran, so, the USG is climbing right 
into the ring, to fight Iran outright.

Todd

At 07:48 AM 8/3/2010, Suzanne de Kuyper wrote:
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com>
>Date: Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 6:20 PM
>Subject: The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign
>To:
>
>
>http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/07/31/the-real-aim-of-israels-bomb-iran-campaign/
>
>Antiwar.com
>
>                         July 31, 2010
>
>The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign
>
>Posted By Gareth Porter
>
>Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on
>Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign
>marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full
>support for such an Israeli attack.
>
>What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of
>Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to
>support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn
>into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
>
>That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel
>cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel
>needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel
>wants to start.
>
>Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the
>Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. "If
>Khamenei has a death-wish, he’ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the
>strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf," writes Gerecht. "It might
>be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran
>militarily
." Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any
>Iranian "terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike,"
>by which we really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle
>East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be "obliged" to threaten major
>retaliation "immediately after an Israeli surprise attack."
>
>That’s the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is
>not going to be "obliged" to join Israeli aggression against Iran
>unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too
>strong to resist. That’s why the Israelis are determined to line up a
>strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose
>Obama’s options.
>
>In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into
>the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.
>
>Gerecht’s argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of
>Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the
>Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists,
>as Gerecht’s past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran’s
>Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.
>
>Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000,
>before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an
>essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American
>Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a "terrorist
>act," the U.S. Navy should "retaliate with fury." The purpose of such
>a military response, he wrote, should be to "strike with truly
>devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive
>institutions that maintain them."
>
>And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was
>more explicit: "That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize
>the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless
>Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force."
>
>In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could
>hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it
>had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a
>strategic position to influence that policy.
>
>We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin
>Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney’s main
>adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S.
>military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007,
>Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set
>back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.
>
>"Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental
>assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among
>ordinary Iranians," Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was
>not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and
>massively destructive. "If we start shooting, we must be prepared to
>fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill
>it."
>
>Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It
>would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack
>that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In
>2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser’s advice and tried to get Bush to
>provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.
>
>As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney’s ear in
>2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in the Weekly Standard:
>
>"Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war
>on the clerical regime. We shouldn’t have any illusions about that. We
>could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If
>the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they’d
>lost­and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime
>knuckling after an initial bombing run­we’d have to strike until they
>stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were
>(and it’s a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites
>deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious
>they were building again, we’d have to consider, at a minimum, using
>special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites."
>
>The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious
>lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it
>both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it
>clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound
>Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, "are mentally
>in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush." Even
>though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a
>rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of
>unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S.
>Congress appears as strong as ever.
>
>Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have
>already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran ­ in large
>part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the
>impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are
>apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. "If the Israelis bomb
>now, American public opinion will probably be with them," writes
>Gerecht. "Perhaps decisively so." Netanyahu must be feeling good about
>the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of
>aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in
>2001, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very
>easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way."
>
>Read more by Gareth Porter
>
>Leaked Reports Make Afghan War Policy More Vulnerable ­ July 27th, 2010
>Sources: Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program ­ July 19th, 2010
>Clues Suggest Amiri Defection Was an Iranian Plant ­ July 15th, 2010
>McChrystal Probe of Afghan Killings Excluded Key Eyewitnesses ­ July 6th, 2010
>Outgoing UN Nuclear Inspector Pushed Dubious Iran Nuclear Weapons
>Intel ­ July 2nd, 2010
>
>________________________________
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