By Kenneth J. Theisen, 7/31/07
Remember back before the invasion of Iraq
when the Bush regime repeatedly told the world that Saddam was a threat to the
peace of the Middle East and the world because
of his WMDs? Today we are hearing the same song about Iran and how it
is a danger to the world because of its “nuclear program.” It turned out that Saddam’s WMDs were
non-existent and most experts agree that if Iran is seeking nuclear weapons it
is years away from acquiring them. But there is a real threat to the Middle East and it is the Bush regime.
Of course there is no peace in the Middle East. Since the U.S.
invasion of Iraq
we have had an imperialist war there. And the U.S.
client state of Israel
has kept its neighbors and the Palestinian people from enjoying peace for more
than half-a-century. On July 30, 2007
the Bush administration made the prospect of peace even more remote than it has
been for some time. The regime announced
a major threat to the Middle East and the
world this week. It will provide
military aid packages of over $63 billion that will introduce billions of
dollars in more weapons to a part of the world already armed to the teeth,
including a nuclear-armed Israel. The recipients of this aid will include Israel, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. This clearly constitutes a further threat to Iran and any other nations that dare to challenge
U.S.
hegemony.
While all the details are not yet known, it is known that a $13 billion
military aid package is destined for Egypt
and a $30 billion package is headed to Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced
additional military aid to Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf states.
The Gulf-region countries could receive
at least $20 billion in military aid. This
would mean a total of $63 billion in military aid for Middle East allies of U.S.
imperialism if the Bush regime gets its way.
Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are making a trip to the Middle East as I write this article. Not only are they
attempting to further isolate Iran,
but they are seeking more assistance from Arab allies in securing Iraq. In an example of double-talk Rice stated, “This
effort [the military aid] will help bolster forces of moderation and support a
broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al Qaeda, Hezbollah,
Syria, and Iran”Further modernizing the Egyptian and Saudi Armed Forces and
increasing interoperability will bolster our partners’ resolve in confronting
the threat of radicalism and cement their respective roles as regional leaders
in the quest for Middle East peace and in ensuring Lebanon’s freedom and
independence.” I guess she is
referring to forces of moderation like Saudi Arabia which has a royal
dictatorship that regularly practices torture, treats women as property, and
practices a reactionary 12th century version of Islam known as
Wahabism. Or maybe she is talking about
that great democrat Hosni Mubarak who has ruled in Egypt since 1981 with a combination
of the iron fist and fraudulent elections. Or maybe she thinks that Israel with scores, if not hundreds, of nuclear
weapons needs more weapons at its disposal so it can illegally occupy even more
territory or maybe even invade Lebanon
again to ensure its “freedom and independence.”
Undoubtedly the additional weaponry will promote the Bush regime goal of
spreading democracy in the Middle East. I am sure the Saudi Royal family and all the ruling
sheiks in the Gulf region will use their weapons to protect the polling places
when they create them. And given Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people we
can expect that Israel
will further promote Palestinian democracy with its new weapons. It has done so repeatedly in the past with
missile strikes, the dropping of U.S.
made bombs, and even the use of U.S.
supplied bulldozers to destroy Palestinian homes and build it apartheid fence. Democracy will soon be breaking out all over.
The announcement of the military
aid package was combined with the Middle East trip of Rice and Gates to deliver
a firm threat to Iran.
Rice made this clear at a refueling stop in Ireland. She stated, “There
isn’t a doubt that Iran
constitutes the single most important single-country strategic challenge to the
United States and to the
kind of the Middle East that we want to
see.” She said Iran was a support
of “terrorism that is a threat to the democratic forces in Lebanon, support for
the most radical forces in the Palestinian territories . . . or support for
Shiite militias and the transfer of technologies that are endangering the lives
of our soldiers and endangering a free Iraq.”
Gates also emphasized the importance of the trip, “For the secretary of
state and the secretary of defense to travel together to any region, including
the Middle East, at a minimum is very rare, if
not unprecedented. I think that it is a statement first of all of the
importance of this region in terms of U.S. vital interests and the
importance we attach to reassuring our friends out here of our staying
power.”
Gates fooled no one when he stated, “We are out here
to talk about the long term.” He stated
that if Iran
sees these arms deals and this latest visit by Rice and himself as a threat
then, “that’s in the eye of the beholder.” I am sure that is very comforting to the
theocrats in Tehran.
But just in case any one misses the messages of Rice and
Gates as they travel, Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political
affairs, delivered a telephone briefing to reporters where he stated, “Iran has
worried everybody in the region. It supports everything that the rest of the
world is trying to defend against.” He said that the Bush administration had
attempted to “open the door” to Iran
in talks involving the top U.S.
and Iranian envoys in Iraq and
through negotiations Iran’s
nuclear program. He accused Iran
of rebuffing the U.S.
This is clearly part of the Bush regime’s tactic of using diplomacy in the
build-up to war against Iran. The regime used similar tactics before
launching the U.S. invasion
of Iraq. The U.S. pretended that it wanted a
diplomatic solution then too. But then
as now, it is going through the motions by talking while preparing for
war. The regime talks to Iran but if it
does not get its way, it will launch war unless it is stopped by a massive
movement.
Tehran is not being fooled by the U.S.’s latest
moves. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini stated that U.S. policy
“is creating fear and concerns in the countries of the region and trying
to harm the good relations between these countries. What the Persian
Gulf needs is security, stability, peace, prosperity and economic
development.” Of course Iran’s leaders also desire Gulf-regional
hegemony which is in contradiction to U.S. desires. The reactionary leaders of Iran no more
have the interests of the people in mind than the reactionary leaders of the
Bush regime. But war between the U.S. and Iran is not in the interests of the
vast majority of the people of the world and would lead to unimagined calamity.
Iranian leaders surely did not miss the message coming out of Israel
either. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert made clear what is up when he stated, “We understand the need of
the United States to support
the Arab moderate states, and there is a need for a united front between the U.S. and us regarding Iran.” Although in the past, Israel has
regularly objected to arms sales to Arab states, Olmert stated his government
has no objections to these military aid packages.
The Bush regime intends to “win” in Iraq
and unless stopped it intends to “win” in a war against Iran too. This latest round of diplomatic visits and the
arms package is just an illustration of Clausewitz’s description of war as a
“continuation of politics by other means.”