I have finally had the time to sit down and listen to Scott’s comments on the article Robert Baer wrote about the upcoming war against Iran. As Scott says, the article is full of nonsensical accusations about the Quds for in Iran making GI-killing EFP and the like which are based on just the same rumors, scratch this, the same Gordon produced propaganda as the rest of the War Party’s lies. Scott is quite correct when is says that since the “Iranian nuclear weapons program” nonsense did not stick, they came up with another excuse which goes something like this:
“The Iranian Quds force, backed by the (now officially “terrorist”) Pasdaran are arming the Shias which kill our boys. We do not want war with Iran, but bombing the Quds force and the Pasdaran terrorists is just self-defense, which even the UN Charter recognizes. We hope that the Iranian government will put an end to these terrorist attacks against the Coalition forces, but in the meanwhile we have to defend ourselves”.
What is left out here is that the Quds force is an integral part of the Pasdaran (Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps) which itself is directly subordinated to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei (through Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, CinC of the Pasdaran). Not only that, but the Quds force is also the main trainer and supporter of the Badr Brigades, the armed wing of SCIRI/SIIC, which itself is the main force behind the current Maliki government.
So this entire EFP myth can fully justify the ‘redirection’ Hersh warned about. It can even be used to try to kill the Supreme Leader of Iran or overthrow Maliki.
Scott asks what the end goal of such a strategy would be, what would the Neocons hope to achieve with an all-out war with the Shias in Iraq and with Iran? The answer to this lies, I think, with the Neocon ideology.
While it is often suggested that the Neocons might have a dual-loyalty issue I think that this is nonsense: their loyalty it *completely* to Israel. So to understand their goal we need to look at it not from an American point of view, but from the point of view of an Israeli Likudnik. Then the goal becomes very clear: it is to bomb Iran back to the stone age (as was done to Iraq by the USA and to Lebanon by the IDF last summer) and either put back a Baathist puppet regime back in power in Iraq or, at least, to achieve permanent chaos and destruction in most of Iraq and preventing a strong patriotic ruler (whether Shia ro Sunni) to come to power. By “removing” Iraq and Iran from the Middle-East equation and by leaving only Imperial puppets in power, the Israeli security (read: hegemony) can be secured.
Also – since both SCIRI/SIIC and the Sadrists have clearly stated that they will fight against the USA in case of an attack on Iran, such an attack would provide the perfect excuse for either a ‘redirection’ (which could be then blamed on the Shia) or, in the end, a withdrawal from Iraq under the heading “they don’t deserve us”.
So while any person with the intelligence or ethical sense of a blue-green algae can see that this policy is insane, immoral and suicidal, the Neocons see it as a rather sophisticated and clever plan to achieve their goal of creating a “new Midde-East”.
The Baer article is just another step in the countdown to the inevitable war against Iran and the rest of the Shia the USA will wage *solely* on behalf of AIPAC and its patrons.
