Let’s see. We have an oil gusher out of control in the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight, threatening the coastline all the way down to Miami, a New York stock exchange which can be launched into a thousand-point nose dive apparently by the push of a computer key from a faceless and no doubt wildly-overpaid “trader”, two or three wars on-going in the greater Middle East, an active civil war in Afghanistan, a smoldering civil war in Iraq, and the nintendo conflict in Pakistan that has spread to midtown Manhattan—all of which conflicts are further bankrupting the U.S. Treasury and sending U.S. taxpayers to the poor house. 

Yet on top of this, Washington is heading pell mell—thanks to the astute leadership of our Peace Prize President—into a collision course with Iran. The latter project has something to do with Tehran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program and the “existential threat” Iran supposedly poses to our presumptive ally, little Israel, even though our presumptive ally has a big arsenal of A-bombs at its disposal and the means to lob them anywhere in the immediate neighborhood, including Iran. Is it possible that something has gone horribly haywire in the aftermath of America winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union? Whatever happened to the “peace dividend”? Remember that? 

Last week there was an eye-opening article posted on Antiwar.com by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, who is a contributing editor to The American Conservative magazine. I just don’t believe Giraldi’s ”Timetable for War” has gotten the attention it deserves, under the already-alarming circumstances just outlined. Giraldi flat out predicts a war with Iran by August. The good part is, I think he may be wrong. Good, that is, if you are not a neocon confidence trickster, a warmonger, or a deep thinker like Senators Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, and the rest of those bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran hotheads on Capitol Hill, who have allowed their extended Washington experience to distort their small minds. The bad part is, Giraldi has a lot more experience and contacts than I do, so he may be right.  

Giraldi points out that both Tel Aviv and Washington know that there is, in fact, no genuine threat from a nuclear-armed Iran. Tel Aviv and Washington know this for sure, because the elected leaders in Tel Aviv and Washington are the authors of the fiction that Tehran poses such a threat. Remember, we have seen this movie before. It is a rerun. The Iraq WMD nightmare in the early days of the Dick Cheney Regency was hyped by the same suspects, to wit, politicians with a hidden agenda. The WMD nightmare, including a nuclear-armed Iraq, was the prime motivation for the gratuitous U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was all a lie, which the public bought. The resultant quagmire has been called the Three Trillion Dollar war by expert economists who have added up the long-term costs. 

Notwithstanding the idiocy and dishonesty up to this point, Giraldi is of the view that Tel Aviv will initiate a conflict with Iran as part of a scheme to get Washington to attack Iran when Iran attempts to counter-attack Israel proper or takes revenge upon U.S. Navy assets stationed in the Persian Gulf. It is certainly possible, given the track record. 

Washington has demonized Iran to such an extent with non-stop, neocon-inspired “clash of civilizations” propaganda that any attempt by Iran to defend itself from a “preemptive” Israeli attack would ipso facto be regarded as an act of international terrorism by Washington and by the U.S. establishment news media. Such a misguided act of self-defense undertaken by Tehran would be an affront to world peace and security, not to mention the status quo, thereby requiring Washington to jack-knife into the conflict. That’s the scenario, one which is plausible, based upon the benighted assumptions of the Orwellian world we confront in the aftermath of the Cold War. The impracticalities of carrying out this adventure, however, make me wonder if it will happen. That, and the fact that it is unnecessary.

Giraldi highlights one practical consideration: the importance of Iraqi air space, currently under the control of Washington, but which will not be under direct control after August. He posits that Tel Aviv will need to send its U.S.-supplied air force over this, the shortest route to Iran, and in so doing will instantly implicate Washington in the unprovoked attack. But there are other possibilities, outside of Iraq, which would mask Washington’s collaboration in the project. Speculation has been rife for years on this topic in the mainstream news media. One could even suggest that an attack on Iran has been promoted. 

For example, there was Bill Gertz’s “Inside the Ring” article in the Washington Times of October 6, 2006, entitled “Iran Option” wherein he quotes an unnamed, former U.S. Navy intelligence officer to the effect that Israel will attack Iran “soon”—not with long-range bombers, but with Jericho III land-based missiles and with submarine-launched, nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles. The German U-boats are located in the Persian Gulf or just outside it. I suggested back then that Germany would likely be a major beneficiary of blowback from such a hypothetical attack, because Berlin had succumbed to pressure and gifted Tel Aviv with these advanced U-boats, a major platform for launching a surprise nuclear attack. 

In sum, if you discount the possibility that the co-conspirators believe their own propaganda, like Soviet apparatchiki in days of yore, my bottom-line thinking is, why should Tel Aviv go to the trouble and take the risk of igniting a war with Iran when (a) there is no real military danger from Iran to begin with, and (b) when Tel Aviv can get substantially what it desires by using its cutouts in Washington, Berlin, London and Paris to impose crippling economic sanctions upon Iran? 

After all, what Tel Aviv and the Israel Lobby in America want is to degrade and wreck Iran as a viable nation-state, just like Iraq was degraded, wrecked and softened up by years of U.S.-led, UN condoned sanctions, before Iraq was finally poleaxed by the 2003, neocon-inspired invasion. And that is precisely what our Peace Prize President and Hillary Clinton—the two undisputed, opportunistic leaders of the Democratic party—are doing right now, in addition to presiding over an extensive covert campaign of destabilization, authorized and funded by Congress. 

Do I need to spell out why the White House and the Congress are racing down this dead end road? In any event, a shooting war would be almost unnecessary, not to mention nuts, at this point. One thing is certain, however: the entire fake Iranian crisis is a great diversion and distraction from the colonization of Palestine and from Tel Aviv’s atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon. The fake crisis does absolutely nothing to benefit the people of America and Europe. We are just along for the ride. Thank you Barack and Hillary. Such are the joys of the “peace dividend”, twenty years on.