For a person like me who has been predicting a US attack on Iran ever since I began this blog (in 2007), it is rather amazing to see the degree to which this debate about "will the US/Israel strike Iran or not" is frankly disconnected from reality and my wish today is to offer a few simple reminders which then can only lead to one logical conclusion.
First and foremost, and there is no over-stressing this one, something needs to be made absolutely unequivocally clear: a US and/or Israeli attack on Iran will have absolutely nothing to do with any putative Iranian nuclear weapons program. This is so important and yet so much overlooked, that I will repeat that in big bold letters:
A US and/or Israeli attack on Iran will have absolutely nothing to do with any putative Iranian nuclear weapons program
Why?
For one thing, because there is zero evidence that Iran has such a program. Yes, sure, Israeli US and other Western politicians constantly speak about it, but only because not speaking about it or, worse, expressing doubts about it, is pretty much a career-killing mistake. However, away form the media, even Israeli and US politicians know - they have been told so by their own intelligence community - that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Second, even if Iran had a nuclear weapons program or even an fully strike ready nuclear force it would threaten absolutely nobody, not even Israel.
I mean, let's get serious here. Iran being a major regional military power, it does not need nuclear weapons for its defense against a regional attack, nor would it need one if it wanted to attack somebody. What about Israel or a major international power like the USA or, say, an EU member state? Could Iran ever imagine a scenario in which Iran could strike at the USA, Israel or Europe and not immediately by wiped out by a massive retaliation which it would have no means at all from stopping? Of course not. What about the "the Mollah's are crazy, they don't mind dying, they believe in getting 72 virgins in paradise, etc". All this is just a crude Zionist canard. There is zero evidence that anybody in the Iranian regime is crazy, wants to die or, for that matter, use weapons of mass destruction to procure virgins. Last argument: the Iranian might gave nukes to terrorists. That is laughable because the Iranians are no more likely to give nukes to terrorists than any other nuclear-weapons state, if only because by giving out nukes you loose control over them. All this is, frankly, rather silly kindergarten-level nonsense which only gets some traction with the lobotomized zombies who get their news from the TV. Nobody with an IQ at or above room temperature can take that nonsense seriously.
So what is the real deal here?
Simple: Iran is a major regional power, a rich country sitting on top of large energy reserves, which dares to openly defy the USA, Israel and even, crime of crimes, the international financial system (more about that later).
Think of Iran has "Hezbollah, only at a nation-state level, with much more money and resources".
The other "crime" Iran is guilty of being an independent and sovereign Shia state with a very competent diplomatic and intelligence community. In other words, Iran makes controlling the Middle-East very difficult for the USA and Israel. And since the Shia have the bad taste of mostly living in oil-rich parts of the Middle-East, they are a direct threat to the US-NATO-Israeli-al-Qaeda alliance.
Considering the above, the real motives to attack Iran become immediately clear:
First, to set back Iran as much as possible in economic terms, to "bomb it back to the stone age" to use the expression so many US politicians like so much. Think of what NATO did to Serbia, what the USA did to Iraq or what Israel did to Lebanon and Gaza. None of these air operations ever had a significant military impact, but it terms of terrorism against the civilian population they were nothing short of brilliant.
Second, to punish the Iranian people for voting the wrong way, for supporting a regime loathed by the West, and for daring to defy the US and Israeli global overlords. Simply put: the Iranian experiment cannot be allowed to succeed.
Third, a military strike on Iran would give a much needed ego-boost to an otherwise despondent US and Israeli political elite and it would also deliver an equally needed ego-boost to the macho ego to large segments of the US and Israeli public opinion badly bruised by a long string of military defeats.
All of this one already true in 2007. But since then, something huge has happened: the Ponzi-scheme otherwise known as the "international financial system" pretty much collapsed in 2008 and ever since it has been going down and down and down and down. While our financial elites go out of their way to conceal this from us, and while the corporate media assiduously pretends like nothing is really going on, the truth of the matter is that both the USA and the EU could suffer from a quasi-instantaneous financial collapse at any moment. The dollar could loose its (fictitious) value, the EU could go bankrupt, the banks could run out of money, etc. And the really terrifying thing is that this final collapse could be triggered by so many different events that such a crisis has not practically become inevitable. Both French and Russian experts predict that all of the above is likely to happen next year, in early 2013.
Now ask yourself a simple question: if you were one of the plutocrats running the system, the top "1%", the type of person who would have everything to loose, including your life, in case of such a collapse, and if you were given a option of blaming it all on a war with Iran (and/or in defense of Israel, the "only democracy in the Middle-East and our eternal friend and ally!!") - would you go for it? Of course you would.
Think of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" or, on this 11th anniversary of the 911 attacks (organized, of course, by the very same "one percenters") which so conveniently overshadowed Don Rumsfeld's missing 2.3 trillion dollars - $2,300,000,000,000.00 - and ask yourself if having the Iranians try to block the Strait of Hormuz might not be the best way to blame the ensuing economic chaos on "the Mullahs". I think that the answer is rather obvious, is it not?
Besides a "good old war" is an excellent way to boost a stagnant or collapsing economy just as it is a simple but effective way to convince the rest of the planet to purchase US Treasury Bonds and Securities.
The next canard which needs to be debunked is the silly notion that Israel could go at it alone. Nonsense! Israel does not have the military capabilities to destroy the (civilian) nuclear research and energy program of Iran, nevermind bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. All that Israel can do is to act like a trigger to provoke a military conflict between the USA and Iran. So there really are only two options here:
Either the USA and Israel attack together from day 1 or Israel attacks on day 1 and the USA joins the war on day 2.
Anybody doubting that should simply re-watch the speech of Netanyahu to the joint session of Congress on May 24th, 2011 with its 29 standing ovations or listen to any US President's speech at the annual AIPAC dinner (makes no difference which President you pick).
This being said, it is true that a significant segment of the US 1% Establishment does not want a war with Iran. We know that most of the US military is categorically opposed to such an option, and there are good reasons to suspect that even key individuals of the US financial power structure do not want that war either, at least not yet.
The US Nomenklatura is roughly composed of two main factions: first, what I call the "Old Anglo Lobby", which we can think of as "Dollar firsters" as opposed to, second, the "New Jewish Lobby", which we can think of as "Israel firsters". Needless to say, both groups are fluid, its members often interchangeable, and they usually fully agree on most political issues. So they should not be thought of as two hostile groups locked into some kind of zero-sum game. Not at all. For one thing, both of these factions are amazingly corrupt, so personal power and wealth decides a lot, regardless of any other consideration (see Sibel Edmond's book). Tensions between these two groups only flare up when a common policy cannot be agreed upon, and this is what is now taking place with the Iranian issue. The Anglo puppeteers who run the US regime will never shy away from prostituting themselves to the Zionist propaganda and interests, but not at the cost of their own Empire. Simply put, there still is a lot of Big Money in the USA which does not feel that catering to somebody as clearly insane and obnoxiously arrogant as Netanyhu (and most Israeli politicians, really) is worth taking the risk of a war with Iran.
However, the upcoming and inevitable collapse of the US-centered financial system is going to go a long way towards getting the rest of the 1% on board for a diversionary attack on Iran. Besides, when push comes to shove, and regardless of how much money the Old Anglo Lobby still has, the Zionists firmly control Congress and the media. Once the missiles start flying around the Middle-East all they will have to do is speak of "existential threat to Israel", mention the "Holocaust" with its obligatory figure of "6 millions" always attached, and accuse anybody opposed to a US involvement of yet another war on behalf of Israel as being "anti-Semitic" and a "terrorist" and the deal will be done, regardless of any reservations somebody might have.
Bottom line: a US attack in Iran is pretty much inevitable and, barring some major and unforeseen development, its going to happen rather sooner than later.
So forget all this nonsense about a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program and prepare for the upcoming war.
The Saker
