Here we go again. General “Mad Dog” Mattis, the US Secretary of Defense, declares Iran “is the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn puts Iran “on notice.” President Trump says “they are not behaving,” and, on his Superbowl interview, doubles down: “They are the No 1 terrorist state. They’re sending money all over the place – and weapons. And… [they] can’t do that.” Iran is slapped with new sanctions. It’s as if Dick “Dark Side” Cheney and Donald “known unknowns” Rumsfeld never left.
Never allow facts to get in the way of a bombastic quote. “State sponsor of terrorism” is a neocon meme for any nation/political system that resists US Exceptionalism. The industrial-military-intelligence-security complex feeds on massive budgets to engage these manufactured “threats” while real, on the ground terrorism – yielding from the Salafi-jihadi matrix – has absolutely nothing to do with Iran.
The birth of al-Qaeda was inbuilt in the official Dr Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski doctrine of fighting the former USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s via a Wahhabi-controlled Jihad Inc. Nothing to do with Iran. Even Trump’s own national security advisor admitted on the record there was a “willful decision” by the Obama administration to let ISIS/ISIL/Daesh fester. Nothing to do with Iran.
As for the Iranian missile test, the UN resolution concerning the nuclear deal “called upon” Iran not to test nuclear-capable missiles. This was a conventional missile test, as even the White House admitted.
So what is it all about? We must once again resort to the shadowplay/wayang of a Henry Kissinger-devised new balance-of-power US foreign policy bent on preventing Eurasian integration by prying away Russia from China while antagonizing Iran.
Putting the New Silk Roads “on notice”
Beijing was not amused by the new “unilateral” (Foreign Ministry description) anti-Iran sanctions barring access to the US financial system or dealings with US companies. After all, the sanctions include two Chinese companies and two Chinese nationals. Xinhua worries that overall this may become “a ticking time bomb for peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov for his part stressed that Russia and Iran “cooperate on a wide range of issues, [we] value our trade ties, and hope to develop them further.”
Whatever the administration, and whoever the privileged dalang advisor in the shade, the US strategic imperative in Eurasia always remains the same – to prevent the ascent of a peer competitor, or worse, an alliance, as in the case of a Sino-Russian strategic partnership.
For China, Iran is an absolutely critical node of the New Silk Roads, or One Belt, One Road (OBOR). Along with Russia, it is a key player in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), is set to increase its cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and will become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). All this spells out Eurasian integration. By 2030 Eurasia may exceed the US and Europe in global GDP terms. Eurasia, not the Atlantic alliance, is the future.
Most of the geostrategic game ahead hinges on whether there can be a “win-win” grand bargain between the Trump administration and the Kremlin. Assuming Washington would back off in eastern Ukraine and accept Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence in Eurasia – hardly a given – the price to pay for Moscow would be to let go of its very close partnership with Tehran. Kissinger should know better; this is not going to happen.
In between, there are pressing facts on the ground. The avowed, much ballyhooed Trump smashing of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh across “Syraq” simply cannot happen without Tehran-supported Shi’ite militias/boots on the ground, the Quds force led by Gen. Soleimani, as well as Hezbollah fighters in Syria. Trump is waiting for his ordered 30-day Pentagon plan of “victory” against the jihadis. Bets can be made that the Pentagon won’t integrate both Iran and Russia – both doctrinally regarded as “threats”.
In a nutshell; Trump cannot win his war against Islamist terror if he fully subscribes to the neocon wet dream of crippling the Russia-China-Iran alliance.
It also wouldn’t require a PhD thesis for Trump to understand that Iranophobia is bad for business. Iran is a tremendous developing market ripe for investment, as attested by European, Russian, Chinese and South Korean interest.
Assuming Trump’s campaign promise of no more regime change adventures holds, the new US strategic mission across Southwest Asia would be to essentially guarantee that global supply chain sea lanes remain open and secure – to the benefit of booming business across the Rimland. Russia and China could not agree more.
Everyone who’s been to Iran – neocons haven’t – knows Tehran won’t be subdued with angry threats. Iran has been under US sanctions for no fewer than 38 years. Absolutely nothing across Southwest Asia can be accomplished, geopolitically, without Iranian participation.
Nobody – except the usual suspects – wants confrontation. The Joint Chiefs had already informed then President Obama that Washington cannot go to war again until at least 2022; part of Trump’s platform is exactly to facilitate the means to recruit, retrain and re-tool a new US military.
And even in the (terrifying) event that the Pentagon hits Iran, it would take just a few Iranian ballistic missiles strategically deployed against oil fields and oil refineries around the Persian Gulf to spell out the end of the petrodollar.
Tehran is betting on – and wants to profit from – a new multipolar world order. Beijing knows there is no New Silk Road if Iran is constrained. Iran’s arc of development is inevitable – and European, Russian and Chinese investors know it. An American geography professor who conducted a project on the US presidential race told me that among pro-Hillary, anti-Hillary, pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions, “in no case did any of the four sides mention the New Silk Roads, or OBOR.” Trump’s cabinet – with the possible exception of Secretary of State “T.Rex” Tillerson – may also fit this mould.
To speak loudly and carry a tiny stick could not be more counter-productive. It might be a stretch to expect Trump to actually read his foreign policy dalang, but if he went through Kissinger’s World Order he would learn that “the United States and the Western democracies should be open to fostering cooperative relations with Iran. What they must not do is base such a policy on projecting their own domestic experience as inevitably or automatically relevant to other societies,’ especially Iran’s.”
Well said Thomas. The native American had said that all along the Anglo speaks with the fork tongue, and never honor their word.
The thing you’ve overlooked is that that complex, plus the infrastructure feeding it, and fed by it, has a lot of computer controlled valves and switches. And Iran’s cyberdefences prevented the ‘most sophisticated cyber attack ever’ (Stuxtnet) from having any effect (yes, I know, it is Trumpeted as having been effected, but those know nothings, the IAEA on site experts, including their computer security experts, reported something different) and that bodes trouble for those sites without the need for Iran to waste missiles on them. And while shutting down the Saud crime family’s ONLY revenue stream might upset the Chinese, the Chinese would already be upset by the American effort to make China hostage to the Saud syndicare by eliminating Iran.
Joe Kanuck
I wish I could live to see the day when all the criminals who wrap themselves in our flag, claiming to support democracy, would be tried for crimes against humanity, even posthumously. The US people, who are completely in the dark, need this to be whole.
Art Laramee
Well, Art, if Americans ever spent some time in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza with ordinary people, as I have, they might understand that their "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia" influenced view of the reality of the Middle East does not conform with reality. As for Iran, The US and UK overthrew the democratic government there in 1953 and installed a dictator, the Shah, and the CIA created the secret police, the SAVAK which Iranians rightly compare to the Gestapo in its brutality. Tens of thousands tortured to death. But of course in the US, the crime big crime was when student militants held the staff of the US embassy captive for a year, without harming a hair on their heads. So the Shah is overthrown, so the US gets its buddy Saddam Hussein to attack, complete with poison gas made with ingredients provided by you-know-who. Then when Al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11, Iran comes to the rescue and helps round up Taliban and Al-Qaeda types. How did the US respond? George Bush launches his axis of evil campaign, Israel assassinates Iranian scientists, and a full blown campaign of subversion including the STUXNET virus is unleashed. Then there is the completely phoney campaign against Iran’s non-existant nuclear weapons program, which brings us more or less up to the present where there is much huffing and puffing in Washinton over a missile test,the kind of which dozens of countries engage in. More lies, lies, and more lies.
Art Laramee
Actually, Iran has good ties with the west. EU countries and companies are lining up to do business and tourism is stronger than ever.
The only countries that seem to have issues with Iran are the US, Israel and Saudi….so let’s look at their terror activities.
Right now…the US is helping Saudi bomb the hell out of the poorest country in the region, with banned, US made cluster bombs, killing thousands of civilians…on the pretext that Iran is controlling the Houthis. The truth is, the houthis have centuries of history in Yemen….they ARE Yemeni…fighting for rights against a Saudi controlled puppet government. They claim they are really fighting Iran…except not a single Iranian has been captured in Yemen.
A US controlled middle east war where the enemy can’t be found….sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Oh…and those Dhows occasional captured carrying Iranian arms? They also have Russian and Chinese arms and there is no proof that the Iranian government supplied them. Not once, have any of the crews been arrested or identified…which seems kind of odd for such a serious crime, doesn’t it?
The major terror groups in the region; isis, al qaeda, nusra…are all Sunni based and Sunni funded, and Iran is Shiite. As well, if not for Iran, isis would control all of Iran since the US trained troops cut and ran with isis at the gates of Baghdad. Iranians have been fighting and dying helping save Iraq from Saudi and western funded isis, while the US kills innocent Yemenis.
Yes…western funded. In a misguided attempt to overthrow Iranian ally Assad, the US primarily, but also UK and France, threw millions of dollars at any group opposed to Assad…and it turned out that those groups were mostly al qaeda, (you know….the bad guys), the worst of which turned into isis.
Even John McCain couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad, when he snuck into Syria to show support with the noble rebels and ended up taking selfies with al qaeda leaders.
So maybe it’s time to look a bit closer at the involvement of the real major player in middle east conflicts…and there’s ony one party that has been center stage at every one for most of a century; the USofA.
It is funny really to contemplate Russia abandoning Iran and China because of a few kind words from the Trump Adminstration after the slapping around the US has given Russia since the end of the Cold War. Really just how stupid does the American Administration think that Russia and it´s government is. That would be like believing that a Trojan Horse is still a gift even if you knew what it was carrying. There is only one certainty about America, one thing you can always count on and that is that you cannot believe a single thing their government ever has to say.If they said the sky was blue, before believing it you had better check out side. How can you tell they are lying? Their lips are moving.
There is only one issue here. The US wants war with China because it believes that it´s military is superior to the Chinese military and that just like the predictions about Iraq it would be an easy and fast win. But before that war can be embarced upon, the Americans have to first peel Russia away from China. Fighting Russia and China together is just too daunting and since the US is spread all over the planet they could not possibly bring enough force to bear in that conflict to succeed. In any event it would go nuclear and would last days rather than weeks and months.
So that is the easily seen through American strategy. First peel Russia away from China. Go to war with China and get a quick win ( Americans like their thinking to well seasoned with the usual hubris). Then attack Russia. Divide and conquer, first practiced by the Brits in their Empire and as American as apple pie. But a little too simplistic to the real strategists in Bejing and Moscow. I can see Putin and Xi getting together on Skype and having a chuckle while sharing a glass or two of wine.
Nice article.
Another item to take into account: the influence of domestic American interests even beyond the military industrial complex. One of the oligarchs in the US, the Sinclair family, would be heavily impacted by the cessation of sanctions against Iran. They moved to take over the entire pistachio industry – a $600M a year vertical which they control – via massive land purchases after the Iran hostage crisis. Prior to this, Iran was a major exporter of pistachios worldwide.
Ironically, energy is less of an issue due to the rise of fracked oil and natural gas in the United States, but the impact of Iranian oil and natural gas on European markets for Saudi and Qatari energy is also not to be underestimated.
Robert van Riezen Gee Robert, you sure are fixated on FB photos and insults. It shows in the paucity of likes for your delusional comments to the comments of others who seem to be appreciated by a significant number of readers. Are you working out of Langley?
The axis is Russia-China-Iran-Turkey. If Trumps thinks he can link up with Russia and use that to weaken China, he is in delusion. Russia and China have seen US presidents come and went. Trump will go one day and the next one will be very different too. To Russia with Love will be short-lived…and Russia will milk every advantage out of it.
I was once in Al-Jubail, KSA, the 20-km stretch of petrochemical and refineries that sits side-by-side. At night once can see a continuous stretch of lights. I was wondering how easy if was to hit them from Iran…no need for much accuracy..sure to hit something and once the fire starts it will spread as fire-fighting services would be overwhelmed.
American Exemptionalism
Kissinger thinks he is clever. Everyone knows what his game is. Certainly the Chinese do; they have a long history with him and probably understand him better than he understands himself.
Daniel Berg Did you know it really is spelled arsehole? I did not think so.
Very good article. I also believe Iran stands on the way of American and British plan for "Balcanization of Middle East". This result branding and demonizing Iran as terorist country where Saudi Arabia (West’s ally) the biggest terrorist country in the world (financialy and militarily) doesn’t get bundled with Iran.
Robert van Riezen
….amazing presentation of Ignorance,..at best,-difficult to take serious.
China start doing some good in the world and help suffering countries and give your people some rights instead of your elite group of assasins.
Informative article.
Joe Kanuck Afraid to show your face? This sounds like party line nonsence. The middle east will collapse as soon as oil looses it’s importance, Havibg weapons like nuclear missiles are self destructing and can kill off hunanity. The US system is self correcting not like your champion’s religous dictatorship. What has countries like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran done for the world except bash human rights. How much help do you give suffering countries.
Get a real face book page.
Right on, Pepe Escobar!
This new bunch of dumbass clowns are as arrogant as those under war criminals Obama, Hillary Clinton, GW Bush, Dick Cheny, Don Rumsfeld …
The US is still the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. The crooks have been incredibly "humble" in throwing their crown to Iran.
This is one of the very few articles on the relationship between Iran and the US that actually makes sense.
I suppose the distinct lack of ‘alternative facts’ helps.
Like any cornered beast, the US is lashing out. It has had its own way of the world for much too long and is loathe to give up any power and influence. America, and its allies Saudi and Israel, are not, and never have been, afraid of Iranian nukes….rather of the potential of the Iranian economy to grow, once unleashed from the sanctions.
The Iranian economy will be the strongest in the region in the near future, and since money talks, so will its influence, and there’s not much the US and pals can do about it, except bluster and threaten.