[NYTr] Avnery: So What about Iran? (and the earth?)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[As always Avnery says a lot that is worthwhile -- here describing for
the Amerikan knee-jerk ignoramuses (the reactionaries won't read
him) just a bit of the Israeli-Iranian cooperation of the VERY recent
past. And about Israel's "historic" ( < 60 years) strategic analysis.
Yes, the US is in considerable part captive to Israeli manipulation.
And, yes, [sorry LaRouchie conspiracists] Israel has stupidly fallen
into sideshow wars for the US and the old European colonial powers.
And what's "old Europe" now, anyway, you bastard chickenhawk
Rumsfeld? Hard to believe, but scum like you makes MacNamara look good.

Avnery knows the history of the last 70 years -- on Israel's side and
the Arabs' and the non-Arab Persians') and describes it without
sentimentality or racism. He also sounds more (alarmingly) resigned to
armaggedon on a major scale than I have read in his work since I've
been following it regularly (since 1980 or so).  He is neither stupid,
nor racist, nor ignorant nor naive. 

ONLY US CITIZENS CAN STOP US COLLUSION IN THE MADNESS AVNERY DESCRIBES,
which seems more likely every day, as he says.  Read this
column slowly, check out the facts behind what he says. If you care
about peace, Iran, Israel, history, -- face whatever is unseemly in his
capsule history, and fucking please admit it if it checks out -- but
you don't have much time at this point for the research. AND STOP what
Avnery predicts from happening. "Unpleasant?" Oh, Yeah, Israel Our-Team
Rah! fans.  Devastating for the economy, piggo Amerikan and Euro
oil-guzzlers. Tragedy on tragedy for humanitarians and  historians and
archaeologists of Persia/Islam/the "mideast"/Russia/ the Caspian, etc?
Quite obviously.  And for ecologists who care for Gaia, it's a time
beyond imagination, almost. 

On the one hand, it seems  we really do have to stop these evil
disgusting ignorant pigs in the US, by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. It's not
just "America" that's at stake here.  It would be wonderful if
"America" (ie, the USA's empire) could be brought down -- totally -- by
itself. Not so simple. What every human reading this has to judge is:
is it worth the long-term cost (and gain)  for the short-term
destruction of that empire?  To all the species that will fall victim
to the carnage?

Maybe, in the long-run, it is.  This isn't just a few thousand, or a
few hundred thousand, or even a few million brown human bodies on the
pyre we are talking about. On the other hand, maybe we have to shrug,
let the worst happen, let the giant RESET button be hit. Let's all go
party in Havana?  

Your call. But if you care about the earth, the Amazon, Africa,
Mesopotamia and the "cradle of [shudder] "civilization" -- oh, and
if you are a breeder and have grandchildren -- you **might** be looking
at the REALLY "final solution." ME? I care more about the meerkats'
grandchildren, and your dogs' and my cats' than any rotten humans.
So... my scale might be different. 

Do you MoveOn, yuppies? Or do you sit and think? for a fucking change?
It's your move.  -NY Transfer]

                                ***

Gush Shalom - Sep 29, 2007
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1191034415


So What About Iran?

by UriAvnery

A RESPECTED American paper posted a scoop this week: Vice-President
Dick Cheney, the King of Hawks, has thought up a Machiavellian scheme
for an attack on Iran. Its main point: Israel will start by bombing an
Iranian nuclear installation, Iran will respond by launching missiles
at Israel, and this will serve as a pretext for an American attack on
Iran.

Far-fetched? Not really. It is rather like what happened in 1956. Then
France, Israel and Britain secretly planned to attack Egypt in order to
topple Gamal Abd-al-Nasser ("regime change" in today's lingo.) It was
agreed that Israeli paratroops would be dropped near the Suez Canal,
and that the resulting conflict would serve as a pretext for the French
and British to occupy the canal area in order to "secure" the waterway.
This plan was implemented (and failed miserably).

What would happen to us if we agreed to Cheney's plan? Our pilots would
risk their lives to bomb the heavily defended Iranian installations.
Then, Iranian missiles would rain down on our cities. Hundreds, perhaps
thousands would be killed. All this in order to supply the Americans
with a pretext to go to war.

Would the pretext have stood up? In other words, is the US obliged to
enter a war on our side, even when that war is caused by us? In theory,
the answer is yes. The current agreements between the US and Israel say
that America has to come to Israel's aid in any war - whoever started
it.

Is there any substance to this leak? Hard to know. But it strengthens
the suspicion that an attack on Iran is more imminent than people
imagine.

DO BUSH, Cheney & Co. indeed intend to attack Iran?

I don't know, but my suspicion that they might is getting stronger.

Why? Because George Bush is nearing the end of his term of office. If
it ends the way things look now, he will be remembered as a very bad -
if not the worst - president in the annals of the republic. His term
started with the Twin Towers catastrophe, which reflected no great
credit on the intelligence agencies, and would come to a close with the
grievous Iraq fiasco.

There is only one year left to do something impressive and save his
name in the history books. In such situations, leaders tend to look for
military adventures. Taking into account the man's demonstrated
character traits, the war option suddenly seems quite frightening.

True, the American army is pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even
people like Bush and Cheney could not dream, at this time, of invading
a country four times larger than Iraq, with three times the population.

But, quite possibly the war-mongers are whispering in Bush's ear: What
are you worrying about? No need for an invasion. Enough to bomb Iran,
as we bombed Serbia and Afghanistan. We shall use the smartest bombs
and the most sophisticated missiles against the two thousand or so
targets, in order to destroy not only the Iranian nuclear sites but
also their military installations and government offices. "We shall
bomb them back into the stone age," as an American general once said
about Vietnam, or "turn their clock back 20 years," as the Israeli Air
Force general Dan Halutz said about Lebanon.

That's a tempting idea. The US will only use its mighty Air Force,
missiles of all kinds and the powerful aircraft-carriers, which are
already deployed in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. All these can be sent
into action at any time on short notice. For a failed president
approaching the end of his term, the idea of an easy, short war must
have an immense attraction. And this president has already shown how
hard it is for him to resist temptations of this kind.

WOULD THIS indeed be such an easy operation, a "piece of cake" in
American parlance?

I doubt it.

Even "smart" bombs kill people. The Iranians are a proud, resolute and
highly motivated people. They point out that for two thousand years
they have never attacked another country, but during the eight years of
the Iran-Iraq war they have amply proved their determination to defend
their own when attacked.

Their first reaction to an American attack would be to close the
Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the Gulf. That would choke off a
large part of the world's oil supply and cause an unprecedented
world-wide economic crisis. To open the straits (if this is at all
possible), the US army would have to capture and hold large areas of
Iranian territory.

The short and easy war would turn into a long and hard war. What does
that mean for us in Israel?

There can be little doubt that if attacked, Iran will respond as it has
promised: by bombarding us with the rockets it is preparing for this
precise purpose. That will not endanger Israel's existence, but it will
not be pleasant either.

If the American attack turns into a long war of attrition, and if the
American public comes to see it as a disaster (as is happening right
now with the Iraqi adventure), some will surely put the blame on
Israel. It is no secret that the Pro-Israel lobby and its allies - the
(mostly Jewish) neo-cons and the Christian Zionists - are pushing
America into this war, just as they pushed it into Iraq. For Israeli
policy, the hoped-for gains of this war may turn into giant losses -
not only for Israel, but also for the American Jewish community.

IF PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not exist, the Israeli government
would have had to invent him.

He has got almost everything one could wish for in an enemy. He has a
big mouth. He is a braggart. He enjoys causing scandals. He is a
Holocaust denier. He prophesies that Israel will "vanish from the
map" (though he did not say, as falsely reported, the he would wipe
Israel off the map.)

This week, the pro-Israel lobby organized big demonstrations against
his visit to New York. They were a huge success - for Ahmadinejad. He
has realized his dream of becoming the center of world attention. He
has been given the opportunity to voice his arguments against Israel --
some outrageous, some valid - before a world-wide audience.

But Ahmadinejad is not Iran. True, he has won popular elections, but
Iran is like the orthodox parties in Israel: it is not their
politicians who count, but their rabbis. The Shiite religious
leadership makes the decisions and commands the armed forces, and this
body is neither boastful nor vociferous not scandal-mongering. It
exercises a lot of caution.

If Iran was really so eager to obtain a nuclear bomb, it would have
acted in utmost silence and kept as low a profile as possible (as
Israel did). The swaggering of Ahmadinejad would hurt this effort more
than any enemy of Iran could.

It is highly unpleasant to think about a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands
(and, indeed, in any hands.) I hope it can be avoided by offering
inducements and/or imposing sanctions. But even if this does not
succeed, it would not be the end of the world, nor the end of Israel.
In this area, more than in any other, Israel's deterrent power is
immense. Even Ahmadinejad will not risk an exchange of queens - the
destruction of Iran for the destruction of Israel.

NAPOLEON SAID that to understand a country's policy, one has only to
look at the map.

If we do this, we shall see that there is no objective reason for war
between Israel and Iran. On the contrary, for a long time it was
believed in Jerusalem that the two countries were natural allies.

David Ben-Gurion advocated an "alliance of the periphery". He was
convinced that the entire Arab world is the natural enemy of Israel,
and that, therefore, allies should be sought on the fringes of the Arab
world - Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Chad etc. (He also looked for allies
inside the Arab world - communities that are not Sunni-Arab, such as
the Maronites, the Copts, the Kurds, the Shiites and others.)

At the time of the Shah, very close connections existed between Iran
and Israel, some positive, some negative, some outright sinister. The
Shah helped to build a pipeline from Eilat to Askelon, in order to
transport Iranian oil to the Mediterranean, bypassing the Suez Canal.
The Israel internal secret service (Shabak) trained its notorious
Iranian counterpart (Savak). Israelis and Iranians acted together in
Iraqi Kurdistan, helping the Kurds against their Sunni-Arab oppressors.

The Khomeini revolution did not, in the beginning, put an end to this
alliance, it only drove it underground. During the Iran-Iraq war,
Israel supplied Iran with arms, on the assumption that anyone fighting
Arabs is our friend. At the same time, the Americans supplied arms to
Saddam Hussein - one of the rare instances of a clear divergence
between Washington and Jerusalem. This was bridged in the Iran-Contra
Affair, when the Americans helped Israel to sell arms to the Ayatollahs.

Today, an ideological struggle is raging between the two countries, but
it is mainly fought out on the rhetorical and demagogical level. I dare
to say that Ahmadinejad doesn't give a fig for the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, he only uses it to make friends in the Arab world. If I were
a Palestinian, I would not rely on it. Sooner or later, geography will
tell and Israeli-Iranian relations will return to what they were -
hopefully on a far more positive basis.

ONE THING I am ready to predict with confidence: whoever pushes for war
against Iran will come to regret it.

Some adventures are easy to get into but hard to get out of.

The last one to find this out was Saddam Hussein. He thought that it
would be a cakewalk - after all, Khomeini had killed off most of the
officers, and especially the pilots, of the Shah's military. He
believed that one quick Iraqi blow would be enough to bring about the
collapse of Iran. He had eight long years of war to regret it.

Both the Americans and we may soon be feeling that the Iraqi mud is
like whipped cream compared to the Iranian quagmire.